{"id":4178,"date":"2015-05-15T12:15:42","date_gmt":"2015-05-15T11:15:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=4178"},"modified":"2015-05-15T12:15:42","modified_gmt":"2015-05-15T11:15:42","slug":"blame-game-does-not-help-labour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=4178","title":{"rendered":"Blame game does not help Labour"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Surveying the general election\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s political rubble the airwaves are already thick with Labour grandees sharing out the blame.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Blame Ed\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lack of appeal on the doorstep, blame the unions who put him there, blame the lack of the Blairite so-called\u00c2\u00a0 ‘appeal to aspiration\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.\u00c2\u00a0 The list is endless and frequently misses the point.<\/p>\n

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This was an election fought on the economy.\u00c2\u00a0 For the Tories this meant repeating over and over again that Labour\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s profligacy had crashed the economy.<\/p>\n

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Osborne\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so called economic plan with its austerity programme had reversed an economic recovery that was evident in 2010.\u00c2\u00a0 And as Paul Krugman the Economic Nobel Laureate wrote recently, the case for cuts was a lie.\u00c2\u00a0 Austerity was a delusion \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t produce growth.\u00c2\u00a0 But it did let the Tories advance their agenda of destroying the welfare state.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Labour\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s opponents were allowed to define economic credibility as cuts.\u00c2\u00a0 When it looked as if there had indeed been an economic recovery with increased jobs Osborne was able to deploy the same rhetoric as was used in 1992 – you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t trust Labour to protect the economy.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Labour tried to counter with proposals on zero hours, taking on gang masters and ending the abuse by Agencies exploiting migrant labour.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ed seemed liberated during the campaign but his eloquence was too late, and too much of the central Tory argument had been conceded by default.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Inexplicable<\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n

The general election was lost on the day after the 2010 defeat when David Laws pulled out Liam Byrne\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s puerile letter that there was no money left.\u00c2\u00a0 And inexplicably the Labour leadership allowed the myth to ferment that\u00c2\u00a0public spending\u00c2\u00a0had caused the economic crash until in the end that slip of paper became a battering ram.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The austerity straitjacket and the obsession with the deficit meant he couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fight one of the two flanks that Labour were up against \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the SNP.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Labour is the architect of its own downfall in Scotland.\u00c2\u00a0 The warning signals with the SNP had been there for years.\u00c2\u00a0 Aligning\u00c2\u00a0with the Tories to get a no vote in the referendum was a disaster made worse as being unnecessary.<\/p>\n

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Now in this election it became a gift to the SNP and to Lynton Crosby who used the SNP to drive a wedge between English and Scottish voters.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Maybe it was the arrogant belief\u00c2\u00a0that the birthplace of the Labour Party would always be a stronghold.\u00c2\u00a0 It is not a given that a party has to exist.\u00c2\u00a0 Political parties elsewhere, and indeed the Conservatives in Scotland\u00c2\u00a0have disappeared.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had three party leaders tendering their resignation.\u00c2\u00a0 Jim Murphy, Labour leader in Scotland refuses to do so.\u00c2\u00a0 This is unsustainable.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 For Labour to have a chance at next year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Holyrood elections there needs to be a different leader\u00c2\u00a0with a fresh\u00c2\u00a0strategy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We are a polarised country.\u00c2\u00a0 SNP in Scotland. Labour with UKIP coming second in the north.\u00c2\u00a0 Tories in the prosperous south.\u00c2\u00a0 And London still\u00c2\u00a0largely a Labour city.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tony Blair has been quick off the block claiming that the Labour party has to return to New Labour and the politics of aspirations.\u00c2\u00a0 As if ensuring decent jobs, building houses, stopping the race to the bottom wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t aspirational.\u00c2\u00a0 But any debate on the future has to recognise that a manifesto made up of retail offers, with no compelling unifying narrative\u00c2\u00a0is not enough.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ideology still matters.\u00c2\u00a0Ed Miliband saw inequality as one of the UK\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s major challenges.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0He wanted higher taxes to ease the burden. I doubt if Cameron whose backers dole out \u00c2\u014150,000 \u00e2\u20ac\u0098club membership fees\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 giving them access to himself and his cabinet will see redressing inequality as a priority.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There are comparisons being made with 1992.\u00c2\u00a0 John Major\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s victory soon hit a whirlwind caused by his euro-sceptic \u00e2\u20ac\u0098bastards\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, the UK being chucked out of the ERM and the callous closure of the pits.\u00c2\u00a0 These political and economic conditions laid the ground for a Labour victory.\u00c2\u00a0 If John Smith had lived he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have won.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

These next five years will be a continuation of the coalition policies of cuts, attacks on the unions while simultaneously enriching the already rich.\u00c2\u00a0 Boundary changes may well make\u00c2\u00a0a Labour comeback\u00c2\u00a0harder.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But the last thing we need is a return to the Blairite past, and a “wealth creation” model that collapsed in 2008.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*Joy Johnson writes in a personal capacity. This comment first appeared in Tribune, May 15.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Surveying the general election\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s political rubble the airwaves are already thick with Labour grandees sharing out the blame.   Blame Ed\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lack of appeal on the doorstep, blame the unions who put him there, blame the lack of the Blairite so-called\u00c2\u00a0 ‘appeal to aspiration\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.\u00c2\u00a0 The list is endless and frequently misses the point.   This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4094,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[299],"wps_subtitle":"Was Labour architect of its own downfall? ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4178"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4178"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4180,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4178\/revisions\/4180"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}