What Labour really needs is a powerful social movement to carry its vision across the country | Michael Meacher
It’s well understood now that a major reason for Labour’s heavy defeat was its abject failure to throw back into the Tories’ face their preposterous rewriting of history that Labour was responsible for the financial/economic crash triggered by the bankers and the international recession. But that is only part of the story. A reformist party bent on transformational change can only succeed if inextricably linked with a powerful social movement to drive through its aspirations. Focus groups, spin doctors, and central direction with demands to stay on message won’t do it. Until the 1980s the Labour party had a mass movement centred round a systematic programme of political education and democratic decision-making focused around the annual conference.
So far only Yvette Cooper is the only one to bury the lie that Labour was responsible for the crash in 2008.Are the others just cowards or really Tories in disguise?
Several of them have done it; I don’t think she was even the first.
It was to little to late, Ed should have defended this outrageous lie years ago, sadly he did not have the Murdoch hate media on his side but against him on every move.
Throughout 2010/ 11 and 12, Milliband and Balls were busy talking to their Hamstead mates in the Guardian & New Statesman, instead of campaigning in the country and setting up media conferences to debunk the “Labours mess” lie. You can’t blame the Murdock media for everything. Labour always have to fight harder to EDUCATE the public and debunk the Tory myths quicker, BEFORE they take hold.
Labours mantra of “listening” is useless without also leading the debate with grit and confidence.
With hindsight it is now easy to see that the election was lost (or at least Labour’s perceived ability to manage the economy) within months of the financial crash when Labour kept quite as to its causes. And when Chancellor Osborne, from 2012 on, was allowed to change economic policy without sufficient notice having been drawn by Labour politicians and the newsprint media (then by default the TV channels) . However, hindsight does not offer a complete reason for these group’s silence, especially with respect to not drawing attention to the change after 2012. Personally, I’m at a loss when trying to understanding the why. or is it how, the ‘history’ of these key economic events were allowed to be presented as representations of Conservative economic strength. At an instinctive level something suggests this is a new Labour issue, with respect to deficiencies in its ideological ‘world view’. This appears to have a complete ‘blindness’, of the economic deficiencies of capitalist (or is that a too great faith that we all exist and act within a free-market) economies ,
The labour party before the election were acting like the conservatives on many policies and to fool the public they thought a bedroom tax was a good idea pinched from the liberals
What the hell were they thinking picking on a group of people who had lived in that house for years and those paying way over the odds to get that home in the first place
It was a daft idea that and keep picking on business who exploit there staff. Sure that needs to be tackled but you cant do that running for an election and in reality they couldn’t bring anything fresh to the table
ukip had immigration and the EU as there main theme the conservatives had cuts and working class families as there theme
The SNP and austerity and the building of better Scotland as there theme which left labour being able to offer nothing new and that’s how the voting went it’s very simple
The Labour Party never thought the Bedroom Tax was a good idea! Remember, the idea was suggested among Labour ranks while that party was in office – and was dismissed before it was even tested.
You’re right about UKIP’s theme, but the Tory theme was “Labour and the SNP will steal your cash” – and very little else. The SNP theme was “we’ll hold Ed Miliband over a barrel”. If you look at the anti-austerity claim, it doesn’t stand up.
beg your pardon mike it was the mansion tax which has now been abandoned.
hopefully labour will be pro business in going forward and pro hard working families and pro everything else but ruling out punishing the sick and disabled they should never become a bargaining tool they should never be forced in a corner where they may die and the public need wherever they live should support that view point