This research is straight from the copybook of Blairism.

Progess has some very distinctly non-Labour backers, who’s interest is to give further life to neo-liberalism. New Labour supported this approach, and now New Labour is dead progresses backers are trying to influence the next generation.

They are the enemy within Labour.

I live in Bedfordshire, prime commuter-belt country. My MP is Nadine Dorries.

Nadine Dorries won here. And easily. What does that mean? It means that you could slap a blue rosette on the back end of a flatulent cow and it’d get elected round here.

Nobody cares what Labour says, what Labour does, who Labour is, or who the Tories are in this constituency.

Maybe this is not typical commuter belt, I couldn’t say for sure. But I would argue that Labour ought to give this land up for dead. Focus on winning back the votes of the poor, the disenfranchised, the genuinely socially progressive and of course the city dwellers from cities that aren’t London, and the job is done.

as a professional pollster, Peter Kellner ought to be impartial and ought to ensure that any research is undertaken as neutrally as possible.
There have been a few occasions now where he has failed – badly – to do this.

Apologising for electing Blair and then Brown as leaders and PMs would be a good start IMO.

How about, after a setback, not completely capitulating and giving up all your ideas. How about giving some moral leadership on the issue of immigration and not nurturing casual racism?
How about having some beliefs? and not being a flake?
Get somebody in with some opinions and who’ll stick to his/her guns.
John Mcdonnell would be a good start.

Excellent article Don. Most people including commuter belt people (what does this actually mean?) want a return to the politics of decency rather than a continuation of the politics of greed. After all, the recent spate of social unrest affects us all apart from those who live in gated settlements or are tax exiles.

“Nadine Dorries won here. And easily. What does that mean? It means that you could slap a blue rosette on the back end of a flatulent cow and it’d get elected round here.

Nobody cares what Labour says, what Labour does, who Labour is, or who the Tories are in this constituency.”

Yup.

How many of the shires did Blair win?

@7 Sally: “How many of the shires did Blair win?”

Try this BBC map showing the results of the 2010 election:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/election2010/results/

The implied premise that “commuterland” is the key concentration of marginal seats is a bit flawed in itself. They neglect to actually publish a list of the constituencies but we can see from the graph that in total there are 107 and 19 of them flipped from Labour to Tory in 2005.

Compare this to the Midlands, where 24 out of 77 seats went Lab -> Con at the last election. So that’s nearly one in three Midlands seats that are Con/Lab marginals, compared to less than one in five in commuterland.

In London itself, Labour actually did disproportionately well compared to the national swing, only losing 7 out of 73 seats; in the M25 belt that Thomas identifies, that seems to mean it was 12 out of 62, still less than one in five. And those are mainly along the Thames Estuary rather than around the M25 as a whole.

So it seems to me that “commuterland” is an artificial construct in more ways than one. There are numerous problems with the pamphlet as a whole, several of them highlighted in the OP, but the whole thing also appears to be predicated on a very shaky concept in the first place.

“…in total there are 107 and 19 of them flipped from Labour to Tory in 2005″

Whoops – I meant 2010.

I give up with them, I really do.

How terribly, terribly depressing.
My grandparents helped elect Keir Hardie to Parliament and with it the birth of the Labour Party.
I imagine both he and them are spinning like a spit roaster in their graves.
I have been a Labour voter all my life and what a fool i’ve been.
1997 to 2010 revealed an administration of staggering mediocrity, liars, crooks and financial incompetents.
A list of utterly worthless self serving parasites and now they want a plan to get them re elected.
An apology to every member of the Labour Party and Labour voter since 1950 might be a start – but who would believe them?

This has very strong overtones of “winning the election is more important than the reason we stood for election in the first place”.

“This has very strong overtones of “winning the election is more important than the reason we stood for election in the first place”.

Exactly!! See I can agree with you sometimes, when you talk sense.

Career politicains who want to get on are a big problem. The whole point of democracy is to give the voters choice. Labour should not be afraid of losing. I would rather lose, than win, and can’t do anything because you have boxed your self in.

One of Blair’s better insights was that political parties can achieve little if they don’t win majorities in elections.

But I agree with Barrie J @12: “1997 to 2010 revealed an administration of staggering mediocrity, liars, crooks and financial incompetents”

In the last Parliament, more than half the MPs had to repay expenses.

@ Sally and Bob

I guess it’s a case of where you draw the line. If your ideals are so unpopular that you’ll never get more than a handful of votes, standing for election is pointless (at least under FPTP). If you have to change all your ideals to get enough votes, winning the election is pointless.

I think this case goes considerably too far in the direction of “victory at any cost”.

There are different ways to win majorities.

Stealing policies from the opposition is one.

Promoting the policies of your party that are liked by the electorate is another.

Labour used to have popular policies that weren’t Tory. They could be tried again.

@16: “I guess it’s a case of where you draw the line. ”

At the very least, I expect PMs and their governments to be competent at governing this country, which had and has lots of domestic issues to resolve.

Instead, Blair – who isn’t too bright IMO – took to engaging in foreign affairs and wars with all the foreign tripping that entailed. Judging by the things he has been saying recently, he really doesn’t have a clue about the damage he did and the mess he left. He really believes that the New Labour brand was the great achievement regardless of what it did or left undone.

When Blair stood down as PM, he was supposed to be the Middle East envoy working towards settling the Palestine conflict. More posturing with no results has been the outcome.

All that stuff about the historic achievement of three election victories in a row covers over that from the 1997 to 2005 elections, Blair lost 4 million votes and half the membership of the Labour Party.

Great. All three main parties offering slightly different flavours of neo-liberalism. Guess I’m staying home next election day then. (given that no minority parties bother with my const)

Like “New Labour”, “neo-liberalism” is just another label.

We still don’t really know what neo-liberalism is attached to. I keep asking for the neo-liberal policy on housing developments and protecting the countryside but haven’t been able to get any response. That makes me rather suspicious.

The next question would be about the neo-liberal industrial policy. I take it that would have opposed the decision in 1971 of a Conservative government to nationalise Rolls Royce to save the company from collapse.

And would a neo-liberal policy have bailed out the banks in the recent financial crisis or left them to sink – along with all their depositors?

@20

I keep asking for the neo-liberal policy on housing developments and protecting the countryside but haven’t been able to get any response.

Privatise them.
This has been your daily dose of simple answers to simple questions.

Bob B,

Neo liberalism is real.

There is a great reason for neo liberals to want states to bail out the banks. It transferred debt from banks to the state.

Once states are in debt, then global capitalism can hold governments to ransom by the what they demand on the bond market.

This can lead to what has happened to Greece and Ireland – demands for privatisations and the break up of state institutions, allowing profiteers to move in.

By bailing out the banks, global finance has Government by the gonads.

@21: “This has been your daily dose of simple answers to simple questions.”

That is complete rubbish.

As said several times, I believe it was very sensible of a Conservative government in 1971 to nationalise Rolls Royce to save the company from collapse. After turning the company around, it was privatised in 1988. Since then it has become one of the few leading global producers of jet engines for airliners.

That is hardly a neo-liberal intervention but it makes sense to me.

For comparison, Britain’s government managed nuclear energy programme is much much inferior to that of the French government, which only goes to show that the issues are rather more complicated than just whether projects are government run or not.

Bob B,

The first Neo Liberal experiment was probably Chile under Pinochet in the mid seventies, after the democratically President Allende was removed by a military coup (backed by the US and CIA).

Try reading ‘A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism’ by David Harvey (2005).

It’s a good critique

@BobB – There’s a large difference between paying back £2.20 because of an (illegal in itself) retrospective change in the rules, and illegally flipping houses. Until you can make that differentiation, the number you spout means nothing

@24: GaryK

I’m far more focused on what Neo-liberalism would mean for Britain than being diverted off to the history of Chile under Pinochet. Besides, as I understand it, the neo-liberal policy in Chile was handed down by Chicago economic advisers.

I’ve still not had any response to my questions about what is the Neo-liberal policy for reforming the planning system to get more housing built.

I don’t start with any presumption that governments necessarily know best but then I also regard all the stuff about the social benefits of “free market capitalism” as nonsense too.

@25 Leon

I haven’t a clue what you are on about since I’ve not mentioned “illegally flipping houses” – whatever that relates to.

There is a great reason for neo liberals to want states to bail out the banks. It transferred debt from banks to the state.

Once states are in debt, then global capitalism can hold governments to ransom by the what they demand on the bond market.

This can lead to what has happened to Greece and Ireland – demands for privatisations and the break up of state institutions, allowing profiteers to move in.

Um, the Greek debt wasn’t built by the banks…

@27 – Of course you don’t, that’s my point.

And you are once more conflating the free market and capitalism. They’re NOT the same thing!

@22. GarryK: “There is a great reason for neo liberals to want states to bail out the banks. It transferred debt from banks to the state.

Once states are in debt, then global capitalism can hold governments to ransom by the what they demand on the bond market.”

That is a wonderful (emphasis on wonder) argument. But what about the citizens, the people who had money in the bank who could not withdraw it? Your fantastic ideal might deliver a wonderful world, but it fucks up ordinary citizens in its delivery.

@26

I’ve still not had any response to my questions about what is the Neo-liberal policy for reforming the planning system to get more housing built.

Remove any barriers to buying and owning land and building what you like on it.

@29: “And you are once more conflating the free market and capitalism. They’re NOT the same thing!”

I didn’t invent the term “free market capitalism”, which some persistently urge upon us.

I suppose the Nazi German economy was capitalist of a kind – since business remained predominantly in private ownership, albeit with some state enterprise such as VolksWagen – but the economy was highly regulated and manipulated with state controls over prices, wages, investment and foreign trade transactions.

It could not therefore be aptly described as a “free market economy” – which is probably one of the main reasons that Hayek wrote: The Road to Serfdom (1944). However, the Nazi economy was high successful in bringing down unemployment by public works programmes after the Nazis came to power in January 1933.

Curiously, the Soviet Union was content to sign a Friendship Treaty with Nazi Germany on 28 September 1939.

Any one know how to tie a nose, I get the feeling if labour wins again I’ll need it.
We are hearing labour intend to rewrite the labour parties constitution to make it more well conservative.

@31: “Remove any barriers to buying and owning land and building what you like on it.”

I assume that would be the neo-liberal policy for the approval of housing or any other kind of development but I think we ought have that from the Neo-liberals themselves.

@32

Curiously, the Soviet Union was content to sign a Friendship Treaty with Nazi Germany on 28 September 1939.

It’s not that curious, two power hungry megalomaniacs agreeing to not invade one another’s territory while empire building? Sounds very plausible to me.

@35: “It’s not that curious, two power hungry megalomaniacs agreeing to not invade one another’s territory while empire building? Sounds very plausible to me.”

It went a great deal deeper than that. Prior to the German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, Stalin had dismissed incoming intelligence from Soviet agents, warning of the impending invasion, as “misinformation”.

The regular Soviet foreign policy stance in the late 1930s had been to promote a broad anti-fascist alliance involving western powers. Supposedly, that is what motivated the Cambridge Five – Philby, Burgess, Maclean, Blunt and Cairncross – to sign up to work for the Soviets.

After the Moscow show trials of 1936 – and after how the Communists in Spain’s civil war had executed many hundreds supporting the Republican government for ideological reasons – it was hardly surprising that British and French governments were wary about contracting any alliance with the Soviets.

Clarification to me @30: “…but it fucks up ordinary citizens in its delivery.”

The people most likely to suffer from economic failure are ordinary citizens. Economic failure affects the rich in ways that we cannot understand — they now have to use EasyJet which is very tiresome, but normal for us.

As we emerge from the despair, ordinary citizens may have a bit of joy.

And if we don’t emerge from the despair, we can still afford to go to Blackpool.

@36 Yes, we’re very well aware that Stalin was more committed (or naive) to the non-aggression pact than Hitler was, I’m sure you actually had a point in bringing it up…

@31. Cylux: “Remove any barriers to buying and owning land and building what you like on it.”

I do not believe in that analysis. At the same time, I am infuriated by the barriers that are erected against land use. Those barriers increase the price of housing and deny wide home ownership.

So in other words, let’s dich all ideas of fighting for anything out of principle, and lets try to make ourselves popular by polling, and then give the electorate what they tell us they want (or our skewed interpretation of it, ignoring anything we disagree with) That’ll make us really popular and win loads of elections!
Politics as marketing exercise.

In other words, yet more of the same vapid, vacuous, morally and politically bankrupt claptrap the Blairites have foisted on us for the last 17 years!

Trouble is we have had an entire generation of Labour politcians who have abandoned their resposibillities to offer moral and political leadership, and decided to delegate it to focus groups and newspaper editors.

Labouring apparently (mind the pun) under the delusion that by not having any opinions or principles of their own, and parroting whatever they think the electorate want to hear they will make themselves popular.

Thing is, the electorate aren’t stupid, and can see straight through these third rate fakers. Far from popularity, this strategy is far more likely to induce contempt or indifference among the electorate, which is exactly what New Labour achieved.

They’ve learned nothing.

@39: Charlieman: “At the same time, I am infuriated by the barriers that are erected against land use. Those barriers increase the price of housing and deny wide home ownership.”

Absolutely. But the sad fact is that local electorates often object to infill developments, with low additional infrastructure costs, and those houseowners with appealing countryside vistas want the vistas preserved.

The late Nicholas Ridley, when he was environment minister in the 1980s, coined a name for this opposition: NIMBY (not in my back yard). Unsurprisingly, some local politicians latch on to NIMBY sentiments to garner votes – as have Conservatives in the London borough where I live.

However, I’ve seen no recent analysis of developers’ landbanks to see whether that or the lack of buyers with mortgage finance is the main current constraint on house building. And there is a recognised backlog on providing additional social housing which is down to the government.

Does anyone have information on claimed high vacancy rates in newly built 1- and 2-bedroom apartments?

The relevant issues about the housing market are not just a matter of the planning constraints on the relase of more land for development.

Mortage lending is partly to blame for the low ebb in house building – with probably low confidence factors on the part of both builders and potential house buyers:

Gross mortgage lending remained static in July, standing at £7.6bn for the second month in a row, according to the British Bankers’ Association. This lull followed an 11 per cent fall between May and June, the figures showed, suggesting that Britons are still hesitant about borrowing to buy or to remortgage. [FT Adviser 1 September 2011]

The National Housing Federation has stated that it expects home ownership in England to fall to mid-80s levels, slumping to just 63.8% over the next decade . . But to address a critical shortage of homes the government has previously made the rather fanciful announcement that it aims to create 170,000 new affordable homes by 2015. In 2010-11 just 105,000 homes were built in England – the lowest level since the 1920s. [Guardian 1 September 2011]

The National Housing Federation has stated that it expects home ownership in England to fall to mid-80s levels, slumping to just 63.8% over the next decade . .

Not particularly a surprise. The expectation of home ownership is largely concentrated in one and a half generations, and hardly anyone leaves a home to their children any more. The asset is realised to provide affluent retirement.

Businesses can always offer more than first-time buyers, so since the re-rigging of the system to encourage buy-to-let in the 1990s, we’ve been on a guaranteed path towards minimal home ownership.

One of the most beautifully regressive economic policies ever, that. Move the wealth into the hands of capitalists, no matter that many of the houses were built to provide security and living space for actual people.