Interview: Lammy speaks to the common people

wizzer

Hallelujah! Another one sees the light!

Was it ghost written by IDS?

London Calling

Lammy also stated in the House of Commons recently that there are 28,000 unemployed in Tottenham…Hopefully Prince Charles will return again one day for the right reasons, meanwhile all hope is resting on the Work Programme, a bonus led initiative that means zero if training and jobs aren’t available…Areas like Tottenham need serious attention, only a small proportion of residents got caught up in the riots and shamed the majority who live there, as in all other areas across the UK involved...its where we go from here that matters…Lammy knows it all comes down to funding the right independent educational and training support, therefore it may also have to be voluntary led, however jobs still need to be created, as graduates know all too well…doing nothing is not an option…

perdix

He could be a One Nation Tory.

Axstane

David Lammy's problem is that he cannot understand traditional British values and also that until very recently he viewed everything through the eyes of a man of the black minority. His every public utternace was based on racial conflict, tolerance, intolerance.

it may well be that he is maturing and recognising that for all of New Labour's prattle their improvement in the lot of the poor was negligible, if indeed it was positive at all.

If there are 29,000 unemployed in Tottenham but more than 500,000 recent immigrants working in service industries in the capital what does that tell us? the possibilities are that they have no skills to offer or that they are unemployable due to attitude or visible degradation or that they are work-shy.

Mr Lammy is not going to solve that set of problems nor is anyone else unless a vast culture change can be induced.

The other day I was watching a documentary which showed people going into and out of Job Centres. On first appearance few oif them appaered to be naturally employable - gross obesity and optional facial disfigurements appeared to mar the employability of a large proportion of them. Those were at least as marked amongst the white unemployed as with the blacks who were shown in the clips.

TrevorsDen

'The troubled 70s and 80s' -- thats 20 years!
Is there a decade when Britain has not been troubled?
whatever happened to people pulling their fingers out and stopping making excuses??

Were the 90s troubled as well?

What about the noughties - I would suggest that the end of the noughtes were REALLY 'troubled'.
The comfort zone of the early noughties sowed the seeds of the riots.

'social liberalisation of the 60s'? Thats labour again then.... or rather that well known social democrat Roy Jenkins.

London Calling - basically Lammy says what the problem is - The Labour Party. And he has been supporting it all his life and apologising for it all his political life.
Will he resign - will he start supporting IDS?

I won't hold my breath?

Wilhelm 1

I gave up reading this turgid, word salad, gibberish after the first paragraph.

Ps. Im still waiting for an apology by leaders of the black community for what their kinsfolk did during the summer.

Jeremy

David Blackburn:

"Labour's present uncertainty owes much to its technocratic, privileged leadership groping around to find today's working class."

Left to his own devices, I don't think that Ed's an altogether bad sort of chap. It's just that Marxism can have a terribly inhibiting influence upon a person's development...

David, the gist of what you have written suggests that you think Lammy might make for a genuinely interesting leader of the Labour Party. And perhaps he might. But do we really want one of those?

Don Birnam

Get a grip Blackburn! Lammy is a smug, albeit clever, twat who is totally disconnected from his electorate - who would vote for anyone on a Labour ticket.

tankus

Actually labour has been successful ...It has maintained its grasp on the area for decades

keep them breeding
keep them stupid
keep them non aspirational
keep pumping in immigrants
keep them benefit dependet

KEEP THEM VOTING LABOUR

You would think that even after half a century of a labour council and MP ..through even, an almost a decade and a half of the most profligate labour government in power EVER ....there would be change ...But no ...the 'nam has remained the same ...and thus labour

you cannot give the inmates hope and vision ...and god forbid... aspiration! ...otherwise they may question and vote else where!

all part of the plan

Santorum

Willhelm

I'm still waiting from an apology from you for the member of your kinsfolk who let his dig cr@p on the pavement outside my house.

Heartless P.

Off - or on topic - the Leader of HM oppo says THEY will hae to clear up after the 'coalition' government in 2015.

Never, when in Oppo, did I once hear the H2B say that in such clear tones. Or perhaps it was lost in all the meaningless drivel he mouthed.

Austin Barry

Oh dear, I suspect that Lammy is that saddest thing, a black man who wishes he were white. Beneath that urbane facade is Munch's Scream.

Monty

Suggest Lammy focuses his efforts on getting Tottenham a Regional Growth Fund or Enterprise Zone and sorting out his parliamentary expenses

Verity

Wilhelm 1 -- I couldn't stick with the word salad, either. Heavy sledding.

joe

Social and economic conditions tend to be similar in different parts of the same country, be it Britain, America, or Finland.

Poverty and unemployment in Britain exist as much in areas such as Cornwall, Cumbria, and Lincolnshire as they do in Tottenham or Toxteth.

There is poverty in Maine, the Dakotas and Idaho.

But the riots started in Notting Hill ( the first since Peterloo ) and have carried on in Brixton , Toxteth, and now Tottenham, Croydon, Manchester and so on.

In America , there have been no riots in European areas since the Civil War, but they occur in Miami, South L A, Detroit, Chicago, South Boston and so on.

Conversely, there have been no riots in Finland in recorded history.

Until David Lammy and other apologists face this issue squarely and explain to us why riots are largely confined to African and West Indian areas, they are not to be taken seriously.

Enoch Powell pointed out that minorities are alienated, not by economic conditions,but by the necessary fact of being alien. Searching for Marxist/ economic/social reasons to explain the obvious is an essentially diversionary process.

As Orwell pointed out, in a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. Lammy doesn't even make an attempt to confront the truth.

Terence Hale

Hi,
Mr. Lammy speaks to the common people. This may sound committal, but not “too common people” please. In addition the term “ today's working class” is out of date, more “today's consuming class” is appropriate

Santorum

Joe

The extensive riots this summer in Manchester were largely white.

Holly ......

Nice to see the likes of Lammy 'cleanse their soul' of guilt for their blind ignorance, stupidity and inability to encourage self worth, self discipline and boundaries of behavior.

What amazes me more is that now there is a mass 'awakening' to the problems Labour caused and it took riots to wake journo's & the MSM up. To finally see what we have been saying for yonks.

We were nasty, out of touch or, far too well off to understand the misery these people lived in...More money was thrown their way whenever anyone questioned Labour's policy, just to prove Labour were
'nice', 'understanding' and,'tolerant'. The Tories were evil for expecting the 'poor' to at least try to do better.

While you journo's were lapping up the great school exam results and slating as callous anyone who questioned the hard work of our young children, thousands of them were leaving primary school with little education and, even less self worth, manners
or respect...The really bad one's were stuck in 'special needs' classes...More funding for the school, while the child lost out on a chance to prosper.
No one could confront those going off the rails, because Labour did not want the betrayal of thousands of children & families
to become widespread knowledge....Where were the journo's?
Far too busy hacking and acting like scum to notice what the hell was going on and, even though some of us were telling you, you did sod all.

Lammy now writes a book on the back of the people he betrayed.
How very Fabian of him.
How very Blair.

HampsteadOwl

@ Heartless P

Of course your comment is off-topic. You only ever have one topic which is how awful you think David Cameron is. Since you change your nom de plume about a fair bit, have you ever thought of substituting "brainless" instead? Either that, or surprise us with your capacity to think and write something different for once.

You might even think of dropping the hilarious "H2B". All of us have laughed quite enough now thank you very much.

As to Mr Lammy, he seems like a good man trapped in the wrong party. Tottenham is somewhere he cares about, yet he could never aspire to represent it other than wearing a red rosette. And I think he is smart enough to know that his party, for all that it might nod along to his sentiments, has a vested interest in keeping the inner cities repressed and dependent, for all the votes that it delivers.

Nicholas

The problem is that when Labourites talk of "character" and "responsibility" it often translates in reality into the nasty, intrusive authoritarianism of New Labour. My suggestion would be for those like Gordon Brown who suffer intolerable angst about the "poor" to go into charity and/or missionary work and stay away from parliament. When do-gooding becomes state social engineering policy backed up by coercive legislation it all tends to go horribly wrong.

There is also a delicious irony in Labour attempting to alleviate the resentment and polarisation it thrives on, if not actively encourages, in order to strengthen its political raison d'etre. When their whole dogma is bound by an imagined "struggle" for justice, even during the power and wealth of the early years of New Labour, the vested interests it protects become even narrower and less relevant to the forgotten poor white trash, the unemployed and unemployable "working men" rotting in the inner cities.

TrevorsDen

Give us a break heartless, you pointless waste of bigoted space.
Blair promised to be a radical reforming PM, promising to shake up education for instance. He totally failed and made things worse - not least because he was frustrated by Brown.

The govt is reforming benefits and health and education and local government and pensions and you name it.
In that sense (and thats the sense he meant) he is the heir to Blair. He is succeeding where Blair failed and if He wins 3 elections I shall be delighted.

So just cut out the crass rubbish and address some real problems.

Remittance Man

'I favour a Community Land Trust,because the community owns the land… you can buy the property on a long lease and invest in it, but it always reverts back to the community.'

And how would that work, Mr Lansley? Presumably these CLTs will set the prices at which property is bought and sold at below market rates.

What makes home ownership such a driver of social responsibility is the very fact that people feel they have a stake in the local community. If houses are bought and sold at prices controlled by the CLT where is that sense of ownership?

And just why are people going to invest in their homes under this scheme if they see no return from that investment, which they certainly won't if the prices are controlled by some arbitrary body.

I can see what Mr Lansley is trying to acheive and I actually think he is pushing this idea for genuinely good reasons, but I fear he has made the classic mistake all socialists make - he forgets that in human affairs incentives matter. In this case the incentive is owning ones home and seeing a return on any investment made in it.

Eric

Wilhelm 1 - I think you're mistaken, this is the Spectator, not an EDL forum.

Comments such as "just off the boat" are bordering on deeply unpleasant.

Top Dog

Forget Lamby, I'm looking forward to Beefy's take on the riots.

Wilhelm 1

Eric

'' the phrase just off the boat is bordering on deeply offensive.''

I quite agree, its awfully frightfully horrid and beastly, in actual fact its the crime of the century !! that phrase '' just off the boat '' its up there with the Nazi Holocaust in pure evil, isn't it ?

I should have said '' just off the plane'' since they don't use boats anymore.

Eric, don't be a pedantic, supercilious, twittering twit fest of twittery, racked with liberal guilt, all your life, eh ?

Eddie

The fact that most rioters and looters in Tottenham were black simply cannot be ignored or denied: the question is whether the skin colour of the criminals made the police more reluctant to do their job and go in hard to stop them for fear of being called racist. I suspect that is the case. That police inaction gave the rest of the country a green light to go out and loot.

We are constantly told by the BBC, the media, local councils, the education system and politicians how immigrants to this country have 'enriched' all our lives and that we should 'celebrate' all this vibrant diversity etc etc etc.

However, when riots like this happen, the same people do strangely quiet and refuse to even discuss the race of the people rioting and looting, many the descendents of immigrants, and how much they have impoverished - not enriched - this country and caused us problems. And I say that as the son of an immigrant too.

Lammy's book is really a pretty shameless attempt to cash in on the riots - just look at that cover! The publishers must have been rubbing their hands in greedy gleee when they happened, such will be the increased book sales from the Tottenham MP. Not blaming him of course - he's just a politician, after all, so is bound to be an attention-seeking egomaniac opportunist.

Wilhelm 1

The deception of others is rooted in the deception of ones self and the liberal establishment and the lame stream media is in complete denial about the giant ELEPHANT in the room.

The police shot dead gangster, rapper drug lord Mark Duggen and Africans used this as an excuse to riot and loot.

And that is that.

Verity

Is the British taxpayer paying for security for multimillionaire Tony Blair, or does he cover his own costs?

fergus pickering

I've been wondering what H2B meant. I still don't know. Would anyone like t enlighten poor old Fergus? If the joke is funny I promise to laugh like anything.

Laban Tall

"Vast swathes of society have been marooned by the social liberalisation of the 1960s and the more recent market liberalisation. Those twin revolutions have undermined traditional family structures, public morality and low skilled jobs."

What we saw in the Thatcher years was grudging acceptance of the 60s social "gains" while she fought to implement her economic "gains". It was during the Thatcher years that illegitimacy and crinme soared, and the underclass grew to become visible. Committed to winning her economic war, she scarcely seemed to realise that their WAS a culture war, let alone that she was losing it.

Key to the current cross-party consensus is the tacit agreement between New Tory (Thatcher's government was as shocking to traditional, paternalistic Tories as Blair's was to 'old Labour') and New Labour - that the "social gains" of the 1960s would be preserved as long as the "economic gains" of the 1980s were preserved.

The old Tories may have hated mass immigration, but Cameron's crew realise that mass immigration is a more effective weapon keeping working wages down (and allowing director wages to rise exponentially) than any amount of legislation. Surely that's got to be, from the perspective of the Tory funders, worth a few little concessions like gay marriage, compulsory token women in the boardroom and the reorientation of all prison loos away from Mecca ?