Answer these and you might yet win us over
With the Labour leadership contest getting into full swing, we all want to hear what the contenders have to say about where Labour went wrong and how it can do better. Receiving satisfactory answers means asking the right questions. What the Americans call ‘softball questions’ just won’t cut it.
With that in mind, here are some of ours:
Do you oppose the current government’s spending cuts?
Arguments over whether the previous Labour government spent too much may seem pertinent now, but by 2020 they will be largely academic. The Tories didn’t fight the 2005 election on Black Wednesday and nor will Labour contest the 2020 election on the 2008 financial crash. More pressing are the cuts coming in this parliament – cuts being pushed through for the purpose of creating an unnecessary budget surplus by the next General Election.
Whatever ‘tough decisions’ you think any government would have to make on spending, do you oppose the level of the Conservative cuts about to come?
Does the Labour party accept the principle of the free movement of labour?
A great deal of hot air is expounded on immigration by politicians who repeatedly talk about Labour must ‘addressing voters’ concerns about immigration’. This is too ambiguous, for surely there are a broad range of concerns – some perfectly reasonable and others frankly unpalatable.
A good starting point would be to know whether the potential leadership candidates accept the principle of free movement within the European Union. If yes, then we should be honest about the fact and move on to dealing with some of the local impacts of migration.
In many ways honesty about free movement is the prerequisite for trust on issues around integration and the welfare state. Otherwise we end up mired in discussions about net migration, something which (if you accept free movement within the EU) is largely beyond the control of politicians.
If you don’t accept the principle of free movement, how are you planning to negotiate British withdrawal from that covenant at European level? And what if Europe says no? Would that mean leaving the EU?
What’s the best way to tackle Britain’s poor level of social mobility?
“In every single sphere of British influence, the upper echelons of power…are held overwhelmingly by the privately educated or the affluent middle class.”
Those weren’t the words of the late Tony Benn or Dennis Skinner, but of former Conservative prime minister Sir John Major, that well known scourge of capitalism and tribune of the working class.
Elitism in Britain is now so pronounced that the coalition government’s own social mobility commission has compared it to “social engineering” in favour of the rich. Just 7 per cent of Britons are privately educated yet, according to a government report published in August, 33 per cent of MPs, 71 per cent of senior judges and 44 per cent of people on the Sunday Times Rich List went to fee-paying schools. Of the rich countries listed by the OECD, the three in which men’s earnings are most likely to resemble their fathers’ are the UK, Italy and the US – in that order.
What’s the first step in righting this wrong and stopping Britain throwing away so much working class talent?
What will you offer to working class voters who have abandoned Labour?
It isn’t only middle class families who ‘aspire’ for something better; working class households do too. Increasingly Labour is failing to connect with this section of the electorate, no doubt in part because it previously took it for granted. The question now is how to reconnect and win it back.
One of the big issues working class communities face is insecurity – be that economic insecurity or cultural insecurity around the sheer pace of change immigration brings with it.
That raises two questions: What sort of pro-worker policies should Labour embrace to reconnect with the aspirational working class? And how can free movement of labour benefit communities who currently only see it through the prism of cheap unskilled labour and neighbours who don’t speak English?
Migration is good for British GDP; how then can we ensure that neglected communities see more of the financial and cultural benefits of immigration?
Are property taxes such as the mansion tax really ‘anti-aspirational’?
Since the devastating General Election defeat just over a week ago, there has been a surge of people trying to distance themselves from policies which until recently they appeared to endorse. Listening to most pundits today, Ed Miliband got everything wrong.
A great deal of the criticism levelled at the former Labour leader is that his policies were ‘anti-aspiration’. Labour leadership contenders Tristram Hunt and Andy Burnham have already slammed Miliband’s proposed mansion tax, with the latter calling it – yes, you guessed it – ‘anti-aspiration’.
But is this really true? House prices in London increased by almost 20 per cent last year. If the value of assets is increasing more rapidly than the value of wages, it’s better to tax the assets, is it not? Those fortunate enough to be beneficiaries of Britain’s crazy house price inflation ought surely to pay their fair share, no?
On the left we mustn’t be pushed into a corner where we say that the only way to raise revenue is to make bigger and bigger spending cuts. A property millionaire is now created in Britain every seven minutes, mainly in London. A small tax on properties worth over £2 million pounds is a reasonable ask – or better, a rebanding of the council tax rates to make sure those with the most are paying more than their middle class counterparts. Wouldn’t you agree?
James Bloodworth is the editor of Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter
47 Responses to “Five questions for the Labour leadership candidates”
stevep
The problem is that “Careerists”, whether in industry, civil service or politics, often put their careers first and other considerations such as loyalty, service, other people with other aspirations and even their own families second. Aspiration has come to mean the climb up the greasy pole. As for choosing a new Labour leader, although it won`t happen, they could do worse than keeping Harriet Harmon as leader. She has stayed the course and the speech she has just delivered about how Labour must listen to people and learn from them has gone down well with me.
Torybushhug
Even if the system is tightened it will make no difference, the tidal wave of immigration will continue and this means empowers and member of the public requiring a gardener / plasterer can pay less than would otherwise be the case. Employers have no desire to take on trainees in the presence of a mass influx of workers.
We cannot hope to build enough homes, and even if we build many more, this new shiny resource will simply act as an even greater migrant magnet.
In the end we have to shut the border.
It is immoral for us to go along with taking very valuable health workers from vulnerable developing nations anyway. We ought to be encouraging nurse not to come / to return home.
stevep
Yes, you are absolutely correct. but if you wish to build a fair and decent society, whatever that means to you, you have to start somewhere, because such a society doesn`t currently exist in the UK. A wider debate than currently exists is part of the process. If that includes abstract or unfashionable thoughts or concepts, then so be it. I too have benefited from cheap foreign labour, Hands up anyone who has recently purchased consumer goods such as televisions not made in the far east. Over the years I have benefited from Conservative policies in government and been disadvantaged by Labour governments and vice-versa but that doesn`t mean there isn`t room for improvement. Yes, we need to have an uncomfortable conversation, with not only the left, but ourselves:
Are we happy with the society we currently live and work in?
Do we actually want a better, fairer society?
Would we be prepared to stand up for what we believe in to create a better society?
Why aren`t we doing it?
Torybushhug
Us Brits are past masters when it comes to lip service.
Tony Ben virtue signalled all his life, what with his re-distribution narrative only to then place millions of his wealth in trust for his kids (fck the poor) in 2000 and still leave £5m more to his kids on death.
Countless examples of this from pious lefties.
WHY DOES THIS MATTER?
Well consider the fact a fat cat Banker / baby eating Tory is what it says on the tin. He does not preach one thing and do another. He likes accumulating wealth.
On the other hand your pious all knowing lefty millionaires (Ben, Brand, Coogan, Robinson, Elton – the list is long) and wealthy elites (all those left wing academics and professors with £2m Cambridge homes and fat pensions etc) are CHARLATANS.
They paint themselves as slightly Saintly but ACT like the fat cat Tories accumulating wealth.
Which is worse the lefty charlatan or the Tory that admits to enjoying their wealth?
In summary we on the right do not trust those on the left truly have a better vision for the poor and society. All you have is a flimsy narrative that disguises your personal greed. Self loathing really.
If any of you truly believed in your manufactured self portrayal we would see you giving away a truly meaningful share of your wealth. None of you do. The obituaries give away the game, even duffle coat wearing Donald Dewar died a multi millionaire. It’s all a façade to hide your true selves.
Instead of talking, pay more tax voluntarily, but oh no, Brand and others dress this up as merely a futile gesture and thus get to hoard their wealth.
We wont listen to you as long as you are hypocritical to such an extent.
stevep
It is wonderful that you are contributing to the debate about creating a better society, even it is a stream of invective. At least you have something to say.
Yes, you are right about millionaire socialists, but equally there are dirt-poor voters whom, for whatever reason, choose conservatism at every election. Politics is tribal to a certain degree and if given thought, shouldn`t be.
Richard Nixon supposedly said, when staring at a portrait of JF Kennedy: “When America looks at you it sees what it wants to be, when it looks at me, it sees what it is”.
Do you see yourself as the lower part of human nature which concentrates it`s efforts on self-survival, to the denigration of others, or do you see yourself as the higher part of human nature which seeks better things and instinctively understands that in order to achieve this we must all help each other? If the latter, then it might just influence your political thinking.