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Post by Adam in Stroud on Sept 25, 2016 14:43:19 GMT
Migration is in fact a quite complicated question. I have personally never supported complete freedom of movement and I do not agree with subsidising people to migrate to the UK. For example a policy that encourages people to come here to sell the Big Issue is a complete absurdity - but that is what we have at the moment. The problem is that people mix up the issue of migration policy with issues relating to race and religion. There is always a problem when too many people migrate and it often impacts badly on the poorer members of the society that they migrate to. That's fair enough, John, and I certainly don't favour subsidising migration; I'm not sure who does, actively. My view of migration is that it is largely a function of labour markets and therefore, whether you like it or not, interference in that market is unlikely to be effective (especially if you are trying to close down the market in migrant labour altogether) or helpful (if you are significantly distorting it.) To that extent, I thought Cameron's approach of restricting entitlement to in-work benefits such as tax credits had merit, on the basis that assistance to low paid workers is an interference with the market which may be justified as a re-distributive measure but is unhelpful as a subsidy to migrant labour. The problem is that the confusion of migration with race seems to me to be exactly the issue that the right wing of the Labour Party wishes to elide. They are faced with a constituency which is reacting to migration in ways which are to some extent mixed up with race, or at least xenophobic, issues. They seem to want to be seen to be doing something - anything - which will win them back brownie points with the famous and possibly mythical WWC. I don't see LDs wanting to go that way - I certainly don't. It would need to be something much more considered, race neutral, and which could be shown to have demonstrable and specific benefits for the least well-off in the existing population, rather than just kicking migrants to generate headlines in the Sun about "getting tough on migration." |
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Post by iainbhx on Sept 25, 2016 15:21:30 GMT
Jess Phillips maybe - preferably into a lake But who to? |
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Post by greenchristian on Sept 25, 2016 16:08:16 GMT
It certainly started as spin. When Corbyn was first elected as leader, there was no reason to believe that the public couldn't be sold on a genuinely left-wing political platform if it was competently presented. By now it's been uncritically repeated by every part of the mainstream media for so long that it's probably morphed into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Twelve months ago, your party sold a competently-presented, genuinely left-wing political platform and got a load of media coverage and an increased vote. And got stuffed into a cocked hat by three Establishment parties and a hard-Right party that was basically subject to a cordon sanitaire. Can you identify ten seats that you believe voted Tory because they thought Labour wasn't left-wing enough? As Bish said, the overwhelming majority of voters don't really think in those terms, making that a very silly question. If, in 2015, Labour had competently sold a similar political platform to the one we did, it's entirely possible that they would have done substantially better than they did with their actual strategy of selling a mixture of centrist and left-wing policies, and not coming across as genuinely believing in either. As for us getting a load of media coverage, we still got significantly less than any of the parties you describe as "stuffing us into a cocked hat". If that platform had been presented by a party that already had a large tribal base vote, and which got "major party" levels of media presence, then it is likely that it would have garnered more support than it did. The SNP's general election platform was also a very clearly and competently presented left-wing message by a party that the media did treat as "major" rather than "minor", and they increased their national vote share by slightly more than we did (or by a lot more if you're talking about vote share in the seats where they actually stood), and got a substantial seat increase out of it. Basically, the evidence of 2015 definitely does not show that a left-wing platform necessarily makes a party "unelectable" in the 21st Century UK. None of the three parties that gained the most in terms of vote share last year were pushing a centrist vision. But what distinguished them most from the three Establishment parties was that all three came across as actually believing in something (whether it was the Green & SNP anti-austerity message or the UKIP anti-immigration message). |
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Post by johnhemming on Sept 25, 2016 16:08:42 GMT
With all due respect John and on this Forum you are held in a lot of respect..........is that your insight??? This is a thread about Labour MPs rather than migration more generally. However, it is still the case that the taxpayer pays out in terms of tax credits and housing benefit for people who have come to the UK either to sell the Big Issue or set up what otherwise is an insufficiently profitable system of self-employment (often scrap metal). This was a way around the interim measures as it counted as self-employment. To me the big criticism of government is not producing statistics which look properly at when recent migrants are being subsidised by the state in terms of either in work benefits or otherwise. I asked some questions about this and they refused to answer. Many other EU countries only pay out benefits on a contributory basis which means that this sort of thing does not happen. There is no question that this (and the absence of interim constraints on numbers) is part of the issue in terms of the numbers of low paid (but subsidised) EU migrants. There would not have been as many without the subsidy. I also tend to agree with the the government that it is better to aim to support refugees financially in countries near to where they have left. Simply placing people on the welfare state puts more pressure on housing and other services and costs a lot more. There may be small numbers of individual cases where there are strong family reasons (and where the family are willing to support them) for discretion. But encouraging people to camp in Calais is not something that to me seems sensible. |
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Post by gwynthegriff on Sept 25, 2016 19:35:05 GMT
Yes, I agree. I would also recall the mid-late Blair period when relations between the Lib Dems and the right/Blairite wing of Labour were very bad indeed, owing to their disagreements over Iraq and civil liberties issues etc. A lot of the people most likely to be alienated by Corbyn within the PLP are those same MPs or their political successors. They would not be comfortable in the LDs and the LDs would not be comfortable with them. If piles of Labour MPs started entering the LibDems it would turn it into a party that was not a party I would want to be a member of. I said much the same to my wife earlier today in a Tesco car park. However it was in the context of longstanding Labour members voting for Smith but being overwhelmed by new members voting for Corbyn. |
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Post by greenchristian on Sept 25, 2016 19:47:58 GMT
It certainly started as spin. When Corbyn was first elected as leader, there was no reason to believe that the public couldn't be sold on a genuinely left-wing political platform if it was competently presented. By now it's been uncritically repeated by every part of the mainstream media for so long that it's probably morphed into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Twelve months ago, your party sold a competently-presented, genuinely left-wing political platform and got a load of media coverage and an increased vote. And got stuffed into a cocked hat by three Establishment parties and a hard-Right party that was basically subject to a cordon sanitaire. Can you identify ten seats that you believe voted Tory because they thought Labour wasn't left-wing enough? In addition to my previous response, I just came across the following video, which seems rather relevant. |
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Jack
Reform Party
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Post by Jack on Sept 25, 2016 19:48:08 GMT
If piles of Labour MPs started entering the LibDems it would turn it into a party that was not a party I would want to be a member of. I said much the same to my wife earlier today in a Tesco car park. Can't you have political discussions at home? |
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Post by gwynthegriff on Sept 25, 2016 19:57:30 GMT
I said much the same to my wife earlier today in a Tesco car park. Can't you have political discussions at home? Oh we do, we do. Keen political interests has Mrs TheGriff! |
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Sept 25, 2016 20:23:59 GMT
I assumed that Tesco was the handing over point for the kids on your access weekend.  |
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Sept 25, 2016 20:49:21 GMT
Drif's Guide once referred to supermarkets as "places the British take their children in order to publicly chastise them".
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Sept 25, 2016 21:07:18 GMT
Although she would struggle I think in the Edgbaston which is currently being proposed. She would have a case I suppose for following Bartley green into the new Selly Oak & Halesowen seat (but hopefully there will be some improvements to the Birmingham boundaries before they are finalised). Gisela Stuart is definitely my favourite Labour MP now and like you say preferable to many a Tory such as Anna Soubry or Clare Perry I prefer Jeremy Corbyn or Ken Livingstone to Anna Soubry. |
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Sept 25, 2016 21:29:57 GMT
I wouldn't go that far
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Khunanup
Lib Dem
Portsmouth Liberal Democrats
Posts: 12,016
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Post by Khunanup on Sept 26, 2016 0:15:37 GMT
Ok I am still feeling like an intellectual colossus, which is at odds with my previous self assessment. Give the guy a chance Boogs. You're completely politically obsessed with immigration and benefits after all, poor old John has to think about all the other things other than that too! |
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Post by casualobserver on Sept 26, 2016 16:30:41 GMT
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The Bishop
Labour
Down With Factionalism!
Posts: 38,940
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Post by The Bishop on Sept 26, 2016 16:38:59 GMT
That was supposed to happen this morning, keep up.
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Post by casualobserver on Sept 26, 2016 19:02:46 GMT
Sorry, Bish. It's really difficult to keep up with all the Labour Party news at the moment. Exciting isn't it?
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maxque
Non-Aligned
Posts: 9,312
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Post by maxque on Sept 26, 2016 19:24:40 GMT
It happened, it was the Portsmouth Group Leader, calling onto people to create a new one.
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Post by casualobserver on Sept 26, 2016 19:51:26 GMT
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