Yesterday's thread on neoliberal Labour represented a bit of a risk: it could, OF course, backfired on Twitter.
It did not. These are the stats a day after posting it:
I scanned the quote tweets. They are almost without exception in agreement.
One or two (I have seen no more) say exactly the sort of crass things I refer to in the post.
There is very real concern about Labour in this country.
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There’s a game theory problem with Left wing politics in Britain. Triangulation.
If left wingers really wanted to game their votes we would all vote Tory whenever the Labour party wasn’t sufficiently left enough for us, forcing the leaders to tack the party left.
Which sounds obviously absurd.
However that’s pretty much exactly what right/centre Labour voters do. If the party becomes too left wing for them they often will vote Tory.
It’s also why Starmer and the people who advise him oppose PR. Under PR then there would be a limit on how far Labour could tack Right. Too far and it would generate a genuine Left wing alternative.
At the last general election one third of the electrate did not vot., I suspect that a good proportion were labour voters put off by the media lies.
“Tub of lard” Rachael Reeves at it again!
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/aug/09/labour-accuses-government-of-losing-250bn-from-value-of-uk-assets
With quotes by me in there
Yep. Signs you’re beginning to have some impact. Keep up the good work.
I have started to dip into the 9oclock BBC 5Live phone-in in the morning and I tend to be pleasantly surprised at people’s opinions but mostly don’t know where the “money comes from”. Somebody yesterday wanted to borrow to buy back the water companies. The discussion was around sewage in our water amenities.
The p
Without PR I see no way forward. Whether it be US Primaries or the UK two party system, candidates have to promise one thing to be elected leader of their Party (or Presidential candidate) and another to win a general election.
Dishonesty is hard-baked into our system whether on the left or the right.
PR would tell us what people really want and the process of coalition building to form a government would make the compromises on policy from each member of the coalition transparent. Without it things can only get worse!
Quite right.
We know the Tories are dishonest enough that they are quite likely to do the exact opposite of what their manifesto states once they get into power.
We’ve now got the opposite where many on the centre left seem to think that Starmer will duplicate this in reverse by doing something more left-wing than his manifesto states assuming he gets into power!
It really is a nonsense.
Blissex here:
https://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2018/07/not-debating-immigration.html?cid=6a00d83451cbef69e2022ad35e8f44200c#comment-6a00d83451cbef69e2022ad35e8f44200c
Why should a moderate benefit to us of migration controls (assuming one to exist) outweigh a massive cost to outsiders?
BTW our blogger argues here not using a “principles” approach but a globalist calculus of utility one.
Because on the plane of principles our blogger and Bertram’s argument is not objectionable, and applies to a lot of things, not just immigration: if it is wrong denying the poorest billions of Africa and Asia the right to live and work in the UK, thus benefiting from the higher capital-people ratio of the UK, for example it is even more wrong to deny them access to the NHS, free at the point of use, because surely health is even more important than jobs, and denying free medical help to the poorest and sickest around the world can be considered monstrous.
Also if we go back to utilitarian calculus, there is a well known result of welfare political economy that the welfare-maxizing tax is 100% above a low threshold. Then perhaps UK taxes should add up to 100% above £20,000 per year, and we should use the proceeds to save the lives of millions of the poorest in Asia and Africa, and build massive amount of capital there to improve their capital-people ratio.
Because if frontiers should not exist as to living and working in a place, they should not exist as to fiscal and welfare too.
I suspect you are pushing logic too far
I was lucky enough to attend a Compass meeting a few weeks ago, where the visiting speaker was that dangerous radical Neal Lawson. Two things stuck in my mind.
Firstly Neal Lawson pointed out that when a party sets out its election manifesto, it builds itself a cage. Parties almost always achieve less than they promise.
On this analysis, I fear Labour is building so tight a cage that it will be unable to achieve anything at all.
Second was a remark from the floor. Canvassing on the doorstep, the universal complaint is that nothing works any more.
I fear that Reeves is promising that Labour will not address what people want
Agreed
The common complaint on the canvassing doorstep “nothing works any,” more particularly in the public sector, is because we’ve allowed ourselves to become a nation of mutton-heads believing the ridiculous Thatcherite mantra the government has no money of its own! How ludicrous if you tell people the government can create its own money from thin air there’s an immediate response that Weimar style hyper-inflation will automatically ensue! It never occurs to such mutton-heads that the licenced banks create money in the same way and this has resulted in a five decade long completely unnecessary house price bubble! What can you do with such people except a huge re-education programme which none of our dumbed-down politicians seem to grasp even on the issue of climate change where it should be obvious Big Green means Big Fiscal!
Instead of labour trying to address the problems of economics with in our polity, they have decided that economics is not the concern of politics. Whether this will turn out to be good politics or not, relies completely on good fortune. They are relying on the polls being correct.
I am of the mind that the majority of society cares more about how politicians eat their sandwiches than thinking about economics. Stating the obvious that labour cares very little about the big problems of the economy is not going to hurt them.
I have had this thought for a while. Its point of origin is when I saw Paul Krugman debating Andrea Leadsom on newsnight. Neoliberalism is not a type of economics. No one calls themselves neoliberal. It is a political attitude towards economics that says economic policy can’t or shouldn’t exist within the realm of politics. Economics is purely a science. We must do what the market says or we will be punished. We must have austerity because the science says so. Anything else is economic illiteracy and if an academic pushes back against this type of narrative then they are told that they are reckless. Neoliberalism is wherever someone mandates for this kind of economics. And labour do.
“Economics is purely a science. We must do what the market says or we will be punished. We must have austerity because the science says so.”
Asked to explain how the science works in detail they can’t and start slinging ad hominems about like little children having temper tantrums! Tell them their science is nonsense on stilts if they can’t explain it and apoplexy is close! Sadly life is full of shallow people who just get by following what other people do and think!