End of the Labour Party

[AJS-]

Despite their current popularity as a party that can give 50% of the electorate a pay rise, they seem like a party whose time has passed. Their raisin d'être of advocating the newly urbanized working class in the late 19th century has more resonance in Shanghai than Sheffield, while their economic policy of employing everyone in public sector non jobs and borrowing to fund it is damaging both to the economy and to democracy.

Full on communism as some members of the Labour Party have supported over the years is as defunct as fascism or absolute monarchy as a viable system of governance.

The Tories and Lib Dems between them represent a reasonable coverage of the political spectrum that can be satisfactorily resolved at the ballot box, while minor and local parties can step in where something is missing from this.

Can you see a future without a Labour Party, and would this be a good thing in your view?

[AJS-]

Too late! I can't add a poll now.

[AJS-]

Johnnytheboy said:

This thread has a whiff of sour grapes.

Haha
True I'm having a wine.

[AJS-]

Countdown said:

Labour exists as a counterweight to the Tories (and vice versa).

Why couldn't the Lib Dems (or someone else?) Provide that counterbalance better than a party whose basic reason for being is no longer relevant?

I'd go a bit further - Conservatism and Liberalism are political outlooks that can be applied to any political debate. Labour doesn't have an outlook, they have a knee jerk post socialist impulse to spend money.

Socialism, like fascism or imperialism are ideas that have died. The USSR was a counterbalance to the US but ceased to be for the very same reason.

Labour was perhaps a useful pressure group in the days when industry treated workers as an expendable commodity, just as the USSR was seen as a useful step away from the absolute rule of the Tsars, but became a nightmarish burden when it was impeding the development of democracy.

[AJS-]

Derek Smith said:

ClaphamGT3 said:

This is the mother of all dilemmas for the Tories. On the one hand, as the Conservative and Unionist Party, maintaining the Union is in the party's DNA. Cynically, however, no one can ignore the fact that if you cut Scotland lose and, with it, lose Scottish representation at Westminster, there'll be a Tory govt in what's left of the UK for the next 50 years.

Not picking on you, but I don't think that the 50 years is right.

If Scotland was cut adrift then the tories would move to the right and so would the labour party as the centre would have moved. The reason the conservatives are middle of the road is because that's where the votes are. The reason the labour party dumped the nationalisation clause was because they felt it politicaly expedient to do so. They needed centurist policies so something had to give. The old days of parties being, they suggested, motivated by principles are long gone - if they ever existed.

Cameron's main problem is keeping votes whilst stopping the right-wing backbenchers from pushing policies that would alienate the voters. One stupid Hunt is enough for any party.

The otyher thing is that the Scottish labour party, and most of the others, would probably move to the left as there would be no pressure from England/Wales.

Doesn't this make the Tories current policy fundamentally illogical? They're chasing the centre so as not to alienate Scotland, but they only have one seat there anyway. How many seats in England could they win by moving to the right and motivating their core voters, even if it was at the expense of this one seat in Scotland?

Secondly, would it be at the expense of that one seat? Scottish conservatives I have met are not necessarily to the left of their English counterparts (thinforth?). They're just fewer in number and more geographically dispersed than conservatives south of the border.

[AJS-]

Pints said:

Somewhat O/T but I think some sort of 3 question, multiple choice test should replace what we have as the "vote for a party" system we currently use.

Something like this.

Select 2 of the following choices to register your vote:
- more bureaucrats should be employed
- benefit payments should be reduced for the unemployed
- laws imposed by Brussels are a good thing
- private transport is preferable to public transport
Etc.

You get the idea. The questions could address specific policies each party has and you'd need at least a rudimentary understanding of where your preferred party actually stands to force a particular party way.
A different choice could Choi mean the difference between UKIP and Tory, or Labour and Lib Dem.

You'd end up with an endless raft of questions.

How about a system without active politicians where members of the public can propose a referendum then have to get a certain number of signatures - say 1,000 for local/distric issues, 10,000 for city/county issues and 100,000 for national issues - then the proposal is put to a vote.

You could have a series of referendums every year to create new laws, or just as importantly to scrap old ones.

[AJS-]

muffinmenace said:

What about a series of polls?

"Do you want to increase fuel duty by 1p?"

Yes: 0
No: 100,000

"Do you want tax credits for having a job?"

Yes: 100,000
No:0

"Do you want Bankers to pay 100% tax?"
Yes: 100,000
No:0


Referendums suck, the vast majority do not have a the faintest idea how it will affect them. They go on sensationalist rubbish - we elect people to be informed about what it is they vote on for our behalf so we don't have to and can carry on doing whatever it is we do...

All well and good until you get to a point where they're informed by people with a vested interest, and the only nod they give to the rest of us is trying to stay on the right side of the sensationalist rubbish on tomorrow's front pages.

I suspect that with a more direct democracy people would be more concerned with issues that directly affect their lives rather than the silly, abstract fuss over bankers bonuses, global warmings and so forth. I'm not sure how this tallies with the Swiss experience (or indeed many US state and cities that have citizen led referenda).

Getting 100,000 signatures for a national petition is no small thing and would take a fair amount of work. Probably a lot more than getting a few journalists and MPs on side.


A quick look at the government's epetition site here tends to support this view. One of my hobby horses about an EU referendum seems to never garner enough support.

Edited by AJS- on Monday 8th October 09:44

[AJS-]

Do you live there DJRC? Would be interested to hear a bit more about how it actually works - as in does it get bogged down in trivia? Is it responsive to events compared with the Westminster model? I assume it's a slower process, and in my view that could be a good thing...

[AJS-]

Twincam16 said:

Serendipity72 said:

It is funny how 600,000 Poles came here and managed to find jobs that our own unemployed couldn't find.

That's got more to do with exchange rates than job availability.

Consider the two scenarios on offer:

-If you are Polish, and are sending money back home, then you see work in the UK as a temporary thing. The money goes further as Polish Zloty than it does in the UK, so you can put up with things like sleeping in a sleeping bag on the floor of some house with 20 other people and eating crap food, because when you get back to Poland the money you've saved up, which barely keeps you alive in the UK, could get you a house deposit or help you set up a business in Poland. A lot of those Polish workers are graduates and going to work in England is as much a 'thing' in Poland as gap years are in England. Raises money, gets young graduates on their feet.

-The other scenario - you're a working-class Brit. Few if any academic qualifications but you're good at your job - as good as the Polish workers, in fact. However, you have a family to support and long-term plans to make in this country with our currency and housing market the way it is. You could get the same jobs as the Polish workers, but there's no way the money you make from those jobs would support a family.

Problem is, so long as migrant workers make themselves available for work in this country on the basis of sending money home, our own workers will be effectively 'priced out' by the cost of living. Work on or even below the minimum wage just doesn't make ends meet if you're trying to get by in Britain. No wonder that a life on benefits makes more economic sense to some than having their work valued at the square root of sod-all because a Polish worker will do just as good a job for less - because once the job's done, the Polish worker can go back to Poland and buy a house. The English worker can't. So where's the motivation to make work pay?

I agree that work always should pay, but with migrant pressure on the lower end of the economy like this, it's making life difficult for a lot of people who have to live with the reality of what is quite an expensive country to live in.

Or to put it another way, in the absence of a cushy alternative earning £6 an hour really isn't that bad.

[AJS-]

It could be done by sharing a flat with 5 other people doing th same, working every hour you can and sending money to your wife and child who are living with her mother, as per the example you gave. Preferably before getting pregnant. After that you move up, set up a business or get some qualifications that mean you can make more.

Plenty of people do this in Thailand (and much of the rest of the world) for far less than £6 an hour.

It is far from ideal and I sympathise with people who have to do that even if through their own poor planning and carelessness. But it just doesn't seem sustainable to me to have a bottomless pit of benefits making it not worthwhile to work for what is a prett decent wage in global terms.

Agree with the idea of grading it somewhat but I would rather see this done by cutting NI and those taxes that hammer the poor the hardest. Isn't the income tax threshold something like £8000?

[AJS-]

RichyBoy said:

http://labour25.com

Maybe I don't watch a lot of tv but I don't remember seeing any news stories about the above.

Yeah but it keeps UKIP with their unsavory types out.