advertisement


Labour Leader: Keir Starmer V

Status
Not open for further replies.
droodzilla said:
In any case, it's obvious that even Milliband's super-soft left politics are unwelcome in the current Labour Party.
Click to expand...
Mandelson in the Guardian today insisting on the need to denounce the "last decade" of hard left rule - i.e. refusing to distinguish between Miliband's ultra-cautious soft leftism and Corbyn. And then, on the need for a radical, transformative vision, he urges us to look to the "new-era technologies" and the "exciting possibilities" they entail. 1994 forever. He just about managed not to mention the Information Superhighway and e-commerce.
 
Mandelson is a sickening character. As you say just residue from a failed era of Labour neoliberalism. He has so little to offer, but offers it so much. New Labour true-believers are fixated on a single objective: how to get elected to office. Not how to bring meaningful and beneficial ideas to power, just: how to get elected. If it means submitting yourself to the flow of wrong-headed and failed orthodoxies to achieve it, then so be it. That's the entire New Labour philosophy.
 
Seanm said:
Mandelson in the Guardian today insisting on the need to denounce the "last decade" of hard left rule - i.e. refusing to distinguish between Miliband's ultra-cautious soft leftism and Corbyn. And then, on the need for a radical, transformative vision, he urges us to look to the "new-era technologies" and the "exciting possibilities" they entail. 1994 forever. He just about managed not to mention the Information Superhighway and e-commerce.
Click to expand...
Nobody pays any attention to a liar.
 
I note this hasn’t had much discussion and what there has been is typically negative.

Anyway...let’s hope the tories don’t win the next GE and we can start on a recovery and a move back toward the centre ground. It has to start somewhere.

He sets out 10 "simple key principles" for a future Labour government, which would "always put hard-working families and their priorities first".

The pamphlet is peppered with the phrase "security and opportunity".

This is, in part, to convince voters that a future Labour government would tackle the insecurity many people feel at work.
Click to expand...

Source: BBC
 
More like clarifying the obvious for the extremists. I’m sure he won’t stick to them even if he sticks to them. ;) I also have little doubt he’ll be expected to deliver on them from outside of govt but musn’t grumble, only a tory govt for another 5 years.
 
ks.234 said:
The fact that you see Corbyn as a ‘hard left’ ‘leninist’ only shows how far your view of the political spectrum has been distorted by your azure tinted glasses. Quite how you’ve gone from Corbyn to Totalitarianism in the space of a single sentence underlines a prejudice that goes way beyond reason.

Corbyn’s position on the EU was not inconsistent, he held a consistent position until persuaded to accept a second referendum by Starmer. Neither is he responsible to the position Labour is currently in. The Labour Party has been in decline for most of the millennium, the problem is that the Blairites have failed to see why and have determined that the only way back to power is to be more like the Tories. Labour have been so blinded by this dogma that have failed to notice, and capitalise on, the areas that the Tories have behaved more like Labour.

The problems that Labour are now in are entirely self inflicted. Self inflicted by the Labour Party itself who choose to attack their leader and not the government, and by those who supported them.

Finally it is deeply ironic that you see the need to understand the electorate on a left right split, but have no understanding and no little contempt for the electorate over Brexit. On Brexit at least, Corbyn did understand the electorate.
Click to expand...

Corbyn and his cabal were and are far left. They were repackaged a bit by Momentum et al but that just served to confuse the electorate who in the end decided that it did not want to run the risk of having a far left politician in No.10. I know that you are a huge admirer of JC but he was, among other things, a poor leader and he failed to win 2 General Elections - that is the reality.

Re: the Labour Party, I think we can all agree that it is dysfunctional.

Re: Brexit, you've got the wrong end of the stick there. I would include certainly Leavers in any national conversation (or citizens' assembly) and would want to hear what they have to say (including EV and Brian - tbc). Hopefully you can follow my example by starting a similar process with the 1-5%, the Royals, the rich, Tories, centrists, the press, the City, public schools, multinationals and Red Wallers to name but a few. The far left seem like such an exclusionary and intolerant lot.

PS I'm sure you remember that you post a lot about the 'right' of the Labour Party, and about the left. Those terms, it seems, are still relevant.
 
ks.234 said:
No anger here, just surprise. Surprise that you continue to repeat what has been shown to be nonsense.

No anger from LB either, just another straightforward demonstration of your error.

The fact that you obviously seek to cause anger rather than engage in a meaningful debate says more about you that anyone else
Click to expand...

Good to hear then but re: errors...are you saying Corbyn didn't write for the Morning Star?
 
Kirk said:
Corbyn and his cabal were and are far left. They were repackaged a bit by Momentum et al but that just served to confuse the electorate who in the end decided that it did not want to run the risk of having a far left politician in No.10. I know that you are a huge admirer of JC but he was, among other things, a poor leader and he failed to win 2 General Elections - that is the reality.

Re: the Labour Party, I think we can all agree that it is dysfunctional.

Re: Brexit, you've got the wrong end of the stick there. I would include certainly Leavers in any national conversation (or citizens' assembly) and would want to hear what they have to say (including EV and Brian - tbc). Hopefully you can follow my example by starting a similar process with the 1-5%, the Royals, the rich, Tories, centrists, the press, the City, public schools, multinationals and Red Wallers to name but a few. The far left seem like such an exclusionary and intolerant lot.

PS I'm sure you remember that you post a lot about the 'right' of the Labour Party, and about the left. Those terms, it seems, are still relevant.
Click to expand...
Examples of far left Labour policies from those 2 failed GE manifesto’s you refer to please?

Why on earth did you mention me in that post? I have very little to say about brexit and have never said much at all about brexit. We had a referendum and that’s that. Most of my comment is to do with hard remainers and their contribution toward a hard brexit.

By the way, I am not a right wing fundamentalist such as yourself. Perhaps you can offer some thoughts on the advantages of right wing authoritarianism over what was on offer in those 2 failed Labour manifesto’s?
 
Le Baron said:
Your analysis is extraordinarily weak and uninformed. Relying on empty pejoratives, desperately trying to make a repetitive distinction between 'far left (also known as just 'the left') and some sort of other 'left', which appears to be the monetarist centre. I understand that you're ideologically on the political right, masquerading as something else, but it wouldn't hurt to just attempt a neutral assessment. Again the linking of MMT and Venezuela and Corbyn. It's meaningless because they have no relationship, I already informed you about this, but you persist in repeating it. Why? Laziness? Reluctance to learn?

Venezuela doesn't have total monetary sovereignty and has recently even taken more steps to undermine it, therefore no iteration of MMT can apply. Do you understand this? And of course you desperately want to avoid the known fact that Venuzuela is under economic and political pressure from the U.S. and its satellite assistants in South and central America. Who also failed to install their parachuted-in candidate from the School of the Americas. Maybe you need to read up on this?
China 'doubling down on the communist part'? More like the capitalism part. Remind me which country it is where you get maced or shot by police if you don't instantly comply even when not under arrest? It ain't China. Since most people have never set foot in China they rely on spoon-fed fairy stories about it being somehow a particular kind of hellhole as compared to say the hellhole of the U.S.



Hardly personally since I am not a 'Leninist'. Simply highlighting your weak reliance on cheap and easy terminology. Since Corbyn's elevation brought with it the largest rise in membership the Labour Party has known in decades, I'd say it's the current leadership who has things confused. The only issue causing a divide turned out to be Brexit, and on that issue Corbyn was at odds with the New Labourites, not the traditional Labour voter or the average Brexiteer. Refresh your memory by recalling who actually was running the Brexit office from Labour in 2016-2019. You seem to be drawing a direct line relationship between Corbyn's tenure and the bunch of neo-liberal party-within-a-party group who worked hard to make sure he was undermined (all thoroughly documented). In general though any Labour leader of any persuasion would have been caught in a bind because Brexit crossed party lines.

My advice to you is to know what you're talking about before ever entering into an exchange. Right now you're not doing that.
Click to expand...

Putting aside the compulsive need to give me advice (and not particularly good advice at that), it is clear that the hard left's (left's?) default position is now basically failure ("lost, lost, lost, lost, Blair, Blair, Blair, lost, lost, lost, lost”), and where it has got a hold (largely abroad) misery usually ensues. Far left (left?) nations are very familiar with famines, shortages and humanitarian crises. An increasing number of voters around the world have begun to understand that and now see far left (left?) economics as bad for a nation’s mental health, and wallet. Here, its mainstay: the working class - and a few people from Cambridge - have decided that life is too short to wait for revolutionary defeatism, socialist paradises and ‘flat’ societies so they’ve decided to join the capitalists and give wealth creation a go. Sky subscriptions are in, revolutions and mines are out. They may live to regret it but so far, so good.

Maybe it's time for the far left (left?) in the UK to accept reality and start embracing the more electorally successful side of the Labour Party. It can’t really survive or hope to remain relevant unless it starts to make friends with current management. There are other options of course: form a new party, join the Greens or hang out with Pedro Castillo. Whatever the choice, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is, as you know, the definition of insanity.

I usually address your reply at this juncture but the latest comes across as a bit all over the place and 'lecturey', so I will leave it there, save to ask...what does 'left' actually mean and stand for in 2021?
 
Kirk said:
Putting aside the compulsive need to give me advice (and not particularly good advice at that), it is clear that the hard left's (left's?) default position is now basically failure ("lost, lost, lost, lost, Blair, Blair, Blair, lost, lost, lost, lost”), and where it has got a hold (largely abroad) misery usually ensues. Far left (left?) nations are very familiar with famines, shortages and humanitarian crises. An increasing number of voters around the world have begun to understand that and now see far left (left?) economics as bad for a nation’s mental health, and wallet. Here, its mainstay: the working class - and a few people from Cambridge - have decided that life is too short to wait for revolutionary defeatism, socialist paradises and ‘flat’ societies so they’ve decided to join the capitalists and give wealth creation a go. Sky subscriptions are in, revolutions and mines are out. They may live to regret it but so far, so good.

Maybe it's time for the far left (left?) in the UK to accept reality and start embracing the more electorally successful side of the Labour Party. It can’t really survive or hope to remain relevant unless it starts to make friends with current management. There are other options of course: form a new party, join the Greens or hang out with Pedro Castillo. Whatever the choice, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is, as you know, the definition of insanity.

I usually address your reply at this juncture but the latest comes across as a bit all over the place and 'lecturey', so I will leave it there, save to ask...what does 'left' actually mean and stand for in 2021?
Click to expand...
I sort of love it when people publicly parade how little they know about...practically everything, yet try really hard to sound grounded and aloof. Who knows, maybe you really believe the things you write? It's sad in a way though that people can also get decades into life and have learned so little. My condolences.

There is no 'far left' economics in operation. The world is currently operating under extremist market economies organised with a mixture of very little knowledge of how monetary economies work and an irrational obsession with "left-wing" phantasms of their own invention. Which is why the gap between rich and poor is the widest it's ever been and the world is falling apart and super-rich 'capitalist' countries have food banks for middle-class people and the working poor, drug-addiction and mental health epidemics, homelessness, collapsed social cohesion, collapsed employment. Of late the utter failure of these practises has led to increasingly worsening crises, but that was always to be expected because when you put garbage in, you get garbage out, every time. Which explains why you keep writing garbage. I've explained to you in great detail (because you need lecturing to in order to learn) how a monetary economy works, but you choose to fall back on your comfortable ignorance or incompetence perhaps.

Falling into line with that is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result and assuredly a definition of insanity. Sorry 'Kirk', but you are in a dying paradigm, you are yesterday's news, thinking you are the future.
 
Kirk said:
Putting aside the compulsive need to give me advice (and not particularly good advice at that), it is clear that the hard left's (left's?) default position is now basically failure ("lost, lost, lost, lost, Blair, Blair, Blair, lost, lost, lost, lost”), and where it has got a hold (largely abroad) misery usually ensues. Far left (left?) nations are very familiar with famines, shortages and humanitarian crises. An increasing number of voters around the world have begun to understand that and now see far left (left?) economics as bad for a nation’s mental health, and wallet. Here, its mainstay: the working class - and a few people from Cambridge - have decided that life is too short to wait for revolutionary defeatism, socialist paradises and ‘flat’ societies so they’ve decided to join the capitalists and give wealth creation a go. Sky subscriptions are in, revolutions and mines are out. They may live to regret it but so far, so good.

Maybe it's time for the far left (left?) in the UK to accept reality and start embracing the more electorally successful side of the Labour Party. It can’t really survive or hope to remain relevant unless it starts to make friends with current management. There are other options of course: form a new party, join the Greens or hang out with Pedro Castillo. Whatever the choice, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is, as you know, the definition of insanity.

I usually address your reply at this juncture but the latest comes across as a bit all over the place and 'lecturey', so I will leave it there, save to ask...what does 'left' actually mean and stand for in 2021?
Click to expand...
What a load of patronising, ill-informed w@nk.
 
"But anyone hoping that the centre left is finally modernising shouldn’t get too excited. Much of Starmer’s essay and Rebuilding Labour is devoted to wearily familiar centrist themes: the need for the party to be patriotic and pro-family,; to value community and “people who work hard”, and to be tougher on crime. Labour leaders have been saying these things, to diminishing electoral effect, for a quarter of a century. The Conservatives say them better."

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...tarmer-centrists-leader-essay-party-modernise
 
gavreid said:
"But anyone hoping that the centre left is finally modernising shouldn’t get too excited. Much of Starmer’s essay and Rebuilding Labour is devoted to wearily familiar centrist themes: the need for the party to be patriotic and pro-family,; to value community and “people who work hard”, and to be tougher on crime. Labour leaders have been saying these things, to diminishing electoral effect, for a quarter of a century. The Conservatives say them better."

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...tarmer-centrists-leader-essay-party-modernise
Click to expand...
Good article - as balanced an assessment of the state of the Labour Party as you're likely to find in The Guardian these days. That's not to say I agree with every word. In particular I think that "contribution society" is a terrible phrase - not just because it's clunky, but also because of the "striver vs skiver" worldview it insinuates.

The Guardian also assembled an uncharacteristically hostile panel to assess Starmer's big vision:

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...armer-labour-road-ahead-centre-fabian-society

Even the centre-right Behr is unimpressed.

Makes me wonder if they know the jig's up with Starmer (probably after Labour lose the next election) and, if so, who will they throw their weight behind (Andy Burnham? Wes Streeting?...).
 
droodzilla said:
Good article - as balanced an assessment of the state of the Labour Party as you're likely to find in The Guardian these days. That's not to say I agree with every word. In particular I think that "contribution society" is a terrible phrase - not just because it's clunky, but also because of the "striver vs skiver" worldview it insinuates.

The Guardian also assembled an uncharacteristically hostile panel to assess Starmer's big vision:

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...armer-labour-road-ahead-centre-fabian-society

Even the centre-right Behr is unimpressed.

Makes me wonder if they know the jig's up with Starmer (probably after Labour lose the next election) and, if so, who will they throw their weight behind (Andy Burnham? Wes Streeting?...).
Click to expand...
Of those two my bet would be that the media will like Burnham but the PLP will go for Steeting or another right winger like Reeves
 
Status
Not open for further replies.


advertisement


Back
Top