ahwiles – Member

universal suffrage wasn’t mentioned.

‘functional democracy’ was.

I didn’t realise that you could have ‘functional democracy’ without universal suffrage.

Does that mean that Saudi Arabia has ‘functional democracy’ if all the members of the Saudi Royal family get together and have a vote on something ?

martinhutch – Member

If that’s the primitive standard we’re working to…

by and large, it seems we’re still working to that, yes.

No I am thick obviously. So no point thinking about it further.

ernie, you’re missing the ‘oppositional’ bit too.

you seem to be looking for an argument?

(there were only 2 clauses in the original post, ‘functional’ and ‘oppositional’ you’ve successfully ignored both, for little more than point scoring)

you seem to be looking for an argument?

I don’t think politely correcting someone with “Actually that’s not strictly true….” suggests looking for an argument anymore than you challenging me does.

I assume the “looking for an argument” fallback is because you realised how silly your comment was ?

Do you know what made Britain great?

I was under the impression it was something to do with baking.

ernie_lynch – Member

I assume the “looking for an argument” fallback is because you realised how silly your comment was ?

er, no. it was a genuine question.

i think the statement ‘we had functional democracy before we had universal suffrage’ is not without merit. I may well be wrong, but it’s certainly a topic worthy of debate.

not an ideal democracy, granted. But ‘functional’ nonetheless.

Do you know what made Britain great?

I thought it was tea. That and the brutal military oppression of large chunks of the planet

Innovative finance was a major player in Britain becoming great.

Opium was too, wasn’t it?

The 9 charts that show the ‘left-wing’ policies of Jeremy Corbyn the public actually agrees with

Putting railways back into public sector ownership has cross-party support, with even Conservative supporters.

There’s a public appetite for a 75% top rate of tax on incomes over £1m.

Two thirds of Brits want to see an international convention on banning nuclear weapons.

Six out of ten people want to see rents controls on landlords.

The public support a mandatory living wage.

Jeremy Corbyn wants to cut tuition fees and so does the public.

The public were on the same side as Jeremy Corbyn in Iraq War debate.

The public were also in sync with Corbyn when it came to bombing Syria.

I didn’t realise that you could have ‘functional democracy’ without universal suffrage.

Even without universal suffrage, our parliamentary system made sure that no single dynasty/clan had too much power. If you think Britain would be as rosey as it is now under some 18th century version of the CCP then you’re deluded. Competent opposition is the most important tenant of any vaguely democratic system, universal suffrage is secondary to this.

If he gets elected then he is going to have to answer a lot of questions on his love of terrorist organisations like the IRA and Hamas, he’d better have some good, snappy answers.

Yes, he advocated negotiating with the IRA, and then everyone else came to realise he was right. He is also right about the need to negotiate with the democratically elected Hamas.

You mean increased debt for schools and hosps using the Tory PFI system. Public risk, private profit. As Gordon Brown said with PFI, financiers would be investing in services which

Some spending certainly, and I thought it was poor value for the taxpayer. Nevertheless, I remember the state of my schools in the early 1990s, and I look at what we have now, which is so much better.

Some of that is spin by the Independent, take the below for instance where they have taken a result to one question and then wildly extrapolated to get an answer to a completely different question.

It appears the public share his opposition to renewing Britain’s nuclear deterrent – a poll for ComRes last year found 64 per cent of the public wanted to see an international convention on banning nuclear weapons.

Some of that is spin……

You mean some of that isn’t spin – the public actually agrees with some of Jeremy Corbyn’s fundamental principles which completely differentiates him from the other 3 leadership candidates ?

So in a matter of just a few days we’ve gone from claiming that Jeremy Corbyn is guaranteed loser who the British public could never support to talking about precisely how much of his fundamental principles the public agrees actually with.

They say that one week is a long time in politics.

I’m surprised that anti-unionist feelings are so strong in Scotland that it effectively wiped out a long established party, but yet isn’t strong enough to have resulted in a vote in favour of the dissolution of the union.
I see a flaw in your analysis.

Where? The SNP went from 20% of the Scottish vote in 2010 to 50% of the vote in 2011. In a FPTP system anywhere over 40% is likely to result in a landslide. Minor parties like Labour will get very few seats because off FPTP even where there isn’t a majority for independence.

When Labour in Scotland are widely referred to as red Tories they are in deep trouble. Working people don’t think of Labour as their party any more.

Putting railways back into public sector ownership has cross-party support, with even Conservative supporters.

There’s a public appetite for a 75% top rate of tax on incomes over £1m.

Two thirds of Brits want to see an international convention on banning nuclear weapons.

Six out of ten people want to see rents controls on landlords.

The public support a mandatory living wage.

Jeremy Corbyn wants to cut tuition fees and so does the public.

The public were on the same side as Jeremy Corbyn in Iraq War debate.

The public were also in sync with Corbyn when it came to bombing Syria.

Sounds like the 2020 election is a done deal for labour then with Jezza at the helm.

Fairly predictable at this stage of the contest. You can’t beat a good bit of desperate Labour smearing.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11758612/Jeremy-Corbyn-accused-of-inaction-over-paedophile-scandal.html

I see Kendall the tory has now piped up. It’s hilarious really, you can smell the panic. What’s most revealing from all these ‘labour’ MPs and former MPs going on about a return to the 1980s, is that the labour party has for a long time simply been a vehicle for their own personal ambitions, and now someone has come along who threatens that, they’re all running around like headless chickens. There’s a very simple solution if they don’t like it, they could join the conservative party.

When Labour in Scotland are widely referred to as red Tories they are in deep trouble. Working people don’t think of Labour as their party any more.

Well make your mind up! I agree with that ^ and I said basically the same thing and yet you responded by contradicting me and claiming that it was “because the Labour Party is now perceived as being unionist”.

Here :

My impression though is that the SNP gained not because it was left wing but because the Labour Party is now perceived as being unionist.

Sounds like the 2020 election is a done deal for labour then with Jezza at the helm.

No, it sounds like the Blairite and media hysteria that Corbyn’s views are completely at odds with the British public, as opposed to those of Liz Kendall, are false.

Well make your mind up! I agree with that ^ and I said basically the same thing and yet you responded by contradicting me and claiming that it was “because the Labour Party is now perceived as being unionist”.

But that is why Scottish Labour are perceived as red Tories. Because they campaigned with the Tories for the referendum. Their other policies (whether left or right) don’t have much to do with it. I’m not saying it’s logical but that’s just what I hear people say.

Scottish Labour had been perceived as ‘Red Tories’ for a while. Their referendum campaign merely cemented/confirmed this perception.

Fairly predictable at this stage of the contest. You can’t beat a good bit of desperate Labour smearing.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11758612/Jeremy-Corbyn-accused-of-inaction-over-paedophile-scandal.html

You forgot the comma – it should be “desperate labour, smearing” considering that it is a Labour MP making the accusations.

irc – Member

But that is why Scottish Labour are perceived as red Tories. Because they campaigned with the Tories for the referendum. Their other policies (whether left or right) don’t have much to do with it. I’m not saying it’s logical but that’s just what I hear people say.Campaigning hand in hand just made the SNP landslide possible. But people have been suspicious of labour for a long time in Scotland. It’s not really got a lot to do with unionism imo. It’s just that in previous general elections there wasn’t really any viable alternative to them.

If you actually think about it, Labour establishing the Scottish parliament was Labours downfall in Scotland(ignoring policy and politics for a moment), as it allowed the SNP to gain power at Holyrood, firstly as a minority and then as a majority, and which ultimately lead to confidence in the SNP that they could be a different voice to represent Scotland other than Labour.

Margret Hodge will be able to clear up any misunderstandings regarding child abuse in childrens homes in Islington during the relevant period

Yep, seosamh hits the nail on the head imo. Scots, traditional Labour voters that is, in May 2015 felt (rightly or wrongly) that they had a credible alternative to Labour, so they went for it.

What the rest of the UK needs is to be offered is likewise a perceived credible non-Tory alternative to Labour, and that alternative can similarly expect significant electoral success imo.

Create a credible Labour Party which connects with the people (a less likely scenario imo) and whole the game completely changes.

People are crying out for change imo, misguided support for UKIP proves that to an extent.

Bit late to this gig and if it’s not obvious my grasp of politics doesn’t really get any further than what you might term “soft focus”, but if Corbyn’s fellow party members are shifting to try and prevent his election on the basis that they don’t think his views are popular enough to win, rather than basing it on what they think is the correct way to govern the country, then they have my full permission to **** off and die. In a democracy, the politics of conviction have to be better than the politics of retaining power, innit?

if Corbyn’s fellow party members are shifting to try and prevent his election on the basis that they don’t think his views are popular enough to win, rather than basing it on what they think is the correct way to govern the country

That’s not strictly true. Tony Blair let the cat out of the bag yesterday when he publicly declared, quote :

“Let me make my position clear – I wouldn’t want to win from a traditional leftist platform. Even if I thought it was the route to victory”

So there you have it, Tony Blair doesn’t really care about winning he just doesn’t like left-wing policies. And why indeed would the self-serving multimillionaire adviser to wealthy despots ?

Well, it’s not easy to accuse Blair of a lack of conviction, even from my uninformed position.

I’ve posted this before…

..but it strikes me that rather than Labour chasing the million or so of the electorate that they might poach from the Tories if they make their policies right-wing enough, they could go after some of the 20-odd Million that didn’t vote for either Labour or Tory at the last election.

If you actually think about it, Labour establishing the Scottish parliament was Labours downfall in Scotland(ignoring policy and politics for a moment), as it allowed the SNP to gain power at Holyrood, firstly as a minority and then as a majority, and which ultimately lead to confidence in the SNP that they could be a different voice to represent Scotland other than Labour.

That can’t be true as George Robertson told us that “”Devolution will kill Nationalism stone dead” .

🙂

I’ve posted this before…

Yes I think you have……several times 😉

But there is something else your graph shows apart from the growth of the ‘did not vote’ which is interesting, and rather poignant at this particular time.

Much in being made in the media and by the blairites at the moment about Labour “not going back to the eighties”, the suggestion being electoral failure.

Yes Labour did do badly in 1983 as the result of the right-wing breaking away and forming a rival party to Labour which damaged Labour electorally – your graph shows how the SDP damaged Labour and helped the Tories (the Tory vote actually dropped in 1983)

But while 1983 is offered as an example of electoral failure is wasn’t the worse result for one of the two main parties in recent history. That award goes to the Tories who in 2001 got less votes than Labour did under Michael Foot in 1983.

And yet when did you last hear talk of the Tory election disaster of 2001? It’s never mentioned – despite the fact that the Tories received less votes than Labour ever has since the end of World war 2, as your graph shows.

William Hague’s Tory Party was less popular with the British people than Michael Foot’s Labour Party was.

And the Tories managed to that without the existence of a media-backed breakaway rival party.

I watched Corbyn speaking.

None of the PR trained positive head movements, none of the exaggerated hand pumping, none of the waffle and diversionary bullshit, none of the special authoritative voice stuff, basically no signs of having any of the nausea inducing professional liar and deceiver skills. He’ll never get elected as leader by Labour.

Unfortunately.

seems to me that most of this noise that masquerades as debate is because there’s been an inordinate amount of time between announcing the candidates and electing them, so the press have been having a pop because the torys don’t do much in parliament

they could go after some of the 20-odd Million that didn’t vote for either Labour or Tory at the last election.

It’s not that simple though, you need to understand where the votes would matter rather than just increasing the winning share of the vote in a particular constituency. Labour and the Tories should have all this data already, well the Tories do, not so sure about the Labour parties intelligence unit capabilities. Hence, why the politicians focus a specific constituencies in the run up to the election.

None of the PR trained positive head movements, none of the exaggerated hand pumping, none of the waffle and diversionary bullshit, none of the special authoritative voice stuff, basically no signs of having any of the nausea inducing professional liar and deceiver skills.

I cant think of a single MP on any bench and certainly not cabinet/shadow cabinet that is that genuine

we are doomed to a continued cycle of plastic tony blair clones….

What the rest of the UK needs is to be offered is likewise a perceived credible non-Tory alternative to Labour, and that alternative can similarly expect significant electoral success imo.

Create a credible Labour Party which connects with the people (a less likely scenario imo) and whole the game completely changes.

Agree, I think the key is a new Left party. Or a Labour party that is able to go through the pain of realising it’s dabble with centre right politics has been disastrous, there are too many influential figures in the labour Party who probably aren’t willing or able to do/see that.

seems to me that most of this noise that masquerades as debate is because there’s been an inordinate amount of time between announcing the candidates and electing them, so the press have been having a pop because the torys don’t do much in parliament

Indeed. Its an awful lot of time for everyone to effectively say nothing at all, for fear of scaring the horses. You could listen to anything the other 3 candidates have said, all the simpering meaningless platitudes, and just like Ed before them, you’d be none the wiser as to what any of them actually stand for.

Corbyn has come out and said “I believe in this, this and this!”. And thats simply not the done thing. Saying what you believe in? In modern politics? Whatever next?

Of Course, the real turmoil for Labour is yet to come, with the EU referendum rearing its ugly head before long, Corbyn the other day was very non committal in his answer the other day (the other three were clear about staying in)