We've lost Glasgow East

So the question is this: Who could possibly blame us for making changes after a loss like this?

..

Display: Sort:

Re: We've lost Glasgow East (#1)

One change in particular.

Re: We've lost Glasgow East (#2)

This isn't just about Brown though, people are utterly dismayed at best, and actively hate at worst, the Labour party. All of it.

A recount is imminent I hear, by the way.

Re: We've lost Glasgow East (#3)

A terrible result but isnt all this driven by the media which, with the exception of the Mirror, fails to analyse what it is the Tories stand for and constantly talk down the Labour government?

Gordon Brown is the subject of a vicious witch hunt to drive Labour from power, this is driven by the very top of the  Tory voting establishment and conducted by the media machine that serves them.

The mantra 'labour bad, Gordon Brown bad' is repeated on and on and the fickle public in large measure buy it in the same way if a commercial for Daz washing powder is shown enough more people end up buying Daz than any other.

It does not help that people in our party, instead of rallying to the PM and taking the fight to the Tories and their nationalist stooges, enagage in doing the work of our enemies for them.

 

Re: We've lost Glasgow East (#17)

"A terrible result but isnt all this driven by the media"

That's right - it's everyone else's fault. Nothing to do with the economy or voters feeling betryed over 10p tax or "work for you dole" schemes.

Re: We've lost Glasgow East (#4)

That's slightly different from the messages we've been getting on the ground (from places like Crewe, Glasgow, suburban London and also South Yorkshire). There the message is 'Labour is still good despite everything - it's the leadership that's lacking'. It's surprising (given the geographic differences) how consistent that's been.

Re: We've lost Glasgow East (#13)

"That's slightly different from the messages we've been getting on the ground (from places like Crewe, Glasgow, suburban London and also South Yorkshire). There the message is 'Labour is still good despite everything - it's the leadership that's lacking'"

If you really think that's the mood of the public today, then you certainly are bonkers.

Re: We've lost Glasgow East (#5)

One wonders if a BNP candidate would have helped squeeze the vote enough to keep this a Labour hold?

The full result, for records -

J MASON SNP 11,277 (43.1, +26.1)
M CURRAN LAB 10,912 (41,7 -19.0)
D RANKIN CON 1,639 (6.3 -0.6)
I ROBERTSON LIBDEM 915 (3.5 -8.3)
F CURRAN SSP 555 (2.1 -1.4)
T MCLEISH SOL 512 (2.0 -)
E DUKE GRN 232 (0.9 -)
C CREIGHTON 67 (0.3 -)
H HOWITT F4C 65 (0.2 -)

Re: We've lost Glasgow East (#32)

If anything a BNP candidate would have helped the SNP, surely? More Labour voters would vote BNP than SNP voters, surely. The SNP is too anti-Britain to attract any potential BNP voters, I'd have thought.

Re: We've lost Glasgow East (#6)

Do not fear, I'm sure we will listen to the voters and understand their concerns, and act appropriately...

Re: We've lost Glasgow East (#7)

The sheer scale of managerial incompetence involved in the loss of this seat is almost unbelievable.  Appointing a leader of Scottish Labour just becasue she is the sister of your #2 mini-me. Then having a public fight with her, and losing her just before a by-election.  Then having a public fight with the Catholic Church which is the bedrock of your support in Glasgow. Etc... etc...

If this were just a party matter it would be one thing, but the same amazing leader is supposedly running  the country. I don't think the electroate will forgive the Labour Party if this breathtaking incompetence continues for another year or two.  The chance of Labour having fewer than 100 MPs in the next parliament is now, in my view, over 15%. 

Re: We've lost Glasgow East (#8)

The only message I'm beginning to see consistently now is "Nowhere is safe".

The Tories overturned a majority of 8,000 and replaced it with a majority of 8,000 for them in Crewe.

The SNP has now taken an area that had voted for Labour since the year dot, and continued to do so since Glas East's creation in 2005.

Both previously believed to be "safe seats" both now very much not. If this is what's happening now, what the heck is it going to be like in a General Election under Brown or a new guy?

 

 

Re: We've lost Glasgow East (#9)

There is no doubt this is a terrible result.

I used to live in Glasgow East and until recently I could never have thought we would lose a seat like this.  But in the lead-up to this by-election I had a gut feeling that the SNP might just take it.

The saddest thing is that the SNP haven't won it.  Labout have lost it.  We've lost it to a party with no clear policies apart from independence.  They won it by virtue of simply being perceived as the logical alternative to the Labour Party rather than because they had a good candidate, a set of radical ideas or clear policies.  They won it because we've made ourselves so unpopular.

Of course, the media is partly to blame.  I'm not sure I agree with the comment about the media's unquestioning promotion of the Conservatives; at least, it isn't the case up here in Scotland.  But the unremitting and disporportionate criticisms of Gordon Brown are having a definite effect - he and the government are being undermined by the media as much as by their own lack of direction.  I personally find it ridiculous that the Scottish media have focussed so much attention on the British PM rather than the shortcomings of First Minister Alex Salmond (and his dreadful sidekick, Ms Sturgeon).

The big question is how we go forward from here.  By-elections are by-elections and I have no doubt we will win this back.  The Tories suffered similarly in the late 80s/early 90s when they couldn't win a by-election even in the Ribble Valley, yet came back to win the General Election in 92.  It's not crisis time but there needs to be a change of direction, an injection of fresh ideas and a serious attempt to reconnect with the public, especially in places like Glasgow East. 

Re: We've lost Glasgow East (#10)

God almight I've just watched Brown on TV the bloke has no idea at all how the people are feeling.

Glasgow has a lot of disabled and sick so that did not help them much with Puriels Welfare reforms sorry miss- spelled that Purnell.

We need to listen but your not are you.

I applied for a job this week at a new firm which has been set up to find work for the disabled, I was told the job might be to much for a disbled person. I kid you not.

Re: We've lost Glasgow East (#25)

Glasgow has a lot of disabled and sick?

Where do you get this from treborc? I think you'll find there are disabled and sick people all over the country.

We need Purnell's welfare reforms if we're actually going to get people into work. The time has ended where we pay fit people for doing nothing.

Re: We've lost Glasgow East (#11)

A salient point from someone on Comment is Free:

During a by-election in one of their safest seats - a seat with a large proportion of people damaged by industrial destruction and neglect - Purnell basically shouts out "Oi! You disabled and incapacitated shirkers! Get out of your wheelchairs and start cleaning up dog shit!" Amazing that it wasn't a vote winner, eh?

Re: We've lost Glasgow East (#23)

A ridiculous comment - to say this is what the Green Paper is about is just pathetic.

There's a few people who post the same old rubbish on this site no matter what the post or issue. I don't know why they bother.

Re: We've lost Glasgow East (#26)

Well that comment on CiF clearly demonstrates great ignorance of the issue. Purnell handled the issue sensitively and his policy makes sense.

I'm glad we've got a member of the Cabinet who's actually brave enough to tackle this issue head on rather than 'shirk' away from it as some are inclined to do in this party.

cuts to disability benefits (#12)

it seems new labour have shot themselves in the foot with announcing  on monday 21/07/08 that they are going to   make people work for dole and    disabled   people out there in england and scotland are frightened they are going to have there benefits cut  they are not coming across as a caring gov and theres also the 10p tax problem they are out of touch with the real would

Re: We've lost Glasgow East (#14)

Just listened to Des Browne answering tough questions on Today. He put in a creditable performance, but it reminds that making Secretary of State for Scotland a part-time job of a busy minister was a mistake given the SNP competition in Scotland.

Re: We've lost Glasgow East (#15)

In the last GE the turn-out was 46%. Last night it was 42%.  This seat wasn't lost because Labour voters stayed at home or the SNP got their voters out,  this seat was lost because Labour's core vote - the working class - turned out and voted against it.

Unless and until Labour not only listens but changes radically, it will be annihilated in 2010.   It's core working class vote is not going to keep voting for middle class middle england policies.

To win the next election Labour needs to do ALL of the following:-
Stop picking on the sick & disabled.
Re-nationalise water, gas, electric & rail.
Substantially increase the minimum wage sdo that people on it have a decent quality of life .
Start building much-needed council housing on a massive scale & stop the 'Right To Buy'
Ensure that every citizen has access to a LOCAL NHS dentist.
Get out of Iraq.
Get out of Afghanistan.
End PPP/PFI.
Use the REAL inflation rate.
Keep Blears and Harmann off the telly and away from microphones.
Drop the Olympics.
Drop ID cards.
Give the people their EU referendum & honour the result before the tories turn the EU into an election issue.

And you need to do this before 2010,  not wishy-washy pledges that it might happen.

Lose the next election and the presence of a tory government in Westminster wil drive the Scots to vote for independence.  Lose Scotland from the UK and you will never be in power ever again.  Do you think that with the guarentee of permanent power in a rump UK that the tories would opt to try and retain Scotland?

Re: We've lost Glasgow East (#16)

Hear! Hear!

Maybe true Labour isn't that bad after all!

I'm a card carrying member of the party and it's really upsetting me to say that we deserved to lose Glasgow East and Crewe and Nantwich through neglect, arrogance and our leaders coming accross so out of touch.

That creep, David Cameron is rubbing his hands with glee!  I feel James Purnell has really let the side down by cosying up to the Tories and appeasing the right-wing comics (I mean, er, 'newspapers')  with these ill-thought at 'Welfare' proposals.  I expect better of our party.

After introducing a minimum wage, offering extra help for children, more money for schools and hospitals,it's as if the Labour Government is shying away from all this and setting the scene for David Cameron's Tories.

What a wonderful early housewarming present this 'Welfare Reform?' paper is!

Come on Labour, it's not too late yet!

Re: We've lost Glasgow East (#27)

Stop picking on the sick & disabled - No-one's picking on them as you know perfectly well. There are plenty of disabled people who are capable of working and the government should help them to get into work. It's a far more dignified life for them and their family than living off the Dole. Ever thought why we're called the Labour party? We're supposed to get people into work.

Re-nationalise water, gas, electric & rail. No.

Start building much-needed council housing on a massive scale & stop the 'Right To Buy'. No.

Get out of Afghanistan. No.

Drop the Olympics. No.

The rest aren't so bad.

Re: We've lost Glasgow East (#28)

What's bizarre is that you and others have said No to various proposals I wrote,  but no-one has objected to my one of keeping Blears & Harman off the telly and away from microphones.

Re: We've lost Glasgow East (#29)

I think though that we have to mean it. We should let asylum seekers work, as it costs money, to pay rather pitiful benefits. This would save us money. The proposals in the Green Paper are actually largely sensible. But, we need to be careful about how it is implemented. For instance, 250,000 drug users are to be sent to rehab. What happens if it doesn't work? Can't we give them a clean script, which we are already doing for tonnes of homeless people to help them leave their rut? It costs around a tenth of the cost of rehab.

What if the right-to-buy were legislated, so that homes are replaced when sold?


Actually, some privatisations, like gas, electric, airlines etc. worked out well. But rail and water is an absolute disaster area. We fork out huge subsidies to these industries, essentially corporate welfare. I inherently distrust private monopolies. Some privatisations do allow people to switch company in a fair way. But we're not going to build a second set of rails for every platform in the country so that we can have a 'choice'. Noone is going to build a second set of taps in our homes. I don't think we should return to top-down nationalisation of rail and water, and I don't trust the old left idea that we should focus services equally to everyone, rather than to prioritise them for the neediest (for that would be to pretend that we already live in egalitarian society. This is why I don't like the idea of say, getting rid of tax credits). But we should find an alternative form of common ownership.


Overall, the state should help people, but we need to help free people, and give them a chance to escape from their rut at the same time. So we need to build more council homes, but it needs to be in line with the right to buy, because combined it leaves a great chance to encourage freedom, but in a very much egalitarian way.

We need to get people into work, and our reforms are largely sensible, but we can't resort to a Toryish nature of saying to people that their condition is their own fault. So if rehab doesn't work, give addicts a clean script, as it has already helped hundreds into proper jobs. If people can't find jobs, put them (of all ages) onto the New Deal. Help rid the notion of a welfare trap forever by tranforming the NMW into a living wage. 

Re: We've lost Glasgow East (#18)

The voters of Glasgow East remained loyal throughout the bleakest days of the 1980's. They have now had enough as has Labour's core vote throught the country. The time has come to stop trying to out tory the tories and to try at last to do something for our hard pressed core voters.
It is time to end our deluded love affair with the private sector. Time to stop attacking the poor, the disabled and the low paid. Time to start doing some of the things that the Labour Party was founded to do.
True, during the past 11 years there have been some marginal gains for the poor but these are insignificant compared to massive gains for the rich. We have totally failed to redress the inequality in our society, indeed the balance has tilted even further toward the rich.
We now have less than two years to do something that may make up for eleven years of wasted opportunity. Forget talk about changing Leader. There may be some sense in doing so if there was an obvious successor but in the most talent challenged and gutless PLP in living memory who is there who could improve upon Gordon Brown?
The chances are that, whatever we do, we will lose the next election. The difference is between defeat and destruction. If we carry on as we are going, destruction is inevitable. We have a short time to win back our natural supporters. It can be done but it needs brave and radical action. Come on Gordon, you've nothing to lose.

Re: We've lost Glasgow East (#19)

As a Labour PPC, I have called for changes in policy and have been met with "We are listening!".  I don't think so.  Something has to give, I hope it is policy and not the leader, or we will look like we are panicing.

John Wiseman

Re: We've lost Glasgow East (#20)

Maybe they will listen when you've lost you're deposit!

A party in government is not going to rebuild itself; that will happen after a crushing election defeat if/when it happens.  I can't see Brown making massive changes in policy direction which would be equally suggestive of panic.

What would be useful in the short-term is to make war on unemployment rather than the unemployed, to lose the arrogance (especially on the EU referendum issue), to appear willing to engage with communities and to stop giving Cameron such an easy ride.  We've played right into his hands time and time again, the 42-days detention without charge issue being a prime example.

I don't think the government has been listening otherwise it wouldn't be staggering blindly from crisis to crisis.  Whether this will change remains to be seen.

Re: We've lost Glasgow East (#21)

If we want to win, we need three or so policies, that are fresh and radical. Some say, sift right, or shift left. It focuses on the parameters of the last couple of decades: nationalise this, or privatise this.

But what we need is a policy that can define New Labour. Currently, even the most loyal supporters of Labour are in despair about what exactly it is we stand for. It didn't have to be that way. Blair could have pushed much harder with small reforms. He should have let PR, or the Euro define his legacy. Now, winning narrowly in a Euro referendum would have made him a bolder, and yet even by avoiding his principle of trying to please everyone, would have left him stronger. His second term, especially after 9/11, should have been about what he promised in his 2001 conference speech. Breaking down trade barriers, fighting tyranny, defeating climate chaos, finding lasting peace in Israel/Palestine etc. This vision could have been achieved, but only if he had pressed ahead with closer integration with Europe. But, now we are more isolationist than before, and missed a historic oppertunity, to banish the right-wing of the Tories forever, and to fight at the heart of Europe against the world's problems.

Brown, must not miss vital oppertunities to achieve his legacy. We don't currently have a strategy, or any tactics. We're not even announcing absolutely fantastic news with any gusto. Look at what Brown has acheived in the last year, and it would trump our measly 1997 pledge card-extending GP hours, equal rights for agency workers, visas for slave domestics, re-regulation of buses, the GI bill. Perhaps most radical of all is our Equality bill. Yet with no fanfare.

Even his original ideas about the Lords, and the constitution brew for a long time. Yet they lose their touch.

What we need is a couple of Right-to-buy style policies. That policy appealed to working-class Labour supporters, and Tory core support. It was electoral dynamite. In the long term, imho, it has weakened us, but if Labour had gone for it, but decided that all houses sold should be replaced, it would have been a fine policy. Nonetheless, it appealed to people who had never even set foot in a council estate.

These policies HAVE to expose the Tories weaknesses, and opposition to the ideas.

I have one. It would be irreversable. The Tories could tinker with it, but never be abolished. It could potentially be as radical as our current crown jewel-the NHS. Best of all, it appeals to swing voters, our core support, and crucially, women. Women are suprisingly more conservative than men, bucking the trend of countries like Spain, France, America etc. Like right-to-buy, it would define the party, and guarantee us several more terms: universal childcare.

In the long term, it is a great extension of the welfare state. We can now ensure that working in childcare requires a three year degree, rather than 2 GCSE's, as what happens is most of the child carers are uneducated in the private system. To politically trump the Tories, it could be a national version of SureStart. Every district should have a SureStart centre that guarantees playgroups, a creche, mother and toddler groups, a nursery, health visitors. If we want a more SureStart style specific programme, then call it SureStart+.

It should have even more services, and it should be the cue for Brown to devolve services to communities, not to encourage private involvement, but to help accessability. So let the government's fantastic after school programmes, and homework clubs be devolved to the centre. Many thinktanks have long suggested that services conducted by GP's could be better, if devolved to pharmacies. So why not devolve antenatal clinics to the childcare centres? If the government really wants to press ahead with workfare, allow the centre to provide New Deal style help for isolated parents. It could be a great antedote to the damage on community life of the last 2 decades.

Re: We've lost Glasgow East (#22)

The mantra: It's not Conservatives/SNP winning it's Labour losing is out of touch. My experience is Labour are starting to be as despised as the Tories were. People now are quite happy to admit they will vote Tory at the next election whereas the disgust with which they speak about the Labour party is quite astonishing.

Re: We've lost Glasgow East (#24)

I shall sum up my feelings:
Labour politicians lie: blatantly.
They are incompetent  and deny any responsibility for any mistakes.
They make election promises and blatantly and cynically break them.
They are not to be trusted with money.
They are not to be trusted on immigration.
They are not to be trusted on defence.
They have done a good job on the NHS but only by throwing money at it in an unplanned manner.
They  are not tackling sleaze in Parliament , in their own party or in their finacing.
They are arrogant.
They are authoritarian: telling us what to do..and lecturing.
They tax and tax and piss away the money spent.
They pass more and more laws without ensuring the ones they have are implemented.
They have so corrupted official statistics that no-one has any faith in them (inflation anyone).
They have screwed up the economy in good times and have no idea what to do in bad.
They have effectively disenfranchised the English vs the Scots (the West Lothian question) and the Welsh.

That's all for starters. I am sure I am not alone in these views.



Re: We've lost Glasgow East (#30)

And now they are toast.
There is justice after all