Gordon Brown for PM?

[Wilkolampshade]

I don't know, just watching the Blair/Brown documentary, does anyone think we could/should bring back Gordon Brown as leader of the Labour Party for a shot at P. M?
YABU... Absolutely not, what ARE you thinking?!?!
YANBU.... Why not, how much worse could it get?

[XingMing]

I think you only need to study the 1970s Ugandan Asian arrivals and their descendents' mobility to understand that as soon as you have built your safe place it is human nature to defend it for your family. Via my sister who worked long term in the middle east in professional services and consultancy as an HR relocation adviser, a great many new arrivals taking up partnerships were UK born, bred and educated to resume the professional status their parents had to leave behind as refugees from Idi Amin, to open corner shops in the Midlands. And they have done good, in trumps. FFS just look at the top level of the governing party (Conservatives) front bench spokesmen. Home Secretary, Chancellor and Health Secretary, plus a white female Foreign Secretary. If you are looking for talent and equal opportunity, the Tories have completely defeated Labour. Sir Keir is a good man and was a superb DPP, but is missing the point in politics.

The new Front Bench is not white privilege; it's a triumph of ability and ambition. Not innate status, and so it is not beyond imagination that your child or mine could reach the same point, if the child is able and if parents parent in hard nose fashion, because I observe, that a lot of parents lose the will when they encounter teen rebellion and recall a bit misty-eyed their own wild misspent fun years. It all becomes 'too difficult' or 'I was a Goth' or 'he (usually) got in a bad crowd'. Where were you? And I know, trying to put a roof over everyone's head and food on the table. Repressive conformity makes for good governance.

I don't expect much agreement though.

[Dervel]

@XingMing absolutely right! As has been pointed out Brown is an intelligent man, and that utter devastation of pensions will lead many who would otherwise have leant conservative to be much more dependant on the state, and thus vote left…

The left is very very clever at creating the problem and selling you the solution.

[RAFHercules]

Nope, Andy Burnham for PM please.

[XingMing]

Talking of Gordon Brown, whom so many are keen to bring back to Westminster politics, and the current politics documentary on Blair/Brown, consider this quotation from an article in The Times today....
"...the documentary also failed to mention another decision by Brown in his first budget that continues to cause harm to this day, namely his abolition of the tax credit that pension funds could reclaim on dividends paid by British companies. The move sucked £5 billion annually from the UK’s pension funds, a move that, on a conservative estimate, has deprived them of a cumulative £120 billion.

It took a sledgehammer to what was, previously, Europe’s best-funded occupational pensions system. It hastened the demise, at least for workers in the private sector, of defined-benefit (“final-salary” in the jargon) pensions. It forced millions of workers to increase their pension contributions or, more likely, will have condemned them to a lower income in retirement than would have been the case otherwise.

And it doubtless resulted in deficits in dozens of pension schemes that eventually caused them to fold, which, in the words of Frank Field, the former Labour minister, left “hordes of workers without the pension to which they have been compulsorily contributing, sometimes over many decades”.

Since his eviction by the voters in 2010, an attempt has been made to rehabilitate Brown as a dignified, almost cuddly, elder statesman. The truth, sadly airbrushed from this documentary, is that he did lasting damage to the UK economy."

Ian King is business presenter for Sky News. Ian King Live is broadcast on Sky News at 10am Monday to Friday

[rrhuth]

@Dervel

The left has an insurmountable problem to overcome. If they did in fact manage to raise the poor out of poverty, voting trends always indicate that as people start to have more wealth and a personal stake in the economy they become more small c conservative in their values and voting
habits.

Immigration was always something of a gift to them as poorer people who settle here will tend to vote left AND wages are depressed to natives on low incomes thus keeping them stuck in cycles of poverty equalling more natural left wing voters. It’s really rather genius.

This was true, but no longer.

Trends are now more linked to education and age than wealth, and globally the trend is for more educated to go left, less educated to go right. Younger go left anyway.

The traditional move in mid-age to the Conservatives has fallen away, which is why they switched to identity politics to attract older traditional labour voters.

[Dervel]

The left has an insurmountable problem to overcome. If they did in fact manage to raise the poor out of poverty, voting trends always indicate that as people start to have more wealth and a personal stake in the economy they become more small c conservative in their values and voting
habits.

Immigration was always something of a gift to them as poorer people who settle here will tend to vote left AND wages are depressed to natives on low incomes thus keeping them stuck in cycles of poverty equalling more natural left wing voters. It’s really rather genius.

[DeepaBeesKit]

The exact details differ, but the broad aim is the same

Of course the aim is the same. Most politicians aren't actually evil, they mean well and want to reduce poverty etc

But it's the implementation and design of such schemes that impacts the effect they have, systemically. To be a truly great pm imho you have to understand (or choose advisors who can) the wider economic impacts of your plans. It relies on a degree of scepticism. Companies and individuals arent going to act altruistically and share the wealth, you have to always assume that in every situation the opposite will happen. So with tax credits they failed to assume that employers would simply take the free wage subsidy and continue to prioritise profit to company/shareholders, as they always will.

[user1497207191]

@julieca

It wasnt different, just less generous. Family credit for example in 70s. It is like saying that PIP is the first disability benefit there was. It isn't. There have been others. The exact details differ, but the broad aim is the same.

Different eligibility criteria
Different amounts
Different limits
Administered by different governmental dept

[Feedingthebirds1]

He’d also really intelligent which naked him infinitely better.

Pass the brain bleach!!

[julieca]

It wasnt different, just less generous. Family credit for example in 70s. It is like saying that PIP is the first disability benefit there was. It isn't. There have been others. The exact details differ, but the broad aim is the same.

[BashfulClam]

I’ve met him, he’s not actually dour he’s just very quiet and a really nice man. He’d also really intelligent which naked him infinitely better than Bojo the clown.

[user1497207191]

@julieca

The equivalent of Tax Credits existed before Gordon Brown. The first similar scheme was introduced in the 1970s.

Yes, there was, but it was very different and it was a lot less generous.

[julieca]

The equivalent of Tax Credits existed before Gordon Brown. The first similar scheme was introduced in the 1970s.

[user1497207191]

@daimbarsatemydogsbone

The other thing wrong with tax credits, is, as mentioned by a PP who was an HMRC employee - it is hideously complex and requires armies of staff to make it work properly. We should be simplifying tax and benefits not making them more complex. Although I disagree with some of how it’s been done, this was the idea of UC - to combine and simplify the daft number of different benefits people had to navigate (and staff had to administer)

I fully agree. Also, it was a bit stupid to give the admin to HMRC who are hopelessly incompetent at the best of times. Brown just called them "tax credits" and gave them to HMRC, in the hope of setting them against tax revenue rather than calling them benefits to make the figures look better on a global scale, but he got caught out and wasn't allowed to do that.

The implementation was also crazy. Starting with a £2.5k income disregard which was way too small and caused untold harm to low earners with variable incomes, then he "corrected" it to far by increasing the income disregard too far to a whopping £25k which cost the country a small fortune in giving tax credits to people who didn't need them anymore.

[daimbarsatemydogsbone]

The other thing wrong with tax credits, is, as mentioned by a PP who was an HMRC employee - it is hideously complex and requires armies of staff to make it work properly. We should be simplifying tax and benefits not making them more complex. Although I disagree with some of how it’s been done, this was the idea of UC - to combine and simplify the daft number of different benefits people had to navigate (and staff had to administer)

[DeepaBeesKit]

For example...

Gordon brown introduced working tax credit.

Great! You think. An income boost for the poorest - what's not to like?

Actually all this did was allow employers to pay unsustainably low wages to employees. In an ideal world this would mean more job creation, in reality, it simply means higher corporate profits, which tend to flow to the wealthiest.

It also has a negative impact on productivity and allowed Britain to become trapped in a low wage economy. If you have to pay more to attract staff, zombie or badly run businesses don't survive and well run ones do. If you have to pay staff more to attract them, they are more valuable, an employer also needs to get more from the employee so its worth investing in training them, an overall productivity increases.

Look what's happened recently. I was against Brexit generally but the one aspect of the EU I disliked was the labour oversupply it created. Having left the EU, wages are rising in many areas that depended on cheap EU labour suppressing wages.

I honestly believe WTC suppressed wages for those at the bottom and allowed more profits to go to those at the top, contributing to the current hideous wealth gap we have in the UK, so despite being a long term labour party member, Gordon brown would not be who I would choose to reinstate.

[DeepaBeesKit]

People seem to misunderstand the time lag of politics. What the finances look like while you are in power (barring global crises like Covid which has had an immediate effect) are often more a reflection of your predecessors than your decisions, as the impacts of policies take time to wash through.

A television documentary is going to be highly subjective and reflect the views of the people making it.

Look at the economic intentions and impacts of the policies Gordon Brown implemented as treasurer and pm. Decide for yourself whether those are intentions and impacts you would be happy with.

[ancientgran]

[quote Zilla1]@Tealightsandd I recall Alan Johnson was well thought of by many, including the Civil Servants in his Department. Not sure he wanted the top job or was willing to be ruthless.

I never understood the presumption that criticism of Ed Milliband for daring to stand against his brother and it being dressed as betrayal. The notion that it was the elder's right seemed odd at the time.[/quote]
I always found the Milliband brothers thing weird. I think David Milliband was impressive in many ways, would probably have been a good leader but honestly sulking because his little brother beat him really makes me question his abilities.

[JustAnotherPoster00]

I never understood the presumption that criticism of Ed Milliband for daring to stand against his brother and it being dressed as betrayal. The notion that it was the elder's right seemed odd at the time.

I remember so many people at the time when Corbyn was leader of the opposition saying it was a personality cult and in the next sentence saying David Milliband should have got the leadership and not Ed, with no hint of irony

[rrhuth]

[quote daimbarsatemydogsbone]@rrhuth That is something on which you and I fully agree.[/quote]
I'm glad we end on a harmonious note!

[BlueJag]

You are out of your mind 🤯🤯🤯🤯

[daimbarsatemydogsbone]

@rrhuth That is something on which you and I fully agree.

[rrhuth]

@jgw1

Does levelling up mean everyone ends up the height of the tallest?

no one actually knows what it means, least of all Johnson

[jgw1]

Does levelling up mean everyone ends up the height of the tallest?

[rrhuth]

@Tealightsandd

We have rising unemployment - million+, and it's set to increase.

We also recently welcomed 20,000 refugees from Afghanistan.

Some of the unemployed and refugees will be unable to work for various reasons - but many can and want to.

Our unemployed and our refugees are not useless or incapable.

They simply need a chance.

Train them up, pay enough, ensure decent non exploitative conditions of employment.

Of course the key is to also tackle the public health housing and homelessness emergency. We need to buy and build lots of social housing.

Good training and employment opportunities and affordable secure homes, and we're on our way to a better future.

No one is saying anyone is useless, but we do need to accept that the pool of unemployed people is not well aligned with the vacancies, in terms of education, skills and geography.

We can get somewhere better in time, but it would take a) investment and b) policy focus.

Neither are happening at all under this government, there is no plan to invest in education etc. - everything is going to be cut.

Levelling up ( ) is looking almost entirely about capital schemes.