This Once Great Movement Of Ours

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The strange thing is more that they are at once making major promises and suggestions for quite radical changes, while also trying to give the impression that they won't rock the boat much: it's also the case that if you watch dedicated politics shows, read 'broadsheet' newspapers and follow politics on twitter you're more likely to have been repeatedly exposed to the latter than if you don't. Of course every Labour government is a mass of contradictions.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Though on the specific issue of not scrapping the benefits cap, the fact that now two otherwise very different Labour leaderships have ended up taking the same (silly) stance on this policy tells us many things. Mostly that not many politicians have much interest in or understanding of the benefits side of social policy.

[Pericles]

Starmer's recent rhetoric of sticking by Tory spending plans and not even recognising increased spending as a solution to problems is infuriating. His talk about 'reform' is hopefully just meaningless tripe, but maybe it's something actively harmful? I am coming around to the view of those on the left-he is just as much of a pathological liar as Boris Johnson.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

His talk about 'reform' is hopefully just meaningless tripe, but maybe it's something actively harmful?

I don't quite see the logic there: considerable reform is needed across the public sector because of quite how much of a God-awful mess successive Conservative administrations have made of things, including and especially due to ill-considered reforms of their own. This has been a particularly high-profile issue in the health service, but has been a problem in other areas as well.

[JimJamUK]

The Labour mayor of Northumberland North of Tyne has quit the party and looks like he will stand as an independent for the forthcoming North East Combined Authority mayoral election. He wanted to be the Labour candidate but was blocked by the party in favour of the elected Police and Crime commissioner (which covers more of the new body). He’s been martyred by the left of the party online but I’m doubtful of his electoral process (in fact, the anointed candidate did much better electorally, insofar as these things can be attributed to the individual). I’m not sure many members of the electorate even know who he is nevermind are actually able to say something he’s achieved.

[Battista Minola 1616]

The Labour mayor of Northumberland North of Tyne has quit the party and looks like he will stand as an independent for the forthcoming North East Combined Authority mayoral election. He wanted to be the Labour candidate but was blocked by the party in favour of the elected Police and Crime commissioner (which covers more of the new body). He’s been martyred by the left of the party online but I’m doubtful of his electoral process (in fact, the anointed candidate did much better electorally, insofar as these things can be attributed to the individual). I’m not sure many members of the electorate even know who he is nevermind are actually able to say something he’s achieved.

My immediate reaction to this story is that none of the things you capitalized have any reason to exist other than Northumberland (and Labour lol). English local government reform and its consequences...

[JimJamUK]

My immediate reaction to this story is that none of the things you capitalized have any reason to exist other than Northumberland (and Labour lol). English local government reform and its consequences...

Both major parties are obsessed with creating ever more devolved bodies that have little actual power or money. That of course doesn’t stop the post-holders and candidates from claiming they have/will be able to solve all manner of things and the electorate believing them.

[Wiswylfen]

Congratulations to Kim McGuinness for winning 74% of the vote on a 50% turnout, with only 0.1% of ballots spoilt! She'll be an excellent Labour candidate.

[JimJamUK]

Congratulations to Kim McGuinness for winning 74% of the vote on a 50% turnout, with only 0.1% of ballots spoilt! She'll be an excellent Labour candidate.

I look forward to her ending child poverty in the North East.

[CumbrianLefty]

The Labour mayor of Northumberland North of Tyne has quit the party and looks like he will stand as an independent for the forthcoming North East Combined Authority mayoral election. He wanted to be the Labour candidate but was blocked by the party in favour of the elected Police and Crime commissioner (which covers more of the new body). He’s been martyred by the left of the party online but I’m doubtful of his electoral process (in fact, the anointed candidate did much better electorally, insofar as these things can be attributed to the individual). I’m not sure many members of the electorate even know who he is nevermind are actually able to say something he’s achieved.

Many if not most of the people doing this aren't in the party (some used to be but left/were expelled, others never actually joined Labour at all) The last thing the left needs is yet another slightly creepy online cult to go along with the one already around Corbyn, but looks like that's what we will get.

[EastAnglianLefty]

His talk about 'reform' is hopefully just meaningless tripe, but maybe it's something actively harmful?

I don't quite see the logic there: considerable reform is needed across the public sector because of quite how much of a God-awful mess successive Conservative administrations have made of things, including and especially due to ill-considered reforms of their own. This has been a particularly high-profile issue in the health service, but has been a problem in other areas as well.

Though the issue is less the talk of reform and more the suggestion that it can be done without up-front cash. Even the reforms that cut spending tend to require initial investment to get them going, and it's much easier to reform organisations that aren't spending all their time firefighting crises caused by lack of funding.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Though the issue is less the talk of reform and more the suggestion that it can be done without up-front cash. Even the reforms that cut spending tend to require initial investment to get them going, and it's much easier to reform organisations that aren't spending all their time firefighting crises caused by lack of funding.

Yes, you often need to spend money to save money. Of course the converse of this is why austerity did not actually save much money.

[CumbrianLefty]

Congratulations to Kim McGuinness for winning 74% of the vote on a 50% turnout, with only 0.1% of ballots spoilt! She'll be an excellent Labour candidate.

If true, this is a striking stat and maybe puts some of the Driscoll hype into perspective.

She is not in any meaningful sense an imposition or "parachutee".

[JimJamUK]

Labour are reported as saying they can’t get rid of the 2 child benefit cap because then they might have to get rid of things like the bedroom tax. Reeves wouldn’t publicly commit to getting rid of the bedroom tax today.

Given that’s been policy at the last 3 elections (pretty much the only welfare policy Miliband clearly promised to reverse), you would have assumed abolishing it was a given. It makes you wonder what costed policies Labour will actually commit to changing, especially before the manifesto.

[MaxQue]

Labour are reported as saying they can’t get rid of the 2 child benefit cap because then they might have to get rid of things like the bedroom tax. Reeves wouldn’t publicly commit to getting rid of the bedroom tax today.

Given that’s been policy at the last 3 elections (pretty much the only welfare policy Miliband clearly promised to reverse), you would have assumed abolishing it was a given. It makes you wonder what costed policies Labour will actually commit to changing, especially before the manifesto.

They will commit to none, as Reeves is essentially a Tory who thought it would be easier to have a career in Labour for family reasons.

[CumbrianLefty]

You keep saying this, but she really is not (and God knows, I am no big fan)

Ever heard of Philip Snowden?

[TheTide]

You keep saying this, but she really is not (and God knows, I am no big fan)

Ever heard of Philip Snowden?

Indeed. More recently, the only Labour MP who could reasonably be described as such is perhaps Gisela Stuart. Even Frank Field can't be described as such IMO. I'm talking of course about whilst they were Labour MPs rather than what they did subsequently.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I'm not even sure what the family reason would be, given that Reeves became prominent in Labour circles before her sister did.

[Blair]

Yes it’s a bit like people claiming Tories like John Major, Ken Clarke or David Gauke aren’t Toris; they are, they’re just from a very distinct tradition!

Worth noting ofc reeves had a change to defect in 2019 and didn’t!

[TheTide]

Yes it’s a bit like people claiming Tories like John Major, Ken Clarke or David Gauke aren’t Toris; they are, they’re just from a very distinct tradition!

Worth noting ofc reeves had a change to defect in 2019 and didn’t!

Clarke and Major were both economic Thatcherites for the most part. Steve Richards says in The Prime Ministers We Never Had that Clarke could (and probably would) have won the Tory leadership if he had played up that aspect more and kept the European stances at bay.

[CumbrianLefty]

But arguably if he had done that, he would no longer have been Kenneth Clarke.

[Blair]

I very much hope that various THIGMOO people have taken Al's advice and gone on a long walk without their phone this weekend...

[CumbrianLefty]

Well we have a few "classics" in that respect if today's Sunday Times is to be believed.

[Angel of Death]

Looks like Starmer's strategy of Thomas Deweying himself into No. 10 is finally starting to show its flaws.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Ann Clwyd, the MP for Cynon Valley from 1984 until 2019, has died. She was eighty six and had been ill for a long time. She was a colourful, idiosyncratic figure in both Labour Party and Welsh politics, always on the left-wing of the Party in terms of her views but rarely in her associations: she was the last protégé of Huw T. Edwards (a left-wing 'soft nationalist' who was an influential figure in postwar Welsh Labour, and very briefly also Plaid Cymru though he soon returned 'home', and Welsh public life generally) and shared both his general outlook and his lack of interest in being a team player. All of which made her a rather polarizing figure, which she enjoyed, much as Edwards always did. For many decades she was the primary advocate in Great Britain of Kurdish political interests, which led to her up-and-down relationship with Tony Blair: in the 1990s he ended her frontbench career for observing a Turkish assault on Iraqi Kurdish positions without permission in 1995, but by 2003 her strong support, on pro-Kurdish grounds, of the invasion of Iraq led to her being appointed by him as a Special Envoy for Human Rights in the Iraq. She was the Chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party from 2005 to 2006. As a constituency member she was strikingly old-fashioned: she never had much time for constituency surgeries, but was a dogged political advocate for her constituents interests in other ways and not just at Westminster - in 1994 she staged a sit-in at Tower Colliery that prevented its closure and led the way to its famous worker-buyout.* She spent her last years in political life campaigning against the poor treatment of the terminally ill in hospitals after some awful things happened to her husband as he was dying, and against Female Genital Mutilation.

_{*The colliery, the last deep pit in Wales, closed in 2008 after finally running out of economically accessible coal.}