Shame we don’t have Doncaster North people to take this in BY HAND !!
Struggling to make an impact: Ed Miliband must reject the Tory Party’s narrative about the need for austerity and bring forward a vision for the future that really does make us ‘One Nation’ again, rather than hanging on David Cameron’s neoliberal coat-tails, as many former Labour voters believe.
The political debate is all about the Labour Party again today – as it has been since the Budget.
The newspapers and websites are full of advice for the party, which is now clearly seen to be struggling to gain any kind of a foothold with electors who have become disillusioned at what might best be called the Party of Very Little Opposition.
Labour “must adopt new principles” according to an alliance of thinktanks and party intellectuals who have written to The Guardian; Ed Miliband has been told “don’t play safe” with the party’s manifesto according to an article on…
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jaynelinney 
How can a Labour Party led by Miliband with Balls & Balls, and Alexander, and Harman, and Burnham and Umunna and Reeves and Coaker and Benn and Flint be anything other than appeasers to the Tory mantra. Most of the faces where there in 2010 – not a lot has changed -policies ‘harder’ than tories – appalling credibility – they believe all they have to do is turn up …. they are NOT GOOD ENOUGH and offer nothing other than TORY POLICIES
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Jane, people are becoming increasingly concerned with “Career Politicians” Standing for election for their own benefit and not for the people. Torys, realising they can no longer be viable, simply move to Labour an visa versa. People in the UK have had enough of millionaire politicians.
As a UK Politician for UKIP . . . let’s break the mold. Go back to the original conception of a politician . . a person selected to the peoples wishes not the politican’s or his/her party.
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I agree with your initial point, however not with your chosen Party
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Today Miliband and the labour party are set to support the government’s Benefit Cap legislation for 2015-16
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With everything Xed x
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Balls, in parliament today, said they want to keep everything as there’s no money but recind the bedroom tax. universal credit could be ‘fixed’ and there would be compulsory job creation for certain age groups. then 500+ MPs trotted off to vote for the benefit cap only 22 against.
Goodbye labour (it’s not really labour it’s tory lite labour – nasty and undeserving and betrayers of the faithful)
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Labour party reply to me
Thank you for your email regarding the welfare spending cap and support for disabled people. For help with specific cases please get in touch with your local MP.
For generations in Britain, when the economy grew, most people got better off. But that isn’t true anymore. Today people are facing a cost-of-living crisis: with low pay and insecurity at work, growing long-term unemployment, and a housing crisis that is pushing up rents and house prices out of the reach of ordinary people. This leaves Britain’s taxpayers facing a higher bill for welfare payments like tax credits and housing benefit.
Labour will turn our economy around so we can earn our way as a country to a higher standard of living. But that means we must be disciplined on how we spend every single pound, and social security spending, vital as it is, cannot be exempt from that discipline. Labour proposed a cap on overall welfare spending in June 2013 as a means of monitoring the social security bill and keeping costs under control. So we will vote for the cap proposed in the Budget in Parliament – it will not involve any additional welfare cuts.
The Tories can’t control the cost of welfare because they ignore the root causes – they don’t understand that the cost of living crisis means people are trapped in low-paid jobs, reliant on tax credits; or that their Government’s failure to build enough homes means that they are spending £19 on housing benefit for every pound spent on bricks and mortar. Overall they are spending over £13 billion more on welfare more than they planned. The cost of living crisis being felt by ordinary people across the country means a rising welfare bill felt in Westminster.
Labour will get the welfare bill down, but by tackling the root causes of social security spending, not by following the Tories’ failed approach. That means improving low pay which leaves too many people reliant on in-work benefits, building 200,000 homes a year to control the rising cost of rents and housing benefit, and introducing a Compulsory Jobs Guarantee to help young people and the long-term unemployed back into work. We will make fairer choices about spending, including scrapping winter fuel payments for the richest five per cent of pensioners and abolishing the Bedroom Tax. Our approach will help people struggling with the cost of living crisis, and reduce the costs to the taxpayer at the same time.
The Government is creating a climate of fear amongst disabled people and their families, with the bedroom tax, failure to reform the Work Capability Assessment, badly thought through changes to Disability Living Allowance, and the complete failure of the Work Programme to help disabled people into work. Labour has demanded a cumulative impact assessment of the reforms hitting disabled people, but the Government have refused.
David Cameron’s Bedroom Tax is forcing 400,000 disabled people to pay more while he gives a tax cut to people on incomes over £150,000. It is a cruel and unfair measure that hits some of the most vulnerable in our society, and does nothing to solve under occupancy. So Ed Miliband has committed the next Labour government to abolishing the Bedroom Tax.
Labour has called on the Government to sack Atos from the Work Capability Assessment contract, and to reform the WCA so it works properly and fairly. Labour believes the principle of assessments is right, but Atos is getting too many wrong, which is why Labour would reform assessments to ensure disabled people are given the support they need.
Labour is looking closely at how we can ensure the social security system is better equipped to address the needs of disabled people. We have established a Disability Taskforce to recommend changes to social security to maximise disabled peoples’ control over their own lives and break the link between disability and poverty.
In the meantime, we will continue to put pressure on the Government to come clean about the effects of their policies on disabled people, and push them to ensure the social security system works for all.
You can play a part in shaping how we deal with the cost of living crisis and reform social security via Your Britain, Labour’s online home of ideas and policy development. You can read more about our ideas for social security in our Work and Business Policy Consultation document. If you have ideas you’d like to share with us, please make a submission to the consultation.
With kind regards,
On behalf of the Labour Party
Labour Party R.I.P
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Thanks Jeremy – this is pretty much the same message I received a while ago – Terrifying
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