POLL: Is it time for Rachel Reeves to go?
Rachel Reeves: One mistake too many?
Today Vox Political pointed out that Labour’s Rachel Reeves has hired an advisor from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), a foreign-owned company that is already advising the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Coalition government, and actually writing laws on tax while helping companies and the very rich to avoid paying it.
It seems clear that she is, as we put it, sleeping with the enemy and it seems likely that this relationship would continue if Labour were to form a government next year – aiding PwC in its aim of being in control, no matter which political party is supported by the people.
Do British people want to live in a corporatocracy like that?
It seems that, if Rachel Reeves has her way, your vote really will count for nothing (who’d have thought she’d be an agent of Lynton Crosby’s ‘They’re all the same’ agenda?) and the corporate bosses will run the country for their own gain and to our detriment.
Alternatively, is it time she received her marching orders and was shipped off to the backbenches, along with her corporate adviser?
Is it time we told Labour that we don’t want to elect another party of corporate lapdogs?
Should we tell Ed Miliband we want him to make his own decisions, untainted by the interests of big businesses that have no intention of helping the poor?
He won’t know unless we tell him.
What do you think?
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Worrying Mike! Maybe a good idea to remind her to “put brain in gear before opening mouth”.
Well – put brain in gear before making decisions, perhaps!
Reeves should sacked from the shadow cabinet. Her plans if Labour wins the election are worse than the Tory led coalition.
what i cant understand is this, when these people were elected by their constituents, they were elected on their own merit, with no advisers like this involved (correct me if i am wrong). its HER who was elected, not the adviser. so why should they need advisers?don’t they have a brain themselves?or are they scared it will wear out before they can do their worst?
Quite correct.
Her seat is a safe seat, they would elect a donkey with a red rosette on it.
However, the Labour majority has halved from 14,000 to 7,000 since 1997 and UKIP polled 30 per cent in her constituency in May elections. It was also Liberal for a time in the 1980s.
It is mostly the elderly who still vote tribally Labour and they are dying off of course.
She’s probably getting a bit worried about it by now.
I cannot believe I have just read this, deeply upset, I want to believe the Labour party
” IS” the party of the people not the bloody corporations.
When will someone form a government that is honest or am I being naive?
If Ed is aware of this which I am sure he is, he should have a good slapping as he would have also misled the people during his conference speeches.
I believe also they intend to continue with the disgusting PIP if that is correct then there is no way they are going forward to No 10 and for sure, the thing which happen is voters will sadly vote for UKIP as protest vote, then God help us all, when will they learn.
Do they really believe the electorate are all so stupid, please give us some credence, are they trying to incite riot? People are starving, homeless and dying through this Tory onslaught.
Ed is accusing the Tories of smoke and mirrors – why has he adopted the same tactics? I am seriously considering forgoing my vote if this what we can expect.
We’ll have an honest government when the electorate forces that government to be honest.
If we don’t have a Labour government next year, then we will certainly have more of the Tories, who will continue to be far, far worse!
Forgoing your vote will only ensure victory for the villains in blue.
Look at the Green Party then, they ARE a party for the people and actually have some integrity. They’re against TTIP and privatization. They are the only real party for the people.
Rachel Reeves is, unfortunately, our MP and when the revelations about Chuka Umunna surfaced yesterday my wife said “This is where Rachel Reeves makes her bid for power – unless she’s buddied up with Price Waterhouse Cooper as well. :D
Some good books about at the moment, if you go to Lobbying, T Cave &A Rowell, or The Establishment, O Jones it will quickly become apparent that Rachael Reeves, reprehensible as she may be, is a very small cog in a huge machine. I’ve not read Russell Brand’s Revolution yet but understand he may be on to something.
In a word, Yes!
Another blairs baby
I just think it a real shame that it appears that Labour are seeming as if they are going to continue as Tory light instead of being true to their roots.Yes they are the lesser of two evils, but what does that say about a once great party that fought for the poor and the sick and disabled. It would appear that they are all much the same.
The problem runs a lot deeper than just Reeves: it’s what Labour has become as a whole. This is what Labour stand for now. There’s really no point complaining any more, I’ve just (belatedly) discovered. Criticising Labour for not being a left wing party is like criticising a dog for not being a cheeseburger, it makes no sense to expect it to be one.
It makes a great deal of sense to expect Labour to be left-wing; that’s what grassroots party members expect from it.
I have to disagree. The members may expect it but the parliamentary party has moved away from such trifles as ethics and ideology and decided that decaf Tory is the way ahead. The membership shouldn’t expect them to be left any more because they have have chnged almost entirely. Like the Republicans in the US were the ones freeing the slaves, the Democrats were largely opposed to it. Things have changed and it’s time for a new grassroots movement which the unions need to be part of, providing they haven’t become so fully absorbed into the corporatocracy. No ‘dialogue’ with Labour. No negotiation. Nothing. Cut them adrift and let them go on their way to irrelevance.
That is what Labour have decided to be. They have left us behind, not vice versa.
The logical answer is for the people who support the PLP/leadership to ditch the neolibs, though – not to go and find another party – because there are far more members of the grassroots party than neolibs in the PLP. The problem is showing them that there is a problem and who it is.
Labour doesn’t really have that kind of grass roots any more, Mike, just a collection of put-upon workers of various levels wondering what the hell happened to their corner of life. Politics and society have, whether they want to or not, evolved way beyond what was in the youth of Labour’s existence. Labour’s biggest problem now is how to unite a disparate and desperate public to fight what Mike has outlined here. Be clear about this, it is not just a fight for a party, it is becoming a fight for democracy itself. We need new ways of doing politics for a start.
I think part of the discussion in the Labour Party needs to be about reuniting the leadership with the people who want to support it, but don’t see it doing what they want any more – the grass roots. You may be right about the way they feel, but this just indicates to me that the last few decades have deprived them of the tools they need in order to express themselves properly. That needs to be corrected.
Indeed Mike, but the party and its supporters need to recognise that the reality of ‘grass roots’ itself has changed fundamentally. It will be a huge task for any party to deliver unifying policies that would attract and retain voters. The other huge task is learning to deal with a future that is no longer a two-party system. This alone would be a big enough problem, one that the Tories must deal with too. Without finding a way to speak honestly to voters who are locked into their individual interests rather than a societal gain, Labour will continue to struggle. Add in that Labour’s politicians are hemmed in (and some happily colluding?) by the strangle-hold of corporate control and it’s difficult to see what might actually change. Which is why so much silence by Labour on many glaring issues like this one is worrying to say the least. Economics is another one. Where is the opposition that speaks to people?
You identify the issues well, although I would widen out your last points. I think Labour should be bringing forward a philosophy for people to adopt, rather than simply coming out with individual ideas; “We’ll do this.” If the party said it’s all part of a plan to bring prosperity to the whole country rather than a few filthy rich but selfish gits at the top, that would be something we could all adopt as our own.
But they need to say what the plan is and how it would work.
I was going to use the word ‘manifesto’, but people tend to think that refers only to policies for the next Parliamentary term, rather than an overarching philosophy.
Absolutely agree, Mike, and yes, philosophy suggests a broader and higher set of principles than manifesto might.
I’ll vote for Labour in 2015, but only because the Greens and the TUSC are far too small to make a difference and the only small party big enough to win any seats is UKIP, who hates me just for existing. I certainly don’t fully trust Labour.
How do we get rid of the neolibs? They’re a large majority, seemingly at least, of the parliamentary party and they just keep on parachuting more well connected neolibs into winnable seats.
Labour is infested with these rats and they’ll take some shifting. They really belong in the Conservative party, maybe amongst the Orange Book liberals at best. Convincing them of that will be difficult.
The answer is for constituency members to resist having these people parachuted in.
They don’t seem keen to exercise that power at the moment but it’s theirs if they only take it.
Esther McVey 2.0. Some of my connections have tweeted questions to her about disability issues if labour win in 2015; she blocked them. I have written a few letters stating the same concerns (Mandatory Reconsideration etc) – no answer. If she carries on like this, she could be the fly in the ointment for Labour.
I thought the time for her to go was when she first started calling social security “welfare” and promised to be tougher than the vermin.
Blair was saying welfare years ago, it then spread in popularity. Gordon Brown was the initiator of that awful phrase ‘hard working families’, too.
I’d like to see the back of Reeves because she’s no bloody good as a politician. Dull, uncharismatic, repetitive, stolid and forgettable she reminds me of Liam Byrne in drag.
You realise that she already uses unpaid interns, including one recruited from Harvard Univeristy?
http://www.iop.harvard.edu/blog/summer-service-international-internship-week-member-parliament-rachel-reeves
This is nothing new for her.
Unemployed Labour Frontbencher Forced to do Workfare for Tories | johnranson
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