*slow hand clap* well done, its only taking you the loss of government to work that out. Bravo!

“a ‘national mission’ to rebalance the economy, warning about the impact of cuts on the ‘squeezed middle’ and lower income workers, and building ‘better community ties’.”

Unfortunately the first and third of those are already key Conservative and Lib Dem themes. Is this seriously the best Labour can manage?

Sunny,

The Labour party “came late to effective active” in creating a balanced economy that was less dependent on banking, shadow business secretary John Denham will admit today.

I think you need to include the rest of the quote and change your sentence to make that make sense.

E.g

The Labour party “came late to effective, active government policies to create a balanced economy, less dependent on the financial services sector,” shadow business secretary John Denham will admit today.

Probably a copy+paste slip-up.

“Unfortunately the first and third of those are already key Conservative and Lib Dem themes”

And aren’t they doing well. They are rebalancing the economy away from things like care for disabled children (serves those children and their families right for their pivotal role in causing the economic crisis) and towards greater spending on mass unemployment, and are building better community ties by wiping out thousands of grassroots voluntary groups and telling lies about supposedly generous benefits for disabled people to stoke resentment and social division.

greater spending on mass unemployment,…

Say it ain’t so! Mass unemployment would be disastrous!

Unemployment in the UK fell by 36,000 to 2.46m in the three months to March, the lowest level since last September, indicating that the government’s austerity measures are not yet feeding through into a higher jobless total.

The unemployment rate was 7.7 per cent of the workforce, down 0.1 percentage points on the quarter, the Office for National Statistics said. City economists had expected 7.8 per cent. Employment rose by 118,000 on the quarter and youth unemployment fell

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b0fe7356-812d-11e0-9360-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1NRzUC7DF

Phew eh?

The fact is that New Labour ministers in the DTI – Beckett, Byers, Hewitt, Mandelson – didn’t have a notion about rebalancing the economy between them and they did precious little about improving the infrastructure for education and training in vocational industrial skills.

Gordon Brown did appreciate the importance of the last and went on about creating an online University for Industry (UfI) in the run up to the 1997 but Blunkett as education minister screwed up on that. At the end, BAE Systems was Britain’s largest manufacturing business – making armaments.

The clue New Labour ministers should have noticed was how to make serious personal wealth in Britain: work in the City, football, entertainment, the fashion industry. Apart from football, none of that was going to do much for most bed-rock Labour supporters.

IMO voters are going to need a lot of convincing that ministers in the next Labour government are going to be a great deal more competent than the last lot were.

Denham is as sensible as Denham often is.

Problem is that this is pretty uncontentious stuff that, emphasis on government’s role aside, is common ground between all three major parties.

What’s more – it’s all high on the Coalition agenda already, so unlikely to be the issue on which the next election is fought.

The party is likely to announce specific headline-grabbing policies a year or two before the election.

Can’t wait…

@4

Well, I could point you in the direction of the moves to grow the green economy which have already led to success (such as 30,000 new jobs in Hull). I could point you towards the protection of science spending. I could point you towards the commission on banking reform which is predicted to make far reaching proposals. I could point you towards the Enterprise Zones which, regardless of what you may think about their potential success, are definitely a measure aimed at rebalancing the economy. I could point you towards HS2 to shorten times between London and the north, increasing the likelihood of investment in places like Birmingham. I could point you towards these and dozens of other moves like them but I imagine you don’t want to hear it.

Like it or not, the Lib Dems and the tories have substantial grounds for saying that they are rebalancing the economy. Regardless of whether this is true or not (and for the record, it is) if Labour starts to talk about the same thing then the response will simply be “then why don’t you support this government’s efforts to do so?”. As a political strategy it will be useless.

@7

“Can’t wait…”

Me neither, it will be nice to see some actual policy from the supposed “official opposition” for a change. It’s risible that the Greens and UKIP have done more so far in terms of laying out alternatives than Labour have.

@5 – for some strange reason, your quote from the FT article didn’t include the following two paras:

“However, the number claiming jobseekers’ allowance rose by 12,400 to 1.47m in April, the largest increase in 15 months, following a revised rise of 6,400 in March. Half of the increase was explained by female claimants switching from lone parent income support because of benefit changes.

Analysts are likely to remain cautious about the path of the labour market over the next few months. Unemployment has been broadly stable since the middle of 2009, but most economists expect some increase as public spending cuts and tax rises start to bite.”

@5

For understandable reasons, the public are very sensitive about the headline figures for unemployment but the conventional economics wisdom has long been that labour market data are lagging, not leading indicators.

Vince Cable in today news has read the omens correctly IMO:

Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, faces a new confrontation with Chancellor George Osborne today after warning that Britain could face the “bomb” of a second financial emergency.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/vince-cable-warns-of-second-financial-emergency-2289206.html

Britain has failed to appreciate the seriousness of the economic crisis and faces another financial crash, Vince Cable has warned.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/liberaldemocrats/8537031/Vince-Cable-Britain-faces-another-economic-crash.html

10 – That’s fine, just point me to the bit where it says that there’s mass unemployment. I’ll carry on looking at the bit that says unemployment’s falling.

Predicting apocalyptic economic collapse is a seriously risky move for Labour.

Unfortunately the first and third of those are already key Conservative and Lib Dem themes.

Hehe. Its nice to see you still believe that George.

Of course, quite how the next Labour government is going to rebalance the economy could be worth knowing. And where they are trying to rebalance it as well.

Until that point, I’ll forgo to much judgement, although if the economy needs rebalancing, I would suggest the market will be more efficient than the government; the market at least is prepared (by virtue of being a set of processes) to do unpopular things which need doing such as killing obselete sectors.

“If the banking failure teaches us anything it is that unrestrained free markets can lead to catastrophic economic failures.”

Haha… The banking industry described as an unrestrained free market, that really is hilarious… No wonder things got into such a mess if MP’s actually believe that’s the case… Clueless…!!!

@1 – ever read Marx?

If you did then you would know what is at fault – but I guess that’s a little too much effort for you.

@14
“Until that point, I’ll forgo to much judgement, although if the economy needs rebalancing, I would suggest the market will be more efficient than the government; the market at least is prepared (by virtue of being a set of processes) to do unpopular things which need doing such as killing obselete sectors.”

What you mean like banking?

Sorry troll – but banking stays because in a system of capital accumulation you find yourself with institutions which are deemed ‘too big to fail’ – and to allow them to fail will destroy the economy.

….or didn’t you work that out for yourself?

Banking was obsolete years ago (see Zoopa) – but for some reason they have clung on…..could it be that once you reach the top of the capitalist tree you can bribe and influence Government to do your bidding?

….or is that something else that passed you by?

Bad news for Labour in latest IPSOS MORI poll for Reuters:

Asked who they will blame if the economy gets worse over the next 12 months, 22 per cent of respondents say the last Labour government but just 10 per cent say the Tories.

When they say re-balancing the economy aren’t they implying it was once balanced? If so, when? The disparities across Britain are huge, old and structural.

Or do they just mean the South East as usual and sod the rest?

@13

“Hehe. Its nice to see you still believe that George.”

Nice to see you failing to read what I’m saying.

Regardless of whether they are accurate statements (which, to my mind, they are), you will see both Conservative and Lib Dem politicians claiming to be rebalancing the economy and building better community ties (the Big Society for the tories and community politics from the Lib Dems). Now, if the two coalition parties are both using these as key themes, then Labour attempting to use the same themes will run aground.

For example:

Labour: We need to rebalance the economy
Lib Dems: That’s what we’ve been saying and doing for over a year
Labour: We need stronger community ties
Tories: Our big society is empowering people and building stronger community ties.

Except, of course, it will be the other way round. The Lib Dems and the tories are already saying those things so Labour will just come across as a copy cat.

Now, if you wanted me to explain why I believe the Lib Dems at least are being accurate when they make those claims I’d be more than happy to but it would be a tad longer than acceptable for a comment thread.

Although I am not a Labour party supporter I think the criticism on this thread is unfair. This is precisely the type of thinking that Labour out of power should be doing. As always the devil will be in the detail and everything will depend on actual policies to achieve laudable motherhood and apple pie aims. Policies to shape investment rather than trying to pick winners and favouring certain industries sounds encouraging.

Not a great event. Denham was okay, but basically just stated the bleeding obvious, and in such general terms that while it was hard to disagree, it was also difficult to discern much by way of substance.
Only two people not in suits, too many think-tankers,quangocrats and ideologues (Tory, LibDem and NewLab), and it was impossible to reconcile the woolly theorising (motherhood and apple pie from all sources) with the realities.

The speech is part of Ed Miliband’s efforts to push three themes as Labour’s message: a ‘national mission’ to rebalance the economy, warning about the impact of cuts on the ‘squeezed middle’ and lower income workers, and building ‘better community ties’. This problem is The tory are saying they are doing the national mission to rebalance the economy and if it starts to work then the warning about cuts on squeezed middle will not occur. So then you are left with your core lower income worker. Ed’s problem is attacking, cuts now, that may not have the impact Labour believe is highly dangerous and you could end up with no positive message to the middle income were the swing is to get back to power. Negative campaigning does not work. Labour must learn from team Obama, even with record unemployment, Obama message is positive and when he ran his was a positive change message and not a attack on Bush and policy, which mistakenly the Clinton lost run with and lost.