The Left is bankrupt

It's not just the nation's coffers they've laid bare.  The current generation of Labour leaders are in danger of leaving their own party intellectually bankrupt.

To get a sense of how dire things are, have a read of Ed Miliband and Douglas Alexander's article "We will defend the State" in today's Guardian.

Miliband and Alexander make the interesting observation that "as constituency MPs, we see people facing daily frustrations in their interactions with government: disempowered not empowered." 

Indeed.  You'd have to be a pretty dim-witted MP from a one-party fiefdom constituency to think otherwise. 

In the real world beyond the SW1 fantasy-land, government is not some kind of enabling, empowering force for good.  It is petty, officious, restrictive, bossy - and, above all, incompetent. 

But what do Brown's back room boys propose to do about it?  Miliband and Alexander talk about "strengthening the power of people in their interaction with the state".  But to do so, they then propose more government.

Instead of allowing local or individual initiative, their remedies are all about official initiative.  Rather than letting go, or allowing choice and competition, or an end to state monopoly, they simply offer to ratchet up the levers of state control; more Whitehall diktat, more national standards and decrees, more we-know-what's-best-for-you.  They write of "neighbourhood policing" in the full knowledge that their own government specifically ruled out direct, local democratic oversight of policing.

That people like Miliband and Alexander can identify the problem, yet not offer a credible solution is beginning to trouble some of the more honest thinkers on the left - as I discovered speaking at a Fabian conference the other week.

The more perceptive on the left recognise that our ipod society is used to choice in a way no previous generation has been.  They realise that the internet - which creates enormous choice, new niches and breaks monopolies - will shift the relationship between the individual and the state.  Or put another way, if Spotify allows us complete choice over the music we listen to, why can we not have choice over even more important things, like how our children are educated?

Miliband and Alexander are analogue thinkers in a digital age.

Posted on 5 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell

Comments

"The real question facing Britain is not how to nudge people but how to give them power over their own lives. The need for collective action is clear:"

Are Alexander and Miliband a new unfunny BBC comedy duo?

The State cannot strengthen people's control over their own lives through collective action. People always end up doing what the State wants from within a choice the State allows. That is not a freedom to choose, just a freedom to choose from a limited set of State approved options.

Posted on 5 February 2010 10:20 by Gareth

An excellent item, as always, Mr Carswell. What is needed is to see individuals freed from the restraints currently imposed. Like the tax on live music in a pub it is the little things which make life more unpleasant. Allow people to live and manage their lives as they want, and the country will start to flourish. I live in a small village. Here many people still operate on their own initiative. It is likely we often break laws. But like Baroness Holland I can't keep up with all the 4,000 new laws, so what the heck!

Posted on 5 February 2010 11:00 by Michael Jecks

Don't forget about Common Purpose:

http://www.cpexposed.com

http://www.stopcp.com

Posted on 5 February 2010 11:00 by Stop Common Purpose

The Milliband Brothers and Alexander are the face and form of the modern Labour Party. Just look at them, listen to them and ask yourself this. Have aliens really landed at last?

Posted on 5 February 2010 11:05 by David Harcombe

An obvious comparison with Miliband and Alexander springs to mind, namely the mantra of the apparatchik Wesley Mouch in Atlas Shrugged: "It's not my fault! I need more powers!"

Posted on 5 February 2010 11:14 by David Cooper

You're falling into their trap again. I quote:-

"Instead of ALLOWING local or individual initiative"

"or ALLOWING choice and competition"

This is THE problem. It is never about the State 'allowing' freedom for us to do stuff. We are free. We can do what we like as long as it does not harm our neighbours.

All the State can do, and which is the central point of leftyism, is to stop us doing stuff or only stuff that they say we can do, and then grudgingly 'allow' us back our freedom.

You must never use the allow word in the debate with lefties. By doing so you are implicitly accepting their argument that it is the State that allows us to do things.

A better way of phrasing you post might be:-

"...Instead of continuing to frustrate local initiatives..."

"...instead of frustrating and inhibiting choice and competition...".

For God's sake STOP USING THE ALLOWED WORD.

Posted on 5 February 2010 11:36 by Lola

Remind me again, what was Einstein's definition of insanity?

Posted on 5 February 2010 11:49 by ThousandsOfMilesAway

The country suffers from not having an effective opposition. In the Thatcher years the Labour party was wracked with internal strife and was never really credible as a government-in-waiting. This also weakened the Conservatives because they had no competition to keep them on their game, with the result that post-1997, they lost all credibility, leading to three successive Labour terms. We're in grave danger of the pendulum lurching all the way back to the other end stop again, with Labour discredited and probably due a period of bloodletting and recriminations if they suffer a huge election loss. They have the problem that all their potential leadership candidates are tarnished by being part of the present government, but for the good of the country they need to sort it quickly.

All MPs are now more on the spot than they have ben in the past, with easy access to voting records and Hansard transcripts where who said what can be examined and instances of selective truth or just plain lack of it can be uncovered and challenged. It is only the apathy of the general public that keeps some MPs in their jobs - people vote for the colour of the rosette because that's what they've always done and it means they don't need to think. Sadly the nanny-state approach of the government, requiring approval and form-filling and regulations, supports and encourages the lack of thought in many cases.

You mention education - I heard mention that in the consultation about school report cards, there were 17 responses from parents. Contrast this to the home education consultation, where there were over 5000 responses. It shows that when you have a motivated group who are thinking for themselves, they are far more likely to stand up for themselves and make a noise. Sadly, the government can't quite cope with the concept and failed to check its ears were working properly because it has become used to the passive acceptance of the masses who are prepared to accept that nanny knows best.

You're not going to change the system until you can get more people stirred out of apathy and taking more of an interest in the workings of that system. that won't happen while they are fed propaganda that lets them delegate their thinking to the state.

Posted on 5 February 2010 11:54 by David Hough

Yes, an astonishing article by Miliband and Alexander.

How really vacuous they both are.

By the way, the CiFs are giving them a tremendous kicking.

Posted on 5 February 2010 12:05 by Marcellus

Actually, Douglas, they are in fact idiots. Neither is fitted for high office in any sense of the word whatsoever. And to prove it, I will list their achievements as ministers below.

Miliband Major
1. Disaster at DEFRA
2. Appallingly bad Foreign Secretary

Alexander.
None

Posted on 5 February 2010 12:09 by Jeremy Poynton

Good points well made but does your boss understand and is he going to do something about it? Does he realise that dealing with the "petty, officious, restrictive, bossy - and, above all, incompetent" representatives of the state does not mean creating new quangos, new tiers of government and oversight or more statute enacted legislation for jobsworths to police in tick box fashion and without discretion or common sense? It means repealing Labour laws wholesale, dismantling the quango state wholesale, and strengthening the traditional British concepts of individual freedom, privacy and rights to re-position the relationship between individual and state the correct way round (you represent us and govern with our consent - you are not in control of us) and to prevent abuse or erosion by future governments with national socialist tendencies like New Labour.

Maybe he does and maybe he will but I have to say the message is neither strong nor clear and leaves plenty of room for doubt.

Posted on 5 February 2010 13:04 by Nicholas

Nice evaluation, Douglas.

Interesting you mention the internet - there are reports that global regulation of the internet is being proposed. Without the free speech the internet affords, the public would never have been disabused of the great global warming con.

Further, without the internet being a free arena for 'dissenting' voices, many would not have fallen for the charms of your colleague Dan Hannan.

The extreme socialists no doubt do not want us discussing what they get up to, but you must defend robustly the internet as a free arena... no matter what dirty looks Mandelson throws at you.

Moving on, when can we expect yourself and Dan Hannan to launch a coup de grace against Call Me Dave and put a bit of conservative common sense onto the ballot papers?

Posted on 5 February 2010 13:07 by Eric Arthur Blair Got Googled

"It is petty, officious, restrictive, bossy - and, above all, incompetent."

Be thankful for small mercies. Imagine if it was competent at being petty, officious, restrictive & bossy!

Posted on 5 February 2010 13:16 by Dontmindme

The phrase "disempowered not empowered" intrigues me. Aside from the poor sentence structure, "disempowered" means nothing other than "not empowered". So they're basically just saying the same thing twice in the same sentence. (Or, given that there are two of them writing the article, perhaps once each.)

Posted on 5 February 2010 15:56 by Tom FD

Miliband and Alexander don't seem to have spotted the irony when they say we need to be "empowered", after 13 years of New Labour creeping statism.

That we in the UK are not empowered is a scandalous state of affairs and Miliband and Alexander ought to feel ashamed to admit it. Although things may not have been perfect before 1997, we were a bloody sight more empowered than we are after 13 years of New Labour.

Here's hoping a Tory government will redress the situation.

Posted on 5 February 2010 18:45 by Talwin

"We understand that the real task for government in the coming decade is to protect people from risk"

This statement tells you everything you need to know about current Labour thinking. The public aren't a collection of independent minded adults according to these two, no. Left to their own devices they'll put themselves at risk so the state needs to intervene and regulate whenever it feels necessary to protect the public from themselves.


The horrid little men they really are.

Posted on 5 February 2010 20:10 by chefdave

Milliband and Alexander are professional apparatchicks (well, more like gravy train student wannabes ) whose careers have some similarities - fast tracked through the British left's murkey nursery mechanisms - trouble is they both still need dummies and diapers.

If this pair of boobs is all the Labour Party can put up - they're sunk, well and truly. If it's a meritocracy one has to wonder what exactly, the Labour Party see as success?

Posted on 5 February 2010 22:13 by Tom

Millibland and Alexander are the exhausted remnents of Nu Labour. When their mouths open dont expect Socrates. They are third rate career polititicians who still look and sound like students and have the political skills of a slug. I dont think there has been a credible " left" in this country for many years as the groups always get infiltrated by outside forces to discredit them.

Posted on 6 February 2010 08:14 by Glenn

And there was me thinking that it was the crazy right-wing economic system so eagerly takwen up by Mr Blair and Co. that bankrupted us?

Or was that just a bad dream?

Posted on 6 February 2010 13:22 by The Ghost of Joe Strummer

chefdave,

Have you seen the Will Smith filum version of I, Robot? That is where we are heading but without the need for the robots.

We learn through taking risks and making mistakes. They are trying to arrest our development.

Posted on 6 February 2010 13:50 by Gareth

When Ed Milliband was on his feet in the Commons before Copenhagen, he was spouting the most unbelievable crap imaginable. Few Conseravtive Party MP were there to challenge it because of Call me Dave's devotion to AGW, and those that were in the chamber were wishing him well in getting a deal on CO2.
No sense railing against dire articles in the Guardian if you fail to challenge them in the Commons where you are paid to be!

Posted on 7 February 2010 01:49 by iain

"We learn through taking risks and making mistakes. They are trying to arrest our development."


I agree completely. Milliband and Alexander only have to read a common history book for clearer understanding of the kind of people we are.

At different points in time we've been humanitarians, scientists, engineers, explorers, adventurers, empire builders and pioneers.

Yet according to the left we should abandon all these useful and exciting endevours so that we're not exposed to risk.

Its a common theme that runs through their thinking; the commitment to a future of low expectations. Its so dull. These men of little imagination have garnered powers way beyond their capabilites, its time for a little market correction.

Posted on 7 February 2010 10:36 by chefdave

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