The 2020 election will be fundamentally different to this one
If he’s true to his word, we won’t face David Cameron – rather an invigorated Johnson, May or Javid. We face a politically gerrymandered boundary review, ‘English Votes for English laws’, radically different public services and a government with a tiny majority that will increasingly abandon parliamentary accountability for the safety of executive fiat.
But two events in this parliament will be the most significant for our country and it’s place in the world for hundreds of years: the risk of leaving the EU; and of a second chance to break up our own 300-year-old union fuelled by Scottish but also English nationalism.
These things could shape the destinies and opportunities of the British people even more fundamentally than five years of Tory consolidation of power or brutalism in our economy.
Another related theme underpinning these events is the increasing ascendancy of selfish and fearful individualism – not just reflected in our increasingly fragmented and unequal society, but also in how we act as a country in the world. We could utterly fail to respond to the challenges of the world by leaving one union and breaking up another.
The rise of nationalist Russia, the chaos in the Middle East, climate change, unmanaged migration and the continued global economic shift to the east could change the prospects and opportunities for future generations of Britons – the list is endless. None are questions that are answered by turning in on ourselves and breaking apart. They are only answered by collective, progressive politics – a politics which believes we achieve more together than we achieve alone.
However much some colleagues on the Labour left might fantasise about a ‘common ground’ commitment to centre-left economic policies, we must not be fooled – the SNP remain committed to one goal only: independence. Their project is clear – and decisive – and is anathema to our own Labour vision.
For all the reasons we fought and won the referendum last year we cannot give up on our union. And equally we must avoid the easy response to the clever but irresponsible Tory (let alone UKIP) stoking up of English nationalism which ends in the conclusion: ‘just let the Scots go’.
Meanwhile leaving the EU – rather than seeking its radical reform – would have devastating consequences for jobs, on prospects for our young people and on our relationships with key partners in an uncertain world. At a time of increasing global instability and rapid economic shifts, we could within five years be a broken, irrelevant and marooned rump on the fringe. With our place in global trade and diplomacy no longer secure, let alone our armed forces slashed and our national confidence critically wounded, the consequences for the British people could not be more serious.
Much of the post-election debate will focus on errors in policy, message and organisation. But any candidate for the Labour leadership who is serious about putting Britain back on a progressive path cannot seek merely to imitate Tony Blair, nor to regurgitate and repackage an economic and political offer which large swathes of the electorate have brutally rejected.
Instead they need to tell us how they would lead and win through two referenda, cope with the aftermath and reverse the worrying individualistic and nationalist shift in attitudes corroding the heart of our country and it’s future prospects.
Our country and our party need strong leadership and a global vision for the imminent and brutal battles of the late 2010s – and the radically changed world of the 2020s – not the 1980s or 1990s. We need a bold leap to the future. And a decisive break with the past.
Stephen Doughty is Labour/Co-op MP for Cardiff South & Penarth. Follow him on Twitter
57 Responses to “Labour leadership: We need a bold leap to the future and a decisive break with the past”
David
What I said is:”The golden rule is when in Rome do as the Romans do. Otherwise you are just bad guests and that is all you will ever be.”
That in no way = eugenics. IF you immigrate to a country and you are still “from” where you were from originally why did you immigrate ?
Cultures whether you like it or not need communally shared values to a degree of the members of that culture Without the minimum amount. it will fall down.
Kind of like the old yakov Smirnoff joke
Right after He got his US citizenship he was asked how he felt. He replied “Mad Damn Mad” his friend who asked then Asked “Why are you mad Yokov?” Smirnoff answered “All these damn foreigners are coming here and taking all are good jobs”
AS I recall two out of three Muslims that immigrate to the US return to where they were form originally. That is the only group(last time I checked) that did that. But I suspect in Europe it is not the same. Muslims are more excepted here as are all foreigners provided the rule that How hard do you work? and what do you know? Are the most important questions.
I came across this article the other day
http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/05/07/muslim-leader-geller-should-be-tried-and-executed/
“Muslim Leader: Geller Should be Tried and Executed”
“HANNITY: You want her to die!
CHOUDARY: You know what? She should be put before a Sharia court and tried and…
HANNITY: She’s not a Muslim!
(CROSSTALK)
CHOUDARY: … of course, she will face capital punishment.
HANNITY: She’s not a Muslim, Anjem. She’s not a Muslim! She doesn’t believe what you believe.
CHOUDARY: She should have thought of that before…”
Now how can a society exist when some of its members don’t give a damn about the rules because of their ideology and are willing to kill people who disagree based on their foreign ideology?
That dog doesn’t hunt and never will.
But be my guest. Go ahead and tell me why someone has the right to make death threats (and to kill)against another person because of ideology? How is it that members of society should have to “justify their existence” to people that really have no concern for the society to which they have chosen to belong via immigration?
Leon Wolfeson
Yes, you just said that you’ll purge all other values from …heck, your *politics*.
This is not anti-immigration, it’s monoculturalism and worse.
You demand ONE type of values. You preach against the Other. You make up nonsense against Muslims. You try and use Choudary as an example of anything other than egregious extremism…
I don’t think you’re right to make death threats because of your ideology. And your nationality has nothing, nothing to do with that. But yet, you clearly justify YOUR words, and condemn Choudary purely on the basis of his religion (not origin, he’s British).
You are wrong, he is wrong. Neither you or he has mass support.
David
Yes, you just said that you’ll purge all other values from …heck, your *politics*.
I said no such thing. I said that the basic values of a society have to be shared. In democracy those are things like rule of law. I believe that the Quran says that Muslims should follow the laws of the country they are living in Most do But it does not take many who do not to have a devastating effect on any society. Therein lays the danger.
And do tell How is this right because of the desire for multiculturalism? ?http://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerscruton/2014/08/30/why-did-british-police-ignore-pakistani-gangs-raping-rotherham-children-political-correctness/
“A story of rampant child abuse—ignored and abetted by the police—is
emerging out of the British town of Rotherham. Until now, its scale and
scope would have been inconceivable in a civilized country. Its
origins, however, lie in something quite ordinary: what one Labour MP
called “not wanting to rock the multicultural community boat.””
Go on I want to hear how I am a bigot(good decision not to call me a “racist” after reading my posting history) for pointing this out?
Explain how because these guys were from a different cultural they had the right to rape children?
Let’s hear it!!
“You are wrong, he is wrong. Neither you or he has mass support.”
I am not wrong What is wrong is to immigrate to a different country without having any intention of trying to be part of the society that lives there.
And if you feel that Choudary has no mass support then how come ISIS and other radical Islamic terror groups exist? How come the London subway got bombed? How come the British solder was killed in the street? How come Charlie Hebdo has dead employees?
Someone is listening and giving support.
Leon Wolfeson
You are trying to backtrack. Saying you can’t tolerate i.e. Jews, because we don’t have many of the same basic values you do. And we do not.
You then highlight how you care about crime ONLY because of the identity of those committing a crime. You’re absolutely fine with crime committed by, oh, Christians, it’s clear. As you talk about your Monocult, your antipathy to any other ideology, let alone religion!
You keep claiming your calls for purges and pogroms are right, that YOU are magically better than Choudary, that YOUR love for extremism is a good thing. That your calls to parallel IS and terrorism are wonderful. You’d be happy if the subway bombers were White Brits doing it for nationalistic reasons, it’s clear, etc.
YOU support extremism, you’re just as bad as any other extremist. Your hate is the problem, the danger, and it supports other extremism to rise in response. Your type of ideology is why Jewish communities are retreating, and rapidly, from dealing with non-Jews, a disturbing trend but one which is about basic safety!
David
“You are trying to backtrack. Saying you can’t tolerate i.e. Jews”
EXCUSE ME I NEVER SAID ANYTHING ABOUT JEWS IN THIS CONVERSATION AND I HAVE NEVER SAID ANYTHIGN LIKE YOU ARE SUGGESTING I SAID IN THE ABOVE EVER !!!
“You keep claiming your calls for purges and pogroms are right”
AGAIN I NEVER SAID ANY SUCH THING LIAR
“YOU support extremism,”
NO I DON”T
“Oh right, because facts to you can be lies, because you say so.”
Yet you don’t even want to address the issue of multiculturalism when it turns out that is used to justify and allowing pedophiles to get away with raping children
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerscruton/2014/08/30/why-did-british-police-ignore-pakistani-gangs-raping-rotherham-children-political-correctness/
SO HOW EXTREME DOES THAT MAKE YOU ? SEEMS PRETTY DAMN EXTREME TO ME.