Who should be Labour leader?

**crayola** · 01-Oct-11, 00:33

As you will know if you read the forums a year ago, I am not a fan of Ed Miliband. Are you? Who should be Labour leader?

**rogermellie** · 01-Oct-11, 01:00

if were talking 'old' Labour then Andy gets my vote, but seeing how were now all 'new' labour (indistinguishable from the tory elite) ... who cares ?
i'm a base voter .... last man standing, in a square go who'd be left .... ?

i hate Dianne's habit of looking skywards as if she's reading her answer from an autocue from inside her eyelids, not to mention all that private school mullarkey, she's lenny henry with an iq

**crayola** · 01-Oct-11, 01:29

Good Lord, Andy Burnham has 3 votes and no-one else has any. What caused that? I sometimes use Diane's eye in the sky action when my audience is full of idiots or ugly people. It's not the best way to endear yourself with your public.

**Bazeye** · 01-Oct-11, 01:59

Dont care. They'd still lie to us and break their election promises.

**joxville** · 01-Oct-11, 02:04

You're lucky those idiots and ugly people can't read your mind!

I chose Andy for being old Labour-ish, the others being too much Tony's cronies. And Diane Abbott has always annoyed me, even more so when she used to appear on This Week, though to her credit she didn't always follow the party line, often voting against party policy.

**ducati** · 01-Oct-11, 08:18

I haven't voted because I couldnt give a clap. Thank You

**Corrie 3** · 01-Oct-11, 08:54

None of the above !!!

**pmcd** · 01-Oct-11, 09:11

Any of the above no-hopers, chancers, hypocrites and placemen are welcome to seize the crown. ANY of them will continue with Labour's inexorable decline as a party of authority and representation. Never have I seen such a sorry collection of swivel-eyed, loose-tongued, false-promising, jam-tomorrow moral bankrupts attempting to be somehow an attractive electoral prospect.

**John Little** · 01-Oct-11, 10:00

Originally Posted by crayola

As you will know if you read the forums a year ago, I am not a fan of Ed Miliband. Are you? Who should be Labour leader?

A Socialist?

**orkneycadian** · 01-Oct-11, 10:39

I couldnt even tell you who is the labour leader - Think its one of the Millibands, but couldn't swear my life on it, and certainly not which one. Of course, Google would tell me in a flash if I were interested, but I am not, so I won't! Aside from that, the labour MPs should just get on with the job of representing their constituents and stop banding together to for a shadow government pretending that they have the same need to do so as the governing parties.

**crayola** · 01-Oct-11, 12:24

Originally Posted by John Little

A Socialist?

It depends what you mean by a socialist. I wouldn't want a nationalising TUC toadying old Labour dinosaur. Not even a young dinosaur. Is that what Andy Burnham is? I don't know enough about him to make an educated assessment. I'm still amused by those who call Tony Blair a liar. He believed in everything he said and did. He really believed in his third way and he really believed he did the right thing regarding Iraq. You and I may disagree with him over the latter but that isn't my point. I hope you're enjoying the sunshine. I am.

**John Little** · 01-Oct-11, 13:29

I am sitting on a bench in Bethersden churchyard and my kindle plays Sibelius next to me. The air is italianate and my sandwich was tasty. Soon I shall climb onto my bike and scoot homewards where a keyboard sits of a better size on which to speak of differences twixt guild socialism and the real thing. Big fingers on blackberry keys don,t really cut it. I hope you are enjoying the sun too tho' in space your vantage is clearer... and I hope the clericks treat you well.

**John Little** · 01-Oct-11, 15:24

Blair was never a Socialist.

He was an opportunist who was able to take advantage of the fact that 'Socialism' or what passed for it made Labour unelectable. The British people had seen 'Socialism' in action and did not want it - and who can blame them?

Trouble is that it was not Socialism.

As to Andy Burnham - I know nothing of him. And if he were so hot then we should have done.
So it depends what I mean by Socialism?

Socialism is an often misunderstood word. To most people it brings visions of bloody minded trades unionists in the winter of discontent and Scargill charging mindlessly to the slaughter at the white-hot revolution at Orgreave.

But that’s not ‘Socialism’ and never was.

The trouble is that a mis-shapen alliance took place in 1899 between Fabian Socialists and Trades Unions in response to an ill though out court decision to make picketing illegal. But it was never going to be a good marriage, because the Fabians were Socialists and the Unions were Collectivists – and they really do not have much in common.

Add to that the revolutionary politics of the Social Democratic Federation and the Syndicalism of the Guild Socialists within the Trades Unions, and you have a Hells broth of conflicting aims and objectives. That’s why the Labour Party never really worked; you always ended up with compromise which satisfied nobody.

Between 1902 and 1918 the membership of Trades Unions went up from 2.5million to 8.5 million and the Unions therefore held the purse strings of the Labour movement. They still do.

But Unions are not there for Socialism. They are Guild Socialists and their aim is, and always was, the interests of their members. They exist to gain advantage for their own folk and if that is at the expense of other groups in society, then so be it.

They were brought into existence by abuse and exploitation and they are a logical development in a state where unbridled Capitalism pays people not a lot whilst maximising profits.

Between these two extremes there will, in the best Marxist sense, always be warfare. But it ain’t class warfare as some think- its Guilds versus employers.

And there is a world of difference between Socialist and Guild Socialist.

This country has never had a Socialist government; and I think that true of any other country also.

So what is Socialism?

Answers to that will always be individual – so mine is too.

A Socialist approaches society and reform of it from the point of view that Society is an entity, and would therefore disagree with Margaret Thatcher’s idea that ‘There is no such thing as society’. To Thatcher the world we live in is made up of individuals, responsible to themselves and acting as individuals. To some people this would seem axiomatic, but the trouble is that if society is viewed as not existing, and that everything is based on the actions of its individual components, then it encourages Social Darwinism. In a country made of individuals life becomes survival of the fittest. People succeed through their own efforts, not because they operate in something built by collective effort. Responsibility towards others is left to individual whim and charity. It operates in the favour of an elite which will emerge, which elevates self and pushy to an art and a dogma. It places sound economy before social welfare

A Socialist would see that we derive benefits from the framework that we live in, and that great change can be made by co-operative action. To a Socialist, it is the health of society and the mass of citizens that comes first. It follows that the larger number of people benefit if individuals come together and act for the common good. Not in a selfish way, as with Unions, but in large ways such as setting up a National Health Service, Sickness Benefits, National Insurance schemes. A Socialist recognises that although society progresses through individual effort, we are responsible to others in society because we do better in a fairer and more equal society. No revolution is necessary because a re-distribution of wealth can be achieved by a fairly graded tax system

In this way Socialists differ little from Liberals but classic Socialists go further in wishing to have nationalisation of the means of production, a right to work for all, and a national minimum wage.

A Socialist/ Liberal who married their Socialism to Liberal ideas like fiscal responsibility, reform based on Commission recommendations, consensus politics and the principle that no group in society should be allowed to benefit at the expense of another – now that would be a person to follow.

I doubt that he or she exists.

**crayola** · 02-Oct-11, 17:33

You're right that Blair was never a socialist. And nor would he claim to be one. The only sense that you might claim he's a socialist is that he isn't a Tory. And he's certainly not a Liberal. He was the most illiberal PM of recent years with Brown as his only rival for that title. But getting back to the question of the thread, it's looking like 'Anyone but Ed' even more than I thought it would.

**Rheghead** · 02-Oct-11, 17:55

I suppose Ed Miliband should be leader for no other reason than for putting Labour ahead in the opinion polls by 3-6% except for the occasional one (using a much smaller population) then it subsequently is flashed over the papers amid claims that Ed is unpopular with voters and his party. You just can't make it up sometimes when the media publish the exception as the norm.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion...neral_election