No surprises there. When, for 13 years, you’ve had a party whose only organisational raison d’etre was to assemble on-message yes-men and robots, this is the inevitable consequence.

The mother of cliches, I know, but you reap the harvest you have sown.

Welcome to the lamest campaign in Labour leadership history.

Oh well, perhaps Diane Abbott can change that.

Phil Woolas might have talked about immigration, but you never missed the opportunity to knock him for it Sunny.

You have consistently been out of step with public opinion on immigration, so why should any of the leadership candidates listen to you on the subject?

Does that make him this contest’s Hilary ‘Why am I standing? Is this thing on?’ Benn or Hazel ‘Continuity New Labour’ Blears?

You have consistently been out of step with public opinion on immigration, so why should any of the leadership candidates listen to you on the subject?

You want me to start listing the issues the right is completely out of step with the public on?

Interesting to see Burnham linking imigration with crime.

And did anybody hear Johnson sneering at Clegg’s non-indigenous parentage yesterday ?

From New Labour to BNP Lite in less than a month. Must make you very proud, comrades.

@6

re: Alan Johnson “sneering at Clegg’s non-indigenous parentage”.

No, he didn’t.
Here’s the exact quote:

“Nick Clegg is married to a Spaniard and he’s the son of a Dutch woman. In the Netherlands and Spain, ID cards are not controversial at all. They’ve had them for years, the same in France, the same in Italy, the same in Germany.”

How is that sneering?
Do you work for the Daily Mail, the Sun, or something?

Sunny,

You want me to start listing the issues the right is completely out of step with the public on?

No, we’re just talking about you being out of step. No need for whataboutery.

Burnham’s stance will help re-connect with WWC voters, but since when have you cared about them eh?

@8

These people going on about “being out of step with immigration”…
Are you, by any chance, the same kind who were so very convinced that the BNP were gonna make humongous gains at the election as “the only party in step with people” about immigration???

Mokujin, are you Andy Burnham? I wasn’t aware he had any supporters at all other than himself.

@Claude

Stop trying to defend the indefensible.

As your quote shows, Johnson now agrees with the Nick Griffin that the non-indigenous status of Clegg’s mother is an issue.

And what about Burnham’s attempt to link immigration with anti-social behaviour ?

The fact that immigrants are actually LESS likely to be involved in this doesn’t seem to trouble him. It would seem that you and your comrades in BNP-Lite are no more concerned with facts than your fellow travellers in BNP Original.

Just to prove the point:

http://www.thurrockgazette.co.uk/news/8174953.Labour_seizes_control_of_Thurrock_Council/

It would seem that Labour and the BNP have now actually entered into an alliance in Oldham.

What a surprise.

http://www.thurrockgazette.co.uk/news/8174953.Labour_seizes_control_of_Thurrock_Council/

That’s a disgrace.

#12

That doesn’t appear to be what the article suggests. The article says the sole BNP councillor for the area voted for one Labour candidate at the council meeting electing a mayor and deputy mayor, and for the Tory candidate in the next vote. Because control of the council was so tightly balanced, both votes were deciding votes. I doubt if either the local Labour or Tory groups did deals with the BNP councillor – the political upshot just to get a mayor or deputy mayor position would be too damaging, quite apart from the principles involved.

@tim f

It’s true that nobody signed anything, but looking at the arrangement it’s clear that a nod’s as good as a wink to a blind man.

And why not? Given the anti-immigrant rhetoric from specimens like Burnham, and worries about Clegg’s non-indigenous parentage from Johnson, I see no strategic reason why Labour and the BNP shouldn’t formally align.

Let’s just hope that Diane Abbot sticks it to your party’s elite before they replace bad (New Labour) with worse (BNP Lite).

“Labour, which had 22 seats to the Conservatives’ 23 after the local elections on Friday May 7, was able to gain control with backing from BNP councillor Emma Colgate and former Conservative group member Stuart St Clair Haslam, who quit the group earlier this week.”

Good going comrades.

#16

Don’t blame us.

It’s all down to those dirty immigrants.

Somehow.

“that we were doing more for those who didn’t want to work than those in work but struggling, particularly with no children; that we were in denial about the effects of immigration – on wages, housing and anti-social behaviour – in places where life is hardest;”

Many people really do think like this, but the trouble is, they’re wrong. Wrong on welfare, wrong on immigration. I hate to say it, but who’s right about this stuff? Guardian-reading liberals, that’s who! We could learn a lot from Guardian-reading liberals, since they tend to be right about pretty much everything!

… except possibly who they vote for, but now that the Lib Dems have gone all Tory, maybe they’ll come back to the fold.

You lot really don’t know much about football hooligan culture.
Your honest to god thug never wears football tops but river island and stone something or other. They all look like checked jockeys but bigger
They have their own little uniform. Sweet eh
The police guidelines are to with the fact that a pub may have two sets of supporters in the same premises. It gives them a get out to stop trouble.
Also I suggest those with a left wing bent and love the beautiful game you buy a philosophy football top.
Wonderful socialist message and a top quality top. I am on commision.
My England top has we only win the world cup under a Labour government and Bill Shankly ones are my favourites, although I do have Camus GK top. Sad but true.
Shatter, they even have a few right of centre messages such as the collected wisdom of milton friedman on a Jimmy Greaves top

Cassandra
Do you ever read what your leaders and ALL your blogs say.
They never stop going on about immigration.
Also the BNP love sites like Migration watch, all run by people close to Dave and Boris.

HM Government was rejected in 1951, 64, 70, 79, 97, 2010 because either the economy was disappointing, or its management of the economy did not inspire confidence.

Anyone know wether Any of Labour’s Leadership hopefuls has reflected upon that in public recently?

Let’s hope we don’t end up with another Hattersley as Shadow Chancellor, when Darling walks, as I recall he’s said he will.

@Chris Baldwin (#18):

Exactly. It’s true very many people think immigrants are the overwhelming cause of crime, the housing shortage, the jobs shortage, stress on the NHS etc etc. They also believe that the country has an ‘open door immigration policy’, and that there are terrifying ‘Muslim no-go areas’ where Sharia law rules rapidly taking over British towns and cities.

But they are wrong on all counts – and so talking/acting tough on immigration in response (justified as “listening to people’s concerns”) is utterly pointless.

If you respond by cracking down still further on immigration, passing anti-immigrant laws, publicly berating minorities for insufficient ‘Britishness’, prioritising ‘indigenous’ people for council housing, then the problems they experience will still continue to exist, because immigration is at most a very minor part of the causes of these problems.

So Labour wouldn’t get any thanks for ‘listening to their concerns’ and changing policy: instead they will continue to blame the immigrants, and continue to insist that government isn’t listening. They will continue to believe there is an ‘open door policy’, no matter how draconian the real policy is. They will continue to demand ever tougher action, expanding their target wider to cover less recent migrants, to cover migrants’ children. In fact they will blame immigrants and minorities for their problems even more, because it seems everyone (even the government!) now agrees it’s these ethnic minorities here causing all the problems.

Labour really should not go down that road – unfortunately they’re already a long way down it.