I am wondering quite why a party which is rooted in socialism is expected to be liberal? Left-wing does not require liberalism any more than right-wing does – indeed, in its classical form liberalism is probably inimical to the equally classical form of socialism.

More to the point here though is the fact that Labour strategists probably think Mr Brown’s only strength is presenting himself as strong and firm on key issues such as DNA, a tough and resolute leader rather than someone who backs down over petty concerns, or some such.

This is the wrongest thing I have read in a while. Your prescription may be right in that tiny, tiny minority of seats where Labour are fighting Lib Dems in what is effectively a gentrified university town that demographically wants to vote Tory but can’t bring itself to do so intellectually.

Across most of the country, however, the correct, and successful, response to resurgent Lib Dems is not to appease their soft-on-crime ideology, it is to expose that ideology to the people who are tempted to vote for them.

We have found that the number one way to bring voters home to Labour is to tell people on the estates when Lib Dems want to take their CCTV away, to tell crime victims when Lib Dems want to hamper the DNA techniques that have brought the perpetrators to justice, and to tell everyone in the community about the Lib Dems calling for more criminals to be poured out of prison and back onto the streets.

We have found that the number one way to bring voters home to Labour is to tell people on the estates when Lib Dems want to take their CCTV away, to tell crime victims when Lib Dems want to hamper the DNA techniques that have brought the perpetrators to justice …

In what way would LibDem plans hamper bringing perpetrators to justice?

John,

If the sort of person who can be swayed by your strong state equals less crime arguments is actually going to vote for the Liberal Democrats (outside of one or two places with long liberal traditions) is not the worry that they have left the ranks of Labour supporters already? They are not natural Liberal Democrat voters by the sound of it, so that they were considering it suggests they feel Labour have nothing to offer.

Of course, I would hate to suggest that parties such as UKIP and the BNP would be using exactly the same argument about Labour. I hope you can explain where the line needs to be drawn if you are going to using demagogic techniques such as that?

New Labour has a problem with liberalism like Indiana Jones has a problem with snakes. It’s not something which will be cured any time soon.

‘We have found that the number one way to bring voters home to Labour is to tell people on the estates when Lib Dems want to take their CCTV away, to tell crime victims when Lib Dems want to hamper the DNA techniques that have brought the perpetrators to justice …’

You mean to scare the bejesus out of them and tell them magic moon-beams will scare the Bogeyman away.

Watchman, quite.

Indeed it seems to me that Labour has not gone far enough. After all, it failed to introduce,

1. indefinite detention for suspected paedophiles and terrorists,

2. 16 hour home detention for civilians, and

3. a CCTV camera in every room of every building.

A vote for Labour is giving a licence to paedoterrorists to rape and kill your children.

@6 – it also failed to re-introduce crucifiction on prime time TV. stupid human rights act.

Planeshift,

“it also failed to re-introduce crucifiction on prime time TV. stupid human rights act.”

Considering how long crucifiction takes (its a matter of days apparently – the joys of studying history at school…) this would be rather boring prime-time TV (undoubtedly there will be internet sites though…).

I think something like the Running Man, but with Simon Cowell as a judge, might be more effective?

More seriously though, and returning to my original point: do Labour need to be liberal, or is that just an assumption by what is generally an educated and probably reasonably well-off crowd of commentators on here, rather than the core Labour vote? The more I think about it, the more it makes sense that Labour can retain a certain level of support by the sort of ignorant modern reactionary views you get from the likes of Ed Balls.

I have to reiterate the point made above me – the American definition of ‘liberalism’ is not liberalism at all, it’s social democracy. The Labour party have never, ever, ever stood for liberalism in the sense the rest of the world understands.

Maybe they should, sure. But they don’t pretend to.

Civil liberties are not among the main concerns of voters at election time. It is sensible if you want to be elected to appear ‘tough’ about “law and order” – something that is one of the main four or five concerns.

I wonder if John @2 tells “people on the estates” that Labour introduced the Human Rights Act.

Shatterface,

You mean to scare the bejesus out of them and tell them magic moon-beams will scare the Bogeyman away.

Indeed!

Watchman @4

The Lib Dems are content-free political opportunists. Where you have gone wrong is to suggest that the swing voters I’m working to recapture have been swayed by any policy content at all. They’ve been swayed by Liberal Democrats knocking on their doors, blaming the Government for whatever concerns people raise (many of which are the fault of the Lib Dem Council but never mind), bombarding them with negative leaflets, and pushing the line that Labour would favour people “on the other side of the borough” (it might, they’re even worse off, but since they’re far away and a different colour it’s got the potential to be an incendiary issue). 90% of those voters don’t actually know what any Lib Dem *policies* are, and when they find out, they are often shocked.

As to the pro-crime brigade who are piling in, I don’t see that there’s much use in us even beginning to debate, is there? As usual, there’s not enough common ground. You will call highly evolved DNA matching technology “a magic moonbeam”, and describe the actual real-life criminals who roam the streets near me as “bogeymen”. Then I will point at the high success rate of the technology in crimefighting and post-crime justice, perhaps with some aside about how you are in the same mindset as the primitive tribes who destroyed explorers’ cameras for fear that the photographs would steal their souls. Fun, but ultimately a waste of everyone’s time.

John,

As to the pro-crime brigade who are piling in, I don’t see that there’s much use in us even beginning to debate, is there?

Indeed I doubt the use of a ‘debate’ if you’re going to lie about our positions.

But you could at least make an honest attempt to answer my question: in what way would LibDem plans hamper bringing perpetrators to justice? After all, if you’re saying this to “people on the estates” you must have based this claim on evidence and reason…

John,

Good response. I can’t disagree with the Liberal Democrats being opportunistic. Likewise, if you really believe that the state should hold our personal information for safety, there is little to debate – it is a matter of argument and persuading others.

I would say two things however. Firstly, where do you draw your line to stop totalitarianism or extremist demagogues? Secondly, you do realise that there is a viable probablity (sorry, figures not to hand) of any DNA sample from me matching other people, some of whom are not relations, also? DNA is not a unique fingerprint (in fact, fingerprints are more unique I believe), just fairly so.

Gwyn,

I have to reiterate the point made above me – the American definition of ‘liberalism’ is not liberalism at all, it’s social democracy. The Labour party have never, ever, ever stood for liberalism in the sense the rest of the world understands.

Maybe they should, sure. But they don’t pretend to.

I think ‘liberalism’ is the wrong word. Stuart uses “civil liberties” in the body. Labour pretends to support civil liberties even as it attacks them. It pays lip service to reform (e.g. Human Rights Act, Freedom of Information Act) and ignores inconvenient outcomes (S & Marper, information it doesn’t want freed). Think of the legislation the Government tried to introduce – 90 day detention without charge for example.

There appears to be rather less regard in the Labour party for the rule of law and due process than in the Conservative or Liberal Democrat parties. It is not the Conservative party that attempted to do away with juries, habeas corpus, and reduce the standard of proof in criminal cases etc – it is Labour. Except for divisions on the then Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill, which the Liberal Democrats tended to support, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have been allies against Labour’s inroads on our liberties. Hardly a populist position to adopt, either.

All else being equal, or if a voter sees no other difference between the parties, he ought to vote against Labour if he cares for civil liberties (unless he is a constituent of one of those ~20 Labour MPs, e.g. Corbyn, who regularly oppose the rest of their party on such issues, I suppose). I’m concerned that a Labour Government will claim a mandate to erode our liberty still further.

“Secondly, you do realise that there is a viable probablity (sorry, figures not to hand) of any DNA sample from me matching other people, some of whom are not relations, also?”

Yes of course, although the more the technology develops, the less likely that is becoming. I’d argue that the more people are on the register (to be honest, I’d personally be happy to make it universal), the less chance there is of an injustice arising – because you would get all the possible matches, rather than the risk of a single incorrect match around which someone unscrupulous could be tempted to make the evidence fit. Then the other available evidence can be used appropriately, rather than risking abuse through confirmation bias. I certainly oppose the Lib Dem plans to remove around a million people from the database overnight, without any assessment of why the database has developed as it has.

What’s also beneficial in some crimes is the ability of DNA pretty much to exonerate someone immediately – saving them hassle, and the police from wasting a bunch of time. There’s a debate to be had about the imminent sharing of DNA across European borders, I don’t think that can work for the UK (even if you think it’s right) without better data on who is coming in and going out, otherwise you massively increase that potential for false matches.

I think where you draw the line on this sort of thing is open to debate. As you can tell I go quite a long way in one direction. So taking the two big ones, on DNA I probably draw the line at making it available to private companies (even though it’s not a meaningful sequence), and if the police or other branches of the state were using the database to match against something other than a crime scene, I would want to know what and why. On CCTV, I am happy for CCTV to be used anywhere a police officer with a pair of binoculars could stand without a warrant, and for the owners of private property (say, nightclubs) to use it within their property wherever they wish. I wouldn’t be happy for it to be used non-consensually in private property without very good reason – say, a history of domestic violence but a victim who is not prepared to leave the perpetrator who ‘says he won’t do it again’, that I would accept.

John,

What’s also beneficial in some crimes is the ability of DNA pretty much to exonerate someone immediately – saving them hassle, and the police from wasting a bunch of time.

Such as Kevin Reynolds? Oh, he was held for 34 hours and his house was torn apart.

I certainly oppose the Lib Dem plans to remove around a million people from the database overnight, without any assessment of why the database has developed as it has.

Quite, it would be useful to assess why there hasn’t been proper Parliamentary scrutiny and statutory basis.

John, in what way would LibDem plans hamper bringing perpetrators to justice? Surely you must know.

I say blame the public – there’s far too high support for ID cards and the DNA database as far as I can tell to justify it to Labour strategists.

Sunny,

I say blame the public – there’s far too high support for ID cards and the DNA database as far as I can tell to justify it to Labour strategists.

Of course, we can’t blame Labour Ministers for introducing the ID card legislation, can we? Or for supporting the DNA database despite the lack of scrutiny and evidence of effectiveness?

UKliberty: from the link you have provided;

“Kevin Reynolds has had to go through a traumatic arrest, which could have been avoided had the Police immediately checked his previously retained DNA profile”
“the data retained on the National DNA Database was ignored to arrest an innocent for murder, indecent assault and robbery”
“Kevin’s DNA profile on the NDNAD would have been sufficient to show there was no match and clear him from suspicion”
“Kevin’s DNA eventually cleared him”

That’s not a problem with DNA retention, that’s a problem with incompetent coppering and a failure to use the DNA register properly. The article (accidentally, I assume) makes exactly the opposite point from the one you are trying to make. Greater reliance on DNA would have helped Kevin, nor harmed him. Now he’s off the database following his complaints, the next time an ex-girlfriend accuses him of beating her up, he could end up in a worse situation rather than a better one.

As to how you can’t get it into your head that removing 20% of the available evidence of a particular kind would make it harder to solve crime, I despair.

John – you naively assume that the police and the State as a whole will use DNA for wholly benevolant purposes.

Ask yourself this question: has crime risen drastically enough during the New Labour era to justify their authoritarian ‘solutions’?

If no, vote them out: New Labour control freaks.

If yes, vote for someone else: New Labout are imcompetent.

Couldn’t be simpler.

@20 Yes, I generally believe that Government, while it may often be incompetent, is rarely actively malevolent in most modern democracies. If I didn’t believe that, I’d be a libertarian rather than a Socialist.

@21 Crime has, of course, plummeted since 1997. I love it when people write articles saying “and yet we have xxx people in prison”. By “and yet”, I assume they mean “partly because”.

John,

“rarely actively malevolent” is not what I’d call a reassuring level. But speaking as someone who is fairly libertarian (and libertine) I’d suggest there are plenty of alternative political positions where opposition to state retention of personal information is valid, including forms of socialism. Otherwise, this is turning into a libertarian site (which would be a major shock for Sunny).

@22

Yes, I generally believe that Government, while it may often be incompetent, is rarely actively malevolent in most modern democracies. If I didn’t believe that, I’d be a libertarian rather than a Socialist.

Hmmm… y’see, I like to think that liberalism and socialism can coexist on mutually beneficial terms. This doesn’t mean giving the Gov the right to know every little thing about each of its citizens on the spurious grounds of “preventing crime/terrorism/rapists/paedos”. I think good ol’ Eric Blair had it right in that novel of his, I forget the title…

[yes I'm fully aware of the libertarian/far-right mis-use of 1984 as an example, in this case I think it actually fits - Orwell was, after all, a committed democratic socialist.]

Perhaps. Personally I found the hero’s inability to get served a pint of beer the scariest part of the book.

Yes, I generally believe that Government, while it may often be incompetent, is rarely actively malevolent

There is a very long way between “rarely actively malevolent” and “wholly benevolent”. On many civil liberties, I’d describe New Labour as “passively malevolent” – in that they introduce measures which are liable to abuse without sufficient safeguards. Sure, they’re not actively and deliberately intending that these measures be abused, but they’re not taking any steps to make sure that they’re not either. It’s kinda like the difference between (a) picking out your sniper’s nest, taking careful aim and killing someone or (b) getting roaring drunk, putting on a blindfold, and going for a drive.

@25

heh, damn metric system

@23 I like liberal socialism, I do – syndical, freely communitarian, all that business. I find it deeply emotionally appealing.

But I don’t think it can possibly be made to work in a society with large anonymous urban settlements, motor cars, human rights lawyers, marketing executives, and mass migration. It would have been a great thing, 400 years ago, but it relies on a string of social forces which have gone, forever, and deliver things which can in the modern age only be delivered by Government, or not at all.

“I think something like the Running Man, but with Simon Cowell as a judge, might be more effective?”

Incidently, does anyone here remember a TV show in the mid-late 90s, with Richard Littlejohn as host, called Wanted, that seemed spookily inspired by the book version of the Running Man?

John,

hat’s not a problem with DNA retention, that’s a problem with incompetent coppering and a failure to use the DNA register properly.

Um…that’s my point. We’re given warm words about how it can be used to exonerate the innocent – but it isn’t.

As to how you can’t get it into your head that removing 20% of the available evidence of a particular kind would make it harder to solve crime, I despair.

Well, it depends on the false positives, false negatives… the effectiveness of the system. Given that there has been inadequate assessment of the effectiveness of the system, I’m not entirely sure you can reasonably claim that “removing 20% of the available evidence of a particular kind would make it harder to solve crime”. Indeed, in this particular case it may well improve the detection rate. Who knows?

Plus any sensible system would retain DNA samples recorded from a crime scene on a database, and then check newly arrested individuals against THAT database for a match. No reason to keep an individuals DNA on a database linked to them unless they’ve been found guilty of a crime.

And even then such evidence would be extremely circumstantial. The DNA database doesn’t close cases, real police work does.

Plus any sensible system would retain DNA samples recorded from a crime scene on a database, and then check newly arrested individuals against THAT database for a match.

So giving the police a reason to arrest someone they otherwise wouldn’t have.

The arguments so commonly made online against DNA databases, CCTVs and so on really don’t seem to make any rational sense. In any other context, you would assume there was some industry lobby behind them – is it really true that organised crime is so organised?

@1

Written by a much greater man than I, and most people I know:

To consider Socialism a tyranny because it will compel everyone to share the daily work of the world is to confess to the brain of an idiot and the instinct of a tramp.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/shaw/works/guide2.htm

Childish people, we saw, want to have all their lives regulated for them, with occasional holiday outbursts of naughtiness to relieve the monotony; and we admitted that the ablebodied ones make good soldiers and steady conventional employees. When they are left to themselves they make laws of fashions, customs, points of etiquette, and ‘what other people will say’, hardly daring to call their souls their own, though they may be rich enough to do as they please. Money as a means of freedom is thrown away on these people. It is funny to hear them declaring, as they often do, that Socialism would be unendurable because it would dictate to them what they should eat and drink and wear, leaving them no choice in the matter, when they are cowering under a social tyranny which regulates their meals, their clothes, their hours, their religion and politics, so ruthlessly that they dare no more walk down a fashionable street in an unfashionable hat, which there is no law to prevent them doing, than to walk down it naked, which would be stopped by the police. They regard with dread and abhorrence the emancipated spirits who, within the limits of legality and cleanliness and convenience, do not care what they wear, and boldly spend their free time as their fancy dictates.

The “New” Labour party we have today is not rooted in anything other than Tory capitalism. It is new, as the name suggests. New in that is was to be a 3rd way – clean, silver in design and concept, to bring a way of making capitalism work for all – Dave-boy is saying the same thing.

I object to the title of this post, it leaves off the ‘new’ part. If the Labour Party were to once again emerge from this freak of political nature then I do feel we would see so many weep in recognition of allowing the Tories to take control of a once great, liberal, party. Liberal in the emancipation of the people – all the people, not simply a landed few.

Our Henry

“Unfortunately, a simple mathematical analysis will not give the true picture. Two factors will increase the probability of adventitious matches: firstly, the condition of crime scene samples may lead to incomplete profiles; and secondly, individuals who are related are more likely to share the same profile than unrelated individuals.”

Torygraph story

Oh, wait, what?

It looks like there are quite a few police officers in Germany with egg on their face right now. They spent several years, thousands of man-hours, and over $14 million trying to track down a criminal mastermind, only to discover that they were chasing lab contamination.

Not CSI after all.

Some of you may not remember but in the good old days (pre-Blair), Labour used to support civil liberties. It continually tried to vote down the Prevention of Terrorism Act over a period of more than a decade on civil libertarian grounds. The direction in which the party has been led in the period since then is nothing short of shameful.

‘Some of you may not remember but in the good old days (pre-Blair), Labour used to support civil liberties.’

We had Space Hoppers too.

I don’t think Labour has ever had a coherent policy on personal liberty. After all the old Methodists who helped set the Party up were none too keen on drinking alcohol and very active in the temperance movement IIRC.

Rrright. Lets get down to the practicalities of fingerprints and DNA fingerprinting.

Fingerprint analysis is subjective though its supposed to be systematic. Fingerprint experts are generally ignorant of the failure rate of their technique, very few are aware of the real accuracy of what they do. Take a look at http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527521.400-fingerprints-put-forensics-on-trial.html.

Public opinion may have been influenced by a sort of “CSI Effect.” In fact forensics is, like much of science, complicated and hard to interpret under time pressure (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16631-forensic-science-too-unreliable-says-report.html).

DNA profiling has not been fully tested for ethnic bias, for example. There are problems with mixed samples (crime scenes are messy) and small samples if they are amplified up to make a profile. There is also plenty of scope for coppers to plant DNA evidence but because its “science” it is perceived as special by the public and trusted more than it should be.

Gievn this alone, why should we consent to our profiles being held by the police?

If you agree with a DNA database fo everyone arrested (or who walks into a police station?) why not go further? Fingerprints too? RFID tags? There is so much tech out there to spy on us, we need to treat this as a precedent to set the tone of future policy.

You left out personal testimony, which is well known to be completely unreliable (in particular massively ethnically biased), computer records which can be hacked, photographs which can be doctored, and documentation, which is completely forgeable.

Civil liberties consist of intelligent lawyers and awake juries doing their job under fair laws. Not a pre-emptive attempt to claim complete immunity from the justice system because you think it might return a result you don’t like.

37
Non-conformist religions (including Methodism) have their roots firmly in the liberal tradition of the 19th century. G.B. Shaw attended a Methodist School in Ireland and Methodism is closely associated with the growing number of rich industrialists in the 19th century.
Although Socialism is often associated with state control and a rebuttal of individualism, this is more to do with the introduction of the soviet model, particularly Stalin’s attempt to brainwash people into marxist ideas (although very little in the USSR had anything to do with Marx’s writings)
To confuse matters, Fabian Socialism (although its’ expressed aims were similar to marxism), believes that socialism should emerge by slow, evolutionary means and requires that education provided by the state should prepare the population for this end state. Of course, there are those who question the difference between the soviet model and our own state, an argument which is often expressed on LC.

@40

Oh I know that, my grandmother was a Methodist lay preacher for 50-odd years… what I mean is they were quite puritanical (by the standards of the 19th century) and even set up Temperance pubs for non-boozers (there’s one still in Rawtenstall, Lancashire, I think) and were heavily involved in workers’ rights/freedom etc at the same time. So it’s ironic that Labour these days are happy to give us the liberty to drink 24 hours a day should we wish, but not be observed by CCTV or put on DNA databases even if we’re innocent.

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” H L Mencken

Anyone who thought “New” Labour was anything other than a spin obsessed vehicle for a bunch of a-principled political opportunists deserves to be stripped of the right to vote forthwith.

Sadly, I don’t share the apparently widely nostalgia for “old” Labour either….. the decades after 1945 simply demonstrate that the Labour movement wasn’t “radical” at all in any meaningful sense, or it wouldn’t have tolerated the kind of constitution and continued inequality we’ve had to endure up until now: most of the time they were too busy being co-opted into discredited, deeply illiberal and 19th century system.

That failure of nerve, and lack of a “radical” core, explains why a monster like New Labour was possible: the elites of both the right and left weren’t interested in changing the system, just entrenching their own narrow interests.

Can I just reassert one rather important point here, in response to one or two comments above. Marxism, and even Fabianism in the sense it is working towards a predetermined outcome, are not liberal. The point of liberalism is pretty much that we can work towards our own outcomes, and that this benefits all of us. State-control forms of socialist thinking are not liberal, but rather depend on bogey-men (‘Bourgouise’, ‘Intellectuals’, ‘Reactionaries’) who wish to hold back their project; this they share with those who may or may not have a particular predetermined outcome, but use labels such as ‘criminal’, ‘immigrant’, ‘paedophile’ to justify their position. And eventually you have to decide, are you with the Daily Mail or against it?

Presumably Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys is competent to comment on the risks inherent in such a system. From oral evidence given to the Home Affairs Committee:

Q187 Chairman: You, of course, invented techniques for DNA fingerprinting in 1994. At that time, did you envisage that one day there would be a database with five million names, the largest in the world, as a result of the work that you had done?

Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys: Absolutely not. If we roll the clock back 25 years, if there had been a suggestion then that I would be sitting here today debating why it is that we have roughly a million UK citizens, entirely innocent, residing on a database, I would have been frankly astonished, perplexed and deeply worried. And I still am deeply worried.
…
Q188 Mr Winnick: …The Minister of State is going to give evidence to us later this morning. When he was asked previously if he would have any objections to having his DNA profile on the database for years, his immediate response was that he would not object in any way whatsoever. What about yourself? Would you object if your DNA database was kept?

Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys: If my DNA were to be put on the database, I would object profoundly against that. [provides two reasons: sensitivity of the personal information and the uses to which it can be put; and, "the worst that could happen would be if some glitch in the database gave a false match to my DNA profile, bringing me into the frame of a criminal investigation, which could have very serious repercussions for me until that error was solved, or, potentially, leading to the inculpation of a close family relative; for example, a brother or a sister, which again would have very serious ethical issues within my family."]

189 Mr Winnick: The argument may be from ministers and others, and certainly from the police, that if you have not done anything wrong, why worry? If you are innocent, so be it, there is no reason to have concern. That is not my view necessarily. I am putting, if you like, the view of those who do want to store DNA on a database.

Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys: I think I have given two very good reasons why there is a risk to an individual of having their DNA placed on the database. I have a real fundamental concern here. I am not a lawyer, but I have always understood that one of the great foundations of English law was the presumption of innocence. We are now seeing a sort of presumption of “future possible guiltyishness, but currently you may be sort of innocentish.” I find that a deeply worrying shift in the whole ethos of how the legal system operates.

John @ 2 writes as follows:

‘This is the wrongest thing I have read in a while. Your prescription may be right in that tiny, tiny minority of seats where Labour are fighting Lib Dems in what is effectively a gentrified university town that demographically wants to vote Tory but can’t bring itself to do so intellectually.

Across most of the country, however, the correct, and successful, response to resurgent Lib Dems is not to appease their soft-on-crime ideology, it is to expose that ideology to the people who are tempted to vote for them.

We have found that the number one way to bring voters home to Labour is to tell people on the estates when Lib Dems want to take their CCTV away, to tell crime victims when Lib Dems want to hamper the DNA techniques that have brought the perpetrators to justice, and to tell everyone in the community about the Lib Dems calling for more criminals to be poured out of prison and back onto the streets.’

A few comments in reply:

(1) The ‘intellectual’ confusion amongst the citizens of Oxford East, which John thinks he can discern, must be pretty profound. So thoroughly confused are they about their latent Toryism that they have not managed to elect a single Tory to the city council in about ten years. Meanwhile, they have managed to elect, alongside Lab and Lib Dems, lots of Greens and a few members of the Independent Working Class Association.

(2) But seriously….let’s assume that John is right that the tactics he espouses are electorally effective. Does he not grasp what a complete condemnation of Labour his line of argument is?

Once upon a time, the idea was this: Labour has a positive message on the economy and social policy but those reactionary Tories distract the voters by saying we’re soft on crime. So let’s get tough on crime (or at least sound tough). That way we neutralise the Tory fear tactic and can get a hearing for our positive message.

John is advocating something quite different. He is not saying we need to neutralise the Tory fear tactic to get a hearing for a positive message. In his world of Labour politics, the message – to fight Lib Dems – just is one of fear. Labour is no longer simply neutralising a Tory tactic, but deploying it! There is no positive message to win voters over from the Lib Dems…so, John argues, let’s scare the voters to Labour.

(3) Just consider John’s language of ‘bringing voters home to Labour’. It makes them sound like sheep who have to be coralled into the right pen. What a contemptuous attitude to the voter.

Assuming John is really a Labour party member/supporter, and not someone posing as such in order to discredit the party, his comments reflect just how detached from any conception of progressive values the thinking of some in the party has become: ‘What’s our message of hope and aspiration? None! Why vote Labour? Out of fear! To what progressive end? Er, to keep Labour in office as an end in itself…’

43
I don’t know if you are refering to my post @40, I will assume you are and apologize if I am mistaken.
Your notion of predeterminism is too simplistic and one-dimensional, Marx suggests that the end of history is socialism whereas Fukuyama suggests that it is liberalism, taken on the basis of this argument, both socialism and liberalism are subject to determinism. Whoever is right, (supposing the end of history is socialism or liberalism) it does not mean the end of the history of events. people will have the opportunity to shape their own futures. “Men make their own history but not in the circumstances of their own making” Karl Marx.
One major problem with liberalism is that it fails to give the environment due regard and explains behaviour in terms of agency, free-will and rational actions, it disregards power, class and inequal access to social goods, the aim of socialism is to enable equal access to all, which is achieved by changing the economic base. It does not attempt to turn people into a uniform mass.
Of course socialism and liberalism can co-exist side-by-side but I don’t doubt that stalinism and nazism have given socialism a bad name.

The right-wing of the Labour Party has had a social-liberal hole in its soul since the departure of the SDP. A hole that has been filled by a rightwardly mobile generation from the old statist Left. The current Labour Left, with roots in the egalitarianism of the grass-roots labour movement, has a far better record on social-justice issues (just look at the voting record of MPs of the Socialist Campaign Group). Authoritarianism is a serious issue for the Labour Right, but there is a significant strain of Labourism that remains rooted in liberal principles.

Like Stuart White, I find the comments from John so bizarre that I wondered whether he was a false-flag operation. If the Labour Party really does think that this is the way to “bring voters home to Labour” then the Party needs to be aware that it will also lose votes because of its clear disdain for basic civil liberties.

Sunny and Sunder were trying to persuade us a few days ago that there is a difference between Labour and the nasty Tories. John has just shown the opposite.