tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post7436529534549364749..comments2024-03-29T09:14:53.583+00:00Comments on All That Is Solid ...: Why Labour Lost: A Scottish PerspectivePhilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06298147857234479278noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-21921506944278553982015-05-21T19:49:30.603+01:002015-05-21T19:49:30.603+01:00For years people have complained Labour became a g...For years people have complained Labour became a grotesque mirror image of the Tories to win a majority in England. For years they have ignored the complaints because their core support had nowhere else to go. This was as true with many of the core support as it was with the MP's. Labour had the power, this became the holy grail, rather than what they did with the power. Many would stay with them, just happy to keep the Tories out. Many who thought things through further than this would not.<br />In Scotland voters had somewhere else to go and in time the SNP demolished it's tartan Tory label and won many of them over. The usual dismissal of how this occurred is seen in comments here. "They ere misled by the SNP." "They were brainwashed by the SNP." The assumption is always that Labour support deserted for the SNP because they were stupid or gullible. It never occurs to those who bandy this insulting myth, that these people have actually thought things through in a way that they themselves have failed to do.<br />They have seen that what lies ahead for the UK is not "the prosperity of our children" parroted mechanically by an increasingly embittered Labour rump. What lies ahead is a future of endless debt, nationally and personally!<br />Between them the "Old Firm" of UK politics have embedded massive trade deficits in the UK economy by abandoning manufacturing. Encouraged calamitous risk and fraud in the financial sector to gloss it over. Refused to regulate against the risk and the fraud to keep the big numbers coming. Created a massive debt ratio of 90.60% and rising towards default because for all the cuts they still can't balance budget never mind reduce the debt. Given us the highest energy and distribution costs for business in the world by using fuel excise duty and VAT as cash cows to fund personal income tax cuts. Diverted investment into private housing bubbles. Virtually forced people into private ownership to feed the bubble by creating a massive shortage of rented council homes. Created a generation of students declared bankrupt in their twenties and thirties and patted themselves on the back for being champions of aspiration in a Britain they have bankrupted.<br />It never occurs to the unionist mentality that Scots have deserted Labour because they have seen the economic reality of UK PLC and it's future and decided enough is enough. <br />We don't need more socialism. We don't need less. We don't need a class war. We need a capitalist system that stimulates investment in manufacturing and finds a better way to cut its costs and let it be competitive, than cheap labour. The UK has none of that to offer and no political will to acknowledge its mistakes or reverse them. For many of us it's about uncertain hope against no hope at all. That is what Labour refuses to recognise and why it has nothing to offer but intelligence insulting gimmicks and slogans. Bankers bonuses did not cause the crunch. Unregulated banks caused the crunch. Did Milliband think we were all too dumb to know that? Where were the regulation plans? A tax on big houses will not cure the economic imbalance and the trade deficit, or balance the budget. We are apparently all traitors for not being economic dimwits. We plead guilty.<br />The Article covered the rest of it very well. I have just added a perspective from someone who used to be a Labour unionist but broke free from the indoctrination, by confronting the reality of a debt based economy. I was brainwashed once. Not any more.Hugh Hnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-84449119806324570672015-05-18T13:41:53.252+01:002015-05-18T13:41:53.252+01:00Truth is they can (and will) do what they want wit...Truth is they can (and will) do what they want with welfare because the people who receive it do not vote for them. Speedynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-64005965255037837872015-05-18T10:48:37.114+01:002015-05-18T10:48:37.114+01:00I don't think Boffy is wrong to suggest the vo...I don't think Boffy is wrong to suggest the voters got it wrong, although you'd be laughed out of court for saying so.<br />The polls misled everyone.<br />The Tories campaigned on fear.<br />Labour found itself answering rather than leading.<br />Austerity is nothing other than bollocks put forward as the only cure to debt.<br /><br />What the Tories are going to do now is raise the temperature on Europe with a few apologists being trotted out on a 'we can go it alone' agenda.<br />Then when the referendum question is put, the whole business class (inc the Tories) will bludgeon to death any 'wild eyed loons' who want out.<br />Not only that, Cameron will hatchet any prominent Tory who dares to talk 'anti' and backed up with a compulsory yes/pro EU vote.<br /><br />On the stealth side, Ian Duncan Smith is pulling off a mater stroke.<br />Pensions.<br />The great Tory 'bail out' from SERPS into private pensions is being targeted very quietly (enough to bring down any Tory Government in my opinion).<br />Ask around to see if anyone bailed out in the late 1980's (as I did) and ask them why they did it?<br />Duncan-Smith is going for a leveller state pension removing all add-ons.<br />All well and good but apparently not for those that bailed out of SERPS.Gary Elsbynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-2784600075472650342015-05-18T10:06:28.909+01:002015-05-18T10:06:28.909+01:005656SNP UPRISINGnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-54624869416040441282015-05-18T07:01:41.046+01:002015-05-18T07:01:41.046+01:00The Scots did not vote SNP because they are of a m...The Scots did not vote SNP because they are of a more generous disposition, they voted SNP because it was the party that promised them the most freebies - be it education, health etc. <br /><br />This is fair enough, but it irks to have all this smug "we're more left than you" stuff going on - who wouldn't vote for a party offering this, if they felt their country could afford it? <br /><br />The difference is the English don't think their country can afford it (although I believe they can) and they do have a point in so much as they are thinking of 65 million rather than 5. <br /><br />The Scots have the best of both worlds - union without responsibility. You can't blame them - Labour after all handed it to them on a plate - but for every action is a reaction, and the Tories have become the de facto SNP of England. <br /><br />It is difficult to grasp the enormity of this political error by Labour - bigger than Iraq - and history will certainly be its judge. <br /><br />Nationalism on both sides of the border will now rule the roost. <br /><br />Labour has no future in Scotland while it remains the party of union because union will always favour the English, who make up 85 per cent of the country. <br /><br />Labour will have to fight in England, which means moving (or staying) to the right. The attitude of Boffy is laudable but laughable. <br /><br />Labour will become (more like) the Democrats. Even if the UK stays in the EU it looks likely to fracture in the end because these tensions will pull it apart, and everyone will be worse off and unhappier. <br /><br />On a deeper level this is about the death of socialism, which accompanied the fall of the wall and the slow death of industry in advanced economies. What is needed is a new analysis of power in the light of these rapid changes, and a new socialism that properly reflects that and works for the many, not the few.<br />Speedynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-43322905578235410942015-05-17T17:27:03.878+01:002015-05-17T17:27:03.878+01:00Labour is going the same way as Pasok, only slower...Labour is going the same way as Pasok, only slower.<br />The Blairite and Blue Labour careerists now have such a hold ideologically that even this catastrophe won't shake them off.<br />The next step will be Unite ditching Labour. People arguing that Labour must concentrate its fight against the SNP are lunatics. What Labour must do is fight the Tories and austerity. Lead national demos against cuts, encourage and lead civil disobedience, remember Poplar.<br />But it can't and won't, so it's finished.<br />The only difference between Scotland and England is that there is no credible left alternative to Labour in England yet. But there will be. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-25809929572535751632015-05-17T12:50:27.367+01:002015-05-17T12:50:27.367+01:00What partsd don't you agree with Phil?What partsd don't you agree with Phil?Jonathannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-14790482529589285032015-05-17T12:40:38.978+01:002015-05-17T12:40:38.978+01:00The attitude taken here is essentially Blairite it...The attitude taken here is essentially Blairite itself. It is a sort of consumerist attitude to politics in which "The customer/consumer is always right", and whereby politicians have to tailor their offering to what those customers/voters want rather than any notion that the job of a Party is actually to stand for a set of principles and ideas, which it fights to convince a majority of people of.<br /><br />I have no trouble with saying that the voters got it wrong, rather than that the party got it wrong - though in fact I believe all the parties, and the voters got it wrong.<br /><br />I have no trouble with the idea that Labour moved away from Scottish voters, and thereby lost votes to them. The question is rather in what way did Labour move away from those Scottish voters. If Labour moved to a more correct socialist position then I'm all in favour of it, whether or not it meant it moved away from Scottish voters, especially as those Scottish voters have been misled by nationalism, just as some english voters have been misled by Tory UKIP and in the past BNP nationalism.<br /><br />The job of a workers party is not to tail the voters, even working class voters, but to analyse and define a socialist programme and to convince workers of its correctness, even if that means losing elections in the short term, because those workers have not yet been convinced. To simply follow the workers or remain on their existing ground is the policy of the Blairites not of socialists.Boffyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08157650969929097569noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-75537392229383888512015-05-17T12:38:44.996+01:002015-05-17T12:38:44.996+01:00Oh God, listening to the TV news programmes and re...Oh God, listening to the TV news programmes and reading the blogs and it is hard. Left and Right talk about getting back to the roots. The roots are not there any more, based on large scale industry and the housing schemes and working class villages, townships and the tenements of Clydeside associated with the pits, dockyard,docks and shipyards the roots died with the death industy. Trade Union members are in the minority and are in the main black coat workers. The SNP talk the talk but under the False Flag of Universal Benefits have directed a massive amount of funds towards the middle classes, they certainly do not walk the walk. Scotland ias about 40% middle class, 30% affluent working class and 30% and the bottom 30% have been left to sink or swim. The former mining village I live in has in the last 10 years became a dormitory for the Enburgh office workers, how can any party deal with these sudden changes. I think the actual structure of Scottish Labour should change, the whole branch structure is like a bloody anchor. Not so coherent today, to much politics but one thing, the Nationalists played a crazy and dangerous game putting their party before the electorate driving English voters from Labour giving Cameron the premiership. They are the enemy and Scottish Labour only have one task at the moment, to drive a wedge between the SNP expose them and the generation that is going to suffer the most, the 25's and under.<br />Think this video is 8 years old, but sinc that time they have grown<br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=du6oC2Jpt6QVinyl Minerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14143010575470895405noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-70325590422228359852015-05-17T08:55:15.053+01:002015-05-17T08:55:15.053+01:00One question that the Scottish Labour Party has fa...One question that the Scottish Labour Party has failed to grasp! - <br /><br />Why was it abandoned by the Scottish people and it's working class bedrock? <br /><br />Is it saying we were brainwashed by the SNP? Is it saying the Scots electorate were traitors for not voting Labour? <br />I was a member of the LP for 31 years. I would have remained there if it had ploughed it's own furrow during the Referendum debate. I left because it stood alongside the Tories, UKIP, the Orange Order, British Nationalists etc. <br /><br />I was sickened by it's lack of courage. With a heavy heart I cancelled my membership! It will take a long time for me & many like me to come back to a Labour Party that has forgotten it's roots! I may go back if it rediscovers it's socialist principles. This seems unlikely at the moment - <br /><br />It has a conservative streak going through it - like Blackpool Rock. It has to make up it's mind which camp it supports? The one of privilege or the one of working people & the vulnerable - <br /><br />It needs to be a party that doesn't echo the Tory mantra that brands unemployed people as scroungers - a party that sees itself as fiscal managers rather than an enlightened socialist party of the people. <br /><br />It can't blame the Scots for it's defeat. We were engaged - not because of it's input, It would rather we weren't so awake! <br /><br />It's defeat was due to it's lack of ability to persuade those south of the border. If it doesn't recognise this - it will be a constant opposition & irrelevant...!Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00382220370282682922noreply@blogger.com