I wonder if, despite your excellent contacts, you are not underestimating the Labour Party’s ability to think through at least the outline of what they are going to do about the unholy mess they will inherit. The disastrous state of social security, health, prisons, and of all the other areas of social policy you enumerate is hardly hidden from sight. I think the “iron discipline to get elected” is so overwhelmingly important to the leadership that they have gone overboard in hiding any hint of their thinking if it involves money. You can see why, when every interview e.g. with the BBC is focussed entirely on “how will you do this without spending any money?” and seldom if ever on why it is so desperately needed in the first place. All that said, there are going to be legions of disappointed people around in the first one-two years of a Labour Government so they will need every single seat they can get. That is another reason for the “iron discipline”.
I think you describe the Labour situation really well. Provide policies and get them ripped to shreds by the gutter press or maybe copied by the Govt, or say nothing and rely on being less rubbish than the self-destructing Government but without really inspiring anyone. I think we will see some more, fairly safe, policies emerge as we have seen with house building, but otherwise discipline all the way! It is actually quite admirable in a really stubborn sort of way. I think the whole thing is really exacerbated by the unusually long time between the Govt becoming dead ducks and the actual election.
Do you ever find yourself worrying that it’s going to take things getting even worse for political parties & whoever’s in government to finally do big things they need to do.... you know, hitting rock bottom as the only galvanising force?
You are absolutely correct that the British State needs a radical overhaul. Also that the way in which our Parties are organized is part of the problem. Can you suggest ways in which the Universities can be brought into the picture? Their development has been warped by the hypercentralization and pseudo corporate ideology of the Thatcher -Blair years, Their survival owes much to entrepreneurship and regional roots unrecognized by the British State, but certainly recognized in Brussels and my side of the Atlantic. After all a healthy global-facing university sector is central to the survival of the UK as a middle-weight entity. Or will such an endeavor be for ever blighted by shallow populism.
I wonder if, despite your excellent contacts, you are not underestimating the Labour Party’s ability to think through at least the outline of what they are going to do about the unholy mess they will inherit. The disastrous state of social security, health, prisons, and of all the other areas of social policy you enumerate is hardly hidden from sight. I think the “iron discipline to get elected” is so overwhelmingly important to the leadership that they have gone overboard in hiding any hint of their thinking if it involves money. You can see why, when every interview e.g. with the BBC is focussed entirely on “how will you do this without spending any money?” and seldom if ever on why it is so desperately needed in the first place. All that said, there are going to be legions of disappointed people around in the first one-two years of a Labour Government so they will need every single seat they can get. That is another reason for the “iron discipline”.
I think you describe the Labour situation really well. Provide policies and get them ripped to shreds by the gutter press or maybe copied by the Govt, or say nothing and rely on being less rubbish than the self-destructing Government but without really inspiring anyone. I think we will see some more, fairly safe, policies emerge as we have seen with house building, but otherwise discipline all the way! It is actually quite admirable in a really stubborn sort of way. I think the whole thing is really exacerbated by the unusually long time between the Govt becoming dead ducks and the actual election.
Do you ever find yourself worrying that it’s going to take things getting even worse for political parties & whoever’s in government to finally do big things they need to do.... you know, hitting rock bottom as the only galvanising force?
You are absolutely correct that the British State needs a radical overhaul. Also that the way in which our Parties are organized is part of the problem. Can you suggest ways in which the Universities can be brought into the picture? Their development has been warped by the hypercentralization and pseudo corporate ideology of the Thatcher -Blair years, Their survival owes much to entrepreneurship and regional roots unrecognized by the British State, but certainly recognized in Brussels and my side of the Atlantic. After all a healthy global-facing university sector is central to the survival of the UK as a middle-weight entity. Or will such an endeavor be for ever blighted by shallow populism.