What new parties would you like?

[Barry]

Is this the beginnings of a new party?
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news/laurence-fox-interview-with-martin-daubney-92440

[patman post]

My ideal party would be a forward looking centre-left one.

This party would be committed to:

A fairer society with a level of redistribution of wealth and promoting equality.

A bigger role for the public sector. For any future nationalisations, e.g. rail, water, electricity, I would favour state-owned companies rather than state-run corporations.

Keeping the island of Great Britain as a single sovereign entity and retaining the UK as a whole while the majority of people in Northern Ireland wish to stay part of it.

Harsher penalties for violent crimes and indeed for most crimes including motoring offences.

Accelerating the move to renewables and electric vehicles.

Considering rejoining the EU if it's A) clearly beneficial to the country and B) there's clear evidence that the majority of the public would support it (e.g. election result or referendum).

Parts of that wish list make me nervous.
Specifically, anything further Left than Healey or Jenkins would sound alarm bells.

1. A "fairer distribution of wealth" usually means making the majority poorer. A more attractive aim would be to increase everyone's access to, and share of, the national cake with state encouragement of employment, industry and trade.

2. The activities of public utilities and industries should be overseen and regulated by national bodies with teeth, but not financed by government — though I don't see much against state shareholding, eg, similar to Renault in France.

3. Populations of the four nations of the UK (and maybe some English regions) should be free to choose their own destiny — provided enough people can be persuaded (perhaps requiring a two-thirds majority). Whether the whole UK should be involved in "devolved" decisions would need to be resolved.

4. Because the UK has a high crime rate, despite having the highest prison population in Western Europe, I'd like a real investigation and overhaul of the penal system with emphasis on correction, and constant oversight by a regularly refreshed body. I'm not convinced ever harsher penalties is reducing crime or making the population safer. This could run alongside research into the causes of crime, away from the usual populist dog-whistle pronouncements.

5. I'd like there to be greater emphasis encouraging research into all less polluting energy and transport — including evaluating stop gap measures such as nuclear while cleaner technologies are sought and implemented.

Apart from such modifications, I think I could live with your suggestions — provided I could introduce some further actions: such as reforms of the Commons and Lords and electoral boundaries, on-going meaningful all-embracing discrimination review, investigation the military and possibility of a more formal civilian role in all emergency services (perhaps an expansion of the old Civil Defence), in-depth non-partisan review of public broadcasting and the BBC...

[Borchester]

My ideal party would be a forward looking centre-left one.

This party would be committed to:

A fairer society with a level of redistribution of wealth and promoting equality.

A bigger role for the public sector. For any future nationalisations, e.g. rail, water, electricity, I would favour state-owned companies rather than state-run corporations.

Keeping the island of Great Britain as a single sovereign entity and retaining the UK as a whole while the majority of people in Northern Ireland wish to stay part of it.

Harsher penalties for violent crimes and indeed for most crimes including motoring offences.

Accelerating the move to renewables and electric vehicles.

Considering rejoining the EU if it's A) clearly beneficial to the country and B) there's clear evidence that the majority of the public would support it (e.g. election result or referendum).

Any party that does not support the above.

[HDQQ]

My ideal party would be a forward looking centre-left one.

This party would be committed to:

A fairer society with a level of redistribution of wealth and promoting equality.

A bigger role for the public sector. For any future nationalisations, e.g. rail, water, electricity, I would favour state-owned companies rather than state-run corporations.

Keeping the island of Great Britain as a single sovereign entity and retaining the UK as a whole while the majority of people in Northern Ireland wish to stay part of it.

Harsher penalties for violent crimes and indeed for most crimes including motoring offences.

Accelerating the move to renewables and electric vehicles.

Considering rejoining the EU if it's A) clearly beneficial to the country and B) there's clear evidence that the majority of the public would support it (e.g. election result or referendum).

[patman post]

A lot of industry died in the Thatcher era and shifted abroad, never to be replaced. It wasn't lack of demand either.

Yep — one of Thatcher's targets was nationalised industry that survived only through state handouts. That's why inefficient industries were divested by the state into the private sector and told to make their own ways. Unfortunately, many continued with inept management and reactionary union-controlled work forces which wouldn't accept there was competition in the non-subsidised world — not only for their own industries, but also in the wide world that the UK has to trade in.
After that came pressure from fund managers, asset strippers and merger and acquisition merchants who engineered some of the nations most reputed brands into the hands of foreign owners...

[papasmurf]

Where did they go? To the EU member countries?

Some of them did. In the case of a company I worked for at the time making coal cutting an associated equipment when it went tits up the Chinese rocked up and purchased all to the machinery, jigs, tooling, drawings and patents. Took it all back to China, and broke the World record for the amount of coal won in a shift.

[T00ts]

Admittedly there's still a lack of coopers, cordwainers and wheelwrights around the country. But did that happen through lack of demand, or did government policy thin them out?

A lot of industry died in the Thatcher era and shifted abroad, never to be replaced. It wasn't lack of demand either.

Where did they go? To the EU member countries?

[papasmurf]

Admittedly there's still a lack of coopers, cordwainers and wheelwrights around the country. But did that happen through lack of demand, or did government policy thin them out?

A lot of industry died in the Thatcher era and shifted abroad, never to be replaced. It wasn't lack of demand either.

[patman post]

What it states on the tin. Industry ceased to exist in large swathes of Britain and has never been replaced.

Admittedly there's still a lack of coopers, cordwainers and wheelwrights around the country. But did that happen through lack of demand, or did government policy thin them out?
My new party would compartmentalise "obsolete industries and outdated practices" in a section of Dept for Industry. In addition to the crafts above I'd expect it to highlight Trade Unions and restrictive practices, bad criminal and inept managements, and the way state industries were at the mercy of politics...

[papasmurf]

Emotive phraseology, but what does that really mean?

What it states on the tin. Industry ceased to exist in large swathes of Britain and has never been replaced.

[patman post]

Pardon? She created an industrial wasteland across vast swathes of Britain.

Emotive phraseology, but what does that really mean?
Coal mining hastened it's own end by failing to recognise the industry was in no position to try and hold a country to ransom. Steel workers and heavy industry employees thwarted the introduction of advanced techniques that could have kept the industries competitive. Car workers' demarcation and wage demands limited investment in efficient manufacturing and new models. Even regional industrial development initiatives, often trying to bring new jobs to areas of high unemployment, had to grind through the incessant obstinacy of local unions.
The shock realisation that the queue of industries unable to compete through high costs meant job losses came too late, and many had to wait for overseas companies to be convinced that investing in the UK was safe...

[papasmurf]

As I remember it the Unions had a lot of input.

So the propaganda would have you believe.

[T00ts]

As for Thatcher, she invigorated a moribund industrial structure that had hardly moved out of the coal and steam age because of the stranglehold unions had on the levers of production...

Pardon? She created an industrial wasteland across vast swathes of Britain.

As I remember it the Unions had a lot of input.

[papasmurf]

As for Thatcher, she invigorated a moribund industrial structure that had hardly moved out of the coal and steam age because of the stranglehold unions had on the levers of production...

Pardon? She created an industrial wasteland across vast swathes of Britain.

[patman post]

Sorry Patman, the destruction that bitch wreaked was not worth the right to buy and connect your own mickey mouse phone to the network. And none were as cool as my push button trimphone anyway

But under the state-monopoly mentality of the '50s and '60s the original trimphone reputedly took longer to gain approval by GPO Telephones than it took NASA to get man on the Moon.
As for Thatcher, she invigorated a moribund industrial structure that had hardly moved out of the coal and steam age because of the stranglehold unions had on the levers of production...