Blue Labour?

[jackstarb]

This looks interesting.

Labour's traditional working class supporters are abandoning the party in their droves. But can Labour win them back without alienating the middle-class voters it needs to win the next election.?

Radio 4 Analysis at 8.30pm this evening (Monday 21).

This Independent article covers it too!

Blue Labour want to combine social conservatism with leftist economics.

I think we'd all have more respect for the Labour party if they stopped with the focus-group-oriented vote-chasing and decided what, if anything, they actually believe in. You can't please all the people all the time...

Actually, I think that with Red Ed, Labour have decided what they believe in - unlike Tony Blair's era, where he led them unwillingly (and perhaps as a result, sadly, ineffectively) to the centre ground in many policy areas.

The trouble for Red Ed is that his views are far, far to the left of British public opinion. He might get poll leads, just like Michael Foot or Neil Kinnock, in these intermediate years - but he is blatantly not leadership material in terms of his character and personality, and what little we know of his policies places him firmly in the Guardian/Mumsnet category, ignoring everything about what was once the working-class base.

I should caveat my post. Obviously, by "Labour", I mean the trade union bloc vote which swung it for him with their AV transfer votes.

The MPs, who collectively have more of a clue as to how to actually win votes, were far too sensible to vote for Red Ed.

The issue the programme identifies is that Labour needs both it's middle class and working class voters if it's going to win the next election. And the two groups increasingly have different needs. The middle class Guardian readers versus the tabloid reading working class.

The middle class benefited from globalisation - the working class less so.

Well, of course the working class are going to be totally disaffected with a wonk like Miliband.

He has about as much in common with the working class as I do with Mike Tyson.

Cameron, for all his toffiness, is far more in touch through his natural empathy - but he doesn't instinctively understand the working class and their motivations, like Blair did. That is his single biggest weakness.

Having said which, if the competition is Clegg and Miliband... the biggest problem for him could actually be UKIP. Not because they'll win, obviously, but because Farage actually echos the concerns of working-class Tories, and could split votes.

From the Independent article:

"Broadly speaking, middle-class liberals place most stress on individual rights and cultural openness. They are highly mobile and pro-diversity and pro-immigration. They are softish on criminals and green on the environment. They are comfortable with globalisation and benefit from it both economically and culturally."

Basically your average Guardian reader (or dare I say Mumsnetter)

"Working-class communitarians, by contrast, have a more collectivist view of rights, and place great stress on community membership. They worry about welfare free-riding, they value the familiar and the local, and are sceptical about mobility and mass immigration. They are draconian on crime and not very green. They are uncomfortable with globalisation, and tend not to benefit from it economically or culturally. At the more extreme
end, they shade into racists."

Sounds more Daily Mail reader to me!

I think after Cameron, the Tories simply must choose a working-class woman as their leader. Enough toffs, and enough men!

If I had to bet, I would pick Justine Greening - but there are several to choose from.

Of course, they shouldn't stoop to the indignity of shortlists and quotas in the process; Tory women are more than capable of making their own way, as Mrs Thatcher so brilliantly showed.

"Ed is far far to the left" dont be ridiculous he hasn't joined Class War or the SWP and how if you claim he has no policies can you judge his political position.

He does not have to have any set policies just like the Tories did not any have many before the last election. Those they had they mostly reneged on anyway.

Agree entirely regarding focus group.

Also agree regarding Farage who will appeal to the closet racists, homophobes and misogynists which inhabit the Tory hinterland and are very unhappy regarding the coalition.

Come the next election Clegg and the LD's will be toast and considering the damage the Tories are intending to do to the social services the "working class" value so (I hope) will be the Tories.

The Coalition agreement is a one spin gamble which wont work.

Cameron and Clegg's lies will come back to haunt them.

No top down change to the NHS

Abolish student fees

No damage to front line services

The rich will bear the brunt of the cut backs

No change to EMA

CB to remain universal

(copyright call me Dave and Honest Clegg)

A lot of lies for less than a year in power.

Really looking forward to the May elections.

Mrs Thatcher so brilliantly showed.

What did she show other than hatred of the working class, spite against those who opposed her and a callous disregard for society and anyone who was not "one of us".

newwave Unfortunately for Labour, "one of us" was most of the country throughout the 1980s.

She wasn't popular, but by God, she was respected. She won elections again and again - something you are seemingly unable to explain.

The explanation, is, of course, simple. She tapped into the natural Tory instincts of the working-class swing voters. (This group also have several natural Labour instincts, but Guardian-style leaders like Foot ignored them). She let ordinary working people buy their own houses, afford foreign holidays, buy cheaper cars, and own shares in the once nationalised industries.

LFN

You are of course right in regard to her populist policies although the cheaper cars is a long stretch, that said were her policies the right policies.

She sold council houses on the cheap and refused to allow councils to use the money to build more houses which is partly why we have an affordable housing shortage.

The nationalised industries were also flogged off on the cheap if you look at the value of them now after taking inflation into account, I would agree those industries needed a good shake up but far better the profits were coming into the exchequer than being creamed off by French and other foreign businesses.

The deliberate destruction of large swathes of Northern society were hateful and I truly believe this was because they were seen as the "enemy"

Why did she keep winning, because some people need nanny to hold their hands and the 1980,s were a time of "greed is good". If it had not been for the Falklands conflict she would have only lasted one term.

Nanny to hold their hands???

She was the greatest proponent of individual freedom, personal responsibility and lack of State intervention in the twentieth century.

You seem a bit confused. The nanny state party is Labour.

I guess she was far more authoritarian on law and order matters than the current Tories - so to that (limited) extent, you are right. But by and large, describing Thatcher's Tories as "nannies" is simply ridiculous.

She was the greatest proponent of individual freedom, personal responsibility and lack of State intervention in the twentieth century.

Which I translate as throwing the poor and weak to the wolves.

It is undeniable that society for the losers became a shabby place under her auspices, homelessness and child poverty increased,schools and hospitals were starved of funds, she broke the pensioners earnings link. The winners won big but the poor and needy got royally shafted.

Maybe nanny was the wrong word, if I may I would change that to "someone to hold their hands" whether she wanted to or not.

Society for the losers is not a good place, regardless of who happens to be in charge. Labour over the last 13 years created a different kind of loser, that's all. People for whom there was no hope. What a good conservative government does - and this is why working class people voted for Thatcher in their millions - is create opportunity and reward aspiration & hard work. Labour - when run by people like Mandelson - don't think the working class can ever amount to much, by contrast. If they want to appeal to the working classes again, they have to stop thinking that paying people to stay poor is the way forward.

The Tories understand aspiration. They understand that people don't want handouts, they want opportunities.

That most people would like to decide their own fate rather than have every minutiae determined for them by a clipboard carrying bureaucrat.

The former was something that his Tonyness understood and managed to tap into. The first (and last) Labour leader to truly understand that in my opinion.

The latter was a big reason why people left Labour. Sick and tired of being told what to do.

Oh and like her or loathe her. Thatcher was a strong leader who did what she felt was right. Not what was popular.

That's something I'd love to see back in our MP's who seem more interested in their own survival than doing the right thing for the country, even if it is not popular.

Oh FGS. Labour hasn't been remotely a party of the working classes for aeons now. Their creeping (at times downright LEAPING) ever more to the right is the reason they're destined to expire. Too late now to stop the rot.

The tories are so not a party of aspiration. They're a party of corrupt colonial corporate cronyism.

And SWP/Class War are not the only left alternative to Labour. They're a tad clannish and loopy. There's the Socialist Party.

The trouble with the Socialist Party is that, like the old Labour Party, they need to keep their core supporters down, or they'll lose them. They're not interested in improving social mobility, for example, and their lack of understanding of commerce means progress is usually sacrificed on the altar of maintaining the status quo. The last time anything like real socialism was in operation in the UK, we ended up about 20 years behind the rest of the world.

You mean Attlee's post WW2 gov that gave us the welfare state in the face of economic ruin and gave the valiant solidiers coming home "a heroes' welcome"? That was the last socialist gov GB's had Chil. Come on keep up and don't be hoodwinked by the right wing media.

Yes, it worked in the extreme situation the nation found itself post war. But, by the days of the Wilson government (still socialist as far as I recall), the cracks had appeared. We were still running a 1950's methodology in the early seventies. Nothing had progressed. That's the problem with socialism... paying people to stand still.

Socialism is dead. Name me one country which still operates that way? Even Cuba is rejecting their socialist roots and moving (albeit slowly) towards a more capitalist economy.

The problem with socialism is that everyone is equal....except those who have power, who are always more equal than everyone else.

Animal Farm to the rescue! Twee and hackneyed I'm afraid. Cuba is not moving towards capitalism. It's being strangled slowly by US embargoes. It wasn't socialist for very long anyway.

It's always curious when something's declared dead that hasn't ever been given a chance to survive as is constantly slapped down by worldly types like Niceguy.

Did you actually live in the UK in the seventies? Socialism wasn't 'slapped down by worldly types' it was rejected wholesale by a population fed up of having to live in a place that resembled one of the USSR's less salubrious outposts. Stagnation with flares...

Oh Chil a shame you didn't read my post 09.51 re. real socialist gov in Britain. You know...the one which gave us the NHS that your lovely lot are now explcitly intent on hammering the last nail in its coffin.

Quasi dead is capitalism's moribund corpse that won't die quietly and wants to take us all down with it.