This is the same leader of the Liberal Democrats, now the new hero of the chattering classes on STW, who as Business Secretary in the coalition government of 2010-15, along with LibDem Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander, were among the most vocal supporters of austerity :

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jun/22/budget-taxandspending

He called for an EU referendum in 2007 as well.

This is what Vince Cable had to say about Donald Trump’s state visit to the UK :
“There is no problem with doing business with the American government, but, he shouldn’t be honoured in any particular way, most American Presidents are not.”

It’s bollocks though. Every landmark D-Day Anniversary the president gets a state visit. It’s not honouring the individual, it’s honouring the nation via it’s head of state. Cable’s position is as mental as Corbyn’s. Ironically, Trump is probably the only person in the world who actually thinks the state visit is to honour him personally.

Which is precisely why Vince Cable refused to attend the state banquet too.

I’m staggered the leader of a party with 11 MPs is expected to go.

So why no criticism of Vince Cable on STW?

For the same reason that people don’t start threads about the weird things Mad Vera from 3 doors down does. Mad Vera From three doors down is (currently) utterly irrelevant. If MVFTDD (Or Vince) could whip 229 seats in the HoC I’m sure there would be scrutiny of her.

“It is deeply disappointing that in its desperation to pander to the new US President the Government has ignored almost 2 million British people who made it clear they do not want to give a racist misogynist the highest honour our country has to offer.
“Donald Trump’s presidency has already been marked by an utterly disgraceful travel ban, while his apparent intent to withdraw from the Paris Agreement highlights his contempt for environmental protection.
“We should be showing backbone and leadership by taking a stand against the President’s damaging policies – not rolling out a red carpet.”

Did they then try to arrange a meeting with him?

Jeremy Corbyn has always made it abundantly clear that he willing to talk to people of all political hues, including those with whom he strongly disagrees

Chukka? Blair? The contrast of the people he won’t speak to and the people he will reflect terribly on him.

Can you imagine the outcry if Corbyn had agreed to attend the state banquet?

I wouldn’t have a problem with it. The USA helped us out 75 years ago. Every 25 years we invite the US HoS over as a thankyou to the American people. Apparently the Leader of the Opposition has some kind of involvement in part of the ceremonial guff around that and it’s part of his job to attend. I’ve no problem with that. I presume as PM these responsibilities will be impossible to duck so he might as well get used to it.

As I say, ironically, Trump is probably the only person in the world who actually thinks the state visit is to honour him personally.

I’m shocked to discover that you don’t agree with me outofbreath.

I’m shocked to discover that you don’t agree with me outofbreath.

Good to have you back though, the forum is much better for your posts.

Why thank you. And it’s good to be back in polite company.

I’ll second that it’s good to have you back ernie!
I slagged off the LibDems on the Euro thread.They betrayed their supporters and the country when they had a once in a generation chance to alter the politcal landscape.Corrupted by power,austerity enablers.

Chukka? Blair?

Why would he talk to them? Who does Chukka represent other than his own ambition? As for Blair, he’s spent the last 15 years trying to whitewash the blood stains on his hands. His contributions on modern politics are nothing more than a desperate attempt to secure a legacy that isn’t in the form of hundreds of thousands of dead civilians.

Chukka and Blair have made it clear that nothing can be achieved by talking to them, much like Trump. There’s no point talking to people with closed minds. What he should be doing is talking to the likes of the Green Party, tory moderates and labour brexiteers in an attempt to bring them together against Farage and Boris. The libdems too maybe if they can demonstrate that they are interested in anything other than their own electoral interests.

Chukka and Blair have made it clear that nothing can be achieved by talking to them, much like Trump. There’s no point talking to people with closed minds.

So he won’t talk to Chukka or Blair because they have closed minds, but will talk to Trump, Xi Jinping, Hamas, the IRA because he thinks they’re so open minded?

To correct myself It’s not that they have open minds, but that they have power and the ability to change things, whereas Chukka and Blair have very little.

NHS budgets doubled under Blair. How’s Corbyn doing?

To correct myself It’s not that they have open minds, but that they have power and the ability to change things, whereas Chukka and Blair have very little.

Correct yourself. Or to put it another way come up with another hypothesis when your first desperate hypothesis to explain it away turned out to be nonsense.

Or to put it another way come up with another hypothesis when your first desperate hypothesis to explain it away turned out to be nonsense.

We’re all entitled to change our minds. You should try it sometime. 😉

NHS budgets doubled under Blair. How’s Corbyn doing?

It’s all well and good for £billions of the NHS budget to go into the coffers of private contractors hungry for profit, but how much of it went into patient care? Personally I would prefer if it was all of it.

The NHS was created to make people healthier, not wealthier. A point which Blair seems apparently to have forgotten.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/nhs-funding-pfi-contracts-hospitals-debts-what-is-it-rbs-a7134881.html

“The NHS has more than 100 PFI hospitals. The original cost of these 100 institutions was around £11.5bn. In the end, they will cost the public purse nearly £80bn.”

And I think you might be exaggerating Corbyn’s magic capabilities. Yes, in his first general election he did increase Labour’s share of the vote by more than Blair ever managed to do, but I’ll remind you that Blair also didn’t do anything for the NHS between 1994 and 1997. He didn’t even manage, during that period, to burden it with massive and crippling PFI debts.

The taxpayers paid for Tony Blair’s huge generosity to private contractors, they are still paying for it now, and they will continue to pay for it for many years to come. So I would temper your enthusiasm and suggest somewhat more muted celebrations.

Aye oop Ernie. Good to have you back comrade. The Croydon communist has been Missed 😃

Looking at the Corbynite social media it looks like Emily Thornberry is now persona non grata, and the latest to be airbrushed out of the politburo photographs. On top of John Macdonnel and Dianne Abbot last week

There can’t be many left in the bunker now. Just Seamus telling Jeremy what to do, Malcolm Tucker style

I was never gone binners, just incommunicado*. I still followed the forum of sorts, including of course the great EU thread. It’s amazing how a dozen or so totally committed individuals have managed to keep that thread alive for so many years. All credit to you binners, your daily rants have played no small part in that. And of course you’ve never stopped posting those 2 hilarious stills from The Life of Brian. Oh how I have laughed, please never ever stop posting them. I’m sure you never will.

* It was seeing the very sad news of Bullhearts passing away which prompted me to re-register so that I could post my tribute on that thread. Despite never meeting him I found his determination inspirational. I cycled down to his funeral as a mark of respect.

Once re-registered it was easy to post the odd comment, too easy I guess. But not easy enough that I want to engage in that much discourse. If you know what I mean brav.

Always good to hear your views, fella

And you know I’ll never let you down on the PFJ front 😉

Looking at the Corbynite social media

Is there a special app for that?

Red Labour is my favourite. Its like a sort of left wing Corbynite mix of ISIS, Stalinism and North Korea

Designed to appeal to marginal swing voters in marginal seats, obviously

good read here

https://www.ft.com/content/00d9d73a-8779-11e9-a028-86cea8523dc2

Looking at the Corbynite social media it looks like Emily Thornberry is now persona non grata, and the latest to be airbrushed out of the politburo photographs. On top of John Macdonnel and Dianne Abbot last week

There can’t be many left in the bunker now. Just Seamus telling Jeremy what to do, Malcolm Tucker style

All this stuff you are saying is just in your head, you do know that don’t you?

So – Perterbough by election

the sitting labour MP found guilty of a crime and thrown out of the party, a 60% brexit voting seat, a massive amount of free publicity for the brexit party and still a labour win with the tories absolutely hammered. Looking at the results few labour votes went to the brexit party.

And as a wee bonus the brexit candidate outed themself as racist!

Ernie – what do you say to this idea that is continually expressed on here that Corbyn has taken labour policy into the realms of the hard left? I see it more as moving labour from centre right / christian democrat under blair to centre left / social democratic.

In defence of PFI it did at the time directly benefit millions of NHS patients, without out it a modernisation of the NHS infrastructure would never have happened in the way it did. The new hospitals it built are vast improvements on buildings in some cases as old as queen Victoria. Ask anyone who’s worked in one.

It has however passed the bill onto future generations, but I suppose they will be the ones who benefit from them.

Anyway a 700 vote victory and 17% swing away from labour might be close enough for Corby & the 4Ms to realise the current strategy is a terrible one, but I bet it won’t.

Your defense of PFI is simply wrong. Its had significant extra costs from the start. the reason for it was althugh private companies pay more for credit it does not appear on the PSBR.

If the same hospitals had been built by direct government action the costs would have been lower from day one. thus for the same spend we could have had more hospitals built.

I’m not defending the nature of PFI or the terrible contracts negotiated as part of it

But I question whether those 100+ hospitals would ever have been built without it.

Certainly not under new labour , the Tories or any government we are likely to have in the foreseeable.

Looking at the results few labour votes went to the brexit party.

Even better than that, labour still won with a slightly increased majority even though they lost 17% of their vote share. This means that the rightwing vote is split between the tories and the brexit party. If this is repeated nationally labour are a shoe-in for the next election.

Ernie – what do you say to this idea that is continually expressed on here that Corbyn has taken labour policy into the realms of the hard left?

I assume that you asking the question because you know the answer TJ!

It is very difficult for the Tories, those in the Conservative Party, New Labour, and the LibDems, to attack Corbyn on specific individual policies. We know that from the result of the 2017 general election.

Up until the 2017 general election campaign Labour support, according to all the opinion polls, had collapsed. The clear evidence was that Corbyn had been successfully vilified in the press and media, and if a general election was to be called Labour would suffer a crushing defeat at the hands of the Tories who would win a staggering landslide victory. That indeed was precisely why Teresa May called an early election, ie, the outcome was apparently guaranteed.

What actually happened, as we all now know, was that instead of Labour electoral armageddon Labour’s share of the vote increased by more than any time since the end of World War 2 and the Conservatives lost their parliamentary majority.

So what the **** happened? Well under strictly enforced electoral rules Labour/Corbyn had to be afforded a fair and equal share of broadcasters output. This led to not only to Corbyn being given the opportunity to discuss his policies but for the policies themselves to come under intense scrutiny.

The result was that Corbyn’s policies were found to resonate with a huge swathe of British public opinion, including in fact some Tory voters. You can in fact see the sudden change in the opinion polls when the Labour Party’s 2017 election manifesto was first leaked to the press, after that Labour’s share in the opinion polls steadily rose.

The general election of 2017 is now but a distance memory and Corbyn is once again attacked on a daily basis for being hard left. Plus with the now newly added extra ingredient of also being a racist who hates Jews. The number one priority is that Corbyn should not be allowed to talk about his policies, especially as they will be once again limited in that goal when the next general election campaign is declared.

On the specific question of how left-wing Corbyn’s policies are, well the policies of Harold Macmillan’s governments were significantly more left-wing than those proposed by Corbyn. Which of course beggars the question how hard-left were Macmillan’s governments? I’ll let you decide on that one.

Whilst I am generally supportive of Corbyn as the alternatives are simply too horrendous imo, I do consider him to be a bit too right-wing for the radical changes which I believe the UK requires.

BTW have I ever mentioned that Harold Macmillan (sometimes referred to as Harold Macmillian the council house builder) was the greatest Tory Prime Minister ever had?

my goodness so much nonsense 🙂

It’s all well and good for £billions of the NHS budget to go into the coffers of private contractors hungry for profit, but how much of it went into patient care? Personally I would prefer if it was all of it.

Same proportion as previously. Hospitals and health systems are big and complicated, and don’t just run themselves. Would you count a ward manager as direct patient care? The people who run the lab doing tests on blood? The people who negotiate bulk purchase of drugs (at 33% of what they pay in the US system??

The NHS was created to make people healthier, not wealthier. A point which Blair seems apparently to have forgotten.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/nhs-funding-pfi-contracts-hospitals-debts-what-is-it-rbs-a7134881.html

“The NHS has more than 100 PFI hospitals. The original cost of these 100 institutions was around £11.5bn. In the end, they will cost the public purse nearly £80bn.”

Over what period of time? I’m not going to argue for the brilliance of pfi, but hospitals that were needed were built quickly, and these sums are not large in the context of the NHS budget.

And I think you might be exaggerating Corbyn’s magic capabilities. Yes, in his first general election he did increase Labour’s share of the vote by more than Blair ever managed to do,

that was the post coalition collapse of the lib dem vote. The conservative vote also had its biggest increase. That was down to the woeful performance of lib dems propping up a tory govt, not to anything labour, who lost the election, did. I know people who regard it as some kind of victory for socialism. For ****’s sake…

but I’ll remind you that Blair also didn’t do anything for the NHS between 1994 and 1997. He didn’t even manage, during that period, to burden it with massive and crippling PFI debts.

Actually the NHS budget grew 4.4% over the first Blair govt, on a historic trend of 3.6% growth. Not dramatic I’ll agree but in the right direction and more than the tories, and it takes time to turn of the taps, train and recruit people so money’s not wasted.

The taxpayers paid for Tony Blair’s huge generosity to private contractors, they are still paying for it now, and they will continue to pay for it for many years to come. So I would temper your enthusiasm and suggest somewhat more muted celebrations.

How about numbers rather than rhetoric? Perhaps start with some reading…

http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/dps/case/spcc/wp02.pdf

It’s not an unmixed picture for sure, but it’s not bad and a lot better than now. And obviously outcomes are what matter (vastly reduced waiting times, increased patient satisfaction, child mortality down from 5.9 to 4.3 deaths per thousand in first year of life etc etc), inputs are just a means.

Thank you for your thoughtful critique johnx2. However I must point out a couple of obvious schoolboy errors. Firstly you claim that the 9.6% increase in Labour vote in the 2017 general election” was down to the woeful performance of lib dems”. The LibDem vote in the 2017 general election fell by 0.5%. Work out the maths.

Secondly, to counter my claim that Blair also didn’t do anything for the NHS between 1994 and 1997 you provide NHS budgetary figures for a period after 1997. Have a hard think about that one.

And finally, your claim that “obviously outcomes are what matter”, seems to suggest that “cost” has no relevance. I’m a carpenter John, if I came to your house to ease your front door and it took me half an hour do you think I would be entitled to say “well the door shuts now, you got what you wanted, that’s what matters” when you queried the bill for £680? Think about that one too.

But I question whether those 100+ hospitals would ever have been built without it.

Of course they culd and should have been. The only reason for PFI and its varients was to keep borrowed money off the PSBR. That and it was intended to put money into the hands of the tories friends,

Admin cost grew greatly in England ( post SNP win in scotland they got rid ofg all the PFI/ internal market / trusts nonsense) to over 20% of budget from under 10%.

The same money spent sensibly could have improved the NHS much more.

I give the labour party a B- on this. Yes it did make a difference and budgets did rise even a rise in the amount of money spent on clinical work. But around half of the increase was swallowed up in admin and costs associated with PFI.

Secondly, to counter my claim that Blair also didn’t do anything for the NHS between 1994 and 1997

He had the Major govt on the ropes, and 20%behind in the polls, and then replaced it in the ’97 landslide?

Ta Ernie. Its utterly obvious what you say is true and that there is almost notyhing in labour policy that is not firmly in the european social democratic tradition. Indeed many of the labour policies are accepted by both right of centre adn left of centre parties all over europe. Such things as essential services being under state control, housing for all at fair prices. Worker representation on company boards.

We remain a low tax, low wage, low spend on healthcare country

Nothing in labour policy that isn’t in the European Social Democratic Tradition?

Other than leaving the European Social Democratic Tradition

Right ho… crack on…

Other than leaving the European Social Democratic Tradition

Leaving a political party tradition is the same as leaving the EU?

What Corbyn, Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are doing is rejecting the “Third Way” which Blair became a champion of – and are clearly moving towards actual traditional Social Democratic values and not the “tradition” you refer to that is only 20 or so years old.

What you are advocating is a neoliberal movement. And that’s fine, and there are parties out there advancing that but not Labour.

All I’m advocating is not sitting there, watching casually by with your thumb up your arse while the most extreme right wing project this country has ever seen unfolds around you, with you nodding it through.

Maybe I have unrealistic ambitions for the Labour Party

Still…. Palestine, eh? And Venezuela… the stuff that really matters…,

Binners is Mark Francois and I claim my £5.

No – you just hate Corbyn so much that what you see is not what is actually happening. Its not just Corbyn tho – the whole party is split and 70 or so MPS are against a second ref. Mind you the labour party did whip for a second ref twice and almost all of them voted for it – including Corbyn

He’s ****ing useless! Has been from day one of his alleged leadership

Do you not look at the chaos we’re in, and back at the utterly shambolic way it’s been handled, and think “well… if we’d actually had an opposition worthy of the name during that period….?”

Still…. those placards aren’t going wave themselves… and IRAQ!

binners

He’s ****ing useless! Has been from day one of his alleged leadership

And yet on ‘day one of his alleged leadership’ you were rather supportive of him.

binners

It’s no wonder they’ve come out against Corbyn. He’s as terrifying and alien to them as someone northern, working class, or scottish. They like to stay in their nice, comfortable, upper middl class, bollocks-talking, London-centric metropolitan bubble, just like the Labour Party

binners

Say what you like about Corbyn, at least he’s communicated what it is he’s about. Love it or hate it, its fairly unambiguous.

The others? Anyone got a the faintest idea…?

Back then it was all Blair’s fault.

binners

The mess the labour party is in is all down to Blair. Another thing we’ve got to thank him for. Due to his messiah complex, and his intolerence of free-thinking or disent, he hollowed out the party from the inside.

So perhaps not day one, eh? Pick another day when Corbyn suddenly became the target of your daily explosive rants?

Those posts weren’t difficult to find btw, they all come from the start of this thread.

And binners, with your impressive ability to preform political acrobatic stunts, coupled with a total lack of shame, you really should consider a career as a professional politician. Mind you, you would need to ease off the ranting, that wouldn’t look good on the telly.

there is almost notyhing in labour policy that is not firmly in the european social democratic tradition

Apart from the minor matter of brexit, the issue isn’t policy (which won’t be implemented from opposition) it’s isolated, tactically utterly inept, and generally shite ‘leadership’…

I’m surprised that anyone still thinks Jeremy Corbyn is capable of being a Prime Minister.
Most of his Shadow Cabinet resigned, now he has some very lightweight MPs on his front bench. How Diane Abbot has made it to still be there is beyond me. She is one of the few MPs I could never ever vote for. I was told some very disturbing things about her attitude to some people in her Constituency from people who had no axe to grind. I mentioned this 10 pages or so back.

Of the most toxic, I think John Mcdonell does talk some sense occasionally. He certainly seems more sincere than Corbyn, and actually answers questions rather than trying to dodge them.

What should be damning for him is the total inability to get a consistent Poll lead against one of the most incompetent Governments in history.
Labour should be 20% higher than the Tories in the Polls now. If we had an election next week, they may just scrape in. Have it in 6 months time, no chance, as the Tories will have their new leader and be all smiles with promises of what they will be doing etc.
Labour, and Corbyn in particular, have not got enough sense, or quality of staff to compete in their current state.