ErnstRemarx wrote:onebuttonmonkey wrote:ErnstRemarx wrote:
Emoticon for wild applause there.
Balls is combative, but people just don't warm to him much (something he shares with No. 11's current incumbent) regardless of his accuracy of prediction or economic skills/knowledge.
Hunt and Umunna can jump off a fucking cliff as far as I'm concerned. Two characters (and Reeves, now I think on) more lacking in actual blood and charisma are hard to imagine as 'leading lights'. The reason their arguments often look like quibbling over details is because they are quibbles over details. Reeves should be saying categorically WCA will be scrapped on day one and something of use and of help put in it's place. Umunna should be saying that Osborne's fucked it up, and it's low wage jobs and scaring the unemployed in self-employment on shit rates that's screwing the tax take, and Hunt should be stating categorically that academies are a shit idea that should never have been countenanced, and that all such schools will return to LEA (democratic) control.
That they can't even dredge up the bottle to argue for three such easy and sensible hits is beyond me. No wonder so many voters don't trust Labour.
In short: yes, yes and yes. Absolutely. All of this.
Thank you. To put my rage into context, I'm a living, breathing (most days) Labour councillor. And I know quite well that there's plenty in my local group and the two local parties that it derives from feel the same way as me. The Tories are there for the taking, and because the national party's so scared of the meeja and so worried that they might say something vaguely radical that might offend the Blairite undead who infest the shadow cabinet, they end up bickering with the Tories about nuance and detail when they should be able to punt those useless, vapid, morally bankrupt and corrupt bastards over the horizon in very short order.
Miliband needs to fire off some of his "stars" (as identified by the right wing meeja) and flush them down the toilet along with Progress, Dan "fucking" Hodges, the remaining Blairites and anyone else who thinks that apeing the Tories in any way whatsoever is going to please either said meeja or people out there in punterland, 'cos it really, really isn't and never will. They will either simply insist that it's not right wing enough to vote for, or in the case of the latter decide that they either won't vote for lukewarm Thatcherism or that there are two or three other parties that do Thatcherism better than Labour.
I'm either a dangerous marxist or else Britain's lost its fucking marbles. This isn't radical; this is a recognition of what needs to happen.
Well, this is the thing - even some moderate, pragmatic lefties are so far to the left of the party, they would be considered extreme now - but they know they're not extremists in normal people's eyes. And it's absurd - not just that so much has been left behind, but that a broad church appears to terrify some in the party. How scared they are of appearing to listen to or speak the same language as them. I've never heard a single credible reason why the Progress mob have any affiliation with Labour, anyway, or why they joined the party for anything other than their own progression. And yet there is a degree to which they hamstring the parliamentary party, like a kind of Zombie SDP, only - somehow - worse.
Now, you know and I know that Labour will be portrayed by the Tories as the party of tax and spend. They always will, regardless of what they say to the contrary - regardless of the fact that they probably will not tax and spend. Blairites like to say that they won that argument, but it's more they won while still not being believed on that argument. I genuinely think we could do with some tax and spend - and some borrowing to spend rather than to plug gaps.
But most of all, there's no point being hung for a lamb. They'll get criticised for it anyway, so why not just do it if that's what they want to do? There is nothing whatsoever to lose from saying, "yes, of course we are in favour of renationalising the railways and that's what we want to do. East Coast pays a profit back to us each year. Think what we can do with that!" Hunt doesn't need to pay lip service to the illusion of choice and can simply start banging on about the reality of failing academy trusts. WCA? Scrap them. Come out and say that it's no wonder that the "benefit bill" is rising when wages are falling and the cost of housing is going up. And so bollocks to ZHCs and a non-living wage. "It's time for work to pay, because working isn't working. "
But no. It's no spending. And let's not raise tax. Let's pretend that "we can't afford it" rather than admitting "we've chosen not to raise or borrow the money to pay for it because the newspapers and the Home Counties and I don't know what." And we can't possibly borrow because... erm... The Mail says so. And we can't afford things we can easily afford. And choice is great (don't ask what it means) unless it's what we choose to do which is a Tough Choice which means we have no choice to make it. And immigration is bad now. And let's just deflect away from Gove's problem legacy rather than tackling the outsourcing of all non-teaching posts and profiting from pupils. And all the rest of it. 5 million votes lost between 1997 and 2010. 5 million. And they're not all going to UKIP - they're fed up and disgusted and feel they have no one to vote for. How about talking to some of those people? How about remembering that the left is a source of pride and identity and change, not something to be scared of getting mentioned? How about being genuinely brave and being a real difference not a shallow, so-called tough choice?
We don't want the Tories. We don't want the slightly softer Tories. We don't want the edges off and the soft soap. We don't want a slightly slower sell off. We want a f---ing change, and a real alternative, and we want a proper welfare state and an NHS we all pay to help, and a living wage and proper taxation, and we don't want vilification instead of care. We want someone to say, "if there are fewer jobs than there are unemployed people, it's a problem with our economic framework and the state can help. But it's going to cost. But it will make us all better off." That's not Marxism, it a very limited social democracy. How far away something so moderate seems. And it's cowardice not to offer it, and it's cowardice that will kill Labour - because even if they win the election, they'll be hamstrung by compromises they didn't need to make.
I've honestly never been so disillusioned. Even back in the dark days of the 80s and Thatcher. I have never had less hope than I have now. And I genuinely can't understand why it can't be better - which just makes it worse.