The Labour Party under Andy Burnham

[edwin_m]

Figures from 2019 suggest that only 79% of the British workforce earn less than £30k pa. I think you'd struggle to convince anyone in that 79% that they are "middle-income middle class". So who represents them? It certainly isn't the Tories, Labour don't appear to be successfully representing anyone right now, the Lib Dems are still licking their wounds from the coalition days and most people probably think the Greens just want to ban cars and force everyone to become vegan.

That's the chunk of the electorate that feels the most ignored, forgotten about or crapped on. "We're helping the poorest people" lines from government almost always refers to people who are out of work, or working only part-time, and receiving some sort of benefits.

The current government has raised the minimum wage (which tends to push upwards wages for people above that level too) and is just passing a Bill to improve workers' rights. So they are actually doing quite a bit for this group. But unfortunately instead of talking about it they keep going on about asylum and other issues where they will lose more moderate voters in the process of failing to outcompete Farage. This is a trumpet they really should be blowing.

 

[Lewisham2221]

The current government has raised the minimum wage (which tends to push upwards wages for people above that level too) and is just passing a Bill to improve workers' rights. So they are actually doing quite a bit for this group. But unfortunately instead of talking about it they keep going on about asylum and other issues where they will lose more moderate voters in the process of failing to outcompete Farage. This is a trumpet they really should be blowing.

Every government raises the minimum wage, pretty much every year. Pretending that's a uniquely Labour policy for the working class is just wrong.

Totally agree on the point that they should be blowing the trumpet, loudly, about everything positive they're doing.

 

[Topological]

The current government has raised the minimum wage (which tends to push upwards wages for people above that level too) and is just passing a Bill to improve workers' rights. So they are actually doing quite a bit for this group. But unfortunately instead of talking about it they keep going on about asylum and other issues where they will lose more moderate voters in the process of failing to outcompete Farage. This is a trumpet they really should be blowing.

Fully agree.

I don't want either policy, but at least they are Labour policies. (I do not plan to get into why I do not want them, I will leave that for others)

The problem is that Labour are so bad at explaining what they do well that the boats will need a direct visible answer.

The other issue is that inequalities are deepening everywhere. Recent research from my place (The University of Manchester) points to the imbalance of "Levelling Up" funding against the South: https://www.manchester.ac.uk/about/news/levelling-up-left-many-southern-areas-behind/

Communities in the South of England were systematically underfunded in the government’s flagship ‘Levelling Up’ programme, according to new research using a Community Resilience Index (CRI) developed at The University of Manchester.

The study, published in Contemporary Social Science, analysed how £8.64 billion of Levelling Up funding was distributed across 307 local authority districts in England. Using a new Community Resilience Index (CRI) to measure need, researchers discovered that while many northern and coastal areas received more than their “fair share” of investment, the South of England was consistently underfunded.

The findings challenge the dominant narrative of a simple “north-south divide” and reveal that southern communities - particularly in inland areas - were frequently left behind in funding allocations.

Only 36.2% of local authorities received support proportionate to their need - the research shows that 30% of Levelling Up funding would have needed to be reallocated to ensure an equitable distribution across the country

 

[Richard Scott]

Many of the industries had died long before the 2000s. Thatcher killed off the mining industry but the real damage to heavy industry was done in the period 1990-1997. The damage had largely been done by the time Blair took charge.

You mention the automotive industry. Ford stopped making cars at their Dagenham plant in 2002, before the EU expanded, and manufacture was moved to Spain. But it had stopped making everything except the Fiesta there as long ago as 1990. You see similar with Leyland Bus, Volvo closing both plants in the mid-90s. By the time Labour were in charge, nearly everything had gone.

Nearly everything had gone, really? UK is still has a large amount of manufacturing. Companies like Rolls Royce producing high value aero engines.
The two that you state, Dagenham was a shadow well before 1990s and Rover producing vastly more cars at Longbridge, which shut down whilst Labour were in power. Volvo shut down Leyland bus as Olympian was a step entrance bus and low floors were taking over. Dennis had cornered the double deck market with the Trident and had runaway success with the Dart as a small single decker, all produced in the UK. Dennis was hardly even a bit player in 1980s but read the market correctly so can't blame any government for these two.
The current government have an obsession with electric vehicles opening the door to Chinese manufacturers, and no regard to our own industry, with grants for said vehicles. Up to 35% of bus sales are now Chinese built, that really helps our manufacturing.

 

[jon0844]

We should be investing in facilities to make batteries and electric vehicles here. They are here to stay.

 

[Richard Scott]

We should be investing in facilities to make batteries and electric vehicles here. They are here to stay.

Not disagreeing they are here to stay and definitely agree we should invest in facilities here but inept government can't see it.

 

[ainsworth74]

Nearly everything had gone, really? UK is still has a large amount of manufacturing. Companies like Rolls Royce producing high value aero engines.

I think the critical difference, and you allude to it with your example actually, is that the UK still has a lot of high value manufacturing but we do not have a lot of manufacturing which employs a lot of people any more.

We might make jet engines which go into hundreds of aircraft but we don't employ many people to do it. Rolls Royce has something like 20,000 UK based workers and they no doubt add massive amount of value to the UK economy as do I'm sure the employees in the supply chain that work to supply Rolls Royce with widgets and gizmos to go in their engines.

Nissan is another example up in Sunderland. They make something like 300,000 cars per year a vast number of vehicles. But they only employ around 6,000 people to do it. Considering how many people used to be employed by shipyards, steel works, chemical plants, factories in that part of the world 6,000 good well paying jobs are welcome but the number of jobs lost is far higher than those gained even though the value Nissan adds to the UK economy is no doubt massive.

Its unarguable that the number of people employed in manufacturing has fallen substantially since say the late 1970s and in many places that has left a desserts where there just aren't more than a handful of those types of jobs left where once upon a time there were jobs in their thousands. Even though, yes, manufacturing contribution to the UK economy in terms of value of its products remains substantial possibly even higher than in the days of "workshop of the world".

And that's the real problem. Not that we don't make stuff, we do, lots of it(!), but that we don't employ anywhere near as many people as we used to to make that stuff and often the jobs that are left are not spread around and are clustered.

 

[Richard Scott]

I think the critical difference, and you allude to it with your example actually, is that the UK still has a lot of high value manufacturing but we do not have a lot of manufacturing which employs a lot of people any more.

We might make jet engines which go into hundreds of aircraft but we don't employ many people to do it. Rolls Royce has something like 20,000 UK based workers and they no doubt add massive amount of value to the UK economy as do I'm sure the employees in the supply chain that work to supply Rolls Royce with widgets and gizmos to go in their engines.

Nissan is another example up in Sunderland. They make something like 300,000 cars per year a vast number of vehicles. But they only employ around 6,000 people to do it. Considering how many people used to be employed by shipyards, steel works, chemical plants, factories in that part of the world 6,000 good well paying jobs are welcome but the number of jobs lost is far higher than those gained even though the value Nissan adds to the UK economy is no doubt massive.

Its unarguable that the number of people employed in manufacturing has fallen substantially since say the late 1970s and in many places that has left a desserts where there just aren't more than a handful of those types of jobs left where once upon a time there were jobs in their thousands. Even though, yes, manufacturing contribution to the UK economy in terms of value of its products remains substantial possibly even higher than in the days of "workshop of the world".

And that's the real problem. Not that we don't make stuff, we do, lots of it(!), but that we don't employ anywhere near as many people as we used to to make that stuff and often the jobs that are left are not spread around and are clustered.

To be honest expect most manufacturing in majority of countries is highly automated and employs far fewer people than it used to?
Lots of industries want to reduce labour costs hence many things now done on line rather than getting a human to do it? Banking, holidays, travel tickets plus many other examples.

 

[ainsworth74]

To be honest expect most manufacturing in majority of countries is highly automated and employs far fewer people than it used to?

Well yes which is why we're seeing lots of similar issues across the western industrialised world at the same time. But I'm not convinced it's a satisfactory solution to just say "Oh well, that's the way the world is moving. Better luck next time!" at least not if we would prefer to avoid the rise of extreme ideologies (at the moment it's right wing, but I can see how extreme left wing ones could prosper).

 

[J663738]

To be honest expect most manufacturing in majority of countries is highly automated and employs far fewer people than it used to?

But that is the elephant in the room, the UK's productivity is terrible. Until this is addressed then the UK will fall further down the global league table, having 10 people at a manual car wash is not something to be proud of.
Cars, steel, even aero engines have all fallen behind in recent years. I am not sure what the answer is, other than work harder and for less, which is not what most people want to hear, the rest of the world won't subsidise us forever.

 

[GusB]

Every government raises the minimum wage, pretty much every year. Pretending that's a uniquely Labour policy for the working class is just wrong.

It was a uniquely Labour policy! While successive Conservative governments have increased the National Minimum wage over the years they were in government, do you honestly think they'd have introduced it if it didn't exist in the first place?

I don't want either policy, but at least they are Labour policies. (I do not plan to get into why I do not want them, I will leave that for others)

I assume that the policies that you don't want are a) having a minimum wage and, b) those geared towards workers' rights. I'm quite in favour of there being some minimum standards so that unscrupulous employers don't take the mickey, but I'd be interested to find out why you're against them.

Volvo shut down Leyland bus as Olympian was a step entrance bus and low floors were taking over. Dennis had cornered the double deck market with the Trident and had runaway success with the Dart as a small single decker, all produced in the UK. Dennis was hardly even a bit player in 1980s but read the market correctly so can't blame any government for these two.

This is definitely a subject for a separate thread, but there are some glaring factual inaccuracies in your post. Leyland Bus was acquired by Volvo from the previous management buyout team in 1988. "Low floor" might have been an aspiration at the time, but the Dennis Trident didn't appear until 1997, a few years after Workington, the last Leyland plant, had closed.

The original sale of Leyland Bus was due to the Tories' "get rid at any cost" policy and prior to that it had been starved of investment at a time when the market was changing significantly. The expertise was there, but the funding wasn't. But hey, let's blame the Labour party that didn't actually take power until 1997!

You need to do some research before posting!

 

[Richard Scott]

This is definitely a subject for a separate thread, but there are some glaring factual inaccuracies in your post. Leyland Bus was acquired by Volvo from the previous management buyout team in 1988. "Low floor" might have been an aspiration at the time, but the Dennis Trident didn't appear until 1997, a few years after Workington, the last Leyland plant, had closed.

The original sale of Leyland Bus was due to the Tories' "get rid at any cost" policy and prior to that it had been starved of investment at a time when the market was changing significantly. The expertise was there, but the funding wasn't. But hey, let's blame the Labour party that didn't actually take power until 1997!

You need to do some research before posting

I know all of that, thank you. The reference was to closing down of Leyland in the 1990s; the sale of it to Volvo was at a time when bus sales were an all time low and potentially could have been closed down then. Dennis read the market introducing the Dart and made a success of it and grew something that Leyland didn't do.
Thanks for the sarcastic comment on doing research but do know what happened.
I wasn't blaming anyone for Leyland closing, more to the point, as a company, they misread the market or had no intention of changing. Maybe they were a victim of too much capacity as Dennis had cornered the market by then.

 

[Yew]

The other issue is that inequalities are deepening everywhere. Recent research from my place (The University of Manchester) points to the imbalance of "Levelling Up" funding against the South: https://www.manchester.ac.uk/about/news/levelling-up-left-many-southern-areas-behind/

I feel that is more by design, than by accident, as that is typically where the most deprived areas are.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 16 Sep 2025 ==

But that is the elephant in the room, the UK's productivity is terrible. Until this is addressed then the UK will fall further down the global league table, having 10 people at a manual car wash is not something to be proud of.

I feel like that is a bad example, issues are within the core of our economy, not in minor ancillary services.

Cars, steel, even aero engines have all fallen behind in recent years. I am not sure what the answer is, other than work harder and for less, which is not what most people want to hear, the rest of the world won't subsidise us forever.

That is the wrong mindset, it's not about wages and "hard work", we're talking about major structural issues. Too many British companies have had this "make do and mend" mindset, sweating assets that are long overdue for replacement. This is compounded by document-heavy business processes, that focus on local optima, rather than the optimal outcome for the whole business.

 

[ainsworth74]

I feel that is more by design, than by accident, as that is typically where the most deprived areas are.

Though in fairness there are plenty of properly deprived areas in the south as well. Jaywick which is often amongst the most deprived areas of the country (if not the most deprived) is within a certain Mr N Farage's constituency of Clacton for instance. I think the wider issue is that for around forty or even fifty years now economic activity has been concentrating in London and pockets of the South East (with some more recent resurgences in the larger cities like Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Cardiff, Edinburgh, etc) whilst outside of those pockets it's been economically very poor.

Mostly good (or at least paying reasonably well with reasonable job security, many of these jobs were no picnic to be clear!) jobs in traditional industries like manufacturing, steel, chemicals, etc being offshored to other parts of the world (not just the EU!) and the only replacements being lower paid and insecure retail, call centre, care work type jobs. The only remaining good jobs often require good academics to get as well in the form of a degree. Meaning we've also cut off people who cannot, for whatever reason, access higher education from being able to secure the few good jobs remaining in those areas.

We then don't help this situation by avoiding investing in the underpinning infrastructure of these areas because the "value for money" would be poor compared to investing elsewhere. Typically London and the South East but it's noticeable that when we're talking about the "North" that appears increasingly to be shorthand for Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds.

Is it any wonder many people outside of those bubbles of relative prosperity (though, as noted by @Tetchytyke, even those who should be well off often don't feel it anymore!) are angry and turning their backs on traditional parties in favour of the siren song of Reform? As I've argued repeatedly a lot of Reform's support isn't because everyone outside of London is racist, a lot of it is a scream into the void for someone to do something to help them make their lives less crap.

Too many British companies have had this "make do and mend" mindset, sweating assets that are long overdue for replacement.

Whilst the reasons for British de-industrialisation are many and varied part of it certainly a consistent unwillingness to invest in modernisation meaning we were still putting a ship together in the 1980s in the same way, broadly, that we had been in the 1880s (obviously it wasn't identical but I'm exaggerating for effect ). A trend which continues unabated into the modern day!

 

[KevinBrum12]

I feel that is more by design, than by accident, as that is typically where the most deprived areas are.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 16 Sep 2025 ==


I feel like that is a bad example, issues are within the core of our economy, not in minor ancillary services.

As far as the West Midlands conurbation goes it certainly has been by design.

The forgotten post-war decree that deliberately strangled Birmingham

 

[Yew]

Mostly good (or at least paying reasonably well with reasonable job security, many of these jobs were no picnic to be clear!) jobs in traditional industries like manufacturing, steel, chemicals, etc being offshored to other parts of the world (not just the EU!) and the only replacements being lower paid and insecure retail, call centre, care work type jobs. The only remaining good jobs often require good academics to get as well in the form of a degree. Meaning we've also cut off people who cannot, for whatever reason, access higher education from being able to secure the few good jobs remaining in those areas.

Indeed, people who's parents walked out of school at 16 into a good industrial apprenticeship, often have then been pressured to do the same, but unfortunately the good apprenticeships and "jobs for life" are no longer there.

We then don't help this situation by avoiding investing in the underpinning infrastructure of these areas because the "value for money" would be poor compared to investing elsewhere.

Indeed, I agree that we should prioritise things by their cost to impact ratio, but the narrow definitions used by for profit companies are not the right metrics to use for State level investments - the state needs to focus on the broader macroeconomic impacts of its actions.

Typically London and the South East but it's noticeable that when we're talking about the "North" that appears increasingly to be shorthand for Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds.

And even they are struggling to get "Northern Powerhouse Rail" built.

Is it any wonder many people outside of those bubbles of relative prosperity (though, as noted by @Tetchytyke, even those who should be well off often don't feel it anymore!) are angry and turning their backs on traditional parties in favour of the siren song of Reform? As I've argued repeatedly a lot of Reform's support isn't because everyone outside of London is racist, a lot of it is a scream into the void for someone to do something to help them make their lives less crap.

Indeed, I feel that a portion of it is due to there being lots of progression on social equality issues, addressing things such as Racisim, Homophobia, Gender, but meanwhile allowing significant regression in economic ones. It's quite easy for Farrage to make the innacurate connection of make the connection of "your poorer" and "we've had all this imigration" to suggest that immigration is the cause.

Whilst the reasons for British de-industrialisation are many and varied part of it certainly a consistent unwillingness to invest in modernisation meaning we were still putting a ship together in the 1980s in the same way, broadly, that we had been in the 1880s (obviously it wasn't identical but I'm exaggerating for effect ). A trend which continues unabated into the modern day!

EXactly "working harder" isn't the solution. Toyota didn't become a leading manufacturer due to the Japanese work Ethic, they became a leading manufacturer because they were willing to inspect their way of working and continuously improve them.

 

[brad465]

I think the critical difference, and you allude to it with your example actually, is that the UK still has a lot of high value manufacturing but we do not have a lot of manufacturing which employs a lot of people any more.

We might make jet engines which go into hundreds of aircraft but we don't employ many people to do it. Rolls Royce has something like 20,000 UK based workers and they no doubt add massive amount of value to the UK economy as do I'm sure the employees in the supply chain that work to supply Rolls Royce with widgets and gizmos to go in their engines.

Nissan is another example up in Sunderland. They make something like 300,000 cars per year a vast number of vehicles. But they only employ around 6,000 people to do it. Considering how many people used to be employed by shipyards, steel works, chemical plants, factories in that part of the world 6,000 good well paying jobs are welcome but the number of jobs lost is far higher than those gained even though the value Nissan adds to the UK economy is no doubt massive.

Its unarguable that the number of people employed in manufacturing has fallen substantially since say the late 1970s and in many places that has left a desserts where there just aren't more than a handful of those types of jobs left where once upon a time there were jobs in their thousands. Even though, yes, manufacturing contribution to the UK economy in terms of value of its products remains substantial possibly even higher than in the days of "workshop of the world".

And that's the real problem. Not that we don't make stuff, we do, lots of it(!), but that we don't employ anywhere near as many people as we used to to make that stuff and often the jobs that are left are not spread around and are clustered.

This is something that doesn't get discussed anywhere near enough. While a lot of manufacturing jobs have gone as a result of outsourcing abroad, a comparable number have gone through advances in technology leading to more automated aspects. Martin Wolf summed it up nicely in an FT opinion piece after Trump was re-elected (my only criticism was he didn't publish it before the election):

Manufacturing fetishism is destined to fail

It is so much easier to blame the disappearance of these US jobs on China than on domestic consumers and automation

www.ft.com

In 1810, 81 per cent of the US labour force worked in agriculture, 3 per cent worked in manufacturing and 16 per cent worked in services. By 1950, the share of agriculture had fallen to 12 per cent, the share of manufacturing had peaked, at 24 per cent, and the share of services had reached 64 per cent. By 2020, the employment shares of these three sectors reached under 2 per cent, 8 per cent and 91 per cent, respectively. The evolution of these shares describes the employment pattern of modern economic growth. It is broadly what happens as countries become richer, whether they are big or small or run trade surpluses or deficits. It is an iron economic law.

 

[Lewisham2221]

It was a uniquely Labour policy! While successive Conservative governments have increased the National Minimum wage over the years they were in government, do you honestly think they'd have introduced it if it didn't exist in the first place?

Emphasis on was.

Introducing the minimum wage was a Labour policy, I'm well aware of that, and I agree it's unlikely that the Tories would have introduced it themselves.

But the poster I was replying to appeared to be suggesting that the next rise in the minimum wage was a unique Labour policy to show that they are listening to and supporting a large chunk of disillusioned voters, when it's nothing of the sort.

 

[nw1]

I believe Farage is there to get Tice into power, but that’s for a different thread.

Tice, the man who threatens legal action for using the "far right" label when describing the party. Rather than threaten legal action, I'd like to see a reasoned argument from them as to why they are not far right, while France's RN, for example, are.

 

[Tetchytyke]

Nearly everything had gone, really? UK is still has a large amount of manufacturing.

It doesn't. Manufacturing now accounts for roughly 8% of GDP. In 1970 it was 30%.

There are pockets of high value manufacturing, mostly in the aerospace sector. But they are just that- pockets. They don't employ that many people.

Volvo shut down Leyland bus as Olympian was a step entrance bus and low floors were taking over. Dennis had cornered the double deck market with the Trident and had runaway success with the Dart as a small single decker, all produced in the UK.

Complete nonsense.

Volvo shut down Leyland because they wanted to move the work to Volvo's existing plants, which were empty. In 1987 Leyland had 75% of the UK market.

You mention the Olympian. It was such an outdated product that it remained in production, rebadged as a Volvo, until 2000. At least the Olympian was still (partially) manufactured in the UK, just at the Volvo plant in Scotland.

The Dart was a good product but Dennis got a foothold because Volvo created a vacuum by withdrawing the Leyland Lynx. The Lynx was designed as an easy access bus, as defined by the regulations at the time. But Volvo chose to withdraw it to bounce operators into purchasing the B10M instead.

Of course the B10M- which also remained in production until 2000- was built in Sweden and production was transferred to protect jobs there, further illustrating what happens when you allow domestic manufacturing companies to be acquired by overseas companies. Overseas companies will always protect their 'home' jobs first- see also Honda at Swindon.

Whilst the reasons for British de-industrialisation are many and varied part of it certainly a consistent unwillingness to invest in modernisation

It was a combination of that and, to be quite honest, widespread resistance from the workforce to adapt to new ways of working. By refusing to adapt, the workforce made themselves irrelevant.

Of course many of the people who bought the newly privatised industries also had no intention of investing, they were just there to asset strip. Pretty much what Volvo did to Leyland, if we're being honest.

The current government have an obsession with electric vehicles opening the door to Chinese manufacturers, and no regard to our own industry

The Chinese saw which way the wind was blowing and invested accordingly. They were behind the curve on internal combustion engine (ICE) technology and saw an opportunity to get ahead of the curve on electric technology.

ICE technology is on its way out. But instead we get a lot of people in the UK railing against electric vehicles.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 16 Sep 2025 ==

While a lot of manufacturing jobs have gone as a result of outsourcing abroad, a comparable number have gone through advances in technology leading to more automated aspects.

Automation is definitely the elephant in the room, as others have alluded to.

Automation is coming to the service sector too, now. Won't be long until we get fully automated call centres. All those jobs will be gone. Hard to see what they will be replaced with.

Automation also has an impact on inequality. The people at the top of these companies will still be making big wages. The owners will still be making big profits. But all the people whose jobs were replaced by robots will now have zero income. The gap between the haves and have-nots will just get even wider.

I think a Universal Basic Income is the way things will have to go. Taxation will have to adapt to fund it. But the haves have the money to 'persuade' politicians against it. Something will have to give.

 

[kristiang85]

I think Labour are in a lot of trouble, electorally and indeed existentially. In trying to keep up with the overton window they have shifted too far right for the stomachs of their core left wing votes, and the voters they are trying to win back are seemingly set on switching to Reform anyway. There is no real talent in the front benches to turn this around, and when Corbyn's party gets off the ground this will cause further haemorrhaging.

Despite their large majority in 2024, it was mostly built on sand anyway - if 'Apathy' was a party (ie those who didn't vote) it would have won by a landslide, and most of those that did vote Labour did not do so with any real love for the party; it was just 'anyone but the Tories'. People were fed up with the Tories and wanted something different, and gave Labour a chance to show they might be that after 14 years out. Labour had to get it *right* from the start, and in a spectacular way, and not only have they not achieved that, it's been a disaster. Their messaging, by constantly blaming the previous government, is wearing thin and a lot of their piousness from when the Tories were in power is starting to come back and bite them, as sleaze remains. It also feels there are people lurking in the background on manoevures now to get rid of Starmer, given the almost daily leaks of information which feel they have been sat on for a while.

With the global economy on the edge, and the UK not really in a strong position to weather it well, the next budget is likely to be the death knell for them.

And if they do get rid of Starmer, then they will be in a tricky position given their constant pressuring of the Conservatives to hold an election when they changed leaders. Though, to be honest, that might end up being their best option for long term survival - calling an election soon before the economic storms come in, and let Reform make the hard, unpopular decisions that will have to be made and hope the electorate blame Reform and not Labour for it (although that is not a given).

 

[nw1]

And if they do get rid of Starmer, then they will be in a tricky position given their constant pressuring of the Conservatives to hold an election when they changed leaders. Though, to be honest, that might end up being their best option for long term survival - calling an election soon before the economic storms come in, and let Reform make the hard, unpopular decisions that will have to be made and hope the electorate blame Reform and not Labour for it (although that is not a given).

I'd disagree there. For the good of the country as a whole, Reform should not get in and the best way to avoid this is to delay the election as long as possible. This will give the chance for Reform to be found out by more of the electorate, and for alternatives to Labour, such as the Tories, to have a realistic chance of winning as many will have forgiven them by then, I suspect. It will also give the chance for new parties on the Left to arise - this is something we lack currently and an insurgent Left party could yet save us from a nasty fate as some of the "anyone but Labour or Tory" voters will pick them.

In my view Reform are far less likely to win with a late election in 2029 than an early one, and anyone who supports an early election is basically throwing the UK to the wolves. If Labour do throw us into Reform's hands with an early election, they will absolutely never be forgiven for their selfishness and will be electorally finished.

Historical precedent in this kind of situation (Major, Blair/Brown, and Truss/Sunak) has always gone for a late election so should it be any different this time round?

 

[Ted633]

And if they do get rid of Starmer, then they will be in a tricky position given their constant pressuring of the Conservatives to hold an election when they changed leaders. Though, to be honest, that might end up being their best option for long term survival - calling an election soon before the economic storms come in, and let Reform make the hard, unpopular decisions that will have to be made and hope the electorate blame Reform and not Labour for it (although that is not a given).

If you ask reform voters who was to blame for the austerity of the 2010s they'll more than likely say Labour. So I don't think that'll work somehow

 

[Magdalia]

But that is the elephant in the room, the UK's productivity is terrible. Until this is addressed then the UK will fall further down the global league table, having 10 people at a manual car wash is not something to be proud of.
Cars, steel, even aero engines have all fallen behind in recent years. I am not sure what the answer is, other than work harder and for less, which is not what most people want to hear, the rest of the world won't subsidise us forever.

It is a common misunderstanding that getting people to work harder for less is the way to get to higher productivity. It isn't. And in lots of parts of the economy it simply can't be done. The classical example is a string quartet playing a Mozart work written more than 200 years ago that takes half an hour to play. More than 200 years later it still needs 4 people and half an hour to deliver the same output; nothing can be done to improve their productivity, the 4 people can't play faster, nor can they perform with only 3 people.

A better way is for people to move from a low productivity job to a high productivity job. In ye olden dayes of large bureaucracies, this was done mainly by getting promoted. Now it has to be done mainly through job mobility, and the UK economy doesn't have enough of it. That's partly down to lack of workers rights on day one, losing those rights when people start a new job is a significant disincentive to job mobility. But a far more significant impediment to job mobility is the UK's highly dysfunctional housing market, which has huge incentives encouraging people to stay where they are, and huge disincentives discouraging people from moving.

Automation is coming to the service sector too, now. Won't be long until we get fully automated call centres. All those jobs will be gone. Hard to see what they will be replaced with.

When automation came to manufacturing, few people could foresee that the jobs would be replaced by call centres. Technological advance will create new jobs, as it always has done.

The best way to improve productivity is to get out of low productivity industries/services and into high productivity industries/services. The UK actually has some excellent opportunities to do this in fields such as life sciences, artificial intelligence, clean energy and entertainment.

The UK needs to concentrate on developing these, not continuing with its obsession with creating/retaining more low productivity jobs, notably in what these days is called hospitality. The UK economy isn't going to get more productive by having more people selling each other cakes and ale. This is particularly perverse in a labour market that has reduced supply because of demographic changes. These can be partially addressed by higher workforce participation, but equipping people with the necessary skills is more important.

 

[edwin_m]

Indeed, I agree that we should prioritise things by their cost to impact ratio, but the narrow definitions used by for profit companies are not the right metrics to use for State level investments - the state needs to focus on the broader macroeconomic impacts of its actions.

That is exactly the Benefit-Cost Ratio process that some people on here disparage in relation to rail projects. It has been tweaked somewhat since Labour came to power, in an attempt to reduce the weight put on improving mobility in areas where is is already good.

But the poster I was replying to appeared to be suggesting that the next rise in the minimum wage was a unique Labour policy to show that they are listening to and supporting a large chunk of disillusioned voters, when it's nothing of the sort.

That was probably me. PDF page 10 of https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-7735/CBP-7735.pdf shows the national minimum wage in real terms. It is clear that Labour increased it significantly prior to the financial crisis, it didn't recover its 2010 value until around 2014 and there has been a big real terms increase in the last couple of years. Unfortunately it's only a graph and not a table, so not easily possible to tell whether the last one is down to Labour or the Tories or both without doing a lot of maths on the tabulated figures and inflation rates.

I believe the UK loses out relative to other countries due to being over-reliant on financial services. This creates a climate where better returns are perceived to be possible by investing in financial instruments rather than in industry, and companies are driven by short-term share values rather than long-term sustainability. Also some of the best talent goes into those fields rather than into something that would make more of a social return.

Also our industrial relations is much more confrontational than somewhere like Germany, which has fallen back in recent years but before that was consistently doing better than the UK. There, management and unions work far more collaboratively rather than being "us and them".

In past years I would also have said the UK had a disproprtionate amount of defence spending, which is likely to produce less benefit pro rata than investing elsewhere unless it manages to trigger a big technological spinoff. But that probably ceased to be true a decade or two back, and now we need that spend for other reasons anyway.

 

[Harpo]

I see the Daily Mail came out in support of Diane Abbott today. I trust Private Eye will find some of the Mail’s previous pieces about her.

 

[ainsworth74]

This is something that doesn't get discussed anywhere near enough. While a lot of manufacturing jobs have gone as a result of outsourcing abroad, a comparable number have gone through advances in technology leading to more automated aspects. Martin Wolf summed it up nicely in an FT opinion piece after Trump was re-elected (my only criticism was he didn't publish it before the election):

Manufacturing fetishism is destined to fail

It is so much easier to blame the disappearance of these US jobs on China than on domestic consumers and automation

www.ft.com

Agriculture is of course the posterchild of automation and productivity gains! UK had around 1.5m agricultural workers in the mid-19th century, around 500,000 in the mid 20th century and down to around 180,000 now. At the same time the actual production from farming has either remained fairly constant or increased. Massive productivity gains thanks to new technologies and processes being adopted. Indeed if you go back a bit further it's arguable that the reason we were amongst the first to industrialise (apart from easy access to a good fuel in coal) was that we could release many people from working in fields to working in industry because they weren't needed any more to work fields. Though that might be getting a bit off topic at this point!

It was a combination of that and, to be quite honest, widespread resistance from the workforce to adapt to new ways of working. By refusing to adapt, the workforce made themselves irrelevant.

Indeed, I didn't want to get into it but British deindustrialisation has many causes and workforce reluctance to adapt to new ways of working is another one of them to add to the pile.

But a far more significant impediment to job mobility is the UK's highly dysfunctional housing market, which has huge incentives encouraging people to stay where they are, and huge disincentives discouraging people from moving.

I must admit I am an increasing subscriber to the "Housing Crisis Theory of Everything that's wrong with Modern Britain"

The UK needs to concentrate on developing these, not continuing with its obsession with creating/retaining more low productivity jobs, notably in what these days is called hospitality. The UK economy isn't going to get more productive by having more people selling each other cakes and ale. This is particularly perverse in a labour market that has reduced supply because of demographic changes.

Hopefully we can still keep some people selling cakes and booze. I like those things and would like to continue enjoying them! But yes there is only so many jobs that we can actual sustain in those sorts of roles. But we do need to keep in mind, as alluded to above, that we will need jobs for people who cannot be solar panel engineers, our AI researchers, or work in life sciences as a biomedical researcher or similar. Plus how many of those jobs will actually be created?

I still feel that a major problem we have is that we have a group of well paying jobs which require high levels of qualification to access and excel in, we have a smattering of remaining jobs that are well paying but do not require academic qualifications even though they are skilled in other ways (a lot of the trades, or even something like train driving for instance) but then for everyone else it's hospitality, care work, or similar poorly paid and insecure drudgery.

Which isn't ideal! I mean that's basically what you've got here on Teesside. We have some reasonably well paying and fairly secure jobs in the public sector (NHS, local government, schools, etc), we still have some reasonably well paid (though often not that secure) jobs in parts of the private sector (there are still jobs in chemicals, manufacturing and even steel just nowhere near as many) but after that? Hospitality, retail, care work and that's about it. Hence why so many people in places like Teesside are looking at Reform. We ain't all racists, but a lot of people are fed up and feel that they've been failed by Government after Government for decades. Why not just burn it all down? What is left to lose?

These can be partially addressed by higher workforce participation, but equipping people with the necessary skills is more important.

Yes but beating people with sticks and blaming them for not having a job is much easier than actually trying to address barriers to workforce participation. Plus it makes for much better headlines in the newspapers when you can just blame the workshy scroungers!

 

[Richard Scott]

It doesn't. Manufacturing now accounts for roughly 8% of GDP. In 1970 it was 30%.

There are pockets of high value manufacturing, mostly in the aerospace sector. But they are just that- pockets. They don't employ that many people.


Complete nonsense.

Volvo shut down Leyland because they wanted to move the work to Volvo's existing plants, which were empty. In 1987 Leyland had 75% of the UK market.

You mention the Olympian. It was such an outdated product that it remained in production, rebadged as a Volvo, until 2000. At least the Olympian was still (partially) manufactured in the UK, just at the Volvo plant in Scotland.

The Dart was a good product but Dennis got a foothold because Volvo created a vacuum by withdrawing the Leyland Lynx. The Lynx was designed as an easy access bus, as defined by the regulations at the time. But Volvo chose to withdraw it to bounce operators into purchasing the B10M instead.

Of course the B10M- which also remained in production until 2000- was built in Sweden and production was transferred to protect jobs there, further illustrating what happens when you allow domestic manufacturing companies to be acquired by overseas companies. Overseas companies will always protect their 'home' jobs first- see also Honda at Swindon.

It was a combination of that and, to be quite honest, widespread resistance from the workforce to adapt to new ways of working. By refusing to adapt, the workforce made themselves irrelevant.

Of course many of the people who bought the newly privatised industries also had no intention of investing, they were just there to asset strip. Pretty much what Volvo did to Leyland, if we're being honest.


The Chinese saw which way the wind was blowing and invested accordingly. They were behind the curve on internal combustion engine (ICE) technology and saw an opportunity to get ahead of the curve on electric technology.

ICE technology is on its way out. But instead we get a lot of people in the UK railing against electric vehicles.

8% now compared to 30% doesn't mean much, other sectors have grown so even if manufacturing stood still it would still be a lower contribution to GDP.
What's complete nonsense? You're quite rude here.
I'm sure Volvo did want the work in one factory so not surprising Leyland's Workington factory eventually shut down as did Irvine where Vovlo Olympian was made, doesn't change the fact that Leyland products weren't what the market wanted in the end. Dennis read it right and that was that. Volvo tried to get in with the B6R but it wasn't as successful.
75% market share in 1987, hardly any buses were sold then. As far as I'm aware very few 'D' or 'E' registered buses were produced as bottom fell out of the market then except for van derived mini buses or purpose built minibuses such as the Metrorider.
Percentages in themselves are just statistics and mean nothing without real figures.
I'm sure manufacturing has declined in real terms in UK, doesn't mean we still aren't a large player in the arena. However, this government is not helping, not disputing electric vehicles are an up and coming market, which Chinese manufacturers have got to grips with. However, seems this government isn't interested in supporting UK vehicle manufacturing. If any evidence to the contrary then please quote it, I'll be happy to be proved wrong.

 

[JamesT]

8% now compared to 30% doesn't mean much, other sectors have grown so even if manufacturing stood still it would still be a lower contribution to GDP.
What's complete nonsense? You're quite rude here.
I'm sure Volvo did want the work in one factory so not surprising Leyland's Workington factory eventually shut down as did Irvine where Vovlo Olympian was made, doesn't change the fact that Leyland products weren't what the market wanted in the end. Dennis read it right and that was that. Volvo tried to get in with the B6R but it wasn't as successful.
75% market share in 1987, hardly any buses were sold then. As far as I'm aware very few 'D' or 'E' registered buses were produced as bottom fell out of the market then except for van derived mini buses or purpose built minibuses such as the Metrorider.
Percentages in themselves are just statistics and mean nothing without real figures.
I'm sure manufacturing has declined in real terms in UK, doesn't mean we still aren't a large player in the arena. However, this government is not helping, not disputing electric vehicles are an up and coming market, which Chinese manufacturers have got to grips with. However, seems this government isn't interested in supporting UK vehicle manufacturing. If any evidence to the contrary then please quote it, I'll be happy to be proved wrong.

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/gbr/united-kingdom/gdp-gross-domestic-product has UK GDP as $3.381Tn in 2023, compared to $130.67Bn in 1970. Now, I think those numbers aren't taking account of inflation, putting the 1970 number through the BoE's inflation calculator gives $1.685Tn, implying the economy has roughly doubled in size in the last 50 years which is believable. On that basis, the percentage share would imply UK manufacturing is roughly half the size in value terms of where it used to be.

But the question should be, is it worth chasing after those manufacturing jobs? Are they going to add more value to the economy than other work? The previous government did put some money into car manufacturing, e.g. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...-uk-investment-in-electric-cars-b2409164.html

BMW has announced a £600 million investment to prepare its Mini factory in Oxford to build new electric cars after securing Government funding.

The German manufacturer said it will transform the plant to enable production of two new electric Mini models to begin in 2026.

Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch, who visited the site on Monday, refused to comment on speculation that the Government funding was worth £75 million.

But a lot of the current noise is around battery manufacture, which seems to be a relatively low value-add industry which would require lots of government subsidy to make it competitive with the Chinese.

 

[Magdalia]

I must admit I am an increasing subscriber to the "Housing Crisis Theory of Everything that's wrong with Modern Britain"

Fixing the housing crisis won't be sufficient, but it is absolutely necessary.

Hopefully we can still keep some people selling cakes and booze. I like those things and would like to continue enjoying them! But yes there is only so many jobs that we can actual sustain in those sorts of roles.

One redeeming feature of hospitality is that it redistributes from the older generation, who do lots of the spending, to the younger generation, who do a lot of the employment. Grumpy well off old people should definitely stop whinging about the price of cake and ale, and this has really got me thinking about whether I need to end my lifelong cultural resistance to tipping in cafes and pubs.