They should be ripping into all sorts of nonsense such as this, the education and NHS "reforms". Outright opposition and a clear statement that Labour will re-create the NHS as a true public service would win them the election on its own. Would unpicking Lansey's work cost money? Undoubtedly but that would be money well spent.



Unfortunately they are too timid to state outright opposition to anything as they try to appear reasonable. Alistair Darling is being proved right over the economy with even the IMF warning austerity with no growth is too dangerous a path to follow. There are plenty of government policies that require outright opposition and that would not imply any fiscal irresponsibility.



Unfortunately swapping Millibands would not work because D Milliband is as much a closet Tory as Blair was and that is why his brother got the leadership of the party in the first place. I think people expected Ed to be a darn sight redder than he is over things like the NHS but apart form Andy Burnham saying what Lansely is doing is wrong (which it is) he is not saying he will reverse the reforms if he gets into office.

That well know peddlar of insanity, The Guardian, had an article this morning likening Cameron's government / times / potential fate to Ted Heath's. Tellingly though, it ended by saying that Cameron can be thankful he doesn't have to face Harold Wilson in The Commons.

The problem with your analysis DHM is that although Labour need a new leader because they elected a clown they also need a fundamental change in policy direction. The other brother would not give that. The time is right for a really radical left-wing stance to be taken that starts off by absolutely and utterly rubbishing in an illectually sound way Thatchersim, New Labour and the coalition. Is that likely to happen? No chance with the current PLP in office.

I have read this post three times ... and I still (almost) agree with it.

I must have strayed into an alternate universe.

If you put a 1000 monkeys in a room with a 1000 typwriters....etc......etc.....?



I mostly agree with it as well, although I don't believe the British are ready for fundamental shifts to the left anymore. Blair realised this and we ended up with the lesser of two evils and we managed to get our hospitals and schools rebuilt. This is where David Milliband would have worked. I have always seen the radical left as uncompromising and self destructive - as well as being not particularly popular. Tony Benn, as revered as he seems to be now, was as potent a weapon in the Tory nal as Saatchi and Saatchi.

Politics - Ideals diluted by necessity

Ed Miliband (he may be a really good bloke/ politician) will NEVER be prime minister.

The time is right for conviction politics. People are fed up with weasly politics. Someone who is willing to stand up, talk bluntly and follow it through would work now / in the very near future.



Labour need to start winning arguments. The Tories came up with the politics of envy. The time is ripe for destroying the "politics of greed and selfishness." Will they have the guts to try to win an argument on those grounds? Have they got the personnel to win any argument? Probably, no and no.

Replace both with the "politics of dancing" and the job's a good 'un

Modern politics is without principle, it is governed by public opinion and seems to change with the day of the week or wind direction.

What we need, regardless of ones political preference, is some politiciand who are prepared to be unpopolar in the short term, but for the longer term good of the country.

Going back to expenses, I have no problem with any expense claim that is a genuine out of pocket cost, but dont take the "p".

and 26K in benefits is staggering. Many people have to work damn hard to ged a fraction of that !

The big difficulty with basing your political strategy on standing against "greed" is that most people are greedy, or stupid enough to believe the money train will let them on at some point in their lives (the housing market is one example of where for a second everyone thought that the money train had stopped at their station). Thatcher played on this to perfection with the "generous" selling of assetts we already owned back to us (well, when I say "us" I mean mainly really rich people who made a fortune). Also, a very strong counter argument is that people who go out to make themsleves wealthy generate employment and tax revenue, which is largely true. Capitalism needs subtle modifications that it would be hard to sell and even harder to actually communicate clearly. You only have to look at the universal fake thickness shown by political commentators last week when Mr Ed started talking about spending commitments Labour couldn't make 3 years before any chance they would be in power - "does that mean Labour now support the cuts? I don't understand? Suddenly I'm deliberately thick so I can make more of this than it is" etc...etc...etc...



I think "conviction politics" are the last things anyone needs, dogma is never flexible enough or caring enough to suit the demands of running a diverse culture and economy. Blair - love or hate - tried not to get tied down and that gives you options - you can pick the best options, not those that are restricted by your "convictions".

I think people misunderstand Blair on this point. He wasn't a flip flop politician or one that avoided conviction for the sake of being uncontroversial. Blair was similar to Thatcher in that he was convinced in his own sense of moral right and wrong and did not bother if that went against public opinion - see his stance on the Euro and EU, tuition fees, academies and of course war in Kosovo and Iraq, where he was against the tide of public opinion on all fronts but never tried to soften his stance.



A lot of Blair's convictions were fairly uncontroversial in terms of they were shared by a large proportion of the population, centre leftish but authoritarian on issues of law and order and security (although he proved himself to the right of public opinion on security once the paranoia post 9/11 had set in).



Blair was always talking about welfare reform in his early years in office as well, but New Labour's welfare reform was more about rewarding the low paid for taking work, with tax credits etc. This at the time was fairly popular as it was the "hand up rather than a hand out" and it was seen as reducing the poverty trap where it paid people more not to work than take low paid work. Unemployment fell considerably during the era of 1997-2007. However now, those low earners that are benefiting from tax credits, get demonised as being families that scrounge support off the state instead of living off their own low incomes, and the Tories say that there are too many families getting subsidised by the state.



It will be interesting to see over the next couple of years if the welfare bill goes up or down. I suspect, as it did in Margaret Thatcher's time, that for all the Tories welfare reform, the overall bill to the taxpayer will rise.

Change "convictions" for "principals", should we all not have some principals ? ok these may change over time, but there has to be a starting point for our beliefs.