Ed Miliband may win the Labour leadership, but he will never take the country

Tony Makara

Statism results of a nation being too poor to pay its own way. The State quite literally props people up through all manner of services and rebates. So long as widescale poverty exists in Britain, people like Ed Milliband will be able to make a case for Statism pluging those gaps.

The fact that Poverty increased significantly under Labour was down to the way the economy was structured. The Financial sector did produce outstanding wealth, but that wealth remained the prserve of that group. The common man saw none of it and was consigned to earning his crust in the low-wage service sector where wages had to be topped up by the State.

If we are serious about Social Justice then the common man will have to receive a much better income, the very wages that will end his dependency on the State and will call time on Statism itself as a political entity.

Good wages can only come from an economy that pays for itself, one that doesn't need a leg up from the State. The service economy being largely unproductive, localised and limited cannot do that. It cannot produce the good wages needed to end State dependency.

Statism as advocated by Ed Milliband and other fellow travellers on the Labour and Liberal left owes its very life to a failure to spread prosperity by creating a productive economy. The Labour years ended with UK manufacturing on its knees while the yellow-economies of the East dominated our domestic market.

Statism will only end when the common man can pay his way, can be secure enough in a job to buy a home, and cast the State monkey off his back. For that he needs good wages, in fact very good wages.

I wonder if the Millibands understand this?

Bill Corr

Tony Makara is in error; the Tories, no less than Labour, destroyed British manufacturing industry.

Manufacturing towns are now a shadow of their former selves.

HJ

Bill Corr is in error.

Under the last Tory government, manufacturing output grew by 20% overall - after an initial retrenchment it grew pretty steadily.

Under labour, the strong manufacturing output growth it inherited stalled around 2000, output stagnated thereafter and it fell by over 12% in the recession. Output is now around 10% lower than the level Labour inherited - a far worse record than any other advanced economy over their period in office.

The figures are there for all to see on the government statistics web site

GeoffM

It would seem appropriate that the Labour Party should be run by someone who looks like Brian the snail out of magic Roundabout

Bankruptbriton

If what Mr Makara says holds anyone's interest, please could I recommend Charles Murray.
His solution to the reform of the welfare state - as it is currently set up - produces a genuine redistribution of money from rich to poor, and the state stays right out of it.
I asked George Osbourne about Charles Murray, and his response was 'I talk to him a lot, but I don't agree with some of it'.

I am afraid I heard 'I don't have the Thatcher-sized testicles to implement it'. But that is unfair, because he has bigger things to deal with right now - and we have the centre-left consensus. So us old right wingers might as well shut up now and forever hold our peace.