The Political Thread

[IndigoPrime]

No, because that lets them off the hook of the most important decision this country made in modern history. Yes, broadly, Tories are to blame. But the UK is struggling like other comparable nation right now, and there's only one difference. And NI is in very specific ways struggling less, again because it has one major difference from GB.

Also, we need to keep hammering the Brexit drum so Labour can actually use it as a weapon. If not, we will eye the 2023 general election with both major parties wanting to keep our relationship with the EU cold and dead. That would hamper any efforts Labour might make to improve things, and the party would be out on its arse after a single term. (Not that it has much chance of getting in anyway, as per my previous post.)

[GordonR]

I mean not to be pedantic but PR can't be the solution to getting the Tories out of power, but the Tories won't pass it themselves. You do need to win a FPTP election first

You do, but how does Labour do that under current electoral maths? Scotland is lost to the SNP. Labour majorities always relied on seats there.

Yeah, that's nonsense. All three of Tony Blair's victories would still have happened without a single person in Scotland voting Labour.  It's not the Scots abandoning Labour that causes Tory governments; it's English voters voting Tory.

[IndigoPrime]

OK, you're right on that. So I take that back. But I stick to all my other points regarding Labour's current direction and thinking.

Right now, the electoral maths does not work. You are not going to get enough English voters to switch. Instead, you'll end up with Lab/Lib cancelling each other out. And even if Labour did squeak home, we're still in the same unrepresentative bullshit. (On a Tory win, I'm sure people will blame that on the English, BUT even in 2019 the Tories only won a plurality of the English vote!)

I'd take Blair's government over the current shower any day, but there's no getting away from it still being unrepresentative. Getting a majority in 2005 with barely more than a third of the popular vote should have triggered deep thinking. Instead, Blair still hand-waves away PR, because he knows FPTP is the only way his party could ever take full control.

Still, I'm sure Labour will keep going, thinking it could see a bigger swing than we've ever seen in modern history. Then the party will lose and blame Lib/Plaid/Green voters for not voting Labour. Again.  It's exhausting.

[Leigh S]

I'm the first to defend a "loony left" idea such as free broadband, but a minimum wage of £15 sounds like it's from the mouth of someone who doesnt even know basic facts about current wage levels and thinks that is a low figure.  It's more than the average wage from what I read?

I know I have been in a sector with decades of wage stagnation, but even so, I am nowhere near £15 an hour. I don't think even a promotion would put me on that wage, and I am already a few rung up from the lowest level in our organiation. Why would I (and many others in the same boat) continue to do high stress jobs that require specialit knowledge when we could go stack shelves?

[Jim_Campbell]

Why would I (and many others in the same boat) continue to do high stress jobs that require specialit knowledge when we could go stack shelves?

This is precisely the point: it drives wages up across the board because that's the only way retain/attract skilled/specialised staff. All the arguments currently being wheeled out against are essentially the same arguments used when New Labour brought in the minimum wage in the first place. We didn't get mass unemployment, catastrophic waves of business failures and rampant inflation then, so there's no real reason to imagine it'll happen this time.

With 40% of Universal Credit claimants actually in work, the taxpayer is currently subsidising employers' low wages and the only realistic way of changing that is by forcing employers to pay their staff better.

[Leigh S]

I get that, and I am all for a rise that removes UC supporting low wages (rather than specific needs within a family re disability, children etc).

But if the result is half of the workforce or more are now on the same lowest wage (because you can be damned sure employers arent going to factor in increases above that), then all you have is a new bottom that people who have worked their entire life find themselves at. 

That's a pretty seismic shift that would not be about pulling out the poorest in society, but would alter the landscape massively for the majority of workers in the UK.  And the vast amounts of spending power unleashed per pound by that would surely be a tidal wave of inflation, with more than half your workforce now at the bottom rung of wages wherever prices level out at. 

They'd need to give me a pay increase of something like 20-30% to put me in a comparable position to where I am now. Given I'd be surprised If I have had a 30% payrise in the last 20 years combined, it seems unlikely that would follow on.   And if every company did increase in comparison, then surely all we have done is inflate everyone wages in one giant blast. 

It just doesnt sound believable, even if there is some research that might support it - and if there is research to support it, then that should be front and centre of any push for it, because without that, it sounds crazed to anyone on a low to middle income - they are at least as likely to be turned off by it than on, if we look at how previous ideas such as Free Broadband have been met.

Isn't it Norway that doesnt ahvve a minimum wage, but sets inimum standards across different industries?  That sounds more credible as an approach. 

[Jim_Campbell]

The median UK salary in August 2021 was £23760*, or £12.18 an hour. I'll be honest, that seems shockingly low. After standard PAYE and NI deductions, that's £1650 a month. The average UK mortgage payment is £723, average rent for a domestic property is £1007.

That's going to leave this statistically average person with £162-£230 per week for everything else. I mean, I imagine council tax is likely to work out at £30/wk for a lot of people. Get a pay rise of £1300p/a and your student loan repayments will kick in if you graduated after 2012. (Before 2012 you'd have been repaying since your gross salary reached £19K.)

God forbid you run a car, since the average weekly cost of putting fuel in it is £20-25 (depending on whether its petrol or diesel).

So... you're working full time, on the exact statistical average salary, living in rented accommodation and running a car. You're not repaying your student loan. You've got £448 a month left out of your salary to pay all your other bills and buy food. Apparently, the average UK energy bill for a small (1-2 bedroom) house or an apartment is £66/mth. So you're down to £398/mth (£95.50 a week) and out of that you've still got to find money for your phone bill, broadband, water rates.

Maybe you're right... maybe a £15/hr minimum wage isn't the answer, but, Christ, that makes grim reading.


*A lot of stats quote the mean average, which is closer to £30K, but the mean is useless in this case because a small number of really high earners can (and do) distort the average.

[Jim_Campbell]

I meant to add to the above:

Keep in mind that, as the median salary, by definition half the population is earning less than this.

[Leigh S]

Yeah those figures make it worse -£15 is setting it way past what half the population currently earn. Probably at a rate that is more than 60% or more of the population - just on that base fact, it seems a sell 1000 times harder to make than free broadband, and would surely have vast implications that your average voter is going to be wary of. 

Theres a separate cost of living crisis as you lay out there, Jim.  I'm not sure that putting up wages would solve that or we would just see a commensurate (or more likely inflated) boost in prices.  It feels like it would be akin to changing the currency, where no one would be really sure what their pound was worth anymore, and certainly it wouldnt be worth as much as it was prior. 

I'm a bit above that average wage* and a little below the average mortgage (though paying off more!) after 30 years in the Job market and a couple of promotions -we both drive but have one ccar for both financial and "green" reasons. Neither of us has student debt. 

Although my employer calculates my hourly rate on the basis of a 42 hour week when we work 37, presumably in order to cut down on overtime! This means my "hourly" rate is probably a lot closer to that average than I think.

[Tjm86]

Theres a separate cost of living crisis as you lay out there, Jim.  I'm not sure that putting up wages would solve that or we would just see a commensurate (or more likely inflated) boost in prices. 

This is probably the biggest issue right now.  As you've all mentioned above, basic costs are sucking away at any earnings at a disturbing rate.  It's not any surprise that so many are forced to rent rather than buy their own home.  There is also the issue of how on earth many can afford to save for retirement when they can't afford to make ends meet now.

The £15ph min wage is a wonderful aspiration but the question is who ends up footing the bill.  The NICs increase that Johnson has just brought in is going to have a massive impact on the care sector where they are only just keeping their heads above water.  So increasing the min wage to that level is likely to be the straw that breaks the camels back.

What is daft is how Starmer made a big thing about it not long ago and joined a photo op.  So he boxed himself into a corner on that one.

No, because that lets them off the hook of the most important decision this country made in modern history. Yes, broadly, Tories are to blame. But the UK is struggling like other comparable nation right now,

True but then that is my point.  They made this decision and it is part and parcel of their misrule.  It is a decision that should never have been foisted on the country and certainly not the way it was handled.

The problem with Labour hammering on the referendum is that they have been stung by some of the stupid decisions made over the last few years.  Until they can find a better way of handling the issue it is going to bite them.  So it is the elephant in the room for them.

[IndigoPrime]

It's not any surprise that so many are forced to rent rather than buy their own home.

Not least when you frequently see people renting for £1k+ per month told by building societies and banks that they aren't eligible for mortgages just over half of that outlay.

The NICs increase

Which is, as ever, anti-progressive. Really, we should have more tax rates, but every party bottles that because not enough voters understand how marginal tax rates work. (Hence people freaking out about Labour's tax rise, which would only have affected earnings over 80 grand.)

The problem with Labour hammering on the referendum is that they have been stung by some of the stupid decisions made over the last few years.  Until they can find a better way of handling the issue it is going to bite them.  So it is the elephant in the room for them.

They should stop backing Brexit and start hammering, tooth and nail, at the manner in which Brexit was done and seeding in people's minds the benefits of being a part of Europe while not being part of its politics. A smart Labour Party would be able to get us back into the single market within two terms in office. But this is not a smart Labour Party.

[Leigh S]

Arguably a smart Labour Party would have campaigned on committing to a soft Brexit, staying in SM / CU back in 2019.  Of course, the Right of the Party got their way with what was spun as too complicated and/or a backdoor second referendum and the architect of that got the Party to boot.

But that would have been too close to what Corbyn wanted presumably, so we get what we got.

[IndigoPrime]

I never quite understood what Corbyn wanted. I'm not sure he did either. He and others in the party conflated the CU and SM, coming out in favour of the former but being lukewarm on the latter whenever it was mentioned. Ultimately, no-one came out of that period well. Corbyn's lot say on their hands whenever the SNP suggested something smart. Libs, Lucas and TIG derailed IVs on CU and CM2 while Labour wrecked 2nd ref. All three should have passed and been options. Instead, we got nothing.

[Tjm86]

IIRC Corbyn has a long history of ambivalence / opposition to EU membership.  His call for May to trigger Article 50 pretty much straight away before anyone had had a chance to think through the implications of the vote didn't help since it set a hard deadline without any clear direction.

What also didn't help is that there was still quite a lot of tension within the parliamentary Labour party (as usual).  Plenty of voices were commenting that they needed to respect the wishes of leave voting constituents, particularly in areas with high levels of support for leaving (a lot of these being so called 'red wall' seats ...).

Irrespective of whether or not the vote should be respected, the behaviour of MP's during this period is a despicable abuse of their role.  From the initiation of the referendum through to the final votes on the Brexit deal they have done immense damage to the already fragile trust of politicians.  May talked about the betrayal of democracy too many times during her tenure, failing to realise that she was presiding over it.

[Jim_Campbell]

while Labour wrecked 2nd ref.

It was literally their policy in the 2019 general election.