James Bloodworth's post, entitled 'some basic demands the left must start to make' raises a longstanding peeve of mine.

This is that the use of the word 'demand' - which has long been common on the left and among trades unions - is a terrible rhetorical strategy. People who make demands are tiresome - demanding! - and unreasonable. The very use of the word is therefore a turn-off.

We know that people's attitudes are shaped by the way in which options are framed. The left's use of 'demands' is a counterproductive frame.

The right, and the capitalist class, knows this. Read pretty much any rightist blog, and I doubt you'll see their policy proposals regularly framed as demands, as James and the left so often do. And, of course, employers have for years made 'offers' - how generous! - whilst it is unions that make demands. But this is not necessary. Unions could easily reframe pay 'demands' as reasonable offers: 'our members are offering to work for one-200th of the salary of the chief executive.'

So, how might 'demands' of the sort that James makes be reframed? Here are three possibilities:

1. An assertion of rights. James says we should have a right to recall MPs who break manifesto promises. But why frame this as a 'demand'? Why not instead say that the breach of such promises is tantamount to a breach of contract and thus a violation of basic democratic rights? Framed this way, it is manifesto-breaching MPs who are making unreasonable demands - demanding to stay in office despite lying to voters.

2. Stress the benefits of the policies. For example, egalitarian policies such as taxing the rich or nationalizing utilities can - if you insist - be presented as a way of increasing aggregate demand, by redistributing income from savers to spenders.

3. Use the language of inevitability and necessity; you don't have to demand what will happen anyway. Marxists, of course, used to do this, to the chagrin of champions of free will such as Isaiah Berlin. But the trick has long since been copied by the right. It has claimed (reasonably) that bank bailouts were necessary and (less reasonably) that public spending cuts are. And of course every boss trying to justify mass layoffs does so by claiming they are necessary.

The left should relearn this trick. Rather than 'demand' change, it should point out that things can't go on as they are, and so change is necessary.

Now, in saying all this I'm not picking a fight with James; his post actually comes close to doing what I've suggested. My beef is instead with the left's lazy and dangerous repetition of the 'demand' frame.