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[DotCommunist]

I honestly struggle to understand how anyone can look at the current global political landscape and think that more centrism! is any kind of answer.

'Centrism is back – and we have a new international think tank to boot'

the new prog-centre think tank. lol. Is this where whatsisfaces lovefilm money went eh

 

[killer b]

yougov are always going to have a tory bias, cos they are tories.

They don't have a tory bias, none of them do - weighting poll results to reflect whole-populations is just very difficult. Yougov's election model in the run up to the 2017 election predicted the actual result almost exactly, and their conventional poll was good until they lost their nerve on the eve of the election.

 

[killer b]

Saying 'only one poll matters! the polling companies are biased!' is fucking bollocks tbh. The reality is that that Labour is neck and neck with the Tories and have been since the election, with a slight lean towards the Tories since Salisbury.

We can debate why this is the case, or what could happen to break the deadlock - but to deny it isn't true is just wasting everybody's time.

 

[kabbes]

I see myself as a social democrat and liberal. I believe in reforming the capitalist society we live in to make it fairer and more equal. I'm pro-EU, support immigration, electoral reform, environment policies and equal rights for women, gay couples etc... and a properly funded NHS, welfare system, schools and other public services.

I'd probably vote Lib Dem or Green if I felt it would make a difference under the FPTP system but it doesn't. So I opt for Labour especially as where I live is a safe Labour seat. Anything but Tory.

I'd call that centre-left at least which doesn't seem to fit in on here.

What about that is “left wing”? What do you understand by left wing? It’s not just a synonym for liberal, you know.

How do you envisage making a capitalist system “fairer and more equal”? What would that look like and what controls would be needed to sustain that? Does any of that resemble anything envisaged by Blair or the LibDems?

I think you mean well but you’re pretty naive. Inequality is systemic not just a matter of being nice or not. The system inherently produces those inequalities because of how it functions. That’s why it gets worse over time rather than better.

 

[Chilli.s]

They don't have a tory bias

Company was started by prominent tories iirc.

 

[killer b]

I know.

 

[keybored]

Surely, it's in the national interest to have our politicians housed in a modern, air conditioned building in Sheffield.

Work is well underway.
Sheffield Coroner's Court and mortuary set for £2 million revamp

 

[SpackleFrog]

I am no cheerleader of the Blairite, moderate wing of the party.

To be fair to Blair, he invested massive amounts into hospitals, schools and public services. He made sure there was a fair and generous welfare system and child poverty was reduced significantly.

I see myself as a social democrat and liberal...I'd call that centre-left at least which doesn't seem to fit in on here.

Yeah you've not found your spiritual home. I'd feel some sympathy if this thread wasn't so boring.

 

[redsquirrel]

So there isn't an obvious solution, but Blair did win Labour three elections, something no Labour leader has ever managed before, and Corbyn and the party's task is to work out how to do that again. Like him or hate him, Blair managed to unite a huge chunk of the electorate to vote Labour including Tory voters.

1997 - 30.5 % of the electorate voted Labour
2001 - 24.2 % of the electorate voted Labour
2005 - 21.6 % of the electorate voted Labour
2010 - 18.9 % of the electorate voted Labour
2015 - 20.2 % of the electorate voted Labour
2017 - 27.5 % of the electorate voted Labour

Only in 1997 did "Blair [manage] to unite a huge chunk of the electorate to vote Labour" more than Corbyn did.

I see myself as a social democrat and liberal. I believe in reforming the capitalist society we live in to make it fairer and more equal.

Well social democracy and liberalism are not only not the same thing but they are actually two differing political ideologies (although with a certain degree of overlap).

But if you are a social democrat you should be happy with what's happened under Corbyn's leadership, the Labour Party has returned to, a really rather mild kind of, social democracy.

 

[xarmian]

To be fair to Blair, he invested massive amounts into hospitals, schools and public services. He made sure there was a fair and generous welfare system and child poverty was reduced significantly.

The Tories are the one who have destroyed public institutions with their austerity which has decimated the NHS, schools and public services, the very services Labour invested heavily in.

Austerity was and is an ideological attempt to create a small state. Child poverty, homelessness and foodbank use have all shot up under this government and it's cruel welfare policies such as the Bedroom Tax and Universal Credit.

So his victories were not useless as Blair understood that in order to create a fairer, more equal society, you have to be a party of government and not just speak to yourselves but to the whole country. The minimum wage, welfare state and NHS were all created while Labour were in government. It's easy for Labour to slide into their comfort zone and oppose for opposition's sake but until they actually find an alternative message and coherent policies, they'll struggle to get back into government. The Tories are useless but the opposition aren't much better.

The investment was through PFI, based on the same logic as austerity and saddling schools and hospitals with unpayable debts.

Minimum wage was made necessary by increasing conditionality, job-seekers allowance, forcing single parents into work sooner, ESA, WCA and ATOS to force disabled people into the workforce.It helped some low wage people to break the ceiling but wages above it have sunk to the floor. Scandinavian countries don't have a problem with the posted workers directive because none of them need a minimum wage. Their unions set and enforce sectoral minimums. Here it is used to undercut workers in regions that need the jobs and are reliant on the wages being spent locally.

"Politically, a case was being built - and support gathered for it – for the government to revisit and revise its extremely neo-liberal 1999 interpretation of the Posted Workers Directive into national regulations. These stipulated that terms and conditions should not be below the legal minimum as per the minimum wage and the like rather than not be below the collectively bargained industry rates. It is this revision – to the collectively bargained industry rates – to the British regulations which seems more likely to be achieved rather the revising of the EU directive itself or the European Court of Justice rulings which mean that it is unlawful to prevent a company using the Directive to undercut union rates."​

What Blair and Brown didn't understand is that you can't build a strong economy by making it reliant on growth in services based in the cities and low wage warehousing work in the towns. Importing cheap skills when they're needed and diverting spending in the towns to corporate headquarters in the cities. They left the country much more vulnerable to the crash than it should have been and the effects of austerity have been magnified by the reliance of towns on public sector spending to provide investment and subsidise low wages.

Stears in the quote below is Blue Labour. i don't think they have all the right answers. Blair invented bogus asylum seekers to pander to these tendencies and kept people waiting years for the right to work legally. It helped put more downward pressure on wages and set us up for the increasing violence of anti-immigrant talk and action of the Tories, Ukip and the far right. The Windrush deportations started under Labour too. But this article is very good anyway. Labour in crisis: Can the party reconnect with its heartland?

“In the late 90s and early 2000s,” says Stears, “New Labour explicitly did a deal with the devil – it said, ‘Look, we’ll leave neoliberal policies alone because we’ll be able to cream off enough money to redistribute adequately.’ So you could generate support for the public services by being very hands-off with market forces, but then redistributing through the state.” The achievements of New Labour in re-investing in the NHS and renovating crumbling schools were the fruit of this bargain. But, says Stears, there was a darker side to the project.

“The big problem with the model was that the Labour hierarchy grew to have disdain in high places for the people who were not happy with that settlement. People who were miserable at work because they were being treated badly by some corporate power; or people working in a public sector that was increasingly marketised and target-driven; or people whose communities were changing and felt aggrieved at the emergence of clone towns and high streets that lost all their identity.”

The crash brought an uneasy compromise to an end. “If economic times are good and you are getting a fancy new GP surgery, you may feel you can put up with the lack of control at work, or the nature of the high street and so on. But when that improvement in the public realm comes to a shuddering halt, as it did in 2008, then this deal is no deal at all. And you get the populist revolt that we’ve seen.”​

 

[chilango]

I see myself as a social democrat and liberal. I believe in reforming the capitalist society we live in to make it fairer and more equal. I'm pro-EU, support immigration, electoral reform, environment policies and equal rights for women, gay couples etc... and a properly funded NHS, welfare system, schools and other public services.

I'd probably vote Lib Dem or Green if I felt it would make a difference under the FPTP system but it doesn't. So I opt for Labour especially as where I live is a safe Labour seat. Anything but Tory.

I'd call that centre-left at least which doesn't seem to fit in on here.

Yeah. Those sort of politics will be - rightly imo - torn to pieces by many on here.

But if you stick around and read what people say, you never know what you might learn. Even if you don't agree.

 

[SpookyFrank]

'Centrism is back – and we have a new international think tank to boot'

the new prog-centre think tank. lol. Is this where whatsisfaces lovefilm money went eh

Fucking think tanks. "Government should do X, Y and Z" says group funded by people who will profit from X, Y and Z who told them to say exactly that. Yeah, that sounds like a valid piece of news reporting

 

[Pickman's model]

Work is well underway.
Sheffield Coroner's Court and mortuary set for £2 million revamp

can't keep them in a mortuary indefinitely, it's not hygenic

 

[Old Spark]

They don't have a tory bias, none of them do - weighting poll results to reflect whole-populations is just very difficult. Yougov's election model in the run up to the 2017 election predicted the actual result almost exactly, and their conventional poll was good until they lost their nerve on the eve of the election.

So they have no bias but they lost their nerve.How does that work.?.Commissioners have bias of course.

It was a sampling cock up in 2015 so labour was overestimated and a turnout cock up in 2017 so labour was underestimated(Survation the exception).

Watch the trends in opinion and believe the exit polls is my advice.

 

[killer b]

They lost their nerve on the eve of election because in 2015 they overestimated Labour support, and thought they might be doing it again, of course. What electoral benefit do you think their sudden weighting change might have given the conservatives? What damage to their business as a company that claims to give impartial polling results do you think being seen as open to bias might cause too?