Current Affairs The Labour Party

[Bruce Wayne]

People have no guarantees things would be run better under a Corbyn government, but it appears you seem certain they would be ran terribly under a Corbyn government. Surely either both of these things can be true, or neither of them?

You look at the resumes of his shadow cabinet and I'm not sure you can really come to any other conclusion. I mean seriously, a defence minister whose only professional background was as a teacher? That's absurd.

 

[abelard]

The smarter people around Corbyn (which I fully accept may be a smaller sub section) are acutely aware that there is very little that could be changed in 5 years (relative to what the expectations will be). This will be the enormous sticking point of the Corbyn government, how this demoralism is both handled and framed.

If it is done properly it could represent a seismic shift with the politics that went before it. A kind of reverse 1979 (or a 1945 election) whereby a sharp change in direction was established and a new paradigm takes it's place. That is already starting to happen, though there is a certain polarisation in both directions. it's difficult to see the neoliberal consensus holding though.

For Corbyn the critical thing is not really the specificity of railways and their ownership, but rather does he make people who voted for him feel that society is becoming fairer, and that there is enough change to counter for the inevitable disappointments that will come alongside it.

Corbyn needs to select wisely which issues he makes a point of, to hopefully demonstrate to the wider public that bringing services under democratic control and reducing the amount of money lost to profit can actually provide a more efficient service, so there is an increasingly confident and strong grass roots call for more of it.

Bruce is waging war against figments of his own imagination. He thinks that on day one, a bunch of Momentum partisans with pitchforks will turn up on the platform to round up all the drivers and conductors, and commandeer the trains.

It is a product of the (deliberate) immaturity of this country's political press.

Instead (as has been pointed out on many occasions on this forum), the existing contracts will not be renewed when they expire, allowing for a gradual and orderly disinentanglement, and the eventual end of a disastrous ideologically-driven arrangement.

The LNER offers a perfect example (or 'experimentation on a small scale') of how the process could be administered effectively.

Also - don't mess with teachers. Võ Nguyên Giáp started out as a teacher, before the French executed his family and he took up arms, eventually besting the American military ; )

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Our system (for better or worse) doesn't operate on that basis though. It's not America where you find competent people in each area. The civil service effectively run each department. Most politicians have limited experience with overseeing budgets and projects that are required to run big departments. It may be a problem but it's not a problem unique to Labour or indeed to Corbyn.

The limitation on Corbyn's cabinet is not that they don't have direct influence in certain areas. It's a myth that getting a business man in to run business for the country works, or a teacher to run education, an NHS doctor to run the NHS etc. The limitation for Corbyns team is more that they lack the necessary political experience in how to navigate the civil service who de facto operate the minutiae of how these departments run. To me this is a far more logical position to take.

You can't have it both ways, can you? You either say that Simon Stevens runs the NHS and that the 5 year strategy documents that he's produced to oversee the NHS over the next few years are sacrosanct, in which case Labour policy on the NHS is largely irrelevant, or you say that Stevens doesn't run the NHS, and Ashworth, with his zero experience in healthcare, dictates the strategy instead.

 

[degsy]

As a student of law, without wanting to demonstrate any bias, the politicians held in highest regard throughout history - in the UK and USA have worked or studied Law.

Lincoln, Coolidge, Roosevelt (both of them), Lloyd George, Atlee...

And some of the worst.
Also depending on your view, Thatcher too.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Bruce is waging war against figments of his own imagination. He thinks that on day one, a bunch of Momentum partisans with pitchforks will turn up on the platform to round up all the drivers and conductors, and commandeer the trains.

It is a product of the (deliberate) immaturity of this country's political press.

Instead (as has been pointed out on many occasions on this forum), the existing contracts will not be renewed when they expire, allowing for a gradual and orderly disinentanglement, and the eventual end of a disastrous ideologically-driven arrangement.

The LNER offers a perfect example (or 'experimentation on a small scale') of how the process could be administered effectively.

Also - don't mess with teachers. Võ Nguyên Giáp started out as a teacher, before the French executed his family and he took up arms, eventually besting the American military ; )

I hope you're this smug in real life or it will be a tremendous let down should I ever have the pleasure of enjoying your company.

 

[catcherintherye]

You look at the resumes of his shadow cabinet and I'm not sure you can really come to any other conclusion. I mean seriously, a defence minister whose only professional background was as a teacher? That's absurd.

I am not sure I go along with the idea that because one cabinet post is filled with a woman who was a teacher (alongside a variety of other managerial positions in other areas) it would be absurd to take a view that anything other than imminent collapse would occur if Corbyn were elected.

Keir Starmer is widely accepted to be one of the leading solicitors in the UK. Both Abbott and Thornberry are also widely accepted as strong legal figures (yet many believe them to be poor at the job).

I would suggest what is closer to be being absurd is a fatalism that the work history of a single MP necessitates a dogmatic interpretation of how any particular government would fare. There's a real naivety in that world view.

 

[catcherintherye]

You can't have it both ways, can you? You either say that Simon Stevens runs the NHS and that the 5 year strategy documents that he's produced to oversee the NHS over the next few years are sacrosanct, in which case Labour policy on the NHS is largely irrelevant, or you say that Stevens doesn't run the NHS, and Ashworth, with his zero experience in healthcare, dictates the strategy instead.

Well the truth is we do have it both ways. Most policy decisions on most areas are a split between the government and it's manifesto refracted through the glass of professionals in the sector. In most areas there are severe disagreements on this (almost irrespective of who is in government).

How ambitious Labour wishes to be on restarting those strategic developments is up in the air. I have to say I hope they are radical, as I believe decisions over strategy should be taken by the electorate and that a vote for Labour would be quite a significant rupture with what had proceeded it, so to maintain democratic legitimacy the policies followed would be the ones outlined in the manifesto.

That being said, there always has to be a degree of pragmatism. The NHS does need more funding and if they believe it's just an issue of greater funds going into the system under the tutelage of Stevens then so be it. I can't say that's my view but it's not an illegitimate view.

Either way, the wider point wasn't really about the specificity of the NHS. It was that a decisive vote for Labour could mark a longer term shift towards a different societal approach that would impact on all areas, in much the same way 1945 & 1979 did.

 

[degsy]

I'm taking a punt on this, but weren't the Railways nationalised because the private companies running them made such a hash of it, mainly on the safety side.
Strict operational rules were laid down, we get the original term 'Work to Rule' from this.
Again with the punt, but the need for accurate train times led to the standardisation of the various local times to one national time??

 

[zzr45]

I'm taking a punt on this, but weren't the Railways nationalised because the private companies running them made such a hash of it, mainly on the safety side.
Strict operational rules were laid down, we get the original term 'Work to Rule' from this.
Again with the punt, but the need for accurate train times led to the standardisation of the various local times to one national time??

Yeah the expansion of the rail network led to a more standard country wide time, before that their could be small discrepancies in the time between communities based on when the sunset etc.

 

[abelard]

lol I hope you're this smug in real life or it will be a tremendous let down should I ever have the pleasure of enjoying your company.

aw... too much?

In any case, you are imposing a standard that you yourself couldn't remotely hope to follow.

You couldn't possibly know what the Lib Dems or CUK would do regarding transit (not least because they will both desperately refuse to tell you), but you'll happily vote for their 'responsibility' and 'competence' brand just the same ; )

 

[degsy]

You look at the resumes of his shadow cabinet and I'm not sure you can really come to any other conclusion. I mean seriously, a defence minister whose only professional background was as a teacher? That's absurd.

Anybody checked the resumes of this or previous other Governments for proper job related skills??

 

[orchard]

Anybody checked the resumes of this or previous other Governments for proper job related skills??

It's in the hats and tailoring.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

aw... too much?

In any case, you are imposing a standard that you yourself couldn't remotely hope to follow.

You couldn't possibly know what the Lib Dems or CUK would do regarding transit (not least because they will both desperately refuse to tell you), but you'll happily vote for their 'responsibility' and 'competence' brand just the same ; )

I haven't decided who to vote for, not least because there is so little to actually vote for. Even in the European elections I couldn't tell you what any local candidates (of any stripe) actually plan on doing. I wouldn't say that the political class as a whole have painted themselves especially well in the last few years.

I wouldn't regard either the Lib Dems or CUK as competent. I've spoken to Jo Swinson a number of times, and she's genuinely lovely, but not someone I'd ever regard as prime minister material, although as the likes of Arden has shown, being a reasonably nice human being is not a bad start point, albeit it's perhaps not a start point that many of our leaders have not begun from over the years.

 

[degsy]

It's in the hats and tailoring.

Glad they're well dressed then, bound to be decent chaps and thus should run the Country

 

[Jebus_lives]

And some of the worst.
Also depending on your view, Thatcher too.

Thatcher was a chemist.