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!

I agree with wheresthebeach about MPs having a proper job for 5 years. I also think that there should be a minimum age for becoming an MP...say 40. And an MP should have a local connection with their constituency.

As long as the 'proper job' wasn't City wanking and/or helping out in your wealthy family's business!

... Yes, yes, I know banking/finance is a real job, but it hardly gives you a realistic view of life, does it?

They need to make up for the fact that the leader is the wrong Miliband and come up with some very strong credible policies.

I even found myself thinking I wish Labour had a Theresa May in the wings.

Labour running the country again gives me the willies in the same way I would feel if my teenager suddenly took to the internet with free reign of my credit card

They're simply not responsible people

Our Labour controlled council totally ignored us when we were badly flooded two years ago. Two elderly people in our street died as a result of the stress.

Personally. I believe that at least two thirds of the shadow cabinet are actually trying to lose the election so that they can change leaders.

Two fingers to their supporters who are dreading another five years of tory tyranny.

YADNBU. I come from a long line of Labour voters, with living in a northern mining town.
I started off at the age of 18 voting in Labour and every election after that. As that's what I knew. When I read up on the other parties though, I'm afraid to say I've been voting Conservative ever since. They seem to stick up for the hard working people of the country.
The huge rise towards UKIP is frightening. I see it a lot here. It's because everybody's sick to the back teeth of being sold out to the EU, powers being eroded, and immigration uncontrolled.
When UKIP's the only party promising to clamp down and reclaim England, THAT'S where people are going to turn to.
Never mind the fact it's frighteningly echoing Nazi Germany and how they got into power - from disillusioned people turning to extreme parties, and a whole 'meh, can't be bothered to vote as all parties are useless' attitude.'
The main parties need to stop shouting 'racism' at any voiced concern of immigration and start LISTENING. Otherwise UKIP is going to grow and grow.
If 'meh, can't be bothered to vote, they're all the same' is how you feel, get your arse out there and vote. Otherwise the extremists get in as they're the only ones with a strong enough view to get their voices heard.

People need to think about who they're voting for and not just do it out of tradition. Somebody once said that if Labour put forward a monkey as a canditate, people would vote for it

They're too complacent in expecting the working classes to automatically vote for them. I live in the NE and everyone votes Labour in my area. It's infuriating.

They totally screwed the country up during their last reign

I think Ed Miliband has done an okay job given what he's inherited. Cast your mind back to 2010 when the party was in meltdown and riven with Blairite and Brownite infighting and having suffered a crushing defeat at the election. His brother was too tainted by his association with the previous regime to have really done anything about it.

He put the Iraq issue to bed in his first speech, kept the party united(ish) and stopped it dividing on a Blair/Brown or New/Old axes, stopped the government from going gung-ho into Syria, took on Murdoch. forced the government's hand in cutting energy bills and is reforming Labour's links with the trade unions. Not bad for an opposition. The Labour party could have quite easily become an unelectable basket case, but it isn't and that is in part down to Ed Miliband.

I also get the rage when people say 'we don't want PR managed, airbrushed politicians' and when they are presented with someone who is neither of those things the response is ' don't like him, he's weird' of course he's fucking weird, he devoted his entire life to politics! He isn't the bloke next door, no politician is.

I also wish the whole front bench would be a bit more assertive and nail the Tory lie that 'Labour caused the recession' when it was a global economic crisis and it wouldn't have mattered a jot what stripe of politician we'd have had in office when the crisis happened.

Yes, there was a global economic crisis, but Brown had been quietly screwing things up for years behind closed doors

He really was weird.

I couldn;'t believe Tony Blair's son is being put forward for a safe Labour seat. That on its own is enough to put me off voting for Labour. Talk about jobs for the boys. Totally sickening.

And if those economic plans were so bad, why, before the economic crisis, did the Tories agree to match Labour's spending plans if they won the election? Before the crash, Brown wasn't wildly overspending, the economy simply couldn't cope when the meltdown happened. There is an argument that he should have squirrelled away more in the good years, but then there have only been three years that government had run a surplus (and one of those was in the early years of the Blair government).

At the time of the 2010 election the economy was (slowly) recovering and growth was killed off when the Tories started to cut too quickly. We then had the double dip recession and the loss of the triple A rating under the Tories.

If there was a catastrophic failure it was a failure of almost every major political figure in the UK with the exception of Vince Cable and that was a failure to think about how to regulate the banks properly and advocating 'light touch' regulation and the economy being too dependent on the financial sector. But again, both political parties were guilty of that.

People need to think about who they're voting for and not just do it out of tradition. Somebody once said that if Labour put forward a monkey as a canditate, people would vote for it hmm They're too complacent in expecting the working classes to automatically vote for them. I live in the NE and everyone votes Labour in my area. It's infuriating.

Yup, I agree with this. I'm in a Northern town with a huge Labour stronghold (even got a major member of parliament as our MP) as they know the majority of voters will never sway anywhere else.
I don't know why I bother voting in the main elections sometimes, as I know I'm shouting into the wind. I still want to get out there and try and make my voice heard though.

Why is that only mentioned in relation to Labour voters? It is equally true that there are constituencies in the South East where they weigh the Tory vote and a pig in a blue rosette would get elected for them.

I agree that the 'I've always voted X' mentality is stupid, but it is unfair to think that it is the sole preserve of Labour supporters.

I don't give a fig if Ed Miliband is likeable or not - but frankly he's unelectable.

I was a staunch Labour voter until the last excesses of the Blair/Brown regime, and voted Lib Dem in 2010 (ha! hollow laugh) because I just couldn't excuse the war mongering.

In the locals, I voted Labour as our ward councillors here in Lambeth are actually pretty good, and I've always voted Green in the EU elections.

Labour at the moment are in crisis I think. They have massively lost their way, have no distinctive policies, have a lacklustre front bench - I've met most of them and think Siddique Khan is horrible, Ed Balls is a bully and the only one who is on top of their game is Yvette Cooper, who did a very good job with the housing portfolio.

UKIP offer easy soundbites; Tories offer nasty politics but some truth in terms of economic recovery. What are Labour doing to recover all of the ground they've lost - not least was that horrendous note left for the new Treasury Secretary saying there was no money left? Where is the true left in this country - Aneurin Bevin would be spinning in his grave.

We need a new John Smith and we don't yet have one. I'd definitely pick Kinnock even over this crowd.

On a personal level I'm waiting for the political party that is willing to enforce access to education as a universal right for all British born children. I'm also for a leader who is willing to stand up and face down the causes for the appalling rise in frequency of violent hate crimes under the current regime and the exploitation of workers through zero hours contracts. There are battles for equality and fair treatment by various minority groups that I thought we'd broken the back of in the 1970's, that under Blair were set back for decades, along with social mobility. The current administration are doing nothing more than entrenching the inequalities.

I want to see the family valued as the cornerstone of society that it should be. That doesn't mean single Mum bashing, but does mean that compassionate leave for a child who needs to attend the funeral of a much loved grandparent should not involve the risk of parental fines. It also means that absent parents should be held accountable for the financial support of their children. Education needs to be based on evidence based practice not nanny state political indoctrination if we are to become globally competitive once more. Security of tenure is needed for many families.

I want to see an end to welfare for the elites, and a return to the promotion of a free market & support for small and start up enterprises. I want to see our university research departments respected and academics to be able to have enough security to become the hubs of innovation so desperately needed to compete in a global economy and answer some of our most pressing energy and food security issues. In other words I want the segments of society that have in the past pulled us out of recession to be properly encouraged to do it again.

I'm sick of the whole divide and conquer meme - Labour is just as guilty of the divisive sneery, sneery approach as the Tories at the moment. Vince Cable got flak from all sides of the house, and I'm not saying I agreed with everything he has said but he does seem to have been the ONLY politician in recent years to have even attempted to address the structural faults in our economy. Those fault lines have been growing ever deeper and maybe, just maybe if others had been willing to brainstorm instead of just pointing fingers at each other like naughty kids with their hands caught in Mum's sweety jar we might have been able to resolve some of the issues by now.

I want to see the NHS reinstated as a well run public health service for all British subjects that is free at the point of use - this was Britain's crowning glory. Now it's a cess pit of back handers for various consultancy firms to make huge profits while the clinical needs of the sick and in need are ignored and front line staff are treated like crap.

Many items on my wish list should reside firmly in the lap of the Labour party, but they don't.

Tony Blair v Nigel Farage

This is how Labour should treat UKIP. No more fucking pandering about the immigration/EU scaremongering. Stand up and say: it is us who are reclaiming Britain, for the majority of people who treat their neighbours with respect no matter where they come from, for all the decent British people who don't want benefits removed from disabled people, for all the people who donate to food banks so others don't go hungry. Labour isn't about the leadership, it's about the broad church of everyday decent people who Labour should represent.

The thing that annoys me most about UKIP is the way they portray a version of Britishness that is small minded and filled with hate for others. Most British people are not like that and Labour need to say so. Stop appealing to the worst in people and remind everyone that we are basically decent and that Labour can be the basically decent party that represents us.

Rightly or wrongly the electorate want a strong leader and a clear message - that's why Farage, Cameron, Blair, Thatcher won public support. Unfortunately that means that other more admirable qualities (intelligence, morality etc) go by the wayside.

Labour need to play the system enough to get CLEAR POLICIES over to the electorate, show that Miliband is a LEADER whilst also putting a stop to the pathetic tit-for-tat political squabbling advocated by Ed Balls.

Its so depressing that even staunch supporters of labour are struggling to get on board with the current labour leadership .

Alas he is currently sending me to sleep on bbc news channel. I really want to love him....

He keeps saying 'we need a radical and bold offer.' So WHAT IS IT then Ed???????

I've missed most of the post mortem due to busyness, but am relieved am too busy to have to see Farage's mugging face and witnessing a naive, witless country talking still of a 'protest vote'.

SolomanDaisy Hurrah for your post!

The video was a bit of a jolt, too. I never was much of a Blair fan, but that couple of minutes makes Ed 'n' Dave look totally insipid.

When did "What we stand for" turn into "What we stand against, and a few catchprases"?

The video is great Solomondaisy- Both men on really good form but Blair wipes the floor with Farage. 'You sit with our flag but you do not represent the Interests of the British people' is a great,simple line that Miliband could have learnt from!
And Blair yesterday gave great advice too.
Oh what is the world coming too when Blair looks like a towering giant of decency and Miliband looks like a cringing coward?!

I don't get why people are saying the 'wrong' brother was picked. David might be a bit less geeky, but not much. I suspect he would have been all mouth and no trousers. He has a hugely similar background to his brother (obviously) so I don't think he would have much more of a clue about "real life" than his brother.

There's nothing between the main parties now.

People need a change. That's why Nigel Farage and his party did well. I mean how long has Harriet Harman been pontificating to us in those headmistress tones. The whole lot of them are as stale as anything. They might as well record a message and sit at home. It's the same old rubbish year after year or even decade after decade. Nigel Farage has put a bit of life into politics.