Britain is no longer a Conservative country, claims Polly Toynbee

From Polly Toynbee's Guardian column:

"If Conservatism cannot win a majority under dream circumstances with every fair wind blowing in its favour, it has become a minority rump belief in British life. Labour was on its knees with a singularly disliked leader. Cameron was better by far than the Tories' last four leaders, astute in trying to adapt his party to changed times. The crash and its aftermath have unseated governments everywhere, and Labour was partly blamed. The Conservatives outspent the other parties by millions, sending Lord Ashcroft's gilded missiles into the marginals. After 13 years, it really did feel like time for a change. So for Cameron to win a meagre 36% of the vote was a phenomenal failure. Not a failure of Cameron's personally, nor of his campaign. The Conservatives were beaten because this is no longer a Conservative country."

In his City AM column Allister Heath insists that Britain is not a left-wing country:

"It is true that all the parties represented in Parliament are firmly left-wing in their policies, apart from the Tories and Northern Ireland’s DUP (to divide beliefs into “left” and “right” is problematic but will have to do for the time being). But this doesn’t mean that 62 per cent of the electorate is on the “left” – many back parties that don’t properly represent their views. The reason I can write this with confidence are the findings of opinion polls as well as the British Social Attitudes Survey. The British are conservative on crime – a strong majority is way to the “right” even of the Tory party on that issue. On Europe, a big minority supports immediate withdrawal from the EU and the vast majority supports repatriating powers back to London, a policy that every government since the 1970s has rejected. There has been a hardening of attitudes towards welfare claimants and a greater acceptance of inequality."

Discuss.

Tim Montgomerie

Polly Toynbee's wish-list of policies for the Labour manifesto

In her Guardian column today, Polly Toynbee dismisses the businessmen attacking Labour's planned rise in national insurance and laments that Labour courted business and "never confronted the worsening dysfunctions of modern capitalism".

Seemingly despairing at what Labour can propose to win the election she proposes adopting a number of policies being suggested by Labour campaign group Compass, in order to "energise Labour support". Here they are, accompanied by a figure with the supposed amount of public support they enjoy according to an uncited poll...

• Electoral reform to break the Westminster stalemate (65% support)
• Splitting banks to shed their casinos (68%)
• Cut Trident (63%),
• Take back the railways (70%)
• Ban advertising to children (77%)
• Replace fees with a fairer graduate tax (88%)
• A Robin Hood tax on bank transactions (53%)
• Cap loan shark interest rates (89%)
• Create a high-pay commission (65%)
• Create a living wage (58%)

Jonathan Isaby

Ms Toynbee is "deeply alarmed" at the prospect of Labour pledging not to raise tax

Yesterday I blogged about Treasury Chief Secretary Liam Byrne's statement that Labour would not introduce any new tax rises if re-elected.

Notwithstanding the fact that the credibility of that assertion is seriously questionable, Polly Toynbee is less than enamoured of the idea, as she writes in this morning's Guardian:

"The budget is 10 days away and yet already the chief secretary, Liam Byrne, appears to have ruled out any new tax rises to deal with the deficit. That is a deeply alarming prospect – and as a political stand, a blunder. If the election squeezes out any honesty about the cuts to come soon, then voters need to know the choices. The Institute for Fiscal Studies warns the likely cuts will wipe out virtually all the extra spending of the Labour era – an unimaginable blow. Unless taxes rise to mitigate that disaster. Whether or not Byrne really meant it, why was he pretending tax rises were off the agenda?"

"The chancellor should be listening to the group of 80 MPs and economists calling for another fiscal stimulus to keep the economy afloat: Britain is one of only two G20 countries withdrawing the stimulus this year. To invest in housing, transport and clean energy with growth and jobs is the Rooseveltian way out of recession and debt. The cabinet debates how to use a windfall from the bank bonus tax and lower than expected unemployment. With an abyss gaping below, of course it must be put back into investment. And this is no time to rule out tax rises."

Jonathan Isaby

The vast majority want higher taxation of the rich, says Toynbee in rebuke to Mandelson

Polly Toynbee in The Guardian:

"Mandelson is profoundly wrong and out of date to accuse others of "class war". The 50p tax rate and tax on bonuses are not some "core-vote" strategy. Polls and focus groups prove them so popular that the Tories dare not vote against them. Mandelson's claim that taxing the rich makes Labour no longer the party of "aspiration" is to grossly misunderstand the present mood. The decade-long deception that pretended mega-wealth could be "aspired" to by all is over: the real middle Britain, median earners on about £23,000, are not core-vote but the majority – and they have rumbled the rich. Their aspirations have nothing to do with letting Rothschild and Deripaska incomes rip. Remember only 10% earn over £40,000. To have any hope of salvaging this election, Labour has to know whom as well as what it stands for. That's not class war, that's basic social democratic principle, and it's good psephology. "The many not the few" is no retreat to a core vote."

Polly Toynbee's warning to Labour: Get rid of Brown or you are toast

The year isn't 48 hours old and two Labour MPs - Barry Sheerman and Greg Pope - have called on Brown to go.

Polly Toynbee uses her first Guardian column of the year to slam Gordon Brown's record and to predict defeat if he stays as Labour leader:

"There is nothing to celebrate in the dismal year ahead. The Labour party is sledging down a black run, eyes tight shut, the only certainty the electoral wall at the bottom of the hill....

The delusional tone of Gordon Brown's new year message says it all: "I believe we can create a new decade of prosperity with opportunities fairly shared amongst those who work hard and play by the rules." Just about every word of this raises questions about his record that he can never answer: GDP has fallen by 5% in the last year, taking us back to 2005; growth in his time was profoundly unfairly shared – over half the population saw virtually no growth at all; GDP per capita is a fraudulent measure that disguises how almost all growth went to the top 10%, and most to the top 1% – while he and Tony Blair did no more than see that the back half didn't fall too far behind...

The cabinet is frozen by individual self-interest – shame on all of them. They want Brown gone, but none dares wield the knife without the others... The country doesn't much like the Conservatives, but voters will throw Gordon Brown out – unless Labour does first."

Does Polly Toynbee read The Guardian?

In her Saturday Guardian column Polly Toynbee was complaining about the right-wing press' coverage of Darling's Pre-Budget Report:

"The pre-budget report was a political disaster. The massed Exocets of the press fired straight at Brown and Darling, as they were bound to. An election approaches and the 80% Conservative press at last scents victory. "Middle Classes Hit Hard", blazed the Telegraph. "The Buck Passer's Budget", said the Mail. "Labour's War on Workers", blared the Express."

It wasn't just the "80% Conservative press" Polly! Didn't you notice your own newspaper's headline...?

"Darling soaks the rich... and the rest of us too."