Richard Darlington, of Demos, said: "This poll will be a wake-up call for Labour's leadership candidates. Labour's next leader needs to support public sector cuts and embrace the 'big society' agenda if they are to be heard by the public."

Bit of short-term thinking there. Obviously if you think public sector cuts and the big society agenda are going to stay popular then politically you want to support them. But (1) if that does happen, you're not likely to make much progress against the coalition, who will very likely be popular too; and (2) if, on the contrary, these ideas drop in popularity, you'll be in a much weaker position for having failed to criticise them.

"This post-election poll shows that Labour's defence of services against spending cuts was falling on deaf ears..."

Well they haven't actually had, actually felt, the cuts yet have they! Before retreating on this agenda Labour needs to wait until people are actually experiencing the results of Tory policy, once people are being hit themselves rather than expecting "other people" to face the pinch I think you'll see some stark changes in those attitudes. Some of the cuts already announced aren't even appreciated yet - even by those who will be hit.

For instance, with the help of a compliant media, the ConDems have so far pulled off the con on Housing Benefit that cuts will hit only those few on super-high rents in London over £400 per week. Once a million households on low earnings and in perfectly modest (even cheap) accommodation suddenly find that they are going to have to find an extra £500 quid a year somehow, you're going to see a repeat of the Brown "10p tax" bombshell - a reaction which was also delayed for a year until actual implementation because a lazy/compliant media had previously failed to pick it up, but is now regarded (including by GB himself) as what sunk any hope of a Labour election victory.

This phenomenon will be repeated (though the HB one will be the one that shocks most) again and again, as more and more groups who thought they would be all right discover the truth at brutal first hand. Oh, and by the way Labour leadership candidates (completely ignoring this HB scandal at the moment) those HB household casualties: stuffed full of fertile territory for Labour - disillusioned but naturally Labour-inclined non-voters for whom £500 quid a year (and the rest: VAT, etc) is more than sufficient reason to come back on board if Labour promise to reverse it.

They also MUST fight harder against the patently absurd "it's all Labour's fault" on the economy argument, currently being deployed by the ConDems as the response to any and every criticism (the old "Something must be done / this is something / therefore we must do this" fallacy) .... that really is an open door because people KNOW that the whole developed world has been hit too. They must establish that the ConDem cuts agenda goes well beyond that which is necessary and is in fact one of their choice not one forced on them as they pretend (should have been easy in a week when Francis Maude admits that the plans were in fact very long in the making - far from a response to "seeing the books" - and Clegg's admission that he too had joined the cuts agenda before the election .... and not told anyone!).

Labour must admit that the deficit was £30bn but on a downward trajectory before the bankers' recession (though about £25bn of that was actually capital, not current, expenditure) - and that is the part of the deficit which is their responsibility and needed closing with taxes/cuts; another £30-40bn is directly due to the bankers' recession (it is the loss in tax revenue due to the negative growth they 'gifted' us rather than the modest growth for which we were otherwise headed) and just as this hole was created by negative growth, it is appropriate that this be filled by future positive growth. Even the ConDems admit that the rest is 'cyclical' deficit which will naturally decrease and even ultimately become surplus as a simple function of the economic cycle (much as they like to omit this acknowledgment when either hitting Labour over the head with the deficit or trying to defend their swingeing cuts).

What an absurd phrase is 'radical centre ground' - the very fact it is the centre ground means one has precious little room for manouevre to be in any way 'radical'. At the moment we have the most regressive, reactionary and right-wing administration since Thatcher calling itself 'radical' - politicians love this term at the moment don't they? The way the ConDems mean it of course is in terms of 'severe', without any of the traditional left-wing associations to the term, it is now coming to just mean 'extreme' and 'draconian' - so again an echo of Thatcher who was indeed a radical PM, radically unfair.

Balls is completely missing the point here: Labour's only hope of avoiding perpetual political oblivion is to reconnect with its betrayed heartlands and disenfranchised lower income old voters and the under classes - most of whom have long since despaired of the party post Blair and since it abandoned any hint of redistributive socialism from its policies. The deficit, the recession, all were the failures of unregulated capitalism, of continuing Thatcherite monetarism, championed by New Labour, and it's now going to cost all of us dearly.

All Labour could do now to revive its relevance is return to the Left, that way it could reengage its core vote, and even attract into its ranks some of the left-wing Lib Dems, not to mention the superb Caroline Lucas of the Greens.

To think instead of this dreadful Coalition of Grim Reapers we might have had a compassionate and sensible Rainbow Coalition, with possibly Lucas as one of its Ministers. Terrible how nightmares sometimes come from dreams.

Oh, and EuroJohn is absolutely right to cite the oncoming HB caps as something that will shake this nation to its core: this is one of the most appalling, almost evil policies ever to be passed through a British Parliament, and by tlhe same dreadful bunch of capitalists who originally removed rent controls in the early 90s, which enabled unscrupulous landlords (the two words do tend to go together) to put up their rents inexorably over the last two decades, which has resulted in some of the extreme rates the Gov cites. Instead of them getting furious about the exorbitant amounts of rent charged to tenants in those freak cases they cited, they just bash at the poor bloody claimants and tell them basically, if you don't find some fictitious job immediately, you'll have to pack your bags and find some dingy slum to live in from now on because we ain't going to keep paying your rent for you. What a nice empathic chap Mr Cameron is eh?

How about this for chutzpah:

''The Lib Dems had "sold their principles for power", Balls said''

Unilike you know who - people who live in glass houses ... etcetera

Thanks so much for

dreadful Coalition of Grim Reapers

.
I call them the Neo-Vandals. Any other suggestions? Printable, of course.
Balls is right though: the fig-leaf is covering the Tories, but there's nothing of any substance to cover.

Thanks so much for the dreadful Coalition of Grim Reapers.
I call them the Neo-Vandals. Any other suggestions? Printable, of course.
Balls is right though: the fig-leaf is covering the Tories, but there's nothing of any substance to cover.

We had 13 years of "radical" centre ground, and it was authoritarian, arrogant, war-mongering and favoured the rich. At times the Lib Dems looked like they were to the left of Labour.

Perhaps, since the Lib Dems are now part of a right-wing government, Labour should start looking to the left?

We had 13 years of "radical" centre ground, and it was authoritarian, arrogant, war-mongering and favoured the rich. At times the Lib Dems looked like they were to the left of Labour.

Perhaps, since the Lib Dems are now part of a right-wing government, Labour should start looking to the left?

Good points made by Balls; all the leadership contenders should stress the international scope and origins of the recession and that the cuts are ideologically driven.

They are going to go deeper and last longer than is needed because the Tories hated being out of power and want their revenge over the centre left .

Look back a few years at the Countryside Alliance nasty aggressive demo's I knew then they were still the nasty party, they just got better at their PR and have the Lib Dems as their stooges.

How can the "Labour Hopefuls" let the Conservatives "off the hook" when they are all deeply embedded on it and likely to be so for the rest of their political lives.

Those dastardly Tories are the main focus of any opposition surely?

The Lib Dems are but flotsam and jetsam on the tide nowadays - ebbing into a dark cave on a windy shore to be forgotten- forever.

How do you like my holiday spin all all this?

So a cap on housing benefit will rouse the nation to fury? Actually most people struggle to pay their own housing costs and resent paying taxes for others who, as they see it, dont.

I appreciate that HB has an important role to play but it has got well out of hand and needs cutting back. Most people would not be as liberal as that.

Most people would say if you are unemployed in London and cannot afford the high cost of housing then move somewhere else.

It's been nice being away on holiday to two countries where coalitions are accepted norm of politics. Coming back to the hysterical anti-LibDem stuff here is kind of funny.
Here's a thing- currently Tories are on 41, labour on 38 and LibDems on 15. This leaves the Tories short by 11 to form a government if a general election were to happen tomorrow. Given that they'll lose some support over the next few years, LibDems will probably remain static at a low number and Labour should recover a few, the opportunity for a Labour/LibDem coalition would seem more likely in the future. Will Labour sell their principles down the river and ask to form one with the villainous LibDems? Never!
Attack policies by all means, but having a go at a coalition and all the necessary evils of one is ridiculous from a political party that was in effect a coalition of two opposing forces for 13 years.

I'm coming round to Ed Balls a little. I thought his handling of the Sharon Shoesmith case was a fiasco, blatantly pandering to the tabloid media; maybe I should judge more by actions than words. But his opposition to Gove (a soft target admittedly) has been first rate, and his stance above seems a sensible one. Could we see a shock yet? I don't think anyone saw beyond David Davies a month before the tory race came to fruition last time out.

Good points by EuroJohn. And Balls is right. We have a Tory government and Labour must concentrate its fire on them. The LibDems will fall with them anyway. It's irrelevant that the coalition isn't too unpopular now when its poison hasn't yet seeped into the vital organs of our society. But next year is going to be a very bad year for the coalition.

HB is a problem that cannot be fixed in isolation.

We need to consider, inter alia:

* other benefits - do they need to be increased if HB is cut?
* housing supply - where do we build the necessary houses?
* rent controls
* relocating people to cheaper areas

The best thing for the Labour Party would be for Ed Balls , Yvette Cooper, The Dedward Millibands and Harriet Harperson all to retire. Andy Burnhamt is quite right about the London Dinner party circuit and the above mentioned are useless and irritating to hear their negative armchair socialism.They are using the Labour Party for their own political ends and are extremely tiresome.Nothing is ever right unless it is what they want to hear and they don't LISTEN. They always know what's best for everyone else.

The worst thing about this spending cut debate are the psychological messages: the throwing around of blame and pitting everyone and everything against each other. It's as if David Cameron now suddenly has the answer to everything.

To cut the deficit is the main priority, no doubt as everyone would agree. But the way it is delivered as a threat, a humiliation and the "no-one-will-escape" scare-mongering won't do much good. I never thought that politics could be so primitive in its delivery.

The IMF has already warned Britain that this iron fist of cut-backs could damage recovery - something that is not much talked about in the press.

This deficit is not the result of gross misconduct of the general population and is not limited to Britain or the fault of the Labour party. It is a global crisis that originated in meltdown of the financial and banking sector, which arguably the whole western system has been involved in in one way or another, partly because of the lack of regulations and the free reign of the market. And for which the whole western world needs to find ways of dealing with.

The messages that this government are sending out are destructive to morale and self-esteem of this country, they are punishing and threatening. It is a cheap and populist way of throwing up of values, e.g. arts against sciences (what has more grip on reality, what counts more) making the arts marketable and market-oriented. The global financial crisis shows what can happen if markets are the only measure tool.

It's not so much what your aims are but how you convince people of them.

The PMs gaffes on every single state visit speak volumes. He says it as it is - and surely that will work....

"They largely stuck with us at the election, while we lost the support of too many people on lower incomes

I agree with this although I don't know if it is correct. I am on middle income and have just joined Labour.

I know disillusioned low paid voters that did not vote Labour. I think because of the expenses scandal.

I think such people were disgusted with politicians. The middle classes and Tory voters are used to fiddling their expenses so they were not shocked by the expenses scandal.

(No I don't claim expenses, never mind fiddle them)

asgill
"reconnect with its betrayed heartlands and disenfranchised lower income old voters and the under classes"
I agree with this completely, but I think Labour should take a lead from China and ally itself with those capitalist forces that help to redistribute wealth.
I may be wrong, but I think many of the supermarket chains help the masses to focus their buying power driving down the profit margins of rich farming and manufacturing industry. I remember how expensive food was when I was a child in a poor family before the advent of supermarkets.

@vercol

Thankyou for illustrating my point about people not even knowing exactly what the ConDems are actually proposing (esp. re Housing Benefit). That "capping excessive HB" headline is a con you see - it raises almost nothing, under £100m a year, less than 5% of the £1.7bn the government want to claw back in HB.

The bulk comes NOT from those headline caps but from hitting the overwhelming majority relying on HB (or rather, Local Housing Allowance - which replaced Housing Benefit 2 years ago). Previously HB/LHA was restricted to the median average (ie. at the 50% rents lower, 50% higher level) for each property type in each area. The change is to a 30% level (ie. at the level where only 30% are lower and 70% higher) - which will hit most claimants, including those in modest accommodation even in 'cheap' areas. Households paying rents even as low as £300-400 per MONTH can expect to have to find some £500 a year! There is also no reference to actual availability: so even if the demand for accommodation below the 30% level in an area exceeds supply, the cap still applies.

Do you realise just how little people have to be on to get HB/LHA (and BTW 70% of claimants are low-waged in employment, plus many of those out-of-work claimants are low income pensioners on Pension Credit)? To get "full" HB (subject to the aforementioned caps) someone must have an income of no more than about £3,300pa; the 'deduction taper' above that income is terrifyingly steep: for every additional £1 of income above £3,300pa 65p is deducted (PLUS a further 20p deducted re Council Tax Benefit). How are people on these incomes supposed to pay?

The reason for the size of the HB/LHA bill is that rent (and property general) levels in the UK are obscenely excessive and we have woefully inadequate social housing provision outside private hands to house those who cannot afford are ludicrously high private rent levels. The solution therefore is not to increase homelessness, poverty and indebtedness of the poor as this disgraceful HB/LHA '50% to 30%' cut proposal must inevitably lead to (as confirmed by homeless charities just last week); it is to tackle excessive rent levels (with rent controls - that would benefit ALL tenants, both on and not on HB, with perhaps an end to Thacher's awful uncontrolled 'Short Term Lease' provisions) and radically increase the state's holding of accommodation to house those who cannot afford private rents.

seker

"The IMF has already warned Britain that this iron fist of cut-backs could damage recovery - something that is not much talked about in the press."

I wouldnt really look to the IMF for objective analysis in an issue like this, let's actually see what the cuts result in.

I'd like to try making a case for not maintaining high spending. The truth is, if we maintained government spending to prop up our economy, the situation at present would not be so bad: overall demand in the economy would be higher, and unemployment would be lower and so on. However, we'd merely be delaying the recession and in 5 or 10 years a much worse one would come along, with all the same problems that have resulted in this one times multiplied....we need to re-structure our economy, which can happen alongside a spending cut. I think people should actually give the Tories some time to see what happens: Labour had their way for 12 years and still managed to mess things up.

Another thing. If people think that Osborne and Cameron are nothing more than media-savvy politicians who use smokescreens to minimize the state, what exactly are the Milibands and Ed Balls? Portillo hit the nail on the head when he told Ed Miliband that he was no leader and that he had no guts to challenge Brown before the election. Speaking of populism, the idea that the Coalition is some sort of meet up between weak minded Liberals and sinister Tories who want to destroy the working class is nothing short of outrageous populism.

seker:

"This deficit is not the result of gross misconduct of the general population and is not limited to Britain or the fault of the Labour party. It is a global crisis that originated in meltdown of the financial and banking sector, which arguably the whole western system has been involved in in one way or another, partly because of the lack of regulations and the free reign of the market. And for which the whole western world needs to find ways of dealing with. "

This may be true: the global economic crisis may not solely be restricted to Britain. However, the impact it has had on Britain has been the greatest of any country in the G7 because we over exposed ourselves to this crisis: for years Brown was lecturing the EU on how to manage finances and the benefits of a de-regulated financial economy. However, the truth is, whilst over countries saved in the good times we borrowed. Brown and those around him actually were unbelievably, incredibly aarogant: they thought the days of boom'n'bust had gone and that the country would continue to grow economically forever.

When the financial crisis hit and the banks were begging for money, the government were in a strong position to place new regulations on bonus pay and mechanisms to regulate bank lending: they could also have put in place a tax on the banks spending to recover the money we gave to them. The government had a very strong hand which now doesn't exist now that the banks are making profits. Make no mistake about it, the Labour Party's management of the economy was pretty poor.

It seems that in this country we all think that we deserve entitlement all the time: top quality services, top quality health, top quality education, top quality welfare. However, people a)don't want to contribute to this (notice skepticism on the big society "I dont have time to help"), b)dont appreciate that life doesn't always work like this. If the current coalition had the money to sustain the entitlements we have enjoyed in the last 15 years, im sure they would do it. It's not a sinister plan to de-rail the economy into a bunch of wealthy, Tory, Southern Lords and businessmen.

Western European countries are seeing the economic lead we have had for hundreds of years being eaten away at a reasonable pace by developing economies. We're complacent and have believe we have a right to things we don't neccessarily have. Watching a programme like Question Time for one week should be enough for anyone to realize that the "British Public" can often be nothing short of self-obsessed and greedy. Part of living in a democracy is supposed to be about gaining entitlements, but taking on some responsibility as well (something we ajbectly fail to do as a society). Some of the Conservative policies are no doubt misguided: the plans on universities for example look pretty short sighted and socially unjust. Even if you hate the Tories, and hate what they stand for, it doesn't mean that the policies they pursue per se are wrong for the moment we're in.

The term "middle class" and "working class" keeps being bandied about with a little bit of complacency. Our class/socioeconomic structure isn't so structured as that anymore, surely? Whilst class issues of course exist, is it not fair to say that infact there is a very, very blurry line between the upper working class and the lower middle class which probably constitutes most people in this country?

@biggraham

Offset by the same forces driving down the incomes of low earners in UK agriculture and manufacturing, using migrant labour or cheap imports.

Is 'the radical centre ground' an oxymoron?

I agree with Ed Balls- and said as much on the TUC thread this morning.

It is pointless trying to split the Libs from the Tories or constantly ( in the Commons) appealing to their better nature.

Labour need to focus on opposing a new right wing government.

Balls is also right that they need to re-connect with working people. By that I don't mean the old notion of working class. I mean people who work for a living rather than live off private wealth. People who want to do a decent day's work, bring up their family, have a decent holiday now and again, and who don't really care much a bout politics but don't begrudge paying taxes for community services. New Labour became out of touch with and in the end alienated these ordinary Brits. Stick to basics, concentrate on what people say matters to them.

Clearly, there is difficulty in reaching this audience given the right wing media but this should be the task.

The Tories will isolate themselves because they do not understand the lives and aspirations of ordinary working people in Britain and the sort of communities they want to live in.

I totally agree. The opposition should expose the Tories for what they are.

They are the organ grinder and the Lib Dems the chimp part of the organ grinder's act.

Don't waste energy by fighting the chimps.

*
rmjg118 rmjg118

The term "middle class" and "working class" keeps being bandied about with a little bit of complacency. Our class/socioeconomic structure isn't so structured as that anymore, surely? Whilst class issues of course exist, is it not fair to say that infact there is a very, very blurry line between the upper working class and the lower midd

The distinction that matters is between those of us who work for a living and value community services, and those who live on private wealth and who use private services.

This government is so extreme in ideology that they see a mobile community library bus as left wing Bit State socialism.

Richard Darlington, of Demos, said: "This poll will be a wake-up call for Labour's leadership candidates. Labour's next leader needs to support public sector cuts and embrace the 'big society' agenda if they are to be heard by the public."

He added: "This post-election poll shows that Labour's defence of services against spending cuts was falling on deaf ears. While Labour has consistently argued that spending cuts should not go too far or too fast, this poll shows that a significant number of voters recognise the need for cuts. That includes many people who had recently voted Labour, many of whom felt that Labour was spending too much, too wastefully, with too little benefit for them and their families."

This is dangerous. Labour has no need to associate itself with Tory cuts. People haven't yet experienced them so opinion polls about them are ridiculous. Labour certainly had plans for cuts but they are not in the driving seat so why talk about hypothetical situations.

Oppose the vicious ideological cuts that the Tories are about to make and listen to what the public says.

rmgj118

I was trying to make a case not against cut backs, but commenting on the way this is being delivered and the impact this will have on morale. It seems to me that a sense of togetherness if you will is already lost in Britain, probably has been for a long time. This is not going to get better if you pitch everyone against each other. I am criticising the constant weighing up of different fields against each other (e.g. what deserves to be cut more the fire services or social housing or the arts?). All of these things are necessary and not all are linked to the free-market in the same way, ie. you can't tell them all in the same way to get their act together, which is what seems to be repeatedly and incessantly drummed home.

It seems that in this country we all think that we deserve entitlement all the time: top quality services, top quality health, top quality education, top quality welfare. However, people a)don't want to contribute to this (notice skepticism on the big society "I dont have time to help"), b)dont appreciate that life doesn't always work like this.

On the above. I wish we had top quality services, health and education this is laughable.
Just a quick story that happened to me recently. The train station where I live is served by two train companies, but the staff who work at the station, are only employed by one of them. I came to the station on Sunday, of course having checked online before I left the house whether the trains would run, (this is something that one has to do, as there are engineering works literally every weekend, meaning out of a 7 day service which you pay for you get effectively a 5 day one...). So I came to the station and the trains did not run even though they were advertised to: When wanting to enquire about what's going on, not only were the staff not able to find out (because they were employed by the other company and had absolutely no information about this one), but they were saying we've got nothing to do with this company (which by the way has served this station for probably over 20 years but within that period changed ownership and strategy about 20 times. Sort of a harmless example about privatisation, but can easily be transfered.

On your other point. It is one of the grand illusions of post capitalist thinking that everyone can and should organise everything for themselves. Not only do I do my banking, but I also organise the education for my kids, and I'm a medical expert if I'm ill and of course culturally I also produce as well. So I make my world as I wish, based on my own strength, vision, ability and of course I know what I want, so I'll get there. So if I'm able, educated and do have time to do these things, meaning I'm not tied up in a 60 hour week to make ends meet in this ridiculously overpriced country, then I'm ok. If not, well then tough luck. This has nothing to do with curbing motivation, drive and initiative but with the fact that the state should be there to regulate and guide if one talks about fairness at all.

I am so utterly disgusted by this country that I am finding that CiF piece about Japan quite intriguing.

Ed Balls is exactly correct.
Personally, my every reference to the present administration is by the reality of it: "Tory".
The reality of Cameron has become increasingly clear this week, at home and abroad...
People, we have a genuine little tin-pot-Hitler in our midst!
Cameron bears the unmistakeable characteristics of megalomania...
ALL of us must quickly awaken to, and beware of this reality...not the least, indeed, his own Tory backbenchers, many enough who must be truly wondering exactly what kind of monster it is that they have unleashed upon an unsuspecting British electorate...

Labour with Ed Balls prominent has ratted on its own supporters, laid the foundations for these Con Dem scum and whats more you could put the contenders in aConDem government and not notice any difference

Balls personifies Neo Liberal Labour, crawling to Murdoch and the Bankers,Privatising NHS services,Warmongering,anti union,anti Comprehensive,anti council house and pro wealthy

So Balls to Labour and start fighting back against every cut, we are going to build a Left that wont rat on the poor, the disabled, the unemployed,the unions, the Health workers,the elderly or the asylum seeker.
A real fighting left that will do to the Con Dems what they and Labour have done to us for the past 40 years

Fight back against the cuts

I instinctively know that if Gordon Browns "bag carrier" advocates something it must be opposed vigourously.

I see that Labour have never argued spending cuts were eventually needed(Alistair Darling was to reduce, NOT increase, the deficit by 2015). The sacrifice to frivolity(spending your way out of a recession) was a temporary measure to go on only as long as a recovery was assured, and was not a new precedent... Did FDR not come out of the gold standard to facilitate a recovery during the great depression?

Labour supports cuts! Just not immediate debilitating cuts which will only lead to businesses being stifled when they still need the crutch of tax breaks and cash flow.

If cuts were not so immediate, growth would have ensured more employment and spending, so in the long-term, more taxes and less benefit payments thus less 'cuts' per capita.

Balls urged Labour supporters not to give up the "radical centre ground of British politics"

What? Give me strength. That's never been what made me a Labour party member. It's what got me to resign my membership a few years ago.

We are desparately in need of a strong left wing party at this time and not another tory clone which the labour party became.....the reason the tories have had trouble getting back into power is because their policies are not much different to the labour party's....middle class values, fighting expensive unnecesary wars etc.
The labour party ought to return to it's original principals as a socialist party if it is going to represent the values of the workers.
The tories always go for the throat and this time they ra e going for it big time and will squeeze as much blood from the stone as they can knowing that their bitches the lib dems will fall from grace totally and no longer have any power, when their own left wing faction ups and leaves....the tories will be left up the creak without a lib dem paddle and they will be kicked out after their term is up.....so please Labour party lets get back to being the old labour party and fuck new labour and the brillcream boys who are fighting to run the ship....lets have a strong leader with balls and I don't mean Ed Balls.

in all honesty I don't see anyone worth voting for but I always vote labour just to block the tories,,,,anything is better than them being in power but it would great to actually vote for a party because I want threm for their values and not just to block the dark side.

Labour needs to go after the Tories not retreat into an unelectable left wing bunker. The labour team should not forget how inadequate these lib/con puppets and puppeteers are and how superficial and self serving their plans.

Labour needs to show its intelligence, experience, strategic planning for the good of the most people or fairness for all and aspiration for all to achieve to their highest potential.
Concentrate on what was done well. The crime rate is the lowest ever which is a result of the massive reforms on the public services and dragging them screaming and complaining into working together the much derided joined up working. It worked.
A society that can have such a crime rate is working well for everyone.

Lib/cons are not permanent they are only there as long as we let them be. We need to get up and fight this together don't wait until they have wrecked 13 yrs of work.

Balls is right to say that the fight must be taken to the Tories - they need to be challenged on every ideologically-driven policy that pares back fairness and equality in every area of our society and at every level. They need to be fought in Parliament, in constituencies, in courts, on the streets in demonstrations - Labour need to spearhead a massive campaign against the gross unfairness being metered out by this most unscrupulous of governments. The myths about the deficit also need shattering as EuroJohn says

You say cut-back, we say fightback - come on Labour, it's time to stick up for the vast majority of ordinary people in this country who gave this vile government absolutely no mandate for any of their rubbish, to shatter the Tory policy myths about there being no alternative to savage cuts and remind people of the effort that the Labour government put into rebuilding this country after the Thatcher years.

Above all we need a plan for the future from Labour - for wealth creation that will foster regrowth and provide desperately needed jobs for our people.

@megabrainz
Richard Darlington, of Demos, said: "This poll will be a wake-up call for Labour's leadership candidates. Labour's next leader needs to support public sector cuts and embrace the 'big society' agenda if they are to be heard by the public."

Bit of short-term thinking there. Obviously if you think public sector cuts and the big society agenda are going to stay popular then politically you want to support them. But (1) if that does happen, you're not likely to make much progress against the coalition, who will very likely be popular too; and (2) if, on the contrary, these ideas drop in popularity, you'll be in a much weaker position for having failed to criticise them.

Yes, that's the argument from expediency.

Now what do you actually believe in?

Complete with figures which add up?

@bathcityfc
Labour need to focus on opposing a new right wing government.

No doubt that makes a refreshing change from running a right-wing government.

Could not agrre more with Ed's thoughts in this article. It is vital the the leadership candidates during their campaigns look outwards and display the sort of Leadership they can offer the party if they were elected. The Tories appear to be getting of very lightly when it comes to challenging the spin & lies coming from their front bench. There reckless disregard for parlimentary due process is also something that so far is being left unchallenged.
I have been quite surprised however by the tone of coverage in the normaly right wing pro-tory press who would appear to be unhappy with both Cameron's leadership and the thought of sharing power with a group of chnacers who would appear to be like a lump of concreate being thrown to a drowning man. I am hopeful of a very prompt and messy divorce on the horizon.

Brown cost labour the election with his know it all attitude to getting the country out of recession. It was a self imposed defeat which his government went along with.

To get back in to power, the tories now have the agenda to radicalise and damage what is left of this country's social and moral fabric beyond repair as can be seen by the end of what is the right to buy and the limiting of council tenancies to really being the same as private sector tenancies.

Labour are out for at least 10 years to 2020 unless the torie muck up so badly that they get back in with the lib dems in 2015.

@brianrouth
in all honesty I don't see anyone worth voting for but I always vote labour just to block the tories,,,,anything is better than them being in power but it would great to actually vote for a party because I want threm for their values and not just to block the dark side.

Up to a point.

Certainly it was true that "anything but the Tories" was the necessity up to and including Howard & Co in 2005.

Despite how awful New Labour were for much of that time.

Since we all want to be able to vote for what we believe in, it is blindingly self-evident that we need genuine PR.

How do you propose to change Labour policy to achieve that?

I don't mean New Labour's empty words, I mean their actions, their applied policy.

Cameron bears the unmistakeable characteristics of megalomania...

And of course Big Gordon was vastly different. The way I see this we've traded a bad government for one that might be bad. I'm willing to give the Coalition a chance. If Labour pull their heads out of their collective rear and sort themselves out to be a proper party that champions 'working britain' again then I might give them another chance. Oddly there's a Team America anaolgy that is strangely relevant to the current three party system but if I post it I'll get modded so I'll leave you all to work it out

Labour's childish behaviour since the election takes them out of the frame for some time. The sight of people like Straw and Johnson trying to justify such things as ID cards and banging people up in prison just because it sounds tough was sickening. And where has Labour been on the economy? Totally rudderless.

I must admit that I am getting a bit worried that so many on the center left are so easily spooked and start believing in the Cameron hype that cutting the deficit is the number one priority.

The Demos poll showing that the public wasn't sold on the Labour message prior to the election doesn't necessarily mean that the message was wrong, just that Labour wasn't able to convince. Tim Bale's essay in the Summer 2010 Fabian Review basically argues for the same. Listen to the public and then build policies around what the people want. But what if the people are misled by the slick Tory PR machine? Is it right to simply follow the current public mood or should Labour focus on developing a convincing aspirational narrative of a future Britain that is fair for all.

Gordon Brown may not have been a great leader or communicator, but he wasn't wrong about the fact that our number one priority has to be securing economic growth. Yes, the current deficit is not sustainable and yes, Labour did spend too much effort on improving the quality of public services and not enough effort on reform to ensure that these public services were financially sustainable. But addressing the deficit doesn't have to be as dramatic as the coalition makes us believe.

The 80% cuts versus 20% tax ratioi is an ideological choice, not one based on an indepth analysis of the current economic climate. Eliminating the structural deficit within five years is again an ideological choice, aimed at creating 'small' government. The cost of these ideological choices is acceptable for the Tories as the 'victims' are unlikely to be Tory voters.

Ed Balls is right in his argument that Labour has to do more to expose the coalition's reforms and policies for what they are but for Labour to be believable they will have to come up with convincing alternative vision and policies. Sofar, the debate on the center left follows the Cameron narrative (immigration, income equality, etc.) rather than how to build a fiscally sound green, knowledge based future.

Come on Demos, Fabians, MilliBalls, etc., stop panicking and start thinking.

Demos is like many organizations in this country, a home for ex-lefties who would rather not work but do like the freedom to push their post-radical agenda while getting the hapless third sector to commission their services. Their various surveys have never proved anything; this one seems calculated to achieve the response they required. Blair's addiction to think-tank politics was at least part of his problem; he failed to see it as the marketing opportunity it was and so lost any tenuous attachment to more enduring principles that he might, arguably, have possessed.
What was ever the point of alienating people, trampling over them and ignoring them, failing to counter the slush of propaganda from the tabloid press, and then suddenly developing an appetite for asking what they thought about the current political situation which they'd had no hand in creating? This is what the left has reduced itself to, and it really needs to ask itself why and how it happened - listening to the likes of Demos and swallowing the New Labour agenda whole was undoubtedly part of it; only one part, perhaps: but the answer does not lie in returning to the same polluted sources for advice.

Demos? - that's the same Demos of which George Osborne is a board member right?!