The Labour campaign continues to make good progress whilst the Tories lurch from one failed artifice after another, and Ed Miliband is increasingly taking command with growing confidence. The election has nevertheless drawn attention to a disturbing penumbra of alienation from the whole process. In poor white working class areas the number of households who […]
Posts Tagged ‘Working Class MPs’
UKIP’s surge makes working class Labour candidates more vital than ever
May 27th, 2014 by Jon Lansman.The initial Labour reaction to the success of UKIP at attracting working class voters in many areas has focussed on the right policy response. But as Matthew Goodwin and Robert Ford, authors of Revolt on the Right: Explaining Public Support for the Radical Right in Britain, say in tomorrow’s Guardian the voters with “white faces, blue collars and grey […]
Share:
Labour voters don’t want rich tax dodgers or Etonians as MPs – no-one wants SpAds
Mar 10th, 2014 by Jon Lansman.A YouGov poll for the Times revealed today what we always suspected. No party’s voters want a SpAd as their MP. Not Labour voters, Tories, Lib Dems, nor Ukippers. Especially not Ukippers. Not just SpAds actually but anyone who’s “never had a ‘real’ job outside the worlds of national politics/think tanks/journalism/local government before becoming an […]
Share:
Aberavon selection: anyone but a working class candidate?
Feb 14th, 2014 by Keith Wright.What a difference a day makes! Yesterday, we questioned whether Stephen Kinnock, who sent his daughter to a Danish private school, was a suitable potential Labour MP. Since then, we’ve heard that Kinnock now stands little chance of winning the Aberavon constituency selection. His all-star strategy has backfired. Paying to opt-out of state education hasn’t […]
Share:
Progress, class and parliamentary selections
Apr 25th, 2013 by Ken Livingstone.I am one of those who wants to see more working class people – and a bigger range of people generally – active in the highest levels of politics. So I welcome the emphasis the party is placing on broadening the social composition of parliament. That process is certainly not going to be resolved across the […]
Share:
On Progress and the parliamentary candidate selection process
Mar 11th, 2013 by Paul Cotterill.Richard Angell, Deputy Head of Progress party-within-the-party, has written an interesting column on how Labour parliamentary candidates are selected and new rules to increase working-class representation. This might sound dull as ditchwater, but the process is actually a pretty key variable when it comes to what kind of person we end up getting to represent us in […]
Share:
Paul Kenny on influence of Progress and the need for more working class MPs
Oct 22nd, 2012 by Newsdesk.Paul Kenny talks a great deal of sense about Labour’s lowest ever level of working class representation and how the targetting of parliamentary seats by Progress with “outside money” obstructs working class representation and promotes privatisation.
