Labour Leader: Keir Starmer VI

[notaclue]

I don't believe sexuality is an inherent qualification in itself

Yvette Cooper, capable operator but not the answer IMV. I think Reeves is the likliest option (ducks for cover etc)

No, but could swing things for him over a woman. Would represent progress and would be historic. But the pressure to finally pick a woman may well prove too much to stop. Nandy will also have a good shout.

Being an affable Northern bloke (who likes The Smiths, Stone Roses, New Order, etc) is unlikely to cut it in 2022. Might have swung things 10 years ago...

 

[notaclue]

Incidentally, I am thinking that Sir Keir being fined and finished would be no bad thing for Labour. Whoever they pick will certainly be more exciting.

 

[Woodface]

No, but could swing things for him over a woman. Would represent progress and would be historic. But the pressure to finally pick a woman may well prove too much to stop. Nandy will also have a good shout.

Being an affable Northern bloke (who likes The Smiths, Stone Roses, New Order, etc) is unlikely to cut it in 2022. Might have swung things 10 years ago...

Burnham struggled when he was in cabinet, even BJ largely got away with it when just a Mayor.

There’s a massive lack of political talent on all sides of the house currently.

 

[Jim Audiomisc]

Yes, you are a scientist, an academic. That’s great. I have nothing but respect for your understanding of electronics, physics, astronomy etc. Huge respect. Now please give an indication of how many of the wider electorate have political qualifications or actually read ‘books and journals’ to inform their voting decisions? I’m prepared to bet I am in the top 2% or so as I have at least actually read Marx’s Das Kapital! It really isn’t a factor.

You constantly slag off Twitter, Facebook etc, and IMHO do so with all the understanding of a luddite wanting to smash-up an automated loom. The simple reality is if you want direct connection to political movers and shakers of all colours it is the best source on the planet right now as you can go direct to the people or organisations and follow their own unedited output as it happens. You get to see their words first hand and can even get responses to questions should they choose to answer. As you are left-leaning you can go straight to the politicians (both parties and individual MPs) you respect, the trade unions,

You are actually making my points for me. A big part of the politcial problem we have is that people now get into 'bubbles'. In the past this was mainly driven by their choice of newspaper. Now it tends to be via what twerper, etc, deduces they will 'like'. (Code for what will keep there eyeballs looking at postings with ads.)

The problem is people not choosing to look wider, and coming to assume that what they see (in their bubble) is all there is to see. Nor applying any critical consideration to see if what they are being given actually stacks up to a search for flaws.

The *point* of being a 'scientist' isn't to wear a white coat. It is to look for problems with our current understanding and then see if want get better ideas. Engineers then leap on that to develop new ways to do things better.

 

[ks.234]

Will likely be Wes Streeting or Rachel Reeves.

Labour need a woman leader at some point so that gives Reeves a big boost, but Streeting would presumably be first (openly) gay leader of a major party (unless I am forgetting one) and is better on the media and a better speaker.

If there was a Rachel Streeting, she would be a shoo-in.

Burnham has lost what momentum he had. His moment has gone. As his music choice showed, interestingly enough https://thequietus.com/articles/31215-andy-burnham-bakers-dozen-favourite-music. Solid, but stuck in the past, inward looking and unadventurous.

Yvette Cooper is tremendous in the Commons so has a chance.

Well. That sums up the future of the Labour Party rather neatly, a choice between Rachael Tougher That The Tories Reeves, Yvette Tory Welfare Bill is Good Cooper and Wes Tory Privatisation of Education is Fine by Me Streeting.

Labour…. the continuity choice.

 

[Jim Audiomisc]

I'm not even sure selling it off cheap was such a great idea. The bloke we bought our first flat from bought it off the council a few years earlier and was cashing in selling it for three times what he paid. Obviously he had to buy somewhere but a nice little earner all the same.

IF the council had been allowed to use the money to build a replacement (i.e. new) dwelling with the money then the prices wouldn't have risen, and people later on would then be locked out from finding affordable decent homes to rent *or* buy.

That's why the Tories *prevented* councils being able to replace the dwellings.

 

[paulfromcamden]

IF the council had been allowed to use the money to build a replacement (i.e. new) dwelling with the money then the prices wouldn't have risen

In theory building new homes would be great, but there's the problem of where to build. Most post-war social housing in Camden was built on bomb sites (case in point - our flat was in a street with council flats on one side and Georgian terraces on the other - you could see the line of new brick on them where the same blast had taken the roof off). In many areas of inner London if you sell off the existing stock there isn't an abundance of sites for new homes to be built on.

It also doesn't take into account that the homes were sold at a fraction of market rate. The land is 90% of the value of a London home. Sell them off half price and you're only going to be able to build half as many replacements.

Why not just keep the existing stock?

 

[Jim Audiomisc]

In theory building new homes would be great, but there's the problem of where to build. Most post-war social housing in Camden was built on bomb sites (case in point - our flat was in a street with council flats on one side and Georgian terraces on the other - you could see the line of new brick on them where the same blast had taken the roof off). In many areas of inner London if you sell off the existing stock there isn't an abundance of sites for new homes to be built on.

It also doesn't take into account that the homes were sold at a fraction of market rate. The land is 90% of the value of a London home. Sell them off half price and you're only going to be able to build half as many replacements.

Why not just keep the existing stock?

Yes, it would have been better to keep the existing stock - or sell it at a price that allowed the council to build a replacement. But the Tories ensured this wasn't possible. Buying the land would also have been possible if the system had been run with it in mind. Note that councils tended to build flats, masonettes, and tower blocks in a lot of London Boroughs. That can then reduce the land-contribution per dwelling. However this was often badly done due to 'connections' between councillors and local builders - and, indeed, the big system-builders.

Another face of this was forms of corruption and cronyism in councils. Where I used to live many councillors were either builders, or masons (in the other sense) and would divvie up the work.

Bottom line though, that social homes sales was rigged by the Tories because "Council home dwellers vote Labour, not Tory" so far as the Tories were concerned.

cf Westminster and the Noble Dame Porter.

 

[notaclue]

Burnham interviewed on LBC just now has ruled himself out. Not coming back as an MP any time soon.

Though money bet on Burnham is not necessarily wasted as it doesn't mean he won't be the next Labour leader, just that he won't be the next one if Sir Keir has to resign over the curry.

 

[paulfromcamden]

@Jim Audiomisc yes I posted just this morning in the local elections thread that our new council leader (Greenwich) is a lobbyist who advises large property developers on getting their proposals through planning. No conflict of interest there then. It seems to be something of a tradition in Greenwich for there to be a revolving door to the developers.

 

[Tony L]

You are actually making my points for me. A big part of the politcial problem we have is that people now get into 'bubbles'. In the past this was mainly driven by their choice of newspaper. Now it tends to be via what twerper, etc, deduces they will 'like'. (Code for what will keep there eyeballs looking at postings with ads.)

Again I think you are so spectacularly ignorant of the technology I suspect you don’t even understand what it is or what it is for. It feels like arguing with someone who has drawn a picture of an elephant despite never having seen one and is still convinced their interpretation is right despite it looking nothing like one.

If I want to know what say Angela Rayner thinks about stuff I follow her Twitter account. I read what she posts, look at the videos she links, see what she retweets etc. This will be multiple things a day and often reactions to events occurring right now. I don’t need the BBC, Ian Hislop or the Daily Mail to select, edit or comment on that for me. They are obsolete as I get direct contact to the source; her thoughts, her views and in her own words. Extrapolate that to just about any MP, organisation, artist or pressure group on the planet. Direct contact with whatever souces I select for myself without having to have anything filtered by the conservative white public school elite of the mainstream. The all-controlling editorial arrogance of the past media is thankfully now long in the past. We can all think and interact freely now. A true democratisation of media. You really do need to try it.

 

[matthewr]

If I want to know what say Angela Rayner thinks about stuff I follow her Twitter account. I read what she posts, look at the videos she links, see what she retweets etc. This will be multiple things a day and often reactions to events occurring right now. I don’t need the BBC, Ian Hislop or the Daily Mail to select, edit or comment on that for me.

Not sure politics is the best advert Twitter and the account of someone like Rayner is going to be mostly managed by her office and in most cases is not a dissimilar experience to just reading their press releases. And of course where political accounts do stray beyond the benign is exactly where the worst of Twitter lives.

Where it's much better is in terms of following domain experts where you can really do get a direct line to what is happening in a way that you cannot otherwise do. So ironically, given the above discussion, it's *really* good for science as you can follow actual scientists and learn what they are up to and have access to the latest thinking all in real time.

It's also great for the live tweeting of events that we would otherwise not get to follow live. So PFMers will have been glued to the #WagathaChristie trial today instead of having to wait for the sanitized news reports later this evening.

 

[Tony L]

Where it's much better is in terms of following domain experts where you can really do get a direct line to what is happening in a way that you cannot otherwise do. So ironically, given the above discussion, it's *really* good for science as you can follow actual scientists and learn what they are up to and have access to the latest thinking all in real time.

You are right, I should have used science/medicine as the example as it is stunningly good there. It is absolutely where science discussion and public information sharing lives these days outside of stuffy academic journals etc as mainstream TV has no time to follow long-form research etc spanning months or years. As an example we get The Sky At Night once a month, Twitter gets their source material every single day of the year from everywhere in pretty much real time. Every astronomical institution, astronomer, major telescope or other academic grouping will have their own accounts to follow and interact with. So much to deep-dive into if that is one’s interest.

Really I’m just trying to break through Jim’s bizarre reality distortion over what is actually a stunningly useful communication tool. There is good reason absolutely no one outside a handful of very old people use say Usesnet these days. This technology is from several internet millennia ago and is so old and moving so fast into the past it is likely displaying red-shift by now.

PS The annoyance is I know Jim would absolutely love Twitter if he really gave it a chance as all his interests are there for the following/participating. He’ll definitely find the next generations of the scientific research he was part of and could likely contribute a lot.

 

[matthewr]

There is good reason absolutely no one outside a handful of very old people use say Usesnet these days. This technology is from several internet millennia ago and is so old and moving so fast into the past it is likely displaying red-shift by now.

Now you are the one showing yourself to be out of touch! I have had a usenet subscription for the last decade or so as the binary newsgroups are the most reliable content provision backbone for a state of the art media server (sabnzbd, sonarr, radarr, etc.). Although admittedly it's much more of a Linux thing than a Windows or OSX thing.

 

[Tony L]

“Tony Blair tells Starmer to drop ‘woke’ politics and focus on economy” (Guardian).

So, given where the world is right now with police racism, misogyny and brutality, the evaporation of long-established human rights and civil liberties thanks to the far-right Brexit project along with the associated demonisation of refugees, the ongoing erosion of the 20th century civil rights movement in the USA including even basic female reproductive rights, increasing hostility to LGBT+ folk, and an obviously Trump-clone Tory Party in power driving these things in the UK it is obviously time for Labour to buy yet more ambiguity fences to sit on.

By saying that no one would ever expect anything even approaching a coherent moral argument from a warmongering neocon narcissist who “prayed” with a hard-right Republican president before embarking on a religious war of vengeance that has left much of the middle east destabilised and in ruins to this day.

 

[Woodface]

I think the focus should be on the economy but I don't see why 'woke' policies have to be dropped to accomodate it. Number one priorty should be cost of living at the moment.

 

[Seeker_UK]

“Tony Blair tells Starmer to drop ‘woke’ politics and focus on economy” (Guardian).

So, given where the world is right now with police racism, misogyny and brutality, the evaporation of long-established human rights and civil liberties thanks to the far-right Brexit project along with the associated demonisation of refugees, the ongoing erosion of the 20th century civil rights movement in the USA including even basic female reproductive rights, increasing hostility to LGBT+ folk, and an obviously Trump-clone Tory Party in power driving these things in the UK it is obviously time for Labour to buy yet more ambiguity fences to sit on. By saying that no one would ever expect anything even approaching a coherent moral argument from a warmongering neocon who “prayed” with a hard-right Republican president before embarking on a religious war of vengeance that has left much of the middle east destabilised and in ruins to this day.

The headline is unhelpful but the underlying message is true as ever - promise people better standards of living (ie more money in their pocket) and you have their support.

Whilst I am not saying that you're wrong, when a lot of voters are struggling with the "Basic" (lowest two tiers of Maslow's hierarchy of) need, worrying about the rest of that is an irrelevance to them.

Edit

As @Woodface says, they're all important elements for the society we deserve, and should be part of any decent manifesto, but they're not the priority for everyone and they're not the argument to get into power to be in a position to implement them.

 

[droodzilla]

“Tony Blair tells Starmer to drop ‘woke’ politics and focus on economy” (Guardian).

So, given where the world is right now with police racism, misogyny and brutality, the evaporation of long-established human rights and civil liberties thanks to the far-right Brexit project along with the associated demonisation of refugees, the ongoing erosion of the 20th century civil rights movement in the USA including even basic female reproductive rights, increasing hostility to LGBT+ folk, and an obviously Trump-clone Tory Party in power driving these things in the UK it is obviously time for Labour to buy yet more ambiguity fences to sit on.

By saying that no one would ever expect anything even approaching a coherent moral argument from a warmongering neocon narcissist who “prayed” with a hard-right Republican president before embarking on a religious war of vengeance that has left much of the middle east destabilised and in ruins to this day.

Was just about to share that. Appalling stuff. I love how the "leading progressive newspaper in the land" just laps it up. Never forget that The Guardian is the house journal of the Labour right.

Those final paragraphs in particular are just jaw-dropping:

He also warns Starmer against excessive caution – something the Labour leader is charged with by some colleagues. “The bane of progressive politics is to think the choice is between being voter-friendly and boring, or exciting and voter-repellent,” he says.

As an example of the kind of radical policy he would like to see, Blair suggests tackling concerns about illegal immigration by introducing biometric ID as a precondition for accessing work and public services.

Well, I suppose more authoritarian crackdowns will give some voters a hard-on.

 

[Tony L]

Whilst I am not saying that you're wrong, when a lot of voters are struggling with the "Basic" (lowest two tiers of Maslow's hierarchy of) need, worrying about the rest of that is an irrelevance to them.

This is exactly how fascism works. A right-wing government promises security and basic needs to its base, scapegoats and blames others for failings/“moral decline”, and quietly burns human rights and civil liberties in the background. This is where we are right now.

 

[Seeker_UK]

This is exactly how fascism works. A right-wing government promises security and basic needs...

OK, but I don't think that the majority of the UK population cares about anything more than those at the moment.