Required Reading
A must read for Labour activists:
http://clients.squareeye.com/uploads/prog/documents/byrne_200510.pdf
posted by Luke Akehurst at 3:26 pm
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
http://clients.squareeye.com/uploads/prog/documents/byrne_200510.pdf
About Me
- Name: Luke Akehurst
- Location: North Durham, County Durham, United Kingdom
Labour MP for North Durham since 2024. Labour Party activist since 1988 - firmly on the moderate wing of the party. Member of Labour’s NEC 2010-2012 and since 2020. National Secretary of Labour Students 1995-6. Parliamentary candidate for Aldershot (2001) and Castle Point (2005). Hackney Councillor (Chatham Ward) 2002-2014, Labour Group Chief Whip 2002-09, Chair of Health Scrutiny 2010-2014. Dad. Unite and GMB union member. All views expressed in a personal capacity. The rest will become evident from reading the blog.
12 Comments:
Also required reading: http://www.labourlist.org/how-labour-lost-lose-again-declan-gaffney
3:44 pm, May 25, 2010
Another busted flush Blairite. You've had your time. Social action with free markets failed.
The only thing more astonishing than being taught how to suck eggs on the future of the Labour party by a failed former minister is being taught how to suck eggs on the future of the Labour party by a failed banker and failed former minister.
I'm hoping the party's members won't get fooled twice but it doesn't look like we've learnt our lesson yet.
Oh, and stop calling working class people C2s.
4:59 pm, May 25, 2010
I don't think the answer is to try and rebuild new labour, which is essentially what is being said. Like it or not, the Con-Dems have moved into much of that area.
I don't think that it is likely that enormous majorities can or will be constructed again as in 97, and I think ultimately it wasn't particularly healthy
Some of the seats mentioned in that article may not be won easily again, but that won't necessarily prevent a majority.
It does appear that different parts of the country want different things, and I'm not sure that we can offer to fulfil everyone's aspirations and pursue sustainability
6:35 pm, May 25, 2010
Amazing how the LINO's infest this blog. Cou;d it be that nobody reads thier own futile rentings ?
GW
8:18 pm, May 25, 2010
I think GW's comment speaks for itself.
9:58 pm, May 25, 2010
I read Byrne's article as soon as it came out, because he's a thoughtful guy - even if his sense of humour is not appreciated by Tory ministers.
I have two particular worries. One is that by any increased focus on migration might be successfully mediated, but we need a greater emphasis on the wider issue of security.
The other worry is that although Labour can succeed in mobilising to prevent the Tories' Age of Austerity ripping communities apart, we might fall into the trap of accepting the Tory logic of cuts = deficit reduction = economic growth.
This is not the case. Public spending is not crowding out private investment - without running a deficit we'd have higher levels of unemployment, business failures, and home repossessions.
The Lib Dems are trying to justify their u-turn on immediate cuts by citing the Eurozone crisis. But what this actually shows is that the potential for export-led growth could be weakened by austerity across Europe - strengthening the case for deficit reduction through economic stimulation, rather than immediate contraction.
12:42 am, May 26, 2010
Is John Redwood eating D Abbott's Kitten?
1:07 am, May 26, 2010
Load of crap new labour scabbed on the working classes and that's it?
How can the working classes ever trust a scab again?
1:13 am, May 26, 2010
Cable Cars
First, Vince Cable is to privatise the Royal Mail. How very New Labour.
And now, Vince Cable is to privatise the motorways. How very New Labour.
11:38 am, May 26, 2010
Liam Byrne says immigration came up on doorstep after doorstep.
No kidding! Have you ever seen any of his literature in Birmingham, from 2004 down? Utterly disgusting.
3:32 pm, May 26, 2010
The problem is that even if immigration was cut considerably, I think that there would still be people saying there were too many immigrants....but if their kids could get a council house, it would matter far less
8:42 pm, May 26, 2010
Entirely correct, Merseymike. Concerns about immigration are largely rooted in New Labour's failure to create jobs, housing and a variety of other key services at anything like the required rate.
The intellectual dishonesty of people like Liam Byrne is truly astounding!
New Labour can't admit that, in a time of unprecedented economic growth, their priority was ensuring that the "filthy rich" remained that way instead of redistributing the proceeds of growth amongst the hardworking many.
They put their natural constituency last and now we've paid for it at the polls.
Reading Byrne's document anybody would think that the party has been insufficiently free-market and right-wing since 1997!
Even if immigration were the major problem that Byrne 'identifies', it's the result of the liberal economic theory, manifested in our policies, that New Labour embraced from 1994 onwards.
People like Byrne aren't part of the the solution, they're part of the problem.
12:28 pm, May 30, 2010
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