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?

@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

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.

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.

@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.

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

Nope, Andy Burnham for PM please.

@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.

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.