to think we should all back edd to stop the tories and ukip getting into power

[wilsonq2]

This weekend many people in labour have turned against edd. I think its just too late to replace him and we should support him to stop the other two getting in
The has tag has been hijacked I think, not sure if it is genuine.

Get labour in and then sack Milliband. The key thing is to get the Tories out. But I'm sick to death of politicians who put their own careers before both the interests of their party and, more importantly, the interests of their fellow citizens. If you can't do the job, go quickly and gracefully.

I have said this before, but the general consensus of most economists on immigration is that higher levels of immigration tend to result in a faster increase in wealth overall in the country, BUT the benefits do tend to go disproportionately to those who are better off, and there does seem to be some absolute negative impact on people at the bottom of society (who already have the least, and therefore any impact on them at all is a real problem). And that's just in the short term.

In the long term, high immigration rates are likely to increase inequality still further, because of the effect on what economists call "mutual regard" (=willingness to redistribute wealth in the form of taxation).

So this is about trade-offs. Do we want to increase society's overall wealth to the absolute maximum extent, at the expense of becoming a more polarized and unequal society?

Or would we be OK with increasing the overall wealth of society a little more slowly, but be a more egalitarian and less polarized society?

If the former--keep on with high immigration rates. If we want the latter, we should probably look at gradually dialling immigration levels back to what we had in, say, the mid-1990s. We could still enjoy most of the benefits that immigration begins, but we would be more comfortable with ourselves as a society.

It is not about "good" or "bad"--it is a question of "What sort of society do we want to become?"

By the way, most immigration comes from outside the EU, so even if we stay in the EU (which would make economic sense, quite honestly), we could still reduce immigration levels from the rest of the world if we really wanted to.

Patsyandeddie - I'm old enough to remember the Thatcher and Major years and that's why I won't vote Conservative. They made a pigs ear of it then, they've just made a pig's ear of it again. The Labour years were utopian in comparison.

Jesus who are all you people

Deeedeee er personally I had voted labour all my adult life, so since 1982 as my parents were red hot labour voters.

Afraid to say the Blaire/brown days were a sad blight on the party and comments such as yours simply compound the fact that labour don't listen, don't care and are incompetent.

Labour are the party that label people racist when they dare to question mass immigration and the EU as actually helping drive wages lower while profiting big business.

Remember Gordon's ridiculous British jobs for British people

If you are a doctor all fine and dandy. You can piss off abroad and earn lots. If you are a brick layer then it's not so good that your previous boss lays you off while employing a group of polish blokes who have no family here so can live 10 to a house share and work for less money. Don't blame them.

It's happening to our friend right now.

Wake up. Listen. Act. Or UKIP will be the power broker with the Tories and quite frankly labour will be finished.

The winter of discontent?

Utopian really? Frankly I go back a long way and all the governments had bad and good patches.

However back in the day at least labour had politicians who did care about working people.

John smith etc.

Now they are the same smug patronising career politicians from just as privileged back grounds as the Tories.

Ed Milliband and Ed balls. Not fit to wipe John smiths boots.

Benefit fraud may be small but that's only those who are caught. That's an interesting fact re that high number who pulled their claims rather than have a medical.

It's the actual benefit system that needs tackling and heavily cutting back then the fraud can be looked at. Labour made it possible to work less hours or to choose not work at all and won't reverse that so it's likely they don't want to get back in this time as everyone knows the cuts need to continue.

Immigration does need to be looked at, not stopped but just made far stricter with no recourse to public money for say five years until enough Ni has been paid here and then limited.

We have made a good baby steps into bring a work ethic back to the country, now it just needs ramping up and finishing.

The cuts are resulting in lower government borrowing,

Oh dear DrDre, a blatant lie, confirmed by our beloved government mouthpiece

To all those advocating austerity please go and live in Japan, where austerity isn't working and hasn't since its instigation in the early '90s. In fact, they've just devalued the Yen by 10% to try to make their exports more competitive whilst their economy shrank by 3% last quarter.

Ironically, had the towel folder followed Labour policies in 2010 the economy would likely have recovered, as it was doing before he was put in charge.

A vote for Wallace Ed won't change anything.

Uptheairymountain - not sure where you were living, can't believe it was in the same country as me. Thatcher was the best prime minister of the last 70 years, I wish we had someone with her courage now!

Deleted for suggesting that UKIP is a racist party with a lot in common with the BNP! Come off it mumsnet! The uncanny similarities between UKIP, racism and the policies and ideals of the BNP has been remarked on in many places before -and not deleted!- here are some:

blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/ukip-and-bnp-two-of-a-kind-or-on-different-planets/

www.theguardian.com/politics/quiz/2014/may/19/quiz-bnp-ukip-quotes-who-said-what

blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danhodges/100261889/ukip-are-now-a-racist-party/

m.huffpost.com/uk/entry/5350757

www.standard.co.uk/comment/matthew-dancona-we-must-expose-ukip-as-the-racist-party-it-really-is-9409277.html

Oh well. Of course, it's not racist to moan about immigration- except that it very often is!! www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/11/five-questions-anyone-who-says-its-not-racist-talk-about-immigration

I'm disenfranchised and deeply unenthusiastic about all the choices in May, but the one thing I wouldn't do is vote UKIP because being disenfranchised is no excuse for being racist.

Yabu, he is not a good leader IMO.

It isn't just about a PM's intelligence and beliefs. They need to have gravitas and an immense presence on the world stage.

Oh Spring it's just such your attitude that makes UKIP so popular.

Seriously can't you get that?

Moaning about immigration? Is that the same as discussing immigration?

Ye Gods.

Springheeled

I always have a bit if a laugh when people who have little to no understanding of politics decide to start espousing views that have been fed to them by those with their own agenda.

The so-called evidence of racism you posted is risible. Link to the LSE well known left institution who come up with the staggering fact that bough UKIP and the BNP want go leave the EU. Well do do the Greens, so did Tony Benn. That doesn't make them racist

And then we get the left wing Guardian Labour supporting and the right wing Tory supporting Telegraph also trying yo smear their competitor. I didn't bother reading the rest if the links.

You'll notice that the majority if these articles came from Mar 14 when the country was just starting to realise that could could actually debate immigration without bring called racist or- as Gordon Brown should have called you, a bigot.

We've moved on with this UK debate. You have not.

Shouting racist used to be the classic left wing behaviour to close down all debate on subjects the left cud not want yo discuss. Well those dats are over as even your former supporters now realise that the pressure on their jobs, their houses, their local Nhs and their education services are are bursting point

I have no problem with controlled immigration whereby we have planned for an increase in population and have adequate infrastructure to support the increase in demand. I do have a problem with unskilled European immigrants living tough in the streets in my local town

I disagree with the greater part of what most of the UKIPers have said here, BUT I absolutely agree that we need to be able to discuss immigration without knee-jerk accusations of racism.

Like I said in a previous post, large scale movement of labor (rather like large scale movement of capital) is associated with faster-growing wealth BUT also with more inequality, and negative consequences for people at the bottom of society, who have the most to lose. ESPECIALLY in the long term.

It is perfectly reasonable to have a conversation about this, and I do find it deeply disappointing that so many people on the left are refusing to talk about migration in any terms other than "money in, money out" and "what businesses say they want." Look, if you canvassed a load of businesses on the question, most of them would probably also support scrapping the minimum wage, say. Doesn't mean that that's the right thing to do. There are, believe it or not, plenty of progressive people who also think that we need a more cautious and careful approach to mass movement of people across borders.

The rest of the left MUST start engaging with people on this issue. Seriously. Otherwise we are going to lose a lot of people permanently to unpleasant parties like UKIP. Especially in the north of England. You have been warned.

No more negative voting, and no more pretending to be PC.

They've both done more than enough damage to the fabric of Britain, the prospect of food in people's bellies and shelter over their head.

Hell, thousands of children have been abused, raped, murdered, given class A drugs, urinated on etc. and the response of Labour councils and PC local authority types was to cover it up and hand the kids back

There is literally nothing important enough to turn your back on child sex abuse, protect the abusers, hand those kids back when you don't have to. Literally nothing. The people responsible should hang. I was one of generations of Labour voters from the celtic fringe - I would rather vote for Hitler than the Labour party ever again. They are, perhaps unintentionally, evil.

Vote green, far more palatable than ukip or the other 3.

This is such a pleasant thread. It's so nice to see proper, thorough political debate instead of the usual "posh toffs" / "vile racists" / "liberal idiots" lines that get brought out so regularly.

Oh, wait....

NewStatesman and aermingus have both made solid, un-hysterical supply and demand based analyses of why immigration disproportionately harms those at the bottom of the employment heap. I'm puzzled as to why the Labour supporters on this thread - the party supposedly of 'the poorest and most vulnerable' - are not addressing the issue of cheap imported labour hammering wages for the poorest workers in the country.

I should be warmly pro-immigration, as I am a homeowner (pressure on housing = rising prices) and with both me and DH on high professional wages we employ the services of builders, cleaners etc. Immigration absolutely benefits me. The people it doesn't benefit are those cleaners, builders etc whose hourly rate hasn't increased for the last 5-10 years, thanks to stiff competition from foreign workers living in houseshares and remiting money home.

Meanwhile the costs of food, housing, heating and petrol have rocketed and we've ended up, as a PP said, with a situation where British workers simply can't afford to do some of the jobs on offer because they are trying to build a life here, not just save a deposit to buy a house back home. So they get misrepresented as lazy and workshy by the Tories, and condescended to with offers of welfare dependency by Labour (all the while telling them they're bigoted for daring to complain about the situation) when all they are doing is pointing out a simple supply and demand problem.

I agree with the PP who said you can't be the party of the working class and refuse to have the conversation about the impact of mass immigration on the UK's working poor. Labour have absolutely become the party of choice for comfortable middle-class people who are not yet impacted by foreign competition for their jobs and who want that nice warm feeling of being anti-racist and pro-diversity while others pay the price.

FyreFly

Your point of view then is?

Or are you too clever to post here amongst is idiots!

Do please tell us.

I'm with Othehugemanatee, NewStatesman & Aermingus. They've said everything I wanted to say far more eloquently. And interestingly no one seems to be addressing their points. Much easier to have a bun fight I suppose.

I bet if there was a massive influx of barristers and CEO's that were prepared to work for half the current UK going rate, there'd be outrage. But no. As it is the poorest in society that are suffering the consequences of mass immigration, nothing is being done about it so people are having to resort to voting for a party that would be off the radar otherwise.

The only conclusion I can come to about the conspiracy of silence about this issue is that most Labour politicians don't care about the working poor. They only care about those so poor they can be bought off with state handouts, and those wealthy enough not to be impacted by the policies they have brought in that hammer low-skilled wages.

One of my relatives works for Tony Blair, who is evangelically pro-mass immigration as he believes that the free movement of labour is the only way we can compete in the 21st century. When I challenged them on this issue they said airily 'Oh well, of course there are winners and losers from immigration'. Exactly. Winners and losers. The benefits don't accrue evenly throughout society, and the harm falls disproportionately on the working poor.

This is why it makes me so. fucking. angry. when people go on about the Tories unfairly targeting the poor as if Labour were still the champions of the little guy. They're not - they don't care about the working poor, only those on benefits and those well-off enough not to be affected by the 'winners and losers' of their ideological commitment to diversity at all costs.

I agree whole heartedly agree with you Manatee. The islington luvvies and Rule Britannia slebs are leaving in their droves. It's just a hollow shell of a once great party and the working person is suffering as without adequate political representation they are side open go the abuse of zero hours contracts, displacement by cheaper immigrant labour etc.

nice warm feeling of being anti-racist and pro-diversity while others pay the price.

Yeah. It's now clear that caring, sharing mindset couldn't hold humanity in greater contempt.

The destruction Labour/Conservative politicians (and the reast) have wrought on people, their lives and their cultures, here and abroad is just unimaginable, and the damage done by incompetence and moral cowardice is just as bad as the damage done on purpose to be honest.

I actually think Ed would be a good prime minister. The media have done a very good job of portraying him as an unelectable geek, but I don't think this is borne out by looking at actually policy.

As for how he would do on the world stage, I don't think other world leaders would be quite as obsessed with style over substance as our media seem to be, so he would probably do very well.

We don't want a leader who is "cool" and spent his uni days drinking and smashing up bars do we? I would rather have a geek as a geek suggests making the most of educational opportunities so that he actually understands the policies he is proposing to make.