How New Labour Policy Making Works

Alf Tupper C.R.O.F.

The any generation Asians from anywhere will get housed due to the fact that they are given preference by 'their own', who work in the housing offices of many councils, where an inverted racism flourishes free of the attentions of Spectator writers et al. This is not what I've heard, it's what I see everyday in my work.

This 'pure populism' you dismiss: as in popular and the popular vote? As in that which is concerned with the views of ordinary people?

Whatever next?

Simon Stephenson

"The best New Labour policies have always been designed for sale to liberals and reactionaries at the same time."

I don't think policies is the right word, Martin. Presentations would be better, don't you think? After all, a policy is what you are actually going to do, with all its outcomes and consequences out in the open on display. If this was what was the reactionaries and the liberals saw, they wouldn't individually support very many of new Labour's policies, and they wouldn't jointly support any of them.

On the other hand, presentation. Fillet the policy of all the implications that are anathema to the particular focus groups, make different presentations to the different groups, and dog-whistle them behind the "policy".

That is new Labour. Create a false air of hope, and then, by the time the reality dawns on people that they've been conned, it's old news - the world's "moved on" as the expression goes. There's already a brand new false message about something else being pumped for all it's worth.

It sounds cynical, but how far from new Labour strategy actually is it? Politics should be about serious choices, and pretending that your policies will appeal to all interests is no more than a temporary vote-grabbing ruse whose time is now over. We've had the best part of 20 years of posing and posturing that has curdled the insides of anyone with a functioning brain. Now lets get politics back to intellect and hard reasoning, where it belongs.

mac

"There is much to salute in Building Britain's Future . . . "

Risible Pollytwaddle.

The Bellman

Arrant cockwaffle. Why should we suppose the 'future' that they propose to build now will in 12 years time be any better than the God-awful mess they've created so far?

Random

To have a "best" policy some need to be good. What New Labour policies are good in any way?

Mike, Brighton

"There is much to salute in Building Britain's Future"...like what exactly??
Vacuous waffle designed to fool dumb voters with unenforceable "rights" and downright lies.
Surely you and your leftie friends are ashamed of what the Labour party has become?

Richard Abbot

I won't be as direct as Mike from Brighton, but all my Labour friends suddenly don't want to talk about politics anymore.
Can they be ashamed, or just a bit regretful? I would be very interested in an article comparing Labours current situation with the Liberal Party in 1918. Go on Martin, if you can stomach it.

Jeremy

"...the latest Gordon Brown policy document: Building Britain's Future."

Why didn't they just call it: Lying All The Way To The Next General Election?

Trevorsden

Whyb are you trying to rationalsis what Brown is doing?

Its just desperate propaganda. The British Council Houses for British workers is probably illegal under EU and or Human Rights.

Its unfunded and unplanned and ill thought out and just a rehash (ie the apprentices) of previous spurious claims.

It only referred to the English of course and was presented by a Scotsman whose not liable to his own constituents for similar policies in Scotland.

Edward

I don't profess to know "How New Labour Policy Making Works".

But if "Harry Enfield Hitler" is typed into You Tube, and watched - I imagine it's not too far from an uncomfortable truth.

Noonan

Oh come on - legal rights to be seen quickly in the NHS or go private is a good idea and doesnt even get a mention here?

Pete

Building Britain's Future....should be renamed Building Britain's Future after having reduced the economy to rubble

Mr Green

Ah, but Noonan....

Who says what being seen "quickly" really means? "Quickly" is a non-specific, subjective period of time.
If Brownie's policy stated an absolute period of time in which you must be seen, regardless of the condition then I would agree that this had merit. But to state that the NHS must see you quickly or you can go private is not worth the crayon which wrote it.

John Liburne

So they defeat the BNP by copying their policies then?

Please define what there is to "salute" in this document?

John Liburne

So they defeat the BNP by coying their policies then?

Josh

How New Labour policy works.

''Lord Voldemort of Foy and Hartlepool, what does the country want at the minute?''
''Lower taxes, lower spending, a deficit reduction plan, and some honesty in politics.''
''Ok, do the exact opposite and engage in a bit of class war to appease the proles.''