The backing of both Rentoul and Kamm (oh, and Campbell)? More evidence, as if any were needed, why dissimulating David Miliband is such a dismal and dangerous choice.

is there any reason for thinking that right wingers make worse political predictions than left wingers? before answering, read this:sampling error

Don’t worry, David Miliband won’t win.

Rentoul: ‘By the end of the process the candidates might have got down to the real issue, which is what Labour can say about the vast fiscal deficit with which it saddled the country.’

You wouldn’t be being taken in by the grand Tory narrative would you there, John?

Evidence that Rentoul long ago had anything informed to say about anything.

the Tory right is going to be increasingly marginalised

I’d like to believe this, but the proof of it will be whether the budget sticks to 40% CGT. If it doesn’t, it shows that Cameron will talk centre-ground but is still in thrall to his Right.

I don’t really agree with this bit.

“What the Blairites don’t and never will accept about their movement was that it was never successful in carrying people with them.”

I think they actually were very succesful in carrying people with them. Blair was hugely succesful in forging an alliance of different causes from anti-fox hunting, the roads protests, and the anti-racism struggles, combining that with the cultural movements surrounding britpop, and Euro 96 (remember the “labour’s coming home” speech). He told the nation it was a young country that was hopeful. He was aided in this by a conservative party that appeared the opposite – disliking football fans, overwhelmingly white and distrustful of popular culture, obsessed with tradition (back to basics) and uncaring about social issues and problems. And he had neutralised the areas where labour could be attacked (taxation).

What he didn’t have and didn’t need was detailed policies, he just had a few aims and extremely sophisticated marketing. That he managed to maintain the coalition until 2003 wasn’t because of actual policy either……

Compare it with Cameron, in the early days he had the positive PR – he cared about the environment, appeared to want to create an inclusive and non rabid conservativism. He had a disabled son, so he understood the value of the NHS. And he had the cultural momentum as labour’s stealth taxes started to become noticed.

What he didn’t have was detailed policy and vision. In fact as soon as the policies actually started coming out, he fell in the polls.

Having policies is a disadvantage.

Oddly you seem to have missed out of your litany of Tory woes the news that the Conservatives have jumped back up to 40% in the polls and that the BPIX poll last Sunday showed overwhelming public support for the cuts, with 90% in favour of cutting the pay of senior civil servants and 80% in favour of downsizing the public sector.

Seems to me that David Miliband is the only runner not stuck in denial about the deficiit. Whether that helps or hinders is an open question.

“And now the Blairites, without having learnt anything at all from the last 13 years, are back advocating the same path. In fact D Miliband endorses it. At the New Statesman hustings he actually said he was fighting on the party’s last manifesto. Yes, the same one that lost them the election.”

Yes, the same one that E Miliband wrote.

One problem I foresee as a result of reading this blog and watching the Labour leadership candidates in action is that Labour supporters generally have only a somewhat dated and stereotypical view of their enemy, the Conservatives.

Here’s a clip from a recent speech that in its little way is just as significant as anything said by Jon Cruddas at the Compass do:

Over the past two decades the British Government have become steeped in a 1970s textbook caricature—a view in which markets are always efficient, prices reflect perfect information, and institutions are nowhere to be found. One would be tempted to call such a view neo-liberal, were we not in a time of coalition government.

“Worse than that, the deep assumption remains that human beings are purely economic, rather than social, animals. This dismal gospel regards the human world as static, not dynamic—as a world of fixed social engineering, not one of creation, discovery and competition. In policy terms, this textbook economics takes power away from local people. It encourages centralisation and top-down meddling. It pushes us towards an inefficient, inhumane and factory-style view of public services. It is absurdly risk averse. In its apparent inevitability, it stifles public debate about other, more thoughtful approaches. Above all, it actively undermines the ideas of public service, public vocation and public duty—…..

“Now is the moment to re-examine these assumptions. Politics is not a subset of economics, and economics is not a subset of the financial sector. GDP growth is important—goodness knows that is true now—but so are flexibility, resilience and, above all, entrepreneurship in our economy. We need a new economics in our Government, not the desiccated economic atomism of the old textbooks, and we need to see people for what they really are, as bundles of human capability, creative, dynamic and fizzing with imagination and potential.”

That was Tory MP Jesse Norman in his maiden speech this week.

The Conservatives are a moving target and Labour ain’t keeping up.

Sunny

Can you clarify a few points about the evidence for the underpinning argument about a successful Labour electoral strategy.

(1) “What the Blairites don’t and never will accept about their movement was that it was never successful in carrying people with them. It was just a naked bid for power without any coherent narrative. Millions of people like me who wanted to vote Labour couldn’t bring themselves to do it because it offered no sense of purpose other than to seize power”.
– are you saying you couldn’t do so in 2010, or also in all of 1997, 2001 and 2005? –

“Millions of people like me who wanted to vote Labour couldn’t bring themselves to do it ”

– I haven’t seen a detailed analysis of which lost Labour voters in 2010 sensibly fit into which categories (eg your disaffected left group vs other factors/types of voter): do you have one?

There was no significant group of this nature in 1997. I can see it is very plausible to find 2m+ such people in 2005 (Iraq, tuition fees), particularly moving from Labour to the LibDems: as certainly Labour vote significantly underpolled Labour identifiers. There were a range of different effects in 2010 (cf Labour strength in London, Scotland and recovery post-2007) so it would be interesting to hear if anybody has a detailed account of that.

It would obviously be wrong to claim that the whole Green or LibDem (or Respect) vote “ought to be Labour really”, so can we be clearer about the claim as to what the size of this group is, who and where they are, what we know about them, etc?

(2) “It only worked while the opponent was worse than their own offering“.
– I agree Labour needs to say more than “we’re not the Tories” and have argued that at length in various places, so I am sympathetic to this argument (certainly up to a point): that was an insufficient argument in 2010, though a very strong reason for many people to vote Labour in 1997 and (though less) in 2001, and it was even enough to squeak over the line in 2005 (by which point there was very little substantive or positive agenda).

– Labour did, however, have rather more to say than that in 1997 (when it got 44% of the vote, and 58% preferred a Labour to a Tory government).

– But you will acknowledge that “the opponent is worse than their own offering” should again be part of the argument at the next election? I agree not all of it. Otherwise you are buying the substance of the Cameron claim that Cameron-Clegg equals a substantively progressive and egalitarian agenda?

Are people in the Labour Party really taking seriously the opinions of Oliver Kamm? If they are, then this is a big part of the Labour Party’s problems.

The only time that I have seen him he was on the platform with Julian Lewis, and it was difficult to tell which one was the Tory backwoodsman. Kamm was mixed up with the Euston Manifesto, and wrote a book abouth the left-wing case for neo-conservatism, and this tempted some people in the Labour Party (desperate to find a justification for the invasion of Iraq) to take him seriously. There is however nothing in his background or his views that makes Kamm at all left-wing.

I don’t know what he’s said previously but on Saturday DM was the clearest defender of deficits. He cited Blanchflower and opposed the conservative idea that deficits are ‘immoral.’ And he’s right, of course.

To win, the Labour leader will have to stay left-of-centre, but he or she will also have to find a new narrative and set of policies that will grow the Labour family to include the millions of ex-Labour voters.

Sunny, that assumes that such a narrative exists.

Assuming an agenda that centres around welfare reform, the environment or multiculturalism would not appeal, perhaps you could tell us what the new policies might be?

planeshift, I disagree with your point about Blairism carrying people with it – I should have been clearer in the sense that I meant that over three elections.

From 1997 to 2010 Labour went from the biggest landslide in its modern history to the second worst result ever. That’s not carrying people. He captured imaginations in 1997. By 2005 he was a spent force.

flowerpower: and 80% in favour of downsizing the public sector.

Was that through asking questions in this manner?

Anon: Yes, the same one that E Miliband wrote.

It wasn’t entirely his idea. He says now he was opposed to ID cards and 3rd Runway but was outvoted on it.

flowerpower: The Conservatives are a moving target and Labour ain’t keeping up.

Keep dreaming.

Sunder:
WRT point 1 does my response to Planeshift answer your question?

I haven’t seen a detailed analysis of which lost Labour voters in 2010 sensibly fit into which categories (eg your disaffected left group vs other factors/types of voter): do you have one?

I’m looking at the group that YouGov at one point referred to as ex-Labour voters:

The Labour disloyals:
http://www6.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2010/03/02/welcome-peter-kellner/

But you will acknowledge that “the opponent is worse than their own offering” should again be part of the argument at the next election? I agree not all of it.

Yes I agree that you have to paint a negative narrative about your opponents. I just think the impact of this will be overblown by 5 years time, because Cameron will go out of his way to neutralise the negative social connotations associated with the Tories.

There is a danger in Labourites believing in what their lefty political mates are saying and thinking that the ‘same old Tories’ narrative will work to the extent it did in April 2010. It won’t. In the same way it won’t work against Boris, who also went out of his way to neutralise the image Ken et al tried to paint.

I don’t know what he’s said previously but on Saturday DM was the clearest defender of deficits. He cited Blanchflower and opposed the conservative idea that deficits are ‘immoral.’ And he’s right, of course.

They’re all the saying the same. I can’t even wedge a Rizla between the leadership candidates on their economic positions.

Could it be the air of excitement is because the “progressive” left is deluded enought to think Diane Abbott has a chance of winning?

The guy who carries the Union vote will win. So that look like Ed or Ed then.

“He captured imaginations in 1997. By 2005 he was a spent force.”

Well yes, but between 1995 and 2003 he was extremely succesful, and carried many with him. I can’t really think of many political movements that have done as well for so long.

Who ever wins the the party leadership will lose the election. Most governments get in for the second term, by then the conservatives will have ditched the lib dems, probably over Iran.

It does amaze me why so many conservatives are concerned about the Labour leadership on this blog.
Why and please don’t say that we want a strong opposition. That has all the sincerity of a Chelsea supporter wanting a strong Arsenal team.
It is probably a need for hate figure. The poor old right wing posters such as cjcjc and flowerpot will have no figures to throw their bile at

As an ex Labour party member but still a trades unionist perhaps we need to accept it is the end of the line for Labour.

I cannot see Labour ever been re-elected again. England will get more and more conservative economically over the next 10 years.
The real fight will between economic libertarians and the social conservatives