I’d have thought that that was exactly the point.

I am no longer convinced that Labour can get it’s core vote back. It has bought too much into the PR game to pull back now. It actualy believes what it’s focus groups tell it. Which is to deny it’s traditional vote. This is a conundrum about electors and electibility, and Labour seem to have lost both constituencies.

If you want a job, it would be to reinvigorate that group in our society that thinks much as you do. It would probably take a generation, but a resurgent Liberal Conspiracy, around 2030 AD, might just sweep the country by storm.

Well, I’d say the Iraq war had quite a lot to do with that… as well as the excessive focus on spinning and triangulation over being honest about what the party stood for and push for that. After all, Ken Livingstone unapologetically did it for years and still got re-elected.

Sunny, I just used hard-left to mean very left wing, compared to the country the election is held in. As for “the right policies”, when you are discussing how to gain or hold power, the right policies are those that will get you elected. Centrism is generally the way to go. You will notice that now the primaries are over, Obama is not going around telling Amererican voters how liberal he is.

The point is that in a fight over the Labour Party’s future it is tempting to promise policies that Party activists, Unions with money to spend, and the Left generally, desires. And convince yourself that that is what the electorate as a whole desires. In reality, of course, the average voter is in the centre, so moving towards the activists generally means moving away from most voters.

Conversely, pleasing the electorate usually means frustrating ones own party. Which is why so few Labour members were keen on the most electorally sucessful Leader in their Party’s history.

Where I do disagree with Nick is on the subject of Kyoto: creating a system of multilateral agreements to cover international policies of global importance is the only way in which they will be resolved. So whether or not you accept the conclusion that the world is threatened by environmental cataclysm the only acceptable and practical way to address problems which might arise from the constantly changing climate (and by implication all emergency scenarios) is to plan for their contingency.

The European Declaration of Human Rights does not really afford any defensible rights to individuals. It more or less says “Governments can’t do anything to infringe these basic human rights unless it is in in the interests of public health, safety, security or morality” which means in practice they will find a way to do it if they really want to (follow my link for an issue that is substantially unprotected by European human rights law because it just isn’t politically correct enough).

We do have a one-sided extradition treaty with the US right now. If we are signed up to EU human rights legislation, why aren’t we protected as European citizens from it?

Kyoto: will not solve climate change (if it is in fact happening).

These things seem to be very much more about symbols than actually increasing the rights of individuals in a practical way. Part of the reason is that the UK (and the US for all its faults too) has had a very strong conception of rights as prior to what states can do, which European legal systems have often failed to match. For many European counties, the EU is a massive improvement in terms of governance. For us, even with the culture of Westminister as it is, I think it represents a step back.

Err, we’ve already done that. And we’re still in the EU, right?

Which other thread?

Are you arguing against the EU or not? Sometimes I have difficulty in following your line of logic. It is probably just me.

Whatever.

You cannot be a member of the EU unless you are a functioning democracy. If you cease to be such a beast, you’ll get chucked out. You cannot attack another member state without getting black-balled. If I remember correctly, you have to sign up to the European Declaration of Human Rights. You do not bend the knee to US pressure to agree to their attempts at world domination through one-sided extradition. You all sign up for Kyoto.

It is issues like these that make me think it is a worthwhile project, and it is the nonsense that Nick has highlighted that makes him think it is all a load of baloney. He does have a valid point about micro-management, does he not?

But, where, exactly, do you stand?

Wrong target. Try the Council of Europe and you’ll be much closer to the truth. This is straying from the other thread in that the recent shared experience of subjugation was the reasoning for pooling sovereignty in the face of a growing nuclear threat, but this is still highly relevant.

It’s strange that Post Office closures are given as an argument in favour of scaling back the EU into an EFTA-type group when cross-border harmonisation of economic conditions is primarily a free trade issue. It is only by evolving an ever-greater political role without necessary representative oversight and accountability in parallel that confusion over the purposes and public anger over the impact of the practice grow, because no elected official would unnecessarily run the risk of upsetting their voters the way the EU has been able to – the EU desperately needs democratic checks and balances.

I’m only interested in the EU as a peace making organisation, which it seems to do pretty well. And that, I think is it’s most important function, everything else ought to be seen as secondary. I am not interested in square bananas, or whatever.

What it’s supposed to be about, if I remember back to the 1950′s or thereabouts, is about stopping war. Coal from Germany, iron from France. Without both, you can’t fight, or some such. Which warfare, folk back then had had more than a bellyfull of, IIRC.

Perhaps it needs to concentrate on that rather than bureaucracy for it’s own sake. My point merely being that peace is a tad more important than the politics of the PO.

Which was what my ‘baby and bathwater’ comment was all about.

You say:

It is not enough, Douglas, to say “we have had peace for 50 years and we have had the EU for 50 years, therefore the EU caused the peace”. I am sure that is a logical fallacy of some sort.

Perhaps it is a logical fallacy of some sort. It also happens to be demonstrably true. Name me one other era in European civilisation where peace has been the norm?

You cannot, I would submit, argue that the EU is a waste of space, without at least looking at the ‘what might have beens’. You are unwilling, or, unable to address these issues.

I’m not denying that NATO was important, but what I would say is that NATO would have seen, say Poland, as part of the Warsaw Pact and thus a legitimate target. Have you noticed that Poland is now part of the EU? And that we didn’t have to blow it up to get there?

Guess what? I don’t give a monkeys about Post Offices. If there is a need for their services then they will be provided in a different manner.

Yes, you are probably correct that the EU should not be involved in that sort of micro-management, but neither should you feel free to chuck the baby out with the bathwater.

Which, frankly, is what you are doing.

You are clearly anti-EU. Well done. It is a safe position to take, despite being completely wrong. Policy adjustments I can go along with. Attempting to destroy the whole concept is just ridiculous.

I am asking why the EU needs powers to control national post offices in order to prevent wars because that defence seems blatently absurd – it is an unnecessary power if that is what its purpose is. By implication, I was saying that the LibDems are at odds to hold a pro-EU integration view while claiming to support local post offices. As it happens, developing a market in postal services isn’t one of the crazier schemes the EU has come up with (it makes economic sense, but it might not have factored in correctly what social role post offices play in this country).

I am also asking why the provisions of the European Free Trade Association are insufficient for preventing free trade and commerce developing between European nations, perhaps the most established non-violent way of preventing wars between states. And need I remind you that there was another organisation that has been hoovering up European members for a while now, NATO, which as a mutual defence pact against a clear threat would seems to have played a more direct role in maintaining peace between European states.

It is not enough, Douglas, to say “we have had peace for 50 years and we have had the EU for 50 years, therefore the EU caused the peace”. I am sure that is a logical fallacy of some sort.

Detail mate.

So far, so good,with the EU project.

In times to come, I expect it to spread across most of the planet, for the simple reason that peace is better than war.

I am getting a little fed up with the arguement that without the EU we would not have been at each others throats. In that alternative history, could you give me reasons why not?

No, I didn’t think you could.

The UK and Spain could have declared war over Gibraltar, say, or to take a more recent example, what say you about Radovan Karadži? and the desire of Serbia to join up?

Joining means giving up quite a lot of things, including mutual aggression.

Are you so young that you have forgotten how bad war is? This cynicism, or stupidity, drives me crazy…..

We Europeans, more that any other group on this planet, need whatever tools we can agree to, to avoid mutual destruction. For, you only have to go back a trivial hundred years or so to see how it was a mere game for the younger Royals.

I think.

And how exactly is the EU meant to be more effective at preventing wars than say EFTA (which has a wider membership than the EU)? After all, democratic countries with free trade and fewer labour restrictions are highly unlikely to ever go to war. I don’t see why we need a bloated transnational agency on top of that.

Hopefully not. The EU has stopped Europe from being the cockpit of wars, or as most critics seem to say “that is not the point”. Whereas it is the bloody point.

…

Wouldn’t it be easier to just vote Lib Dem?”

That is funny. Are the LibDems planning to leave the EU?

Synergy, I’m referring to their latest podcast on the issue… I’m not sure it disagrees with the near explicit state guarantees. Everyone knows FM and FM are too big to fail. The question is whether they should be private or public. Given the state is already supporting them, they pretty much accept they should be nationalised. Otherwise it makes no sense.

My point is that if the Economist is calling for better regulation (and more regulation, see the podcast) then its a big change to what their traditional position usually is.

I presume the article you’re referring to is “End of illusions”, July 17th. The vast majority of the text rails against the failings of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, Freddie/Fannie management, Congress, and the need (or lack thereof) for their creation in the first place. There is little to support the strength of your position, other than, “If Congress approves this package, the Fed will have more authority over the agencies. But that will give the central bank another headache. If an institution is struggling, the normal answer is to shrink its activities and wind it down slowly. But that is the last thing that the housing market needs right now.” Hardly a clear, ringing endorsement for nationalisation.

Saying that “Many are calling for more regulations against business and banks” and qualifying it with “And yet the Economist is calling for it.” unnecessarily simplifies the positions of both sides. Furthermore, it could easily mislead a reader into believing that the Economist somehow supports the latest anti-capitalist diatribe of large-scale regulatory increase. Which, in nearly every issue, it takes great pains to point out it doesn’t. To simplify, say the reds want the minimum wage up by 5%, and the yellows want it up by 50%. If a yellow spokesman said “Our position on the minimum wage increase is supported by the reds”, it would clearly be misleading, if not plain wrong.

I was going to write more generally on the misunderstanding of the Economist’s political and economic viewpoint, but thomas covered it more succinctly than I could have. I think when Sunny uses “liberal”, he actually means, as with LC itself, “liberal-left”, which can become confusing.

Contrary to what ad said above, I’d certainly position the SNP to the left of the Labour Party. They have old-fashioned ideas like no to Trident, no to tuition fees, stuff like that. And yet they seem to be electable.

The protest vote, if I’ve read it correctly, was not just about being ignored but also about being taken for granted.

Things change. Especially, when what is new is really not so new after all.

Who said anything about hard-left? When has a party calling for a hard-right approach come to power?

And anyway, its difficult to comare the US and UK given their left is still very right to us. Saying that, Obama has been named the most liberal senator of all by his voting record and he’s on course to win. McCain may be a right-winger, but his trick is to distance himself from the hard-right winger GW Bush.

The point isn’ whether a policy is hard-left or hard-right. The point is what are good policies that will benefit people. And that too given the state of affairs.

You have an economic situation in America where even the Economist is calling for the nationalisation of Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae (massive mortgage lenders) because the Fed govt has had to prop them up.
Many are calling for more regulations against business and banks, and there’s a general mood that unfettered capitalism is unnecessarily risky. What do you call that? A policy actually advocated by the left. And yet the Economist is calling for it.

Events, dear boy, events.

I wrote a post on the situation the party faces and how it got there. http://compassyouth.blogspot.com/2008/05/lets-put-people-before-profits-if-not.html. So it’s not about stabbing Gordon Brown in his back to replace him with another leader/PM that doesn’t radically change the direction the party is going.

Conor, you’re right when you say Labour have lost the trust of the people. When you develop a project management style to governing like the New Labour project, building trust, understanding people’s concerns and getting people inspired about values of social justice and collective action were always seen as risks (or going back to the 70s as they like to say) to the model of efficiency they thought people wanted.

Sally, this is the great irony that for fear of the electorate thinking that Labour was going to being too liberal or too left wing, they went for the option of appeasing Conservative voters (and the party) by stealing their policies. Voters aren’t stupid and have always voted for whoever proposed the policy first and what is the point in the Labour party if not to be liberal left?

Synergy6, have a look at this post that describes a living wage campaign we were involved in
http://compassyouth.blogspot.com/2008/05/campaign-for-cleaners-campaign-for.html

Alix, you’ve opened up a can of worms! Neil, thanks for pointing out that Compass offer simple, radical and popular policies – how can we build the support for them that doesn’t rely on trying to infilitrate “closed door policy making” like we’ve seen with the National Policy Forum?

If we look at liberal left campaigns that have actually made a difference, they have never relied on a political party to succeed; whether it’s the living wage in London, the 24 weeks abortion debate (lot of credit goes to LC!), companies bill and education bill in 2006, youth employment reform in France, gay rights in Spain. So how can we find ways to build coalitions that mean we don’t have to depend exclusivelly on political parties to succeed?

When was the last time that any party came to power on an openly hard-left agenda? In the UK? In the US? Anywhere in the English speaking world?

The last example I am sure of was Johnsons election in 1964. Since then people have been elected from the centre-left or centre right, but there has also been Thatcher, Reagen and W Bush.

So it seems to me that “lurching to the right” may work, but not “lurching to the left”.