The Bishop
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Post by The Bishop on Feb 23, 2023 12:54:21 GMT
Even had Yvette Cooper won, does anybody seriously think she would have won the 2015 GE? I suspect either a "we're better at Torying than the Tories" Labour would have now been permanently PASOKified (or something pretty close to it), or we would still have had the 2015 leadership election, with the left still fed up of the failure of the supposedly "practical" wing to win the 2015 election and we would still have had a left-wing leader elected. Now, in some kind of bizarre "trousers-of-time" style twist that leader may not have been Corbyn but there's no actual reason why Cooper winning instead means it wouldn't have been This idea that putting out a competent Tory image has been a deadly flaw in Labour electoral prospects is belied by three consecutive wins by Blair. Eh? To a significant degree he won in 1997 because the Tories were genuinely despised - I'm not denying that he was pretty popular himself as well, though to a non-negligible extent public enthusiasm prior to his becoming PM has been retconned; the internet was in its early days then (and regrettably, relatively little from those times remains) but it certainly wasn't hard to find similar criticisms to the ones Starmer gets now - "pretty much the same as the Tories", "no actual substance", blah blah. And in 2001 and (less so) 2005 the Tories were still manifestly unready to return to government. Labour got very lucky in several respects come the latter election too. Brown would quite possibly have won that one by a bigger margin had he taken over in 2004 (as was quite close to happening) as well. |
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nodealbrexiteer
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Post by nodealbrexiteer on Feb 23, 2023 13:19:02 GMT
This idea that putting out a competent Tory image has been a deadly flaw in Labour electoral prospects is belied by three consecutive wins by Blair. Eh? To a significant degree he won in 1997 because the Tories were genuinely despised - I'm not denying that he was pretty popular himself as well, though to a non-negligible extent public enthusiasm prior to his becoming PM has been retconned; the internet was in its early days then (and regrettably, relatively little from those times remains) but it certainly wasn't hard to find similar criticisms to the ones Starmer gets now - "pretty much the same as the Tories", "no actual substance", blah blah. And in 2001 and (less so) 2005 the Tories were still manifestly unready to return to government. Labour got very lucky in several respects come the latter election too. Brown would quite possibly have won that one by a bigger margin had he taken over in 2004 (as was quite close to happening) as well.
hard to say, we'll never now, of course if IDS hadnt been ousted the Blair 2005 majority might have been higher |
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right
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Post by right on Feb 23, 2023 13:48:20 GMT
This idea that putting out a competent Tory image has been a deadly flaw in Labour electoral prospects is belied by three consecutive wins by Blair. Eh? To a significant degree he won in 1997 because the Tories were genuinely despised - I'm not denying that he was pretty popular himself as well, though to a non-negligible extent public enthusiasm prior to his becoming PM has been retconned; the internet was in its early days then (and regrettably, relatively little from those times remains) but it certainly wasn't hard to find similar criticisms to the ones Starmer gets now - "pretty much the same as the Tories", "no actual substance", blah blah. And in 2001 and (less so) 2005 the Tories were still manifestly unready to return to government. Labour got very lucky in several respects come the latter election too. Brown would quite possibly have won that one by a bigger margin had he taken over in 2004 (as was quite close to happening) as well. Brown is unlikely to have run as left wing a campaign. He's a centrist and the 2010 campaign was a result of the fact that his economic model of borrowing and calling it a bustless boom had been shown to have failed. In 2004/5 it hadn't failed and he would have run on the back of that. Brown was no left winger, even if he was more rooted in Labour culture than Blair. |
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right
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Post by right on Feb 23, 2023 13:51:13 GMT
This idea that putting out a competent Tory image has been a deadly flaw in Labour electoral prospects is belied by three consecutive wins by Blair. A large section of the electorate want a competent (which means right wing economically) government while at the same time not feeling bad about themselves. Brown broke that in 2010, but would have probably have failed due to the Brown-Blair boom coming to a bust, but Miliband comprehensively broke that. Corbyn was really comfortable running on Miliband's programme in 2017. Outside Scotland Labour has no chance of being PASOKified. Appealing to the centre ground is the only winning strategy for Labour. I can see that it sucks because that's not the case for the Conservatives, but life often sucks. if anyone has destroyed the idea that right wing economics is competent it's Liz Truss. People probably would have said Pasokification would never happened in Scotland til it did. The SNP had been the opposition in Scotland since at least 1998. And considering the alternative we're living through, the Truss plan was the only game in town to escape the doom loop of ever taxing our way into prosperity that the political consensus is offering us today. |
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The Bishop
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Post by The Bishop on Feb 23, 2023 13:53:12 GMT
Brown would almost certainly have made some nods to the left had he been leader in 2005, though I totally agree about the substance (and indeed said so at the time!)
His being nowhere near as tainted by Iraq as Blair would surely have counted significantly with voters, at a time when that was maybe *the* live issue.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 23, 2023 13:54:54 GMT
Even had Yvette Cooper won, does anybody seriously think she would have won the 2015 GE? I suspect either a "we're better at Torying than the Tories" Labour would have now been permanently PASOKified (or something pretty close to it), or we would still have had the 2015 leadership election, with the left still fed up of the failure of the supposedly "practical" wing to win the 2015 election and we would still have had a left-wing leader elected. Now, in some kind of bizarre "trousers-of-time" style twist that leader may not have been Corbyn but there's no actual reason why Cooper winning instead means it wouldn't have been This idea that putting out a competent Tory image has been a deadly flaw in Labour electoral prospects is belied by three consecutive wins by Blair. A large section of the electorate want a competent (which means right wing economically) government while at the same time not feeling bad about themselves. Brown broke that in 2010, but would have probably have failed due to the Brown-Blair boom coming to a bust, but Miliband comprehensively broke that. Corbyn was really comfortable running on Miliband's programme in 2017. Outside Scotland Labour has no chance of being PASOKified. Appealing to the centre ground is the only winning strategy for Labour. I can see that it sucks because that's not the case for the Conservatives, but life often sucks. The two are entirely different. Blair was accused of being a Tory by many on the left but the image he sought to present was of competent Labour in opposition to the clearly unfit-to-govern Tory government of the time. Secondly, PASOKification will obviously manifest itself differently under FPTP (hence "or something close to it"). Labour would not have been replaced on the left but many Labour-inclined or swing voters would have seen little or no reason to vote Labour, and would have lost enthusiasm or gone over permanently, leaving Labour with an effective range of probably 200-250 seats. Enough to stay as the main opposition but not enough to actually form a government |
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Post by mattbewilson on Feb 23, 2023 14:37:58 GMT
if anyone has destroyed the idea that right wing economics is competent it's Liz Truss. People probably would have said Pasokification would never happened in Scotland til it did. The SNP had been the opposition in Scotland since at least 1998. And considering the alternative we're living through, the Truss plan was the only game in town to escape the doom loop of ever taxing our way into prosperity that the political consensus is offering us today. but let's be right, no one imagined the SNP sweeping the board. It's amusing to watch 2010 coverage and hear 6 seats was the SNP target. Clearly the markets didn't agree with Truss though |
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Post by aargauer on Feb 23, 2023 14:41:05 GMT
This idea that putting out a competent Tory image has been a deadly flaw in Labour electoral prospects is belied by three consecutive wins by Blair. A large section of the electorate want a competent (which means right wing economically) government while at the same time not feeling bad about themselves. Brown broke that in 2010, but would have probably have failed due to the Brown-Blair boom coming to a bust, but Miliband comprehensively broke that. Corbyn was really comfortable running on Miliband's programme in 2017. Outside Scotland Labour has no chance of being PASOKified. Appealing to the centre ground is the only winning strategy for Labour. I can see that it sucks because that's not the case for the Conservatives, but life often sucks. if anyone has destroyed the idea that Liz Truss right wing economics is competent it's Liz Truss. People probably would have said Pasokification would never happened in Scotland til it did. Please find attached my corrections. |
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Post by aargauer on Feb 23, 2023 14:42:23 GMT
The SNP had been the opposition in Scotland since at least 1998. And considering the alternative we're living through, the Truss plan was the only game in town to escape the doom loop of ever taxing our way into prosperity that the political consensus is offering us today. but let's be right, no one imagined the SNP sweeping the board. It's amusing to watch 2010 coverage and hear 6 seats was the SNP target. Clearly the markets didn't agree with Truss though They disagreed with printing money rather than cutting spending. The proposed defecit was the problem. With rates as they are, inflation at is, it was a monumentally stupid thing to announce tax drops without spending cuts. Many of us were very worried about Truss and still voted for her, because we (correctly) were worried Sunak would be awful. I still hope the tories can engineer another leadership contest. Sufficiently desperate that I would like to see Penny Morduant have a go. |
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right
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Post by right on Feb 23, 2023 16:48:23 GMT
but let's be right, no one imagined the SNP sweeping the board. It's amusing to watch 2010 coverage and hear 6 seats was the SNP target. Clearly the markets didn't agree with Truss though They disagreed with printing money rather than cutting spending. The proposed defecit was the problem. With rates as they are, inflation at is, it was a monumentally stupid thing to announce tax drops without spending cuts. Many of us were very worried about Truss and still voted for her, because we (correctly) were worried Sunak would be awful. I still hope the tories can engineer another leadership contest. Sufficiently desperate that I would like to see Penny Morduant have a go. They markets also disagreed with the cost of the most statist and expensive energy plan in Western Europe, which Truss had specifically said was not needed during her campaign Tax cuts were the problem with a couple of international institutions, who now say we're stuffed due to our tax rises Labour supporters are going to argue that we can tax our way to prosperity (economic literacy is unhelpful if you want to support Labour) until the moment that Labour runs on a tax cutting platform. |
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Post by Peter Wilkinson on Feb 23, 2023 16:49:07 GMT
This idea that putting out a competent Tory image has been a deadly flaw in Labour electoral prospects is belied by three consecutive wins by Blair. A large section of the electorate want a competent (which means right wing economically) government while at the same time not feeling bad about themselves. Brown broke that in 2010, but would have probably have failed due to the Brown-Blair boom coming to a bust, but Miliband comprehensively broke that. Corbyn was really comfortable running on Miliband's programme in 2017. Outside Scotland Labour has no chance of being PASOKified. Appealing to the centre ground is the only winning strategy for Labour. I can see that it sucks because that's not the case for the Conservatives, but life often sucks. The two are entirely different. Blair was accused of being a Tory by many on the left but the image he sought to present was of competent Labour in opposition to the clearly unfit-to-govern Tory government of the time. Secondly, PASOKification will obviously manifest itself differently under FPTP (hence "or something close to it"). Labour would not have been replaced on the left but many Labour-inclined or swing voters would have seen little or no reason to vote Labour, and would have lost enthusiasm or gone over permanently, leaving Labour with an effective range of probably 200-250 seats. Enough to stay as the main opposition but not enough to actually form a government Cards on the table, first. In the 2010 Labour leadership election, I voted for Ed Miliband; in 2015, I voted for Yvette Cooper, though admittedly as (on balance) the least unsatisfactory available candidate - if Cooper had stood in 2010, then I would almost certainly still have voted for Ed Miliband. Turning to the question under discussion - take account of the fact that Labour's PASOKification in Scotland was the result of there being a plausible Scottish competitor party which does not campaign in England, and the 2010 GE results in England indicate a clear potential path to PASOKification in England, even if it was one that, in retrospect, was effectively nullified by a point of divergence before the 2010 Labour leadership campaign even started started. In terms of votes, Labour's 2010 results in England were significantly worse than even its 2019 ones, and scarcely better than 1983 - and the Lib Dem results were only slightly worse in terms of votes than the Alliance ones in 1983, and substantially better in terms of seats. If the Lib Dems had not gone into coalition with the Tories in 2010 and thus rather removed themselves from competition on the left, then Labour not showing a clear economic alternative to the Tories after 2010 would have made its PASOKification in the 2015 GE a distinct possibility. As matters turned out, the equivalent in 2015 happened to the Lib Dems instead. For that matter, Labour had been extremely fortunate (except perhaps in retrospect) with its English results in 2005 - a majority of seats, to be sure, but on a share of the vote only a percentage point or so higher than in 2019. The difference between the 2005 and 2019 results in terms of seats was mainly that the Conservatives had a far higher proportion of the non-Labour vote in 2019 than in 2005, though there is also the matter of the Labour vote having fallen in a number of seats it held in 2005, while rising in a number of others which still (as of early 2023) have Conservative MPs. And while there is certainly an argument that, at some times between 1997 and 2010, Brown relied too heavily on government borrowing to maintain a boom, hostility to government borrowing can easily be taken too far. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, borrowing in order to limit at least some of the worst potential consequences of the crash was, I think, fully justified. There is indeed a point where further borrowing become too expensive, in terms of the likely benefits, to justify expanding it further or even maintaining it at current levels, but that point had not yet been reached at the time of the 2010 GE - and Osborne's austerity policies, to the extent that they were even effective, amounted to shock treatment that was then made even worse by Brexit and left the British economy with less of the resources needed to deal with further crises such as the Covid pandemic. Where I think Brown can be criticised about government borrowing is during his later years as Chancellor - by 2004 or so, the boom was clearly reaching its peak and current borrowing should probably have been restrained to the extent that genuine improvements to service efficiencies or carefully planned further taxation would allow. However, doing this in the immediate lead-up to the 2005 GE might obviously have affected the chances of a Labour election victory, and doing it between 2005 and 2007 would probably have adversely affected Brown's chances of succeeding Blair without a contest. But a Labour GE loss in 2005 or a succession contest in 2007 obviously amount to different what-ifs. |
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Post by mattbewilson on Feb 23, 2023 17:26:33 GMT
if anyone has destroyed the idea that Liz Truss right wing economics is competent it's Liz Truss. People probably would have said Pasokification would never happened in Scotland til it did. Please find attached my corrections. oh I didn't realise it wasn't all the plans to cut taxes, which the markets responded by saying you can't afford to, that led to the current economic situation and Tory collapse |
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Post by mattbewilson on Feb 23, 2023 17:27:56 GMT
but let's be right, no one imagined the SNP sweeping the board. It's amusing to watch 2010 coverage and hear 6 seats was the SNP target. Clearly the markets didn't agree with Truss though They disagreed with printing money rather than cutting spending. The proposed defecit was the problem. With rates as they are, inflation at is, it was a monumentally stupid thing to announce tax drops without spending cuts. Many of us were very worried about Truss and still voted for her, because we (correctly) were worried Sunak would be awful. I still hope the tories can engineer another leadership contest. Sufficiently desperate that I would like to see Penny Morduant have a go. yes that's what the country needs, another leadership contest |
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stb12
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Post by stb12 on Feb 23, 2023 17:50:53 GMT
They disagreed with printing money rather than cutting spending. The proposed defecit was the problem. With rates as they are, inflation at is, it was a monumentally stupid thing to announce tax drops without spending cuts. Many of us were very worried about Truss and still voted for her, because we (correctly) were worried Sunak would be awful. I still hope the tories can engineer another leadership contest. Sufficiently desperate that I would like to see Penny Morduant have a go. yes that's what the country needs, another leadership contest Well it’s been a few months since the last one, overdue another |
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Post by matureleft on Feb 23, 2023 17:53:05 GMT
They disagreed with printing money rather than cutting spending. The proposed defecit was the problem. With rates as they are, inflation at is, it was a monumentally stupid thing to announce tax drops without spending cuts. Many of us were very worried about Truss and still voted for her, because we (correctly) were worried Sunak would be awful. I still hope the tories can engineer another leadership contest. Sufficiently desperate that I would like to see Penny Morduant have a go. They markets also disagreed with the cost of the most statist and expensive energy plan in Western Europe, which Truss had specifically said was not needed during her campaign Tax cuts were the problem with a couple of international institutions, who now say we're stuffed due to our tax rises Labour supporters are going to argue that we can tax our way to prosperity (economic literacy is unhelpful if you want to support Labour) until the moment that Labour runs on a tax cutting platform. Of course we’ll never know, but I’ve always argued that, objectively, Truss’s main problem was not what she was planning to do but the crass, incompetent and hubristic way she did it. A scheme that was slightly better designed, better prepared and better argued would have caused much less stir. Markets aren’t some precise, calibrated judge. The elimination of the additional rate was of symbolic not meaningful purpose and merely raised temperatures, the determination to avoid OBR scrutiny was unnecessary, sacking the Treasury chief and winding up the Bank sent unhelpful signals. The (seeming - since nobody had prepared the other obvious components) implication that tax cuts were the single measure required for economic growth suggested a poor grasp of economics and a reliance on ideology. Returning to the thread(!) I can’t recall who my first choice was in 2010. I do remember being saddened by the poverty of that choice and calling someone who I preferred (Cruddas) and that I would have liked Johnson to have run. I suspect I voted first for Burnham or Balls, second for the other of those, third for the older Miliband then the younger and then Abbott. If Cooper had been a candidate (and presumably Balls not) I’d have placed her first or second but without huge enthusiasm. Labour had first to accept that it needed “permission to be heard”. The (largely false) narrative around what had happened in 2008 had started to stick and Brown’s premiership had been dogged with both error and poor luck. Nobody initially was listening to Labour. And people at first quite liked the Coalition as an idea. Who the Labour leader was in the first couple of years made little difference. But the time should have been used building a sturdier narrative of the alternative to Osborne’s simplistic and harmful approach. Once people did start listening again, Miliband wasn’t the most convincing communicator. But I wouldn’t say that Cooper’s much better though I suspect her contrast, as an intelligent woman, with the Tory leading duo might have had greater purchase. |
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Post by Adam in Stroud on Feb 23, 2023 17:54:49 GMT
yes that's what the country needs, another leadership contest Well it’s been a few months since the last one, overdue another Yeah, it's a bit like good public transport, if they come frequently enough you don't worry about missing one. |
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Post by aargauer on Feb 23, 2023 18:48:55 GMT
Please find attached my corrections. oh I didn't realise it wasn't all the plans to cut taxes, which the markets responded by saying you can't afford to, that led to the current economic situation and Tory collapse You can manifestly afford to if you cut spending! For a start the enormously expensive energy subsidy. To try and argue that the markets turned per se against right wing economics is indefensible. |
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Post by mattbewilson on Feb 23, 2023 20:54:10 GMT
oh I didn't realise it wasn't all the plans to cut taxes, which the markets responded by saying you can't afford to, that led to the current economic situation and Tory collapse You can manifestly afford to if you cut spending! For a start the enormously expensive energy subsidy. To try and argue that the markets turned per se against right wing economics is indefensible. tax cuts to produce growth to pay for public spending is right wing economics and its why we're in this situation. Yes spending cuts would have probably been better recieved but doesn't mean that truss' own proposals werent right wing thinking and they were rejected |
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nodealbrexiteer
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Post by nodealbrexiteer on Feb 23, 2023 21:41:01 GMT
but let's be right, no one imagined the SNP sweeping the board. It's amusing to watch 2010 coverage and hear 6 seats was the SNP target. Clearly the markets didn't agree with Truss though They disagreed with printing money rather than cutting spending. The proposed defecit was the problem. With rates as they are, inflation at is, it was a monumentally stupid thing to announce tax drops without spending cuts. Many of us were very worried about Truss and still voted for her, because we (correctly) were worried Sunak would be awful. I still hope the tories can engineer another leadership contest. Sufficiently desperate that I would like to see Penny Morduant have a go.Install her in August 2024  |
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The Bishop
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Post by The Bishop on Feb 24, 2023 11:33:42 GMT
Actually if the Tories have a second disastrous set of elections in May next year, I can see them trying the "change leader" thing one last time as a Hail Mary pass.
So who knows?
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