We cannot allow trade unions to bribe us with large cheques even though we know that their values are often out of touch with ours and often contradict New Labour principles.

Nobody doubts that trade unions do good work, but why should they be affiliated to any party? Surely they should work with whoever is the government of the day to ensure that workers always have their rights upheld. The fact that they support Labour probably puts a lot of non-Labour-supporting workers off from ever joining a trade union, which is sad.

This constant failed alignment with trade unions puts us at odds with modern society and probably puts a lot of voters off us. New Labour is just as supportive of businesses as trade unions today, but people widely accept that businesses shouldn't dominate our funding and certainly should not be able to vote in our electoral college - so why should trade unions get privileges? Just because they helped to found the Labour party does not mean they should always have the right to rule over us irrespective of how they act.

History should not be allowed to hold us back. Progress and democracy cannot be stopped and sooner or later, our party will ditch our constitutional links and our funding links with trade unions - and rightly so. Embrace change and embrace the future.

"As a trade unionist it would only be with my dying breath that I would allow the link  with trade unions and their funding to end."

Better get planning that funeral then wiseman!

Also, I'm on the party's right and oppose state funding (it's my liberalism coming out).

To me, limits on spending are the way to go. It mean that, if the limit was set at the right level, parties would, at any one point, have more offers of donations than they could except (or spend) - meaning that they could be more choosy about who to take money from and avoid being roped into funding-policy reciprocity.

Luke Akehurst and those on the right who defend the link don't do because they passionately believe that Trade Union barons offer some fabulous insight into the working class (the leaders are about as in touch with their members as Blair is with some of the Trots on this forum): it's because they want the dosh and know that the Unions get only a marginal influence on policy in return.

Both are wrong.  If the left are right the link between Unions and Labour should be able to withstand a cap on donations - and if it can't then another sacred cow of the left has been shown to be little more than the usual gesture politics.  

Equally, let's not have those on the right pretending to give a stuff about Unions' input into the Party when this is solely about them trying to rig the party financing system so that Labour remains able to receive vast donations while the Tories are prevented.

There is absolutely nothing to prevent Labour retaining exactly the same income it gets now - indeed increasing it - from Trade Unionists: all that needs to happen is that individual TU members opt to join or donate to Labour themselves, rather than having their bosses doing it for them.

Indeed, surely from a left-wing perspective, the party would be very much stronger if it had these extra hordes of supposedly red-in-tooth-and-claw trade unionists as paid-up members?

Of course, therein lies the problem: no-one especially wants to join political parties anymore, whether they be trade unionists or anyone else. And even if they did, the myth that trade unionists simply by their membership of such a body are any more or less party political, or even more or less Labour-supporting than ordinary people who don't belong to a union is simply that: a myth.

You're never going to be able to persuade the public that it is reasonable to block large donations to Conservatives while to Labour they're perfectly legitimate (indeed, I suspect there are a few on this forum who'd like the requirement for a ballot before they're permitted to be axed).  There's a simple reason for that: it's a ludicrous  and self-serving argument.

The point is, these two creators of wealth have been pitted against one another for centuries by landowners, who collect rents but do precious little for it.

It is time for there to be one party for workers AND business (that wants low income and corporate taxes and high taxes on land values) and a dwindlingly small party for landowners (who couldn't care less about taxes on wealth creation, as long as there are little or no taxes on land values - agricultural landlords being an extreme example of this - no business rates, no inheritance tax and CAP subsidies for good measure).

Yes, it's borrowing at a higher rate, but rolled into that is the transfer of risk to the private company - insurance that, if the project goes wrong, the cost fall on the private company.

Of course, this is all tied up with the PFI contract - if you get that wrong by leaving a load of get out clauses or not properly transferring risk, the whole thing goes down the pan. But PFI is not inherently bad.

And yes, I'm going to say it - private sector innovation CAN have a role in improving the way the public sector is run.

So, in my opinion, the extra cost (of which some goes to shareholders) is offset by the transfer of risk and private sector innovation.

Buses and trains. At present we subsidies private train companies millions a year for them to pay shareholder dividends with. That's just one way that money could be better spent on services. Publicly run and democratically accountable public transport is not only cheaper but safer, more efficient and more responsive to passenger interests.

I'm not convinced that renationalising the trains would make them cheaper to run. I do think that they were badly privatised, but still think a better private model would be better than renationalisation. There was a Jenkins article in the Guardian about it a while ago - very interesting.

"Oh it's nice when multi-millionaire company owners have supposedly left wing people to make their arguments for them. Fact is that in the vast majority of cases work is not moved abroad as a way of avoiding bankruptcy but, as in the case of Burberry, so a very profitable firm can make even bigger profits. If it was harder to lay people off in the UK then bosses would have to think much harder before relocating to Asia in order to increase their already lucrative profit margins."

But what happens when Company X's American/European/Japanese rivals, who ARE allowed by their governments to relocate jobs overseas to cut costs, are able to sell their products cheaper and drive British Company X out of the market? What happens to the jobs provided by company X in the UK?