Is the Left Waking From Its Slumber?

Rhoda Klapp

This is so desperate it's not even wrong. It doesn't reach the connectedness required to BE wrong.

Polly Toynbee never created any job except maybe for sick-bag manufacturers.

Nobody could ever ever ever manage a national government with GB in charge, because he can't co-operate with anyone in his own despicable crew, never mind another party. He has to be ditched first. But then, we have a mechanism for getting a new government. It's an election. What is the problem with having one? Labour might lose. That's the problem the left has identified, and it's the reason behind all this rubbish. Get used to it. Labour might lose. Plenty of time then to worry anout whither the left.

Olaf Rye

This is, indeed, self-indulgence. It is debt that threatens jobs and demands for more public spending can only be sneered at inasmuch that we have had a government that has taken nearly 40% of the GDP in tax revenue and has never managed to balance the books in good times. This is outright incompetence. Moreover, what have we got for this public expenditure ? Everything is rubbish: poor hospitals, an emasculated police force, high crime rates, bad education, rubbish roads, bad equipment for our armed forces, etc. The only ones that have benefited are a mob of faceless bureaucrats. I must say, Gordon Brown is correct when he says that he created jobs, for 'creation' is the operative word: how many in this country actually have jobs that are not directly or indirectly dependent on government funding or their legislation ? No one wants to say it, but the public service must be drastically reduced and we need proper jobs that are not reliant on the stroke of a pen on some sheet of government paper.

The recommendation for proportional representation is just an attempt to limit the damage that will be wrought on the Labour Party in the coming election. Everyone associated with this entity are becoming increasingly venal and self-serving, unwilling to accept any responsibility for the catastrophe that they have presided over whilst assuring everyone that the 'boom and bust cycle' had come to an end and a brave new world had begun. All we got was Old Labour: tax, spend, regulate and borrow.

Daniel Heslop

"the formation of a national government to tackle the emergency"

How utterly terrifyingly sinister! So a "government of all the talents" really is a euphamism for fascism.

Lloyd

First to dismiss Toynbee's typical hyperbole. Unemployment has doubled but, as Brown correctly said at PMQs, is still a lot lower than ither western EU states. In any case, 'creating' jobs is what has given us Stafford hospital and 'five-a-day outreach co-ordinators'. (five whats a day? I might sign up.)

Last year Darling was all for taxing SUV's off the road - now we have a million new cars parked and thousands out of work. At the cost of paying benefits and company subsidies, a short-term major duty reduction might encourage those employed to buy a new car. This is the way to stimulate the economy.

Cruddas, on PR, has the stench of self-preservation of the elite. With all his faults, at least Major didn't go beyond a cones hotline.

PR gives control to party apparatchiks and creates a democratic deficit. Look at the EU, Belgian, Dutch or Italian parliaments to see how party cronyism marries with commercial lobbying to the detriment of us poor proles.

The warp and weft of public opinion has given us a move to Thatcherism to correct a post-war socialism, followed by Blair as Thatcher-lite and now, potentially, Cameron as Blair-lite. Tired governments need to be put out to grass and only the first-past-the-post system ensures that.

Rhoda Klapp

Three outa three so far. Thinking this is a party which cannot awake from its nightmare.

Martin, do you think there is anything in this foul tribe which deserves the loyalty it gets from you and others like you? Can't you see when its time to ditch them?

Or maybe a whole lot of supporters will post here to make my scepticism seem silly, and make sense of the original post?

Nick Kaplan

“Polly Toynbee never created any job except maybe for sick-bag manufacturers.” – Brilliant!

Hawkeye

So after years of resisting PR the left are thinking of embracing it. Why? Because with PR Labour will be guaranteed some power forever as every government will be a coalition government.
.
It is amazing with the left will do to cling to power. I simply cannot wait to see what Gordon's excuse for not calling the election will be.

David

"That means instituting a system of fair voting that can rewind the way Britain's political parties have sought to camp out in that mythical middle England"

You don't think it worrying to argue that the political system should be changed on the grounds it's not producing the "correct" results?

Fergus Pickering

La Toynbee with her knickers in a twist. Parturiunt montes and behold a Job Creation scheme. What jobs, Polly, and doing what? Oh, she simpers sweetly, it doesn't really matter what. Officers and co-ordinators don't you know? Yes, Polly, we kmow, we know. Go to sleep again, darling. Sorry to have bothered you. Think Tuscan summers.

Alf Tupper

The Left will do what the Left does when it wakes: yawn, light a spliff, think about all those people who left for work hours ago, and help itself to a leisurely and gratuitous wank.

RW

I tried to say this before, thoroughly enraged, and got censored, so I'll try again politely: Mr Bright, are you quite sure you are blogging in the right atmosphere and to the right audience, or might it be better to return to a more familiar and receptive stamping ground, like the poor old New Statesman?

Your tribal loyalty is utterly incomprehensible. It makes you blind to reality.

TrevorsDen

Institute a system of fair voting.
Ha - just when first past the post promises Labour annihilation, lets change the system.

National Government? The last time we had one of those was when Rommel was crossing the Meuse.
The point being that the then Prime Minister (the incompetent cause of the crisis) had to resign before it was possible.

Your delusional slip is showing Mr Bright.

And Toynbee - its not long ago she was getting into a huff saying 10% unemployment still meant 90% working.
Maybe the redundancies at The Guardian are causing her the rethink.

Searching for a 'government of all the talets' might be worthwhile if there was any talent to draw on. And if there were anything constructive they could do in the circumstances we find ourselves in.
Otherwise this is glib nonsense parading as the pretence there is a solution to the crisis.
Like a fever it has to take its course.

David Alexander

Polly this, Polly that.
Have you read the comments to Toynbees articles?
Ordinary people hate the ground over which she slithers.

Fergus Pickering

Tribal loyalty is never incomprehensible, but why should the left be a tribe? Like the Bullingdon, it is a club for callow youth. Mrs Pickering and I won the New Statesman crossword on a number of occasions in the early seventies but advancing years and experience meant the natural increase in our collective wisdom and no more New Statesman not long after. I'm sure the same quite natural declension is occuring with Mr Bright. Nobody rediscovers a liking for Kylie Minogue and nobody RETURNS to leftyhood. Some persist in their folly of course, but not Mr Bright. Good on him!

elixelx

The Left, of which you, Martin, are not ashamed to affiliate yourself (shame on you, genius!) is like RUST--it never slumbers or sleeps!
Of course that makes it god-like for some people, like Martin, until he realizes the accidental prescience of the Headline:Is the Left Waking From Its Slumber?
Indeed it may well be, only to discover that on lower and higher Education, Social Policy, Redistribution of Wealth, Politicization of Media and Martin and Marr, the world and all the honest-thinking people in hold it in contempt!
What a Rip (as in Van Winkle!) to find yourself made irrelevant as you slept and dreamed your golden Marxist dreams!
Polly is crackers! Marr is a blot! Martin, your surname is oxymoronic!
Publish this and be damned, Sir!

Occasional Ostrich

Time for the stake through the heart, the cross and the silver bullet?

Wily Trout

I think if you want to witness the Left waking from its slumbers you should visit Bob Crow's new party website. Set up to stop disaffected working class voters abandoning Labour for the BNP. I think Mr Bright is mistaking the metropolitan chattering classes for the Left. He wants to get out more.

Grahame P

Is the left waking from its slumber? I do hope not. It's done a bad enough job sleep-walking us into the current disaster. Increasing the public sector funding requirement, through idealogical commitment to a 'big state', has contributed to making us so badly prepared for this downturn. That, and incompetent management which believes that investing in the bureaucracy of regulation (without actually regulating) somehow makes our country more efficient. Or that increasing State dependency somehow encourages self-reliance and social responsibility. More of the same isn't a recipe for anything but deeper disaster and greater social fracture.

Calling them the 'liberal-left' is an oxymoron. They're the most illiberal bunch of incompetent nincompoops ever to afflict our nation. Polly Toynbee might think its a good idea to shovel ever increasing tracts of the nation's diminishing wealth into the rapacious maw of the bloated State, but then she's an ideologically driven commentator - not a wealth creator. And people who hope that by repeating the same social experiments we'll somehow deliver a different outcome, are demonstrably incapable of learning from experience.

Mind you, neither are we, the Great British Public. We voted Labour in before and got exactly the same result then as well. This might be a global crisis, but British banks (as well as US banks) were in large part responsible for causing it. I'm surprised Gordon Brown can attend meetings of international finance ministers without feeling the sort of sense of shame and failure which only hari-kiri or immediate self-immolation could sate. So if, by waking from its slumber, you mean to imply that the 'left' can come up with some sort of solution to the mess they've put us in, then please... euthanasia has much more merit.

Michael Taylor

Martin,
There is no such thing as 'The Left' anymore. Have you not noticed that the Labour Party has produced the most authoritarian, and almost classically fascist, British government we've ever seen? And that it's damned near bankrupted the country?

What's left of the Left, post the Labour Party? Seriously? Just bone-headed class hatred, I'd guess. And judging from the reaction to those striking construction workers a few weeks ago, I think we know which class the Labour Party really hates/fears.

Imagine Miliband, Darling, Harman, Jowell et al down the WMC. Good luck with that.

Bottom line: the Labour Party has destroyed the Left in its entireity. It is bankrupt ideologically, politically, financially and ethically. There's no way back.

Rhoda Klapp

Martin, that's eighteen out if eighteen, not counting my three outa three post. Not much identification with your position. Response?

John Lea

David Alexander - don't be so quick to 'misunderestimate' MS Toynbee. I agree she represents the worst excesses of the Islington-based loony left brigade, but does she not - in a truly awful way - represent where we are now as a society? And by that, I mean her views probably chime with all of those liberal fools who voted for Blair's Third Way, and will soon vote for Cameron's compassionate conservatism. The likes of Ms Toynbee are here to stay...unfortunately!

CS

***Is the Left waking from its slumber?***

I think that a 15 year slumber is more of a coma.

JES

So the fascist left now see the 'merits' of PR. What a surprise. It's just an admission that there is now a new political elite, a ruling class who, whatever the hue, all have the same actual objective - to rule, and never be subjected to the real will of the electorate again. PR will do just that. The old saying that "whoever you vote for you end up with the Government", will be a sinister reality.

"I simply cannot wait to see what Gordon's excuse for not calling the election will be"

As the recession bites deeper and the bankruptcy of UK PLC looms ever closer Brown will declare a state of national emergency, martial law and suspend elections... Watch this space...

David Ossitt

There is still a powerful argument for the formation of a national government to tackle the emergency, something I first suggested in September last year.

There are also powerful arguments for the return of the death penalty for murder.

Corporal punishment in schools.

And for honesty and truth from MP's about their expenses.

But it is never going to happen.

I am beginning to think that you are not very well:-

You write:-

'Brown should have gone for it when he was still being celebrated for his handling of the crisis'

Celebrated? by whom; for your own good health stop reading The Guardian it is rotting your brain.

GaryO

Polly Toynbee has only woken up because the recession has started to effect journalists' jobs and newspaper circulations (read her new post lamenting the demise of many regional newspapers).

A more vigorous kick up their backside is needed before the lefties fully wake up though.

David B

I'm not so convinced about the need for a government of national unity just yet, but the rest makes sense:

Electoral reform (as well as a Bill of Rights and other reforms of our constitutional set-up, such as separation of powers) has to be on the table - if the election is a landslide then we will simply have another decade of no opposition to hold the government to account, dictatorship through lobby-fodder.

Having bought into the neo-liberal market economy so wholeheartedly, the government also has to have the nerve to pick up the pieces and tackle unemployment before it is too late.

"Is the Left waking up?"

Quite frankly, it is their duty to do so, because the Right certainly aren't producing any useful solutions (largely because they are in shock - their ideology having caused this crisis).

Victor, NW Kent

I see the cunning plot. Just as Labour is about to be decimated the great new idea is a government of National Unity.

Voters have the chance to be rid of Labour for 25 years or so - they will have little desire to see the same tired and distrusted faces still appearing nightly on the telly.

As for the introduction of PR, I say look at Italy, Pakistan or Israel and back away.

That can be done next time Labour reforms the Lords - about 2036AD.

David Bouvier

I can't remember who it was who proposed the law that the right answer to all headlines that are questions was "No".

This headline further corroborates the hypothesis.

David B

Of course "PR" can mean a number of things and nobody is really suggesting we follow the "pure PR" models of Israel, Italy or Pakistan, but most Western democracies have more representative voting systems than we do, with good results, so why not borrow one of the more moderate ideas?

Alternative Vote, Single Non-Transferable Vote, mixed First-Past-the-Post with Top-Up-Lists - any of these would avoid the current British disease of swinging from one unopposed government to another.

But is has to be accompanied by other measures to improve our democracy - an elected second chamber with increased powers, a bill of rights, formal separation of powers, etc.

Ferfus Pickering

Good Heavens, David B, why would we want to change the voting system in any particular when we're going to win with things just the way they are? I can understand why YOU would want to change it.

David Ossitt

David B

Alternative Vote, Single Non-Transferable Vote, mixed First-Past-the-Post with Top-Up-Lists - any of these would avoid the current British disease of swinging from one unopposed government to another.

All very complicated, what you mean by good result and what many of us mean by a good result are miles apart.

I suspect what you mean would be a government of all the talents, selected from a party list of the elite, all nice and cosy all very PC.

What I mean by a good result is the largest landslide vote for the Tory's, so that they will have the biggest ever majority of all time.

To give them the time and the opportunity to put right all that New Labour has destroyed.

To give this lot of shysters the thorough good kicking that they so justly deserve, to have at least half of the cabinet out of work and on the dole.

Now that would be a good result!

To give them the time and the opportunity to put right all that New Labour has destroyed.

To give David the chance to show his real conservative values and not these wishy washy pseudo New Labour ideas that he thinks he has to espouse in order to win the election.

Rhoda Klapp

How is changing the voting system going to get us better politicians? How could we trust them to deliver any reform of the constitution or voting system when their primary aim will be to feather their own nests, while keeping their noses in the trough (I know, mixed metaphor).

I wouldn't trust anybody currently engaged in politics to do it. We'd need a royal commission of people who were well-versed in history and constitutional theory but never involved. And they would be barred from participation in the future. Then we'd sit them in a room for ten years or however long it took, reporting to the Crown, not the government. And I'd like to limit them to a sheet of A4 for the complete document.

Rodders

The problem with arguing from a false premise is that you quickly end up floundering in a mire of compounded error.

If you don't correct the error immediately, and allow evolution to have its way, you end up with a hideous distortion of an ancient stupidity - just like this article.

What a struggle I had to read it all, simply to keep my mind from wandering down any of a hundred different paths, as it struggled to identify any kind of central truth from which it could then make sense of the rest of it.

Was your presence on this website intended to "provoke discussion"?

Well, that would be fine - if the left had anything to discuss.

David B

"why would we want to change the voting system in any particular when we're going to win with things just the way they are?"

That's what both Conservatives and Labour say every time - and then they take it in turns to have 10-15 years of unopposed, unaccountable government interspersed with similar periods in the wilderness.

No other Western democracy works like this, and we could hardly say we're happy with the results.

Maybe we can't get better politicians - like we can't change human nature - but we can make a better system.

That's why.

David Ossitt

David B.

No other Western democracy works like this, and we could hardly say we're happy with the results.

The great US of A does; for one.

It is our way; stop bleating and live with it.

Just because others have vastly inferior systems; that lead to wishy washy consensus politics, does not mean that we should change what has served us so very well for years.

Kiffa

The left waking up? God help us all. You do need to 'wake up'. The mind-set of the liberal left, and lefty blindness to the failed social policies that are a result of their 'vision', and their absolute refusal to acknowledge the empirical feedback of the failures of that social vision - crime, education, family disintegration, the underclass and other social pathology - will never cease to amaze me. How CAN you evade the mounting evidence of the FAILURE of your deepest held beliefs?
The Labour Project doesn't work. It never has. It never, ever will.
Now, go away and leave the rest of us alone.

Fergus Pickering

What we want, David B, is fifteen years of Tory Government interspersed with four r s of te other lot, just to keep us up to the mark. Unfortunately, the mad dogs have been in for TWELVE yers and that's enough to ruin the country. I blame it on Blair myself. No country would ever vote for a repeat of Brown. The system you want would have Nick Clegg permananently in government - a prospect ghastly to contemplate.

Oscar India

It's not asleep, it's just institutionally crap.

David B

David Ossitt,

No, you are wrong, the US does not have a system anything like ours - they have an elected head of state and a congress with two elected chambers - with well defined separation of powers between all three. They have no significant 'third parties', the president is elected by electoral college, not FPTP, senators are not proportional to population, and congressional districts have been gerrymandered to within an inch of their lives.

Power is often shared, with different parties holding the senate, the house or the presidency - and to win any of these three you need near 50% of the vote. Our system delivers centralised, unopposed, unaccountable power, based on a minority of the votes cast.

"...has served us so very well for years"

And yet nobody seems to be happy with the results.

David Ossitt

David B

You are absolutely correct.

But you do know what I was driving at; over there like here the winner wins; the loser loses but with any form of PR it is all very cloudy.

Many in our country will know who their MP is but only the very fiew will know who their MEP is, because of the way that they are chosen.

David B

David Ossitt,

the low recognition of MEPs is at least as much to do with the lack of power and the limited policy remit of the European Parliament.

Many fairer voting systems would preserve the single-MP- constituency and the voters' relationship with their MP - the Alternative Vote and Supplementary Vote systems for example - already used in Ireland and Australia and used to elect Boris Johnson as Mayor of London.