Dejanic wrote:The idea that Labour needs to move to the "centre ground" is bollox, because Labour was in the centre ground under Ed Miliband. The party proposed soft austerity, and overall spending cuts outside of a few "key areas" like the NHS, and education. You can't even really argue they were a centre-left party, since a centre-leftist would argue for spending increases/Keynesian economics, and a full on leftist would be arguing for Socialism. One nation Labour argued for moderate austerity, not proper Keynesianism, in that broad economic sense they were actually to the right of say the US Democrats whom have avoided broad austerity.
Labour lost because Ed Miliband failed to capture the peoples hearts for 5 years, and only gained a little bit of pace in the last few weeks. That and the whole scare campaign about SNP/LABOUR, which would of existed even if a more third way type like David Miliband had led the party, since unless Labour went full on hard left and out left winged the SNP, they were going to lose Scotland.
I agree. The US has mostly avoided austerity, and most Democrats are arguing for more stimulus.
I think the key is to take back the debate...right now, the right has a hold on debate with its media, think tanks, etc. In some ways progressives in the US are doing this. You can see a lot of think tanks and progressive media coming about, for example ThinkProgress and MSNBC. Democrats like Obama, policy-wise are to the right of Labour obviously, but Obama has won elections attacking the 1% and businesses. Even Hillary Clinton has been yelling "Businesses don't create jobs! Trickle down economics are a sham!" And I think the media is a bit more pro-Democrats here.
