That manifesto has fairly diminished Labours chances of winning the election. Listening to McDonnell there on R4. Just not credible.
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I saw the point being made last night that what Corbyn is proposing to nationalise, is effectively run by the state in Ireland already. However it kinda proves that privatising/nationalising is like growing a beard. If you have a beard or are clean-shaven no one passes any comment - it’s going from one to another that freaks everybody out.
The problem with re nationalising something is you’ve to take them off the private companies who’ll either demand a massive payout or else will fight you tooth and nail through the courts.
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Yeah - it’s presented as a fix-all when like most things it’ll be very messy with lots of vested interests. I’ve heard question of the ability to do it in the context of EU membership too (which wouldn’t exactly give heart to remainers) but I don’t have the full details on that.
Manifestos are funny things - you need to promise enough to attract swing voters and motivate your base but if you over-egg it then it just comes across as fairytale stuff or not deliverable.
The particular problem for Britain is the memory of what nationalised industries looked like and the hold that the unions had over them. Not alone is there no confidence that Labour could or would control the unions, they are proposing to embed the unions into many sectors of the economy. If the unions had behaved rationally in the past that might not be a particularly bad idea on the face of it. But they didn’t and many people of voting age in Britain remember that.
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One of the main reasons Corbyn is actually a Brexiteer
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Has Boris won yet?
My particular favourite line from the manifesto is a commitment to give union reps adequate time off for union duties.
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Lily Allen likes it though
The thing about it is that hard-core labour voters will vote for them anyway. They need to build a coalition of voters that includes centrist voters who are disaffected with the Tories, LibDems etc. It’ll be interesting to see how such a radical manifesto goes down with those types
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What Labour are proposing works very well in Europe
Workers councils and worker representation on boards is an integral part of the Scandinavian model
They are proposing state investment slightly above the European average
Seems pretty sensible
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Yeah - the workers council thing works well in Europe but I’m not sure that automatically means it works well when moved elsewhere. Certainly the experience as @Fagan_ODowd points out is that in the UK (and in other circumstances in Ireland etc) increased Union control tended to result in companies being run for the benefit of the employees rather than the customers. In Germany and other places the sense from afar would be that the councils have been far more pragmatic and that it has been properly run in partnership mode rather than “how much can we extract from this”
Either way though, as it’s a general election so the politics of it and how the crucial swing voters see it is far more important to the actual election result. Labour needs to convince them somehow that a European type system can work in the UK.
I know it works well in Europe. But my point is that the memory of how the unions behaved in the past in Britain means that those who remember that time will have very little confidence that it can be transposed successfully into the British environment.
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It works well in Europe because the people who run companies want it to run well
That has never been the case in Britain where owners and managers have always seen workers and unions as the enemy, hardly surprising when that’s what Tory politics has always taught them to believe
It would require a sea change in attitude from company management
People are looking in the wrong place - it’s the Anglo-Saxon, or more pertinently, the Anglo-American model and atttitude of management that needs to change
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I remember learning in business studies, which would have been in the 90s some time, that there were more unions in Irish rail than in all of Germany.
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I think your looking at it a bit skewed here. I’d say both “sides” need to change. As well as management the Unions have typically seen and portrayed management/shareholders as the enemy too. The history between the two sides means that culture is ingrained and so isn’t easily changed - and certainly as @Fagan_ODowd points out the voter is likely to be a bit wary of anyone claiming it’s easily done
When the system broke down in Britain Labour had been in Government for 11 of the previous 15 years.
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Britain is at a stage where it need to change and needs to change now, because kicking the can down the road isn’t a realistic option
For too long worker’s rights have been dirty words
Nobody can look at the comparative experiences of Northern continental Europe for the last 70 plus years vis a vis the UK and the US and tell me that the attitude of management in Europe to workers’ right isn’t much superior
By European standards, what Labour is proposing is moderate social democracy, by British standards it’s radical because Britain has had decades of poor industrial management, and decades of anti-worker and anti-union rhetoric, meaning people are socialised into a particular way of doing things where they believe nothing can ever change
That has created mass disenchantment in society, yet conversely, much of British society has also been made to think that nothing can ever change - that’s almost like the mindset you get in dictatorships
Societies now are at the point where if they don’t change and implement big ideas like in the post-war period, they will be hopelessly ill-equipped to deal with what is coming down the tracks
All we ever hear is, “we can’t do this, we can’t do that”, I find it astounding that anybody would vote for more of the same, because the same has been a failure
The climate crisis is the most pertinent problem facing humanity - right-wing political parties have no answers to it and no ideas
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Labour governments were on average considerably more fiscally prudent in post war history than Tory governments
It was the Tories that brought in the three day week
When the Tories took over in 1979 they implemeted Monetarism which was designed specifically to create mass uneemployment - it did