What does Labour need to do to get back into government?

A classic example of Labour's disregard and distance from some of their core lifelong supporters was the Mrs Duffy incident. She was a lifelong Labour supporter and thankfully she still is.

'I see Labour as ideally representing the core 'British' values of tolerance, decency, hard work etc'

Agree , but they are aklso traditional Tory values.

Yes these categories are generalisations, but there is also some truth to them. You yourself didn't vote Labour because they did not treat some of the things you believe in seriously enough. I think that was also true of the working class who turned away from Labour, they didn't feel their voice and interests were being heard.

I think it comes down to how much people care about certain issues. Labour and the Tories were both all for globalisation and for the environment etc., but I don't think that many working class voters were.

To woo teh working class 'Blue Labour', New Labour may have to change some of their priorities and policies and speeches. I think the 'Blue Labour' policies are a move in that direction. However, this may upset some of 'Champagne Labour' and some left wing activists, both of whom often ignored the voice of the people and thought that they knew what was best for them.

Interesting analysis, claig, though reading it I suspect it's one of those bits of analysis that looks really good on paper but doesn't actually stand up when faced with real human beings rather than theoretical models.

I am definitely middle class and would flatter myself I sort of fall into the 'intelligentsia' category - but I actually find myself kind of agreeing with both your supposedly liberal and supposedly communitarian ideas above, if anything the latter more than the former. I suppose I see Labour as ideally representing the core 'British' values of tolerance, decency, hard work etc - some bits of which fit into your 'liberal' definition and some into your 'communitarian' category - but actually they meld together very nicely in practice and always have done, and are at the heart of what it means to be British.

You could apply your definitions just as easily to the Tory party - that too has plenty of people who favour globalisation versus Little Englanders etc.

So not sure the analysis is that helpful.

The articlle shows how out of touch the 'middle class liberals' are with the mass of the working class. The 'middle class liberals' are 'I'm alright Jacks' who are miles apart from the majority. Thatcher was closer to the working class 'Blue Labour' than the middle class liberal 'Champagne Labour'.

The voice of the working class and 'Blue Labour' has had very little influence in the higher echelons of New Labour for many years. Maybe this will change, but will the change be for real or will it be spin?

breadandbutterfly, you are right. I didn't realise that Labour had lost so many working class voters as opposed to middle class voters. I realised taht lots of voters were turned off by Labour but didn't realise the real breakdown.

The green policies don't really play to ordinary working people who are very sceptical of the intelligentsia's claims. They never understood why they had to endure £1000 bin fines to 'save the planet'. Sustainability didn't play to them - they thought it was about sustaining Labour in power and they couldn't see the benefit of that.

This article from the Independent explains it well and talks about teh 'Blue Labour' policy to try to regain teh lost working class votes.

'The problem Blue Labour tries to address is this. Labour has lost around 4 million working-class voters since 1997, and at the last general election, for the first time, Labour's middle-class vote (in the ABC1 sense) was higher than its working-class (C2DE) vote. To win an election, Labour needs to win back lots of those blue-collar voters; the trouble is that Labour's middle-class voters, especially the liberal graduates among them, have increasingly divergent values and interests.

Academics call this the liberal versus communitarian value divide. Broadly speaking, middle-class liberals place most stress on individual rights and cultural openness. They are highly mobile and pro-diversity and pro-immigration. They are softish on criminals and green on the environment. They are comfortable with globalisation and benefit from it both economically and culturally. At the more extreme end they are universalists, who feel no greater obligation to someone in Birmingham than to someone in Burundi.

Working-class communitarians, by contrast, have a more collectivist view of rights, and place great stress on community membership. They worry about welfare free-riding, they value the familiar and the local, and are sceptical about mobility and mass immigration. They are draconian on crime and not very green. They are uncomfortable with globalisation, and tend not to benefit from it economically or culturally. At the more extreme end, they shade into racists.'

www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/david-goodhart-labour-can-have-its-own-coalition-too-2246971.html

sorry, to working class children

Well, I guess I am just an old Labour voter :)

I'd be very happy with your list, breadandbutterfly.

MrPants, a few thoughts:

" why is giving your workers a share of the company profits bad if they are bank bonuses?" I don't think it is, per se, although you have to be extremely careful about the incentives that you create in this sector because of the potential for one sided risk taking and the mobility of the workers. Although I don't always agree with Nouriel Roubini and I would say he mostly comes from a relatively right wing perspective I think his writing on regulation of bank remuneration is sensible and his proposals perfectly workable.

My support for mutualism is though much more about worker control rather than just a distribution of profits. Obviously it depends on the industry, but to generalise massively the tendency is for lower level workers to value stability, long term employment and reliable ongoing acceptable performance over and above short term high profits. Whereas you can see at the top level in businesses that high level employees come in, generate high profits for a few years, then leave with a good pay off. Often of course leaving the business burdened with debt or otherwise in a much worse long term position.

"meritocracy and social mobility " TBH, I think social mobility is a massive red herring at this point in Britain's history. I've discussed this a lot with my Mum (who is an even older labour voter ). The social mobility that we saw post war and through to the 1970s was basically an illusion. There were very few people going down the social scale, what was happening was a massive expansion of the middle classes because of the way the economy was developing (similar to what is happening in China now). As it happens both my parents and especially my mum were beneficiaries of that expansion which the State facilitated through for example the opening of the grammar schools too working class children.

In addition, we have such an unequal society that anyone at a higher level is going to cling on like grim death to their position and make sure that their children are setting out with a head start - hence all the angst over schooling, getting in to the 'best' school, getting the best possible exam results. In a society where, for example, care workers were paid a decent wage and didn't need to rely on state benefits to survive, people wouldn't worry half so much about where there children ended up on the social scale. At that point you might see more genuine social mobility where people move into jobs that are suited to their abilities and talents.

"in these ecologically aware days would a leading politician dare pin their hopes on a big fossil fuel discovery?" No, you're right, the oil days are long gone. But I think it is still important in that a lot of people see the problems of the 70s and don't fully understand the relevance of oil in both creating those problems (the oil price shock) and getting us out of them (north sea oil).

On the other hand here in Wales I see a massive opportunity for Welsh politicians to exploit the potential for renewable energy and to tie that into the engineering skills that still exist in the Valleys (and the fact that as an industrial landscape in great need of jobs there is likely to be much less opposition to windfarms et al). An old fashioned active industrial policy could go a long way here IMO.

I don't think pandering to the public sector is the way for Labour to get back into power. Most people, even people working within it, know it needs to be reformed and that many people working within it are overpaid for what they actually do.

Labour need to make a complete and unreserved apology for the New Labour era, and completely purge the party of anyone even tangentially connected with that regime. So Millibands, gone. Balls, gone. Fielding, gone. Harman, gone. They need to draw new MPs from working-class people, not the entitled middle-class that has taken control of the party over the last 20 years.

Great posts/ideas from both Mr Pants in his OP and Takver.

I'm an Old Labour voter (as opposed to an old Labour voter ) but I have no problems with Mr Pants ideas - they seem v sensible. Esp no 4 - I hate tax credits ie giving back with one hand what you took with the other minus all the costs in admin/fraud etc - totally pointless. Plus the low paid should be better paid by their employers, not by the state chipping in.

Also love Takver's ref to mutualism, which I'm a big fan of - the more coops we have and the less Philip Greens at the top etc creaming off their billions and salting them away in some tax haven somewhere, the better. (Except for the Philip Greens themselves, and Tory party coffers. ButI can cope with them being a bit poorer.)

Re who would Old Labour voters vote for intead - easy. In my household, me and DH refused to vote Labour so in the end, I voted Green - as do a lot of effed off Labour voters (and I did this primarily for their general policies, not specifically for 'green' reason; the environment etc is on my list of areas I look at, but a long way from the top). DH voted Lib Dem - ha ha - well, he'll never make that mistake again - they're dead in the water.

claig - you'e simply wrong to say that Labour lost the last election because they were deserted by centrist voters - they werent particularly. Research after the election showed it was actually the traditional Labour 'core' vote that deserted them in droves.

Certainly, experience in other countries shows you cannot write off socialist parties - they have come back from electoral wipeout in a number of countries over the last couple of decades.

My preferred policychanges to ensure I vote Labour again? Here they are:

1. Apologise for ballsing up over the last decade. Esp re housing - allowing house prices to get so out ofcontrol, not building enough, and more generally, encouraging a credit boom). Also re allowing and encouraging lax regulation of the the banks etc - that wastotally their fault - Mandelson's comments about being 'totally relaxed about the filthy rich' kid of sum it upfor me. Also maybe about Iraq - doesn't bother me personally but really matters to some people.

1. Defend the NHS with all guns blazing. Popular with almost all voters - I have yet to meet anyone who is not a Tory MP who wants the reorganisation of the NHS to go ahead. A bit like Labour's ID cards plan - everyone thinks it's shit.

1. Recant the stupid anti-public sector pay claptrap - easy way to lose most of their core vote in one go. (NB - their core vote is NOT Daily Mail readers or Telegraph readers - if they get miffed, well, oh dear.)

1. Policy to build loads more houses thus in one fell swoop both solving the housing and unemployment problems. Plus accidentally having the knock-on effect of lowering huse prices thus improving everyone's quality of life (except for BTL landlords, but again, I'll cope), as people don't need to spend so much on housing costs and can spend on other stuff, thus improving the economy generally.

Loads more ideas but will leave it there.

I agree Labour haven't represented the working class in a long time. I have to laugh when people think the Tories are better with money. A lot of their cuts will actually cost more in the long run. I despair of all the parties.

Thinking more seriously:

Start talking long and hard about inequality. Point out how much more unequal we are than other EU countries. Talk about how inequality affects everyone, even the rich, talk about the insecurity, stress, and family breakdown that it causes.

Talk about capitalism, and the ways in which predatory US style free market capitalism can be brought under control

Talk about the 1970s - look at the problems of monolithic state owned enterprises, and think about how ordinary people can control the means of production in different ways. (Hence talking about mutualism above.)

When you're talking about the 70s, talk about the 80s as well. Talk about the fact that what saved the UK's bacon in the early 80s was the cash from North Sea Oil - not Conservative policies (but admit that Labour back then were also hanging on for the cash to come through, rather than tackling industrial decline, thinking of creative ways to finance businesses securely and all these other things that the Germans and the Scandis do so well). Talk about what Norway did with their North Sea oil money.

Talk about industrial relations - the fact that unions are important, that they can be a serious force for good.

hmm, must do some work :)

So the problem with this thread and perhaps the reason it has attracted very little input from "old labour" types or from those that would identify themselves as socialist is that we do not want labour unless it once again starts to speak for the non white middle class, daily mail reading working poor, and non working poor.

It is and always has been the middle class that right wing parties have had to court in order to hold power, those that support capitalism by buying in to all the crap that makes them more selfish and narrow minded and thus easier to by with votes, or scare shitless with stories about the underclass and those who are such a drain on the resources of the society.

Old labour voters have given up any hope or indeed do not want labour to be electable if all they do is parrot neo liberal capitalist crap. Look to Scotland to see what the Labour party is having to do, it is going through a period of change that might bring Labour back to the left. If it does not it will always be outflanked by the SNP who despite being exactly the same as every other political party in it's belief in the discredited capitalist system still manages to sell it's self as more socialist and the thing is the people are voting for it.

I'd start with

1. Pick up and run with Cameron's flirtation with mutualism. Starting with substantial tax breaks, and lots of other assistance for new employee controlled companies and businesses shifting to worker control. That could be traditional small workers' co-ops where the workers run the business themselves, or in the case of larger businesses its more likely that the workers will employ managers to run the business on their behalf.

2. Continuing in the same vein, rework the old Thatcher idea of employees owning shares in their company. It got lost in the whole privatisation-get-rich-quick 80s thing, but it has lots of potential to tie businesses and workers together.

3. Think long and hard and come up with some creative new suggestions for long term secure finance for small to medium sized businesses

4. Serious re-regulation of the financial sector along the lines suggested by Nouriel Roubini

I could go on. . .

And, despite what the Fail and the propaganda in the Right wing press suggests, the public sector does create wealth for the nation. We pay taxes too you know.
Not in any real way. Taxes pay your wages. Then you give a bit of it back. Pointless really, it'd be easier just to pay public sector people less and not bother taxing them.

"I (was) a teacher. I created wealth for the nation by providing an educated workforce capable of filling the jobs private industry created."
But there are record numbers of NEETs. More and more children are leaving school unable to do fairly basic things. Something HAS to be done about it.

Yeah, all those children lifted out of poverty, all those NHS waiting lists cut down to the minimum, all those disability discrimination laws, all them gays who can now get married, not to mention those evil women and their insistence on not only maternity leave, but the right to go back to their own job afterwards. That building schools programme was a disgrace. Why on earth would you want children taught in schools with watertight roofs and no mould? We obviously don't nned the excessive police force, that can go, along with the Sure Start programme. Libraries!!! What a waste.

Who'd want to go back to that?

After all the damage they did over the past 13 years, I can't believe anybody would want a Labour government ever again.

'When do you reckon ED had to shop at primark'

When the spin doctors told him to?

I don't think he is too bad. He is not arrogant, he seems alright.

They had their turn and they spent all the money labour had healthy books

Then they just went mad and spent all the money went on a bender like Whitney and never really got their mojo back

The other thing is they go on about Tory toffs labour hasn't represented the working class since god knows when

Even the union bosses bob brow and others are on mad money

When do you reckon ED had to shop at primark

Yeah right like a fat kid needs cake they do

I'm not sure where the traditional labour voters will go. At one point they would vote Lib Dem in protest, but the Lib Dems have completely shot themselves in the foot in that respect lately. My friends on the left think the Socialist party and their ilk will rise to fill the void but I suspect that's wishful thinking at best.

I also reject the idea that the Daily Mail is the beating heart of public opinion that claig insists it is. the fact is, their circulation has been dropping for years to the point where it can no longer claim to voice the opinion of the even a significant minority.

And, despite what the Fail and the propaganda in the Right wing press suggests, the public sector does create wealth for the nation. We pay taxes too you know.

I (was) a teacher. I created wealth for the nation by providing an educated workforce capable of filling the jobs private industry created.

DH worked in the NHS. He created wealth for the nation by keeping the workforce healthy and capable of working.

We both pay taxes (higher rate in my instance) as does the entire Public Sector workforce. By cutting these jobs and by cutting pay, the govt is lowering it's tax intake which it needs in order to support the private sector. It's a false economy, much like the removing of benefits from the disabled thereby making them unable to work and contribute to the tax intake of the nation.

What happens if you cut the Public sector jobs or make the pay so low as to make it uneconomical for people to work in them? What happens if you make the cost of gaining the qualifications required in order to gain a job that pays barely above the minimum? As far as I can see the following is going to happen. Our talented young people are going to reject careers in the Public Service. All those potential teachers, nurses and even doctors are going to weigh up the pay of the potential jobs against the student debt and decide it's not worth it. And those working, especially part time in public sector jobs with shrinking incomes are going to realize that they will be better off on benefits. First there will be increased immigration. We will have to import the teachers/nurses/doctors from abroad, leaving our country underskilled and uncompetitive, and secondly the public purse will be stretched even more by the non-tax paying people (especially women) who cannot work because the low wages offered would all be swallowed up in childcare fees.

"Efficiency Savings" as proposed by the Tories is, in fact, quite the opposite.

So who will the disenfranchised labour voters vote for? your guess is as good as mine.

Well from what i've seen he's not actually said those words....just skirted around the subject and let people read it how they want. Typical politician I guess.

The uncomfortable truth is that the public sector has expanded past the point where the private sector can support it. So now we need to make cutbacks.

And there's only really two ways to do this. Make people redundant. Or pay everyone less money. Sure we can tinker around the edges looking for "efficiency savings" but the size of the deficit is too high for a nip tuck here and there. We need a fundamental rethink about what the state provides for.

Perhaps he should avoid saying that public sector workers should take a pay cut.