“and Ed Miliband even went as far as admitting Labour should not have opposed the right for people to buy their own homes during Thatcher’s era.

So far so good.”

Erm, excuse me please! “Admitting”? “Contending” perhaps, but “admitting” suggests we all agree that Labour actually was wrong about this, which we certainly do not.

The idea of a “right” to buy one’s council house is utterly preposterous. They’re municipal property which people rent. Why would that imply a right to buy them, any more than I have a “right” to buy my local swimming baths? Council housing was created for a reason – to provide decent, affordable accommodation. That’s a basic social need and by letting people buy council houses you’re destroying an essential public service.

If I were Prime Minister I’d end the right to buy in a second.

Of course, saying ‘sorry’ repeatedly is not the same as giving the impression you have moved on from the past.

Sorry but why does the Party have to move on from the past? New Labour under Blair was the most successful (in the narrow sense of being elected a lot rather than in the better sense of achieving anything useful) Labour administration ever. It is not clear to me that people are so turned off by them they won’t even listen.

Nor is it obvious to me why they have to apologise. The only thing that they might want to think about is Iraq as it was poorly handled and alienated their base. But the way things are turning out that may be counter productive.

@1. Yes, quite right. Utterly preposterous that council house tenants should get uppity ideas about owning the homes they live in, like their more wealthy neighbours, colleagues or friends do. These oiks should realise they’re only tenants in municipal property, and they should count themselves lucky to be housed in the property of the all-mighty Municipal Borough of Nowheresville.

Spoken like an officer, no doubt?

On a less sarcastic note, the relevant problem of a lack of social housing caused by RTB could be more easily resolved by allocating the proceeds of RTB to council house-building.

Agree with So Much for Subtlety, I think the Labour Party is making a much bigger deal out of ‘moving on’ than the electorate does. If you spend 13 years in government some things are bound to go wrong. I agree about moving on, we need to move on but that does not involve constantly apologising and bad mouthing the last Labour government.

I also agree about right to buy council houses, good idea by DC to encourage more of this and in turn building new ones.

@1 – It wouldn’t be a problem if the discount was lower (sufficient for another house to be built, ignoring profit and land costs mean it’ll still be considerable) and money was reinvested in social housing, would it?

@2 – Because you don’t want them elected again, of course. Duh.

Unless Labour are willing to re-establish their left-wing roots, they’re whistling in the dark. (And there are Grue’s)

Blair or Brown era -

The Brownites,led by the two Eds undermined by the Blair government and their own party – now Ed MIliband supports academies but as a true Brownite acolyte both him and Balls opposed academies – have they apologised for that.? No.

Those two were meeting on 21 JUly 2005 (barely three months into the new parliament) and plotting to depose Blair for Brown – not for any particular policy or direction – but just to get their boss the top job and advance their career. But what is worse is while they were meeting terrorists tried another attack in London that morning – Have they apologised for that? NO.

In the whole Blair Brown tussle, they also showed tremendous bad judgement suggesting Brown has an brith right to be PM and the leader of the Party – even though he turned out to be the worst decision – but hey getting cabinet jobs was more important – but have they apologised for that. NO

I actually agree with Ed MIliband’ problem identification – yes far too many people in our society have been rewarded for bad behaviour – but Ed Miliband himself embodies that.

For example, he wants everyone to pay their fair share but did not have a problem to pay less inheritance taxes by working in tandem with his brother.

For example, doing his best along with Yvetter Cooper and ED Balls to undermine any government policy not approved by their head of the Mafia family – Gordon and running around conferences to undermine Blair

For example, going and shouting at Sally Morgan demanding Blair leave office because Brown should be PM – and Pushed a dodgly bloke on top of the party and government – and get to the cabinet quick way.

To top it all off – the voters think and rightly so he shafted his brother and won a dodgy election which has been confirmed by a University of Bristol study was fairly dodgy.

And now he wants us to behave well – and he wants to judge businesses – even thoguh there are very few people in the shadow cabinet who ever held a real job and reached their current jobs without direct patronage –

And Miliband is the man to break closed circled –

And the headline Blair era on this article is proper tabloidy Sunny – instead it should read public still rejects backstabbers the two EDs to run the economy competently.

I think the people do not trust the Brownite cabal.

Despite everything they elected Blair thrice and dumped Brown and his cabal at the first opportunity.

I know many in the party are already talking about yvette cooper as the next leader – another Brownite and it would lead to one more election loss.

And then the country saw the jeers from the conference and despite apologies later, the smile and the pause shows Ed Miliband wanted that response despite realising it was a major faux pass later.

What a speech – what a conference – shadow cabinet members trying hard to differentiate bad and good companies – tracking back on tuition fees and the leader having to defend his speech for three days straight in damage limitation.

There are some capable MPs but the miliband acolyte Lisa Nandy needs to do some reading. She claimed the Federation of Small Businesses would support Miliband’s idea but they opposed it straight up – and while two other MPs felt the Blair jeering was the low point – she did not see a low point at all in the conference sitting next to those other two MPs.

It would be like the AV – there is a progressive majority yeah – oops only 7 small pockets in the United Kingdom voted in favour. Similar thing is waiting for teh Prvada (guardian) columnists when Ed Miliband and the Labour Party get a thrashing in the polls starting with Red Ken next year.

It would be like the AV – there is a progressive majority yeah – oops only 7 small pockets in the United Kingdom voted in favour.

Not many in favour of electoral reform were also in favour of AV, which would have affected things, plus the yes campaign was astonishingly shite. However given that Labour’s current performance can also be described as such I can’t really disagree with you over much about their electoral chances.

“1997 was nearly 15 years ago”. Yes, and it’s also four years since Blair stood down as leader. In my experience on the doorstep, it’s the Gordon Brown legacy that is much more of a problem for the party, and the perception – unfair to a great extent but not adequately dealt with by the party – that he wrecked the economy and left the country with a legacy of unmanageable debt.

The continuing hang up that many in the party have with Tony Blair is preventing us from looking at the real problems that the public have with us.

I’ve added a new poll out by YouGov tonight – which explicitly points out public think Ed M hasn’t done enough to move on from Blair-era

@8 – Quite. I actively campaigned against it, because it tends to exacerbate major vote swings, as we see in this county.

@7: “Despite everything they elected Blair thrice and dumped Brown and his cabal at the first opportunity.”

That’s spinning more Blair mythology. Blair as party leader lost 4 million votes between the elections of 1997 and 2005 and at least half the membership of the Labour Party. It was no accident that turnout at those three elections 1997, 2001 and 2005, was low by historic standards:
http://www.ukpolitical.info/Turnout45.htm

None of that adds up to growing enthusiasm and support for Blair’s leadership of the Labour Party.

You can whistle loudly Leon and people still would’nt vote for a left wing laobur party, Why sohuld teh public feel that labur should apologise for the Blair era, Blair was level pegging in the polls as he left office, it was teh Brown era that made laobur unpopular, most of the things that Sunny feels laobur should apologise for during teh Blair era, like private money in Schools or the NHS, or the anti terror laws were popular with the public.

5. Leon Wolfson

Unless Labour are willing to re-establish their left-wing roots, they’re whistling in the dark. (And there are Grue’s)

Socialism is utterly and totally dead. It died when their inspiration collapsed and the Berlin Wall came down. The Socialists tried to attach themselves to the Soviet band wagon and so they collapsed too.

Left-wing roots? Ha! Unless you mean a return to cloth-cap old-style Labour Party politics. That may have some chance of success. I can just see what the genuine Old Style Labour Party would say about Gay marriage, immigration and crime. Probably vote for the BNP.

Labour cannot get elected as long as they threaten people who want to own their own houses. End of story.

@1. Yes, quite right. Utterly preposterous that council house tenants should get uppity ideas about owning the homes they live in, like their more wealthy neighbours, colleagues or friends do.

If I can scrape together 5,000, should the government should give me another 15,000 so that I can buy a brand new Vauxhall Insigna?

Corollary, should I be able to buy a bed on a hospital ward for my own personal use, thus stopping anyone else using it or even renting it out to any potential patients, knowing that no new bed will be brought in to replace it?

The headline is actually very true of the poll Sunny highlighted – so many apologies Sunny.

But interestingly, the poll showed a rather favourable view of Balir on other questions:

- Blair is regarded as the best Labour party leader by 24% – leading John Smith the next person on the list by 9% points.

- 39% of people think Blair was a good or great Prime Minister, 24% an average one, 35% a poor or terrible one. (that’s 63% considering him a decent or better Prime Minister)

- Majority of the respondents felt it was wrong to boo the former PM

Yes they said Miliband should move Labour away from Blair legacy – there are two reasons:

1) Miliband was right to say parties that live in the shadow of former leaders do not progress

2) Tories would of course want Miliband to leave Blair direction because he won three massive victories against them – surprisingly, within the Labour party its really close only 4% more want to move away from Blair and 35% of Lib Dems think Blair’s policy weren’t too bad.

Do you still think Blair is an electoral liability – No. Especially since Blair heir has been duly installed in No. 10 and more importantly, public tend to remember past leaders more fondly as time passes.

Blair should not be in the equation directly about Labour moving forward. But Labour must not also allow the coalition to claim the many successful reforms carried out in Blair government as their own.

But the key question is Miliband’s credibility with the electorate – that is Labour’s big problem.

@16 Shamit:

But why did Blair as Labour leader lose 4 million votes between the 1997 and 2005 elections? Why the fall in party membership? Why the historic low turnouts at the elections after 1997? Why did polls in both Britain and America turn against the Iraq war?

Blair, along with Peter Mandelson, Lord Layard, Kenneth Clarke, Michael Heseltine, and the LibDems, wanted Britain to sign up to join the Euro. Does anyone this side of sanity now think that not joining was a missed opportunity?

@14 – Right, because I’m a left winger, I’m a Fascist. Oh wait, I’m actually Jewish and you’re a socialist…National Socialist. Gee. Funnily enough, the British Communists marched against your ilk at Cable Steet, and lead the battle.

Socialism is still VERY much alive, and the EU countries practising it are a LOT more successful than this rapidly-becoming-third-world nation.

The Tories are starting to realise the political costs of slowly killing hundreds of thousands of people without even being seen to try to rectify the situation, so they’re re-announcing policies they haven’t and won’t act on. As with you, their shill, they’re lying vermin.