Labour’s next leader must challenge Tories’ poisonous myths
Here’s Kevin Maguire, writing in the Daily Mirror:
Labour’s next leader will become trapped in a maze of Tory lies unless he or she challenges a string of poisonous myths.
I badgered Ed Miliband for years in this column to prove spending by the last Labour Government didn’t trigger the 2008 global financial collapse.
The national debt was a smaller proportion of GDP before the banking crisis than Labour had inherited from the Conservatives in 1997.
Failing to regulate the spivs and speculators was the catastrophic error, not reviving the NHS or putting money into workers’ pay packets.
Economists knew it, the Bank of England governor knew it and so too did David Cameron and George Osborne – but the Tory duo cynically pinned the blame for the crisis on Labour’s spending plans.
The problem is, of course, that many of the politicians who now claim to represent Labour values are quite happy to let this Tory lie go unchallenged.
Those of us who know the facts have been telling everybody we can for the last five years and more, but we simply don’t have the mass media clout needed to get the message across.
People like the right-wing Labour leadership candidates (everyone apart from Jeremy Corbyn) and Harriet Harman can’t be bothered to correct a ‘big lie’ that has been repeated so often that people now believe it automatically.
They’ve got their Parliamentary seats and pensions; they’re doing quite all right out of all this, thank you very much.
Maguire makes some more useful points, which are well worth repeating, if you have ignorant friends:
The whole welfare debate is skewed when we wrongly think £24 in every £100 of the social security budget is fiddled. In reality, it’s just 70p.
The Department of Work and Pensions pumps out these tales to justify deep cuts. The £1.2 billion a year benefit fraud is pennies next to a great tax robbery soaring to as high as £120 billion.
Yet the Treasury and HMRC prefer cosy private deals with wealthy dodgers while what crooked US socialite Leona Helmsley referred to as the “little people” are thrown to the hounds.
And how about this:
It isn’t just the economic debate that’s distorted by myths. Immigrants pay in more than they take off the system.
Only reactionaries and racists benefit when it’s thought 24% of the population are recent migrants when it’s 13%.
Standing up for decent values requires politicians to tell hard truths and never pander to prejudices.
That’s not going to happen in a Labour Party led by Burnham, Cooper, Creagh or Kendall, then.
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The only candidate to say that it wasn’t the Labour Parties fault that the crash happened is Yevette Cooper…..Its the Tories weakness which the last Labour Leader kt on apologising for……….The best means of defence is Attack especially when there are so many open goals on the TORY benches……you know the ones I mean….all of the TORY MPs who have banking credentials.
I don’t think Corbyn agrees it was Labour’s fault either.
This propaganda of imputing imagined fault blame on Labour is not simply, actually it is beyond their intelligence, an Tory Con, it is paid for and designed by the Neo Nazi insane US organisation;
“Through the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, global corporations and state politicians vote behind closed doors to try to rewrite state laws that govern your rights. These so-called “model bills” reach into almost every area of American life and often directly benefit huge corporations.
In ALEC’s own words, corporations have “a VOICE and a VOTE” on specific changes to the law that are then proposed in your state. DO YOU? Numerous resources to help us expose ALEC are provided below. We have also created links to detailed discussions of key issues, which are available on the left”
This may be familiar to you: So called Corporations are are dividing up the NHS, Transport, Education, Job Assesments, Benefits distribution, all the the point where nothing functions properly and all to the disadvantage of those who depend upon these services….and they are all US Corporations.
Is the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has reported previously, the American City County Exchange (ACCE) was formed in 2014 as a local government version of the state legislature-focused American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The new group’s structure mimics its parent organization, with corporate lobbyists paying between $10,000 and $25,000 to sit side-by-side with city and county elected officials and vote on legislation that all too frequently benefits ALEC’s corporate members.
Read the rest of this item here.
http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed
Thier ‘Local Friend’ is:
“Thatcher’s reckless acolytes don’t know when to stop”:
Polly Toynbee
I won’t hold my breath for a response from the Cons!
Don’t worry you can rest assured that MP’s will vote for the one that is most likely to maintain the status quo and their luxury lifestyle. God forbid that they elect a decent plain speaking left winger line Jeremy Corbyn. This would cause too much embarrassment for the Tories. A state of affairs that other lead ship contenders would never allo.
The vote isn’t limited to MPs.
Sorry Mike I was referring to the need to obtain 35 sponsors in the PLP.
I am seriously hoping for Corbyn as the others are happy to toe the line and seem already to be pandering to the Tory line. If Corbyn doesnt make it I will be switching my allegaince to The Greens or even TUSC and I have voted Labour all my life, but these days a vote for Labour seems a vote for the right and I am a socialist at heart.
It looks to me like most of the upper echelons of the PLP have been told to accept responsibility for the economic crash but I’d be going off on a conspiracy theory if I said more. Well, I will say one thing: who gains from Labour sucking up the blame for the economy? There’s more to this than just poorly advised MPs.
It seems the Tories are going to keep running with the lie, though. Someone on Question Time said Labour are failing to acknowledge their part in the recession, I wish I could remember who said it and the exact quote, maybe you or the readers can remember? I think he point is to make Labour look like flakes and liars. I’ll say one thig for the Conservatives; they must have colossal testicles.
If Labour stick rigidly to the truth, and I mean rigidly, pointing actual facts out with direct quotes, then the Tories will have a much harder time. They also need to get their retaliation in first and at every turn. They are the opposition, after all and should beat the government mercilessly from now til 2020 on every aspect of their record. They should do this with the truth and the facts.
I totally agree with you Ian. We have nothing to lose, so why not speak up and tell it as it is and was.
Think it was a Tory plant in the audience that said that
Possibly, though I couldn’t say for certain as I was only half listening, such is the standard of the guests on QT these days.
Correct me if I am wrong, finding it hard to check on google, but is it right that for a person to stand for Leader of the Labour Party, they must be first be selected by 35 sitting MPs to get into the running? So if, for instance Jeremy Corbyn does not get 35 MPs to put him forward, then he cannot get into the actual voting process?
Yes – it’s a percentage of the Parliamentary Labour Party which currently equates to 35 MPs.