In my option, Reform have done well as they tap into Thatchers’ human desire to make a better life for yourself and your family and Blue Labours no nonsense trade union aspiration of working class solidarity. New Labour is dead, encapsulated by the Peter Mandleson fiasco. They also say they will “stop the boats” and you sort of believe they will actually do it. No government can ever call itself legitimate if it cannot protect its borders and its people.
Whilst it’s right that there is no one in the Labour Party who can save the Labour Govt, it must also be right that Starmer should not be afforded any protection from his removal. Just as the Tories tried, but failed, to scramble to provide a true leader, so must Labour do the same. Nothing can save them, but keeping Starmer in post is not the answer. This govt failed us from the get go, and now we have to watch our country sink into the abyss while Labour pretends they are the answer, rather than the cause.
The Tories found a true leader in Liz Truss but then ran scared at the prospect of a real conservative leading them again. Sadly, she did not stand her ground and all the lies perpetrated at the time by Bailey and Sunak have taken root.
Yes, that may be true. We shall never know if she would have been a great leader, because as you say, she stood down. Maybe that means she actually didn’t have what it takes.
The problem for labour is that over last 20 odd years they have filled the elected politicians with political empty suits and dresses, people who have no real world experience who do whatever the whips told them to do ( this also applies to tories) , we have spent the last 20 30 years going down a centrist party that took the worst of left and right and then effectively called us racists.
At the next general election I would love to be able to listen to a debate on ideology ( socialist v capitalist v liberal) from the respected parties instead of mud sling, spin , dark arts etc but we have such weak politicians that they are more administer rubber stamping whatever the blob tells them too .
WE NEED A PARLIAMENT FILLED WITH SIGNPOSTS!!!!
To sum up Keirs problem is this ,
If Gordon brown and Harriet harman are the answer then what the hell is the question?
Have a lovely week Paul and other readers 😊
Ps whoever comes into power next must first get the electorate to listen to them , at the moment people are split into two general camps
1 :those that dont even listen to Keir
2: those that do listen but dont believe a word he says
It took keir just 2 years to take labour where it took 14 years for the toriez ...... that is impressive 😉
Our Parliament used to be made up of people who had life skills, on the Labour side Trade Union leaders - who largely got there from the respect of their peer groups, and Business people who got there due to their success and also respect in the community.
This all seemed to change throughout the Blair and Cameron era’s when both Labour and Conservatives decided to control who local candidates for Parliament would be.
This has led to “parachuting” where local associations have no input into who their PPC will be.
Over 20 years this has led to a Political Class, degrees in law and PPE etc. but no experience of the life of the common people.
This is where our government and politics is badly broken.
Starmer says that á reset is needed, he’s right, but not the sort of reset he has in mind.
Having looked and read the various comments on other social media sites it’s frustrating to see the comments regarding the people who voted for Reform being called thick, stupid, racist, fascist etc etc.
The people making the comments are LP activists and Trade Union leaders who have learned fuck all. (Excuse the language)
Then we have the education secretary saying Starmer will be leading labour into the next election.
I never disparage people’s academic credentials but the education secretary is a fucking idiot who is definitely in the emperor’s new clothes gang!
(Sorry for the language again and the hypocrisy of my message but if the cap fits!)
Anyway on a more positive note Sunderland AFC are safe for this season and unfortunately we won’t be playing the mighty Wolves in the league for a while!
Philipson is a ghoul, refusing to accept the dire situation of Starmer, refusing to accept the Supreme Court ruling on Trans issues, and totally ignoring Sunderland City council has fallen.
I hope never to hear her name mentioned again in politics, after the next GE, she’s a self serving, narcissist, who took her constituents for granted.
The problem is Paul is that Keynes is no longer relevant. In many respects Keynesian economics have led us down this very deep well where the chance of getting out of it without it being very messy and painful is next to zero.
The country is bankrupt and noone wants to say it out loud. We are on life support only kept alive by (at present) benevolent bond markets who keep buying our debt.
The yields on Bonds are starting to rise which I suspect is an indication of the financial horrors that await us should Burnham, Rayner or Miliband get into No 10. When they do, expect the people who lend our Government money want higher rates for the higher risk of lending to a Government run by a bunch of incompetents that make Starmer and Reeves look almost like the purveyors of propriety.
We are in no position to spend our way out, we are bust.
Most of the PLP live in cloud cuckoo land and are utterly unsuited to supporting the sorts of tough decisions needed to start down the path of financial stability.
I'm not convinced that Reform have grasped how dire the situation is, but at least they have some sort of idea how to get some aspects of Government spending under control.
I’m constantly surprised to read people putting forward this story when it has no bearing at all for the UK.
The UK cannot be “bankrupt” in its own currency, and neither does it “borrow” on markets. What borrowing occurs automatically and costlessly as a function of the way double entry bookkeeping works.
The current “full funding” rule is a policy choice and can be abandoned. That’s why it says “the government believes” every year in the Debt Management Report.
Bond markets are refinancing operations, and government can simply decide not to do that. In which case it will drop automatically through to the Ways and Means account - again as the DMO explains every year in the Annual Review.
Look at the yields on the UK Treaasury Bills. You’ll find they are anchored to the Bank Rate at all times. When times are uncertain fixed rate investors tend to move from long duration to short. And things are very unpredictable at present.
I’d suggest you read the paper “The Self Financing State” published in the Journal of Economic Issues to understand how the system actually works, rather than parroting the fairy tale told by the financial industry.
Only the House of Commons can constrain government spending; the bond market cannot.
We got rid of the unelected veto on money bills by the unelected in the 1910s. That remains the case.
Because we have a government that prefers to give a basic income to rich people relative to how much money they already have than poor people a job. That’s a political choice. A bad one in my view.
After all if you owned a bank outright, who would you “borrow” from? So perhaps time to ask why your government doesn’t do that.
In a floating exchange rate system there is no need to defend the asset side of the central bank.
That’s how it works. The government orders the Bank of England to credit bank accounts. It does and the banks do as they all have no legal authority to refuse.
Feel free to point out the law that stops that happening if you know better.
It may work that way, that's not my argument. I'm not interested in how MMT works per se, as it is the outcome that is important, not the policy. If you prefer it is leading us to Insolvency rather than Bankruptcy, but the semantic difference is an irrelevance.
Labour's mid term political loss of council seats is not important. What is important, and what everybody now feels, and what you Paul have been predicting for a decade, is that this vote represents the people s cultural separation from the party. People now identify the Labour Party with a culture that is, not alien to them,but one that they see but fundamentally disagree with. These elections was the manifestation in political terms of the cultural shift the Labour Party made and people now reject. I can't see how the Labour Party can turn things round because it's members believe that culturally they are correct but politically they are going wrong, when actually the opposite position is true.
The UK debt is currently 94% of GDP, and we are running a large deficit. As Ian points out above, we’re broke. The idea from Modern Monetary Theory that we can simply print money to cover our debt and more borrowing has been tried by a number of countries throughout recent History. Venezuela and the Weimar republic spring to mind. It has never ended well. So no, we cannot just simply turn on the printing presses to finance infrastructure building.
There are no cost free solutions that can save this country from the spiralling disaster yawning before us. To turn the country around is going to cost us and frankly, hurt. None of the parties are being honest about the situation. Fundamentally, we cannot afford the state spending we have and reining that in is always going to create hardship.
That is compounded by the fact we actually do need to spend on infrastructure and encourage re-industrialisation, we need to make things and sell them to get the money in to reinvest and do the same again - we need growth from real manufacturing and production. That means tackling the outrageously high fuel prices. Some of the prices do come from what’s happening globally, some don’t. They come from government decisions on, and their approach to Net Zero (both the pace and their choice of solution).
Then you can turn to the fact we currently couldn’t defend a small village with our armed forces against a determined enemy. That’s not a comment on the ability of our armed forces personnel, but on the fact successive governments have denuded the military of resources and equipment. They banked on the peace dividend and unsurprisingly that also turned out to be an illusion (just like “The End of History”).
Both the above will require more money to be found, than just that to bring debt and deficit under control. So the pain is going to be a lot worse. The longer reality is ignored the more painful will be the solution.
I feel really pessimistic about this country and its chances. I fear our democracy will not survive another failure in 2029 (or whenever the election is held) for the political class to grasp the nettle and do what is required pull this country out of the increasingly fast tailspin it is now in.
If you’re going to talk about MMT at least understand it first. What you are saying is completely incorrect.
Please read the paper suggested above (The Self Financing State) which will dispel the myths.
All UK government spending since at least 1866 has been “printing money”, and we built and lost and empire over that time. The idea that it is a problem is simply down to a lack of understanding.
Just because some aircraft have crashed doesn’t mean heavier than air flight is impossible. It means you need better pilots.
It’s amazing how people can be so confident despite all the evidence to the contrary.
The Self Financing State explains the process in depth. Feel free to point out where we’ve gone wrong. The peer reviewers couldn’t find anything wrong with it. Perhaps you’ll have more success.
That’s not really an answer is it, unless you are proposing that some unelected individuals should be able to veto the House of Commons.A power that was removed from the Lords in the early 20th century.
Which would mean you oppose democracy. Is that the case?
The Uk government pays for things by ordering the Bank of England to credit bank accounts. The Bank of England has no legal power to refuse. The result is what you call “borrowing” but it is really a balancing Item on the accounts.
So it’s not a matter of telling anybody. That’s how it has worked since at least 1866 with the advent of “book debt”.
Starmer thinks the answer to our woes is to reverse the outcome of the Brexit vote - because we Neanderthals got it wrong, and he, being very clever, knows better - and we mustn’t let democracy get in the way of what is good for us.
But Paul, your suggestion that government planning if the economy is the answer is also wrong, as Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China demonstrated. That would have us cantering down the road to serfdom.
How on earth can it not be clear that the public have had enough of the status quo. These bumbling Labour and Tory narcissists who think they have the magic whilst ignoring the clearest signal since 2016, namely that they want less immigration. And that was at a time when the figures of the catastrophic net fiscal drain of immigrants hadn't yet been released. In the same way that we wouldn't invite a friend over to stay if all he did was sponge off us and didn't pull his weight and then let him stay anyway and invite more such friends into our house, why on earth are we happy to give our money away to foreigners who overall cost more than they put in. It makes no sense. £65M a year to the NhS in translation services, £2bn a year on illegal immigrant housing, £6bn a year to benefit claims by non-Brits, the list goes on and on. Stop ILR, stop benefits for foreigners, stop free stuff, stop student visas after their degrees, stop dependents coming, stop subsidised NHS use for foreigners and no4-star hotels and phones and money and bowling vouchers for illegal immigrants and stop anyone from coming who can't speak English. These are simple basic things that can be done overnight that would save billions. Once we halt immigration we can start to fix the problems in the economy and elsewhere and work out how to integrate the millions already here and get people off welfare. But Labour will never do these things. Ever. The projections are for our population to rise by another obscene number of millions over the next decade but why is no government saying STOP. Where are they going to live? I simply do not understand why no leader is explicitly saying, we have no houses left, we have little land left so I'm sorry but you can't come. Reform is the only party who has even the tiniest chance to turn this around. It's the only party that has said it is willing to do so. Vote Reform or it really is the end (if we aren't past the point of no return already). I highly recommend reading Matt Goodwin's new book Suicide of a Nation. Seeing the numbers written down in one place gave me a huge shock.
This is the much discussed great realignment in progress.
The Labour party, as someone said recently resembles Wily E Coyote, the cartoon character that runs over a cliff taking a while to realise that there is no ground underneath before crashing down.
Labour is now irrelevant,whether the Tories can pull something out of the ashes is yet to be determined.
This is exciting and should be welcomed as a necessary step towards a reinvigorated two party system that actually offers the public a choice.
All good points. Where does this leave Paul Embery and the three or four other decent Blue Labour supporters who have so far stuck to the deck of the sinking ship?
I've asked Paul this a few times and if I remember correctly it's the Thatcherite economic policy of Reform he appears not to like. I agree that Thatchers policies gave little thought to the consequences for the working class and she ripped their industries out from under them without considering the damage so I fully understand this view. However, hasn't Labour done just as much damage to the working classes? Tony Blair never gave them a second thought either so surely Reform would be no worse for the working class but at least they'd go a long way to fixing the problems (like immigration) that directly impact them more than any other demographic. But no doubt Paul will answer for himself.
My partial recollection is that the Thatcher government tried to keep the old industries going but was thwarted by the cost and the unions. Ironically too more manufacturing jobs were lost under Blair and Brown who rode the high watermark of globalisation. We are though in a new era and surely Reform with its Red Wall has to be the voice of the working class. It is I expect a bit of a mix that is working things out and needs someone like Paul to provide some balast. A party like Reform will be a coalition of views and must have room for the Blue Labour voice. Being in a fringe party of purists like the SDP will get you nowhere.
Yes she was thwarted by the unions in many respects but in my view lashed back too hard. Moreover she assumed that everyone could pull themselves up by the bootstraps and find alternative work. What she failed to see is that when you have families and communities that have worked in industry for so long and it's all they know, and if from the minute you are born you know you'll be heading into that industry, and that industry ceases to exist virtually overnight, then it is extremely hard to suddenly change tack. These red wall communities only ever existed and grew into towns because of industry so when that goes they are left with nothing. Thatcher did some good things but she wrecked the working class and assumed they all had her nouse and ability to go from "grocer's daughter" to white collar. She was also somewhat of a pioneer of globalism. I totally agree Blair and Brown exacerbated the problem greatly and were even worse than Thatcher for the working class. Absolutely a bit of a mix is necessary. Blue Labour would be great within Reform. I'm surprised they are still in Labour because that party will never be turned around unless the woke and champagne socialist virtue signaller globalist leave.
I think to be fair to a point, Thatcher tried to save the NCB, British Leyland and British Steel but there was a lack of solidarity and empathy on both sides that saw the other as the enemy. Those were also the days of the Big Bang and getting on your bike and loadsamoney - which rode roughshod over Thatcher’s low church assumptions about human nature. The world has moved on and neo-liberalism and globalism belong to another age, along with coal mines and steam trains. There is a window in which the old red wall and the shires can come together and learn from the past, before it is too late.
I think Thatcher was a big fan of loadsmoney. That, for me, was the main problem. She assumed the miners and others could get on their bike. But they couldn't. She hugely underestimated their ability to do that and the consequences linger on today with the running down of once cohesive communities, unemployment, loss of pride and the unfair image of working class people, now rebranded as "chavs", living on estates claiming benefits. Meanwhile the degree-waving globalist sneer at them without a thought for how they got there.
In my option, Reform have done well as they tap into Thatchers’ human desire to make a better life for yourself and your family and Blue Labours no nonsense trade union aspiration of working class solidarity. New Labour is dead, encapsulated by the Peter Mandleson fiasco. They also say they will “stop the boats” and you sort of believe they will actually do it. No government can ever call itself legitimate if it cannot protect its borders and its people.
Whilst it’s right that there is no one in the Labour Party who can save the Labour Govt, it must also be right that Starmer should not be afforded any protection from his removal. Just as the Tories tried, but failed, to scramble to provide a true leader, so must Labour do the same. Nothing can save them, but keeping Starmer in post is not the answer. This govt failed us from the get go, and now we have to watch our country sink into the abyss while Labour pretends they are the answer, rather than the cause.
The Tories found a true leader in Liz Truss but then ran scared at the prospect of a real conservative leading them again. Sadly, she did not stand her ground and all the lies perpetrated at the time by Bailey and Sunak have taken root.
Yes, that may be true. We shall never know if she would have been a great leader, because as you say, she stood down. Maybe that means she actually didn’t have what it takes.
Hi Paul 👋
The problem for labour is that over last 20 odd years they have filled the elected politicians with political empty suits and dresses, people who have no real world experience who do whatever the whips told them to do ( this also applies to tories) , we have spent the last 20 30 years going down a centrist party that took the worst of left and right and then effectively called us racists.
At the next general election I would love to be able to listen to a debate on ideology ( socialist v capitalist v liberal) from the respected parties instead of mud sling, spin , dark arts etc but we have such weak politicians that they are more administer rubber stamping whatever the blob tells them too .
WE NEED A PARLIAMENT FILLED WITH SIGNPOSTS!!!!
To sum up Keirs problem is this ,
If Gordon brown and Harriet harman are the answer then what the hell is the question?
Have a lovely week Paul and other readers 😊
Ps whoever comes into power next must first get the electorate to listen to them , at the moment people are split into two general camps
1 :those that dont even listen to Keir
2: those that do listen but dont believe a word he says
It took keir just 2 years to take labour where it took 14 years for the toriez ...... that is impressive 😉
Exactly!
I have been saying this for years.
Our Parliament used to be made up of people who had life skills, on the Labour side Trade Union leaders - who largely got there from the respect of their peer groups, and Business people who got there due to their success and also respect in the community.
This all seemed to change throughout the Blair and Cameron era’s when both Labour and Conservatives decided to control who local candidates for Parliament would be.
This has led to “parachuting” where local associations have no input into who their PPC will be.
Over 20 years this has led to a Political Class, degrees in law and PPE etc. but no experience of the life of the common people.
This is where our government and politics is badly broken.
Starmer says that á reset is needed, he’s right, but not the sort of reset he has in mind.
Is there any chance that either party has learned the lesson and will let locals choose their candidates again?
Good points Paul.
Having looked and read the various comments on other social media sites it’s frustrating to see the comments regarding the people who voted for Reform being called thick, stupid, racist, fascist etc etc.
The people making the comments are LP activists and Trade Union leaders who have learned fuck all. (Excuse the language)
Then we have the education secretary saying Starmer will be leading labour into the next election.
I never disparage people’s academic credentials but the education secretary is a fucking idiot who is definitely in the emperor’s new clothes gang!
(Sorry for the language again and the hypocrisy of my message but if the cap fits!)
Anyway on a more positive note Sunderland AFC are safe for this season and unfortunately we won’t be playing the mighty Wolves in the league for a while!
Philipson is a ghoul, refusing to accept the dire situation of Starmer, refusing to accept the Supreme Court ruling on Trans issues, and totally ignoring Sunderland City council has fallen.
I hope never to hear her name mentioned again in politics, after the next GE, she’s a self serving, narcissist, who took her constituents for granted.
The problem is Paul is that Keynes is no longer relevant. In many respects Keynesian economics have led us down this very deep well where the chance of getting out of it without it being very messy and painful is next to zero.
The country is bankrupt and noone wants to say it out loud. We are on life support only kept alive by (at present) benevolent bond markets who keep buying our debt.
The yields on Bonds are starting to rise which I suspect is an indication of the financial horrors that await us should Burnham, Rayner or Miliband get into No 10. When they do, expect the people who lend our Government money want higher rates for the higher risk of lending to a Government run by a bunch of incompetents that make Starmer and Reeves look almost like the purveyors of propriety.
We are in no position to spend our way out, we are bust.
Most of the PLP live in cloud cuckoo land and are utterly unsuited to supporting the sorts of tough decisions needed to start down the path of financial stability.
I'm not convinced that Reform have grasped how dire the situation is, but at least they have some sort of idea how to get some aspects of Government spending under control.
I’m constantly surprised to read people putting forward this story when it has no bearing at all for the UK.
The UK cannot be “bankrupt” in its own currency, and neither does it “borrow” on markets. What borrowing occurs automatically and costlessly as a function of the way double entry bookkeeping works.
The current “full funding” rule is a policy choice and can be abandoned. That’s why it says “the government believes” every year in the Debt Management Report.
Bond markets are refinancing operations, and government can simply decide not to do that. In which case it will drop automatically through to the Ways and Means account - again as the DMO explains every year in the Annual Review.
Look at the yields on the UK Treaasury Bills. You’ll find they are anchored to the Bank Rate at all times. When times are uncertain fixed rate investors tend to move from long duration to short. And things are very unpredictable at present.
I’d suggest you read the paper “The Self Financing State” published in the Journal of Economic Issues to understand how the system actually works, rather than parroting the fairy tale told by the financial industry.
Only the House of Commons can constrain government spending; the bond market cannot.
We got rid of the unelected veto on money bills by the unelected in the 1910s. That remains the case.
ROFL.....
If borrowing is "costless" then why are we paying billions of pounds each year to service our debt?
Because we have a government that prefers to give a basic income to rich people relative to how much money they already have than poor people a job. That’s a political choice. A bad one in my view.
After all if you owned a bank outright, who would you “borrow” from? So perhaps time to ask why your government doesn’t do that.
In a floating exchange rate system there is no need to defend the asset side of the central bank.
Ah! The fallacy of Dosh ex Nihilio.....
That’s how it works. The government orders the Bank of England to credit bank accounts. It does and the banks do as they all have no legal authority to refuse.
Feel free to point out the law that stops that happening if you know better.
It may work that way, that's not my argument. I'm not interested in how MMT works per se, as it is the outcome that is important, not the policy. If you prefer it is leading us to Insolvency rather than Bankruptcy, but the semantic difference is an irrelevance.
Labour's mid term political loss of council seats is not important. What is important, and what everybody now feels, and what you Paul have been predicting for a decade, is that this vote represents the people s cultural separation from the party. People now identify the Labour Party with a culture that is, not alien to them,but one that they see but fundamentally disagree with. These elections was the manifestation in political terms of the cultural shift the Labour Party made and people now reject. I can't see how the Labour Party can turn things round because it's members believe that culturally they are correct but politically they are going wrong, when actually the opposite position is true.
The UK debt is currently 94% of GDP, and we are running a large deficit. As Ian points out above, we’re broke. The idea from Modern Monetary Theory that we can simply print money to cover our debt and more borrowing has been tried by a number of countries throughout recent History. Venezuela and the Weimar republic spring to mind. It has never ended well. So no, we cannot just simply turn on the printing presses to finance infrastructure building.
There are no cost free solutions that can save this country from the spiralling disaster yawning before us. To turn the country around is going to cost us and frankly, hurt. None of the parties are being honest about the situation. Fundamentally, we cannot afford the state spending we have and reining that in is always going to create hardship.
That is compounded by the fact we actually do need to spend on infrastructure and encourage re-industrialisation, we need to make things and sell them to get the money in to reinvest and do the same again - we need growth from real manufacturing and production. That means tackling the outrageously high fuel prices. Some of the prices do come from what’s happening globally, some don’t. They come from government decisions on, and their approach to Net Zero (both the pace and their choice of solution).
Then you can turn to the fact we currently couldn’t defend a small village with our armed forces against a determined enemy. That’s not a comment on the ability of our armed forces personnel, but on the fact successive governments have denuded the military of resources and equipment. They banked on the peace dividend and unsurprisingly that also turned out to be an illusion (just like “The End of History”).
Both the above will require more money to be found, than just that to bring debt and deficit under control. So the pain is going to be a lot worse. The longer reality is ignored the more painful will be the solution.
I feel really pessimistic about this country and its chances. I fear our democracy will not survive another failure in 2029 (or whenever the election is held) for the political class to grasp the nettle and do what is required pull this country out of the increasingly fast tailspin it is now in.
If you’re going to talk about MMT at least understand it first. What you are saying is completely incorrect.
Please read the paper suggested above (The Self Financing State) which will dispel the myths.
All UK government spending since at least 1866 has been “printing money”, and we built and lost and empire over that time. The idea that it is a problem is simply down to a lack of understanding.
Just because some aircraft have crashed doesn’t mean heavier than air flight is impossible. It means you need better pilots.
MMT - also known as the Magic Money Tree.
There isn't one. If Governments spend more than they can raise in taxes, then they have to borrow it at interest.
The idea we can print money without cost is why we are in the mess we are in.
It’s amazing how people can be so confident despite all the evidence to the contrary.
The Self Financing State explains the process in depth. Feel free to point out where we’ve gone wrong. The peer reviewers couldn’t find anything wrong with it. Perhaps you’ll have more success.
Peer review. Right. There are plenty of questions about the veracity of Peer Review.
If you tell Politicians that they can create something for nothing that they can use to bribe voters. I mean what could possibly go wrong?
I have looked at the effect of MMT and when the lovely theory comes into contact with reality reality always wins.
That’s not really an answer is it, unless you are proposing that some unelected individuals should be able to veto the House of Commons.A power that was removed from the Lords in the early 20th century.
Which would mean you oppose democracy. Is that the case?
The Uk government pays for things by ordering the Bank of England to credit bank accounts. The Bank of England has no legal power to refuse. The result is what you call “borrowing” but it is really a balancing Item on the accounts.
So it’s not a matter of telling anybody. That’s how it has worked since at least 1866 with the advent of “book debt”.
I'm not sure you have understood what I am saying.
I see little point in carrying on this discussion.
You are interested in the process, I am interested in the outcome.
Starmer thinks the answer to our woes is to reverse the outcome of the Brexit vote - because we Neanderthals got it wrong, and he, being very clever, knows better - and we mustn’t let democracy get in the way of what is good for us.
But Paul, your suggestion that government planning if the economy is the answer is also wrong, as Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China demonstrated. That would have us cantering down the road to serfdom.
How on earth can it not be clear that the public have had enough of the status quo. These bumbling Labour and Tory narcissists who think they have the magic whilst ignoring the clearest signal since 2016, namely that they want less immigration. And that was at a time when the figures of the catastrophic net fiscal drain of immigrants hadn't yet been released. In the same way that we wouldn't invite a friend over to stay if all he did was sponge off us and didn't pull his weight and then let him stay anyway and invite more such friends into our house, why on earth are we happy to give our money away to foreigners who overall cost more than they put in. It makes no sense. £65M a year to the NhS in translation services, £2bn a year on illegal immigrant housing, £6bn a year to benefit claims by non-Brits, the list goes on and on. Stop ILR, stop benefits for foreigners, stop free stuff, stop student visas after their degrees, stop dependents coming, stop subsidised NHS use for foreigners and no4-star hotels and phones and money and bowling vouchers for illegal immigrants and stop anyone from coming who can't speak English. These are simple basic things that can be done overnight that would save billions. Once we halt immigration we can start to fix the problems in the economy and elsewhere and work out how to integrate the millions already here and get people off welfare. But Labour will never do these things. Ever. The projections are for our population to rise by another obscene number of millions over the next decade but why is no government saying STOP. Where are they going to live? I simply do not understand why no leader is explicitly saying, we have no houses left, we have little land left so I'm sorry but you can't come. Reform is the only party who has even the tiniest chance to turn this around. It's the only party that has said it is willing to do so. Vote Reform or it really is the end (if we aren't past the point of no return already). I highly recommend reading Matt Goodwin's new book Suicide of a Nation. Seeing the numbers written down in one place gave me a huge shock.
This is the much discussed great realignment in progress.
The Labour party, as someone said recently resembles Wily E Coyote, the cartoon character that runs over a cliff taking a while to realise that there is no ground underneath before crashing down.
Labour is now irrelevant,whether the Tories can pull something out of the ashes is yet to be determined.
This is exciting and should be welcomed as a necessary step towards a reinvigorated two party system that actually offers the public a choice.
All good points. Where does this leave Paul Embery and the three or four other decent Blue Labour supporters who have so far stuck to the deck of the sinking ship?
I've asked Paul this a few times and if I remember correctly it's the Thatcherite economic policy of Reform he appears not to like. I agree that Thatchers policies gave little thought to the consequences for the working class and she ripped their industries out from under them without considering the damage so I fully understand this view. However, hasn't Labour done just as much damage to the working classes? Tony Blair never gave them a second thought either so surely Reform would be no worse for the working class but at least they'd go a long way to fixing the problems (like immigration) that directly impact them more than any other demographic. But no doubt Paul will answer for himself.
My partial recollection is that the Thatcher government tried to keep the old industries going but was thwarted by the cost and the unions. Ironically too more manufacturing jobs were lost under Blair and Brown who rode the high watermark of globalisation. We are though in a new era and surely Reform with its Red Wall has to be the voice of the working class. It is I expect a bit of a mix that is working things out and needs someone like Paul to provide some balast. A party like Reform will be a coalition of views and must have room for the Blue Labour voice. Being in a fringe party of purists like the SDP will get you nowhere.
Yes she was thwarted by the unions in many respects but in my view lashed back too hard. Moreover she assumed that everyone could pull themselves up by the bootstraps and find alternative work. What she failed to see is that when you have families and communities that have worked in industry for so long and it's all they know, and if from the minute you are born you know you'll be heading into that industry, and that industry ceases to exist virtually overnight, then it is extremely hard to suddenly change tack. These red wall communities only ever existed and grew into towns because of industry so when that goes they are left with nothing. Thatcher did some good things but she wrecked the working class and assumed they all had her nouse and ability to go from "grocer's daughter" to white collar. She was also somewhat of a pioneer of globalism. I totally agree Blair and Brown exacerbated the problem greatly and were even worse than Thatcher for the working class. Absolutely a bit of a mix is necessary. Blue Labour would be great within Reform. I'm surprised they are still in Labour because that party will never be turned around unless the woke and champagne socialist virtue signaller globalist leave.
I think to be fair to a point, Thatcher tried to save the NCB, British Leyland and British Steel but there was a lack of solidarity and empathy on both sides that saw the other as the enemy. Those were also the days of the Big Bang and getting on your bike and loadsamoney - which rode roughshod over Thatcher’s low church assumptions about human nature. The world has moved on and neo-liberalism and globalism belong to another age, along with coal mines and steam trains. There is a window in which the old red wall and the shires can come together and learn from the past, before it is too late.
I think Thatcher was a big fan of loadsmoney. That, for me, was the main problem. She assumed the miners and others could get on their bike. But they couldn't. She hugely underestimated their ability to do that and the consequences linger on today with the running down of once cohesive communities, unemployment, loss of pride and the unfair image of working class people, now rebranded as "chavs", living on estates claiming benefits. Meanwhile the degree-waving globalist sneer at them without a thought for how they got there.