Absolutely. Being in opposition isnt just about doing whatever it takes to get power. Its about challenging the narrative and working to persuade the electorate that you offer a better vision for the country. Not just 'Whatever you want we'll give it to you...'
Jeremy Corbyn
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Absolutely. Being in opposition isnt just about doing whatever it takes to get power. Its about challenging the narrative and working to persuade the electorate that you offer a better vision for the country. Not just 'Whatever you want we'll give it to you...'
Dinowolf
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Exactly right. By being a strong leader and an effective opposition you will be elected, esp. when the Govt. has only a slender majority and unpopular policies. Wait until the fiasco of the referendum is over and see what the electorate think then.
Templeton Peck
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Yes. This is why Harman got battered the other day telling Burnham they'd 'lost the argument' over public spending. Nobody in the Labour party made the fucking argument.
Lord Knows
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Maybe to win the next election Labour should argue on their economic record rather than accepting the media/Tory view. Gideon will fuck up because he's basically incompetent and Labour should hammer him at every opportunity.
FrankMunro-371
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The Labour Party need to stop the in fighting. Calling people morons, or saying they need heart transplants does them no favours. Today the arguments continued with Messrs Prescott and Milburn wading in. And the unions have also put their view across. The country needs a strong opposition, as weak opposition leads to complacent Government. We saw it after Blairs landslide win 1997. The Conservative party tore itself apart and had Michael Howard and Iain Duncan Smith as leaders. For eight years after the 1997 debacle, the Conservatives were not doing the job that her majesty's opposition should be doing. If Labour want to avoid being in similar dire straits they need to stop the in fighting, let the leadership contenders put their views across, and then get behind whoever wins.
Deutsch Wolf
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The likes of Burnham, Cooper and Kendall have nothing to offer to me. I don't want to vote for a right wing politician.
Templeton Peck
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Corbyn would and already has been. The other three candidates have largely accepted the Tory narrative meaning defeat in 2020 unless the govt massively fuck up and people are desperate to vote them out.
Templeton Peck
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Agreed. Its Corbyn or nothing for me. I can't vote for anyone who accepts the economic necessity for austerity.
Hereford Wolf
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Of course the Tory's are very clever. They included the minimum wage rise in the Welfare Bill, so even though it will put 1000's of families into more poverty, if Labour voted against it then Osbourne will say they voted against increasing the minimum wage.
Such is politics.
Such is politics.
Templeton Peck
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I do. I think the defeat of Corbyn might be seen as the last hurrah for any left leaning Labour supporters and they'll go elsewhere. If Corbyn wins I think the party will split and we'll see the formation of some sort of SDP.
Any vaguely competent Labour leader could expose that narrative as bollocks.
Deutsch Wolf
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I already voted Green in the election because of my dissatisfaction with Miliband and his lukewarm agenda. Labour won't be getting my vote until they provide a credible alternative, Harman is a disgrace.
EdgeOfTheAlps
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If the media, combined with the two Tory and the one Blairite candidate keep ramping up the rhetoric of fear maybe they should just call an end to the farce and announce a one-party state.
The attacks on Corbyn from the greasy pole career politicians are a disgrace.
The attacks on Corbyn from the greasy pole career politicians are a disgrace.
Templeton Peck
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Anyone else noticed how none of his opponents have offered any critique of his policies? We hear lots about Corbyn being a 'disaster', 'lurching to the left' and 'unelectable' but I've yet to hear critique of his plans and any alternatives.
I read his policy document the other day (rock n' roll through and through) and its eminently reasonable. Not the Trotskyite blueprint for war and famine much of the media (and Labour MPs) would have you believe.
Lord Knows
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Listening to 5live the other day with Corbyn interviewed by Nicky Campbell on the Welfare bill. When Corbyn debated each point with good reason Campbell quickly switched the debate to Nuclear weapons. Not sure if Campbell had the right wing agenda or someone in his ear.
Lord Knows
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It should have been shouted from the roof tops.
Comments by some Labour leadership contenders that the last Labour Government may have borrowed too much or even over-spent before the 2008 global financial crisis raise fundamental questions about the Party’s ability to project a winning economic programme for the future.
They also play to the Tory and media agenda by falsifying Labour’s pre-crisis record, fail to put Labour’s rather modest 2006 and 2007 budget deficits into context, and don’t acknowledge the mammoth effort required to deal with the biggest financial crisis since the 1930s and its impact on UK national debt and budget deficits.
By June 2007, when Gordon Brown took over from Tony Blair, Britain had enjoyed under Labour a record ten years of continuous economic growth, low inflation, low interest rates, record employment, big cuts in child, pensioner and working poverty, dramatic reductions in NHS waiting times, record infrastructure investment, and improved living standards.
No-one was especially worried about the level of public spending or the size of Britain’s budget deficit. UK national debt had fallen from 42 per cent of GDP under the Tories in 1997 to 38 per cent in 2007 – below that of France, Germany, the USA, Italy or Japan. The budget deficit was well within the three per cent limit of GDP set by the EU Stability and Growth Pact. In September 2007 even David Cameron publicly pledged to match Labour’s spending plans up to 2010.
In financial markets the FTSE 100 share price index had hit a six year high, showing optimism about Britain’s economic prospects under Labour. Bank credit default swaps – the cost of insuring bank loans against the risk of borrowers failing to repay – had reached an historic low, another sign of real confidence in Britain’s future.
The consensus was that the UK economy was in good shape and its prospects looked bright, with lead responsibility for keeping the economy stable through monetary policy handed over to an independent Bank of England.
Of course subsequent events proved that both Labour Ministers and Tory Shadow Ministers were wrong to believe both that we had put an end to boom and bust and that light touch regulation was enough to ensure financial stability. But very few commentators said so at the time.
There was no clamour for public spending cuts. That only came after the autumn 2008 financial crisis which the Tories seized on with their Big Deceit that ‘overspending’ by Labour had left the country with mountainous levels of national debt and a huge budget deficit.
The truth is Britain’s 2007 budget deficit of £39 billion or 2.7 per cent of GDP was dwarfed by the colossal cost of subsequent state support to save Britain’s failing banks which by 2009 was equivalent to some 90 per cent of GDP.
The cost to UK taxpayers of bailing out Britain’s banks had peaked at £133 billion in cash outlays alone. But by 2012 the potential total taxpayer liability including cash outlays, government guarantees and Bank of England support had exceeded £1160 billion or ten times the annual cost of the NHS.
By tackling the banking crisis and the recession that it provoked Labour solved a private sector financial problem but at the price of transforming it into a public sector fiscal one as taxpayers picked up the huge bill from reckless bankers. Consequently the UK debt to GDP ratio more than doubled from 37 per cent in 2007-08 to 80 per cent in 2014-15. Significant cuts in public spending to produce something a bit lower on the budget deficit scale in 2007 would have been totally irrelevant to the stratospheric impact of the crisis or how the last Labour government was able to manage it.
So my questions to Labour leadership contenders are these:
-Surely you agree that rebuilding Labour’s reputation for sound economic management makes it essential to correct the Tory Big Deceit, about Labour ‘over spending’?
-Do you accept 200 years of economic experience demonstrates that the best way to bring down the debt burden is to encourage the economy to grow, not to slash public spending? Surely growth not still more austerity is the answer?
-Instead of targeting a budget surplus surely what is needed is sufficient public and private investment to establish the quality infrastructure, the millions of new houses, the high skills and the cutting-edge technology to sustain a competitive productive economy?
-Surely that is better than copying current Tory policy of building UK prosperity upon a consumerist chimera of high personal debt, artificially inflated housing assets and a disastrous trade gap?
-Do you also agree that Labour cannot back Osborne’s Victorian idea for permanent budget surpluses except during recessions? Such pre-Keynesian neoliberal dogma would mean a constant squeeze on public spending after tax cuts that deliberately put a budget surplus beyond reach. Surely it is Osborne’s equivalent of the Tea Party ‘starve the beast’ strategy in the USA, aimed at shrinking the state for dogmatically political, not soundly economic, reasons?
Well said Peter Hain.
http://labourlist.org/2015/07/a-win...ions-to-leadership-candidates-on-the-economy/
Comments by some Labour leadership contenders that the last Labour Government may have borrowed too much or even over-spent before the 2008 global financial crisis raise fundamental questions about the Party’s ability to project a winning economic programme for the future.
They also play to the Tory and media agenda by falsifying Labour’s pre-crisis record, fail to put Labour’s rather modest 2006 and 2007 budget deficits into context, and don’t acknowledge the mammoth effort required to deal with the biggest financial crisis since the 1930s and its impact on UK national debt and budget deficits.
By June 2007, when Gordon Brown took over from Tony Blair, Britain had enjoyed under Labour a record ten years of continuous economic growth, low inflation, low interest rates, record employment, big cuts in child, pensioner and working poverty, dramatic reductions in NHS waiting times, record infrastructure investment, and improved living standards.
No-one was especially worried about the level of public spending or the size of Britain’s budget deficit. UK national debt had fallen from 42 per cent of GDP under the Tories in 1997 to 38 per cent in 2007 – below that of France, Germany, the USA, Italy or Japan. The budget deficit was well within the three per cent limit of GDP set by the EU Stability and Growth Pact. In September 2007 even David Cameron publicly pledged to match Labour’s spending plans up to 2010.
In financial markets the FTSE 100 share price index had hit a six year high, showing optimism about Britain’s economic prospects under Labour. Bank credit default swaps – the cost of insuring bank loans against the risk of borrowers failing to repay – had reached an historic low, another sign of real confidence in Britain’s future.
The consensus was that the UK economy was in good shape and its prospects looked bright, with lead responsibility for keeping the economy stable through monetary policy handed over to an independent Bank of England.
Of course subsequent events proved that both Labour Ministers and Tory Shadow Ministers were wrong to believe both that we had put an end to boom and bust and that light touch regulation was enough to ensure financial stability. But very few commentators said so at the time.
There was no clamour for public spending cuts. That only came after the autumn 2008 financial crisis which the Tories seized on with their Big Deceit that ‘overspending’ by Labour had left the country with mountainous levels of national debt and a huge budget deficit.
The truth is Britain’s 2007 budget deficit of £39 billion or 2.7 per cent of GDP was dwarfed by the colossal cost of subsequent state support to save Britain’s failing banks which by 2009 was equivalent to some 90 per cent of GDP.
The cost to UK taxpayers of bailing out Britain’s banks had peaked at £133 billion in cash outlays alone. But by 2012 the potential total taxpayer liability including cash outlays, government guarantees and Bank of England support had exceeded £1160 billion or ten times the annual cost of the NHS.
By tackling the banking crisis and the recession that it provoked Labour solved a private sector financial problem but at the price of transforming it into a public sector fiscal one as taxpayers picked up the huge bill from reckless bankers. Consequently the UK debt to GDP ratio more than doubled from 37 per cent in 2007-08 to 80 per cent in 2014-15. Significant cuts in public spending to produce something a bit lower on the budget deficit scale in 2007 would have been totally irrelevant to the stratospheric impact of the crisis or how the last Labour government was able to manage it.
So my questions to Labour leadership contenders are these:
-Surely you agree that rebuilding Labour’s reputation for sound economic management makes it essential to correct the Tory Big Deceit, about Labour ‘over spending’?
-Do you accept 200 years of economic experience demonstrates that the best way to bring down the debt burden is to encourage the economy to grow, not to slash public spending? Surely growth not still more austerity is the answer?
-Instead of targeting a budget surplus surely what is needed is sufficient public and private investment to establish the quality infrastructure, the millions of new houses, the high skills and the cutting-edge technology to sustain a competitive productive economy?
-Surely that is better than copying current Tory policy of building UK prosperity upon a consumerist chimera of high personal debt, artificially inflated housing assets and a disastrous trade gap?
-Do you also agree that Labour cannot back Osborne’s Victorian idea for permanent budget surpluses except during recessions? Such pre-Keynesian neoliberal dogma would mean a constant squeeze on public spending after tax cuts that deliberately put a budget surplus beyond reach. Surely it is Osborne’s equivalent of the Tea Party ‘starve the beast’ strategy in the USA, aimed at shrinking the state for dogmatically political, not soundly economic, reasons?
Well said Peter Hain.
http://labourlist.org/2015/07/a-win...ions-to-leadership-candidates-on-the-economy/
FrankMunro-371
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The Corbyn bandwagon rolls on. It seems a lot of people are joining the Labour Party in order to support him. And Alex Salmond has backed him. Meanwhile John Mann has called for the leadership election to be halted.
Tony Towner
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Allegedy it's because those signing up at £3 a pop are Tories who know that Corbyn as a Labour Leader will make them unelectable in 2020, although I respect the view of TSB and others that have said that being true to your ideals is more important than being in power. Bookies still only have him as 3rd favourite though, if he were to win I'd think the PLP would find a way of forcing him out before 2020 though
