Labour Leader: Keir Starmer VII
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droodzilla
pfm Member
Gordon Brown talking more sense in a few paragraphs than the entire Labour front bench has managed all summer:
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...ing-suppliers-into-public-sector-gordon-brown
He stops short of full and permanent nationalisation but there are lots of crunchy policy ideas that might, you know, help people.
Of course, the people now running the Labour Party see Gordon Brown as "a Trot", so I doubt that Labour's own ideas will be anywhere near as comprehensive.
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...ing-suppliers-into-public-sector-gordon-brown
He stops short of full and permanent nationalisation but there are lots of crunchy policy ideas that might, you know, help people.
Of course, the people now running the Labour Party see Gordon Brown as "a Trot", so I doubt that Labour's own ideas will be anywhere near as comprehensive.
klfrs
chill out
Beating the tories is going to require a lot more than ill-conceived sloganeering.
ie paying the wages of the furloughed in pandemic was arguably a torygovernment idea. Does that make doing so a bad idea?
droodzilla
pfm Member
He comes across pretty well in the BBC's New Labour documentary series. A solid social democrat with a genuine interest in redistribution, and a politician of much greater intellectual substance than Blair. Temperamentally unsuited to the chaos of leadership though, even allowing for the fact that he was constantly briefed against by the Blairite wing of the party.
The one thing in the documentary that left a sour taste in my mouth was Brown's near-silence on the Iraq war, which came across as an abdication of moral responsibility, especially when compared with Robin Cook's principled stand.
That’s a fair summation, not sure about his comparative ‘intellectual substance’, Blair was no dummy.
Spraggons Den
pfm Member
At least on this occasion Cook was able to stand, most of the time he was pissed and prostrate on the bathroom floor having had a row with his wife about his girl friend.
Seanm
pfm Member
A spiv.
droodzilla
pfm Member
Slick, quick, and ruthless, but not a deep thinker when it comes to policy. If he ever had any ideas of substance, there was no sign of them in the BBC documentary. I was genuinely surprised by how intellectually vapid he is.
PhilofCas
pfm Member
Very good article that, thanks.
ks.234
Half way to Infinity
Spraggons Den
pfm Member
Lots of chat on the morning news about the effects of rising energy costs on households. Labours policy of a windfall tax on the oil produces for a couple of years to mitigate bills of the poorest seems like a good idea to me although maybe they should shout it a bit louder.
Seanm
pfm Member
It won’t touch the sides, it leaves all the problems in place for next time, and the Tories are already doing it: it’s basically a promise to do what the Tories are doing but more competently. I’m not surprised they’re not shouting about it, “We have no answers!” is not a vote-winner.
Spraggons Den
pfm Member
Not true.
It’s been Labour policy since before the Wakefield by-election whilst the government (from today’s Grinder):
Ministers are rowing back from threatening energy companies with a bigger windfall tax, after Liz Truss and her ally Kwasi Kwarteng made plain they would not support this option.
Nadhim Zahawi, the chancellor, and Kwarteng, the business secretary, will meet energy companies on Thursday morning, but multiple government sources said the discussion would be with electricity generators to discuss investment, wholesale prices and security of supply, rather than a windfall tax.
It’s been Labour policy since before the Wakefield by-election whilst the government (from today’s Grinder):
Ministers are rowing back from threatening energy companies with a bigger windfall tax, after Liz Truss and her ally Kwasi Kwarteng made plain they would not support this option.
Nadhim Zahawi, the chancellor, and Kwarteng, the business secretary, will meet energy companies on Thursday morning, but multiple government sources said the discussion would be with electricity generators to discuss investment, wholesale prices and security of supply, rather than a windfall tax.
Seanm
pfm Member
That article is all about “closing loopholes” in existing government policy i.e. same policy done better. It doesn’t matter how well they do it it won’t touch the sides and it won’t address the underlying issues, it’s a nothing proposal.
This is just projection because you don’t agree with him. Leadership is a skill, it’s not frippery or insubstantial. Blair was pretty smart, Brown made a number of missteps & mistakes which show he wasn’t exactly a genius. Some of his ideas resulted in endemic low pay, an unintended consequence I grant you.
Anyway, we are covering old ground so let’s just agree to differ.
Careful ... these days it's hard to differentiate between truth, irony, gags, hubris, hypocrisy, BS, etc.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-487796/How-Queen-charmed-pants-Confessions-old-Leftie.html
Silly Billy!
Can you imagine the off-spring?
droodzilla
pfm Member
It really isn't.
I accept all the stuff about him being a gifted politician, and there's no doubt that he got a grip on the party (a grip that lingers to this day within the national and regional bureaucracy).
I give him a lot of credit for persevering with the Northern Ireland peace process, when some advisors said it could never work. This is his greatest achievement, in my view.
But I'm talking about substantive policy ideas and it became increasingly obvious in the course of the BBC documentary that Blair doesn't have many. He talks a lot about "modernisation" (then, and now) but there's almost nothing of substance to back it up (modernisation of what, and to what end?). I'm sorry, but I do try to give everyone a fair hearing, and I watched the BBC documentary with genuine curiosity (being a scientist). My conclusion remains that Blair was an extremely smart politician but that he is intellectually empty.