Blair & Brown: The New Labour Revolution

JackG said:
We had one. It wasn't.
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Jack - I meant more than a Cameron coalition government. Brown is on record saying cuts had to be made but Labour wouldn't have been as brutal as Osborne. Tory Austerity achieved nothing but make those worse off even more worse off. It creates the conditions for Brexit.

It's funny watching Johnson's lot now banging on about wage growth. It was that lot who created the conditions for low wage increases. From 2008 normal public sector workers haven't had much of an increase compared to inflation.

I know people who in 2008 took 10% salary cuts instead of redundancy. Their salary never returned to pre-2008 levels.
 
BlindBoyGrunt said:
I don't hold Brown completely to blame for 2010 by the way. I thought that between 2008 and 2010 the Labour party as a whole just laid down and accepted all of the blame for the financial crash. It was not their fault but they showed absolutely no inclination to fight their corner. Brown was actually lauded in the rest of the world for showing the way out of the crisis. I liked him.
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Exactly right. Labour have bizarrely never attempted to fight that. The conditions for greedy bankers were created by Thatcher and not even Blair dared take the City on. It was a house of cards and would have crashed regardless of who was in government.
 
I’ve binged the whole series.
I’m off work sick and incredibly bored.

Struck me in the first episode that Labour under Foot is just like Labour under Corbyn and Labour under Kinnock is just like Labour under Starmer.

also how much of a presidential campaign Blair ran and won in 1997.

Had forgotten how toxic the Iraq war was. And how it completely overshadowed all the good Blair did.

It’s such a shame the Labour Party are a completely useless opposition now. Voted Labour all my life but they lost me years ago (and not to the Tories before anyone starts)
 
Tony Blair did a deal with Murdoch. Every other Labour leader has been pilloried by the media. Massive, massive factor.

I was on the streets at the last election, lots of people were saying they usually vote Labour but wouldn’t vote Corbyn. I heard this a few times so asked them why. Nobody at all had an answer, other than “I dunno”.
 
Markburke said:
Tony Blair did a deal with Murdoch. Every other Labour leader has been pilloried by the media. Massive, massive factor.

I was on the streets at the last election, lots of people were saying they usually vote Labour but wouldn’t vote Corbyn. I heard this a few times so asked them why. Nobody at all had an answer, other than “I dunno”.
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Shame you didn’t bump into me I’d have told you why I wouldn’t and couldn’t vote for him.
But then I live in one of the safest Conservative seats in the entire country. Only canvassing we get round here is the incumbent MP standing on the high street for half an hour one morning during the campaign just so we remember what he looks like. Our Labour candidate in 2019 was jettisoned in from 100 miles away at the last minute, when the local councillor who was originally going to stand accidentally liked an anti Semitic post on Facebook….
 
New Labour Government was a Golden Age of increased investment in schools & health with a booming economy. Then 3 RW clowns from America ruined it
 
Labour as I wrote earlier should have regulated the financial sector more in 1997-2008 period, so the City gamblers (big Banks) had to pay their own bills rather the the UK Government pick up the tab. They knew the UK Government would bail them out if their bets lost. I think Blair would get again in fact I would say his politics and not a long way from Boris Johnson both seem to getting close to the Centre.

I would have given Corbyn a chance, but most Labour MPs did not support him (to me unfair) and the public picked this up (non support from over 50% of Labour MPs). Corbyn's past was a negative too - he admitted himself he quite liked far left Governments overseas and that loses you a lot of the moderate vote which you need to win an election. He had always been in the background and again that can make people suspicious of abilities to run a government. I liked how Corbyn was not priviledged, was not selfish or greedy, generally did not hide from what he believed in. At times he had few supporters in politcis and the media but did not crack.
 
Aet290204 said:
Shame you didn’t bump into me I’d have told you why I wouldn’t and couldn’t vote for him.
But then I live in one of the safest Conservative seats in the entire country. Only canvassing we get round here is the incumbent MP standing on the high street for half an hour one morning during the campaign just so we remember what he looks like. Our Labour candidate in 2019 was jettisoned in from 100 miles away at the last minute, when the local councillor who was originally going to stand accidentally liked an anti Semitic post on Facebook….
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Hi Aet,

I have no problem with anyone voting for anyone they want, that’s democracy and long may it be cherished.

just found from the evidence in front of me that everyone I asked didn’t know why they were anti corbyn. What was a huge shame was that no one had read the manifesto of any party. It’s like buying a house without reading a surveyors report.
 
Aet290204 said:
I’ve binged the whole series.
I’m off work sick and incredibly bored.

Struck me in the first episode that Labour under Foot is just like Labour under Corbyn and Labour under Kinnock is just like Labour under Starmer.

also how much of a presidential campaign Blair ran and won in 1997.

Had forgotten how toxic the Iraq war was. And how it completely overshadowed all the good Blair did.

It’s such a shame the Labour Party are a completely useless opposition now. Voted Labour all my life but they lost me years ago (and not to the Tories before anyone starts)
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That sums up how it feels to me too. I don't personally disagree with a lot of the Corbyn economic agenda, his naivety over foreign policy always irritated me, but at the end of the day Labour achieves nothing in opposition and the only way to win elections in our system is by gaining marginal seats. You gain those seats by attracting floating voters.....Corbyn couldn't do that, yes he energised radicals who might have been previously disengaged but the demographics of that don't add up to victory in our system. I always look back to 2015, which was closer in terms of vote percentage than seats won, a lot of this was down to the Tory resources (illegally) going to key marginals.
 
Just finished watching it. Thought it was very interesting stuff.
Can’t help but feel that poor old Gordon got a bum deal, and bum luck!
I reckon if you were to ask the public who is the worst PM of recent times, he’d possibly come back as top answer even above Cameron, Johnson and May, which is just astounding. Especially given what he did regarding the financial crisis, which was basically leading the world through it.
 
Just finished watching this, it's a great documentary. It also shows how weak the government politicians of today are compared with many from that time. Gordon Brown was a proper politician and it's shocking how Britain has managed to elect an absolute chancer in Johnson. It's a shame on anyone who voted for that cretin.

Edit; Tony Blair was also a proper politician.
 
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Nero said:
Just finished watching this, it's a great documentary. It also shows how weak the government politicians of today are compared with many from that time. Gordon Brown was a proper politician and it's shocking how Britain has managed to elect an absolute chancer in Johnson. It's a shame on anyone who voted for that cretin.

Edit; Tony Blair was also a proper politician.
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If they decided to come back in I reckon either Blair or Brown could easily become PM again.

Johnson is a funny guy but that wears off and the Tories don't really have anyone else.

The **** stuff Blair and Brown did was stuff the Tories would've done, possibly worse.
 
Some the seats Labour lost in the NE were unbelieveable. Some good MPs too. I think a ot of the general public thought Labour was trying to over turn the 2016 referendum - hence they did well in London even in 2019. The won Putney from the Conservatives, a middle class seat, but lost Redcar which was over 90% working class with probably some of the most deprived wards in the UK and possibly in Europe.
 
Unravel_Morrison said:
If they decided to come back in I reckon either Blair or Brown could easily become PM again.

Johnson is a funny guy but that wears off and the Tories don't really have anyone else.

The **** stuff Blair and Brown did was stuff the Tories would've done, possibly worse.
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Hague and Duncan-Smith, I thought were a bit weak as leader material. Cameron was a tougher opponent and Johnson. Maybe its the Etonian education.
 
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I was at the 2004 Labour Conference when Bono called them the Lennon and McCartney of global development.....besides that it was actually an excellent speech
 
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