Monday 25 May 2015

Kim Howells on GE2015 not really understanding why they lost.

It must be frustrating to be an ex MP and finding unless you get the  accolade of elder statesman no one is asks your opinion anymore .

So for someone like Kim Howells who never tires of hearing his own voice an opportunity to speak out on the General Election.

Former Communist Party member turned Arch-Blarite Kim Howells has been spouting off to the BBC

He suggested to the BBC Radio Wales’ Sunday Supplement programme that the Labour general election campaign was “unmitigated gloom” and that policies such as the mansion tax didn’t promote the need for entrepreneurship.
“I didn’t vote for Labour out of admiration for its policies at the general election, I voted out of tribal loyalty,” he said.
“The notion that we were going to pay for everything from these odd and crazy taxes, the Mansion tax what it was doing all the time was that it was undermining the belief in people that if you work hard and get on you are going to get nailed by a government that is going to tax you more and more and more."

 "It's probably at least as bad as under Michael Foot's leadership when we were in real dire straits."If the Labour party doesn't come up with fresh thinking, with some radical analysis of what's going on in society and what people need out of society, it could well dwindle to a very small number of MPs."


In Wales, the party won 25 out of 40 seats, but had expected to improve on the 26 seats it won in 2010.
Of those seats, it lost Gower to the Conservatives by 27 votes, a constituency Labour had held for more than 100 years.


Howells acknowledged Labour's biggest successes were in the city and coal field regeneration areas.

"If we ever want to be back in government again, we need to win southern England," 

So is he saying abandoning the people of city and coal field regeneration areas.for votes of Tory supoters in Southern England is the policy Barbour should pursue?

Can it be that that like himself  the people of Wales should vote Labour out of "Tribal Loyality whilst  the party abandons  them as they pursue Tory votes in Tory Southern England with Tory policies?


He seems incapable of acknowledging   the true Disaster for Labour in the election namely Scotland  where Labour was almost wiped out by the SNP running partly on an Anti-Austerity program

Well he did but only to say only to say  didn’t think Welsh Labour could be wiped out in the same way in Wales

He said 
 “Carwyn Jones is much sharper leader than that. They’ve proved that they can run a government in Wales, and people trust them”.

Hm some think that the success of the Tories in Wales was that they could attack the Labour Assembly Government  over the NHS.

Can anyone point to Labours stewardship of the Assembly and claim they were inspired by a radical progressive government?

Mind you it seems this is the last thing Kim Howells wants.
.
It seems Howells believes that doing a virtually nothing in your tenure and not seeking the powers to make real change is doing a god job.

If Labour follows Howells analysis they may regain power but will be no difrent from the Tories.

Oh that's right they already are.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kim Howell is an over-rated politician whose opinion of himself is greatly over-stated!

Anonymous said...

Howells was once reported as saying:

“I quite like being part of the United Kingdom. I don’t particularly want to belong to a nation that hasn’t even got three million people in it, and it’s got a kind of establishment, a cracach, a ruling
class, which I think is incredibly insular, self- sustaining and self-serving in so many ways.”

Yet he was quite happy to belong to a political party that is part of a self-sustaining and self-serving elite that see Westminister as a private members club - the Kinnock dinasty being a prime example.