I used to vote Labour when it represent people like me. Now I don’t bother voting at all except for an independent in our council elections. All three parties – Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrats – are much the same. They don’t represent us anymore. They’re in it for themselves, their pals in business and their pals in Brussels. Ed Milliband is a prime example. While he is leader Labour is unelectable. The same goes for his brother. Labour needs someone who has leadership qualities. It needs someone who represents us.

Miliband is far too afraid of becoming “unelectable” by opposing the government’s rightwing policies. Articles warning him not to frequently appear in the Guardian, Indie etc, articles which bear the clear taint of blairite pro market thinking. Now the rumour is that he will reshuffle his shadow cabinet, bringing back “big beasts”. No prizes for guessing which blairite acolytes will return to trumpet the necessity of “centrist”, neoliberal policies if power is to be regained. That leaves us with three parties against the people and for the markets and only the Greens as an alternative.

Attention grabbing interventions may help to raise his profile, but electoral success needs more. We have too many reminders of New Labour’s failings, including high-profile shadow ministers who whole-heartedly participated in them. They are so egregious that time alone will not remove them from voters’ memories.

I accept that generally governments lose elections rather than oppositions winning them. Add to this the high probability that the Lib Dems will be a much smaller factor in the electoral arithmetic for a generation and Labour should do better. However the proposed boundary changes will probably count against them. Swings and roundabouts? One thing seems certain, unless something of real substance emerges from Labour’s policy review they seem unlikely to win the next general election.

I couln’t agree more with Sunny. Neither of the M’s… have got what it takes to lead the Labour Party. The party needs to change to a radical modern socialist democratic organization.

Northern Worker @ 1,

I think you suffer from a democratic deficit. I am Scottish and I can vote SNP which usually means that I can subscribe to the viewpoints that lots of your compatriots who write here claim they believe in. But they have no-one to vote for. The system is corrupt and well, jiggered.

I read lots of English people seeing no-one to represent them, no distinction between one party and another. It is really sad.

Frankly, if the Labour Party took over tommorrow, I doubt they’d do much different. It is too soon to forget who got us into this mess and is it is not too early to realise that voting for Cameron had no credibility either?

You are left without a choice, except the extremes, and you rightly reject that. But the mainstream appears to be without any sort of moral compass whatsoever.

I really don’t know who I’d vote for if I lived in England. Probably no-one in the mainstream, that’s for sure. Green?

@douglas clark

‘I think you suffer from a democratic deficit. I am Scottish and I can vote SNP which usually means that I can subscribe to the viewpoints that lots of your compatriots who write here claim they believe in. But they have no-one to vote for. The system is corrupt and well, jiggered.’

didn’t know the SNP was anti EU, that’s news to me.

@1 – I’ve voted for, at different times, labour, libdem and independents in local elections. This is based on very different factors to national elections.

Where I don’t have anyone to vote for, no.

Ed Miliband urgently needs to think of something radical to communicate his key ideas across to the electorate. The current state of affairs isn’t as bad as the media is painting but it’s not ideal.

Perhaps it would be nice if had some ideas to communicate.

@2.Briar

Miliband is far too afraid of becoming “unelectable” by opposing the government’s rightwing policies. Articles warning him not to frequently appear in the Guardian, Indie etc, articles which bear the clear taint of blairite pro market thinking. Now the rumour is that he will reshuffle his shadow cabinet, bringing back “big beasts”. No prizes for guessing which blairite acolytes will return to trumpet the necessity of “centrist”, neoliberal policies if power is to be regained. That leaves us with three parties against the people and for the markets and only the Greens as an alternative.

I think this is a problem. As I’ve written elsewhere, I actually think the Ed Milliband could potentially be a good leader. I get the feeling that his heart is roughly in the right place. But he is as yet very inexperienced, and he can’t yet seem to find any guts to face down the multitudes of ‘blairites’ and neoliberals in his party, and ignore their siren voices in the media. Which he despately needs to do.

The last thing Labour needs to do now is return to being a neo-liberal lite party.

Ideally, Labour needs to come to terms with the fact that the New Labour project was ideologically misguided and utterly unnecessary for electoral success (John Smith or a successor in the same vein would have won comfortably in 1997 against a divided, demoralised and economically discredited Tory Party which everyone was sick of).

Too many of our comrades fell for the idea that the death of Communism meant the death of socialism and social democracy and that the temporary economic boom in the developed world (nothing compared to the boom of the post-war golden years) meant we had no choice but to buy into the New Right consensus and become, at best, a social liberal party.

1. It is far too early for people to imagine what Ed Miliband might be like in four years time – while they see Cameron acting as PM almost every day. It’s not too difficult to see why the odds are stacked against the Labour leader.

Which is why the useful comparison is between Ed Miliband now, and David Cameron in about 2006 (or Tony Blair in 95). And the news isn’t entirely rosy on that front.

http://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2011/09/15/leader-ratings-how-ed-miliband-compares/

Looking at those Leaders of the Opposition ratings, Miliband’s closer to tracking Howard and IDS than anyone else, which can’t be terribly encouraging.

So is it going to be Andy Burnham or Yvette cooper as leader after the election

A little less union bashing would certainly help Ed Miliband assert his position as leader. Wether you loved or loathed Blair, as his opponent, you were wise to fear his wrath, the same goes for Brown. Ed obviously lacks a certain animalistic edge, Blair being the sly fox, ready to pounce when your back was turned. Brown, the grizzly bear, smashing your head against the wall if you got in his way. Ed Miliband, bit of a chipmunk, breaking cover to give the occasionall nip, but mostly s itting in a tree, nibbling his nuts and waiting for a brainwave to magically spring up. Going head-to-head with the unions is like grabbing the tiger by the tail, instead of showing some balls and standing shoulder to shoulder with the people who gave him the job in the first place. By lining up against them, he is opposing not just the union leaders, but much worse, the union members. Clegg betrayed his core support, Cameron betrayed everyone he made promises to. Ed Miliband may well be remembered as the leader who betrayed his country, wasting the opportunity to defend his people under attack, preferring to court the support of the middle class academics and the power-crazed money men he seems to spend quite a lot time with. Get a grip Eddy-boy, you need to choose a side. If you’re a socialist who cares about those who cannot defend themselves, start acting like one. If you’re actually a new version of Blair, walk away now and let a genuine socialist take the wheel.