Unions are to push the government for “pay restoration” deals that would award above-inflation pay rises to public sector workers who have suffered a decade of real-term salary cuts.
Members gathering for the Trades Union Congress’s annual meeting next month are due to vote on a motion that calls for pay restoration to be “a key feature of our campaigning with the new government”, the final agenda for the event shows.
Whatever the peak, peak, rates achieved under a giveaway government were those are the new normal to which pay must be resotered. Never should it be possible for anyone to say that, acshully, the last lot went too far and your pay is now relatively too high.
Just sack them all therefrore.
This is truly adtonishing.
After 35(?) years of total irrelevance, suddenly the TUC in newsworthy.
That fact alone should be enough to condemn Labour to permanent opposition.
All those promises not to increase income tax and national insurance will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
It is not as though Reform voters weren’t warned of the consequences of letting Labour in…
Choke on Tory cock Theo.
But Theo, we were also warned of the dangers of letting the Tories back in.
Theo: even if every one of the Reform voters had voted Tory, Labour would still have a working majority of a size to enable all the malign policies on their list.
I wonder if one of the key policies adopted at the Labour party conference in 2022 will be adopted….Proportional representation.
I mean it has the highest number of Constituency party backing of any single policy issue on record, so two tier won’t go against the wishes of his members will he?
Theo: «It is not as though Reform voters weren’t warned of the consequences of letting Labour in…»
Would you argue that the Tories are doing a sterling job in opposition by challenging the govt vigorously at every turn or is it perhaps more accurate to observe that the rump of your favourite party is engaged in an introspective battle between its left and right buttock?
It is not as though Reform voters weren’t warned of the consequences of letting Labour in…
Seriously? 14 years of miserable sub-Blairite failure, but it’s Reform voters’ fault?
Don’t forget to blame those who switched to LibDem or those that stayed at home. It can’t possibly be the fault of the lying, malignantly incompetent cunts propping up the rotting corpse of the Tory Party.
TG
even if every one of the Reform voters had voted Tory, Labour would still have a working majority of a size to enable all the malign policies on their list.
Not true. Reform cost the Tories 170 seats…
Julia
But Theo, we were also warned of the dangers of letting the Tories back in.
Yes, we were. But it is a case of the lesser of two evils – politics being about trade-offs. Nothing is gained by dividing the right when the left is united.
Ask anybody you know who works in the government sector: Why should I personally be impoverished you you can be enriched?
Thankfully, I’m in the US, so we’re not quite as far down that road, but I felt like British politics was a slow-motion train wreck. The supposedly conservative party fails its voters in numerous & important ways (immigration, energy costs, etc.). So, conservative & moderate voters split off or don’t show up & the skids are greased for a much faster descent.
The question, I assume, is whether the Left cocks things up so bad (no heat in the winter, rising crime that can’t be swept under the rug, people bristle at the threat of prison if they don’t agree with all the PC talking points, etc.) that the country swings back to at least a weak conservative majority or a real one.
Or – the Left goes full Orwell and no matter what the population wants, there’s no going back.
I find it hard to imagine Door #1 being the ultimate answer, but it could lead for a while at least to a real conservative government.
@Theophrastus
The tory party cost the tory party 170 seats.
Why do you so wilfully refuse to see this?
They were given a majority of 80 in 2019, a significant contribution to which was the red wall.
What did they do to deserve to retain it?
Lesser of two evils?
Is that it? Do you have nothing more, nothing positive?
“when the left is united.”
Not for long it will be..
And let’s be fair… It was high time the UK electorate gets what they voted for. Good and Hard.
TMB
Would you argue that the Tories are doing a sterling job in opposition…?
Of course not. Because they are in the middle of a leadership contest. And, anyway, I am not an enthusiastic supporter of the Tories; but I am realistic enough to see that most of the UK electorate is unlikely in the foreseeable future to vote in the right-wing/small state/ free market option that I would prefer, and I am also realistic enough to see that the Tories are at the very least marginally better than Labour (the ‘uniparty’ being a figment of the imagination). And Reform, as I have argued here before, will move leftward on economics, because there’s only a small electoral market for small state + social conservatism.
@Theo: ’Nothing is gained by dividing the right when the left is united.…’
I can’t understand what it is you hope to gain by continually mischaracterising this wretched excuse for a Tory party as ‘the right’.
“the ‘uniparty’ being a figment of the imagination”
Have you noticed what sort of MPs the Tories have these days? Most of them would fit quite in fine in either of the other main parties. Indeed several have jumped ship quite happily. And Rory Stewart (PBUH) who was once considered a candidate for Tory leadership now spends all his time hobnobbing with Alistair Campbell of all people, who a real Conservative would only ever meet once, to beat to bloody pulp. Thats the calibre of people in the Tory party nowadays, establishment scum basically.
Theo:
Your “Of course not” says it all about your introspective Tories (or what’s left of them). The leadership election is paramount and to hell with with everyting else.
People tell us to vote for ‘the lesser of two evils’ seem to be forgetting that they are still evil.
Mark
The tory party cost the tory party 170 seats. Why do you so wilfully refuse to see this?
Reform cost the Tories 170 seats by dividing the right-of-centre vote. There’s no getting away from that. And the actions of Reform voters are having dire socialist consequences. Why do you refuse to accept responsibility for this?
Lesser of two evils? Is that it? Do you have nothing more, nothing positive?
Nothing. Because my ‘support’ for the Tories would evaporate if there were a credible chance of a small state and socially conservative party being elected. But there isn’t. Because many small staters are not conservative but libertarian; and many working class social conservatives are not small staters or free marketeers.
Julia
Relative to the current Corbyn-lite Labour government – probably the most left-wing ever – the Tories are undoubtedly right-wing.
@John
“I’ve seen policies you people wouldn’t believe.”
TMB
Your “Of course not” says it all about your introspective Tories (or what’s left of them). The leadership election is paramount and to hell with with everyting else.
Every time a governing party loses a general election, it becomes introspective. So why are you holding the current Tories to a higher standard? Meanwhile, the undoubtedly talented Farage, who wants to replace the Tories, is doing nothing to oppose the government. Indeed, Reform is being deeply introspective itself, focussing on its constitution and branch network…
Jim
Rory Stewart is an odious twerp with a messiah complex; but the Tory Party still contains some MPs who are not Rory Stewarts. And the Tory policy platform is undoubtedly preferable to the Labour Party’s.
Theo, you can’t go and simply claim all those Reform votes for the Conservatives. A fair chunk of them would otherwise have gone to Labour. Furthermore, current polling suggests that Reform are way more likely to get Labour voters to switch than the Conservatives are. And that’s what will have to happen for Labour to be voted out next time – Labour voters will have to be persuaded to vote for someone else, and that someone else is Reform.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/08/23/labour-voters-would-rather-back-reform-uk-than-tories/
If we hadn’t voted in sufficient numbers for Reform this time around to get them half a dozen MPs, that possibility would be off the table. We wouldn’t be seeing the BBC being obliged to cover the Reform Party conference, and the Reform offer being put out there for potential Labour switchers to hear.
Look, I understand your point about Reform being leftwards in some ways on economics, but you yourself say, quite rightly, that politics is all about tradeoffs. Well, how about the tradeoff of resuming fracking and North Sea exploration, thus making Reform’s otherwise left-leaning policies more affordable? Because the Conservative Party have made it perfectly clear that they will never allow fracking again – it would be too much of an affront to their elite eco-credentials.
Without Reform, the UK would be trapped under Labour for ever, with the Conservatives a weird, Labour-light, fringe opposition.
When does my private sector salary get ratched up to compensate for a decade of real-terms cuts?
Even after these “real-terms cuts”, the public sector is still ahead of the private sector, what they are complaining about is that recently the acceleration of their increases has been decreasing. The third differential has gone negative.
If you take this data you find that, if you take 2000 to be equality between public and private, by 2022 public sector pay has dropped to being only 0.17% ahead of private sector pay, down from being 10% ahead in 2012.
They are complaining not that their pay is going down, but that their pay is no longer getting more and more than private sector pay as fast as it used to be.
Theo,
It was your party with its high taxes (how many years of frozen allowances and thresholds was it?), net zero, pig-headed fixation with HS2, kow-towing to the NHS, previously unimaginable levels of immigration and attempted betrayal of the 52% who voted for Brexit which drove its own supporters away. They had thirteen years and only made things worse. Labour may have ramped up the two-tier system but don’t kid yourself it wasn’t already well and truly in place before this year.
If it hadn’t have been for Reform most of us would have stayed at home and the turnout would have plummeted well below 50%.
I am not angry at the pay deals. If British workers get more pay, then that should help ordinary British people.
The left are supposed to help working and ordinary middle class people.
As u ha e said before;
The far right see the working class as criminals and parasites.
Boris described the British working class as criminal, drunk and hopeless.
Rishi said he had friends from all walks of life except the working class.
And the Reform Party are just far right Tory yuppies with a new uniform.
I meant to say “as I have said before” not “as u ha e said before.”
Stupid predictive typing BS..
I.was trying to say
As.i have said before the far right see the working class.as.criminals and parasites.
@Theophrastus
I voted for reform and it was clearly a possibility that labour could win. Had I voted tory, it was clearly a possibility that labour could win, as it would have been however I cast my vote, or had I not cast it at all.
The responsibility for the actions of the labour government lies squarely with the labour party. The responsibility for the actions of the tory government lay squarely with the tory party.
If you want to say that I – and millions of others – are responsible for what der sturmer is doing, that is your prerogative.
The tories drove voters away, by the million. Voters who had given them a chance, and a fairly clear idea of the direction. All they did is spit it back in people’s faces – John sums it up rather well.
I’d like to see a genuinely small state, genuinely socially conservative and genuinely pro-British party too, and if there were such a party I would vote for it in a heartbeat.
There isn’t, but there is reform.
It’s a start.
If you want to continue voting tory, you are, of course, free to do so. The consequences (if you have been) of doing so over the past 25 years have not been terribly insipring have they?
Paul S
I am not claiming “all those Reform votes for the Conservatives”, but only Reform votes in 170 of the 251 seats the Tories lost.
current polling suggests that Reform are way more likely to get Labour voters to switch than the Conservatives are.
Yes, for now. But if Labour can recover from 2019, I wouldn’t write off the Tories yet. The electorate is fickle and volatile; and the Overton Window does move.
And that’s what will have to happen for Labour to be voted out next time – Labour voters will have to be persuaded to vote for someone else, and that someone else is Reform.
Which is why Reform will have to move leftwards on economic policy. All new political parties lack traditions and so are inherently fissiparous. A change of economic policy could easily split Reform….And Farage is a Marmite politician, so there’s a low ceiling to his popularity. He’d never be elected as PM.
As to trade-offs, any left-leaning economic policy of Reform’s would have to be pretty mild to persuade me to vote for them. I can get left-leaning economic policy from the Tories, if that’s what I want (which I don’t). But these are matters of degree; so I reserve my opinion. Also, the Tories aren’t inherently anti-fracking, and their policy could change.
Whistling past the graveyard of Western power and the “liberal international order”:
The Houthis have defeated the US Navy – The Telegraph, August 24th
Pretty big if true, no? And it does seem to be true, the Ewoks have defeated the Empire in the Red Sea. Alarming.
But don’t worry, the Royal Navy and Marine Nationale are doubling down on failure using their own pathetic handful of ridiculously expensive floating gay discos:
But the EU and France haven’t given up. They’re still fighting for freedom
So, idk how relevant pubsec largesse is gonna be in the very near future. The centre couldn’t hold, mere anarchy etc. No doubt we’ll keep spending money we don’t have, right up until we can’t, but does anybody believe we can simply double the national debt again, as the Con Party did during its 14 year Long Con? Declining powers don’t generally get to enjoy easy money for very long.
The masters of the world can no longer keep the sea lanes open. What do?
https://archive.is/L0KHL
Theo, I don’t see how you can blame Reform for “dividing the right” (your words), while at the same time you reject them for “moving leftwards on economic policy”. How can they have divided the right if they are moving leftwards? Those Reform votes would not have all gone to the Tories in those 170 seats the Tories lost. They took some votes from Labour, some from the Tories and some from people who would not otherwise have voted.
As you also say, Reform have identified a constituency which is not currently catered for: socially conservative, economically leftwards, and also (and this is crucial) pragmatic, anti-ideological and pro-prosperity. Hence the enthusiasm for fracking, which both Johnson and Sunak rejected out of hand. The Conservatives have banned fracking with all the hardline stupidity of a Starmer or a Miliband. To claim that they would have been a better choice than Labour because “their policy could change”, when it’s in fact identical, isn’t going to convince me one bit that I made the wrong decision in voting for Reform. Only that I had nothing to lose.
Paul, strangely enough, banning fracking in the UK and Europe is exactly what Putin wanted. Russia Today, the Kremlin’s mouthpiece, has been spreading anti-fracking propaganda (in the UK and Europe) for years.
Why are our leaders helping Russia defeat us?
Toledo zaragoza: «I meant to say “as I have said before” not “as u ha e said before.”
Stupid predictive typing BS..
I.was trying to say
As.i have said before the far right see the working class.as.criminals and parasites.»
Brain and typing skills perfectly matched!
Steve, I couldn’t agree more. You know my fervour for Ukrainian independence, but one of my reasons for voting Reform was precisely that they are the one party committed to the single thing which will effectively hit the Kremlin’s revenues: that is, increasing the supply of gas and oil and thus reducing the price.
Every other party flies the blue and yellow flag while moronically subsidising the white, blue and red one.
I remember back in February 2022 my best and oldest friend – who lives in Brighton and is, as you’d expect, extraordinarily wealthy and Labour-voting – asking me what he could do for Ukraine. I told him to lobby his MP to overturn the fracking ban. His MP at the time was Caroline Lucas.
We had a laugh about it, as we always do about these things, because what else can you do? You can’t fall out with your best friend over politics – something neither of you can do anything about. That would be granting victory to the politicians.
Steve,
It’s not just what Russia wants though is it?
America is doing very nicely nicely out of shipping LPG to us along with vast quantities of woodchip which, despite generating far more CO2 than burning coal or oil, is ludicrously defined as “green”.
France has us over a barrel with our dependence on their nuclear surplus. Just wait until the next fishing dispute to see realpolitik in action.
Then there’s all those cuddly OPEC Arab states whose only dilemma is which, if any, British assets are still worth buying up.
China supplies around 60-70% of the worlds (short useful life) solar panels. They’re not exactly shedding any tears at the thought of what should be an energy independent and net exporting country endlessly pissing on its own chips.
This anti-fracking policy was madness under the conservatives and will continue unabated with the current bunch unless, as Theo puts it, “their policy could change” which admittedly with Captain Flip Flop in charge isn’t as daft it sounds.
The Meissen Bison ; Stick to the pottery.
Paul S
I don’t see how you can blame Reform for “dividing the right” (your words), while at the same time you reject them for “moving leftwards on economic policy”.
Because it’s my prediction that Reform will move leftwards economically – not that it is left-leaning now economically. Currently, the free-marketeers and small-staters control Reform (and all power to their elbow, if they pull the UK right broadly in that direction). However, to increase vote share, and if/when its membership increases, Reform will face strong pressure to move leftwards on economic (including welfare) policy. I can’t see Tice and Farage – the latter being politically talented but egotistical and rather authoritarian managerially – swallowing that easily. If they do, power might possibly beckon, but only as a right-of-centre party embracing some soggy centrists – just like the Tories! In which case, we’d be back were we started…
Paul S
We had a laugh about it, as we always do about these things, because what else can you do? You can’t fall out with your best friend over politics – something neither of you can do anything about. That would be granting victory to the politicians.
That’s very civilised, Paul. I have a good friend who is a barking Corbynista. However, one of my wife’s friends refuses to talk to me because I said that the theocratic ideology of Islam posed a problem for the UK because Islam doesn’t (like other religions) allow a secular space. She thinks I’m racist….As a young air hostess, she lived in Bahrain, where she accepted a gold watch and jewels for dropping a log on a glass table with a coprophiliac sheikh underneath….Weird.
Mark
The actions of x are the responsibility of x; but if y knowingly facilitated the predictable actions of x by doing F, and not-F would have impeded x, then y is (at least partly) responsible for x’s actions and their consequences. The criminal law recognises this reasoning.
Reform voters should accept (at least some) responsibility for Starmergeddon. I can have only scorn for their denial of responsibility for the consequences of their actions. That said, I can comprehend the (undoubtedly flawed) ‘calculation’, advanced by some Reform voters, that it was somehow for the greater political good that Reform facilitated Starmergeddon, because Labour will soon implode and (somehow, unspecified) Reform will replace the Tories. The risk is that the 2024 GE opened the way for 10-15 years of socialism. But if in 2026-9, Reform is leading the polls and heading for government, I will eat my words.
Theo, in my constituency the Conservative MP lost. His vote went down by 40%.
He lost nearly 13,000 votes from the previous election. Not one of those went to Reform, because there wasn’t a candidate (rumour is he filled the form in incorrectly).
They stayed at home. If Reform hadn’t been standing, that’s what would have happened in many constituencies. Former Conservative Party voters weren’t choosing between voting Tory or Reform; they were choosing between voting Reform or not voting at all.
@Theophrastus
It was an election not a trial.
I was a voter in that election, not a defendant, co-defendant or witness.
The criminal law might recognise your reasoning, but it clearly selectively applies it (and has for quite a while), as you are doing.
I cast my vote for the party I thought would be best for the country. Did I expect them to win and form a government? Of course not, it may take several several cycles (but der sturmer has been SO bad, it might be 2029). Keep der sturmer out, but every other combination is fine, or would you be saying this about reform voters whoever won (party or coalition) unless it was the tories?
Fine, if it makes you happy I have a degree of responsibility for Starmageedon, as I had for Sunakgeddon, Trussgeddon, Johnsongeddon, Maygeddon, Camerongeddon, Browngeddon and B-liargeddon (and they’ve ALL been geddons to greater or lesser degrees)
How much, 5%, 10%, 50%/ What would make you happy?
What percentage do you accept?
“Because it’s my prediction that Reform will move leftwards economically – not that it is left-leaning now economically. Currently, the free-marketeers and small-staters control Reform (and all power to their elbow, if they pull the UK right broadly in that direction). However, to increase vote share, and if/when its membership increases, Reform will face strong pressure to move leftwards on economic (including welfare) policy.”
So you’re saying don’t vote Reform, because they might turn into a bunch of Lefties (but aren’t at the moment), but do vote Tory, who definitely have been a bunch of Lefties for a decade or more, and show no signs of wanting to change.
Right……
Theo: «Reform voters should accept (at least some) responsibility for Starmergeddon. »
John McEnroe’s appeal to the umpire applies.
« I can have only scorn for their denial of responsibility for the consequences of their actions.»
I think you need a bit of a lie-down, Theo. Your lot should have stood up for Liz Truss when you had the chance instead of capitulating to the BoE organised putsch.
Theo – Reform voters should accept (at least some) responsibility for Starmergeddon. I can have only scorn for their denial of responsibility for the consequences of their actions
I voted Reform because I like what they have to say, but the fact it makes you piss your knickers with impotent rage is also lol.
But if in 2026-9, Reform is leading the polls and heading for government, I will eat my words.
Nobody cares.
I said that the theocratic ideology of Islam posed a problem for the UK because Islam doesn’t (like other religions) allow a secular space.
So you voted for the party that proudly invited several million more Muslims into what used to be your country.
I’m amazed you can climb a flight of stairs with those enormous clown shoes you wear.
Paul – Yarp, it’s definitely not worth destroying a relationship over politics. Tho, ironically, the kind of people who do that aren’t worth knowing.
Imagine living your life like terminally online lefties do, always terrified of saying the wrong thing in case your “friends” turn on you. The whole world is a prison to those people.
John – as a Christian, I believe all of these people should be nailed to crosses erected along the M6.
Steve
I naturally believe that the huge sums of money we spend on subsidising Yemen should immediately be cut off. Of course, the Global South (I understand this includes southerners like Putin) can feed the Yemenis if they like. The money we waste on keeping them alive could then be spent on the ammo needed to kill them.
One assumes the Yemenis will then flee to the Saudi occupied area in the north or to UAE supported southern Yemen in the south. And the do-gooders will shriek that they should all be allowed to colonise the wicked white west.
Bboy – a US government press release about the country that just defeated them in war:
The United States is providing nearly $220 million in additional humanitarian aid to help the people of Yemen, including nearly $200 million through USAID and nearly $20 million through the Department of State.
Somebody here is too stupid to live, and surprisingly, it’s not the inbred retards who believe Mohammed flew to the Moon on a magic Space Horse.
It’s not about left and right, it’s not about Labour vs Tory. It’s about us and them. If Reform won the next one, the weasel carpetbaggers would flock to it and Whitehall would still be Whitehall. The point about voting Reform is only immigration. If we don’t stop that we’re fucked. Reform cares, or purports to care, about the people of the UK. That alone distinguishes them from the others and that deseres our votes because otherwise we’ll never have a relevant vote again.
Oh, and leadership contest or not, there is still a leader of the opposition and he is silent. There is much to oppose going on right now and nobody is doing it. Because Rishi can’t see anything wrong? Because it’s fine for politicians to issue orders to the judiciary as to whom to try and what sentences to pass after a show trial?
Rhoda – there is still a leader of the opposition and he is silent.
Yes, I’m sure that sniggering Indian midget cares deeply about the native English.
No doubt the little turd will leap out of the toilet bowl to save us at the crucial moment.
TMB
Your lot should have stood up for Liz Truss when you had the chance instead of capitulating to the BoE organised putsch.
It wasn’t the BoE who did for Liz Truss. Her problem was not her policies but her lamentable political failure to consult the City in advance about them. Her bull-in-a-china-shop approach (and her poor interpersonal skills) spooked the markets. How anyone with her political experience could make such a basic error is remarkable.
As for “your lot”, I don’t have a “lot”. I regard the Tory failures as contemptible; but the other major parties are even more contemptible and much more dangerous. Rational self-interest means I vote so as to keep Labour out. If there were a viable alternative to the Tories, I would vote for it; but there isn’t – yet. So it’s not me that needs to lie down, it’s those who irrationally voted for Reform knowing that it would ensure socialism.
RK
…there is still a leader of the opposition and he is silent. There is much to oppose going on right now and nobody is doing it. Because Rishi can’t see anything wrong?
And Farage and his merry men, with 4 million votes behind them, are also doing nothing to oppose socialist tyranny! Why?
Steve
So you voted for the party that proudly invited several million more Muslims into what used to be your country.
And you voted for Reform knowing that it would let in socialists who will admit even more Muslims and other losers than the Tories did. Whatever the Tories do, Labour will make it worse.
Jim
Relative to Labour, the Tories are not lefties…
Mark
The reasoning about responsibility I summarised is regularly used in daily life – even by children apportioning blame – and was first identified by Aristotle: it is not confined to the criminal law. And I am not applying it selectively.
Relative to the Socialist Workers’ Party, Labour are not lefties?
@Theophrastus
Yes you are!
Your apparent ire was targeted at reform for “splitting the right wing vote”, and yes, tactically, it can be interpreted that way as the labour party, who’s vote is clearly in long term decline, won a landslide on a very anaemic vote share.
You have no “lot” and your only concern appears to be to keep labour out. Fine, it’s your vote and that’s how you chose to use it.
But what you wanted, “we” did in 2019. Farage stepped his troops down in many constituencies, and with help from the red wall gave the tories a resounding tactical victory (helped, in no small measure, by a lunatic labour manifesto).
Labour was indeed kept out, and the tories showed their appreciation by royally fucking up the arse all those who had naively helped them (I was one of them!)
This is why they are now simply dead to so many of us.
And has been pointed out, many reform voters potentially were tory, but had reform not existed may well not have voted.
If your attitude is just tactical to “keep the other fuckers out” (and there are people who vote labour for precisely this reason of course) then you pretty well guarantee continuance of the uniparty (yes, you deny that it is a uniparty, as you are free to).
The issue, the real issue, as Rhoda Klapp points out is untrammeled gimmegration. The first step would be to get out of the ECHR and only Farage seems to have mentioned it. Good reason to give him a chance as far as I can see.
Mark
Reform would have won exactly the same number of seats (possibly several more!) by simply fighting their c.20 most winnable constituencies. Instead, they contested (nearly) all constituencies, splitting the right-of-centre vote and giving Labour a massive majority. If Reform had contested only its c.20 most winnable seats, then …who knows?…there might then have been a Tory-Reform coalition that could have dealt with immigration….Instead, Farage said he wanted to destroy the Tory party – which means we now have five years and more of socialist tyranny. Thank you, Reform!
And anyone who imagines there is a uni-party is hard of thinking and/or has a low reading age. The evidence of the differences between Tory and Labour policies is extensive! Mr Google is your friend…
@Theophrastus
You simply won’t have it that it was anything other than reform will you?
TMB
Relative to the Socialist Workers’ Party, Labour are not lefties?
Labour and the Tories are the main parties of government. The SWP is not in the running. My comparison was between two realistic options – not between a realistic option and an electorally irrelevant leftist groupuscle.
The further one moves to the ends of the right-left spectrum, the greater the foreshortening of ideological perspective tends to distort one’s judgement of other positions on the spectrum. So, to the SWP, the Labour Party rightwards is all fascist. And to Reformers looking leftwards, there is a mythical ‘uniparty’…Yet neither of the judgements by the SWPers or the Reformers survives impartial and rational assessment.
Mark
You simply won’t have it that it was anything other than reform will you?
Not true. I accept that the Tories screwed up generally and failed lamentably on immigration. I also accept that the Tories would have lost c.50 seats even without Reform’s intervention. Unfortunately, Reform’s intervention cost the Tories another c.170 seats. Yet, had Reform looked to maximising its seats rather than its vote-share, the outcome of the GE could have been very different, because the right-of-centre vote would have been maximised. Instead, angry and irrational Reformers – like turkeys voting for Christmas – divided the right-of-centre vote and opened the door to socialist tyranny. Duh!
However, with Labour on only 33.7% of the vote
*However, with Labour on only 33.7% of the vote*
And with Labour on only 33.7% of the vote!
@Theophrastus
Have you actually read ANY of the comments posted here?
“the foreshortening of ideological perspective ” is why we have a uniparty supported by a crooked self-serving establishment. Minor distinctions of left and right are not important. That’s why we need small r reform. Any vote for lab or con is a vote for same-old same-old You can’t fix it by voting for the same people who made it as it is.
I don’t know who I voted for. That day I identified as a **** so I just signed the postal form and let my spouse fill in the vote. A mighty blow against Two-Tier society, eh?
It’s not turned out so bad – we have a Labour government intent on doing some remarkable things:
1 – spending restraint (they’re bullshitting a bit on the PR about the Tory legacy, but spending on the rich and the middle had to be reined in)
2. – not being socialists (a simplistic analysis of the conservatives 2015-2024 shows that they were socialists – spending and taxes went up, price controls were implemented on energy, new things got created with the word ‘national’ in them if a convenient heuristic is needed. HS2. LNER renationalised. Climate change committee. Size of public sector grew.)
3. – none of the 25 communists in the Parliamentary Labour Party got ministerial positions, contrast that to the ministerial positions in the Conservative Government that went to NIMBYs and socialists.
So far, 7 weeks on, doing ok compared to the alternative. Not as well as if less of life was decided by centralised governments of course.
Labour and the Tories are the main parties of government. The SWP is not in the running. My comparison was between two realistic options
And yet when it comes to providing opposition to the govt you imply that Reform should be doing the heavy lifting while Sunak sorts out his Green Card.
Bongo !
“but spending on the rich and the middle had to be reined in”
And it hasn’t been. The public employed middle class are the greatest beneficiaries of Labour”s largesse.
It is like having a chouce between the Communist Party Great Britain ( Eurocommunist ) and the Communist Party of Britain ( Marxist Leninist ).
TMB
And yet when it comes to providing opposition to the govt you imply that Reform should be doing the heavy lifting while Sunak sorts out his Green Card.
No, I am not implying that at all. Rather, I am pointing out the inconsistency of Reformers complaining that the Tories are not opposing Labour while Reform itself is doing nothing to oppose Labour.
WHY has nobody on this thread pointed out what should be the starting point for discussion of the quote
1) The public sector workers are overpaid relative to comparable private sector workers *even before adjusting for the superior public sector pensions* [Source The Office of National Statistics, itself a public sector body]
2) Public sector workers got paid 100% of their wages/salaries during lockdown, while a lot of private sector workers only got 80% (and some self-employed got zero)
To achieve fairness most of the public sector workers should get a pay cut
Mark
You simply won’t have it that it was anything other than reform will you?
Have you actually read ANY of the comments posted here?
Your rhetorical non sequiturs indicate that you have no rational responses left. If you can’t reply with evidence and logic, please don’t bother.
RK
“the foreshortening of ideological perspective ” is why we have a uniparty supported by a crooked self-serving establishment.
Foreshortening in painting and photography is an illusion*, and illusions can’t be evidence for anything – let alone a uniparty in politics. Duh!!
*foreshortening is an artistic technique that creates the illusion of depth by recording the distortion the eye sees when viewing an object from a distance or at an unusual angle.
@Theophrastus
Says somebody who voted tory!
Theo, foreshortening was your own metapgor, you now find it objectionable. I suggest you carry on the stupid westminster tribalist nonsense with Bongo, who seems enamoured of Labour.. Many of the rest of us have done with it. It would be an irrelevance if it were not a trap to divert discussion into safe channels for the blob.
RK
I don’t find my metaphor objectionable – how could anyone rationally conclude that I did?? – but I find your ignorance of the meaning of ‘foreshortening’ deeply disheartening. ‘Educated’ at a comprehensive, perhaps?
Mark
Says somebody who voted tory!
Which proves my point: you have no evidence or logical inferences to support your position, only rhetoric.
And, btw, I would have voted Reform if I lived in a constituency where Reform stood a chance of winning, because my rational strategy is to maximise the right-of-centre vote – rather than express my undoubted anger at the failings of the Tories and so ensure a Labour majority!
“Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best.” – Bismarck
@Theophrastus
Well it took you long enough, but I suppose you’d get round to personal insults eventually!
Mark: How have I insulted you?
@Theophradtus
You clearly insulted Rhoda.