...Instead of asking “What should we offer the people in our bid for a fourth term?”, let’s instead ask: “If we were in opposition right now, and the country were facing exactly the same challenges as it is now, and we were determined to form the next, new, government, what would be in our manifesto?”
What new policies and projects would an experienced Labour opposition in 2010 propose to the electorate in order to woo it, and would they be measurably more radical than what an incumbent government would offer?
If so, then we need to adopt a new mindset. And do it quickly.
Tom Harris is clearly an under-used resource. That's why he has such a good blog.
19 comments:
No, no and thrice no.
This is a government obsessed with 'new'.
We don't need 'new', all we ever needed, all we need now, is for 'existing' to work properly.
Unfortunately there's no headlines in 'existing', no press conferences to announce 'existing', no touring of TV studios.
Tom Harris probably has an important future in the Labour party. If, as now looks overwhelmingly likely, Labour cruises to a staggering, massive defeat sometime between now and May 2010, his party is going to need him and others like him.
He is relatively young, he has a solid majority, some creditable Ministerial experience and a modest but undeniable public profile, which isn't closely associated with either Blair or Brown (most people I know felt that his infamous blog post on happiness was actually quite sensible). In other words, aside from some "splash damage" from the Labour brand, he is largely unpolluted.
It will fall to him and others of his Ministerial generation to pick up the pieces after the next election. I can't say I envy him; it will be a thankless task. There's no glory in being the person who picks a party up after the kind of defeat that ensures nobody will listen to it for a decade; just ask William Hague. However, if the Labour party is to somehow survive the next few years, it will need level heads and strong wills to rally its fortunes during the wilderness years.
Over to you, Mr. Harris...
Labour have already proved in law that their manifesto do not count,so this is hot air or more spin.
more lies!
this lot are all gong and no dinner.
Tom - for God's sake start to get worried!
If Iain Dale is praising you like he regularly does, it's code for "you are doing the Tories a great service mate - keep it up!"
Change your tack Tom beofre its too late! This is NOT flattery its the kiss of political death!
I have heard something similar from Daniel Finkelstein. Good advice.
All the leadership stuff is a distraction. Labour has deep problems, and a change of leader will make no difference (except for a very short-term and short-lived poll boost), especially given the alternatives (am I the only one to point out that Emperor Miliband is wearing no clothes?). They need shock therapy and fundamental action now.
It doesn't matter what policies they adopt now, Labour will not be trusted for at least another decade to even run a whelk stall.
If they had been true Socialists, and had been competent at implementing their credo, I would have strongly disagreed, but still respected them.
Instead, NuLab has been horrendously and in some cases viciously destructive, not just economically, and I seriously wonder whether the UK will ever recover.
Mr Harris should get a job with the Samaritans, if he's such a nice guy - they'll be needing a lot more staff.
Tom Harris is a saddo! I would'nt listen to a word that man has to say!
In fact he is so sad that on Xmas eve last year he undertook a war of words with me on my blog...
I challenged him to re-open part of the East West rail link... and his response is......nothing - not a single train has been tested on the route.
Sorry Iain, I normally agree with your blog but on this ocassion I believe your wrong.
I am going to religh the next two years, Broon and McLabour booted out by landslise, England getting rid of the Scotch EU Region, and David my Dad was a Marxist hence i am a Marxist too Miliband becoming McLabour leader......with McLabour being out of power for the next two decades in England....and perhaps indeffinitley with some other fine upstanding party who would do a credible job as opposition such as the English Democrats Party.
The problem with this Iain is it is just how Labour have acted in government - as an opposition campaigning, rather than an administration governing.
The first 5 years were blowing smoke in the electorate's eyes and keeping the narrative going. The next punishing anyone who pointed out that Britain was not the Utopia St Tony and Brown told everyone it was.
The fundamental problem with Labour is they tried to dismantle the traditional feedback loop of general elections buy using deceit, spin and when Gordon Brown was worried in 2005 straight lies over the EU constitution and Conservative spending plans.
The entire New Labour project is about breaking the troublesome link with reality that the electorate realising how much debt and taxes have increased used to cause.
As a result they have no link that functions with reality. Now that the public has rumbled them the damn burst of public anger can't be held back with re-launches, reshuffles, narratives or walks on the beach. It needs the humiliation of an arrogant, ineffective, irresponsible and fundamentally dishonest government (sending the country to war in Iraq on a lie and subverting the institutions of government to perpetuate that lie anyone ?)at the polls in a general election.
Tom Harris is just hiding behind questions. He asked what should Labour now do. He was told. Did not like the replies. So reverted to classic Labour spin and asked another question and still no answers.
He is a little more refresing than many of his ilk, but is basiclt tarred by the same labour brush.
Labour needs nothing new but go back and try and put right what they have mucked up.
There are without doubt, thoughtful people on the Labour benches and Harris is clearly one of them. The problem is that guys like Harris will come out with this stuff, but not take the steps needed to realise them- in this case to tell Brown to go, and go now.
(As an aside I can't help watching Brown of late without seeing the image of Steve McLaren... soldiering towards disaster as he was, and Brown is.)
But the reality is, that if Tom Harris is sincere in his opinions, and I have no reason to doubt that he is, he must tell Brown, as Cromwell famously told Parliament:
"You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately ... Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"
Perhaps it's Tom who should listen to Tom.
Another typical Nulab journeyman (sorry journeyperson) who seems to find the talk easy but effectiveness and competence a little more difficult to achieve.
Except, that is, for the Nulab competency of getting his hands dirty with micro-management and disappearing when things go wrong, or (true to type) blaming managers on the ground for the consequences of his interference.
This is the Tom who is making a bollox of the railways which lack any strategic direction.
In fact as a Transport Minister, he makes Prescott look effective.
Jeez!
This is precisely what is wrong - turning the Labour Party into soap powder, just as Dave has done to the Conservatives.
Surely the parties should be about principle and what they believe in.
What we have now is a pair of Morris Itals, two old buckets that have had a new grille, square headlamps and matte black trim applied to make them appear "modern" with one purpose - to sell as many heaps as possible just to survive.
They won't change to do good or to ease people gently in their direction, they will just change to get elected, change to gain power.
Anon at 08:01 is near how I feel. We do not need "new" things or "change" and even then, the words used have no guarantee they are better than what exists. Government should either maintain or IMPROVE.
Labour is facing extinction so what do the tories do? Try to save it!
Just shows that they're all part of the same rotten problem. Try to hang together if you wish. You will hang separately.
But GB does not do listening.
The problem for Labour is not just Brown so much as the last 11 years.
Anything Brown tries now to resolve his problems will only serve to underline what a termially useless bag of shit this whole government has been since 1997. What options does that leave him? None.
Labour need to go into opposition NOW and to decide what the hell they believe, who they stand for and what they might possibly offer the electorate when, after 10 years or so, they become listenable to once more.
GB doesn't listen to anyone, including Tom, Dick or Harry
Is this true?
"Yes, they´re expecting trouble alright. A lot of it. And here´s why...
Over 25 years ago, a policy of fiddling with the official inflation figures began. The result now, that is becoming more and more obvious to more and more people (even the perceptively-challenged) is that massive numbers of people are facing the coming winter in freezing cold houses with little to eat. That ought to be enough to start a riot in just about ANY country.
The fact is that the official UK inflation rate is MASSIVELY understated and has been for very many years. Only lately is the absurdity of the official rate attracting the scrutiny of the ordinary peasant on the street, however. Even the most willfully ignorant have woken up to the fact that their currency vouchers are buying less and less. The official headline rate of inflation in the UK at present is in the region of about 3.5%. In reality, the true figure is something closer to 32% - higher than at any time (eclipsing even the previous peek set 32 years ago under the then Labor government of Harold Wilson (Wilson's finance minister at that time was a guy called Dennis Healey (a long-standing member of the scheming Bilderberg Group).
How can this current situation have arisen?.... Once upon a time, the British government adopted an entirely transparent mechanism for monitoring price rises. It was (and technically still is) based on the cost of a 'basket of goods.' Originally, this notional shopping basket held items such as a loaf of bread, a pound of tea, a gallon of heating oil, a joint of beef, a pint of beer and so on. Basic necessities, in essence. Its price was calculated from the average costs of these items in different places in the UK. The resulting inflation figure was pretty accurate, being rooted in what people HAD to have at a basic level.
The official inflation rate is a critically important measure. It was and still is always desirable (for a government) to UNDERstate it. Why? Because it helps to foster faith in the currency and the economy, but also, and crucially, it is the benchmark figure for wage claims. Claims for wage rises (particularly in the public sector) above the rate of inflation are heavily deprecated as they fuel future inflation and can lead to a wage-price spiral (as was the case in Britain in the 1970s). By publishing a misleadingly low official rate of inflation, governments can save BILLIONS every year in public spending by getting the Ingorati to accept pay rises that are in reality, BELOW inflation. Year on year, this effect accumulates until finally it becomes glaringly obvious to all.
That is the situation Britain faces today. The British government has CONNED millions of people from the middle classes downwards, including all its state pensioners, into living on less and less and less as the years go by. All by manipulating the official inflation rate. How was this achieved? It was fiendishly simple. Successive governments have meddled with the contents of the notional 'basket of goods' by gradually replacing certain items with others on the pretext of 'keeping the system current.' Keeping the system up to date is, if done honestly and transparently, no bad thing. But it has not been done this way. The composition of this basket is now changed EVERY year and the staple items that people NEED to SURVIVE have been steadily replaced by junk items that typically devalue quite rapidly: computers and their accessories, widescreen TVs, mobile phones and other hi-tech items that can be explained as forming a significant part of people's outlay.
Things have now reached such a degree of absurdity that the Bank of England now uses a measure called 'core CPI' which totally strips out the cost of food and fuel! The excuse given was that these components were "too volatile" to continue to be included. Well,how remarkably convenient in a country where the cost of a loaf of bread has doubled in the last 6 months! Not only, food, but gas, electricity and water charges in the UK continue to rise HUGELY by an average (over the last few years) of some 50% year-on-year! Yet the peasants are still urged to curb wage demands to below 'the level of inflation' – meaning below 3.5% as opposed to what it is in truth: almost 10 times that figure.
Well, you can keep up such a pretense for just so long before the strains start to show, and boy are they showing in Britain right now! Whilst it would be desirable and refreshing to see the status quo in Britain overturned as a result of the people's waking up to the fact that their country has been taken over by Jews, it's still almost as invigorating to see how the TeeVee loving sans-culottes of lower Britain are being driven to the point of realization through self-deserved cold and starvation. Maybe the first will come in the trail of the second; we can but hope the people of this once-great country will see behind the smokescreens of the media/government lies and identify the REAL culprits and architects of their demise."
http://worldpeace-phaedrus.blogspot.com/
Post a Comment