UK's Labor vows iron discipline on budget, spells out some cuts

[steve2470]

Source: Reuters

(Reuters) - Britain's opposition Labor party will seek to convince skeptical voters it is fit to run the economy by promising "iron discipline" on spending and pledging some cuts to welfare benefits if it wins the 2015 election.

Would-be finance minister, Ed Balls, will say on Monday that winter fuel subsidies for the richest pensioners will be scrapped if Labor wins power, a small saving but a sign that the party is determined to show it can cut social spending.

The leadership of the centre-left party that ran Britain for 13 years until 2010 has come under pressure from internal critics, including former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who say it is short on specific policy ideas.

Labor has a 10-point lead over the Conservatives in opinion polls. But it lags on the question of who is best to run the economy with memories still fresh in voters' minds of how it managed Britain in the run-up to the financial crisis.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/02/us-britain-politics-labour-idUSBRE9510F320130602

[Wolf Frankula]

1. Labor Says It will Act Like Tories if It Gains Power

Nt.

Wolf

[Crow73]

2. Has worked in the US....

[Ken Burch]

3. Great. Ed Miliband no longer has any right, as a result of this, to ask people hurt by the Tories

to vote Labour instead.

What part of "people don't WANT the opposition to promise to do the same things the government does" doe Ed not get?

And how, if he does this, can he still argue that there's any point in electing a Labour government?

Labour is still stuck in the damn "end of history", for some reason.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

6. It's acted like the Tory party for a number of years now

it is unrecognizable.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

4. Pedant mode: It's called the Labour Party

it's a capitalised name and ought to be rendered in its original spelling. It would be as if a British journalist referred to "Pearl Harbour" (sic)

[steve2470]

5. you are correct, I copied and pasted it directly from the Reuters website as is nt

[Anarcho-Socialist]

7. I know

It's not meant as a criticism of you

[steve2470]

9. I'm surprised Reuters did that, very poor proofreading nt

[blkmusclmachine]

8. It's Change You Can BeLIEve In!

[socialist_n_TN]

10. In spite of it's name, Labour is NOT a worker's party.....

It's bourgeois, in that it has a vested interest in keeping the current system in place. If it has to fuck over the workers (labour) to keep the current system, it will do so.

As an aside, it doesn't look lie "Red Ed" is so "red" anymore.