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Eric_WLothian wrote:Don't know whether this has escaped over the border:
Scottish Labour was plunged into civil war last night after the party suspended its group of councillors in Aberdeen for agreeing to form a coalition with the Conservatives on the city council. In an open challenge to Kezia Dugdale’s authority as leader, the nine elected representatives ignored warnings from party officials not to proceed with a power-sharing deal with 11 Tories and three independents.
Leaving aside the rather inflammatory "civil war" description, I wonder if such a coalition could work.
I struggle to think of a better way of destroying Labour in Scotland than what these councillors have done. I can't think of any reasons that any coalition between Labour and the Tories could work any better than the Tory-LibDem coalition, and plenty of reasons why it might work less well.
I agree entirely with AK with respect to the timing. I would also agree that a Lab/Tory coalition would be unlikely (understatement) to work at a national level. Given the political divide in Scotland, I wonder if it's that clear cut at local council level.
Personally, I think I'd have been inclined to keep quiet until after the GE (a) to see what happens and (b) to minimise pre-election fallout.
The national party is getting stick from some for its decision, but its hard to see how they could have done otherwise after they TOLD the Aberdeen councillors not to do this.
It may at least put off the couple of other Labour groups who were rumoured to be thinking of doing the same thing.....
I am not convinced this is a bad thing. At first glance it is an improvement on the current system. However the small print will require careful inspection.
It is interesting she feels able to do this now, presumably to stop Tory MPs voting against it post election.
RobertSnozers wrote:
It's bizarrely accepting one of the Dilnot recommendations but I suspect in a way not remotely intended by Dilnot. Certainly the lifetime cap on contributions of £35,000 hasn't been mentioned.
And I don't trust this one bit:
The Conservatives will attempt to soften the blow by promising that pensioners will not have to sell their homes to pay for their care costs while they or a surviving partner are alive.
Anyway, people with that sort of wealth will have much more freedom to arrange their affairs to avoid having to pay. This smacks of a mildly populist sop to cerberus which will achieve little to solve the underlying problems.
The Guardian piece says 'At present, people have to pay for their social care at home if they have wealth of more than £23,500, excluding the value of their residence' - I'm not sure that's true, is it? I'm pretty sure it currently includes your residence. That's why the current system is so unfair to people of lesser means who have most of their wealth in their house. If it's not true then May is essentially announcing a massive cut in the threshold, not an increase at all.
Small print is critical. As I understand it they don't include your house - until you go into residential care.
But I don't know.
It looks like a position that if you need long term care the state gets everything except the last 100k when the house is sold.
How she intends to stop transfer of home ownership between the generations so you have pensioners living rent free in "the kids home" I don't know.
However it has clearly registered with May that something has to be done(TM) and she feels she needs to declare it up front.
