Party politics - Labour party in-fighting, and Conservative policies

The Economist's take on the 2015 budget:
"Politically astute, economically flawed".
Picture Credit; Economist

The recent Conservative budget (the first Blue budget since 1996) was interesting mainly because it took inspiration from various Labour Party policies ("a living wage") while still sticking to traditional Conservative policies. Main details here, and analysis from the Economist's leader here. There is much to applaud, and also to critique.

However, more interesting is its impact on Labour.

The current Labour leadership battle is fascinating because (apart from anything else) it is a look at the various factions in the Labour Party.

Clearly for G and P students taking Units 1 and 2 in Summer 2016 it'll probably be useful background. By the time the exam takes place there will be a leader in place and there shall be the outline of Labour policy; essential for the "Party Politics" topic of Unit 1.

Despite winning 3 elections and being the most successful Labour leader ever, Tony Blair is despised by some in Labour circles for, principally at least, the Iraq war. His intervention in the Labour Leadership election became controversial, because he warns against Labour "turning left" - in other words becoming "Old Labour" rather than "New Labour".

Which brings us onto the leadership candidates. Details of them can be found here on the Wikipedia page - for our purposes at the moment there is the left-leaning Jeremy Corbyn and the Blairite Liz Kendall, plus Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper who were part of the previous Labour regime. Stephen Daisley on STV has a great comparison of the different candidates here; most importantly he highlights quite how vicious and unpleasant it has become. For some left-wingers, Liz Kendall is not "Labour" enough and should be a Tory.

At time of writing Corbyn is in the lead prompting Blair's intervention. The battle seems to be between people who want to win elections by formulating policies which the public will vote for, and those who want to remain ideologically "pure".Typical of the genre is this rather unstructured tirade by Bryan Gould in the Guardian:

I have watched in disbelief as Labour leaders have sought to explain their unwillingness to stand firm and fight for what they supposedly believe. We are told that the voters’ support for further victimising those who have been left to pay the price of a recession for which they have no responsibility means that there is nothing further to be done.
“We can’t fight the electorate” is the siren call. But how are the voters likely to view a party that so manifestly lacks the courage of its convictions? Will they not conclude that Labour is fatally short of both courage and convictions?

By contrast here is fascinating analysis from Stephen Daisley; "it's not enough to be right, in politics you have to win too".

One of Daisley's important points is that Labour in the future not only has to win support from voters in England, but also has to win back support in Scotland - the SNP is doing very well and it will be a long battle to get Scotland back. This is a topic for another day:

2015 Scottish General election result compared to 2010.
Picture credit; BBC.