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State of the Party survey: Steady Eddy

March 8, 2012 3:26 pm

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Last month in our State of the Party survey, we saw a New Year Ed Mili-bounce, as Ed’s popularity amongst LabourList readers bounced back after a pre-Christmas dip. This month, it’s “steady as he goes” with little change compared to last month. 41% of those who voted believe he’s doing an Excellent or Good job (compared to 43% last month), with 30% believing he has been either Poor or Very Poor (compared to 31% last month).

In an attempt to pinpoint what has caused this (relative) improvement in Miliband’s popularity amongst labour supporters, we asked if you thought his PMQs performances have improved in 2012. We received a resounding yes – 69% of you thought so, compared to just 24% who disagreed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With the “Workfare” scheme very much in the public eye, we also asked “Should the Labour Party back compulsory work placements for the long-term unemployed?”. The answer as far as LabourList readers are concerned is no – with 64% against, compared to just 29% in favour.

565 LabourList readers voted between March 1st and March 8th. Thanks to everyone who voted. Don’t forget to check back next week for the latest shadow cabinet rankings – and your MP of the month.

Related posts:

  1. State of the Party survey: Mili-bounce back
  2. State of the Party survey: December 2010
  3. Vote in our October “State of the Party” survey
  4. State of the Party survey – February 2012
  5. State of the Party survey – January 2012
  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Paul-Barker/1546990341 Paul Barker

    So 3 out of 5 dont think Milliband is doing a good job. I think they are missing the point. Labour has had equally poor leaders before (Kinnock, Foot) & got massive poll leads mid-term . The problem is with the party not the leader.

  • Samuel_Rushworth

    @Paul Barker: I think people are missing the point that he is doing a good job. It took some floating voters 13 years to go off Labour. We’d be arrogant to think we can win them back straight away. We are trying hard to articulate the nuanced view of an alternative through a hostile media that reads any rejection of any cut as deficit denial and any acceptance as evidence that Labour are no different. Ed has set the agenda on executive pay, the media and the NHS. His biggest barrier to success so far has been the failure of those who should know better to back him. I give him my fullest support (and this is coming from someone who voted for his brother).

  • AlanGiles

    It gives you hope that 64% of LL readers are against “workfare” – thank goodness there is a majority against the pernicious idea of people working for Tesco and Poundland for nothing.

    • jaime taurosangastre candelas

      @ Alan Giles,

      except, as I understand it, these people are not working “for nothing”.  They are in receipt of benefits.

      I would like it far more if the effort was devoted to ensuring that Tesco etc, paid the cost of the benefits to either the individual or the Government.  Morally, they should pay minimum wage rates or better and that uplift was paid to the person concerned.  However, that is a separate argument.

      What is being argued against is the principle that someone who is already unemployed should do some work experience in return for the benefits they receive.  Turn that around in my mind, I cannot see how that is a bad thing, in comparison with the alternative of receiving the same amount of benefits but doing nothing for it.  Maybe not every work experience will work out or convert to a permanent job, but some will, and that is surely a better result than everyone sitting at home receiving the benefits.

      What is wrong is someone sitting at home receiving benefits but yet rejecting the chance to get a permanent placement because they are not being paid by the employer.  I’ll tell you what, millions of taxpayers are paying them, and have some expectation that is not an enduring situation, and that like everyone else in life, they need to get off their bottoms and make an effort.

      • AlanGiles

        A lot of unemployed people do voluntary work in charity shops, and that is fair enough and to be encouraged. What should NOT be encouraged is the retailer which makes the biggest profits on the High Street taking advantage by offering bogus “work experience” for nothing. You don’t need much experience to stack tins or collect abandoned trollies.

        The rate of benefit is very small –  JSA is about £55 p.w. far less than a doctor, for example, would earn in a morning

        • jaime taurosangastre candelas

          @ Alan giles,

          I don’t think we are arguing against each other, more likely holding two separate debates!

          Yes, I agree that the employer should pay – and a proper rate – for the work.  Completely.  Maybe the Government then pays the employer an amount of money equal to JSA, as a subsidy for the employer.  That would I feel give the employer also an incentive to give adequate training and care to the work experience person, rather than just turn them out at the end of the scheme and say “next!”.

          But equally, I do not see any problem at all in asking people who are unemployed to do these schemes, instead of doing nothing.

          In the end, with a mathematical perspective, this is all about how much we as a country can make these schemes work for individuals, to give them at least a chance.  Simply giving money to people with no expectation has got to be a terrible solution.

          (And yes you are right about the value, and no I could not live on £55 a week. Roughly, post tax I am on double that for a morning, and that provides much more comfort and luxury than £55 a week. That does not mean I have no compassion however).

          • AlanGiles

            These days Jaime people who claim JSA have to jump through hoops to get it – applying for a certain number of jobs each week, to agree to be ready to attend interviews at short notice etc, so I think it could be argued they do have to work for their benefits.

            I was lucky I was never unemployed, but I would have very much resented having to work for nothing for an avaricous company like Tesco.

            One other point: people over 50 find it extremely difficult to get back into employment, however hard they try, and as this situation is unlikely to change, not least due to employers attitudes, I find it hard to understand why both the present and previous governments were so keen to raise the retirement age. I would hope no government would take advantage of these older people with this frankly pointless little scheme, which doesn’t solve the unemployment issue, but merely makes it APPEAR the government are “helping”

          • jaime taurosangastre candelas

            Alan,

            jumping through hoops is part of life.  I’m sorry but I won’t agree that applying for jobs and being ready to attend interviews is particularly arduous.  If you don’t have a job it is not arduous at all, within reasonable geographical limits.  If someone is unemployed, they should regard the business of getting a job as being their job.  And if the “system” gives them a work experience opportunity, it should be seized.  I don’t want to see anyone out of pocket from these schemes, I do want to see them get at least minimum wage, but the chance of a job is a golden opportunity if they have not the capacity to get one on their own.

          • AlanGiles

            Jaime: I don’t mean to be rude but if you think collecting trollies for 8 weeks for nothing  for the biggest and greediest supermarket on the High Street is a “golden opportunity”, we have such different ideas it is really a waste of your time and mine to be conversing.

          • jaime taurosangastre candelas

            I don’t think that it is merely collecting trollies Alan.  Based on the controversy over the last few weeks of this, I went to our local Tesco store and spoke with the manager who I know very slightly from a charity event I ran last year.  I wanted to find out for myself.  He said that the work experience scheme is quite structured, and those who attend (3 in his store’s case so far) spend time in 4 departments:  receiving goods in, store operations, stock control, and store administration.  He received a programme from Tesco corporation, and amended it slightly to reflect his own store’s day to day life.  He also keeps an eye on the work experience people and tries to give them encouragement and advice.  It is not just collecting trolleys.

            My own work experience started with cutting grass and painting seats at my rugby club.  I built it up from there, trying to make myself useful and also to contribute to the club’s activities with my brain as well as physical capacity.  I have no doubt at all that you will feel that my initial experience, akin to “collecting trollies” was an example of ruthless exploitation and should be resisted, but do you know what?, I was glad of the experience, it paid me some loose change, I got to know how to deal with people from the club president to the lady who cleaned the toilets, and most of all, I learned that in the adult world lots of people have lots of opinions and skills, and some of them are good and some of them are bad, and not to believe the first thing you are told.

          • AlanGiles

            Jaime: You – like myself – did what we did because we wanted to: I remember one of my very first jobs in one of the UKs coldest winters included at 7.30 every morning taking a boiling kettle of water and pouring it down the outdoor lavatory of the factory to break the ice – a big kettle a fairly small boy at the time, but of course that was only the first 5 minutes of the day. And I was paid!

            I would have felt very differently had I been forced to carry out work for nothing by some bald overpaid politician who took fiddling his expenses to boost his already inflated pay packet as a right.

            Mr Duncan-Smith wouldn’t have expected his wife to work for nothing – and she didn’t.

          • jaime taurosangastre candelas

            I have a feeling this conversation could easily degenerate…

            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo

          • AlanGiles

            Not in the least. I am sure your experience was as truthful and genuine as mine.

            The point is, I didn’t work for nothing and neither did you. What right have I to say 50 years on people should have to do what I wouldn’t have been prepared to do.

          • jaime taurosangastre candelas

            Alan,  as I said earlier, I think it would be better if the company receiving the work experience people paid at least the minimum wage, and I would like to see the government put some effort into that.

            Nevertheless, the people concerned do receive their JSA, so it is not “for nothing”

          • AlanGiles

            Under 25s receive £53.45JSAper week, soTescoare getting VERYcheaplabour,evenso

          • StephenG

            You can discuss the rights and wrongs of workfare until you’re blue or red in the face. It won’t make any difference.
            What really underlies workfare policy isn’t a desire to help the unemployed but a desire to punish them.
            Surveys undertaken by Labour and others indicate that those in target swing seats (i.e. constituencies mainly in the S.E. of England) are of the opinion that it is unfair for hard-working families to have to pay for others (even if it’s not their fault) to sit at home and watch daytime tv (this is how they perceive it). Therefore to win swing voters – governments and prospective governments must show that they’ll compel the unemployed to work for financial support. 

            It’s not about the unemployed, it’s not about reducing unemployment (there are no jobs anyway) – it’s about getting politicians rumps onto deeply upholstered benches.  

  • Dave Postles

    “Should the Labour Party back compulsory work placements for the long-term unemployed?”

    That’s Labour Party policy, isn’t it?  Isn’t Byrne, with authorization, proposing six-month jobs, but no benefits if you do not take the job? It sounds like: take this job for six months or we will cut your benefits for those six months.  That sounds like a compulsory work placement to me.

    • TomFairfax

       Hi Dave,
                        Agree workplaces too temporary to be of any real benefit.

      Let me give you an early fifties alternative that suited a NEET of the time, my father.

      Like everyone else he had to do National Service, not the most useful skills in the world, but in the world of work an understanding that things could be worse, though not in his case, he like many of his generation of the unskilled found they’d acquired a marketable skill set, it also gave rise to self respect and self discipline, which are also vital in the world of work. It’s something I see in France and Germany still. Protest is much more effective if the protesters know what they are doing.

      Controversial I know, but 2years National service has some other advantages.

      Consider the era immediately after 1918 saw the rise of the Labour Party, and let’s be honest coincided with a large number of militarily trained working class members of the population who gained from the expansion of the franchise, because it would have been a bad idea not to grant it to them. Not just morally.

      Likewise in the period from 1945, social progress seemed to coincide with a high level of working class people who not only granted Labour a landslide in 1945, but clearly wouldn’t be cowed by the police in the same way as modern day protesters. Kettling works because the police are working as an organised and disciplined team, and the ‘kettled’ are anything but.

      Democracy after all is a way to run the country peacefully.  It achieves this by avoiding the risk of influential parts of the population being so disenchanted they resort to other means. However, being influential, is often denied to the many when they have a choice of parachuted policy wonks and insiders at an election whose only distinguishing feature is the colour of their rosette, which as we often see, can be quite interchangeable.

      Sadly it seems you need to train the masses to be a threat to the rich and powerful to gain influence.

      Even the 38degrees type route requires cash. This seems wrong, when it should be the number of people involved, not the depths of their pockets.

      In an era where the left is associated with all things fluffy and peaceful I don’t think military National Service will make a comeback, because even DC’s short lived attempts to push some organised volunteer service from the young in 2010 stopped far short of allowing them to volunteer for anything that give them the skills to take what they wanted in the face of any possible prolonged and self serving refusal to govern for the people, not just the section that has lobbyists and PR budgets at it’s disposal.

      It would also hopefully have the benefit that people would be less likely to fall for rabble rousing war mongering if there was a real risk it would be them or theirs at the sharp end and not someone elses kids.

  • AlanGiles

    It is amazing what you hear in the British press review on radio in the early hours.

    This story is NOT exclusively about Labour (Redbridge council is true blue), but it does explain why so many people feel that all politicians are the same. before giving you the link I must apologize that it comes from the source it does (Sunday Express), but just reading it endorses what Cllr George Barratt from B&D said on here just a few days ago about local government:

    http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/307383/Tycoons-hookers-and-our-council-fatcats-party-in-Cannes 

  • Jeff_Harvey

    What about shadow cabinet rankings? After providing David Cameron with any number of supportive quotes – especially in respect to Housing Benefit cuts – I bet Byrne is now top doggy dog as far as LabourList’s shadow cabinet rankings go.

  • http://www.facebook.com/elliot.bidgood Elliot Bidgood

    @Paul Barker, wish that were true, but it’s the opposite. It is the leader, because Labour’s mid-term poll leads evaporate close to elections when we have poor leaders (Kinnock 1992 is perhaps the best example). Ed is down 38 points in favourability in the latest polls, only a few points above Clegg and 30 points behind Cameron, despite a recent return to 5-point Labour leads. He’s underperforming the party, and that’ll come into sharper focus in elections. Moreover, when he was down 44 a few weeks ago, we were statistically tied with Tories, showing that fluctuations in Ed’s relative favourability have at least some link to overall party performance.

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