To want to shake the entire Labour leadership and scream SORT IT OUT you useless tossers!!!!!!

[Springheeled]

Because if Labour don't speak out or formulate anything sensible then the vacuum for the far right grows and look what happens...

I dearly wish they would stop cowering, quivering, vacillating, hovering uncertainly in the middle of the road, wobbling, wibbling and wavering.

I expect they'll now start wetly making noises about immigrations and referendums, pandering to the ukip voters rather than having the guts to argue that immigration and Europe are not the biggest problems we face.

Labour is supposed to be the party of the working people, the majority of us. I am so disgusted with them for missing an open goal and I'm terrified of a Tory/UKIP coalition. A year to go! Some guts please Labour! Some policies! Some swagger!

[Hassled]

YANBU. I'm in despair. They're fannying around with fuck knows what while Rome is burning. It is way too late at this stage to do anything about Ed pre-election, so we're stuck with him - he's a good man, but he's not a leader. We need strong, clear, policies - we need them to be proactive, not reactive. We need principles.

I spent last week leafletting and canvassing and telling for Labour - and our MEP got in, thankfully, but part of me is thinking - what was the point?

[oohdaddypig]

I agree. And I can't bring myself to vote labour right now.

But I'm desperately worried about immigration. But cannot possibly vote UKIP, or for Cameron.

I believe you can generally be left wing AND be worried about immigration. But fuck knows who I should vote for. I voted Green!

[Tweasels]

I will always vote Labour but I totally agree. I like Ed, I think he's smart and good at Poitics and I hate the way you have to be charismatic to be listened to and wish the British public would see beyond shit like that.

However, come on Ed, let's come out fighting. Show that you support the working classes. Don't be afraid to swing to the left. Make some bold policy decisions.

I'd love it if they renationalised energy and the railways. And introduced a living wage rather than NMW.

[Panwearsrosa]

Someone just tweeted this thread to Owen Jones.

[GarlicMayonnaise]

Someone just tweeted this thread to Owen Jones.

(No, it wasn't me.)

PLEASE, OWEN, TAKE UP POLITICS!!!!!

[vitaminz]

You know they won't sort it out, they might tinker around the edges and make a lot of noise but really what does champagne socialist millionaire Miliband know or care about poor workers in the north? Labour had 13 years, 13 fucking years to do something and instead of making people more equal they made the divide between rich and poor so huge.

[Blondieminx]

I agree OP, and mrstigs summed up exactly what I was thinking.

The NHS, wraparound care for schools to support working parents, transport, energy... Those are the issues Labour should lead on. If they just cave and start doing immigration stuff I shall despair...

There are millions of middle class voters who have been utterly shafted by the Tory policies (child benefit, NHS cuts, failure to provide enough school places). Thousands more who won't make the same mistake of voting LibDem again. Labour could and should be capitalising on this!

[GarlicMayonnaise]

Yep, not just the middle classes either. Down here in the underclass we're falling down holes where there used to be safety net, being treated like criminals and discovering that not only is support being removed, but so are the steps back up into productive society. No wonder there's such disaffection & cynicism. People down here are liking UKIP because it offers them someone else to hate - always a winner with a despised class :(

As despairing as I feel about the breathtaking ignorance of politics, economics & history in today's Britain, I do understand it because the public is just fed a stream of slogans instead of ideas. It's like Spitting Image come to life! I really wish Labour would launch a massive offensive - they need to be deconstructing Tory/UKIP spin, hour by hour, as it happens, and be ahead of them At the same time they should be putting forward a better 'dream', with common sense explanations of how it will work and, yes, a stream of positive slogans to counteract the vitriol spewing out of Westminster.

Sadly, I agree with my fellow 'dispossessed' ... This can't happen, because Labour's just another word for Tory.

[bochead]

Does anyone else find themselves thinking more and more frequently that in a nation with a population 60m+ surely we must be able to find a better choice of leadership from somewhere? I look at all 3 major parties and am underwhelmed to put it mildly. I never agreed with a single policy of milk monitor Margaret Thatcher but at least she looked like a leader iykwim.

The current lot - Lib, lab, Con & UKIP are just embarrassing frankly and the country is in such a mess we desperately need a few heavy weight old school statesmen.

Millband looks like he's not sure he should really be wearing his long trousers yet - how many more open goals does he expect the Condems to give him before he starts to behave like a leader of the opposition? I'm struggling to find a sector of electorate (with the exception of a very few foreign olgiarchs and global elite bankers) who aren't dissatisfied with the current lot.

1. Parents - lunacy on the curriculum & exams, school places, childrens centre closures, uni fees, special educational needs, childcare costs, child benefit.
   

1. Workers - zero hours contracts, outsourced jobs or being undercut by people prepared to sleep 8 to a shed.
   

1. 18-25 year olds - uni debt, jobs shortages, internships and workfare, lack of apprenticeship places, cuts to the welfare state and educational standards, private rents
   

1. Professionals - house prices, white collar outsourcing, disrespect of professional bodies advice to government (eg the GMC is ignored in relation to the NHS).
   

1. Elderly - terrified of poor NHS standards, secret court of protection, care home fees and the potential to be mistreated in them. Quite a few of the poorer ones die off each year from being unable to afford food and heating fuel.
   

1. Londoners - how the hell is anyone supposed to be able to afford to live there? crime rates, schools, health
   

1. Non-Londoners - flood defences anyone?
   

May I suggest that public schools pay greater attention to standards in their debating societies because the current pitiful bunch clearly skipped thru the net! It's not just Millband - the entire shadow cabinet is exactly that just shadows.

[GarlicMayonnaise]

Immigration and 'welfare' (national insurance, actually) are the two things people wildly overestimate as probems. Is it a coincidence that these are the two targets mounted by the Tories, to divert attention from the financial asset-stripping that is the real problem?

[Panwearsrosa]

Transport, schools provision, energy prices, cost of living, NHS sell off, poverty where most people in poverty are actually working - these things mean 'immigration' is NOT the most contentious issue, though Ukip and Tories will tell you it is.

[TwoLeftSocks]

YANBU, everythings all so insipid.

[oohdaddypig]

bochead I would vote for you! Great manifesto. Miliband - are you listening???

garlic I agree with you on welfare but not immigration. I describe myself as left wing but really worry about this issue and none of the parties has a handle on it

[bochead]

Panwearsrosa - we have people living in SHEDS, children with no schools to go to and 20,000 dying of the cold every winter. We also have to import 60% of our food, and are due to commence rolling brown outs in 5 years time - how on earth is uncontrolled immigration NOT an issue against that backdrop?

Managed immigration that shows genuine compassion to the persecuted fleeing for their lives in desperation and that can attract the skills and talents that an advanced nation needs is one thing. I'm wholeheartedly behind properly managed immigration - historically like the small business sector it was an engine of growth, right from the time when Elizabeth the 1st had a Moorish Chancellor.

In recent decades though uncontrolled immigration for political gerrymandering purposes has been the order of the day. What we've been gifted since Blair is essentially a complete immigration clusterfook, and is destroying communities and benefiting neither the immigrants themselves nor the communities who do not have the resources to receive them.

[Scarletohello]

Totally agree. Have thought this for a while but wouldn't it be great if MN started a political party? It's got 4-5 million members, why not? There's some incredibly articulate, intelligent and impassioned people here. And surely we couldn't make a bigger mess of it than the present lot...?

[Panwearsrosa]

I said immigration isn't the most contentious issue, which still stands. Accommodation/schools/food imports/NHS/transport/energy prices are NOT immigration issues - they are political choices for the Tories and Ukip to shift onto immigrants, which you seem to have passed on?

[GarlicMayonnaise]

Most of the generally stated arguments against 'immigration' are misinformed. We have oodles of space. Net immigration to the UK is pretty low, both as a percentage of our population and by comparison with other countries. Immigrants claim less social support than native born citizens. We have an immensely long history with integration, and are really good at it.

There are two real problems, which you don't hear about so much. A disproportionately high number of serious gang criminals are immigrants from 3 particular Eastern European countries. This is a policing issue, not an 'immigration' problem. And our famously successful (by and large) integration hinged on behind-the-scenes housing & schooling policies, which were dropped by Thatcher's government and never reinstated. Hence our developing problems with ghettoisation, which those policies existed specifically to deter.

[RazzleDazzleEm]

Agree its totally embarrassing....


Not one of them has said anything useful since the results.


Drop the word absolute and clear

[GarlicMayonnaise]

Accommodation/schools/food imports/NHS/transport/energy prices are NOT immigration issues - they are political choices for the Tories and Ukip to shift onto immigrants

Yes.

[Jinsei]

Yanbu OP. I wish that the Labour Party could sort itself out.

[wheresthebeach]

We need new rules about who can be an MP.

First new rule: Must have had a proper job for 5 years.

Actually in the interests of keeping things simple I'll leave it at that.

Then we'd get people who had some sort of sense of the real world rather than a group that seems to have demoted political debate to a sad, fading reflection of their politics class in uni.

[Scarletohello]

This is an interesting article about Labour, especially people's ideas about what they should do to win the next election, in the comments section.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/may/26/labour-miliband-split-win-back-voters-elections-results