Wipeout for Labour in Hartlepool

[EmbarrassingAdmissions]

Given the landslide in Hartlepool, will anything make Labour think again about the way in which they've alienated their core voters (including women)?

...and as David Lanmy said

"As regeneration becomes gentrification and [economically] mixed communities cease to exist, Grenfell could have served as a call to action to put the ‘social’ back into housing and a turning point to end the supremacy of the market in the provision of homes in this country."

*Lammy

It absolutely was partly done to gentrify and why was that? So that wealthier people in the area could look out of their windows and not see an obvious council tower block

Seriously? Have you ever been to London, especially that part of London? There is literally nowhere that social housing, current or former, does not sit in sight of multimillion pound studio "apartments" most of which used to be social housing.

So when the same cladding and approach was used in Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle (lets forget the poverty in the SW as apparently that doesn't count) was that magically not for gentrification? Or was it, like Grenfell, a desperate attempt to get crappy, badly maintained social housing to a basically habitable state?

I'm a class perspective kind of lefty

What is that, Flaxmeadow?

What is that, Flaxmeadow

You don't know what class perspective is?

@Flaxmeadow

What is that, Flaxmeadow

You don't know what class perspective is?

No I don’t.

Seriously? Have you ever been to London, especially that part of London? There is literally nowhere that social housing, current or former, does not sit in sight of multimillion pound studio "apartments" most of which used to be social housing.

Well yes, that was my point

So when the same cladding and approach was used in Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle (lets forget the poverty in the SW as apparently that doesn't count) was that magically not for gentrification? Or was it, like Grenfell, a desperate attempt to get crappy, badly maintained social housing to a basically habitable state?

Yes it is for gentrification too in those places and definitely in Leeds as well, a city that has changed beyond all recognition in just a few years

But as we know now, Grenfell wasn't habitual was it. Nor are others, now we have cladding being ripped off other buildings.

I'm not sure what your point is

No I don’t

You could try the Google machine

*habitable not habitual

Or was it, like Grenfell, a desperate attempt to get crappy, badly maintained social housing to a basically habitable state

Grenfell, and a number of other concrete tower blocks built in the 1960s and 1970s, were not originally built 'crappy'. It was a well designed structure and built for strength (after the Ronan Point collapse). Maintenance should have been simple. Its structure was solid.

People/organisations made a decision to drastically alter the architecture, they compromised the original safety immensely, and part of that decision was about aesthetics.

I'm not sure why what I'm saying would be seen as even mildly controversial. Campaign groups such as Justice for Grenfell, lawyers on behalf of tenants, synapethic politicians have all said it to

Btw Flaxmeadow Gentrification, i.e. forcing Londoners into HMOs or dangerous rented housing (private and social) or forcing them out of London completely. How is that "London centric"?

It's certainly not Londoner centric.

Tealightsandd

I didn't say it was

But there is a concentration of LP voters in London
And in parts of the north too. Manchester, Liverpool, etc.
What's the common theme here then? Could it be that they're all cities?

The BBC was often criticised for being London-centric. So they just moved almost the entire operation to Manchester. Has it made the BBC any more relevant? No, because the staff still keep to their bubble and don't mix with people from different walks of life. If on the other hand the BBC had been more evenly spread around the country, staff would find themselves socialising with a wider variety of people.

By the way, here in North Wales we moan about the way in which everything is centralised in Cardiff. I understand that many Scots too are unhappy with how Holyrood policy seems to favour the Central Belt.

It doesn't matter whether you centralise something in London or Leeds, it is the centralisation which is the problem.

It doesn't matter whether you centralise something in London or Leeds, it is the centralisation which is the problem.

Agreed. And, it's utterly devastating for those cities. Families and individuals, who are as a consequence, denied a stable home, who are forced into slum housing or away from their communities and support networks.

Yes. The BBC and Media City in Manchester. Locals are beginning to suffer the same fate as Londoners. The "centric" housing prices are impacting. It's going to rip families and communities apart, leave vulnerable individuals unsupported, increase homelessness, destroy so many lives. Just as it has done in London. It's the reality of somewhere being "centric".

Not, that I'm claiming (unlike Flax?) that there's no educational opportunities in the north

Why do you keep accusing other posters of things they have not said?

No one has said there is no deprivation in London.

No one has accused everyday Londoners of being too London centric.

It's the Labour Party, along with the media and academia, that has been accused of being London centric. It's all over the news.

In the last few days Andy Burnham (Greater Manchester mayor) has said the LP is too London centric, and so has Labour MP Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham), saying the LP has been captured by a 'London based bourgeoisie' and 'brigades of woke social media warriors'.

It's institutions that are being criticised not people

The part of what Mahmood said, widely reported in the press

My view is simple: in the past decade, Labour has lost touch with ordinary British people. A London-based bourgeoisie, with the support of brigades of woke social media warriors, has effectively captured the party. They mean well, of course, but their politics – obsessed with identity, division and even tech utopianism – have more in common with those of Californian high society than the kind of people who voted in Hartlepool yesterday. The loudest voices in the Labour movement over the past year in particular have focused more on pulling down Churchill’s statue than they have on helping people pull themselves up in the world. No wonder it is doing better among rich urban liberals and young university graduates than it is amongst the most important part of its traditional electoral coalition, the working-class.

policyexchange.org.uk/hartlepool-is-a-wake-up-call-for-my-party/

@Tealightsandd

It doesn't matter whether you centralise something in London or Leeds, it is the centralisation which is the problem.

Agreed. And, it's utterly devastating for those cities. Families and individuals, who are as a consequence, denied a stable home, who are forced into slum housing or away from their communities and support networks.

Yes. The BBC and Media City in Manchester. Locals are beginning to suffer the same fate as Londoners. The "centric" housing prices are impacting. It's going to rip families and communities apart, leave vulnerable individuals unsupported, increase homelessness, destroy so many lives. Just as it has done in London. It's the reality of somewhere being "centric".

I think something to consider in relation to this is that it's not something which is just happening in the UK. In many industrialised countries, cities are increasingly growing and creating a kind of inexorable gravity that pulls in people, investment, industry. I suppose this has been the case since the industrial revolution but it's now that we are seeing these huge mass cities that have the power of a black hole. And also where instead of being a miss or rich and poor, it becomes possible to eject a lot of the poor people to outer areas.

And there are similar problems with an urban/rural or urban/provincial divide in politics.

Anyway - my point being, given that this seems to be a somewhat international problem, I think maybe the underlying causes aren't national ones.

Agree. The choice of staying in countryside and starving or moving to the city slums is a one faced by millions world over for hundreds of years.

Btw Flaxmeadow Gentrification, i.e. forcing Londoners into HMOs or dangerous rented housing (private and social) or forcing them out of London completely. How is that "London centric"?

It isn't. Its disingenuous to pretend otherwise, just as its disingenuous to present insulating tower blocks as "gentrification" and misrepresent Lammy on the subject.

Gentrification isn't about tarting up the appearance of tower blocks but it suits some political positions to claim it is.

Huge numbers of WC communities were destroyed both within London and the surrounding areas within a generation by a combination of actual gentrification (not the tarting up kind) and deregulation of a great many traditional WC jobs, depriving communities of much of their income. But that's all fine because with the streets paved with gold an' all our families just swept up some dust from the streets to pay the bills.

That deregulation was also responsible for a great deal of rural poverty across the South and Central parts of the country. The idea that poverty, deprivation and hardship and the destruction of communities only happens in one part of the country is nonsense.

I suppose this has been the case since the industrial revolution

New industry attracting workers isn't new but it is not inevitably clustered. Some countries have kept their industries distributed rather than concentrated in a handful of areas which subsequently grew into large cities from market towns.

The effect you describe is more to do with the fallacy of trickle down economics pervasive in some Western countries. The consequence has been ever widening gaps between rich and poor, ever less opportunity and support for the bottom end and a loss of social cohesion. Its really not an accident that extreme political parties and populist bullies gain power. Happy contented people who mainly think they have a future don't generally revolt. People with no future have nothing to lose by radical change.

The idea that poverty, deprivation and hardship and the destruction of communities only happens in one part of the country is nonsense

No one even has said this

Tibtom
Agree. The choice of staying in countryside and starving or moving to the city slums is a one faced by millions world over for hundreds of years.

And how urban North of England was built during industrialisation. When we lost our industry it had long term consequences for huge swathes of our population.

People with no future have nothing to lose by radical change.
It wasn't until after the referendum that I realised how many people I knew had voted leave. And that theme came up a lot: there was no make-Britain-great-again nostalgia, but they were mostly people who'd spent 30-odd years ducking and diving to scrape a living and who basically felt this was a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make a real change, and that they had nothing to lose if it didn't work out.

It was a lesson I won't forget in a hurry.

@C8H10N4O2

I suppose this has been the case since the industrial revolution

New industry attracting workers isn't new but it is not inevitably clustered. Some countries have kept their industries distributed rather than concentrated in a handful of areas which subsequently grew into large cities from market towns.

The effect you describe is more to do with the fallacy of trickle down economics pervasive in some Western countries. The consequence has been ever widening gaps between rich and poor, ever less opportunity and support for the bottom end and a loss of social cohesion. Its really not an accident that extreme political parties and populist bullies gain power. Happy contented people who mainly think they have a future don't generally revolt. People with no future have nothing to lose by radical change.

I don't disagree with this but I think this thing with cities has added something new to what's happened.

It might be related to technology, you just couldn't get cities that were so outsized in the past. Cities like London, New York City, a few others are so huge they start to effect economies in a different way, and I don't think it's about the gap between rick and poor.

How government approaches distribution is a factor for sure, but it's also not the only thing going on.

Something I find interesting about it is that in some ways, it's worse for business. A company that locates in a smaller city or even town with lower costs for workers doesn't need to pay them as much.