The problem for Labour is that most of it’s ministers have no real labour credibility, they have have never undertaken skilled or unskilled labour . Any public school officer who has undertaken any form of military training has performed more manual labour than most of the Labour cabinet In fact a public school educated officer has more shared work experience with a labourer digging a trench than most Labour ministers. The vast majority of Labour politicians are now just envious pen pushers and papers shufflers.

I hope your ‘self satisfied Tory’ jibe wasn’t aimed at me. I’ve been Labour all my life.

The fact that the present Cabinet is largely made up of millionaires is IMHO relevant to a discussion of whether a strategy of economic populism is likely to work.

Just as the fact that the main banks are in de facto public ownership somewhat cramps any aspiring economic populists room for action in bashing bankers, if you follow.

Of course not.

“Is putting forward policies that help themselves and their rich friends the only morally correct thing for a rich politician to do?”

Of course not. But part of this class war thing is that Brown et al are doing the dog whistle…..look at them rich bastards over there, that’s all they will do…..

As opposed to us non rich bastards who have helped the poor by raising NI, abolishing the 10p tax rate…..

Is there some divine law somewhere that says that if you’re rich then it’s somehow morally wrong to work to help the plight of the working man? Is putting forward policies that help themselves and their rich friends the only morally correct thing for a rich politician to do?

If I could just point you to the plethora of comments here that would seem to support the criticism of Sunnys stance about “Class War”.

I suggest you read them before commenting again and confirming what we always suspected.

Not surprised, you’re like bunch of middle class students buggering about.

To parapharse Henry Kissinger, “Liberal Conspiracy politics are so vacuous because there is so little at stake”.

Who needs a journo to stand up Paolo’s point? Just use your own brain/knowledge/common sense.

Sean Woodward is married to a Sainsbury, has a country house, a pad in town and a butler. Definitely a millionaire.

Peter Mandelson lives in a £2.4 million house with no mortgage and is paid £106K.

The Milibands just sold Ralph’s old property for 1.3 million and David earns £141,000. Each owns another place.

Jowell and Harman require no further elaboration.

Lord Drayson (attends Cabinet) is a multi multi millionaire.

Gordon Brown qualifies on his salary alone – not to mention his London flat currently let = and scottish home.

Straw has a house in London another in Oxon plus a constituency one. Must be a millionaire

….and so on

I thought it was her aunt who married in and became Countess of Longford?

Harriet Harman (Deputy leader of the new class warrior labour party)

Daughter of a Harley Street doctor (of the Longford aristocratic faily) and a solicitor

Privately educated at St Pauls girls school

Graduated (Politics) York University (You can’t win em all)

Sends her children to private school

Bizzarely (according to the Sun as cited in Wikipedia) she is also distantly related to David Cameron by marriage

Her only claims to being anything other than upper middle calss are a conviction for contempt of court and a couple of runs in with the law over motoring offences

A Barristers Son

Attended Fettes public school

Attended Oxford

Is a qualified barrister

Is a millionaire several times over

Ok so he’s not quite aristocracy, but he hasn’t ever got dirt under his fingernails either

I won’t even start on Harriet Harman……………

Oh dear: according to this news report today even the French government has been engaging in keynesian fiscal measures to boost their national economy and there’s an illuminating bar chart for comparative public debt levels of world leading economies based on IMF data.

“France’s public debt has risen to a new high of 76% of economic output after additional state spending during the downturn, figures have shown.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8434545.stm

So you are saying that the banking crisis was created on the playing fields of Eton?

What an utterly facile and truly desperate thing to say. Bankers don’t come from Charterhouse or Eton, they are from all walks of life as banking is one of the great meritocratic industries.

Did the Spanish, Swedish or Canadian banks keel over? No. Why?

Because their government regulation prohibited them in dealing with the eventual toxic products some banks were peddling. Government allowed banks to overleverage themselves in ever larger takeovers of other banks and lend larger sums of money.

So our regulation was faulty. Labour’s regulation at that. It is not a question of too much or too little regulation, it is a question of the right regulation. The Shadow Chancellor warned as much in the debate of the Bank of England Act in 1997.

So is Labour’s class war with the bankers and an industry that it bailed out with £250bn of our money?

When manufacturing industries have been failing and shedding jobs for 12 years costing 2,500,000 jobs. Still according to government ministers those workers can always stack supermarket shelves.

Labour’s class war is one thing and one thing, a dog whistle to the bitter and discontented core vote to stop voting for the BNP and shore up Labour’s vote. Please don’t pretend otherwise.

Do you have a citation with link to support that claim?

This is the citation for the claim that there are 19 millionaires in the Conservative shadow cabinet:

“There has been mounting speculation in recent months about the personal wealth of the leading figures in the Conservative Party. Interest has heightened after the Tories announced that they would implement an austerity budget, slashing public services, if elected to Government. Research carried out last year by the News of the World recorded 19 millionaires in the Shadow Cabinet, giving some indication of the level of wealth at the top of the Conservative Party. Here Times Money has updated the list.”
http://timesbusiness.typepad.com/money_weblog/2009/11/10-wealthiest-tories.html

It’s simple economics. You can tax the rich as hard as you like- it will yield little financial return. They have economic mobility, and there are so few of them in reality as to have almost no effect.

You can then tax the middle classes, those on £50K upwards. That will yield modest sums. Remember that VAT affects them slightly more as a proportion of tax paid/income, as do things like property tax and energy bills.

Then you can tax the working class. VAT hits them hard, but there are millions of them so the pain is productive and therefore the debt gets paid. They are immobile because their employers make all the choices in a time of high unemployment. Income tax in this group (£20-50k) hits very hard too, as does NI. However, what choice do they have?

Then there in the non working class, or the perpetually supported in work. They cannot be taxed any further because they are not net contributors. Those on the borders of these two groups may well be hit a little and will have a choice to make. Every tax rise to this group will have to be matched with a rise to in work/unemployment benefits so that these people cannot be further affected by the recession.
(I concede that the maths is a little broad brush and the dividing lines too arbitrary, but maybe the point is made)

So what is most likely to happen is that the class war divide will fall between those who are net contributors (probably about (£25K upwards), and all those who contribute less to the tax system than they withdraw in benefits and relief.

Is that what Labour want? Is that what anybody wants?

The French had their revolution in the late 18th century and the Bolsheviks sorted the Russian toffs out in the early 20th century but, somehow, we never got round to it.

Why was that do you think?

In any event, the working classes never really won a clear victory in the UK and that fact has left a nasty taste in the mouths of some.

So, quite frankly, I’m not at all sure that taxing the rich at a higher rate or banning aristocratic pursuits really cuts it.

Let’s guillotine the bastards.

That’ll sound good on the doorsteps, Sunny.

Really? Just why did so many banks fail in America and Britain?

For sure, it wasn’t because of too much government regulation and oversight.

This is Alan Greenspan’s testimony on 24 October 2008 to the US House of Representatives Oversight Committee:

“Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122476545437862295.html

Btw Alan Greenspan was the previous chairman of the Board of Governors of the US Federal Reserve Bank so I suspect he knows a thing or two about what caused the recent financial crisis.

I am and my family are working class and have been for 400 years, I can trace some of our descendants back to Elizabethan Bristol.

I am guilty of a terrible crime though, I aspired, worked hard and I mean really hard and now I earn good money. I have middle class tastes, I like middle class things, I ski for heaven’s sake.

But I am working class by birth, middle class by income.

So where does your class war draw the distinction? Am I exempt because I am working class and can prove it? Or am I in the firing line because I had the temerity to work my balls off in a competitive environment and come off quite well?

Please do tell me how on earth this is going to win votes with the millions of people that graft, work hard and just want to get on in life?

Or are we class traitors to your ’cause’ (circa 1980) ?

Or this is a sop to the lazy, workshy and can’t-be-bothered that Labour’s largesse to them will always be bigger than the Tories? A shoring up of the bitter that always were Labour’s core vote

I have news for you Sunny, people want a fair crack, they want the government to stop preaching at them and take quite a few steps back to just let them get on with it.

You have your class war but do you know what, I’ll side with the toffs because the rump of your ‘working class’ do anything but ‘work’.

Bring it on because it looks ridiculous, preaching class war when the Cabinet are amongst some of the educated elite and are amongst the top 1% of earners.

And who for the last 12 years made the poor poorer and rich richer?

It wasn’t the Tories.

As Chancellor, Brown ignored many warnings about public borrowing, private debt and house price inflation. The damaging lack of regulation of the UK financial sector happened on his watch. He didn’t cause the recession by any means, but his decisions in the build-up have contributed to the pain felt in the UK. Additionally I’m not convinced of the wisdom of some of his actions since, for example quantative easing seems like a recipe for inflation.

All a bit beside the point however. Brown can’t say “it’s the economy, stupid” and win votes. For him having been in charge of the economy is, rightly or wrongly, a vote loser. One of the few tactics available to him is a character attack on the Tories.

Personally I’m looking forward to a thoroughly dirty election – I think we’re in for a real humdinger.