So the Tories are briefing against David Miliband by portraying him as an electoral liability if he wins?

That tells a story.

As for the third paragraph, I’d say you probably haven’t been paying attention if you are not sure about the general themes on which each prospective leader will attack.

D Miliband will focus on a centre-left agenda of sensible cuts and spending but with greater emphasis than under Blair on the more social democratic aspects like the minimum wage and improved working conditions rather than marketisation of services.

E Milliband will take a more liberal agenda of less state intervention in lives so as to draw away Lib Dem support – while at the same time attacking cuts in general from a keynsian prspective.

That said – the shape of the Labour leadership is yet to be formed. We cant know what influence different people will have and what their strategic impact might be.

The real problem for Labour whom ever wins, is of course making people believe they can do the job, we have the same bunch in power that have made this mess, why the hell would anyone want them back in. Yes maybe if the Tories mess up big time, but I’m willing to give the Tories two terms, after New Labour.

what changed the name of the leader.

“If a majority of the electorate end up accepting Labour is to blame for the pain – it will be out of power for a generation.”

Now why would the electorate do a thing like that?

Labour are going to have to come to terms with the fact that their fundamental approach of increasing the size of the state and intruding further into people’s lives was deeply flawed. They will also have to find some way of overturning the perception that what Labour does is to spend until the money runs out, (not an easy task).

Until, (and it is likely to take a very long time, look at the wilderness wanderings of the Tories), Labour can come back with something new and different they are simply micturating to windward, whoever the new leader is.

I keep saying it, but no one is bloody listening, the way that we can fatally attack the Conservative government is over Lansley’s plans for the NHS.

1. He is treating Parliament as irrelevant. Heard of the plan in the White Paper for GP Commissioning, heard that it will be in place by April 2013? No. Pulse today reports that “that a quarter [of GPs surveyed] had already entered talks with their PCT on increasing their commissioning responsibilities” and that the “process now appears to be gathering pace. Of 29 trusts to respond to questions last week, 23 said they have already begun the process of handing over decision-making power to GPs”. This is response to a demand from the Chief Exec of the NHS, Sir David Nicholson, to ignore normal Parliamentary procedures and implement the white paper without Parliamentary approval. (It has to be said that Sir David was charged with delivering Labour’s Practice Based Commissioning, but failed to deliver. Now, apparently he is overstepping the mark with GP Commissioning. It smells very fishy.)

2. He will privatise ALL NHS hospitals Woolly minded liberals are being lulled by talk of “social enterprises”, but these are private businesses: public assets and public employees will be transferred to private businesses. Lansley’s plans will create 250 separate businesses which means that the NHS will no longer exist as a single organisation. He is saying that there is no public responsibility to provide healthcare the lazy bastard is legislating himself out of work! But seriously, this will have huge consequences over pensions, pay bargaining, job mobility and training of the 1.4 million NHS staff. In future if a hospital fails the Health Secretary will say “fuck off, it has nothing to do with me”.

3. He is paving the way towards co-pay and health insurance. The White Paper says that the private sector (other than the privatised NHS hospitals) will provide more care, but has NOT said how they will be paid. Private providers are unhappy because they are FAR more expensive than the NHS. The only solution is to introduce co-pay, where patients will have to contribute towards part of their treatment out of their pocket. This will inevitably lead to health insurance, which is Nick Clegg’s preferred option.

The public are not in favour of these plans. A campaign highlighting that this is what will happen and the dire effect it will have on lower and middle earners has the potential of killing this nasty government stone dead. WAKE UP AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE NHS!

Economic issues and spending cuts are only one facet of the problem facing the Labour party.

Labour left a very negative cultural legacy too, as last night’s Dispatches made clear. The public already knows the cultural issues are Labour’s fault.

@4 Yes God forbid that we could end up with a healthcare system like the French!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_in_France

@4, I hope you are right. In twenty years, if “the NHS” is a funding agency rather than the world’s worst healthcare provider, we will all be glad. Hospitals and services will be so much better for everyone, rich and poor, that we will wonder how we tolerated the current arrangement for so long. It will be like the fall of the Soviet Union – there will be no going back.

Re. Andrew Lilico.

His piece on ConHome yesterday isn’t a recent bit of theorising. I’ve had occasion to meet him through work a couple of times and he’s being predicting it since at least the middle of last year (around June-ish when I first heard him say it if I remember correctly).

He’s of the centre right – and Policy Exchange do get too close to the Cameroons for comfort some times (as IPPR did with New lab) – but don’t mistake him for a patsy. That is his genuine (and not particulally appetising!) forecast for the UK’s economy.

For those with a strong dispostion who haven’t read it: http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/images/publications/pdfs/5_things_….pdf

Firstly, it might be a mistake to assume David Miliband will become Labour leader. It can so be a self-fulfilling prophecy. As this piece illustrates, the man I call “Blair Jr” is way too associated with the New Labour project to appeal to floating voters let alone the party’s grassroots.

It was and is my opinion that his brother Ed offers the approach to appeal to these important groups. In addition, he is more likely to not only echo Keynesian economic alternatives but also hit the Tories hard on taxation instead of cuts, defend the NHS, and exploit divisions in the Liberal Democrats.

Most of all, we are all forgetting that not only are the public more savvy than we think (and only 10m voted Tory at this election), but that the LibDems and Tories -previously The Government – will be divided to compete against each other in 2015, with the LibDems having to focus their attacks on the Tories to define themselves from them.

Moreover, if anyone thinks it’s easy for the Tories to excuse decimation of essentially services while failing to support social enterprises such as the one I run – exposing the “Big Society” as a DIY-for-for-proles – by saying “oh, it was New Labour’s fault” (when they were the masters of Friedmanesque financial deregulation) and get re-elected, again we are seriously underestimating the intelligence of a British public who by then will be browbeaten. Remember the Poll Tax riots?

4

I can’t understand why the Labour leadership is not making a this a huge issue, and once again just like VAT the tories lied through their teeth. The Lie Dems better stop this or they are finished as a party.

Libby Dyson obviously wants poor people not to have health care. (typical tory scum) Then they can die early and won’t have to be paid a pension. This is class war of the usual tory kind and the left needs to wake up. Trouble is, New labour has signed up to be to the agenda of the global elites and so seems to have no problem with this shit.

This is a global corporate elite instruction that all state run health systems must be destroyed. The American right wing has been spending huge amounts of money trying to destroy the health system of Canada, and we can see now that the tory scum are just puppets to the international right wing. They have tried through free trade and GAT to destroy public health by forcing private health on countries. (funny how the tory scum always bang on about the EU, as a destroyer of sovereignty, but never the free trade liars who want to steal all our rights away.

Why won’t the liars of the tory party honestly tell the people that they want to destroy the national health service? Why are they so cowardly that they have to do everything by stealth. Cowardly conservatives won’t tell the truth. The coalition is not just another political group it is evil. pure and simple.

They have tried through free trade and GAT to destroy public health by forcing private health on countries.

Cor, GATT, that takes me back. Quite what 50 years of global disagreement on agricultural tariffs has to do with healthcare is beyond me, but doubtless the Freemasons and the Iluminati are in there somewhere.

Tim Jerk defending the destruction of the health system ( now his scummy party are in power) but not having the balls to admit it before the election.

I can see why you are a troy Tim, you are a coward. Just like all the other tories.

12 – failing the Turing test again I’m afraid Sally.

“I can see why you are a troy Tim, you are a coward. Just like all the other tories.”

Nothing like sweeping generalisations and insults to win a debate, eh Sally? Still, that’s not the sort of behaviour one would expect from a troll or anything, is it?

Anyway, if we can focus on the question in hand (mea culpa here), I think that the key problem for either Milliband is indeed how to try to disassociate themselves from the current economic mess. For Ed Milliband this is a particular issue, since he actually was an adviser to Gordon Brown when Brown was running a defecit during a period of growth (i.e. during the period when Keynsian logic says run a surplus) , and may find it difficult to explain how he is qualified to promote economic logic now.

And as yet neither candidate has really come up with a convincing idea of what ‘their’ Labour party would stand for and represent, rather than suggesting they will just carry on. If the current government lasts five years, we return to growth and state spending falls (I have my doubts on the last one…) then having a leader who was in a government that increased spending and caused a recession will not exactly help Labour, unless they have a new vision to offer. For example, take Margaret Thatcher for instance, who may still have been the ‘milk-snatcher’ to her opponents in 1979, but was pushing a radically different agenda to that of the Heath government – in such cases the attacks linking someone to the old government are clearly unconvincing and play only to the converted.

The mistake would not therefore not be to resist the bombardment, but rather to stand still and allow the bombardment to happen, rather than to try and change the game by being radical and suggesting a new direction.

Watchman

Nobody on here gives a toss what you think about the leadership of the Labour party. You are a tory troll so mind your own busines.

Sally,

Of course, if my desire to ensure we have a reasonable and sensible challenge to the current government (i.e. an opposition) is not to your taste, feel free to disregard my views. But perhaps engaging with my views, or simply ignoring them, rather than throwing insults (I assume tory troll is an insult) would be more sensible.

Oh, and as I keep pointing out, I’m not a tory. Unless they stop hiring czars and coming up with stupid government intervention projects and taxes, I seriously doubt I could vote for them next time…

@Watchman,

If you and the Tories have no problem with Cameron heading the Government after being Lamont’s adviser on Black Wednesday, then they shouldn’t have a problem with Ed Miliband being Brown’s adviser in the last few years. After all, Black Wednesday (deservedly) ruined the Tories rep for economic competence, and they haven’t actually regained it, per se, it’s rather that Labour are currently even less trusted. So, that might currently be an effective line of attack, but it’s a bit unprincipled, dishonest and very, very vulnerable.

Let’s be honest for a change – it’s actually far too early to tell if Brown was actually wrong to do as he did. A lot of people might have made up their minds, but that doesn’t mean the argument is genuinely settled. In the same way, a lot of people are pretty sure Osborne is wrecking the economy. They might be right, but it’s not settled.

Ken,

Please note I put some provisos about the state of the economy in five years time in my post, so I am aware that there are a number of uncertainties.

But David Cameron could easily avoid the Black Wednesday association, as he is ruling out European monetary union, which is a clearly different line (indeed, it was clearly judged pretty useless, as it never came up during the debates for example). This is why I am advocating a clear change of policy direction (or at least, as in this case, a clear change in certain policies which allow this to be portrayed).

And I am not a bloody tory! If I were one such, would I be offering constructive comments on here? My ideal situation would be to be to be entering the voting booth with the choice of a left-of-centre political party for which I could vote on the ballot paper in my hand.

Sally,

“You have already admitted you voted tory at the last election.”

I did vote Conservative (I could never vote Tory – they were a party of the bloody landlords and factory owners, of the royal court, of the establishment). They were the best option presented to me, so, being generally unwilling to waste my vote, I voted for them. But this does not make me a Conservative, merely a voter who found them the best choice. And if you can’t see the difference, then maybe you need to go back and study how democracy works. Hint, it’s not like football – you can change your tribe very easily.

@Watchman

I did attempt to distinguish you from the Tories, sorry about that.

The current view of Black Wednesday may be different thanks to elapsed time (although Lamont’s reputation has hardly been rehabilitated); the fact is that although Cameron was closely involved in what was genuinely one of the worst decisions ever taken by a sitting Chancellor (even if it had beneficial side-effects), he has successfully evaded a serious stain on his reputation.

Measured critics are aware that, in Government, Ministers generally do not throw big hissy fits when decisions are made that they do not disagree with unless they are genuinely idiotic or immoral. That’s why, for example the Coalition functions relatively effectively at the moment – because the people involved are eschewing soap opera and trying to make a difficult situation work.
Miliband discharged his role for Brown efficiently. He had a choice of doing his job – which he did – or refusing to do his job. Had he done the latter, he would have rightly been cited as being unable to be loyal to his PM, so why would anyone be loyal to him?

It simply isn’t the case that Brown was so self-evidently evil or incompetant that to do his job would have been negligent or immoral, no matter how it suits short-term or tribalist political advantage to suggest so.

10. Sally

Exactly. So what are we to look forward to? Well with the abolishing of the cap on private income we now see that Christies hospital in Manchester is going into partnership with HCA to build a cancer centre for their private patients. Who are HCA? Well, they are the company to have been fined the largest figure in US legal history for fraud – the total settlement was $1.7bn. These people are being invited in to run health providers in this country. It is unbelievable.

(And yeah, I know that New Labour invited these fraudsters in too, but they shouldn’t have.)

But I cannot believe that the Tories posting here have not picked up on the first point that I made which was Lansley is changing who spends £80bn of public money without parliamentary approval. With that huge amount of money there must be parliamentary scrutiny. You may be Tories but surely you believe in democracy and the parliamentary process?

How hard will it be to convince the electorate that Labour is responsible for the need to cut public spending?

“Dear Chief Secretary, I’m afraid there is no money. Kind regards — and good luck! Liam.”

Pretty damn easy, I would think. You’ve joined the crew of a sinking ship, Sunny.

“That isn’t the only problem for David Miliband, I believe.”

I think this was supposed to read: This isn’t only a problem for David Miliband, I believe.’ I.e. David Miliband is not the only one vulnerable to attacks like this. Because he certainly isn’t. It would be v easy to paint Ed Miliband as tightly associated with Brown, and unpopular fag end of the New Labour era. For indeed he was closely associated with Brown, and owes much of his current status to Brown’s patronage. So Ed Miliband has to be ready too…

Any coalition “bombardment” would be launched from a position of declining public support, and pitched at an electorate who – by a clear majority – voted for parties who opposed (at the time of polling, at least) immediate and deep spending cuts.

Also looming, will be the threat of economic slow down and possible double-dip – both direct consequences of the policies that Darling and Cable together warned Osborne against.

Finally, our Westminster obsessed media is likely, for the time-being, to be at least as (if not more) preoccupied with gossip of Coalition splits and signs dissent from the Tory right and the Lib Dem left.

I’ve no doubt the government will go on the offensive, blaming Labour for the cuts. They would be stupid not to. However, I suspect that neither the electorate nor the media will be sufficiently receptive to this strategy for it to have too grave an impact on the new Labour leader.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Labour member and have not voted for them since 1997. In terms of inevitable Coalition attacks, though, I suspect any future Labour leader will have less and less to worry about as time goes on.

“One argument that some Tories will also make is that a double-dip recession, caused by the drastic cut in spending, was actually perfectly predictable.”

That might be a tad difficult to sell given how they repeatedly flatly deny that it will happen.

Still, the usual right wing media echo chamber is always there to assist.

@21, 10. The reason why you’re going to have a hard time selling your “Tory NHS Apocalypse” theory is that other countries have *exactly* the system you think the Tories want to introduce, and by any measure, it’s better than the NHS in its current form. For example, Sweden, or Germany, or France. The abolition of the NHS will be a one-way process, like the demolition of the Berlin Wall. Once it’s gone, it will never return, because the replacement will be so much better for all. Even the poor. In fact, the poor most of all, since they are the ones who have no choice other than the NHS. If that’s an apocalypse, bring it on, then at least these useless Tories will have done one good thing.

I am no Tory, but even if I were, I would not want anyone to “die early” as Sally states. Very few Tories are Daleks, Sally. Most of them are human.

>Any coalition “bombardment” would be launched from a position of declining public support, and pitched at an electorate who – by a clear majority – voted for parties who opposed (at the time of polling, at least) immediate and deep spending cuts.

The problem I see with this is that immediate and deep cuts were in place well before the Election. For example, my NHS consultants and staff were telling me of 1 in 6 job cuts in the specialist (diabetes) unit I am being treated by back in the Spring (Feb/March).

Or Alan Johnson’s proposed cuts in police in autumn 2009.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/dec/02/police-budget-cuts-500m

Or restrictions on student numbers a couple of years ago by (iirc) Lord Mandelbrot. Or any number of other facts of history.

It’s not an easy one to differentiate on unless the audience is stupid and has no memory.

I’m surprised the coalition haven’t come out a lot harder on this – they have been playing the “due to Labour profligacy” meme, but not hit them with much specific evidence, which would not exactly be difficult.

I’d say it’s more with Sunny’s line, and is about prevailing narratives.

It makes no difference – all 3 sets of Neo-liberals are doomed. There will be a rush to the far left and far right and violence will be the new way of doing things.

The coalition will fall on it’s own, it doesn’t need much of a push, but when the people switch Governments again they will realise that it makes no difference which thieving scrats they vote for – they’re all against them, they all support Capitalism, they will all divert future wealth of the nation to prop up the failed financial industry.

Then the people will do what they do best – rise up and show decades of suppressed anger in a matter of days.

I figure the time when this will happen will be when the commodity prices go ballistic (which affects everybody) and the cuts start to hurt. No growth, rampant inflation, lying politicans and an angry public. It’s a recipe for revolution.

“Grimsby Fiendish

How hard will it be to convince the electorate that Labour is responsible for the need to cut public spending?

“Dear Chief Secretary, I’m afraid there is no money. Kind regards — and good luck! Liam.”

Pretty damn easy, I would think. You’ve joined the crew of a sinking ship, Sunny.”

Only for those who choose not to look beyond the last 7 years – anyone with any brains will look over a longer period and realise that the deficit has been rising for the last 60 years or so……probably longer.
The only ‘claimed’ surplus was under Thatcher – which was created by the sale of public assets and not by actual spending reduction or tax increase.

I say let those people blame Labour – they’re clearly too stupid to realise the bigger picture has been maintained by successive Governments from all sides of the political spectrum.

If ‘the electorate’ really do believe this – then there is truly no hope for Democracy as they will be convinced of ‘another way’ by the first Adolf who comes along….

I believe the people who do believe this are in the minority (albeit a loud one) – the problem with the deficit isn’t Labour, it’s not the Tories, it’s the Capitalist system and until it’s removed you could put Mickey mouse in charge and you’d get the same results.