Options
Are the Labour Elite all London Centric
It seems Labour have forgotten about everyone outside of London nowadays. They make gestures towards to the north, but all I see on TV now are southern born MPs or London based MPs, many with millionaire parents and an Oxbridge education.
What's happened to all the good MPs they have from their northern regions? Are they starting to become areas that Labour parachute in London based MPs?
What's happened to all the good MPs they have from their northern regions? Are they starting to become areas that Labour parachute in London based MPs?
0
Comments
They've never needed to care about the North because people voted for them in droves so they took the Northern votes and old working class people types for granted.
However...
The Humiliation of the other week has forced them stand back and take note at what people have been saying and they'll hopefully change things if not they'll loose more votes from their traditional voters to parties like UKIP
The answer to the OP is obviously No. Andy Burnham is from the north and has a northern seat. Michael Dugher who is leading Burnham's campaign and is also in the Labour hierarchy and was a key aide to Miliband too is from Barnsley and has a Barnsley seat.
Mary Creagh also trying to get nominated as Labour leader has a Leeds seat and was born in Coventry according to wikipedia.
Liz Kendal while from Watford, her seat is in Leicester and Tristrum Hunt while born in Cambridge. his seat is in Stoke. Yvette Cooper, born in Scotland, went to school in Hampshire apparently, studied at Oxford and Harvard (very impressive!) but her seat is in the North too.
Yes... no one should ever vote for them ever again... your work is done.
Why do you think no one should vote for them again. Odd response really.
Their message in the north is vote for us, because we hate the tories too. That's basically what they said at the last election. It doesn't surprise me with the shambolic election campaign Labour ran but then again they had the worst front-line for a long time.
I doubt the 2020 election will be any different, they seem intent of self destructing right now. If the Libs know what's good for them, it will be to look like a viable liberal socialist party, that would give them plenty of disillusioned labour voters.
So basically no one should vote for them... it's the message of your thread. Not that odd a response in reflection now is it.
I wouldn't be so confident. Labour gained the best part of a Million votes, something the media likes to leave out. Labour have retained many more seats than what the Tories did during their losses in 97 and 2001 and even in 2005 to actually! The Tories had 161 seats in 97, 164 seats in 2001 and 199 seats in 2005 and then gained over a 100 seats in 2010.
If the Tories can make those kind of come backs in just 1 election then so can Labour. If things go belly up and or if the the Tories bribes turn out to be a load of hog wash, then it could well lead to a Labour victory in 2020 or earlier if Cameron loses the EU referendum.
The Tories only won because the public think things are slowly picking up but interest rates are still at 0.5% too. The way the Tories and their supporters are acting, anyone would think we had record GDP figures, no debt and everyone easily being able to afford the cost of living when many can't and can only get by because of the artificially low interest rates.
It's hard to know exactly why the Tories won but it's easy to see why Labour lost.
The lack of a message, wishy-washy policies, pledges rather than anything specific and a refusal to believe labour voters would vote UKIP.
Add on peoples belief that the economy would be far worse under labour and you soon realise the Labour election was in trouble (not to mention gimmicks like the EdStone and the tory press deciding that attacking Ed was better than writing news).
Labour are now in a hole and until they elect someone fresh with a ladder or spade, they're not getting out.
UKIP and the tories spin it otherwise, but the facts say it all:
Chris Evans – Islwyn
Ann Clwyd – Cynon valley
Wayne David – Caerphilly
Nia Griffith – Llanelli
Gerald Jones – Merthyr
Christina Rees – Neath
Jessica Morden – Newport
Paul Flynn – Newport East
Owen Smith – Pontypridd
Carolyn Harris – Swansea East
Geraint Davies – Swansea West
Nick Thomas-Symonds – Torfaen
In addition to what I've written already, other reasons why Labour lost was because the centre left vote is split so much into 5 or 6 different parties where Tories only have UKIP as a rival and UKIP deliberately courted Labour voters too because even though they won't admit it, they'd prefer a Tory Government to a Labour one.
The scaremongering on the SNP worked. UKIP gained a lot of Labour voters and cost Labour a lot of marginal seats and the SNP took 40 seats off Labour too. If none of that happened, it would have either been a hung parliament or Labour as the largest party.
With only 7 MP's needed to wipe out the Tories majority, they could easily fall apart. Zac Goldsmith has put the Tories on notice that he will quit his seat if the Tories expand Heathrow and I really can't see the anti EU MP's behaving themselves votes wise.
Whatever whatever though, if Labour lurch off back to the centre to the cost of their remaining core voters, they will dwindle as a party even more and will make it very easy for the Tories to stay in power by default just like now. Labour are better off sticking to their true convictions and waiting for their lost voters and swing voters to come back to them as and when the Tories mess up and then Labour should look after their core voters as the priority but do what they can for other voters in addition to that.
I knew Miliband's manifesto was too cautious too and Cameron imo went for bribes that are unlikely to be delivered but I don't think he cares as he's got what he wants and as long as he gets what he wants is all he cares about.
Labour politicians can't complain too much. Their own members warned them during their days in power about all the things they were doing wrong but it fell upon deaf ears. Though having said that, a lot of those Labour MP's are no longer on the scene.
Where Labour can feel hard done by is taking the flak for the banks crashing. Private companies crashing is not the fault of the Government and Tories will say Labour messed up in getting rid of the Bank Of England as the main regulator but the BOE was in charge of regulation when the BCCI bank crashed as well as Bareings bank and did the Tories kop the flack for that?
Those who can definitely feel hard done by is the remaining Labour core voters. They have been let down bigtime and are lumbered with the Tories through no fault of their own much.
I'm not pretending anything. In fact I'm not even a Labour party supporter and neither have I voted for them in my life.
Just observing the fact that the majority of Welsh Labour MPs are local representatives and not the 'parachuted elite' alluded to in the OP.
Please provide evidence to the contrary if you have it.
Yes that's true and the Labour party fought a core-vote offensive only, which was a grave mistake.
They saw a healthy lead in the polls at the start of the year and decided to coast it, assuming the collapsed LibDem vote would come their way, while UKIP splintered the Tory vote.
None of this happened.... a great lesson against complacency.
Wherever they make the family home now, one of the Kinnock's is going to have a long commute to work.
They probably are a bit too London centric. They also seem to be getting stick from people in the North of Engand for losing touch with their working class roots, if some of the interviews with people living there are anything to go by - hence the migration of labour votes to ukip in the North.
To many sneering (supposedly) superior intellectuals in the Labour party, dismissing ordinary people and their concerns as racists and bigots. They need to come back down to Earth and take a hard reality check.
If Labour got the 35% they probably would have either won the election or have been the largest party in a Hung Parliament. Its all very well saying "appeal to the aspirational" whatever and whoever they are but Labour were being responsible in what could be paid for and what couldn't. David Cameron offered up to 25 Billion in bribes that I doubt will be delivered and if it isn't, The Sun and The Mail are hardly likely to get on his case about it but if Labour did the same and didn't deliver, those newspapers wouldn't let them hear the end of it.
Having said that, as the Tories keep on winning elections by offering bribes galore since 1979 then Labour should do too but to their core voters first and foremost who on popular numbers outnumber the Tories but the centre left vote is split into different parties which is why the Tories won.
Also remember that the Tories got just under 37% of the vote, so there was nothing wrong with Labour trying to win on a 35% stratergy.
You're doing much the same here. There's a lot of the south of England that has very little to do with London, socially or economically - and you appear to be assuming that the UK consists of London and the north. Plenty of the south gets even more ignored than the north does (to the point where England's poorest county is deep in the south).
And we'd consider a Londoner parachuted down to one of our safe seats to be just as weird as if they did it in Manchester
I was just talking about labour moox. They aren't relevant really in the south / SW anymore.
He does indeed spring to mind, as does Chris Bryant for that matter.
Still, not quite seeing how that in any way repudiates my point:
Are you trying to say this is untrue?