Corbyn > Labour > corbyn

[Bentley Bullet]

Most people who voted did! That's poor even for your standards Wilts!

[The Red Baron]

TR
We're well and truly through the looking glass.

The PM has been a lifelong supporter of the EU, but heads a party which is strongly anti-EU and so has to half-heartedly claim she is also anti-EU.

The leader of the opposition has been a lifelong opponent of the EU but heads a party which is strongly pro-EU and so has to half-heartedly claim he is pro-EU.

Armando Iannucci or Peter Jay could have a field day with this material.

To be fair, Theresa May's support for Remain was about as lukewarm as Corbyn's. Was she hedging her bets for a future leadership challenge or was she a "shy Leaver?" Although unlike Corbyn she didn't have a previous record of voting against the EU.

It simply reinforces my long-held view that the established political parties are no longer fit for purpose and need to be broken up with a form of PR being introduced. Maybe once the dust from Brexit has settled that will happen.

[BillyStubbsTears]

TRB

I've agreed with you before about the desirability of PR in this country. The true position is that we actually have maybe 5 political groupings.

Far Right - Moderate Right - Centre - Moderate Left - Far Left.

Each one of those has the support of about 20% of the electorate. A grown up arrangement would allow 5 independent parties, each broadly representing one of those groups. Then we could have sensible coalition govt with collaborations between combinations of those groups.

Instead, the Tory and Labour parties are already coalitions of groups with really very diverse and contradictory views. There is little that Rees-Mogg and Ken Clarke agree on, from Europe to gay rights. Similarly, Dennis Skinner and, say, David Miliband would not have any common ground on issues from the EU to NATO.

Ours is a a very unsatisfactory system. It used to be said that it was still better than OR because it gave us strong Govt whereas coalitions tend to be unstable. But German Govt never seems unstable. And since 1964, 7 of the last 15 elections have resulted in no majority (Feb 74, 10, 17) or small majorities with the Govt then being far from strong (64, Oct 74, 92, 15). So that argument doesn't hold.

But you can forget it TRB. We'll not see PR in your or my lifetimes. There was a possibility of it when UKIP and/or the LDs were running at 20%. No chance now those two have committed political suicide and the two old parties are both back to >40% support.

[The Red Baron]

I do wonder if the effects of Brexit might cause one or both of the main parties to fracture. Yes, this year's GE was probably the strongest affirmation of Two-Party politics (in England anyway) since 1979. But we are moving into uncharted waters...

[BillyStubbsTears]

TRB

It's this simple.

1) Without PR, there is no logic whatsoever to the Tories or Labour splitting. It's electoral suicide in a FPTP system. See: SDP, 1983.

2) With electorally strong Tory and Labour parties, there is no drive to bring in PR. Why would either party dispense with a system that potentially enables them to get almost unbridled power with 43-44% of the vote?

There's no push and there's no pull for PR. Always the chance of something unexpected happening but it would have to be seismic to challenge any of the logic above.

[wilts rover]

They have been debating PR and changes to the electoral voting system in Parliament today - although it seems unlikey to go any further.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-41775307

[Glyn_Wigley]

TRB

It's this simple.

1) Without PR, there is no logic whatsoever to the Tories or Labour splitting. It's electoral suicide in a FPTP system. See: SDP, 1983.

2) With electorally strong Tory and Labour parties, there is no drive to bring in PR. Why would either party dispense with a system that potentially enables them to get almost unbridled power with 43-44% of the vote?

There's no push and there's no pull for PR. Always the chance of something unexpected happening but it would have to be seismic to challenge any of the logic above.

Apart from the chance the people had to change things in 2011 that they proceeded to piss up the wall, of course.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Glyn

Aye. Except that wasn't remotely close to proper PR. And it came in a totally different political climate. At (or shortly after) peak-LD.

If Clegg had been a really serious politician, we'd have had PR by now.

He could have turned down coalition in 2010. Gone for not voting to bring down the Tories. Just yet. Let them make themselves as unpopular as they did through Austerity. Let Labour panic in a navel-gazing year or two about what they stood for. Sweep up the centre-left support. Then bring the Govt down in 2012. Force an election. Win 100+ seats and demand REAL PR as the price of support for the next Parliament.

But he wasn't up to that job. He was dazzled by the idea of coalition. He was bullied by Isborne and Mervyn King into signing up lock stock and barrel to Austerity. So by the time the PR-lite referendum came along, everyone hated the LDs and no-one voted for it.

A kid in an adult's game. 

[RedJ]

Not to mention AV is shite as well.

[Glyn_Wigley]

But it would have been a first step away from FPTP, and made people more amenable to further change in the future.

[Akinfenwa]

AV is marginally better than FPTP in that eliminates the need for tactical voting at constituency level. But it isn't a proportional system and therefore does little to end two party domination overall.

The AV referendum was a stitch up, a token gesture by the Conservatives to gain LD support.

That said I doubt a referendum on PR would ever get a Yes vote if one were to be held, unfortunately. The usual bingo card of garbage scare slogans will be wheeled out; 'coalitions', 'instability', 'extremist parties winning seats', 'dodgy deals in smoke filled rooms' (they never fail to mention the smoke), 'small parties holding the country to ransom', and all the rest of it. I can't see that shit not working.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Glyn

Which is why I voted for it.

Trouble is, it was being championed by Nick Clegg. Who had won 23% at the election the year before and magically turned that into 6-7% support in the polls within 9 months. So it was bound to fail.

As I suggested in my earlier message, that was the moment in time which a statesman would have grabbed and imposed his will on the country.  Instead we got that nonentity.

[hoolahoop]

I get the impression that NOF was referring to the North as the North of England. I suspect people who frequently jump down his throat thought the same, but chose to ignore that, in order to continue to clutch at straws to give the tired old argument more life.

Let's look at what happened. Del boy said, "With exception of Scotland that link pretty much backs up NOF".

That statement is 100% correct and true.

I suppose Hoola's statement that "If just 600k had changed their minds the result would have been at the workst a draw for Remain" is also true, but's that's just plain silly!

As silly as those claiming as most do that it was the " overwhelming " will of the people - yes right it was . I've never heard of a 16-15 win on penalties being called "overwhelming ".

[The Red Baron]

But it would have been a first step away from FPTP, and made people more amenable to further change in the future.

I very much doubt that. It would have been a final step and I doubt it would have changed all that much.

[Glyn_Wigley]

But it would have been a first step away from FPTP, and made people more amenable to further change in the future.

I very much doubt that. It would have been a final step and I doubt it would have changed all that much.

The point I was making is that we have had FPTP for so long that I suspect a great many people voted to keep it purely because it's all they know and are suspicious of changing the system in any way - quite possibly so they don't have to think about any proposed alternative and make an informed decision. Once one change has been made, however small, then I think that stumbling block would be removed.

[hoolahoop]

Glyn

Aye. Except that wasn't remotely close to proper PR. And it came in a totally different political climate. At (or shortly after) peak-LD.

If Clegg had been a really serious politician, we'd have had PR by now.

He could have turned down coalition in 2010. Gone for not voting to bring down the Tories. Just yet. Let them make themselves as unpopular as they did through Austerity. Let Labour panic in a navel-gazing year or two about what they stood for. Sweep up the centre-left support. Then bring the Govt down in 2012. Force an election. Win 100+ seats and demand REAL PR as the price of support for the next Parliament.

But he wasn't up to that job. He was dazzled by the idea of coalition. He was bullied by Isborne and Mervyn King into signing up lock stock and barrel to Austerity. So by the time the PR-lite referendum came along, everyone hated the LDs and no-one voted for it.

A kid in an adult's game. 

" If Clegg had been a really serious politician, we'd have had PR by now. "

I would love to know how Clegg could have secured any form of PR for the electorate - they simply could never have got the Tories to agree to a real form of PR  .
Usually , I agree with much that you write, but your obsession with denigrating Clegg at every opportunity is strange . What strength did you think he had but didn't recognise or put to proper use ?

[hoolahoop]

But it would have been a first step away from FPTP, and made people more amenable to further change in the future.

I very much doubt that. It would have been a final step and I doubt it would have changed all that much.

The point I was making is that we have had FPTP for so long that I suspect a great many people voted to keep it purely because it's all they know and are suspicious of changing the system in any way - quite possibly so they don't have to think about any proposed alternative and make an informed decision. Once one change has been made, however small, then I think that stumbling block would be removed.

You make some good points but yet again this was never really discussed properly with the electorate and was not the best option for PR . If the electorate had been told loads of lies , promised herds of unicorns roaming the velvety clouds ( like Brexit ) - they would have voted in their millions for it. Especially if it kept furriners out .

[BillyStubbsTears]

Hoola

I explained how a statesman of real ability and stature could have put the LDs in a much more powerful position than they ended up by 2011. It's all there in that post that you quote.

And you're right. I DO have a big issue with Clegg. He was the one who facilitated Austerity in 2010. He didn't have to do that. He hadn't campaigned in that. He had alternatives. But Osborne and Mervyn King put the screws on him. Told him that we needed Stable Govt and Austerity or we were going to end up like Greece. It was bullshit at the time but he shite it and signed up for it.

Austerity led directly to depressed living standards which led directly to increased anti-immigrant feelings and the rise of UKIP. That led to the Brexit vote.

That's Clegg's legacy. You're damn right I've got issues with him.

[hoolahoop]

The only other option that Clegg would have had as I see it would have been to let the Tory Party form a minority government along with the DUP - similar today strangely enough- either way " Austerity " would have been pursued but without any of the Lib/ Dem checks and or policies being implemented .
Can you name any other politician , given that position and those circumstances that would have made the Tory Party and the BofE pursue a different course. Surely you don't damn the Lib/Dems to eternity for not leaving British politics to meander all over the place at such a crucial time .
Would you have seen him swing the Liberals behind a weak and limping minority Rainbow Coalition around the by then toxic and clueless Labour Govt under Gordon Brown.

Truth is there wasn't really a politician or a permutation of Parties that could have steered this country out of the mire then . The course would probably have been a little austerity to dig ourselves out of the hole we were in .

However the weakness of both the Coalition and the Brown administrations pale into insignificance when compared with this weak lot given the green light by the " will of the people " . Soon those words or the actions undertaken under this " will " ....will have a new meaning when eventually historians paw over just how incompetent leaders of this country can be . Just for that matter, the timing when HMS UK finally was actually sent to the breaker's yard and put out of its colonial misery .

[BillyStubbsTears]

Hoola

No. Austerity wouldn't have been pursued. That's the whole point. There was no majority in Parliament for Austerity without the LDs voting for it. So the Tories would have had to have a significantly less aggressive Austerity approach in their Budget. Or face losing a vote on the Budget and bringing down the Govt.

That's the massive opportunity that Clegg missed. It was in his hands to prevent Austerity. But he shite it when he was put on the spot.

I don't hate Clegg for no reason. I was actually quite impressed with how he performed during the 2010 Election. But his handling of the immediate aftermath was an almighty catastrophe for his party and the country. Utterly out of his depth when a real hard-nosed bas**rd was required.

[hoolahoop]

If Clegg had eventually forced the Tories into a corner with a resultant election ; then, as happened this year, we would probably had the electorate choosing between the two main Parties - I don't believe for one minute that the Lib/ Dems would have been able to hold onto their " soft " Tory vote and certainly not their " soft  " Labour vote. You have to remember that the extra seats they took in the 2010 election were mainly but not exclusively from the Tory Party.

Which of the two main parties would you have  envisaged gaining a majority in say a 2010/1/2 election ?

I believe in your scenario that the electorate would still have voted in a Tory Party ; who would then , in all likelihood, been free to pursue an austerity programme completely unfettered of any Lib/ Dem oversight/input.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Hoola

We GOT a Tory Govt that was free to push its Austerity programme. The LDs signed up to the Tory macroeconomic policy lock, stock and barrel. Yes there were a few concessions around the edges, but not on the single, central, crucial issue of rapid reduction in spending. The LDs supported that and voted en bloc for every one of Osborne's budgets. And as a result, the economy stagnated for 3 years. The OBR calculate that the result of the spending cuts in the  budgets from 2010-2012 was a loss of GDP of 6%. That's about £150bn. Just over those three years. And that got hard wired in to become a permanent loss of wealth because we never made up the shortfall.

Clegg campaigned vigorously on an anti-Austerity programme. Then he flipped within 3 days of the Election and became a cheerleader for Austerity "or we'd end up like Greece" (as he himself said when explaining why he flipped).

Here's what the counterfactual situation could have been.

Clegg goes into discussions with the Tories. He says, "You were the only party in the country who campaigned for Austerity. You lost. You got 306/650 seats. You got 36% of the vote. You can't pass an Austerity Budget on your own. We are not going to support you on that because we don't believe in Austerity. As we said in the campaign, we believe Austerity will do severe damage to the economy.

"Apart from principled opposition to Austerity, we'd be electorally mad to support it. We've spent 10 years convincing folk that we're further left than New Labour. We've swept up millions if disillusioned Lab supporters. If we now support you to impose Austerity, we'll be committing suicide. We'll be down to single figures at the next Election and we'll be irrelevant for a generation.

"Here's what we will do. We're prepared to accept that you were the largest party. You have the right to attempt to govern. We won't obstruct most of your policies. We will abstain where necessary to allow you to get votes through. But we will veto  any Austerity Budget. We are compromising. So must you. We will support a Budget which delays public spending cuts until the economy is back on its feet.

"You know the alternative? Refuse to collaborate with us. Call a 2nd General Election if you want. But you know that Gordon Brown has gone. Labour will have a new leader by the new Election. They will inevitably get a poll boost because Brown was seen as a calamity. If they take just 10 seats off you, we can form a coalition with them.

"Your call."

[bpoolrover]

Bst, I'm not clever enough to no much about the economy but has it ever crossed your mind that austerity was the only answer,for whatever reason the country was in a poor state, labour will throw money at everything they did last time, they made it nearly impossible to get off benifits by giving you so much, while yes there was a banking crisis many labour mps admitted they overspent last time and there record with money is not the best, why if/when they get in power will it be any different?

[Glyn_Wigley]

Bst, I'm not clever enough to no much about the economy but has it ever crossed your mind that austerity was the only answer,for whatever reason the country was in a poor state, labour will throw money at everything they did last time, they made it nearly impossible to get off benifits by giving you so much, while yes there was a banking crisis many labour mps admitted they overspent last time and there record with money is not the best, why if/when they get in power will it be any different?

No, because it wasn't.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Bpool.

It wasn't. Trust me. And it doesn't take a genius to follow the arguments. This was a topic of intense debate between economics experts at the time. Economics is not an exact science, but there has rarely been a debate on this topic which has been concluded so overwhelmingly on one side as this one.

The arguments FOR Austerity at the time was that if our debt got too high, a) our economy would suffer and b) we would have to pay far higher interest on any money that we borrowed, because lenders would be scared that we'd never pay it back, so they'd want a higher return to cover the risk. That was what was happening in Greece at the time. a) was supported by a study by the American economists Carmen Reinhart & Kenneth Rogoff. They had studied about 50 cases of countries which had had high debt, and they concluded that once your debt became greater than 90% of GDP, your economic performance fell off a cliff. George Osborne regularly quoted this in speeches in 2010, saying that it proved we had to reduce our deficit. b) was just an observation: Greece had high debt - their interest rates had gone through the roof. The same could happen to us.

The arguments AGAINST Austerity were based on the work by John Maynard Keynes in the 1930. He had demonstrated that, when you are in a recession, private companies stop investing. And that leads to more job losses. And that leads to lower economic performance. And the thing can become a vicious circle. He said that the answer was for Govts to borrow to keep the economy afloat. For as long as it took for confidence to come back to the private sector. And THEN reduce Govt spending. Otherwise, the result could be a Depression that it took a long time to get out of, with a lot of lost potential wealth being squandered in the meantime?

So. Who was right?

Well it turned out Reinhart and Rogoff had made a very serious mistake in their calculations. This was demonstrated by a young PhD student in the USA who asked for their database. They sent him an Excel spreadsheet with their calculations. And he found that they had added up a column of numbers wrongly. When you corrected the error, there was no correlation between the level of debt and economic performance. So that killed that argument for Austerity.

As regards interest payments on the debt, it's true that Greece and Italy and Spain and Ireland all had problems. But the UK and USA and Japan and Canada all swa their debt increase greatly, but the interest rates that they were charged to borrow money actually FELL. And all this had been predicted by anti-Austerity economists at the time. They said the key thing was whether you had your own currency. If you did, (like UK, USA, Japan, Canada) then you were never in danger of not repaying the debt. At worst, you could tell your Central Bank to print more money to do so. So the lenders never increased their required interest charges. But Greece, Italy, Spain, Ireland couldn't print their own money because they were in the Euro. So the lenders crippled them with high interest charges.

Some much for the argument for Austerity. They were all so much piss and wind, with nothing to support them.

The argument against? The one that said that your economy would struggle if you cut Govt spending before the private sector had recovered from the recession? This is what happened throughout Europe.



In simple terms, right across Europe, the countries which cut Govt spending hardest had the worst economic performance. Exactly as Keynes predicted.

In the UK, this is what happened.



That graph shows how the UK economy suffered, then recovered in the last 6 recessions. The 2008 recession was very bad. But by 24 months in (around the time of the 2010 election) we were starting to recover. Just like we had done from every previous recession. We were recovering because the Govt was doing what Keynes said it should do. Continuing to borrow money and spend to keep the economy afloat. Another year or two and the recovery would have been well set and THEN the Govt could have cut back.

Instead, Clegg gave the Tories cover to introduce massive spending cuts after the 2010 Election. The recovery stopped dead in its tracks for 3-4 years. You can see it in that graph. Plain  as day. That's not a prediction. That's the outcome of what actually happened.

This is very important. By 2014, our GDP was about 8% lower than it would have been if we'd carried on recovering like we were doing in 2010. That means the country was earning about £200bn less than it should have done. Every year. And we've never caught that back up. By now, cumulatively, we're the thick end of £1trillion pounds poorer than we should have been. About £14,000 for every man, woman and child in the country.

That's why wages have stagnated. It's nothing to do with immigration. It is the utter stupidity of Austerity.

[RedJ]

I seem to remember at the time Cameron and co basically tried to reduce macroeconomic argument to a household budget, when in reality it's much much more complex than that. And of course, the majority of people have no real idea how an economy works, but almost everyone can understand the vastly simplified version of things he and Osborne put to the British people...

[Glyn_Wigley]

I seem to remember at the time Cameron and co basically tried to reduce macroeconomic argument to a household budget, when in reality it's much much more complex than that. And of course, the majority of people have no real idea how an economy works, but almost everyone can understand the vastly simplified version of things he and Osborne put to the British people...

This is the problem. People who don't understand economics tend to think of economics with the mind of a bookkeeper, and not that of an economist. And politicians who want to reduce government spending will exploit that tendency to their own advantage. Thatcher did just the same before the '79 election.

[BillyStubbsTears]

RedJ/Glynn

Nail. Head.

Cameron graduated from Oxford with a 1st Class degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. The very renown Oxford Professor, Vernon Bogdanor said Cameron was one of the brightest and most perceptive students he ever taught.

And yet Cameron spouted these idiotic phrases about "maxing out the nation's credit card" to justify Austerity.

He MUST have known just how mendacious he was being. He MUST have known how dangerous Austerity was in 2010. He'd been taught by some of the finest economics academics in the world and he'd excelled in his studies.

Grand, eh? His ambition to be PM and Clegg's vacuosity have cost us £1tr.

[Glyn_Wigley]

RedJ/Glynn

Nail. Head.

Cameron graduated from Oxford with a 1st Class degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. The very renown Oxford Professor, Vernon Bogdanor said Cameron was one of the brightest and most perceptive students he ever taught.

And yet Cameron spouted these idiotic phrases about "maxing out the nation's credit card" to justify Austerity.

He MUST have known just how mendacious he was being. He MUST have known how dangerous Austerity was in 2010. He'd been taught by some of the finest economics academics in the world and he'd excelled in his studies.

Grand, eh? His ambition to be PM and Clegg's vacuosity have cost us £1tr.

What he did was exactly what he always wanted to do, whether there was a financial crisis or not - reduce government spending. It's his political ideology. He was fantastically lucky to get into government with a ready-made excuse for doing it that people would swallow and not go on to complain about a government reducing public services to a shadow of what they should be. And when that excuse starts to wear thin, blame the immigrants!

[wilts rover]

I am just putting a presentation together on the Battle of Passchendaele (for a talk next week some tickets still available!). Here the top brass had a plan they thought would create a breakthrough in the war. When it didn't they thought it wasn't the plan that was wrong - but that the troops weren't carrying it out properly. So they had to do more of the same until it did work.

That's where we are with Austerity and I reckon history will judge it as well as Passchendaele.

One point about where the economy was when the Coalition took over  in 2010 and Gordon Brown's handling of it. So much is going on at the moment that Osborne's admission that Brown did the right thing and he would have done exactly the same, seems to have sneaked through with little notice. They just saw the political opportunity there and ran with it.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/18/theresa-may-sacked-george-osborne-pmqs-came-back-haunt/