To be totally amazed at the sudden change in the language coming out of the Labour Party since the election.

[sunshield]

It seems the labour party have finally seen the light !.

The labour party have suddenly morphed in to a 'centre right' party reading their latest proposals . The blame therefore has to be put on the likes of Burnham , Cooper Et all for allowing Milliband to take the party down the path tothe devasting defeat.

These senior members of the labour party fully backed Milliband's crazy ideas , when obviously knowing they wewre totally out of touch .

Examples of the totally different views and 'common sense' coming out of the labour party now can be seen by the fact are finally . accepting they spent too much, a belief in reducing welfare spending a realisation that the 'mansion tax' idea reeks of 'politics of envy' . The most extraordinary one though is they now realise, whether you believe in the Uk being in Euorpe or not a grown up debate is needed hence a referendum is essential.

Why or why did these senoir labour people go along with Ed Milibands ideas, like members of FIFA going along with Sepp Blatter.

Seen is correct. Too many demands on the NHS. Too many people feeling they are entitled to everything for free, after all they have paid their taxes (even if they haven't!).

A colleague pointed me to some facebooks pages where basically people were being told to fill their boots re the minor aliments. Some one suggested various different family members could go in at different times to claim medicines. Another suggest it could be a way to make a little money. Horrible, grabbing behaviour.

I've seen NHS prescribed medicines and products for sale on eBay.

I directly deal with clients families who demand NHS products and services even if they don't need them. I try and persuade them not to, but they just tell me "why not, he/she's entitled to them" example - wheelchairs for people who aren't well enough to leave bed and hearing aids for people who can hear and who have a past history of refusing to wear them, or taking them out and losing them.

I'm actually appalled by what's happened to the Labour Party since 1997. I only ever wanted a sensible, moderate and compassionate political option, turns out that behind closed doors they were doing more evil than my worst nightmares of the Tories.

People forget how much society has improved since the set-up of the welfare state and NHS.

By a coalition of Labour and Tories, which rather undermines claims of it being some unique Labour proposition. Labour was in office to implement the Beveridge Report because of the 1945 landslide. But they had support from the Tories, who would also probably have implemented it, or something very similar to it, had they won; the main group that opposed the setting up of the NHS was doctors, who claimed it was a Nazi policy (yes, seriously). Hence Nye Bevan's view that he shut the doctors up by stuffing their mouths with gold. You don't set national health services up in five years and Labour were out of office by 1951, and then only had short periods in office with thin majorities until 1997. If the Tories hadn't supported the NHS, there is simply no way that the limited Labour power between its practical formation in the late 1940s in Blair coming to power in 1997 would have prevented its dissolution.

That's why the "Labour as sole supporters of the NHS" narrative is so weak: it simply isn't true. Labour are the sole supporters of the idea that the NHS should be owned and operated by the state (an idea that doctors talk about all the way until they get the valuation from their accountant of their cost rent scheme funded buildings, at which point they get coy), but the idea of and NHS free at the point of use funded from general taxation has no opponents outside the wildest libertarian shores of Tory head banging. Labour crying wolf about those lunatics is done in just the same bad faith as Tory invocation of Militant/Trots/etc as being Labour mainstream thinking.

It's one of the few comments Kinnock ever made that I agreed with, when he said (and this is not a verbatum quote)

"It's a bit hard to say to a docker, earning about 40k a year, with a second home in spain, come let me take you out of your misery."

That to me sums up the difficulty of the Labour party now. It's core vote is mainly middle class, with money. They do not want a return to socialist principles.

Bobby - my DB works for the Railways. For simple admin type roles they are paid like middle band nurses. If you are a supervisor at a tube station you are paid nearly as much as an MP. You have various allowances and every scrap of overtime is claimed.

Bob Crow claimed that the tubes needed to be over staffed just in case of a terrorist attack. it was always something he wanted.

I don't think the SNP got voted in because they are more left-wing. I think they got voted in because they are more populist. They have no shame about speaking directly to ordinary Scottish people. Labour, on the other hand, clearly hate and fear the ordinary people the party was originally set up to represent. The populist ideas that resonate with ordinary people have been poorly and rather unpleasantly represented by Ukip while the Labour Party has alternately sneered at and scaremongered at its natural constituents, and in doing so continued to haemorrhage voters.

IMO the best article that's been written yet about the Labour Party's current problems is this one, about how the best thing Labour could do to win back its voters would be to become a party that Ed Miliband would never vote for in a million years

I think we're all being very unfair to the PLP in one important respect, if the unions want to drive their party over an electoral cliff (by choosing people like Ed) that is their right. The PLP was created by (and for) the unions. It's their party to ruin as they see fit.

Having said that, Harriet did admit the unions balloted their members with leadership papers only containing Ed's name. And she said that won't happen again. So, if the party wants to come into the 21stC, then it's welcome. But, it hasn't decided yet, whether or not it wants to.

If Churchill had won an outright Conservative victory in 1945 he wouldn't even have read the Beveridge Report, much less implemented it.

Churchill was a very strange man according to a recent BBC2 TV programme.
But he thought his mission in life was to be a war leader.

If Churchill had won an outright Conservative victory in 1945 he wouldn't even have read the Beveridge Report

Nonsense. He made a radio speech on March 21st 1943 saying that there was a need to establish a "cradle to grave" National Health service on "broad and solid foundations", based on the Beveridge report that had been published the previous year. Martin Gilbert's biography of Churchill, page 742. June 13th 1945 he made a subsequent speech (perhaps in 1944 he was busy with, oh, the second world war and stuff) which elaborated on the Beveridge proposals and talked of an NHS "to be shaped by Parliament and
made to play a dynamic part in the life and security of every family and
home". Gilbert, p.847.

For a man who didn't read the Beveridge Report, he made an awful lot of speeches laying out how he would implement it.

Before the election Labour were sounding very staunch left wing socialist, brimming with envy towards anyone who had dared to work hard and make a bit of money and champing at the bit to relieve them of their money and redistribute it. If you dared to disagree you were obviously a selfish evil person who didn't care about anyone else.

Newsflash (which they finally figured out on the day after the election), people don't like being preached to by the political equivalent of jealous toddlers and that's why they lost.

It's fine to stick to your principles but if those ideas don't sound good to the majority of the population then you have to change or resign yourself to life on the opposition benches.

Although I voted Tory I did like a few of Labours ideas but the majority of them just made them unelectable.

namechange, I'll do some digging, by and by, not in time for this thread, no doubt. But, I'm sure this won't be the final mention of the man. It's not necessary to write a speech, in order to give it. But, I might have misunderstood the man. He might have had reasons for treating the workers the way he did, other than not liking them very much.

brimming with envy towards anyone who had dared to work hard and make a bit of money and champing at the bit to relieve them of their money and redistribute it

You can read about Tony Benn's tax evasion avoidance strategy here:

www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/tax/11189430/Tony-Benns-inheritance-tax-dodge-how-it-works-and-how-you-can-use-it-too.html

hiddenhome

Socialism is dead

The Labour Party no longer exists, it's merely a figment of everyone's imagination. They're all just standing around looking at each other and mouthing words

May I take a moment to applaud that comment - it really is the essence of it all.

It's also nice to see a political thread without the ghastly name calling and mudslinging of those immediately post election.

Someone upthread also mentioned the huge numbers of carers etc who do not need or qualify for help. My Dad was one of those for 6 awful years looking after my late Mum - but he wouldn't have even given headroom to the idea of voting Labour. He knows - and I know - that whoever is in is in for themselves and what they can get - including the honours when they retire or leave government. The proof for this theory is in the amazingly rapid abandonment of everything Labour stood for not five minutes ago! In it for their altruism and convictions my arse - if they were they'd still be preaching Edspeak.

Not really, farfromany. Labour have just lost an election. It would be pretty silly if the candidates for the new leadership job carried on where Ed left off. Tony is by far the most successful leader Labour never had, even though it wasn't Labour and he's a Tory. So, it's not all that surprising that they're sounding a bit Tony like. They might be left wing, or basically that, but nobody ever said they were stupid.

I also agree its nice to see a reasonable political thread without the name callingfrom left wing voters calling anyone who didnt vote Labout twats, selfish or worse.

If Labour vote Andy Burnham in as their new leader (the unions choice) they are finished. They are looking increasingly as though they dont know what to do next, what to say next. They are back tracking on everything they said before and lining up to stick a knife in Ed's back and say they didnt much like him anyway.

As a true blue supporter who believes that hard work and good decisions needs to be rewarded I have to say I like what Cameron is doing. He has got stuck into the EU. The extra childcare for working parents is going down well. I like the benefits cap - there is no way people should be getting more than the average salary because of poor choices.

As someone said on another thread. Benefits shouldnt be a choice or something that people are comfortable on. Its meant to be something you stay on until you get back on your feet. On another thread I mentioned that Facebook is alive with people sharing the Minor Aliments offer where you can go to a pharmacy to get non prescription medicines. People are tipping each other off as to how to get as much as possible so that they can be sold on. Completely disgusing behaviour and of course will spoil what is actually a rather good idea.

The extra childcare for working parents isn't going down well as providers have said there's a funding gap.

A true blue indeed - especially with the 'poor choices' people make. People don't decide to be disabled, or born into poverty. Choices indeed. Yes there are some people who take the mick but the vast majority do not. I hope you never have to face these 'choices'.

I personally feel they are becoming Tory-lite. I see what people are saying about the need for a centre position to get elected but supporting Tory propaganda is too much for me, especially the whole I am going to be tougher than the Tories - no thanks.

Maybe the best way to leave the mud slinging behind is not to talk about it.

In respect of people working, there have to be decent (non zero hours/living wage/some hope of progression) jobs for them to go to. In a manufacturing economy those things exist, by definition. In a service economy they may not. Having a government website offering jobs which are either duplicates or don't exist at all, or refusing to allow unemployment figures to be recorded properly doesn't help any of this. So, maybe we shouldn't stereotype bash and trade Daily Mail-isms, too much and let's just concentrate on the OP, shall we?

The other obvious option for the PLP, (as organised labour and the unions shrink to an ever smaller proportion of the population) is to stop being a political party and shrink into a pressure group (sort of Greens in reverse) That way they could stay true to their founding intentions and take notice of their social decline both at the same time.