The question Brown must answer if Labour is to recover

Mike, Brighton

It's not if but when Brown goes. The risk/reward equation for Labour MPs is on the side of dumping Brown. Labour's huge issue is that it is broke (bankrupt - not just morally but financially) and cannot afford an election. It is utterly inconceivable that they could dump Brown, install new leader and not call a GE...but they can't afford one. Whoops!
The EU and European Commission must be looking on very nervously. If an election was called in say September. Cameron would campaign on the basis of an immediate referendum on the EU Constitution, er sorry Treaty - which would be dumped by the electorate in the same way the Labour party was

Pete

Exactly.

I write as a switcher myself (I haven't yet voted Conservative yet, but I have no choice so I will, regardless of whatever Labour leader is in power).

We've been led up the garden path and we're fuming. Few in the media seem to get it. Jeff Randall did last week, but I'm surprised it's taken so long for journalists to get this.

I can't get on the housing ladder. All the money has gone on council estate mums, immigrants and human rights lawyers.

If I'd strapped on a bomb to kill people in the name of this or that religion, maybe I'd have had New Labour crawling all over my 'heart and mind'. They don't give a stuff about ordinary people. All they care about is politically correct social engineering, which means getting me out of the picture for a start.

Well, this is one turkey that realises he's been voting for Christmas these last few years and I promise you over my dead body, never ever, ever, ever will I vote Labour again.

David Cameron can put Zippy, George and Bungle in the cabinet for all I care and I'll still vote for him.

I want New Labour broken and busted just like I am.

James J

It has long been predicted that a society that is very ‘diverse’ is a society where no one feels any obligation to support people they have nothing in common with. If this is true then the generation referred to is the one it will show in first.

David Lindsay

Yes, but what would the Tories do any differently?

salieri

Pretty accurate comment, provided you take away the vacuous word 'aspirational' and the deluded notion that only the 25- and 35-plus groups are disaffected. Everyone is drifting away from Labour except its own apparatchiks and even they have a simple message: ditch the pilot.

Perceptive Perry

Ah me, here comes the patronising Bullsh*t, and those horrible, horrible Noo Boring Liar words : ‘challenge’, ‘future’ . . .

‘Nah, not me guvner . . . nah, we neva dun the toff stuff.’

Anything but acknowledge how things really are and were.

Rise, sir whatever you’re called, white as snow. You’re sure to be needed again come 2010.

Nicholas

The toff strategy was all Conservative spin apparently. Having watched the remarkable Huhne on QT last night I must say the determination of leading Labour light(weight)s to block out reality and live in the complete fantasy world of their own belief system is hilarious.

Or would be if it wasn't for the fact that these idiots are in control of our lives. If they had any shred of respect for democracy they would understand the very clear message the public is sending them, step down and call a general election.

Drew

It's not that Labour can't afford a General Election - they probably can't even afford a leadership election. I'd imagine the printers of the ballot papers would want cash up front, not a cheque...

The most dangerous moment for Brown will be about ten minutes after a new state-funding deal for political parties becomes law.

Water

Mike has got it totally right, though the toff scenario was by no means spin!

Tian

But do the tories have answers for this age group of voters? The most important issue for this age group is affordable housing and Conservatives have no policies on providing cheap housing.

Jessica

Pete you're absolutley spot on, I am in this age group and feel exactly as you do.

Taylor, Uk

Mike, Brighton: 'The EU and European Commission must be looking on very nervously. If an election was called in say September. Cameron would campaign on the basis of an immediate referendum on the EU Constitution, er sorry Treaty - which would be dumped by the electorate in the same way the Labour party was.'

Let's hope the Irish vote NO to the Lisbon Treaty/Constitution soon, then the EU lot truly will panic, as it will delay the whole thing. By which time Cameron will have won a general and can gives us our Referendum.

Jo

Pete, you have expressed my thoughts so eloquently I feel there is nothing more I could possibly add.

Frank Pulley

The caption of this thread implies that someone reading this magazine is interested in questions that must be answered if Labour is to recover. I sometimes think it's the New Statesman I'm reading. I gave up my subscription for that when I grew up and transferred it to the Speccy. Surely we should be insisting that it is time to close down the life-support and phone the bloody undertakers, then watch their nearest and dearest squabbling over what's left of NuLab's possessions and positions. I wish the Editor and all the numerous 'associate editors' would spend more time agonising about how best to clear up the mess that will inevitably be left by this bunch of brigands and culture mechanics, rather than navel gazing about what Brown should do to avoid an utter rout; or who Labour's next leader should be. Who gives a toss? Annihilation is what he and his party deserve. That seems on the cards. Let's not posit remedies chaps - it's terminal. At the moment they are bed-blockers. Less of the bedside manner, James. We need some James Robertson Justice prognosis.

John Miller

What a crowd this lot are! McCabe "takes full responsibility" then goes on to list the reasons for failure, stressing that they are all national,PLP reasons. Nothing to do with him then. Wonder if he told Gordon in advance that he was only aiming for second? And the final piece de resistance, good old NuLab denial of documented fact.

Hysteria

Has Dave said he woudl give us a Referendum ...? I must have missed that promise.

dexey

I agree entirely with Pete but I learnt the lesson nearly 40 years ago. if you have a job, money in your pocket and aspirations to improve your lot in life then it is a mistake to vote labour- old or new.
Socialist pigs don't know how to behave at the trough.

TGF UKIP

One of those truly memorable posts, Pete, but when you rightly say "I am surprised it's taken journalists for so long to get this," you could have also expressed surprise that the Tories still appear "not to get it." Ignoring the fact that Gordon's spending binge was always likely to lead to grief and ruin, Dave and Boy George still remain committed to Labour's spending plans and steadfastly pass up every opportunity to escape from that committment. Indeed with the £28bn extra promised for the bottomless pit, they clearly intend to add to not to reduce spending. If you really want to see a government spending less, wasting less and taxing less then I'm afraid you'll be wasting your vote with the Cameron Tories.

Fergus Pickering

I keep on saying this like an old record. It doesn't matter what Dave SAYS. Tories always tx less and spend less than Socilialists. It's one of the thingsthat distinguishes them. When the blessed Margaret came into office she didn't cut spending straight away. She was not able to. But IN THE END she cut taxes and spending. Which is what Dave will do. Similarly, when Broon began as Chancellor he called himself Prudence. But IN THE END... but of course in the end. He's a Socialist and it's what they do. I vote UKIP in European elections because you are the only party that is sound on Europe. You're mad about everything else though so I don't vote for you in PROPER elections.

Rex Burr

Pete, I agree that brown is responsible for your lack of housing opportunity but don't expect the Tories to get prices down to a morally acceptable level as that would hurt too many of their wealthy friends who profit from exploitation.

Max

“Nor could we stem the drift from Labour of the aspirational 25- and 35-plus age groups"
I suspect this is focus group fantasy. I haven't met anyone recently, be they school-leaver or pensioner, who would vote Labour into power again at the next election. Labour could, in theory, turn things around in two years, but that would require a fundamental change in the people involved which I don't think is possible. If anything insolvency seems to be Labour's most pressing problem.

http://theerrorlog.blogspot.com

David C

I heard a telling observation on BBC R5 just before the local elections. This person had voted Labour in 1997; he was not voting Labour again. He said he was Guilty but he just hadn't been caught yet.
He was referring to the never-ending river of regulation brought in to direct our lives (all for the common good, of course). Labour is addicted to Laws.
They love the solid THUD of legislation against individual rights.
If something is a perceived ill in our society, bring in a law: enforcement is immaterial - just so long as the law is there.

We are the proud possessors of a Fascist (in the true sense) government.

Mussolini would not have dared as much.

TGF UKIP

Fergus Pickering, "when the Blessed Margaret came into office she didn't cut spending straight away." Quite so and a point made by other Coffee Housers previously. But is it perhaps being forgotten that, as a consequence of the IMF's strictures in 1976, Denis Healey had already taken an axe to spending so doing part of The Lady's job for her to the fury of his colleagues.

It also appears to me that you are giving Dave an awful lot of benefit of the doubt, when opportunity after opportunity is passed up to escape from the Labour spending pledges and reduce taxes and poll after poll indicates very substantial support for such a course. Being perhaps less trusting of patrician Tory politicians, I can only conclude that either Dave intends sticking with big spending or this appears to be very weird politics. (Would serve him right if Gordon beats him to it.)

Finally, the "madness" of UKIP, and here Fergus I really do beg you to go to the UKIP website and look up their synopsis of policies from April 9th and I suspect you will find them not as mad you paint them to be. In fact I think there will be very little you, or any other conservative, will disagree with - a grammar school in every town for starters.

David Lindsay

Fergus Pickering:

"It doesn't matter what Dave SAYS."

Really? Tony Blair said that he was some sort of Tory (not those words, of course). Did that not matter, either?

"Tories always tax less and spend less than Socilialists."

Yer what?!? Only if you count nothing but income tax, and not even always then.

"When the blessed Margaret came into office she didn't cut spending straight away."

Or ever, very much. She just moved it, and the cost of paying for it, around a lot.

"But IN THE END she cut taxes and spending."

Where? When? How?

And is this really it? Nothing about family life, or strong communities, or historical consciousness, or national self-government, or law and order, or educational standards, to name but a few?

No, of course not. If you still think that the Eighties were some sort of Golden Age, then there cannot possibly be.

The Non UKIP and Lindsay Parties

David Lindsay and UKIPTGF

Do you pay attention to anything that is written in these blogs?

Pete above at May 30th, 2008 4:48pm is why what you two are saying about Cameron is lastingly irrelevant. There are millions out there like Pete who will do the same. So instead of banging on about something that is absolutely irrelevant to what is going to happen, whether you, we or anyone else likes it, simply shut up or say something new and constructive.

TGF UKIP

Wow, such a schoolmasterly rebuke - clearly the Coffee House whips are out in force this week. First Ian C, in very similar terms, tells me to belt up, and now this. Same answer
though - no chance, pal!

Politics is, or should be, about strong feelings and I feel very strongly about Dave and the Cameron Tories. I distrust him and I fear him and what a Cameron Government might bring us. Not just a Blue Labour continuation of tax and spend but, more seriously, a prolongation of the bullying, politically correct social and gender engineering and extreme greenery that has been foisted on us for the past eleven years.

Dave's Tory Party seems to me to be designed as a London/BBC Tory Party entirely fit for the approbation of the Today Programme and the average "Independent" reader.

If, as some Coffee Housers believe, this is all an act and the ugly duckling politically correct, social Democrat Cameron will metamorphose into a beautiful conservative swan in 2011, I will be the first to cheer, prostrate myself and beg forgiveness but till then you'll just have to press the mental "off" button and ignore my posts.

One thing I will give Dave though is that the sod does at least have a sense of humour. Something, together with a spirit of tolerance and generosity, which sometimes appears sadly lacking on this website.

floatingvoter

I think Dave has decided to say nothing. Whilst he is having a quiet time, the labour party are destroying themselves. There is also a risk that any policy he brings out currently will probably be put into the Labour manifesto. If he doesn't say anything for much longer then you might begin to think he has no alternative policies

Fergus Pickering

am tolerany even of UKIP supporters. Again though, it doesn't matter what you SAY. We know what you're like. Women chained to the kitchen sink -wasn't that you or was it just someone pretending to be you?