Does the party have a fixing problem? Have your say – State of the Party, May 2012

June 4, 2012 12:19 pm

It’s back…

After a hiatus last month thanks to the local elections, the State of the Party survey is back – your No.1 monthly barometer of Labour Party opinion.

As well as gauging your opinion on the shadow cabinet and Ed Miliband, this month we’re asking you:

  • Does the Labour Party have a “fixing” problem?
  • And are you a Monarchist? A Republican? Or neither?
It’s your party. Have your say. Vote here.
  • AlanGiles


    Does the Labour Party have a “fixing” problem?”

    YES

    • treborc1

      yes sadly Blair really went to town picking his own

      • Chilbaldi

         Why just mention Blair, when it is the current leadership, the one before that, the one before that, the one before that etc?

        • treborc1

          Oh yes they all try it but Blair was the master of it.

  • Ianrobo1

    No real relevant place to put this but Warsi apologies and Cameron refers her to Allan 

    http://www.itv.com/news/2012-06-04/full-text-of-baroness-warsis-written-apology-to-the-prime-minister-and-his-reply/ 

    And of course nothing about Hunt on a day the media obsesses with the Jubilee and the breaking news of the Duke’s ill health.

    Well played Dave !

    • treborc1

       After yesterday  in the rain the wet and standing for hours he is going to find it hard, anyone would and when your in your nineties.

      Warsi is the best thing for labour foot  mouth and that’s her.

  • Amber Star

    I’m uncomfortable with Labour ramping up the Warsi situation. Is diversity only to be encouraged by the Labour Party for the Labour Party? The Tory right-wing nasties are hounding her; Labour should not be helping them.

    • treborc1

       So if a Tory does something wrong we should be nice to them because their own people are picking on them.

      This lady is one of Labour biggest assets.

    • AlanGiles

      I can’t agree we should overlook wrongdoing, by any member of ANY party, simply because they are not white, male and middle-aged.

      When you choose to involve yourself in public life, you personal integrity should be beyond reproach – that applies as much to Warsi and John Taylor as much as it does  Peter Viggars and Eliot Morely.

    • Dave Postles

      I protested against Warsi when she visited the University of Leicester because she is Chair of the Tory Party which is devastating the lives of people.  OTOH, I’m quite prepared to believe that her sins of omission result from inexperience and lack of advice.  She has openly held up her hands.  Let’s allow the adjudicator on the miinisterial code to make his investigation.  Labour does not need to press this issue.  It would do better to continue to concentrate on Hunt, whose demeanour looks highly contentious and suspicious.

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    • Brumanuensis

      Warsi is a moron and deserves to be sacked, although I agree there’s a nasty undertone to some of the Conservative animosity towards her.

      Interesting how both members of the ‘Press Conference of Hate’, from August 2010 are now in hot water over personal misconduct. Karma is a boomerang, with a very large arc.

    • Chilbaldi

       Are you seriously suggesting that we turn a blind eye to any misdemeanour on the basis that Warsi is Asian?

      Would you also suggest that we let off someone convicted of murder if they are black/asian/[insert minority here]?

    • John Dore

      Doing the right thing is the most important thing. If she is a crook then she must be brought to justice. I do not believe in any form of positive discrimination ever, especially if it prevents the criminal justice system from working.

  • Amber Star

    I hope Anas Sarwar, Deputy leader of the Labour Party in Scotland, gets enough votes to appear on the MP of the month. Amongst other things, he completely shattered the SNP’s position during a big TV debate about Scottish Independence.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jim-Moore/100002860584188 Jim Moore

    Issues over the ESA and DLA and lack of support for the disabled and sick as a moral issue is not being looked at while literally 6,500 people have died

  • Wizard

    To Amber Star: Warsi’s conduct has nothing to do with diversity, but with corruption If what the media is right about what she has been doing and others MPs then they should be taken to justice.  The British public wants answers and will not tolerate corruption in times where people are struggling for their way of living. Corruption is unacceptable.on any grounds.

  • Diogenesthered

    The party, and the leadership in particular, have to stop equating benefits claimants with bankers and come out unequivocally against this kind of appalling behaviour

     http://cynicism.me/2012/05/27/work-programmecontract-for-grayling-buses/

  • Marvin

    I like Warsi. She looks juicy. I bet if you sank your teeth into her fleshy shoulders gravy would run down your chin.

  • Li

    Please stand up for disabled and ill people who are being demonised by the right wing media, pushed out of work (Remploy closures and DLA reforms) and into poverty with cuts to benefits and social care. We are voters too and we have family and firends who see what’s happening to us.

    • Dave Postles

      Remploy: at the very least, please sign the petition:

      http://www.unitetheunion.org/campaigns/remploy_-_not_for_sale.aspx

      even better, consider taking part in one of the local activities.

      http://www.unitetheunion.org/terms_and_privacy/search_results.aspx?terms=Remploy

      • treborc1

         I’ve already been to one in Cardiff on Saturday, and I have been asked to have my say on radio but turned it down, better people to stand up and have a say the people who are working at the factories.

        Sadly right now we have no political party to which to turn except maybe the greens, and believe it or not Labour Wales.

      • AlanGiles

        Hi Dave, Have sent the email to Duncan-Smith: if only there was a brain under that bald pate.

        Li: I feel for everyone in your position, and I am embarrassed and ashamed that Duncan-Smith is, in fact, only finishing the work started by the “Labour” government in it’s later. tawdry days.

        • Dave Postles

          Thanks, Alan.  I suspected that you would.  If anyone wants the lie to the Tories listening, it is Smith and Remploy, but, as you say and Robert/treborc reiterates, it does not exonerate NL for starting the process. 

  • Suejones1963

    Atos, the work capability assessment and workfare need to go. Someone needs to stand up for the most vulnerable members of society, we were once civilised, insofar as we looked after our most needy. Now we demonise them, thanks to the right wing ideologue and press.  As Li says, we disabled vote too. So do our kith and kin. I supported Labour all of my adult life, but it is on these issues I will decide if I will continue to do so. This current Government is an authoritarian one, with a psychopathic leader. It’s about time the opposition challenged his fitness for his role, by the way.

  • Marvin

    Of course there’s a fix going on. How else can you explain Liam Byrne ALWAYS coming last in every recent LabourList poll?

  • PaulHalsall

    “Michels’s grim conclusion was that it was impossible for any party, no matter its belief system, to bring about democracy in practice. Oligarchy was inevitable. For any kind of institution with a democratic base to consolidate the legitimacy it needs to exist, it must have an organization that delegates tasks. The rank and file will not have the time, energy, wherewithal or inclination to participate in the many, often minute decisions necessary to keep the institution functioning. In fact, effectiveness, Michels argues convincingly, requires that these tasks be delegated to a small group of people with enough power to make decisions of consequence for the entire membership. Over time, this bureaucracy becomes a kind of permanent, full-time cadre of leadership. “Without wishing it,” Michels says, there grows up a great “gulf which divides the leaders from the masses.” The leaders now control the tools with which to manipulate the opinion of the masses and subvert the organization’s democratic process. “Thus the leaders, who were at first no more than the executive organs of the collective, will soon emancipate themselves from the mass and become independent of its control.”
    All this flows inexorably from the nature of organization itself, Michels concludes, and he calls it “The Iron Law of Oligarchy”: “It is organization which gives birth to the dominion of the elected over the electors, of the mandataries over the mandators, of the delegates over the delegators. Who says organization says oligarchy.””http://www.thenation.com/article/168265/why-elites-fail?wpisrc=nl_wonk 

    • PaulHalsall


      The Iron Law of Meritocracy states that eventually the inequality produced by a meritocratic system will grow large enough to subvert the mechanisms of mobility. Unequal outcomes make equal opportunity impossible. The Principle of Difference will come to overwhelm the Principle of Mobility. Those who are able to climb up the ladder will find ways to pull it up after them, or to selectively lower it down to allow their friends, allies and kin to scramble up. In other words: “Who says meritocracy says oligarchy.””

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