Is Labour Still The Party For Working People?

[Egara_Flegin]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30157335
Espcially as at least one of their MPs holds them in utter contempt.

[BlackadderV]

Since 2010 and before UKIP the Tories lost only one seat, and that was Corby, a highly marginal seat.

[DTCwordfan]

Okay I have done the analysis.

2 Conservatives have gone to UKIP, one hold
1 Lib Dem hold
2 Sinn Fein Hold
all the rest are Labour and Holds bar one that went to that awful Gorgeous George.

Not that interesting therefore.

[New Judge]

Ms Thornberry is in the unfortunate position (entirely of her own making) of supporting the wrong party for her beliefs and situation in life. Among other things she and her husband are extremely affluent and seem to want to retain much of what they have (nothing wrong with that at all). She snubbed the local State secondary schools and instead sent her children to a partially selective school many miles from her home (which in fact was situated a mere half a mile from her house before it was forced out of London by the now defunct ILEA's witch-hunt against direct-grant grammar schools). Again nothing wrong with that. She campaigns for ever more “social“ housing and for more tenants‘ rights in that sector, though she and her husband bought a former social housing flat (not from the social owners but from somebody else who had bought it from them) for more than half a million pounds which they now let, presumably at the going rate. This flat is managed by a property agency of which Ms Thornberry denies all knowledge, despite having been a director of it for two years. They also own a £3m property in Islington and a flat in Clerkenwell.

There’s nothing wrong with any of this. Good luck to them in making a good living for themselves and looking after the best interests of their children. But she is in no position to campaign for ever greater amounts of taxpayers’ money to be used to support housing whilst sitting on a portfolio of properties herself. But most importantly of all, as far as this question goes, she is in no position to sneer at people who are not quite so affluent (and that’s what she did). I usually subscribe to the philosophy that “I do not have to be like you to be able to represent your interests”. However, the representatives must have a reasonable idea of the concerns and problems of those they represent and Ms Thornberry, living in her agreeable isolated Islington crescent far removed from the thousands of social housing tenants in the estates around her, does not have a clue.

[DTCwordfan]

sorry forgot about Corby.

[grumpy01]

The issue people are missing is that in effect there are 2 Labour parties.You have the party of MP's such as John Mann,Dennis Skinner to name but two and then the party which voters are seeing more and more of,which is the Emily Thornberry's of this world the so called Islington set.Mikey,I guess your roots are in the former group rather than the latter.

[DTCwordfan]

New Judge - a bit like that property baron, Blair - how many houses now, I believe it's 10?

[humbersloop]

and I'd forgotten about Galloway...

[ChillDoubt]

What did you mean by 'the likes of you'
-------------
ymb, it's the new Labour trait(showing their true colours), it's known as 'Thornberrying'.

[ChillDoubt]

That's right DTC. The 'man of the people'(don't make me puke, please) has made a tidy sum out of being a Middle East peace envoy:

http://stopwar.org.uk/news/tony-blair-s-insatiable-greed-exposed-by-his-secret-deal-with-saudi-arabia

Not forgetting his darling wife, whose father would spin in his grave:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1323958/Cherie-sells-Tony-Blairs-signature-eBay-makes-10.html

[BlackadderV]

//Not forgetting his darling wife, whose father would spin in his grave: //

The only thing preventing that is that he is not dead yet!

[ChillDoubt]

Oh dear, how gauche! For some reason I thought he'd passed away a few years back but sadly it would appear he remains in ill health. Such a shame, I used to love his spats with and wind-ups of Alf Garnet.

[DTCwordfan]

He's spinning in his luxury bed, no doubt......lol, chill - want to write an advance obituary for him?

[Gromit]

// The 'North' still stare at Aeroplanes //

:-( Guilty. And I've lived on the flightpath for Ringway for 50 years.

[murraymints]

Tory Blair put paid to that !

[DaisyNonna]

Politicians want power, publicity and pelf. Not necessarily in that order.
They could not care less about the other p, the people.

[Kromovaracun]

" There have been 20 by-elections since they took power in 2010, and they have only won one of them"

There is a rather dishonest spin to this, Mikey. While this is technically true, it overlooks the fact that, aside from the recent by-elections in Clacton and Rochester, every single one of those 20 kept the same party in who had been there before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Kingdom_by-elections_%281979%E2%80%93present%29#Present_Parliament

[murraymints]

agree with daisy

[Svejk]

Certainly since 1997 'the working class can kiss my ass' has been the mantra of the Labour Party. What was contempt for working class people has turned into a visceral hatred.
Who still votes for them is the question I can't get my head around. Middle class people who consider it 'trendy'? Certainly the 'stinking' rich & CBI members who always make a killing from the law of unintended consequences (and, I'm beginning to suspect, not so unintended). People who managed to snag very well paid non-jobs that always proliferate under Labour. Young people who will probably be mortified about it in later life.
There are still working class people in these Welsh valleys who would, and often do, vote for donkeys with a red rosette attached. 'Our dad/granch would never forgive me if I didn't'. Thankfully times are changing and the days of safe seats that they could parachute their Islington chums into are coming to an end.