The Labour leadership contest continues

Dimoto

"ethical economy" eh? Yet another meaningless soundbite.
Since all three candidates are up-to-their-necks compromised with the thoroughly unethical Blair-Brown regime, would anyone really take this seriously ?

Anthony Francis

It doesn't matter a joy what their personal manifestoes or their principles are, because as shown by the last thirteen years every one of them will lie in their teeth to get into a position of power.
(Balls will say, "So what?")

wrinkled weasel

Yes, I keep hearing that they "failed to listen". What they failed to do was to buy enough people off, especially the sponging classes. Creating Four Million public sector jobs and dreaming up ways of gerrymandering the vote in marginals by tarting up railway stations was never going to swing the great unwashed, was it? As for working people, do you mean all those who do it the honest way, e.g, working nine to five, paying taxes, seeing most of their salary going on simply getting to work?

No, what the Labour party got wrong was that it ran out of money and could no longer finance the cushion it provided for its core vote, which is made up of those who do nothing, and those who are paid as consultants to those who do nothing.

David Lindsay

Since this, good though it is, contains not a single specific policy, might Jon Cruddas be standing for Labour Leader after all?

ollie

I'm coming round to thinking that Miliband snr would be better for the Tories than Balls as Labour leader. Balls has some fight in him - but miliband is a machine politician with vacuity at his core. The pregnant pause would sound great at pmqs.

Moraymint

In the end, socialists always run out of other people's money.

Repeat, ad nauseam.

Snowman

‘Each person has the right to be human in his or her own way’. Please, read the short sentence again and think about it for a while. What does it mean? Does it mean something one can relate to, something one can observe, feel its relevance in every day life? If so what? Or could it mean anything anyone wants it to mean? You know, I’m a person and my own way of expressing my humanity is through sitting on my arse 24-7 except for the visit to the local Post Office to pick the Giro. Will it pass? How about ‘each human has the right to be a person in his or her own way’. Any practical or philosophical difference between this and the original quote supplied from the New Statesman’s essay by Jon Cruddas, the Labour thinker of whom James says that ‘many admirers in the Labour movement regret that he’s not running’.

Decades ago, plodding through volumes of dreary writings by Marx, Engels, Lenin and other lesser scribblers of the communist creed I thought ‘God, what a lot of drivel’ for often the stuff was totally devoid of any tangible meaning, here and there, however, the voluminous maledictions on the bourgeoisie did provoke a thought, mostly against the one intended by the author. How wrong of me then to think that dear boring Karl could write nothing but crap. Within just few decades, and some help from James, Karl’s followers are obligingly furnishing the real thing.

TrevorsDen

'Ethical economy' ... that should see the nation bankrupted then.

Balls is being truly duplicitous if he thinks labour kept its middle class support. Take a look at the electoral map of england. Labour does not exist in its middle class areas and it holds precious few seats in Scotland outside of the Strathclyde belt.

Balls has spent 13 years and predicated his entire economic policy to destroying the staples of working class employment. His last 3 years was spent making sure the young were as ill educated and ill prepared as possible to do any better.

We must wish Balls well - he would be the cement that holds the coalition together. We doubt the Telegraph will re-dredge his expenses record though.

Andrew SW18

"Dear Leader of the Labour Party, I'm afraid there are no more ideas. Kind regards - and good luck! Gordon."

John Bracewell

'The Labour leadership contest continues'
- So what.

westymorlander

@Andrew SW18

Gordon?

Gordon who?

Olaf Rye

Oh Lord, the 'covenant with the electorate' was drivel from Clinton. Why do politicians use these vapid slogans ?

2trueblue

Ethical economy, reciprocity, liberty. Liebore will surely struggle to understand the meaning of any of the above.
We had 13yrs of Liebore destroying all that was good in our society, who cares what happens to them?

TGF UKIP

So where's the all the rancorous splits and factional infighting you so confidently and frequently predicted, James?

Glyn H

I have just heard Johnathan Baume of the First Division Association defending senior civil servants earning mote than the PM on the basis that Mr Cameron is already a millionaire. Truly has the baleful spirit of Brown and Balls become a cancer in our society.

stephen

An amusing side show to main stream poltics!
Just imagine it was running at the same time as a Lab Lib coalition government!

RMH

@glyn H

the FDA are clueless chumps, they know their cash and pensions are excessive and will be cut, as will their members.

Vulture

Balls is right (God I never thought I'd write that: it feels all wrong). There IS a huge section of the Middle Class that is still gripped by infantile Leftism and hatred of the 'Tories'. You can bet your bottom dollar that when the cuts start to bite they will squeal like hogs caught under a barn door.

The tragedy of the last electioon was that Dave did not stick it hard enough that Liebore had totally F****d the country and turned it into an overflowing toilet. The 'working class' certainly know it - since they are feeling the consequences in terms of crime and imigration.

The horrible smug chattering classes are still sheathed in illusion and I don't know what will shatter it. Horrible scared that in a few years thy will vote Liebore back in again.

Woody

I don't give a toss, which of the gruesome bunch becomes the next Labour leader, there is absolutely nothing inspiring about any of them.
Labour are really in a bad way if this is all they have got. Even the new MPs' look as though they have come of some conveyor belt. listening to some of them on the radio, they come out with all the old tribal soundbites. Truly depressing.