You raise an interesting point. I agree that there is a “gap in the market” for a progressive social democratic force. Who knows, with the LD’s shackled to the Tories for a while, it might happen? I have to say I’m not tht confident of the chances of such a movement rising from the ashes of either NuLabour, or Old Labour. It may take a more radical fracturing of the current party system for something truly novel to emerge.

A Labour Party which ensured that 80% a police constable’s and sergeant’s time was spent patrolling the beat rather than filling in forms would gain many votes.

A Labour Party which did not appear so beholden to the public sector unions and increasing public sector employment, may gain support from those working in SMEs outside S England.

A Labour Party which actually delivered an education and training system which turned illiterate/semi-illiterate, innumerate and unskilled into craftsmen would greatly increase the ability of people to increase their life chances and reduce social inequality. For many, the greatest bar to earning good wages is to be illiterate, innumerate and unskilled.

You could have added these legacies from other New Labour policies:

- A welfare benefits system in which 1,710,000 people gain only 30p or less for every extra £1 they earn:

Benefits reform targets ‘workless ghettos’
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cce241ee-9bb7-11df-9ebd-00144feab49a.html#

- “The chances of a child from a poor family enjoying higher wages and better education than their parents is lower in Britain than in other western countries, the OECD says”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/10/oecd-uk-worst-social-mobility

thats slavery.

thanks to Labour.

be grateful you still have a voice to mock your own infantilised circumstances, Sally. If that’s what makes you happy, I’m happy for you. I’ll continue to wish you something better and more fulfilling – I’m sure your potential is far greater than you have achieved so far in your life.

Oh, and your rebuttal is impressively profound in it’s analysis and insight. I’m wearing a peach-coloured hawaiian shirt.

Too funny.

Erm, no. Inflation tends to reduce inequality as those living off returns from capital lose out. Those who live from wages lose out less and those who live from benefits (which are uprated each year by inflation) lose the least.

The only problem with inflation as a way of reducing inequality is that it also reduces the general level of wealth as well….more equality and less wealth in total. Not a good idea.

In effect Labour has reintroduced slavery.

Phew, for a minute there I thought this was an over-the-top assessment of Labour’s time in power, good to see reasoned statements like the above prove me wrong.

Claptrap.

Irrespective of their levels, while inflation is higher than growth inequality rises and the poor get poorer relative to the everyone else.

When that happens under a regime composed of a party self-describing as of the ‘left’ or ‘centre-left’ their target electorate sees this as a betrayal and that party has effectively committed electoral suicide.

This can be seen where the pressure for investment in public health services and greater flexibility in the workplace created increases in the labour pool just as low-interest rates shafted savers. Debt-financed housing and education meant individuals were encouraged put themselves in hock to institutions just to tread water.

In effect Labour has reintroduced slavery.

And then Labour’s ruling class of bureaucrats and technocrats were shown to be corrupt to the core, colluding on regulations and laws to put them out of the reach of the wider public, fixing the system for their own benefit.

This could be seen everywhere from expenses, funding and election systems, to security, defense and invasions, to drugs laws and transport, to immigration and marriage.

They created the conditions of discontent which they argued they were resolving: Labour managed the amazing feat that the list of unfulfilled and broken promises is actually far longer than the reforms they claim they were committed to!

As the scale of the failure becomes apparent the future looks exceedingly bleak.

It will take a generation to die out before the memory of Labour’s abject failure is forgotten. If the party survives.

I agree somewhat. Polaris exists and may point towards North Korea. Ouch, if you live in South Korea.

However, if fundamentalists overcome a government that possesses nuclear weapons, the equation is different.

I know your UKIP but that sounds so Tory

I’m not convinced – and certainly not reassured by that prospect.

One reason is that I regard the whole leftist v rightist distinction as pretty meaningless in the absence of clues about what it might signal – the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed a Friendship Treaty on 28 September 1939 when Britain and France were already at war.

Because of the evidence, especially including evidence from the recent financial crisis, I don’t subscribe to a belief that Free Market Capitalism is sufficiently self-regulating to prevent systemic collapses. For another, I reminded of this:

“The chances of a child from a poor family enjoying higher wages and better education than their parents is lower in Britain than in other western countries, the OECD says”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/10/oecd-uk-worst-social-mobility

I don’t support the replacement of the Trident missile system. What’s worrying is the absence of convincing signs that ministers or the military hierarchy are getting to grips with the rising threats from either asymmetric warfare and subversion or cyberwarfare, all of which are relatively inexpensive options for present or prospective enemies of Britain to engage in. The Trident missile system isn’t an effective deterrent against these threats as we know from 9/11 in America or 7/7 in London.

I’ve huge doubts about the benefits claimed for the upheaval currently being inflicted on the NHS and don’t subscribe to the mantra that above all we need “strong and stable” government.

Good post Bob
But the credible opposition will come from the right not the left.

Without that, the governing party (or parties) can pursue its (or their) own agenda regardless of electoral sentiments – recall what happened during the 1980s when we lacked a credible opposition to the Thatcherite ascendancy. Mrs Thatcher eventually resigned in 1990, not because of anything that the Labour Party did but because she lost the support of her cabinet colleagues. Labour lost the following general election in 1992.

At the May general election this year, the failing political standing and credibility of the Labour government made the prospect of a hung Parliament the more welcome and that was evidently not just to my way of thinking.

I’ve no special regard for the Labour Party, nor for the other main parties either – I didn’t vote at the 2005 election. Recent performance of Labour in opposition since the election has focused on bashing the ConDem coalition and defending Labour’s version of the history of its time in government, which is what can be expected. But there will shortly come a time when adversarial opposition alone is not enough to gain credibility. Opposition parties need to come up with alternative policies. We can only wait and hope.

There is an economic model that tracks the governing party’s poll position relative to the main opposition with inflation, unemployment and interest rate weightings. Historically, support for the governing party relative to the main opposition depends positively on wage and house price growth and negatively on inflation, unemployment and interest rate changes.

When the Conservatives were miles ahead in the polls 2009, the model was predicting a dramatic narrowing of the gap at the end of 2009 due to forecasts what would be happening with inflation in the economy. None of the political journalists in the media could understand the narrowing of the gap because Labour were not doing anything different. Furthermore, the model was predicting the polls would narrow until March due to house prices and falling inflation and then the Conservatives would widen the gap until the election as inflation increased. The polls tracked what the model had predicted and if Labour had gone for a March election they may well have been the largest party in a hung parliament. If anything the Conservatives underperformed in the election and Labour despite the Brown unpopularity overperformed.

No, drunk with joy at hounding a dying political party perhaps…..

“Its policy language is stuck with the generation of ’92, the frequent referencing of its values struggles to escape the cliches of ‘fairness’ and ‘progressive’.

It attacks the coalition in a way that fails to grasp that the economic crisis is creating new kinds of political realignments across and within parties.”

Labour is in real danger of becoming the new Stupid Party. I honestly thought they might be more contrite after the election….. instead it looks like we’ll need to wait a decade or so until the current NuLabour apparatchiks finally get kicked out, and something more progressive replaces it.

“If Labour had continued to deliver low interest rates, low inflation and low unemployment they would still be in power.”

Not necessarily. I think enough people were pretty horrified by the illiberal control freakery of many NuLabour policies, the decision to invade Iraq, and the dysfunctional nature of the Labour leadership, to lose them an election whatever the economic position had been. You can’t fool all of the people all of the time

[*] being a rather flattering depiction of myself.

If Labour had continued to deliver low interest rates, low inflation and low unemployment they would still be in power. Where do they go from here? Out of power until the present lot mess up and they can offer credible policies to deliver low interest rates, low inflation and low unemployment.