Labour: the party that hates Britain

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Interesting article about the hypocrisy of Labour. Hopefully the British public's memory isn't too short when they next vote in the general election.

Last edited by Acedia on 07 Oct 2013, 8:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

Are you implying the NHS is not so good?

ruveyn

Tequila, this is correct, though the same thing could be said of the Tories, and in the US of Democrats and Republicans. In fact, the same thing can be said of every so-called center part in the entire West. Fascism was the state against other countries and despised minority groups. As was the case with communism, liberalism is the state against its own citizens. And all of the aforementioned parties are liberal parties.

The question is what is to be done.

and..let the games begin.

It's not started yet.

Exactly, although remember that Tequila is a merchant of liberalism just as much as he is a merchant of Zionism. Don't kid yourself that UKIP will be any better than the Lib-Lab-Con establishment because they are a strong libertarian party.

Michael Newland wrote a fantastic article about liberalism and how it is just as nasty as communism. I have it somewhere and if I find it I shall post it here.

So: Energy prices went up under Labour. Fair enough, but it wasn't Labour policy that made that happen. Now Miliband is suggesting a price freeze. Well, that seems a sensible idea. Shame he didn't think of it while he was a Minister, but better late than never I suppose.

And Andy Burnham has threatened to sue Jeremy Hunt over the suggestion that he was involved in a 'cover up' of the Staffordshire deaths.

Are those the most serious charges that can be laid against Labour during its 13 years in office?

Labour should refrain from calling themselves socialists, they moved way too much to the center of the politican spectrum. As has happened with the Dutch labour party, the Socialist Party in Belgium, and the Partida Socialista in Spain. These days, a true leftist has to dig deeper to smaller yet dedicated parties. The party I vote for has not many votes, but they are real socialists, unlike the ones who call themselves "Socialist Party" but have forgotten their roots.

Socialism died around the time Leon Trotsky got a pick axe in his head in sunny Mexico.

Blimey, where do you live, the 1910s?

Labour hasn't been even partially anything other than a temporary political umbrella for some (very few, and highly-changeable) members of some (more or less temporary) factions of some (formative, and already pre-factionalised and therefore electorally near-insignificant) socialist parties and/or movements, let alone any proposed or notional and/or theoretical subscriber to -- or even (at socialists' most optimistic heights of expectations) a MP majority-voted informal/semi-formal membership of, expressing some occasional (and unavoidable) heavily qualified ideological sympathies of even the most limited nature for or on behalf of, the major doctrinal requirements (and implicitly globally-encompassing ultimate mission objectives) of the International Sovialist Movement (or the politically insignificant British subvarieties thereof) since at least the 1924 MacDonald Government,

Admittedly, Attlee's post-War landslide Labour Government did push for nationalisation of many major state industries and established some arguably socialised (and demonstrably nationally-loved and appreciated,, even at the present day) practices and institutions such as the NHS and the Welfare State as part of the post-WWII social settlement (now being quite openly unpicked, socially-redistributive thread after carefully-fought for thread, by the evil and regressive Conservative Party and its useful idiots in Coalition).

The modern (i.e., post-"New Labour") Labour Party, despite it's supposed retreat from a historical commitment to the cause of the ownership by the workers of the means of production, as was exemplified in the largely-irrelevant hyped-up debate over the party's abandonment of (the by-then historical footnote that was) Clause IV of its constitution in the mid-1990s, had never been a socialist party to any electorally-recognisable degree (or indeed, by any potentially responsive proportion of the electorate).

In general, I can think of perhaps two (at the most) serving Labour MPs who would declare themselves in any significant way as a 'socialist', whether by inclination or practice. Most Labour MPs and PMSs in particular -- from Harold Wilson onward, to Gordon Brown -- who were presented with that possible self-definition would laugh in your face (or, more likely, behind your back).

I think the Iraq War and the bumping off of Dr Kelly were pretty serious.

I dont think Britain has the space or money for Labours open door policy on immigration, "Tony Blair has defended Labour’s controversial mass immigration policy by claiming that Britain cannot succeed unless it opens its borders to more people"

Or how about the gradual dis-assembly of Britain's traditional "Constitution" for a better word, such as the removal of the House of Lords to be replaced by Cronyism, the replacement of The Lord Chancellor with a "Speaker", the replacement of the Law Lords with an American style Supreme Court.

Remember also how the traditional Labour was replaced by "New Labour" after the Traditional Labour Leader John Smith very conveniently died of a heart attck to open the way for New Labours Tony Blair, and have a look at LINK the Communist background of lots of the NEW LABOUR Government.

Gordon Brown selling Britains Gold at a basement price, just before Britain most needed it was a pretty serious mistake as well.

Agree 100 per cent. My own considered but legal layman's opinion is that the war was illegally-prosecuted and that Blair's personal (I.e., outside the professional and purely political) relationship with President Bush II (along with the various informal factors that comprise the nebulous US/UK 'Special Relationship') was the over-riding driving force behind it, but that has yet to be backed up by an official body (although we'll have to wait and see what the now long-overdue Chilcott Inquiry says on the subject, if anything: My own prediction is that it will probably offer a very nuanced and over-interpretable judgement on the matter, so that it's capable of being argued either way, in the typical way that the Establishment looks after its own when the chips are down).



Well, that's one (highly-debatable) interpretation of the events in question.



I am generally in two minds on this matter, but generally I agree that the situation needs bringing under control. But there's nothing we can do about EU immigration, without 'de-signing' a whole lot of relevant EU law. And I don't think that's going to happen (barring the unlikely advent of a UKIP Government), despite all the huffing and puffing of the Conservatives in Government, who are justly alarmed by the apparent electoral acceptance and (arguably growing) popularity of UKIP's isolationist tendencies.

The recent introduction of an Australian-style points-based system for immigration should hopefully (as was intended) help sift the (small amount of) wheat from the (great majority of) chaff when it comes to deciding who to let in. See http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/busin ... guide-pbs/

Some see that system as inherently xenophobic, btw. I would argue that it is merely sensible to regard potential (non EU_ immigrants with at least a partial regard to possible net benefit that they might bring to their adopted society, particularly when (to be quite pragmatic about the question of added population burdens, however their impact is measured) we already live in the most overcrowded country in the EU.



The House of Lords is it stood was an anachronism that needed reforming. And political parties have always tended to stuff it full of 'friendly faces' (if you want an example of REAL constitutional manipulation of (and outright chicanery involving) the Upper Chamber, look up the history of the Parliament Act (1911)). So there's nothing new about that, even though the removal of the hereditary peers could be regarded as an affront to the Constitution, if you were very very conservatively-minded indeed, I suppose.

And it hasn't been 'dis-assembled' by any realistic interpretation of that phrase, merely (I would argue) overhauled, fine-tuned and adjusted to bring its legislative powers into a better accord with modern political needs and methods. Some changes can be argued as negatives, others as positives, but it's a fair bet that there will be future changes made to annul, enhance, over-ride, augment and otherwise affect the way the Upper Chamber functions, and these too will need to be considered in due course.



Net constitutional impact: Nil, as far as I can tell. I'm prepared to be proven wrong, but until then I fail to see why anyone should really care about the replacement of one (largely ceremonial) role with another (largely ceremonial) role, fulfilling largely the same duties.



The Jury is still out -- ho, ho -- on whether the Supreme Court will be an asset to the judicial system. There were good arguments in favour of it and against, but in the end the pro- arguments won out. To date, it doesn't seem to have handed out justice to a markedly different qualitative standard to that demonstrated by the Lords handling of things, despite working to a much tighter statutory/regulatory standard. So again, I'm not presently convinced that the Supreme Court is inherently A Bad Thing, still less an unconstitutional imposition.



Well, the Labour Party always had a problem with entrysim (look at the expulsion of Militant) and on this occasion, the Kinnock-led 'Modernisers' had their chance and blew it when they (unexpectedly, to most people's minds) lost the '92 election -- you could arguably regard the Blairite tendency (i.e., the extreme centre-right wing of the disillusioned modernisers in the party and their ultimate promotion and championing of their proposed direction as represented by Blair as leader) as a similar entryist faction.

Smith's stewardship, at least superficially, seemed to offer more of the same Kinnock-prescribed policies -- although he had demonstrably greater public credibility and a publicly-perceived more personally-favourable political persona than Kinnock -- and when he died (he had a history of heart trouble during and before his time as Shadow Chancellor, so I think that regarding his death as 'convenient' is a bit of an insinuation too far (unless you are aware of any suspicious factors) although it unquestionably happened at a political moment that was to the advantage of the Blairite faction, and was opportunistically exploited as such): It was really just a question of which tendency in the Labour Party was going to become predominant. And due to the comparative strengths and relative advantages enjoyed by (and internal political leverage held by) the party's internal formal and informal tendencies, groups and factions (both declared and undeclared), and for what at the time seemed very convincing reasons (to the majority of Labour party members and MPs who voted on the matter, who also had an inherent interest in the party's electoral prospects), the faction behind Blair's candidacy prevailed (i.e., those post-Kinnockian-modernisation MPs who actually put forward and championed and then collectively shaped and influenced the objectives that Blair later professed to be his own personal convictions -- either sincerely and forgetfully or insincerely and consciously -- in what he astutely judged to be the interests of his publicly-perceived personal leadership style).

It's arguable that the party in general (which had spent 15 years in opposition at that point) was being over-conservative in appointing Blair and accepting all his attendant prospective and potential reformative baggage, since Labour under Smith was convincingly ahead of John Major's Government without any apparent need for drastic or even moderate overhaul or realignment accordant with projections of actual or inferred Kinnockian expectations. It would be interesting to consider the party's post-94 history (i.e., after Smith's presumably-inevitable death, which for theoretical purposes is necessarily-set at the time it in fact occurred) in Opposition and then -- other things being equal -- in Government, had Blair and Brown not reached the Granita pact -- but they did and so (without getting sidetracked into whole new realms of speculation) that's that. Blair got first crack (and arguably basked in the somewhat coincidental socio-political sunshine), while Brown (while given a virtually unchallenged micro- and macro- economic policy remit) was left champing at the Prime Ministerial bit (until his crack came due, during which the political weather got first overcast and then outright stormy, in which circumstances Brown's characteristically downbeat and introverted personality was popularly-perceived as being representative of an unresponsive and artificially-empathic Government).

I also think that it's a bit of a mistake to imagine that 'New Labour' sprang forth into a policy-vacuum left by Smith's demise. Smith (along with Mo Mowlam) had already embarked on what was known as the 'Prawn Cocktail Offensive', doing the round of high-class restaurants, schmoozing the assorted spivs and sharks that are collectively referred to as 'The City', reassuring them that a Labour Government wouldn't do anything to upset the financial apple-cart (as the self-interested of the City saw it at any rate). This was a significant departure from previous Labour attitudes to Big Finance, but one dictated by circumstances after Thatcher's Big Bang, which (whether intentionally or not) saw the City become a political power bloc in its own right. In that respect, Blair merely continued and expanded upon Smith's plans, ultimately, and with an arguable degree of inevitability, with the results that we are now living through.



Yeah, well, everyone makes mistakes. He never claimed to be a fortune teller, and if this old chestnut is the worst charge that can be laid at his door, he did pretty well considering.

My own personal objection to 'New Labour' was its sustained and multi-faceted authoritarian assaults on historical civil liberties previously regarded as some of the defining characteristics of British citizenship, assaults which had assumed truly frightening proportions before Blair made a well-timed exit.

How far Labour (under Miliband and others yet to come) will be influenced by the history of 'New Labour' has yet to be seen, but 'New Labour' as a political force was an experiment, and a largely successful one in electoral terms, whose time has been and gone, although its undeniable historical impact has left an indelible imprint (both positive and negative) on the Labour party (in terms of its image, reputation perception by both its members and by the electorate).

The real question is whether the apparent right-wing bias in the electorate can be addressed by a party of the left or centre-left without compromising their greater socio-political 'missions' (which is what Blair's much-vaunted 'Third Way' was all about, whether you judge that strategy to have been successful to whatever degree or otherwise) or whether that demonstrable tendency among voters has proved/is proving a somewhat transitory phenomenon chiefly recognisable among those who came to their own versions of political maturity/awareness under Thatcher, and who are now (in possibly a majority of cases) approaching retirement.

One of the other reasons that I suspect that the social impact of the Thatcher years have a lot to do with it, is because of the still-current perception among many voters (which they will invariably mention if you discuss their political allegiance with them) that the various negative aspects of the late 1970s were purely ascribable to 'Old Labour' (I don't know of any serious research into the popularity and prevalence of this rather garbled and mythological version of events of the immediately pre-Thatcher period, so my evidence is purely personal and anecdotal). But it's far too early to draw any firm conclusions, let alone tentative ones, at the very least until Labour (without the 'New') has had at least one full term in Government imho.

Last edited by CharityFunDay on 07 Nov 2013, 2:09 am, edited 5 times in total.

Politicians cannot control energy prices so if the govt were to cap what the public had to pay then who would pay the difference between that figure and the real one that is demanded? the government? very unlikely.

If Labour found some way to try and cap energy costs what do you think the energy firms would do just before an election? It's no coincidence prices shot up just after Milliband announced his plans

And by the same token, shares in the major energy companies lost billions in value at the same time so it is being taken as a serious 'threat' by many with a vested interest in the maximal and ongoing profitability of these companies.

Labour has yet to present an analysed, argued and costed version of this issue-specific policy proposal, so we can all speculate about how such a price-freeze and/or cap might be put into practice until such time as the party gets round to putting practical flesh on its hypothetical bones.

But there's nothing inherently improbable or impractical about price-capping, as seen in the recent debate about the sale of alcohol -- a lot of the necessary 'oomph' in order for a party (let alone Parliamentary) majority to be inclined favourably toward, let alone 'get behind' and without even considering their eventual potential for attending (or as a bare professional minimum, paying due attention to) the relevant debates, following the progress of the proposed legislation as it is drafted, considered, debated, amended and finally passed as a Bill for examination by the Upper Chamber.

WARNING: LONG, SUBJECTIVE AND POTENTIALLY VERY BORING ANALYSIS FOLLOWS: PLEASE SCROLL DOWN TO AVOID ADVERSE SIDE-EFFECTS

My own feeling is that the proposed price freeze (i.e. in as much as it has been presented as an undetailed broad-brush and issue-specific potential policy objective by HM Opposition, who of course have the political luxury of opposing (with highly-variable degrees of justification, usually falling between the extremes of the fundamentally-philosophically-principled on the one hand, and the merely temporarily politically expedient on the other, each involving further individual and highly-variable degrees of rational argument and/or political and/or party political coherency) pretty much anything the Government proposes or does, while proposing pretty much whatever they want most of the time, without necessarily considering how it might work in practice if they were to be elected to govern) achieves two discrete and desirable aims at once:
1) It has been generally received and perceived as an unarguably popular, equitably redistributive and socially progressive proposal among most energy consumers (i.e., pretty much the entire potential electorate, regardless of existing political persuasion or unexpressed tendencies), which has provided short-term support and (if pursued) will arguably provide a (perhaps declining but still potentially advantageous) degree of mid to long-term popular support for Labour's potential electoral advantages (both as currently (and persistently)ascertained to exist by the majority of British polling organisations with scientifically-accepted standards and practices of research and analysis; and as is practically (but rather less measurably, except on polling day) perceived by voters and potential voters of decided political preferences or none); and

2) As a general proposal (and as a perceived example of inferred political intent in general) it tends to -- and if Miliband pursues it ruthlessly and consistently, will continue to -- embarrass the Conservative Party as an entity and as a partner in Government, both

2i) Explicitly (in terms of narrowly-political perceptions and preconceptions of the social attitudes and financial circumstances of individually-identifiable members of the Conservative Party in general, and of specific Cabinet members belonging to that party, and of the party in general as it currently stands as the dominant partner in a coalition Government, which implicitly stands idle (collectively and individually) while the (already demonstrably economically-disadvantaged majority of the) electorate suffer further arguably-unnecessarily financial burdens while a select (but unidentifiable, to the average voter) few grow (or are perceived to grow) constantly ever-richer by sharing in profits created directly by and resulting from a widespread (arguably ubiquitous), inequitable, pernicious (and arguably remediable) cause of popular domestic misery and discomfort, not to mention financial hardship, and

2ii) Implicitly, in terms of the inevitable at least presentationally neutral but ideally broadly-or-implicitly positive (and somewhat predeterminable and/or outright negotiable) media re-presentations of the announcement and consequently adjusted or reinforced electoral perceptions of the Labour Party in general and of Miliband's leadership in particular -- which also involves implicit qualities of electability and potential governing capability -- (given his close personal identification with this announcement), all of which will hopefully (from the party's perspective) ultimately influence interested voters and create measurable (and ranging from merely hopefully-durable in the shorter term to ideally-permanent or at least sustainable in the long-term) and electorally Labour-favourable perceptions and consequent or related or even independent voting intention movement/s within any and all of the party's strategically identified and targeted voter group/s and such a group or group's generally-characteristic (if not actually indentification-critical) conscious and unconscious self-perceptions and social expectations in relation to their perceptions and expectations of the party, and consequently the anticipated short/medium/long-term influence on their conscious or unconscious response/s to the party's (currently informal) specific policy proposal (i.e., the suggestion of an energy price freeze (which is of course both implicitly and explicitly, and simultaneously both in theory and in practice, dependent on Labour's presumed Parliamentary majority at the next General Election, which is:

(2.ii.a) Optimistically anticipated (with justifications extrapolated from among a set of arguments, whose characteristics vary in terms including (but not limited to):

(2.ii.b) The possible anticipatable preponderance of rational and (arguably, more importantly) irrational responses by the general public to the potential policy proposal presented and its psychogically-speaking inevitably-arising associations with further naturally arising directly or indirectly associated contextual or even subtextual preconceptions and expectations, conscious and unconscious alike, of the socio-political 'direction' and 'impetus' of the party's imagined conduct in Government.

The arising (and, it hardly need be stated, hopefully positive) psychological reactions among the electorate's psychologically-rateable potential to be more receptive to the Labour Party's entire armoury of socio-cultural-aims and ideals (these are often (arguably, with increasing frequency) deliberately left unexpressed in explicit public discourse, and are therefore not infrequently indiscernible and inaccessible to the average voter as implicit, contextual or even outright subcontextual demands and understandings placed upon them) and therefore less favourably inclined toward the (perceived nature of) Conservatives in Government, implicitly inflicts potential and actual embarrassment each time the Opposition's intentions on this issue are reiterated and ignored by the Conservatives in Government, who tend by political instinct to be opposed to anything that might be seen as interfering with the workings of their beloved 'free market' (again, see the alcohol price-capping issue), while quietly admitting in private, that, yes, energy prices are indeed far too high, at a time when many voters are in dire financial straits, and whose continued lack of political action on the matter puts Labour in a socially-progressive light as well as at a debating advantage whenever the subject (and the Conservatives' silence on the issue) comes up.

And of course, in raising the analogy of the proposed (and defeated) price cap/cost per unit alcohol policy, I have neglected the considerable influence of the combined powers of the alco-industrial-retail lobbying complex, who (understandably, due to their inherent corporate concerns with regard to maximised and ideally increasing profitability, combined with the sector's continued and even increasing demand for ready availability of lowest-cost raw materials consistent with their industry-standard and individually-specific corporate requirements, and their simultaneous corporate desires for favourable purpose-specific and consumer-applicable rates of taxation and duties) occupy (jointly or separately, as the situation demands) a position of considerable political and economic influence and therefore some indirect power over the formulation and ultimate shape of relevant legislation.

I predict that the equivalent industry-specific lobbying power, or perhaps even greater power as yet unrecognised, will be exercised overtly or covertly by the energy giants in the run-up to the next General Election, and subsequently with increased intensity and policy-specific focus if a Labour (or Labour-led) Government is formed and proposes to pursue this price-freeze/cap proposal to its logically-legislative conclusion.

THIS IS THE END OF THE LONG, SUBJECTIVE AND POTENTIALLY VERY BORING ANALYSIS: NORMAL READERS MAY RECOMMENCE APPROPRIATE INTELLECTUAL ENGAGEMENT HERE

Longer-term, the idea may take the form of a firmed-up and fleshed-out policy proposal, and perhaps a manifesto commitment/pledge, should public reaction to it (and hence toward the party) continue to be positive. Or it may (to be cynical but realistic) prove to have been yet another temporarily-expedient but ultimately-disregarded tactic in a greater and ongoing strategy which will only be pursued with ever-increasing focus and intensity as we crawl toward May 2015.

TL;DRChrist, but it becomes nearly impossible to be concise when you force yourself to pre-empt and consider every single bloody reasonably-anticipatable complication or implication of your own argument when you're talking politics, especially when you're talking about the possible socio-political and/or potential electoral consequences of, hypothetical and/or justifiably-predictable reactions and practical responses by some selected interested parties to those consequences (actual or perceived) and the potential predictable and unpredictable socio-cultural side-effects of a vague announcement like the one in question.

If anyone can be bothered to read and digest the whole of this post, I will buy them a pint.

Note to self: Not all possible complications are due equal respect and treatment, and editorially-accurate qualities of summation, précis and concision are widely-held to be self-evident virtues.