To ask what the country was like under a Labour government?

[user6776]

I'm too young to remember a proper Labour government. I was 12 when the Tories got voted in back in 2010 so that's all I've ever really known.

How much better was it than it is now? Why did Labour lose the election back then anyway?

Interested to hear people's opinions.

It was part of what made them so brilliant.

There weren’t 8 million people on NHS waiting lists and people could see their GP and get an NHS dental appointment. These are the things that matter to people.

No, I agree, but the reasons behind those two problems are many and complex and some of them date back to the last Labour government. The pandemic and Brexit certainly made them a darn sight worse and you're right that people just want them fixed and will blame whoever is in government for their failure to see a doctor or a dentist. Like they blame whoever is in government for the cost of living, for what is in their wage packet, for their mortgage payments going up, but the NHS isn't fit for purpose any more and the whole western world is having the same issues with the cost of living and inflation. So fine, next autumn we'll almost certainly get a Labour government and we'll see what they do differently. But the fact is, we'd have had most of the same shit if they'd been in power over the past several years. We wouldn't have had Brexit, and that would've been good, but the rest of the shit was largely unavoidable.

Yes, the labour GP contract was an unmitigated disaster, and of course the doctors don't want to go back from it/ I think COVID rather than BREXIT has had the biggest impact on waiting lists, but the NHS, no matter what party is in power, is to big to manage and has become a cult as much as a healthcare service. Any attempt to question, challenge or reform is met with inertia and barriers.

My experience was that the increased spending and PFI drug made things looks and feel better, but joined up care became harder and harder to access because things became more silo'ed and target driven. Which is fine for the strident middle class, but not so good for those less confident in navigating complex organisations. The patient / customer focus has declined consistently over the last 25 years.

Yes, the labour GP contract was an unmitigated disaster, and of course the doctors don't want to go back from it

No, they certainly don't! They earn way more money now for doing a lot less work. Despite that, I'm well aware how hard it is to recruit GPs now, because no one wants to go into general practice any more. I have several medics in my family and they're very clear about how Gordon Brown's reform of GP contracts totally fucked the health service at the ground floor level.

has become a cult as much as a healthcare service

This is also true, but I think if any party is going to reform the NHS, it has to be Labour. The Conservatives can't touch it, because if they ever tried there would be howls of protest from across the aisle about how 'Our NHS is never safe in the hands of the Conservatives'. So I hope they fucking fix it, because no one else can.

I think that’s very true. We might hear some fantastical visions as we get closer to a general election, but at the moment, no party seems to be offering us anything to look forward to.

@Fieldofbrokenpromises Yes perhaps my memory has not served me well in an era of mass industrial action! The Winter of Discontent of 1978 saw a huge wave of industrial action against the Callaghan government which if my memory serves me correctly, was a Labour government. The three day week of 74 was an attempt to conserve energy due to miners and railway workers strikes.

Between October 1978 and March 1979, ten million working days were lost to industrial action. Lorry drivers, local authority workers, health workers, and many more were on strike. This was under what I would call the last true Labour government.

Are on the lunch wine?

No one has said any of that!

The rest of what you ve written is shite.

Do you mean the Conservative Government of Edward Heath & 3 day week he had to introduce in 1973 to 1974 ?

I note you missed out who was actually in power.

For accuracy, the Winter of Discontent cost the the UK 2.9m working days, not 10m.
We have lost 4m days to industrial action in the last 12months.

I also almost lost my house after the Tories screwed up the ERM and the UK's exit from it.

Party of economic competence they are not.

I like the green plan to make us energy self sufficient from Labour. I think that's the kind of vision we need.

Righting the ship then planning for the future is what I'm looking for.

We need Infrastructure projects and things that make a difference in our lives. The bread and butter of government.

I could not give a shiny shit about the culture war nonsense the Tories use to try to manipulate us whilst leaving our kids under the cosh of crumbling RAAC concrete at school.

I bet they could have rebuilt more than 4 RAAC schools since 2018 if they didn't waste so much money on immigration policy that is solely designed to waste money.

@jasflowers , ElsieMc's point was that in SIX months, 2.9m (or 10m IDK) working days were lost to industrial action, so even more per month than this last year... under the Callaghan/Labour Government.

The 1974 three day week was an energy saving drive after the formation of OPEC and their attempt to dictate world oil prices... before North Sea Oil was being pumped ashore. It affected every part of the world that imported oil from the Middle East; except the US, which was largely self-sufficient in oil. Inflation soared and the property market collapsed. Anthony Sampson's book about the oil industry is a good, very readable account of the history, plus Daniel Yergin's The Prize if you want even more.

Yes, that was Ted Heath's Tory government. I remember it well because it was the summer I took my A levels, before starting university to read Politics.

There deliberately wasn't a vision with Brexit.

They purposely left it as vague as possible to let people fill in the "fantasy Brexit" blanks in their own minds.

No detail was Leave policy.

Cambridge Analytica said as soon as you pin Brexit down to specifics you brought things back to reality and lost voters.

Brexit doesn't work in reality.

As we all now know. (Apart from 9% of us)

Listening to recent european.news the Schengen agreement is as the Italian prime minister said shattering. Germany, France, Italy etc are very concerned that Hamas will infiltrate Europe under the guise of refugees.

Things they are a changing

@jasflowers - No, this is factually correct. See Papyrophiles post also.

It wasn't all that different OP. The leftie lovies of MN (they are legion - as this thread shows), will tell you how it was a socialist utopia with lambs gamboling in the fields and happy, smiling children skipping to well-funded schools while nurses could afford lovely houses in the suburbs and every single Labour politician was a model of decorum and fine, upstanding principles, but that would be bollocks.

Has anyone written anything like that? Anywhere?

And incidentally this labelling of anyone who doesn't seem 100% behind the Tory government and everything they do as a "Leftie" is really fucking childish and makes you sound like someone in the Daily Mail comments section.

Yes all us total lefties on here - lol- I'm very much in the centre to centre left but frankly anything left of pure Nazi these days is seen as 'lefty' it seems.

The country certainly had a better vibe for most of it. Far more 'worked' - we had things like Surestart for young families and Connexions for late teenagers.

There wasn't a constant stream of corruption (although still odd cases) - you could get to see a GP easier,

It wasn't perfect by any stretch but the general vibe was nothing like what it is now -

Lots of positive things came in too that we still have like the rental deposit scheme , better maternity rights (pre labour I got 13 weeks in total) so was back at work with a 3 month old.

I had none of the worries of today , cost of living and government family support was good including children's services .
The nhs was not on its knees.
I remember feeling that Tony Blair was like a breath of fresh air and there was a general feeling of positivity and optimism when he came to power , no signs then of the megalomaniac he became !
I can't see this happening again for our country but i think i am more likely to vote for them anyway.

To the Far Right everyone's a leftie

It wasn't all that different OP. The leftie lovies of MN (they are legion - as this thread shows), will tell you how it was a socialist utopia with lambs gamboling in the fields and happy, smiling children skipping to well-funded schools while nurses could afford lovely houses in the suburbs and every single Labour politician was a model of decorum and fine, upstanding principles, but that would be bollocks.

I'm a nurse, out of interest what kind of house do you think it's appropriate for me to aspire to have?

What kind of home would a well functioning society have its nurses in?

Shall I get my average house prices graphs out again?

Once upon a time when the average house price in the U.K. was about £170,000 a lot of ordinary people in ordinary jobs could afford their own home. Even nurses!

13 years later... the Tories have put an average of £500 a month on people's mortgage payment and Rishi Sunak has been on the radio blaming people for having big mortgages!

(Jack from Guildford was asking what he should do now his monthly mortgage payment was going up from £1500 a month to £2800 a month)

inews.co.uk/opinion/rishi-sunak-tone-deaf-lbc-interview-robot-2520852

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12364313/amp/Rishi-Sunak-insists-UK-stick-plan-cut-inflation-blasted-dad-four-facing-87-CENT-increase-mortgage-payment-ahead-expected-rate-rise-tomorrow.html

x.com/paulwaugh/status/1686650455818973185?s=12

More than a bit disingenuous @verdantverdure .

Very low interest rates and quantitative easing after the GFC drove an asset bubble, especially through the property markets, and not only in the UK. Australia, Canada, NZ and the US are seeing the fall out too. I don't really follow European property markets because I mostly read in English, but presumably there are similar situations in other places: I read that Berlin has become much more costly, but I'd put that down to other causes. Now that interest rates are back at historically "normal" levels, the pain is squeezing anyone who overpaid on the assumption that mortgages were always going to cost 1-3%.

That's not an apologia for any party or politician by the way. It's fairly generally accepted.

Well Blair started an illegal war in Iraq which continues to cause complete turmoil and instability but no doubt everyone will say he was great.

A war that would have taken place regardless of which party had been in office and which only two Tory MPs voted against.

https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/howard-under-fire-over-iraq-7247839.html