#42

Afraid not:

#43

Aye. Ultimately Corbyn has to find a way to win trust on the economy in particular. Some of the smaller policies can actually help with this - Rather than continue spunking £27bn and increasing every year on housing benefit, it actually makes sense to borrow some cash, and invest in housing (ideally social housing) so we can get that bill down long term. Likewise on keeping profit making services inside the public sector - financially alone it simply doesn’t make sense to sell off the Land Registry, Ordnance Survey etc when they contribute to the exchequer. The only reason to sell them is to get a one-off boost to make it look like the budget deficit is decreasing faster than it actually is.

Small beans perhaps in the grand scheme of a £780bn budget, but those are the kinds of seeds that might be able to sow a perception of competence and financial literacy if nurtured properly, particular if the economic costs of May’s chosen approach to Brexit can start to be emphasised too.

Even so, the whole thing is still difficult-difficult-lemon-difficult for not just Corbyn, but Labour as a whole to solve.

#44

I should have said fifteen years ago.

#45

Harking back to when it was just the 3rd most important issue then?

Anyway - you’re correct that the 90s was a bit of a dormant time for concerns about immigration and they’ve shot up the list in a remarkable fashion. But the idea that this is a) because it was influenced chiefly by the media/UKIP or b) comparable to renationalising railways just doesn’t make sense. These things all exist in a cycle of importance at different times.

#46

Yeah I didn’t add a paragraph that I was meant to which said that these challenges facing Corbyn, although different, are of similar levels of greatness to those facing ‘the moderates’ or whatever. And all linking back to the point about how the centre-left responds to the particular political challenges of today etc. etc.

#47

I think the biggest irony of the whole of the last 13 months or so of civil war is that most of the challenges facing Corbyn and the moderates are actually the same at their core, they’ve just got different flaws in their approaches to addressing them. The whole thing can basically be boiled down to groups of people shouting at each other about the the best way to put out a fire while the house burns down because they’re too engrosed in the argument to put any water on it…

1 Like
#48

Yeah. Although my feeling on this analogy is that the moderates will at least stop the gaff burning down as badly, I suppose. How inspiring.

Although I’ve linked to this piece about a million times, I shall link to it again because it’s probably the most perceptive on the issue I’ve read https://www.ft.com/content/427cd7de-6dcb-11e6-a0c9-1365ce54b926

#49

Yeah and migration’s never going to get much traction in a time of booming economy and low unemployment.

#50

Yep. Although I can’t be bothered to look for another graph that ‘concerns about immigration’ trendline seems remarkably similar to the ‘net migration in the UK’ trendline over the similar timeframe (as in the line moves up quite sharply during the 2000s).

#51

I knew this’d somehow be Corbyn’s fault.

#52

We’ll be having by-election soon as our local (Caterham Valley) councillor resigned on Monday for family reasons. Our area has been Lib dem for 16 years but she only beat the Tories by 24 votes last time. Hopefully it won’t go to them.

There are rumours a local residents group will run. In nearby Oxted a residents group ousted the Tories last time. Plus Caterham in the hill are also having a by-election as the Conversative councillor quit to join a residents group.

So three adjoining areas could has resident councilllors soon.

#53

A Lib Dem recovery in seats with this profile is the best possible news for Labour/Corbyn.

1 Like
#54

This is basically a non news story, just the lib dems and ukip wasting a load of money trying to win a seat in a place so comfortably upper class it’s ridiculous

#55

Pretty hilarious that anyone would argue that ‘concerns about immigration’ haven’t shot up largely as a result of the media behaviour and giving UKIP disproportionate coverage.

There is no way that the country wouldn’t have voted for an economy-shafting measure such as Brexit without the relentless anti-immigrant scaremongering of the press and a Coalition/Conservative government condoning it while they enacted targeted austerity on the disadvantaged.

It’s really not beyond the wit of man to see that transport should become one of the major issues of public concern, alongside those of irresponsible privatisation, spivvish profiteering, asset-selling, carpetbagging - all of which feed into the renationalisation narrative - and there’s more common ground there between Labour and the population than there is with the Conservative’s position.

#56

LOL. The ‘moderates’ would pour slightly less petrol on the fire and tell the owners that their next door neighbours turned off the water.

#57

I’m already wishing I hadn’t added an analogy to this thread.

#58

Wishing I hadn’t started this thread

2 Likes
#59

Media behaviour is a strong contributor. Of course it is. I would never say otherwise. “Largely as a result of” - that’s where I disagree. It’s more complex than that.

I agree - same as above. The press contributing to something is very different to the press leading/creating something.

It’s not. But it won’t. Just one of those things. I’d probably put it quite high on my list of political priorities myself mind.

#60

You genuinely don’t think that anti-immigrant feeling in areas with the lowest immigration, where anti-immgration and pro-Brexit feeling is strongest, where newspaper readership is highest, and where people have the lowest personal experience of immigration, is led by the sentiment and campaigning of the right-wing media?

#61

And how much of the UK demographically accords to that remarkably convenient description?

To answer - there probably are a notable number of people whose anti-immigration views are shaped almost exclusively by what they read/see in mainstream media. Does it tell the whole story? No.

We’ve been arguing on this point for years now. Literally years.