UK Politics: The Overton Defenestration

[Lyanna Stark]

On 2016-09-06 at 9:53 PM, Mathis said:

No argument on the nukes, but tax credits are a more progressive way to alleviate poverty than a high minimum wage. One of the true successes of the Blair years IMO.

Tax credits are...bizarre. I can understand the intention behind it as a good one, but how they end up working in practice is pretty awful. For example, when we lived in the UK, due to tax credits, we would have been nearly as well off with me being a stay at home parents as me working full time and putting our child in child care. I have a university education, paid tax and was generally a productive member of society, yet for someone making only a sliver less than I did (which was over the median wage btw) because of what my SO made and how tax credits worked, it would have been a better deal for me to stay at home, pay no tax and let my degree atrophy. Not to mention the effect that Werthead mentioned that this subsidises companies that ought not be subsidised. To someone from a Scandinavian country tax credits are eyeboggling and strange and in the end, it props up a system that hinders more than it helps for the people who need it the most.

I can attest that the NHS is, at least in my experience, very good. And I know live in a country where privatised health care is seen by many of our leading politicians as the end all and be all. The profit margins for these "public service" companies within the spheres of care, schools and care homes for the elderly sometimes have profit margins of up to 40-50% and no, the savings are certainly not all due to efficiency.

Personally I am not ideologically completely against privatisation, but in this case, be careful what you wish for. The Swedish system was pretty good before. Not super efficient, not always the most elegant, not always the fastest or the smoothest, but it worked. Now...not so much.

Take care of the NHS. It is brilliant at what it does, it is, at least in my view, often superior to the Swedish system with better doctors, less red tape and cheaper for people in need of care. It is worth fighting for.

[Werthead]

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Take care of the NHS. It is brilliant at what it does, it is, at least in my view, often superior to the Swedish system with better doctors, less red tape and cheaper for people in need of care. It is worth fighting for.

I think it's clear that the government is losing the battle overall on the NHS. If the junior doctors accepted the contract forthwith, the services would still snap from being stretched so far and being underfunded and under-resourced. If they don't step up those resources then the service is in danger of disintegrating in the next few years, which is way too early for the Tory Masterplan of making the NHS fail gradually over many years to make privitisation more palatable. I can see them giving up and just having to push up the funding and find some way of spinning it as some amazing new grand investment in the project.

[HexMachina]

Corbyn to remain labour leader https://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/live/2016/sep/24/labour-leadership-election-result-jeremy-corbyn-owen-smith-appeals-for-unity-politics-live?page=with:block-57e6618be4b03598d1ce8289#block-57e6618be4b03598d1ce8289

[mormont]

Not a surprise to anyone at this point, even Owen Smith.

[Werthead]

So are Labour now going to unite as much as possible under Corbyn and make the best fist of it, or are they going to continue grumbling and do this all over again in a year's time?

[Liffguard]

I understand and even somewhat agree with the antipathy that the PLP members have towards Corbyn, but at this point it seems like cooperation is the least worst option. Get back to the actual business of opposition, and in the meantime start developing talent for the future so that leadership contests have better candidates than Owen Smith.

[Pebble thats Stubby]

I believe they will mumble and groan.  then make what look like attempts of working together, but will try and demonstrate all the times Corbyn is "unreasonable" or makes it really difficult for them.  (no matter what Corbyn does or does not do)

 

then when enough time has past - showing just how much they all tried we will then do it all over again.

[Werthead]

The PLP's position seems to be that Corbyn is unelectable to the country at large, as shown by the opinion polls, and that if they do nothing then by 2020 the Labour Party could be effectively wiped out in Westminster. If it is and Corbyn steps down and the new leader is decent and finds a good direction for the party that resonates with the country at large, then that puts the next time Labour has a realistic shot of getting into government as 2025. If it takes Labour longer, maybe 2030. That kind of time period to spend under Tory governance is horrifying to the PLP (and not exactly edifying to a lot of other people either).

OTOH, it does also assume that the Conservatives don't implode, that Brexit doesn't cause massive shitstorms and there aren't other issues that arise in the meantime. There is also the possibility that Corbyn does start resonating more widely with the country at large. His stance on Brexit (it's happening, move on) may actually be helpful there. But other policies need to fall into place and the economic situation has to be favourable, and no-one seems to have a realistic clue what the hell the economy is going to do even without Brexit.

[Maltaran]

1 hour ago, Liffguard said:

I understand and even somewhat agree with the antipathy that the PLP members have towards Corbyn, but at this point it seems like cooperation is the least worst option. Get back to the actual business of opposition, and in the meantime start developing talent for the future so that leadership contests have better candidates than Owen Smith.

I heard one of his problems was that a lot of people got him confused with Owen Jones.

I imagine grudging co-operation will be the order of the day, especially if the shadow cabinet elections get brought back.

40 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The PLP's position seems to be that Corbyn is unelectable to the country at large, as shown by the opinion polls, and that if they do nothing then by 2020 the Labour Party could be effectively wiped out in Westminster.

John McDonnell has been suggesting that Labour need to be ready for May to call an early election next year, if the PLP are right about Corbyn then that's something they should support, since it will give him less time to lead the party to the ruin they imagine.

[Liffguard]

40 minutes ago, Maltaran said:

John McDonnell has been suggesting that Labour need to be ready for May to call an early election next year, if the PLP are right about Corbyn then that's something they should support, since it will give him less time to lead the party to the ruin they imagine.

I wonder about the possibility of a snap election. May would either need to introduce a motion of no confidence in her own government, or get 2/3 of MPs to vote in favour of an election. If Labour aren't on board with that then she's pretty much forced to go with the former option. That would be pretty weird, Tories voting against themselves and Labour voting in favour.

[Denvek]

Labour would be stupid not to vote for an early election, even with the polls as they are. If May asks for a vote and Labour say no, that's going to get spun as Labour voting for 3 more years of Tory government, and that's going to be worse for the perception of the party then having the election and losing it.

[Dolorous Gabe]

I think a snap election might actually be bad for Labour currently. I think Labour could do with a little more time to find and develop a suitable potential successor to Corbyn. If a snap election were called and Corbyn performed badly enough for him to step down, the Tories can spend longer in power getting to grips with Brexit when it happens and Labour will be stuck with another unelectable leader. Whereas it could work out much better for Labour if Brexit happens and the Tories find things spinning out of their control. That could put Labour in a stronger position.

That said, currently I cannot see anything other than a Tory government for the foreseeable future and I don't see that as any individual's fault. I think everyone in the Labour party is to blame for that as well as a highly suggestible electorate. Miliband was no more electable than Corbyn in the current political climate. Labour leaders seem to have to unite more factions than Conservative leaders do and there seems to be nobody who can unite the left and weather the storm from the heavily right-wing oriented press.

[Sir Thursday]

As far as I can tell, the main problem the PLP have with Corbyn is not that he's unelectable, but rather that they find him very difficult to work with. Certainly there were people who resented him taking the leadership, but the main thing that caused the grousing to rise to the level of outright rebellion seemed to be how difficult it was for them to get behind him and form a cohesive message about Brexit (or indeed about pretty much anything else). What Labour MPs were saying at the time of the coup was "We have tried working with him, and he's not very good at it! Can we have someone else please?"

I guess you can make the case that this was all a pretext, and that his so-called 'unelectability' was the real driver. Perhaps they gave up too easily on trying to work with him - I'm sure that stepping into the role of leader of the opposition is going to take a bit of transition and Corbyn is going to take a while to get things right, maybe they needed to give him more time?

But in any case, they're going to have to work with him now given the mandate from this election. What choice do they have? I guess they could defect to the Lib Dems, Tim Fallon has been making overtures...I don't know if anyone is listening though.

ST

[Which Tyler]

I don't think that's the case at all TBH - the PLP were complaining about him from before he was elected in the first place; and never even tried to work with him.

The coup was always coming, it was only a matter of time - that much was obvious from his first day in the post.

[SeanF]

I think the PLP both regard him as unelectable, and think (in the unlikely event that he won an election) he would be a disastrous PM.

[Sir Thursday]

47 minutes ago, Which Tyler said:

I don't think that's the case at all TBH - the PLP were complaining about him from before he was elected in the first place; and never even tried to work with him.

The coup was always coming, it was only a matter of time - that much was obvious from his first day in the post.

It's possible that I'm conflating the opinions of a few with the group at large, but I'm thinking mainly of accounts like this:

or this: http://www.liliangreenwood.co.uk/lilian_s_speech_to_nottingham_south_labour_party_members

 

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Rail fares go up once a year on 2 January. It's the perfect opportunity to show that this Tory Government aren't on the side of working people. Commuters who've seen their season tickets go up by more than 26% since 2010. Some of whom are paying more for their rail fares than their mortgage. Four, five even six thousand pounds a year. People who live in Essex and on the Kent coast, in suburbs and small towns, in marginal seats. Many of them are not Labour voters, but they are the people we need to win over. It is a huge date in the political calendar every year.

We had the opportunity not just to criticise the Government, but to show we had a real Labour alternative. Our flagship policy. One that unites our party. My staff spent weeks preparing briefing materials for MPs and constituency parties across the country. Trawling through mountains of rail fare information to provide examples of the season tickets that had risen the most and that cost the most. Examples for every MP and CLP. Like Nottingham to Derby – where the cost of an annual season ticket has risen by almost 30% since 2010. And over the Christmas period we were listening in to Network Rail conference calls, monitoring the engineering works. Several calls every day including Christmas Day and Boxing Day, even New Years Eve. 

On 4 January – a cold dark Monday morning – I was at Kings Cross at 7am doing Radio 5 and BBC TV. Standing with Jeremy and the Rail Union General Secretaries for the media photocall. It was a crucial day in the Party’s media grid. And all across the country local party activists were outside railway stations in the cold and the dark, leafleting commuters with the materials we’d prepared. Armed with the briefings and statistics. Incredibly, Jeremy launched a Shadow Cabinet reshuffle on the same day. 

This was the reshuffle that had been talked about since the Syria vote a month earlier. A vote where I supported Jeremy’s position.  The reshuffle that meant all our staff spent Christmas not knowing whether they'd have a job by the New Year. By mid-afternoon the press were camped outside the Leader's office. They were there for the next 3 days. It knocked all the coverage of the rail fare rise and our public ownership policy off every news channel and every front page.

I respect completely Jeremy’s right to reshuffle his top team. But why then? It was unnecessary and it was incompetent. It let me down, it let my staff down but most of all it let down the Labour campaigners and trade union members, people like you, who had given up their time to go out campaigning for us that morning.

 

 

 

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Now I’d ask you to imagine how you would you feel if you agreed something with your boss but he then did something completely different. Something that undermined you. Something they hadn't even had the courtesy to tell you about.

HS2 has always been controversial, including in our Party, but it is something that I believe is vital for the future of our country. It has the support of all the rail unions. It has the support of Labour leaders in the great cities like Birmingham and Manchester and Leeds and Nottingham. It is important for jobs and skills in Derby and Doncaster and across the country and it is our official policy to support it, as agreed by the Shadow Cabinet and our National Policy Forum.

I’ve been one of HS2’s strongest supporters so I when I took up the job in Jeremy’s Shadow Cabinet I wanted to be absolutely sure we were on the same page. I met his Director of Policy to talk it through. We talked about the most difficult parts of the project, the impact at Euston in London. I'd been working with Councillor Sarah Hayward and her colleagues at Camden for more than 2 years to try and help them get what they wanted for their local residents. It had been very difficult. I'd been to visit several times, meeting residents and businesses and dealing with some hostile media. But we secured real concessions – changes that will make a difference to local residents. It didn’t matter that it was in a nominally safe seat. It was the right thing to do.

Despite our agreed policy, despite Jeremy's Director of Policy and I agreeing our position, without saying anything to me, Jeremy gave a press interview in which he suggested he could drop Labour’s support for HS2 altogether. He told a journalist on a local Camden newspaper that perhaps the HS2 line shouldn’t go to Euston at all but stop at Old Oak Common in West London – but he never discussed any of this with the Shadow Cabinet, or me, beforehand. I felt totally undermined on a really difficult issue.

And when 2 frontbenchers voted against the 3 line whip at 3rd Reading in March he did nothing. Telling one of them “well I've done it enough times myself”. Breaking the principles of collective responsibility and discipline without which effective Parliamentary opposition is not possible. When I raised my concerns it was simply shrugged off. It undermined me in front of colleagues and made me look weak. It made me feel like I was wasting my time. That my opinion didn't matter. And it made me miserable.

All of these seem to paint Corbyn as someone who means well, but is constantly stepping on the feet of his fellow party members and making it hard for them to do their jobs. Perhaps they are isolated incidents, I guess? But they build a picture of someone who could be difficult to work with.

ST

 

[Which Tyler]

I'm not suggesting that he's easy to work with - I wouldn't have a clue; just that that's the post-hoc justification being given.

The PLP were out for his blood basically the moment his name appeared on the ballot.

The decision to try a coup was made well in advance of the excuse they found - a bit like the Bush/Blair invasion of Iraq (though with a more valid-appearing excuse). The decision was made, then an excuse was found. I make no comment on the valdity of him being hard to work with, that appears to depend on who you ask.

[mormont]

So you can't comment on whether Corbyn's hard to work with because you haven't got enough first-hand information, but you definitely know what the entire PLP were thinking right from the start?

[SeanF]

The PLP can see that they're heading for 180-190 seats at the next election, and want to avert such a defeat.

[mormont]

UKIP's new leader stands down after 18 days.

Still, despite this setback, the UKIP conference seems to be going well.