Politics Thread!

[pogo]

It’s perfectly good English. I can write “whenever I go to work I take the bus” and it makes sense. The same as “Whenever Labour run from the left they lose”. It’s both a statement about past events (“Labour have lost every election since Clement Attlee when they have run from the left”) and a prediction that this will not change.

Why won’t it change? Mostly as the country has not changed, or if it has it’s moved to the right. Remember that if the last election had been run under PR the most plausible outcome would have been a Tory-UKIP coalition, as they got 49.5% of the vote. They would only need to recruit one or two more MPs, perhaps from Northern Ireland, or even might win outright as most PR systems exclude parties who poll below a certain threshold.

Labour can only win if they run from the centre, with someone like Blair, or Kendall, in charge. Only then can they attract the floating/centrist voters that swung to the Tories this time. They can count on their traditional voters, there’s no other left-leaning party to tempt them away, especially after the collapse of the Lib Dems.

But they can’t win if they only get the support of lefties. It’s great that Corbyn is attracting thousands, even tens of thousands of new members. But they are people who would vote for Labour anyway. It’s the millions of votes they lost between 1997 and 2010 that they need to get back.

[(o)(o)]

It’s perfectly good English. I can write “whenever I go to work I take the bus” and it makes sense. The same as “Whenever Labour run from the left they lose”.

They are not the same. The former can be stated as a fact because you govern that. The latter is poor english when stated as fact as you are doing. Or maybe you'd like to fill us in now on the outcome of future elections?

Labour can only win if they run from the centre

Put your money where your mouth is the since you are so certain..

It's safe money isn't it what have you got to worry about?

[(o)(o)]

[k345y]

The United Kingdom will survive only if the Labour left prevail.

Scotland didn't just vote SNP Scotland voted left, which the SNP are quickly representing and as there was no alternative to the centre SNP was the only option. If Labour across the UK don't get back to being a unified party of the people that doesn't play into centre politics and copy cat catch up conservatism then the SNP will prevail further north of the border and the UK will cease to be.

I voted YES in the referendum and SNP in the general despite being a Labour supporter all my life, there was no alternative.

If Corbyn can move Labour back to it's social values and influence the Scottish branch in doing so I would switch sides back to my traditional vote and so would millions of Scots.

[pogo]

That’s not why the SNP won though: they won because the 45% or so of people who voted for independence supported them. Their platform was not too far to the left of Labour’s in May. It was clearer: Labour were very vague about their deficit plans and how they would pay for everything. But they occupied about the same space on the political spectrum. The only way to beat the SNP at the moment is be more Scottish than them which is not going to happen.

Moving further to the left won’t help them in Scotland, and it certainly won’t help them in England. England is the only place they can find the 100 or so seats they need to win to get an overall majority. If they move more to the left it would likely lose them votes and seats. The Lib Dems in particular would be happy to win the support of any centre-left voters unhappy with the direction Labour is going.

[gravy]

That’s not why the SNP won though: they won because the 45% or so of people who voted for independence supported them. Their platform was not too far to the left of Labour’s in May. It was clearer: Labour were very vague about their deficit plans and how they would pay for everything. But they occupied about the same space on the political spectrum. The only way to beat the SNP at the moment is be more Scottish than them which is not going to happen.

Moving further to the left won’t help them in Scotland, and it certainly won’t help them in England. England is the only place they can find the 100 or so seats they need to win to get an overall majority. If they move more to the left it would likely lose them votes and seats. The Lib Dems in particular would be happy to win the support of any centre-left voters unhappy with the direction Labour is going.

No, you're wrong there. There's a long history of left wing support in Scotland and a contributory factor for the abandonment of Labour was a perceived drift to the right.

A nationalist party with a right wing bent wouldn't have gained any significant support in this country.

Remember: the repeated number one insult against labour by pro indepedence activists was Red Tories because they hate the right.

[merman]

That’s not why the SNP won though: they won because the 45% or so of people who voted for independence supported them. Their platform was not too far to the left of Labour’s in May. It was clearer: Labour were very vague about their deficit plans and how they would pay for everything. But they occupied about the same space on the political spectrum. The only way to beat the SNP at the moment is be more Scottish than them which is not going to happen.

Moving further to the left won’t help them in Scotland, and it certainly won’t help them in England. England is the only place they can find the 100 or so seats they need to win to get an overall majority. If they move more to the left it would likely lose them votes and seats. The Lib Dems in particular would be happy to win the support of any centre-left voters unhappy with the direction Labour is going.

The SNP campaigned on an anti-austerity platform.
And Labour were anything but vague about their economic plans; it was the Tories who hid £12 billion of benefit cuts.

[pogo]

Scotland is more left wing than England. But Labour moved to the left, under Brown then more under Miliband, and it made no difference. Because the driving force in Scottish politics today is nationalism, and the Scottish National Party is uniquely placed to take advantage of that. The SNP are also left wing, but not especially more than Labour under Miliband.

It’s hard to see what Labour can do in Scotland at the moment. Probably none of the parties can challenge the SNP as they are. It needs radically transformed parties or even new parties to make the unionist case, with Scotland going the same route as Northern Ireland of having completely different parties running for election on completely different policies, with only loose connections to England + Wales.

Or they can wait. The SNP are not perfect, and one day voters will get tired of them not delivering on independence, or on an economic miracle, or just on them becoming complacent and self-serving as happens to most incumbents eventually. But that could take a very long time.

Or even wait for a final devolution settlement which trades further devolution for greater separation from the rest of the UK, including as an English parliament. Then Labour no longer needs to include Scotland in their calculations; they can just focus on winning in England [+ Wales]. But that hardly helps them as the Tories are even more dominant when just England is considered, and Labour still need a massive swing to win.

[gravy]

Scotland is more left wing than England. But Labour moved to the left, under Brown then more under Miliband, and it made no difference.

Except an increase in popular for Labour in the UK. A 1.5% swing.

They moved further left and got more votes.

You're saying any move to the left means less votes.

[pogo]

It didn’t help them in Scotland clearly. I would say also it did not help them in England. That 1.5% was the swing was only a tenth of the 15% fall in the vote for the Lib Dems.

You would have thought Labour would have benefitted more from the collapse in support for the other traditionally left wing party, with voters deserting it for siding with the Tories. But 90% of LD voters went elsewhere. Probably more to the Tories, giving them a positive swing even as they lost a lot of supporters to UKIP.

[gravy]

And the lib dem's vote collapsed after moving to the right.

But you're saying a move to the right would mean an increase in vote share.

You're all over the place.

The truth is it's hard to call, you can't predict the future and you've no greater a claim to authority on any of this. Less so in that when you measure the reality against your core axioms it just doesn't match up.

[pogo]

You are right, it is just a prediction. But it’s based on repeated election results, up to and including the last one, where Labour ran as a left wing party and lost. It’s not just me saying this but many, including many on the left. You may think Tony Blair is being self serving in making the same case but he’s the only living person to win an election for Labour, so if anyone knows what it takes it’s probably him.

More broadly I think the electorate is on the right. On some things they are to the right of the Tory party, who lost more votes to UKIP than to any other party. And there’s no evidence that voters have moved left on the back of the banking crisis and its resolution. In the US maybe, where demographic and social trends are shrinking the core electorate of the Republican party. But not here. If anything we’ve moved to the right here, on trade unions, immigration, attitudes to welfare.

[tufty]

But it’s based on repeated election results

No, it's based on what you think Labour Party supporters want, and based on your estimation of how many people in the UK would support a Labour Party that's true to its roots. As someone who doesn't agree with anything the Labour Party originally stood for, or even show any signs of understanding what that was, you are almost uniquely unsuitable to make such predictions.

[F-ZeroOne]

I wondered when the "speed savings not worth it" one would crop up. This is one aspect where I think the government dropped the ball on HS2s P.R; it never has been solely about speed, its about capacity, reducing the load on existing lines and also building an effectively "fresh start" railway that will then be easier to expand in future. Reduced journey times is something of a bonus, and HS2 isn't planned just to go from London to Birmingham; the longer the distance the HS2 lines go, the greater the effect the higher speeds have on journey times.

If they were serious about improving the infrastructure beyond links to London then they really should start with those. Can't help feeling they're just trying to extend the commuter belt which is not really good news for the wider economy

Also, its always struck me as a bit of an odd, and possibly old-fashioned argument (I honestly think that if the government had announced that they would be building a network operated entirely by steam trains instead it would have gotten more public approval); the Japanese a couple years back invested in some tilting shinkansen trains - presumably at some expense - in order to shave a whole five minutes off what most people would probably already consider a perfectly adequate journey time.

Regards rail fares - I wonder if the issue isn't exactly the cost of the fares sometimes, but instead the perceived value for money. Japanese friends I've spoken to have remarked that shinkansen fares are "expensive", and are often jealous of the rail pass that I can use as a tourist, but I doubt that they would feel that they don't get value for money from shinkansen tickets...

But the rationale for investment it is a classic YMMV argument as what may be value for money for one country may not be value for money for another for various reasons.

One misconception about HS2 is that its at the expense of the rest of the network; recent hiccups not withstanding, its actually in addition to quite a lot else thats on the cards. Also... the Japanese built the shinkansen between Tokyo and Osaka. They then expanded it more-or-less continuously for fifty years. Shouldn't they have just stopped with the first bit, for fear of "expanding the commuter belt"?

I accept the point about "YMMV" but also... something will have to be done sooner or later to ease capacity problems. And, AFAIK, no-one has come up with a viable alternative that doesn't - once you start getting into the details - either have major problems of its own or will have the same long term benefits.

[VNVObit]

One misconception about HS2 is that its at the expense of the rest of the network; recent hiccups not withstanding, its actually in addition to quite a lot else thats on the cards. Also... the Japanese built the shinkansen between Tokyo and Osaka. They then expanded it more-or-less continuously for fifty years. Shouldn't they have just stopped with the first bit, for fear of "expanding the commuter belt"?

I accept the point about "YMMV" but also... something will have to be done sooner or later to ease capacity problems. And, AFAIK, no-one has come up with a viable alternative that doesn't - once you start getting into the details - either have major problems of its own or will have the same long term benefits.

I was thinking more about a tactic for demonstrating value for money for improvements. you start where the improvement is needed the most and the demonstrable benefits are soonest appreciated. I acknowledge that I'm guessing but I believe that's not necessarily lines leading into London