The change is hardly suprising.

From Blair’s vision of, “Education, Education, Education” in 1997, we have moved to this:

“Britain has one of the worst teenage drop-out rates of any developed country, with more than one in ten of those aged 15 to 19 not in school, work or training.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article6825679.ece

Yet those selling socialist worker on the street corner still ply their idealistic trade, does somebody need to tell them that the world has moved on – as far as I can tell we controlled by the mega-corporations nowadays?
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/

The tories experienced the same thing in Scotland, Wales, Inner cities and large parts of the Midlands and South West.

Once gone, it’s very difficult to get it back. Look at Scotland, even on current polling, the tories will struggle to get more than 5 MPs.

Alarmed? Alarmed? We should be ringing the church bells if it really is the final defeat of socialism. But never fear, it won’t be. All three major parties believe in the semi-socialist social democratic model, despite all the evidence that it is not particularly good at improving the lot of the poor or the vulnerable. But at least it’s better than outright socialism, which is worse.

Alfred, are you having a laugh? How far right-wing are you, to beleive that the three decades of Thatcherism we have had are ‘semi-socialist, social democratic’.

Had I been a die hard, northern Labour voter I would have probably stopped being so when they screwed up on the whole 10p tax rate thing in the spring of 2008. Although considered a minor row from the perspective of the future, I reckon that row did more damage to Labour than some think. To screw over the rich is fair enough – that’s to be expected from the left. But to screw over the poorest, from the party that is supposed to protect them, that’s got to be either evil or incompetent and either way will win votes.

Obviously it’s more complicated than this, but if historians are looking for a ‘trigger’ factor for the loss of support up north, they could do worse than look at the 10p debarkle.

Alarmed? I like so many others have Champagne already on ice for the joyous day when the New Labour occupation ends. Of course no-one’s alarmed!

I have the deep joy of sharing this day with a Labour person, who’s already conceded the bet which will see him pay for the booze….

@5 – ooo, I don’t know, the more or less “semi” (half) share of GDP accounted for by government spending perhaps? (far more outside the South East of course)

The extraordinary number of new laws, rules, regulations, impositions, intrusions and breaches of traditional liberties enacted by this government over the past 12 years?

Needless to say, on the post itself, no alarm required.

@1,

On the subject of “education, education, education”, consider how dumbed-down science education has become under New Labour.

@9 Dumbed-down from what, exactly?

@10,

Dumbed down from what they were like when I did them (they were called O levels then).

Some say Labour deserters in the northern heartlands are drifting toward the BNP?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jun/08/bnp-bradford-barnsley

nurse – sshhh…you’re not allowed to point that out

[13] but even Hazel Blears is saying the same thing
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23715146-labour-risks-losing-north-says-blears.do;jsessionid=ECFE51353ABFB585D7BB0D1EFAB4E3B9

cjcjc, there is a lot more to socialism that government spending, and capitalism is not incompatible with high levels of government spending. You strike me as one of these peculiar Internet libertarian sorts, know a lot about political textbooks and such like, but not much of the real world.

That’s why “semi” seems about right!

You have a strange definition of libertarian if you believe that someone who thinks that 50% of GDP might just be a bit too high might count as one.

In my experience it is self-styled socialists who spend rather too much time with their textbooks…

No it doesn’t! It means absolutely nothing!

A strange definition for a strange bunch of folk. Claiming that the Bolsheviks in number 10 control half the economy. Tsch.

This is worrying. Although I’m glad to be seeing the back of New Labour.

But if the exit of New Labour means at least a decade of Tory rule and the decimation of any sort of organised resistance from workers then its a bit of a pyrrhic victory.

It is time that the Guardian and Indy reading metropolitan/London centred left wing non-technical government employed types who realised they have failed to earn the respect many skilled former and present industrial workers. Why should a family, which has a long tradition of skilled industrial employment; provided proud members of armed armed forces and who has members serving in Afghanistan, respect a bunch of middle class failed trotskyists pen pushers and Polly Toynbee clones?

The daft situation is Lord Carrington MC has more experience of the working classes from his time fighting in the Guards in WW2, than 90% of the cabinet!
Has any member of the cabint apart from Houldsworth ever been employed to undertake skilled or unskilled manual labour? Cameron digging his vegetable patch probably has greater cause to claim connection to the Tolpuddle Martyrs than most of the Cabinet.

Winston Churchill, from his experience of building a brick wall around Chartwell gives him greater experience of industrial life than 90% of the Labour cabinet- he was made an honourary member of the bricklayers union.

What is beyond belief is that there are probably former and present idustrial workers who have greater faith in the Tories restring manufacturing than Labour.

Why is it Labour cannot attract articulate craftsmen who have reached the rank of foremen and prefererably served in the armed forces? If they had these sorts of people as MPs, the BNP would be much smaller and the Tories would be seen to be callow and shallow.

The Tories have built a narrow four-point lead in the north,

As they have a ~ 20-point lead nationwide, the North must still be Labours heartland.

I can’t believe that I’m the only one who thinks that in twelve years of NewLab governance too large a hunk of public resources and far too much political toil has gone into promoting and running wars and tripping around on foreign affairs for glamourous photo opportunities. We’d have more remaining confidence in leftist government in Britain, I think, if the domestic agenda had been better attended to and our public services were working well.

A core belief running through leftist ideologies has long been that markets don’t function efficiently or equitably.

Different factions of the left have responded differently to that core belief and proposed divergent remedies but the underlying diagnosis was always there and broadly convergent. The potential for market failure was recognised and elaborated in mainstream economics – externalities, economies of scale leading to market dominance, monopolisation of markets, public goods, network effects, information asymmetries impairing rational decisons.

A curious but manifest feature of our NewLab government, whether of Blairite or Brownish flavour, has been that it believes markets, especially finance markets, function so effectively in risk-taking and allocating resources that, with the single exception of climate change, state intervention is superfluous and could not have helped prevent the present crisis developing.

What amazing naivety.

If you’re from a Labour heartland, you’ll have witnessed 13 years of band aids that failed to stem the neo-liberal trends of increasing inequality, rising utilities prices, crap transport, unaffordable housing, etc etc.

But perhaps you stayed on board the Labour train because you could just about appreciate that you (or your husband or wife or child) was protected from unemployment by a public sector job, and that some improvements to the NHS were noticable (albeit at a ridiculously high cost.)

Now these vestiges of safety and care (which basically keep huge swathes of post-industrial Britain from being submerged in dark waters) are about to be sliced into by whichever party achieves power next year.

So why bother with the old loyalties? You’re going to get shafted any way you vote, so why not take a punt on the other side and hope they shaft you a bit more gently?

I didn’t vote in the 2005 general election but then more absained at that election than voted for Labour candidates. The turnout was the second lowest since 1918.

At the beginning of 2008, I would have readily voted Conservative just to get rid of Gordon Brown. But then the financial crisis developed and I became increasingly appalled at what passed for economic analysis by declared Conservatives, as well as their ignorant policy prescriptions, that I decided then that whatever else, I certainly wouldn’t be voting Conservative at the next election.

My current sentiments are to vote SNP – to give them a good send off – should the SNP stoop to putting up candidates in London constituencies – or to vote for the LibDems because Vince Cable has consistently talked the most sense on the crisis.

Gary, 5. No, I wasn’t having a laugh – as it happens I would call myself socially fairly left but economically fairly right, based on my experience of the world. “If you’re not left wing at twenty you haven’t a heart; if you’re not right wing by forty you haven’t a brain”, and all that.

This is Wikipedia’s definition of social democracy:

“However, modern social democracy has deviated from socialism, and supports positions that include support for a democratic welfare state which incorporates elements of both socialism and capitalism, resulting in a mixed economy combined with a comprehensive welfare state.”

I’d say that all our main parties are social democrats within that, wouldn’t you?

The trouble from my perspective is that “fairly left” and “fairly right” have no clear connotations so the phrases lead to ambivalent interpretations depending on each reader.

Was the fundamental 25-point programme of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party fairly right or fairly left?
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSDAP_25_points_manifesto

Hitlers government was close enough to be considered a communist regime, it was not left right just Hitler.

Something new Labour would like to do now with it’s OK we will control the people.

Are Labour people turning to the BNP yes some of course they are, I nearly did myself until I thought hold on ones the same as the other. Labour has hit hard the people who come here to make a better life, they have detention camps lock up children, but hell the BNP are evil for doing this, we allow people to live here on vouchers of £10 a week.

New labour hail Hitler.

@22 “so why not take a punt on the other side and hope they shaft you a bit more gently?”

That’s route 1 to a very sore arse.

Attempting to categorize political views/beliefs/parties into right or left wing is impossible in view of the many overlapping strands within each. I personally believe that Plato was a conservative although most people tend to label him as ‘socialist’
As a socialist I believe that socialism is an economic stystem/theory. but not all socialists would agree.
Ultimately, we are arguing about whether a tomatoe is round or red.

Round or red, there’s no ‘e’ on the end…

The interesting question about the north and which way it votes is the proportion of people who are dependent on benefit who generally vote labour versus the proportion of people whose taxes pay for benefit, many of whom do not vote for it. Western societies with increasing tax burdens and increasing unemployment can diverge in very different directions – on the one hand populations voting for higher and higher benefits and higher and higher taxes and which breeds more and more welfare dependents (this is my concern and would be suicidal for our nation) or a society who votes for lower taxes (or at least less severe tax increases), lower public spending because it is employed and wants to see more benefit from its work. The divide between these two is crudely represented by the north and south in the UK.
This is not academic – large numbers of pensioners in Europe has led to huge political power for pensioners, ever growing pensions that are crushing european budget deficits and low child benefit and consequently a plummeting birth rate which will cripply european economies in the future.
Sadly when people can vote for more benefit, a whole society may choose to vote for idleness if there are too many on benefit.

25. Bob B . Both communism and nazism were influenced by the theory of evolution: they were both attempts to create a modern political system to counter the militarised land owning aristocratic power base. If we look at who was the most effective opposition to the Nazis, it was the aristocracy. In the early 30s many communists from the working and middle classes joined the Nazis.Perhaps Nazism and Communism are like Janus the two faced god. They are the two faces of tyranny and belief in the moral right to use any means to aquire and hold onto power.

@31 huh?

24 – i wouldn’t necessarily agree with that definition of social democracy, but even so, I don’t think we have a mixed economy or a comprehensive welfare state, so even by that definition I disagree.

31 – Arguing is much easier when you can just make up facts, isnt it? Never mind the fact that the aristocrats and land-owners got on quite nicely with the fascists for the most part. And just overlook the resistance of the CP (the issue is clouded by the ridiculous policies of the Stalinist leadership, for instance the Red-Brown referendum, but still, a great number of the rank and file of the CP, SPD and the TUs resisted and were killed by the nazis).

Gary, 33 – where are you anyway? North Korea? It’s about the only on earth that doesn’t have a mixed economy these days. The UK economy is certainly mixed and if having getting on for 10% of the population on benefits doesn’t count as a comprehensive welfare state, then one of us is a banana. And it’s not me.

I think class generalisations are pretty offensive as well, by the way. Some aristos were taken in by the Nazis, just as many working class people were. So what? What Charlie 2, 31, said is accurate if he was talking about internal opposition to Hitler – blowing him up in 1944 was more “effective” than getting yourself killed without a result, even if Hitler was only injured by the blast.

Alfred, you seem to look at the world like the Ronseal advert – ‘if it says it on the tin, it must do it!’

Just because people are on benefits doesn’t mean we have a comprehensive welfare state. In fact, I would argue that it proves that we don’t!

And as I have said, government spending and state intervention are not incompatible with capitalism, and don’t mean we have a socialist or mixed economy.

What we have is a capitalist government intervening in a capitalist economy in the interests of the capitalists. Nothing mixed or socialist about it.

As far as government spending as well, the question hinges on ownership. As most public services are contracted out, the government taxes people, and hands the money over to a private company to run the service, which creams of a juicy slice of profit. Nothing socialist about that, but it sure as hell is a bit mixed-up.

“I think class generalisations are pretty offensive as well”

I think other things happened in the period 1939-45 that are more worthwhile getting offended about.

As for the bomb plot – so the same aristo’s that funded and supported Hitler into power, stood by him throughout his time in power, become hero’s for turning on him when they realised that the game was up and that fascism was finished, along with the people that supported it.

The class generalisation is accurate – not 100% solidly correct, but if you think things ever are your a bit of a tit.

Gary, 35. This will be my last comment as I have other things to do.

“Some aristos supported Hitler, therefore all or most aristos are Nazis” is every bit as offensive as “some blacks are thick, therefore all or most blacks are thick” – and as inaccurate. Substitute any minority group in that – gays, ginger-haired, or whatever. It doesn’t matter. You’re just showing your prejudice.

Don’t be silly, what is this, PC-gone-mad?

Studying social classes is a legitimate area of academic interest. Social classes are formed by people in a similar social position, with similar interests and ways to advance and defend these interests, and so it is possible to make generalisations (and like I said, these are only generalisations, not concrete, unshakeable laws).

By your insanely-PC argument, most academic fields would be impossible, because any form of generalisation would be deemed offensive.

“What do you mean mosquito’s spread malaria? I was once bitten by a mosquito, and I didn’t contract malaria. You, sir, are a bigoted, anti-mosquito, fascist, and my pet mosquito and I find these crazy theories offensive.”

30
‘Benefits’ is a broad term, it includes child allowance, state-pensions, the winter fuel allowance, which aren’t easily given a labour/non-labour divide
People receiving benefits pay tax and those receiving state-pensions have probably paid quite a lot of tax and national insurance contributions.
Conversly many of those receiving benefits are tory supporters. Your assertion that it is benefits which determine a north/south voting divide is crude indeed.
And do you really believe that the poor level of child benefit is the reason for low birth-rates?

The KPD (Communists) spent much of their energies and hatred in conflict with the SPD Social Democratic Party from 1929 and failed to recognise the the rise of the threat of the NSDAP (Nazi Party).