Labours Conference: A cynical retrospect.
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  Labours Conference: A cynical retrospect.
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afleitch
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« on: September 27, 2007, 04:28:23 AM »

Coming close to the end of the Labour conference I thought I should reflect, in my own partisan way, the stomach churning spectacle of the past few days. The announcements are still coming thick and fast and we may yet get ‘the big one’ as conference closes. Today Jack Straw has announced new laws designed to offer more legal protection to so called ‘have a go heroes.’ Such changes were rejected by the government in 2004. The last review of the self-defence laws, launched in 2004 following pressure from, (surprise, surprise), the Conservatives, led Tony Blair to rule out any changes, describing then existing legislation as "sound". Just one of many policy initiatives exorcised from the 2003-2005 Michael Howard era joining MRSA deep cleaning, matron in charge and chucking out migrants dealing weed.

We also had ‘British Jobs For British Workers’ a proposition so ghastly, and one which I had hoped had been resigned to the dustbin of British politics or at least the fringe parties but appears to be taking centre stage. For a government to encourage foreign workers into our job market only to parrot the ‘takin’ our jobs’ mentality of the grumbling working class and the Daily Mail/Paul Dacre thought bubble is shocking. Yet still the seals in the conference hall whacked their flippers together in unifying appreciation of it’s bigoted vote winning brilliance. Elsewhere ‘Magpie Brown’ has been creaming off the populist tidbits from the 2005 Tory manifesto (copyright D. Cameron of Witney, Oxon) and the conference hall lapped it up, though whether or not they knew what they were lapping up is another question. As long as it was wrapped up in red, anything was digestable (even if you pounded the streets two years ago opposing the very same policies the dear leader was now proposing)

We also had an extra £2bn for the NHS in England (hooray!) which comes on the heels of the £2bn cut at the last budget (huh?)

And now the speech which made Neil Kinnock cry for the first time since Joe Biden plagiarised him has itself been plagiarised! Or, at the very least, his sermon from the heart has the finger prints of Bob Shrum, as the Times noted;

‘It suggests that Mr Brown’s recent attempts to appeal as a prime minister who rejects spin have been crafted, at least in part, by one of America’s highest-paid political advertising and speech consultants. ‘

In short; Talk about you, your mum, dad, childhood, wife, lessons learnt from family mum, dad, childhood and wife,  wheel on a token hero of the day (John Smeaton) chuck in some God, not too much, but enough . Make sure you clarify each proposition with ‘let us be clear’ (used by Ted Kennedy in every speech Bob Shrum has written for him). Most of the rest of the speech was mindnumbingly ‘Gordon’ (which was still more entertaining than Millibands speech) and he resorted to plagiarising Michael Howard rather than Shrum.

Chris Grayling, summed it up well. He said: “We all know Gordon Brown’s announcements are reheated, and now his language seems reheated too. This destroys the myth that we are seeing a Prime Minister who has given up spin. Far from being the genuine article, he is just a copycat prime minister rehashing old material from US politicians.”

The question we are are faced with is, is this what we want? Where’s the real Gordon? Who’s writing his speeches, who’s dressing him up? What happened to policy making in the Labour Party? Why is Labour tolerating a neo-Thatcherite? Answers after the election Grin

Let’s see what happens next week Smiley

 
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #1 on: September 27, 2007, 05:04:19 AM »

Party Conferences are always ghastly, tedious things; from a non-partisan point of view this one certainly was (though from a partisan point of view, it was an improvement on recent ones; the duelling speeches thing got depressing after... about... two or three years...), and the Tory one will be just as bad (and from a partisan point of view it will, of course, be the dullest ever. Just like the last one. And the one before that. And so on and so forth Smiley). I tend to think that the LibDem ones are the worst, but that might just be because too much yellow looks 'orrid.

Re; "British Jobs for British Workers"... I don't like the wording (but at least he didn't declare that there has been "too much" immigration recently), but I do like the indication that there might be a serious effort to increase the number of skilled manual jobs out there (which, btw, is why all the Union people in the hall seemed happy about it).

The one useful thing to come out of this conference (which is also one reason why it could be thought of as being "better" then previous ones), is that it makes election predicting easier as Brown-led Labour is quite clearly targetting two groups of people; traditional working class voters (not so much to gain them from other parties, but to increase turnout) and lower middle class voters. This is especially interesting as the Cameron-led Tories are going after a very different segment of the middle class; next election could see some high swings, even if the overall swing is quite low.
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Silent Hunter
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« Reply #2 on: September 27, 2007, 05:20:14 AM »

I don't really like that phrase either, but didn't notice it until afleitch mentioned it. I'm all in favour of increasing employment, but not on restricting immigration.
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afleitch
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« Reply #3 on: September 27, 2007, 06:31:59 AM »

Labours’ record on job creation is not all it seems and I think Gordon was trying to address that. We do have an expanding workforce, but this can be accountable to good old demographic change and natural population increase combined with migration, particularly from eastern Europe (the number of young students out of work and not in education or training is a 10 year high, but only really began to rise after 2004) which is accountable for close to 3/4 of all jobs created.

Manufacturing has also taken a hammering and has been oft neglected (except in Scotland where we are experiencing a boom – I’ll post something on that later)

The number of people not in work, whether classified as unemployed or not is 5.2 million a higher comparable figure than under Thatcher and just short of the figure in 1990 when it began to fall. It has been rising since 1998. This includes many on incapacity benefit. Again, the highest & rise in claimants are amongst 18-24 year olds; these are not workers with an illness from their place of work or from decades of hard graft, but otherwise fit and healthy individuals (or at least they should be) The out of work figures for those between school leaving age and 24 is, therefore disproportionatelyhigh in comparison to other age groups.

British Jobs for British Workers is perhaps not as ‘right wing’ as I’ve jokingly made it out to be, but the language was unfortunate. Surely Labour should be about jobs for workers regardless of who they are and where they come from? But again it ties in with Browns ambition of embodying Britain in the pursuit of statism, and sticking ‘British’ onto pretty much everything. However much of the associated rhetoric on foreign criminals etc was pretty mean spirited.

Talking of which, anyone know what’s happening with the proposed Remploy factory cut backs or is a decision still forthcoming? Slipped off my radar.
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #4 on: September 27, 2007, 07:47:36 AM »

Manufacturing has also taken a hammering and has been oft neglected

This is true, though things have been picking up a bit over the past year or so (some sectors more than others).

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Interesting; one reason might be that manufacturing employment in Scotland fell further than in most places (though not to the extent seen in London). in previous decades. What areas are the growth in?

(re; unemployment. Don't feel like getting into a statistics war, but I don't think the headline figure there (which is misleading for one or two reasons; like isn't being compared with like) is really needed to make the basic point).

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Yes and no. Historically speaking it's complicated. I'll post more on this later (have to go now).

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Situation has improved a great deal. Will also post more on this later.
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #5 on: September 27, 2007, 10:52:51 AM »
« Edited: September 27, 2007, 10:54:26 AM by The Editor »

And I am now back.

British Jobs for British Workers is perhaps not as ‘right wing’ as I’ve jokingly made it out to be, but the language was unfortunate. Surely Labour should be about jobs for workers regardless of who they are and where they come from?

There's always been a strand within the Labour movement that hasn't always taken an idealistic approach to workers from outside Britain (this goes way back to when industrialists would use Irish immigrants as blacklegs in the 19th century; this, btw, is also where the traditional anti-Irish sentiment in much of Northern England comes from).
Basically, the view is that they are unwitting tools of unscrupulous employers who want to push down wages, not have to deal with Unions, etc, etc.
There have been echoes of that attitude from people you might not expect; John Denham for instance.

While this tradition isn't actually racist, racism has been associated with it in the past, as it was in the early 20th century when local trade unionists were often involved in the various race riots in docks across Britain shortly after the First World War. A more recent (and much milder) example would be the attitude that certain right-wing Labour M.P's (the classic example being Bob Mellish, the most recent being Roger Godsiff) towards immigration and immigrants.

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Peter Hain has stepped in and said that; a) there will be no compulsory redundancies and that b) there will be no closures without the approval of the government (which means the closures announced won't happen, but that future ones might). Government is also giving Remploy £555 million.
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afleitch
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« Reply #6 on: September 27, 2007, 06:22:12 PM »



I'm better with heads than bodies Smiley And I really wanted to sketch Attlee.

Alternative title: Maggie, Maggie, Maggie; In! In! In! Grin
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Michael Z
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« Reply #7 on: September 27, 2007, 07:32:00 PM »

We also had ‘British Jobs For British Workers’ a proposition so ghastly, and one which I had hoped had been resigned to the dustbin of British politics or at least the fringe parties but appears to be taking centre stage. For a government to encourage foreign workers into our job market only to parrot the ‘takin’ our jobs’ mentality of the grumbling working class and the Daily Mail/Paul Dacre thought bubble is shocking. Yet still the seals in the conference hall whacked their flippers together in unifying appreciation of it’s bigoted vote winning brilliance.

Well said! I think it's telling, if downright bizarre, that Labour are now to the right of the Tories on this issue. It illustrates how ideologically confused politics has become, as our elected representatives scramble for headlines as opposed to ideals.
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The Man From G.O.P.
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« Reply #8 on: September 28, 2007, 09:01:35 AM »



I'm better with heads than bodies Smiley And I really wanted to sketch Attlee.

Alternative title: Maggie, Maggie, Maggie; In! In! In! Grin


That's brilliant stuff.
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Democratic Hawk
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« Reply #9 on: September 28, 2007, 09:02:35 AM »


And now the speech which made Neil Kinnock cry for the first time since Joe Biden plagiarised him has itself been plagiarised! Or, at the very least, his sermon from the heart has the finger prints of Bob Shrum, as the Times noted;

‘It suggests that Mr Brown’s recent attempts to appeal as a prime minister who rejects spin have been crafted, at least in part, by one of America’s highest-paid political advertising and speech consultants. ‘

In short; Talk about you, your mum, dad, childhood, wife, lessons learnt from family mum, dad, childhood and wife,  wheel on a token hero of the day (John Smeaton) chuck in some God, not too much, but enough . Make sure you clarify each proposition with ‘let us be clear’ (used by Ted Kennedy in every speech Bob Shrum has written for him). Most of the rest of the speech was mindnumbingly ‘Gordon’ (which was still more entertaining than Millibands speech) and he resorted to plagiarising Michael Howard rather than Shrum.

Chris Grayling, summed it up well. He said: “We all know Gordon Brown’s announcements are reheated, and now his language seems reheated too. This destroys the myth that we are seeing a Prime Minister who has given up spin. Far from being the genuine article, he is just a copycat prime minister rehashing old material from US politicians.”

In response to The Times story, I posted this:

Ever occurred to any one that Gordon Brown, ideologically, is pretty much of a similar mould as Bill Clinton and Al Gore? Something of a Third Way centrist. This, afterall, is how social democracy successfully renewed itself in Britain and assisted Labour towards its electoral victories from 1997 on. It also ensured Bill Clinton his two landslides in 1992 and 1996.

Therefore, it should hardly come as a surprise that Brown in expressing his convictions will, naturally, echo those of many American Democrats.

Brown is a man of deep personal conviction, largely grounded in his Presbyterian faith, who passionately believes in social justice. Yes people may scream and shout that he was somewhat tight-fisted on some things on certain fronts such as top-up tuition fees and measy pension increases but he understands that only a stable economy can be of benefit to the wider good of society.


Quite in keeping with my passion for scratching beneath the surface. It's a sign of desparation that this made the front page of a broadsheet in the first instance

More on the conference later ...

Dave
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #10 on: September 28, 2007, 09:14:20 AM »

I think it's telling, if downright bizarre, that Labour are now to the right of the Tories on this issue.

Earlier today, the shadow immigration minister called for an "explicit annual limit" on immigration, while the leader of the opposition is on the record as saying that there has been too much immigration over the past few years.

Don't think even Liam Byrne (about as right-wing on the immigration issue as Labour M.P's (who aren't called Roger Godsiff o/c...) get these days) has said anything nearly as right-wing as that. And if he did, it wouldn't be party or government policy, though neither would be able to publically criticise him if he did say something like that, as it would be electoral suicide...

...which leads me up to the really sad and depressing part. Byrne's views on immigration are probably to the left of the public at large. Is there an issue on which people's views are so warped by media scaremongering as this? Europe maybe?
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afleitch
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« Reply #11 on: September 28, 2007, 10:25:25 AM »

Dave, what do you think of the policy announcements that bear an uncanny resemblance to those offered by Michael Howard in 2005 which Labour opposed? I'm in the middle of putting something together with the where's and whens for ConHome. Should Labour not be delivering on it's 2005 manifesto on which it was elected to do rather than dredge the Tories back catalogue? Smiley
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Democratic Hawk
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« Reply #12 on: September 28, 2007, 06:41:16 PM »

Dave, what do you think of the policy announcements that bear an uncanny resemblance to those offered by Michael Howard in 2005 which Labour opposed? I'm in the middle of putting something together with the where's and whens for ConHome. Should Labour not be delivering on it's 2005 manifesto on which it was elected to do rather than dredge the Tories back catalogue? Smiley

Andrew Smiley,

I'll answer that one tomorrow but for now, I'll say this, I was at a very well attended GC this evening, and let's just say that Gordon's speech had been well-received among delegates both our working-class populist and our middle-class left-libertarian types

Don't quote me on ConHome Tongue

Dave
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