The Labour Party under Andy Burnham

[Tetchytyke]

One of the things which is fairly notable about Britain's political attitudes is many people may be right wing culturally and socially but left wing economically.

Yep. It always has been, which is why some trade unions were openly operating a colour bar well into the 1970s. I really don’t think those attitudes have gone away as much as we all hoped they had.

It is almost entirely to do with the fact people feel forgotten and the social contract has evaporated. Austerity has a lot to answer for.

Agreed. And that’s the direction in which the solution lies.

“Re-industrialise Britain” was the most interesting of all the points raised on the Reform leaflet that @DarloRich posted.

Yes a lot of very white areas do seem very deprived (Skegness, Clacton etc) but it is much easier to blame everything on people who are relatively recent arrivals and with darker skin - or indeed a different religion (as if all the residents were devout Christians).

It’s a story, London is full of forrins and London has all the money therefore all the money is being given to forrins.

I suggest a lot of people believe the state should control who crosses its borders, and that criminal gangs being able to help people evade border controls for a price is not acceptable. I suggest they also believe that recent numbers of migrants have been too high.

The first bit, we all agree. Although this is partly a consequence of pulling up the drawbridge; if you don’t offer legal asylum routes then you can’t vet in advance and so you hand over control to the organised crime groups.

Worth noting, too, that many of the organised crime groups have very strong links to Russia, who use migration as a weapon in their hybrid war against the west.

The second bit is more interesting. The focus is on the boats. There are only 36,000 people coming over on the boats. Why do people think it is too high? What would be a better number?

I get the impression a lot of people think the number of migrants (including legal migration) full stop should be zero. Why do they think that? And why doesn’t the same logic apply to the people who go and retire in Spain?

 

[Bantamzen]

Well, I have to say the recent announcements on immigrants have gone down very well with real people. I know fellow lefties will be hand wringing and conscience waving like mad but real people seem happy with them.

My football chat group ( people I go to the match with, all middle aged northern white blokes) seem to be very supportive of the ideas. It is a broad church of political views. The main negative statement was "why has it taken so long"!

CLEARLY: This is anecdotal and based on a small sample but the people, like me, who I expected to be horrified by these plans were broadly supportive. I suspect that some of the members of the group are on the Farage bus with a couple more waiting at the bus stop. Anything that stops those people boarding that bus is a positive because otherwise we will have a Fargaist government of chaos.

I know this is going to create blowback but the time for trying to influence views has been and gone. Normal people think ( rightly or wrongly) that there are too many forins coming here and want it stopped. If Labour aren't seen to do that they will be booted out.

This has been one of my personal bugbears about Labour in recent times, too involved in being seen to do the right thing, but not actually listening to actual people's concerns. Rightly or wrongly, a lot of ordinary people are concerned about immigration, and the impact on them, real or perceived. Too often their views have been filed under "thick white flag waving racist", instead of actually paying attention to what people were saying. And this has been that they simply have felt ignored and left out, especially in the more deprived towns and cities where there has been little investment, growing. Throw Reform and the snake oil salesman into the mix taking their concerns and turning them into an immediate social media crisis, and everything that has happened in recent years seems to have been almost inevitable. What a lot on the left, in my opinion, fail to understand that there are other echo chambers away from their own, and these are often used by Farage to his advantage, elevating and magnifying issues like the boat people to make it feel like it's about to go nuclear.

So the leadership, MPs et al need to stop yapping about their own opinions, and do a lot more listening, and acting at least in some way, if they are to head Reform off at the pass. And it may be uncomfortable for some, but politics isn't about being comfortable, it's about trying to find a compromise on issues that affect or concern citizens on a day to day basis to get the best possible result.

 

[oldman]

The focus is on the boats. There are only 36,000 people coming over on the boats. Why do people think it is too high? What would be a better number?

I get the impression a lot of people think the number of migrants (including legal migration) full stop should be zero.

I guess a lot of people would say zero would be a better number for organised cross-channel illicit migration, or, if you like, imperceptible, because perceptions ofter matter more than reality. It doesn't matter whether numbers are a bit down, they need to be seen to be a lot down.

I doubt if there are many who actually want an ethnicly pure white Europe but if a lot of people are concerned about migration, the out-and-out racist fringe will prosper. Allay the concerns, even if it does involve 'performative cruelty', and the fringe withers and you can use weedkiller on what remains.
.

 

[Broucek]

Part of the problem is that many of the negative impacts of illegal migration fall on voiceless people rather than the middle/upper middle class who are disconnected in a relatively benign bubble. As @Bantamzen notes, they are then dismissed as "thick racists" making the whole thing worse. This was a factor in the referendum: I heard a senior BBC journalist admit in a speech that "the only person I knew who voted for Brexit was my make up lady. I should have realised that there are more people in the UK like her than the rest of my ciricle" (paraphrased)

 

[ainsworth74]

“Re-industrialise Britain” was the most interesting of all the points raised on the Reform leaflet that @DarloRich posted.

I thought that. Living and working as I do in heartlands of the "Red Wall" and what I'm sure will be Reform heartland at the local elections next year (another group of shysters to join our excellent Tees Valley Mayor, joy... ) that is a very interesting thing to have on a leaflet. And I reckon it's another message that will resonate very deeply with a lot of people in this area. We're just a couple of weeks removed from the third anniversary of the Redcar blast furnace being demolished and the skyline of Teesside being forever changed. For anyone under the age of about fifty they probably won't remember the mouth of the Tees without it. Even now whenever I look over in that direction (and that's most days as my walk to the station to go/from work included, once upon a time, a panoramic view of the blast furnace in the distance) there's a little pang of sadness. And I never even worked in the steel industry!

That sense of dislocation and loss of something important is tangible in this area and has been for decades (the blast furnace coming down was simply the full stop on a sentence that began in the 1980s). Plenty of people of all sorts of ages (but particularly around 50/60 which is a huge voter block) talk about how there aren't the jobs or opportunities for young people. They'll talk about how they (or at least their parents) were able to leave school and get into a decent (if hard, dirty and often dangerous) job. But now there just isn't the opportunities here anymore. There's still a handful of "good" jobs going as we do still have some manufacturing going (though it's often precarious, Sabic have announced the permanent closure of a cracking plant on former ICI Wilton chemical works site) and obviously there's NHS jobs and schools and local authority (all public sector...) which depending on the precise role pay decently enough and are somewhat secure. But that's about it. If you want something other than that then really you're having to look away from Teesside to Leeds, Manchester or London.

The idea of "re-industrialising Britain" is likely to be seductive to a lot of voters here even if in reality there's no way that we're going to be reopening the steel mills, shipyards and factories that have now gone. I do actually think that some measure of re-industrialisation is necessary as a national security measure but it's never going to be back to the days of yore.

But where is the offer from Labour to the people of Teesside that will actually make us feel like things are improving? It isn't there yet. Everything still feels terrible, getting worse and no sign of that changing. And it's been like that for decades of Labour and Tory administrations. Sure 1997 - 2010 in general things didn't get worse and there were improvements but deprivation in somewhere like Grangetown (Redcar & Cleveland) or Newport (Middlesbrough) has been there for decades. Sky News went to Newport recently where 6 out of 7 children grow up in poverty. This has gotten worse since 2010 of course but it didn't start in 2010.

Is it any surprise that when the two main parties have seemingly no answers, nothing works anymore, everything is getting worse and it's been bad for decades people reach for the smash the system and a pox on both your houses party?

 

[brad465]

I thought that. Living and working as I do in heartlands of the "Red Wall" and what I'm sure will be Reform heartland at the local elections next year (another group of shysters to join our excellent Tees Valley Mayor, joy... ) that is a very interesting thing to have on a leaflet. And I reckon it's another message that will resonate very deeply with a lot of people in this area. We're just a couple of weeks removed from the third anniversary of the Redcar blast furnace being demolished and the skyline of Teesside being forever changed. For anyone under the age of about fifty they probably won't remember the mouth of the Tees without it. Even now whenever I look over in that direction (and that's most days as my walk to the station to go/from work included, once upon a time, a panoramic view of the blast furnace in the distance) there's a little pang of sadness. And I never even worked in the steel industry!

That sense of dislocation and loss of something important is tangible in this area and has been for decades (the blast furnace coming down was simply the full stop on a sentence that began in the 1980s). Plenty of people of all sorts of ages (but particularly around 50/60 which is a huge voter block) talk about how there aren't the jobs or opportunities for young people. They'll talk about how they (or at least their parents) were able to leave school and get into a decent (if hard, dirty and often dangerous) job. But now there just isn't the opportunities here anymore. There's still a handful of "good" jobs going as we do still have some manufacturing going (though it's often precarious, Sabic have announced the permanent closure of a cracking plant on former ICI Wilton chemical works site) and obviously there's NHS jobs and schools and local authority (all public sector...) which depending on the precise role pay decently enough and are somewhat secure. But that's about it. If you want something other than that then really you're having to look away from Teesside to Leeds, Manchester or London.

The idea of "re-industrialising Britain" is likely to be seductive to a lot of voters here even if in reality there's no way that we're going to be reopening the steel mills, shipyards and factories that have now gone. I do actually think that some measure of re-industrialisation is necessary as a national security measure but it's never going to be back to the days of yore.

This attitude takes advantage of the aspect of human psychology about "yearning for the past"; times change but many generations struggle to adapt to changes beyond their prime years. This is of course very common among rail enthusiasts when one's favourite rolling stock reaches the end of its life.

However, letting industrial areas and former coastal resorts (the other area Reform do well in) get run down without rebranding/renovating the areas with new jobs and industry has caused more trouble than any "living in the past" mindset - if these workers were retrained and given new employment, then they'd have coped much better. Therefore, Thatcher's biggest error wasn't closing down mines, it was not providing alternative industry after doing so.

As for why no party has addressed these problems, there are several reasons, but the biggest two will be these: 1) They don't vote for the governing party, or when they do, these seats are shoe-ins and therefore neglectable (Deprived coastal towns were safe Tory seats, while deprived industrial ones were safe Labour). 2) Regenerating these areas takes too long relative to election cycles, therefore there's no point investing if the benefits don't materialise until the party in government has been booted out.

 

[Tetchytyke]

Part of the problem is that many of the negative impacts of illegal migration fall on voiceless people rather than the middle/upper middle class who are disconnected in a relatively benign bubble.

Reform have 5 MPs. They are in:
Clacton on Sea (96.1% white)
Boston and Skegness (96.7% white)
Runcorn (96.6% white)
Ashfield (95% white)
Devizes (96.2% white).

Whatever the people in these areas are experiencing, it isn’t a “negative impact of illegal migration”. Not in towns which are 96% white.

If you want something other than that then really you're having to look away from Teesside to Leeds, Manchester or London.

And this is where the real issue is. There is a real brain drain from these towns, the people who can leave these towns do leave these towns. Norman Tebbitt told them to get on their bikes to find work, so they did. I know, I grew up in one. I left. So did most of the people I went to school with.

This means you end up with towns which fall ever further into a doom loop. People who are economically active have to leave and so there is less economic activity and so yet more people leave. You end up with towns where nobody is economically active and they’re ripe for the populists to move in.

Europe was to blame. Now we’ve had Brexit and it’s been the disaster we all said it would be, now the blame rests with the 36,000 brown people on pedalos.

And yes, neither of the two main parties have done anything to address this. Both parties have subscribed to very similar hyper-capitalistic economic models which have accelerated the decline of industry and accelerated the brain drain to bigger cities.

No wonder people are quite content to go Reform. At this stage, you may as well burn everything down. It can’t be any worse.

It’s also why Labour’s performative cruelty won’t shift the dial. Get rid of all the boat people and Clacton will still be deprived.

If Labour really want to stay in power they need to do something about the deprivation. Sadly the only person who’s allowed to have ideas in Labour is Morgan McSweeney, and he is as dumb as he is nasty.

 

[Gloster]

Reform have 5 MPs. They are in:
Clacton on Sea (96.1% white)
Boston and Skegness (96.7% white)
Runcorn (96.6% white)
Ashfield (95% white)
Devizes (96.2% white).

Whatever the people in these areas are experiencing, it isn’t a “negative impact of illegal migration”. Not in towns which are 96%

You could add Great Yarmouth, and South Basildon & East Thurrock. However, I would suspect that unemployment levels, educational achievement and average income might give a better clue; with the last maybe you should omit Farage as his would push the average up. And remember that Devizes did not elect a Reform MP.

(I am not sure if this should be in this thread.)

 

[david1212]

.....
“Re-industrialise Britain” was the most interesting of all the points raised on the Reform leaflet that @DarloRich posted.
....

.....
The idea of "re-industrialising Britain" is likely to be seductive to a lot of voters here even if in reality there's no way that we're going to be reopening the steel mills, shipyards and factories that have now gone. I do actually think that some measure of re-industrialisation is necessary as a national security measure but it's never going to be back to the days of yore.....

... Therefore, Thatcher's biggest error wasn't closing down mines, it was not providing alternative industry after doing so....

Times change but as @brad465 says the failure is the loss of industry rather than a change of industry not least as @ainsworth74 says for our security and independence. After Brexit there just seems to have been either acceptance of the direct costs and administration to continue imports from Europe or sourcing from elsewhere in the world rather than any increase in self-sufficiency.

Unless I have missed recent statements Rachel Reeves has gone quiet on 'Growing the Economy'.

Back when I completed at Polytechnic then started with a small company my plan was a job at one large component company that was customer. A job for life with a pension, healthcare etc. Soon though the shop floor talk was that the 'bean-counters' were planning to move production to China or Taiwan with just a small area of the site as distribution. The remainder would become a shopping centre. What was missed was where the employees would go to still earn their wages to buy the end product and from the retail park. This didn't happen but rather the end companies gradually shrunk then closed hence so did this company with the loss of jobs across the spectrum from floor cleaner through semi-skilled and skilled to management.
The site never became a retail park as times changed so instead of the creation of mostly near minimum wage shop work it is warehousing and distribution including 'white van man' for Amazon, Evri, Yodel etc. that has grown.

Over the years virtually every site where industry has closed has been turned over for housing plus land that was green fields 30 years ago either already is housing and more green fields have planning permission for housing. Where all who have moved / will move into these houses are working / will work I do not know.

 

[Tetchytyke]

The site never became a retail park as times changed so instead of the creation of mostly near minimum wage shop work it is warehousing and distribution including 'white van man' for Amazon, Evri, Yodel etc. that has grown.

In parts of the north east we've seen this cycle happen a few times. After the mines closed in County Durham we saw several huge call centres open in places like Peterlee and Seaham. I worked in a couple of them when I was at uni, and miserable places they were too. Those call centres were then, too, outsourced out to India, and so the people who had retrained once then again found themselves on the dole.

As you say, Amazon warehouses and their exploitative and abusive employment practices have moved in. These warehouses are in these place for two main reasons- "regeneration" tax breaks, and a pool of employees who are poor and desperate.

 

[sor]

Where all who have moved / will move into these houses are working / will work I do not know.

Being from Cornwall I have personally wondered this myself. I'm not a NIMBY by any means but there is a huge disconnect between £300k+ houses and average local wages. Nansledan (the then Prince Charles's vanity project, near Newquay) is even more ludicrous.

Cornwall is already fairly poor but this is probably one of the poorer parts within it, and has suffered from a similar kind of deindustrialisation (china clay mining - still going, but not as big as it once was, again in part through cheaper overseas sources and through increased automation). I couldn't afford to buy one on the fairly decent salary I earn living hundreds of miles away...

 

[oldman]

Where all who have moved / will move into these houses are working / will work I do not know.

This source (https://evidencehub.northeast-ca.gov.uk/report/employment-sector) gives a picture of where people work in the North east of England with the largest sectors being health, manufacturing, education, retail (mostly part time), accommodation/food service (mostly PT) and public administration/defence.

Another source (https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/reports/lmp/gor/2013265921/report.aspx) divides employment in the region into these percentages: management/professional 48.3; admin/skilled trades 19.1; caring/leisure/sales/customer service 16.2; process/machine operatives, elementary occupations (sic) 16.4.

 

[Broucek]

Management/professional sounds high at nearly 50%. What are they all managing?!

 

[oldman]

Management/professional sounds high at nearly 50%. What are they all managing?!

As the source shows, mostly 'professional'.

 

[david1212]

This source (https://evidencehub.northeast-ca.gov.uk/report/employment-sector) gives a picture of where people work in the North east of England with the largest sectors being health, manufacturing, education, retail (mostly part time), accommodation/food service (mostly PT) and public administration/defence.

Another source (https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/reports/lmp/gor/2013265921/report.aspx) divides employment in the region into these percentages: management/professional 48.3; admin/skilled trades 19.1; caring/leisure/sales/customer service 16.2; process/machine operatives, elementary occupations (sic) 16.4.

While this gives a split of what work people are doing it does not answer where.

Build several thousand houses and also in the locality build or create from existing buildings office blocks as most of management/professional/customer service/admin are desk and computer jobs then places to work but this has not happened. Either the old buildings are cleared for housing or converted into housing. Some no doubt are working from home but I wonder what proportion?
The non-housing construction has been new primary schools, expansion of secondary schools, reworking the hospital to provide more wards i.e. multi-story blocks, health care centres, pub, gym and blocks of small shops i.e. Tesco Express, Sainsburys Local, Co-op etc / fast food / pharmacy / hairdresser, beauty and similar.

 

[edwin_m]

Build several thousand houses and also in the locality build or create from existing buildings office blocks as most of management/professional/customer service/admin are desk and computer jobs then places to work but this has not happened.

Reasons could include that household members work in different places, or change jobs but choose not to move house.

At least having the offices concentrated in city centres creates enough critical mass to support commuting by public transport. If offices were evenly spread then nearly everyone who didn't live within an easy walk would be driving to work.

The places where this sort of mixed use is working is actually where flats are being built in city centres. I can't speak for the North East but it's certainly happening in Manchester.

 

[uglymonkey]

Cornwall is one of the poorer places in Europe and used to get quite a lot of EU grant money as a result when we were in.

 

[Yew]

The places where this sort of mixed use is working is actually where flats are being built in city centres. I can't speak for the North East but it's certainly happening in Manchester.

I think that it can work, but over the last few years it does seem like we're seeing flats pop up on any patch of free land in cities, no matter how horrifically unsuited to housing it is. Some areas (particularly where there is a lot of nightlife) are best left as Offices, shops/storerooms or other light-industrial uses.

 

[uglymonkey]

There are tower blocks by the dozen which have sprung up all around Lewisham station over the last few years.

 

[Broucek]

Yeah, I kind of believe the statistic that we're not building enough but in my part of London flat are going up everywhere....

Without getting into whether it's a good or bad thing, the huge levels of (legal) immigration over the last few years must be a factor

 

[brad465]

Yeah, I kind of believe the statistic that we're not building enough but in my part of London flat are going up everywhere....

Without getting into whether it's a good or bad thing, the huge levels of (legal) immigration over the last few years must be a factor

There's also a high tally of property that's been bought for foreign investors to just leave vacant while the price increases, and even worse, for some it's been bought with laundered money from around the world:

https://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/what-we-do/crime-threats/money-laundering-and-illicit-finance#:~:text=The%20UK%20benefits%20from%20an,pose%20a%20very%20significant%20threat.

Money laundering has the potential to threaten the UK’s national security, national prosperity and international reputation.

The critical importance of the financial sector to the UK’s economy means that money laundering, particularly high-end money laundering (the laundering of large amounts of illicit funds through the financial and professional services sectors) can threaten the UK’s national security and prosperity, and undermine the integrity of the UK's financial system and international reputation. We are focused on tackling illicit finances derived from criminal activity at home and abroad.

There really needs to be some form of taxation on property that is vacant, and/or not the owner's first property, to strongly discourage such behaviour.

 

[Tetchytyke]

Management/professional sounds high at nearly 50%. What are they all managing?!

The north east has a very large civil service presence and most of those jobs will fit into that category. The NHS Business Services Authority is based in Newcastle and the DWP and HMRC also have a large presence in the north east.

The places where this sort of mixed use is working is actually where flats are being built in city centres. I can't speak for the North East but it's certainly happening in Manchester.

What's happened in Manchester is quite remarkable. 500 people lived in the city centre in 1990, now it is 100,000 people.

Manchester city centre population 'could be 250,000 by 2035'

Latest estimates put the city centre population as close to 100,000, up from less than 500 in 1990.

www.bbc.co.uk

The latest estimates put the city centre's population as very close to 100,000, a considerable rise from the less than 500 people who called it home in 1990, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Something similar is starting to happen in Newcastle. There's been a lot of regeneration in and around the city centre with new offices. Many of the civil service jobs are currently in out-of-town business parks but they are moving these jobs in to these new offices. There are a lot of new flats being built in the city centre as a result, especially on the old brewery site and on the land between the station and the river.

 

[Cdd89]

Regenerating these areas takes too long relative to election cycles, therefore there's no point investing if the benefits don't materialise until the party in government has been booted out

When a party could expect to stay in power for a few terms, as has historically been the case, then it could afford to invest in these things early on while popular in the hope that it would pay off in a few cycles when their popularity would start to wane.

However it looks like we are in an environment where parties become unpopular much more quickly, as people are increasingly discontented; Boris Johnson lost his majority very rapidly and Keir Starmer looks set to do the same. Given this, I think your point is well-founded and we may see even less investment of this sort in the future from new governments, since they are immediately focused on not losing popularity and getting re-elected.

 

[david1212]

Reasons could include that household members work in different places, or change jobs but choose not to move house.

At least having the offices concentrated in city centres creates enough critical mass to support commuting by public transport. If offices were evenly spread then nearly everyone who didn't live within an easy walk would be driving to work.

The places where this sort of mixed use is working is actually where flats are being built in city centres. I can't speak for the North East but it's certainly happening in Manchester.

I agree that businesses need to be concentrated in an area to make public transport and also car sharing viable. However if not local first there has to be good inter-urban public transport and second it has to have the capacity for those who relocate to the new build houses. These new estates need a frequent bus service. If the car is needed at all the temptation is to drive either all the way or near to the business area.

I have just looked at the census and the area population. In 2001 ~85000, in 2011 ~95000 and in 2021 ~103000. With the ongoing house building it will have increased further.

 

[JamieL]

Is this the thread for discussion about the upcoming, and likely horrific, budget?

 

[AlterEgo]

Is this the thread for discussion about the upcoming, and likely horrific, budget?

You mean the one that has been gradually leaked as if they are informing a child a close relative has died? Yes, sure.

This will be a giant fetid turd of a budget, can't wait.

 

[styles]

Is this the thread for discussion about the upcoming, and likely horrific, budget?

Aye, probably.

Glad I have a todo list longer than a Leonard Cohen song for tomorrow, means I can just tune into the summary version of misery on the PM programme, rather than the running commentary and the usual jeering from the Commons.

 

[brad465]

You mean the one that has been gradually leaked as if they are informing a child a close relative has died? Yes, sure.

This will be a giant fetid turd of a budget, can't wait.

Nice to see Yes Minister still lives on in the real world.

"The ship of state is the only ship to leak from the top." - Sir Humphrey Appleby


I'm going to cause a lot of controversy with this proposition: there should be a full budget drafted by a citizens' assembly that includes a stratified cross-section of society, along with relevant experts. The Chancellor does not have to follow it, but they have to review it before announcing their own budget, and it is published alongside the actual budget the Chancellor announces so a cross-comparison is seen, where every statement in the assembly budget not included in the actual budget needs a clear explanation as to why it was not adopted. Maybe then the on the ground reality is able to penetrate the Westminster bubble.

 

[AlterEgo]

This is such a thick, mediocre, and unimaginative government. So pleased I didn't vote for them. More little dribbles of info coming out from the government now, minimum wage increase, blah blah blah. Infantile as per usual with our political culture.

Starmer no doubt having an especially long sleep tonight so all the new files download into his NPC brain before the Budget drops. 13% approval rating, hahahaha.

 

[JamieL]

The ISA changes will irk if true- rumours of a cut in cash ISAs from £20k to £12k in the hope of bullying people into using stocks and shares ISAs. They come with risks though, and often platform or trading charges, that it seems most unfair to expose normal savers to.