Does the UK need a 'true leftist' party?

First topic message reminder :

(Not sure if this has been brought up before, apologies if it has but I couldn't see anything like it on the list)

I just read an article on the Guardian website (I retweeted it on Twitter) that discusses the ongoing problems on the left of politics in the UK. It asks whether the left need a leftist version of UKIP to effectively challenge Labour's dominance of the left. Reading the article and the interviews they took for the article it seems that the writer thinks it is possible due to the fragmentation of the relationship between the unions and the Labour Party, however, it is unlikely to happen any time soon.

so what do we all think? Is it needed? Is it indeed possible?

Personally I think it is needed but I'm not sure how likely it is to happen or indeed if it would be successful.

Tash

Welcome Dan,

Like most I was against the sell off, as for it disappearing the majority of the shares was sold to companies that hold our pension funds. The great winners would be those that managed to buy shares as an individual. Do we benefit (doubt it), do we lose out, I'm not sure of how it will affect us long term?

Welcome Dan Fante.
Yes, I suspect it's a part of the strategy to make a government buy-back problematic if not impossible.

tlttf - off the top of my head, privatisation of Royal Mail is likely to result in even higher postal costs, a reduction in post delivery for private individuals, and possibly complete loss of postal service in remote areas, as this will not be seen as a profitable service. I think that's a net loss for 'us' - meaning all the citizens of the UK.

Dan Fante wrote:Apologies if I'm repeating what others have said before, but I'm new here, but isn't part of the reason that Royal Mail has so under priced that it will make it too expensive for a future Labour government to buy it back? I.e. the 'market price' will be around 40% more than the original capital raised (which will disappear into a black hole anyway, at a guess).  

Ain't it de troof? Privatisations have always resulted in value-destruction, for the simple reason that so many intermediaries always suck on the government tit. The share offer is always "underwritten" by Financiers who guarantee to buy all the shares even if the Public ignore the offer. There is always a heavy premium paid for that guarantee, which is lost money. Speculators who inflate the share-price subsequently are not in any sense adding value to the Company, merely increasing the cost of any well-meant plan to unscramble the deal.

oftenwrong wrote:Perhaps someone from the preceding commentaries, for balance,  would now like to expound upon the showing of left-wing opposition parties in every election during the 18 years between
1979 and 1997.

Whilst Callaghan, Foot, Kinnock, Smith and Beckett (!) stuck to Gaitskell's "Nationalise everything that moves" Clause Four requirement, the British electorate preferred the Devil it knew, and returned a Tory administration FOUR TIMES in succession at General Elections.

In 1951 the Labour Party lost with the highest vote ever given to a British political party.   Every shift to the right since has put off more working people, until most of them don't bother

Apathy rul .....zzz

Every shift to the right since has put off more working people, until most of them don't bother.



They say you get the government you deserve - if you don't bother voting - you get what others vote for - and probably shouldn't complain too much.

Passive aggression was never attractive

tlttf wrote:Welcome Dan,

Like most I was against the sell off, as for it disappearing the majority of the shares was sold to companies that hold our pension funds. The great winners would be those that managed to buy shares as an individual. Do we benefit (doubt it), do we lose out, I'm not sure of how it will affect us long term?

I'm far from being a fan of Thatcher but I doubt she would've even approved of this. I think she was against privatising the Post Office because it was the 'Royal Mail' but, putting that to one side, she was in favour of the general public owning shares in former state run businesses. In this case you have something public owned being sold off without the general public having much of a chance to buy a reasonable stake. And I think the net effects will be price increases, job losses and a poorer service, especially in rural areas. The main beneficiaries of the scheme will be stock brokers etc. We'll possibly benefit indirectly since pension funds will buy the shares but, when you break that down, I would guess it will be negligible.
Also, I can't think of much benefit to the taxpayer whenever there's been a sell-off of state owned utilities etc.

The joke, as always, is on the taxpayer. Many of the City Investors who buy privatisation shares will be using money borrowed from the Banks.

Yes, you've guessed it, the Banks we so expensively rescued from their own folly in 2008, and who have since then been "re-investing" the cheap loans made available to them by the Chancellor.

Dan Fante wrote: I'm far from being a fan of Thatcher but I doubt she would've even approved of this. I think she was against privatising the Post Office because it was the 'Royal Mail' but, putting that to one side, she was in favour of the general public owning shares in former state run businesses. In this case you have something public owned being sold off without the general public having much of a chance to buy a reasonable stake. And I think the net effects will be price increases, job losses and a poorer service, especially in rural areas. The main beneficiaries of the scheme will be stock brokers etc. We'll possibly benefit indirectly since pension funds will buy the shares but, when you break that down, I would guess it will be negligible.
Also, I can't think of much benefit to the taxpayer whenever there's been a sell-off of state owned utilities etc.

 
Hi Dan Fante and welcome to Cutting Edge.
 
What I want to know is when our public services are being FLOGGED off to the bankers and hedge fund managers, why do they need subsidies from the tax payer? If you buy a business it's then up to that person to run it so that it makes a profit so they sink or swim by their own hand. I do agree to the outcome you have predicted for our Royal Mail.

There was an appetite for socialism in 1945, when Clement Attlee won a landslide for Labour against a successful war leader

Yes Ivan....an appetite that lasted of all 6 years before they were voted out again

Yes, blueturando – you're great on tabloid-style headlines and soundbites as always, but woefully inadequate when it comes to the facts behind them.
 
The vote for Labour in 1951 - 13,948,385 (48.8% of the electorate) - was the highest ever recorded for a political party in this country at the time and remained so until 1992, when there was a much bigger electorate. The lottery that is ‘first past the post’ just happened to give the Tories a majority of 17.

Ivan...My point was that the appetite soon diminished once the electorate experienced a socialist government...In 1950 the majority was down to 5 for Labour (First past the post) and a year later the Tories were voted in with a majority of 17 (First past the post) and then went on to govern for a further 13 years........Now thats the facts

blueturando wrote:-
My point was that the appetite soon diminished once the electorate experienced a socialist government...

 
Only a Tory could post such an absurd remark, which is tantamount to a lie.
 
Labour vote in 1945 – 11,967,746 (47.7% of those who voted)
 
Labour vote in 1951 - 13,948,385 (48.8% of those who voted)
 
So both the number of votes and the percentage increased, yet you call that "diminished"?? Then you wonder why I call you a Tory troll! Stop wasting my time, I’ve got better things to do.

QUOTE: "If you buy a business it's then up to that person to run it so that it makes a profit."

Which is precisely what the asset-strippers do. The vampire fund-managers who seize control of a privatised company have a set routine.
Watch the Royal Mail under private enterprise sell-off its prime sites, especially in London, to a linked Property Company which will then lease them back to the Royal Mail at a sky-high rent.

The whizz-kids make a profit from owning the associated Landlord Company.

In 1974 the Tories polled more votes than Labour, but Labour still had more seats than the Tories and formed a minority government...That's the system and it works both ways Ivan

Personal Abuse??? you called me a troll so I called you one back

blueturando. You really are determined to stop me getting on with the 101 other jobs I want to do on this forum, aren't you?
 
 
Yes, you're right about what happened in 1974, and we're both right about what happened in 1951, but you're missing the point. Nearly two million more people, a bigger percentage of those who voted, wanted socialism in 1951 than in 1945. The appetite for socialism was therefore expanded not diminished, regardless of the actual result that our quirky electoral system threw up.

blueturando wrote:In 1974 the Tories polled more votes than Labour, but Labour still had more seats than the Tories and formed a minority government...That's the system and it works both ways Ivan

That wasn't your point though. You claimed the appetite for socialism diminished in the period of the post-war Labour government from 1945-51.

I have sent you a personal message which you can if want to, reply to at anytime. I am not wasting your time, I am posting on the board...please feel free to get on with your other jobs and we can carry on the debate later....thx Blue

Very true Dan....Unfortunately that how the coversation progressed. The point I was trying to make was, if Socialism was so good then why didn't Labour last more than 6 years?

Maybe a wider debate is required on what socialsm really is? The reason I say this is because the Socialist ideas and priciples of Attlee, Beven and Beveridge seem quite different to the socialist ideas and principles of of the Lefties I speak with today

blueturando wrote:-
if Socialism was so good then why didn't Labour last more than 6 years?

 
A point which I've answered - because of the vagaries of our electoral system. This feels like arguing just for the sake of arguing and reminds me of this gem:-
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnTmBjk-M0c
 
There certainly appears to be some evidence of an appetite for more socialism in 2013:-
 
http://liberalconspiracy.org/2013/10/07/britons-more-likely-to-support-a-party-committed-to-public-ownership/

blueturando wrote:Very true Dan....Unfortunately that how the coversation progressed. The point I was trying to make was, if Socialism was so good then why didn't Labour last more than 6 years?

Maybe a wider debate is required on what socialsm really is? The reason I say this is because the Socialist ideas and priciples of Attlee, Beven and Beveridge seem quite different to the socialist ideas and principles of of the Lefties I speak with today

bluey, may I interject please. Any civilised Western world country uses its GNP to look after its most vulnerable citizens. ie the elderly, disabled, unemployed and ill.

Since your idol Thatcher, we have done none of this because the State has by stealth been rolled back.

Under this climate, please tell me how you can continue to support the Tory right wing which Thatcher was ??????

Ivanhoe.

 
Ivanhoe The right wing talk about us been tribal in our belief in politics and just follow blindly after Ed Miliband, they are worse than us they follow blindly KNOWING that what the Tories are doing to the sick disabled and the vulnerable is NASTY & VILE but they still carry on spouting the Tory Ideology & Dogma.:yeahthat:

blueturando wrote:Very true Dan....Unfortunately that how the coversation progressed. The point I was trying to make was, if Socialism was so good then why didn't Labour last more than 6 years?

Maybe a wider debate is required on what socialsm really is? The reason I say this is because the Socialist ideas and priciples of Attlee, Beven and Beveridge seem quite different to the socialist ideas and principles of of the Lefties I speak with today

The conversation progressed that way because you attempted to move the goalposts after your point had been countered.

blueturando wrote:Ivan...My point was that the appetite soon diminished once the electorate experienced a socialist government...In 1950 the majority was down to 5  for Labour (First past the post) and a year later the Tories were voted in with a majority of 17 (First past the post) and then went on to govern for a further 13 years........Now thats the facts

The CLAMOUR for REAL SOCIALISM is gathering pace at an alarming rate from the people of the UK, as the months pass it will gather more blue as you must have heard people shouting for Re-Nationalization of gas, electric, rail and now Royal Mail so do you think that is enough SOCIALISM in 2013 to see Ed Miliband sweep into No10 in May 2015. 

Redflag wrote: ... The CLAMOUR for REAL SOCIALISM is gathering pace at an alarming rate from the people of the UK ... 

Firstly, did you mean 'alarming'? I suspect not  

Are we clamoring for socialism? one of the strengths (and weaknesses) of the British people is that as a nation I have always felt that we should do what is 'fair'. When political parties get overcome with ideology and behave unfairly we tend to fall out of love with them quite swiftly. UKIP is a measure of the unfairness of how we feel the EU is unfair. The Liberals shot themselves in the foot over tuition fees - this was very unfair. The bedroom tax is unfair.

We tend to vote against parties and governments that seem to behave badly and get ideological. Margaret Thatcher survived because of Michael Foot and also the Falklands not because she was a great Politician. The poll tax was unfair - look what happened.

No one is clamoring for Socialism whatever that means (and I have heard more definitions than there are versions of Chicken Tikka Massala) but they are calling as they do for fairness. We have moral obligations to the weak and the disadvantaged, particularly in times of difficulty. People saw the 50p rate as fair. It was not about the amount of money it raised, it was about a principle. Times are now hard so giving £30k to all his front bench mates was the height of unfairness.

Good post, Bella. Nicely sums things up.

boatlady wrote:Every shift to the right since has put off more working people, until most of them don't bother.



They say you get the government you deserve - if you don't bother voting - you get what others vote for - and probably shouldn't complain too much.

Passive aggression was never attractive

Mot people get a very limited choice. Is it apathy not to chose a pig instead of a fatter pig? I left the Labour party because the fuhrers from Kinnock on were sick, except that decent Scotsman whose name escapes me. I think now that I was wrong, but it was getting very hard work just to appear a fool.

Children in particular usually have a keen sense of "Fair Play", Bellatori.  Maybe Ed Miliband is on to something in wishing to lower the voting age.

Penderyn wrote: Most people get a very limited choice. Is it apathy not to chose a pig instead of a fatter pig?   I left the Labour party because the fuhrers from Kinnock on were sick, except that decent Scotsman whose name escapes me.   I think now that I was wrong, but it was getting very hard work just to appear a fool.  

 
Gordon Brown? Tony Blair?
I'm guessing you mean John Smith.

oftenwrong wrote:Children in particular usually have a keen sense of "Fair Play", Bellatori.  Maybe Ed Miliband is on to something in wishing to lower the voting age.

Well OW Ed Miliband has said he will give us a gov't that is fair to all, and I for one believe him he has been upfront and honest since he became leader.:yeahthat: 

Dan Fante wrote:
Gordon Brown? Tony Blair?
I'm guessing you mean John Smith.

 
That's him.  Shows the folly of climbing.  I don't think the fuhrer would have made any real difference, though.

Bellatori wrote: Firstly, did you mean 'alarming'? I suspect not  

Are we clamoring for socialism? one of the strengths (and weaknesses) of the British people is that as a nation I have always felt that we should do what is 'fair'. When political parties get overcome with ideology and behave unfairly we tend to fall out of love with them quite swiftly. UKIP is a measure of the unfairness of how we feel the EU is unfair. The Liberals shot themselves in the foot over tuition fees - this was very unfair. The bedroom tax is unfair.

No one is clamoring for Socialism whatever that means (and I have heard more definitions than there are versions of Chicken Tikka Massala) but they are calling as they do for fairness. We have moral obligations to the weak and the disadvantaged, particularly in times of difficulty.  People saw the 50p rate as fair. It was not about the amount of money it raised, it was about a principle. Times are now hard so giving £30k to all his front bench mates was the height of unfairness.

If you take a look at what it is costing the tax payers for the so called "Private Companies" that used to be in the public sector Bellatori Rail is just one of them, West coast line is costing us plenty yet the East coast line (run by the public sector) is making profit for the treasury.:yeahthat:

We tend to vote against parties and governments that seem to behave badly and get ideological......No one is clamoring for Socialism whatever that means (and I have heard more definitions than there are versions of Chicken Tikka Massala) but they are calling as they do for fairness.

 
Bellatori. Thank you for that interesting post. The essence of socialism has to be fairness, where we each contribute what we can and take what we need.
 
The current government is very ideological, as was Thatcher’s. “Everything is better in private hands” (especially if they are the hands of their friends and party donors) and “you can’t buck the market” (unless it suits them to do so when they want to precipitate another house price bubble) seem to be the guiding principles of Cameron and his evil shower. The scapegoating of everyone, from your unemployed neighbour, or the immigrant down the street, or those public sector workers with their ‘bloated’ salaries and pensions, now includes young people. Truth is a stranger to most of the cabinet, but especially to Cameron, Shapps and Duncan Smith. The similarities with 1930s Germany are becoming scary, and in one way worse – at least Hitler didn’t hate wild animals.
 
http://liberalconspiracy.org/2013/10/14/cameron-added-young-people-to-his-list-of-britains-scapegoats/
 
On that subject, you might like to explore this thread:-
 
https://cuttingedge2.forumotion.co.uk/t322-are-the-tories-velvet-glove-fascists
 
I agree that the British public don’t like ideology, but the Tories, with the help of so much of the press, do their best to hide theirs. What we need is ‘pragmatic socialism’, which would involve adherence to the core principle of 'people before profits', whilst adapting to changing circumstances – something which the Tory PM Harold Macmillan saw as the greatest challenge of all (“events, dear boy”).
 
This thread might be of some interest:-
 
https://cuttingedge2.forumotion.co.uk/t431-is-social-democracy-the-best-system-of-government-or-does-it-just-make-capitalism-appear-acceptable

What the British public 'wants' is what they are given, unless it gets intolerable. Our job is to get out there and be bloody rude till we wake them out of their drugged sleep - which is why you need party members and democracy. People will take any old shite until someone teaches them to stand up like men and women and FIGHT the lying buggers!

Whilst I have never voted Labour (and only made the mistake of voting Tory once, Ted Heath, may the God I don't believe in forgive me  ) I would have voted for John Smith. There are some people whose integrity shines through - maybe we would have been disillusioned as one becomes with all politicians but I really felt he was an honest man.

It is clear that Gordon Brown is a nasty piece of work - his abuse of the woman voter was an eye opener and makes much of what has come out recently entirely believable, and Tony Blair - well let me put it this way, African Nations want to walk away from the  International court because they think Africa is being unfairly targeted. It does seem to me that a war criminal who incites and promulgates a war on the basis of clearly forged and false documents and information and is not prosecuted, is a very good reason why they should do so.

I used to view the Liberals as the slightly left of center last resort for fairness. Clegg has undermined all that. Now who do I vote for? Until there is a 'none of the above' box I suppose it will have to be the Monster Raving...

Anyone remember Screaming Lord Such?

Bellatori. Gordon Brown doesn’t have the personality to win ‘X Factor’. He’d be the first person to be voted off ‘Strictly Come Dancing’. He’s not someone I’d want to spend an evening in a pub with, since he comes across as a grumpy old bugger. But he’s not a nasty piece of work; in fact, he’s a good man. Please don't believe everything the Tory press pumps out.
 
Brown didn’t “abuse” a woman voter. He was annoyed about her comments to him, which he perceived as racist, and he referred to her as ”a bigot” in what he thought was a private environment. How fortuitous for Sky TV, Murdoch and his stooge Cameron, that someone left the microphone turned on!
 
Cameron was involved in a confrontation with the parent of a disabled child – I wonder what he said afterwards in private that we didn’t get to hear? Cameron was a member of the Bullingdon Club, which you can currently join if you set light to a £50 note in front of a beggar, so I haven’t much doubt (especially when taking into account his government’s policies) what he thinks of ‘prols’ and ‘plebs’.
 
Brown declined to take his pension for being PM, donated all the proceeds to charity from a book which he wrote, and is currently serving unpaid as a UN special envoy for global education. He’s particularly concerned about the lack of education for girls in certain parts of the world.
 
John Smith did come across as a decent and honest man – but so does Ed Miliband. Smith died before we had a chance to find out what he was really like. After May 2015, there will either be a Tory or Tory-led government or a Labour one. The fragmentation of the non-Tory vote allowed Cameron to slither into Downing Street on the back of Nick Clegg and implement destructive policies for which nobody voted. We can all learn something from that.

Ivan wrote:... But he’s not a nasty piece of work; in fact, he’s a good man. Please don't believe everything the Tory press pumps out.

Nice apologist post for Gordon. Sorry if I don't agree. An article by Chote in Prospect magazine 9 months after the labour landslide, in 1998 described him as cliquey, thin-skinned and did not trust anybody. His paranoia was showing even then. The impression he left was exactly that, paranoid and vindictive.

Sorry to disagree Bell, although I can understand why you and many others have got the wrong end of the stick when it comes to Brown and indeed Blair.

IMO Brown was the best Chancellor this country has ever seen. As far as being a PM is concerned he dealt swiftly with many problems of terror and cattle contamination, if you care to remember and yes he is a good man, although a grumpy one. Blair IMO was one of the best PM's we have had and fell on his sword by backing Bush who undertandably was
trying to avenge 911.
On this forum in the past we have debated the Iraq war and Blair to the nth degree. There were WOMD because as I was advised by a high ranking RAF friend of mine who was out there in Iraq, confirmed that these weapons were taken over the border into Syria before the inspectors arrived. Now with Syria at the height of a weapons inspection, this only adds credence to what I had been told.

Finally, by refusing to vote at the next election, those that do not vote are more or less putting Cameron back in to power. Is that really what you desire my friend?

Welcome to the forum.

Mel wrote:... why you and many others have got the wrong end of the stick when it comes to Brown and indeed Blair....

Can you now?   I judge by performance and when it comes to that well, when you say

Mel wrote:IMO Brown was the best Chancellor this country has ever seen.

I have to . His 'light touch' supervision of the financial industry was the reason (Oh and he was repeatedly warned about this by those 'outsiders' not in his clique) that we had the housing boom, the excesses of the financial industry, the miss-selling scandals etc. In a time of world growth we still managed to fall behind. As for being PM, I would say it was a close run thing for his being voted the worst ever.

Mel wrote:On this forum in the past we have debated the Iraq war and Blair to the nth degree. There were WOMD because as I was advised by a high ranking RAF friend of mine who was out there in Iraq, confirmed that these weapons were taken over the border into Syria before the inspectors arrived. Now with Syria at the height of a weapons inspection, this only adds credence to what I had been told.

We all have friends. After a few bevvies they tend to be expansive and big up their roles and knowledge. Where were the satellite photos? In fact where was any evidence? Had any such been in existence then it would have been on the front page of the newspapers. Of course he had some chemical weapons. We already knew that. It was the 45 minutes and the 'immediate' threat that was total ballcocks.

I think the quote from [url=Iraq and weapons of mass destruction]Wiki[/url]

"Bush later said that the biggest regret of his presidency was "the intelligence failure" in Iraq, while the Senate Intelligence Committee found in 2008 that his administration "misrepresented the intelligence and the threat from Iraq". A key CIA informant in Iraq admitted that he lied about his allegations, "then watched in shock as it was used to justify the war""
... rather says it all.

Mel wrote:Finally, by refusing to vote at the next election, those that do not vote are more or less putting Cameron back in to power. Is that really what you desire my friend?

I always vote. But now it seems I can vote Tory, the other Tories and the other other Tories. A majority Labour government has the potential to be worse even than this coalition. A minority Labour government might just be tolerable. Any such government then has to look for consensus.


It is very eeay to get all dewey eyed over 'newsh but slightly tarnished' Labour but in the end like all politicians they look to their mates and not the big picture.