Red Ed, What Has Induced This Majot Shift Of Policy?

[ToraToraTora]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ed-miliband/10569973/Ed-Miliband-I-can-save-the-middle-class.html
How is he going to save the middle classes? Are they not the traditional enemy to be taxed till the pips squeak? Are they not the source of the "other peples money" that socialists traditionally run out of?

[Gromit]

Emmie,

You live in London and it has a lot of immigrants, so you blame them for the shortages of houses. But it is a national problem. There is a shortage of houses everywhere, including areas with low immigration. There are many causes of the shortage in housing. Immigration is one cause in some areas, but not the major cause.

[Gromit]

Emmie,

Everyone I know who is middleclass votes Labour. In fact, the local Labour Party membership is all middleclass. I guess that counters what you are seeing.

[emmie]

in London it's not just because of immigration, it is however local authorities who continue this blind obsession with private building, with properties being left empty, why on earth don't they force the landlords to do them up, tell them clearly you have 6/12 months to make them rentable, or lose them to compulsory purchase. One thing that has caused problems is that social housing has been handed to people who have not paid anything at all into the pot, that should never be the case, it should be those on the top of the list, not who has the bigger family and needs, i object strongly on that score.

[Gromit]

This is from 2004, just before the election

// And, as far as Tony Blair is concerned, three words will lie at the heart of his manifesto - the middle classes.

They won the last two general elections for New Labour and they have the power to lose him the next one.

And the messages from all the polls and the recent local and European elections suggest they have fallen heavily out of love with the government.

That has offered Michael Howard an opportunity to grab these voters with direct appeals to their self-interest - something that has traditionally slipped more naturally from Tory lips. //

Unfortunately, Howard was not the man to win them back. But for the last 30 years, the middle class vote has been key.

[FredPuli43]

No, emmie it may be you have not got how planning works/ worked. If I wanted to build an estate, however small,, I would have to build affordable housing, very cheap and small homes, at the same time. The ratio varied from council to council. This council required one for one. The adjacent council required one affordable in three. Without undertaking to build the affordable, I wouldn't get permission for any houses at all. This policy meant that I might be able to build one house alone, however much it would sell for, be it £300,000 or £3 million or £30 million, but I couldn't build two without one being affordable and on the same site.

Developers building vast estates would build the affordable last, to get the standard ones sold, then build the affordable in a separate part of the estate, so as not to have cheap next to dear.

This policy is supposed to have been relaxed. People weren't building houses, for one thing. But it lingers on.

[mikey4444]

The answer emmie is to build more council houses !

And Gromit is right..there are plenty of Labour voters amongst the educated and the middle class. The days of flat caps and whippets are long gone. It wasn't the lowers classes that got rid of the Muddling Major, it was people from all walks of life, and a large chunk of them could be described as middle class. As well as the stunning victory of May 1997, they gave Blair another two consecutive victories. Brown was a joke but Labours time will come again, and it appears to be next summer, if the Polls are concerned. They have consistently put Labour ahead since shortly after the last Election.

[emmie]

i have sat in on these planning council meetings, and read documents on it, so i do get it.

[emmie]

they won't, they don't want the responsibility of social tenants, they have been disposing, or letting go to rot many of their properties, that could be used for those on the housing waiting list, of which there are many.

[emmie]

if you don't have jobs in the areas, sufficient schools, what is the point of papering over England with housing.

[naomi24]

Actually, I have acquaintances in all walks of life and whilst I know many who have swapped their allegiance from Labour to Conservative, I know none who have swapped from Conservative to Labour. You're right, Mikey. The days of flat caps and whippets are long gone, but I think many Labour voters fail to acknowledge that, preferring instead to cling to an ideology that no longer exists - and which hasn't existed for a very long time.

[ToraToraTora]

Gromit, the poll of polls has labour 7 points clear, mid term, hardly landslide territory!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18264385

[mikey4444]

I am a Labour voter naomi, and these are the things that I want ::

A good health service, where old people feel safe from abuse and you don't die before you are seen by a surgeon.

A fair society, where people have somewhere decent to live and are not exploited by greedy, unscrupulous landlords, like to the two in my previous link.

Good schools, where ALL the Teachers are qualified and where every child has a fair chance of a successful education ( clue...not Eton )

The list is endless....aren't these things that should all want ?

The question is hypothetical as the answer is of course yes !

Now I must go to work !

[emmie]

so Labour is going to give you all that and more, how are they going to do it, and what happened when they were in power for 13 years, didn't things go awry then, or is it simply when the coalition came to power.

[naomi24]

Mikey, Labour had 13 years in which to provide the things you want. They failed.

[emmie]

both parties stupidly complicit in this, but as this says largely expanded by Labour. You can't spend money you don't have. go ahead and build schools, hospitals, social housing, it comes at a massive cost, generally to the taxpayer in the long term.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9380539/PFI-projects-set-to-cost-tax-payers-over-300-billion.html

[EDDIE51]

emmie , Where are all these empty houses that you talk of? there are none near me in Hertfordshire. They hardly have time to put out the 'for sale' or 'To let' notice before they get sold or let.

[tonyav]

Red Ed, What Has Induced This Majot Shift Of Policy?


LOL, @ Red Ed, he's about has Red as Blair !.

[emmie]

not a small number, none should be left empty if it can be used to house people, those on long council waiting lists. Stuck in B&B or doss houses more like

https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/increasing-the-number-of-available-homes/supporting-pages/empty-homes

[Gromit]

Tora,
Current predictions on a 7 point lead are that Labour will get a 60 seat majority.

And they haven't really started trying yet. The Government have a very poor record with the middle classes. Labour only have to promise to be better.

[Gromit]

No one is taken in by the 'Red' Ed moniker, except the most barmy far right Mail drone.
Miliband is not red, communist, socialist. He is left of centre where the centre is actually quite rightward.

The centre tends to move more rightward during austerity and drift back as people feel more comfortable.