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Labour Leader: Keir Starmer VII

Tony L said:
He’s private school educated, lives in a house that has to be well over £1m, and had an almost Noel Edmunds-grade tidybeard. What did they want? In comparison Boris Johnson looked like a oversized bin-sack of medical waste squeezed into the cheapest possible C&A business suit with hair styled by a Van de Graaf generator and after a two-week cocaine binge.
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He wore truly terrible shoes, had an affectation for French fisherman hats & had a last minute image tidy up. He was also seen in a shell suit. Image matters, never really understood why BJ received a free pass though.
 
gavreid said:
Brown deregulated the banks and set the conditions that led to the financial collapse paving the way for what we have now. Sure they can point to the nhs and schools (what? - 1% of GDP perhaps and a legacy of over-paying) but ultimately they were a failure.
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Again you ignore the alternative.
Gordon Brown failed to sufficiently regulate the banks and admitted later that this was the mistake. The conservatives engaged in wholesale financial deregulation during the 1980s and 1990s (1986 Financial Services Act). Plus it was the conservatives the privatized the utilities and railways - the latter almost as spite prior to being kicked out of office.
 
He called Gary Neville 'Gabby Neril'. Which was a shame as that was his big funny. But that's not quite as bad as crashing the pound.

He'll clearly be the next Prime Minister if there is an election soon.

Decent speech. Strong start. Got a bit dull at the end.

British Energy will be popular*.

* Until it's set up and then provides a rubbish service.
 
Lads, hardcore leftists failing to vote tactically don’t swing elections. You’d think we all had a big red button handy saying More Tory Rule Hahaha! It’s a really pointless, moralising distraction. Think they’re worth voting for? Get out and canvas, persuade your kids to register to vote, tell your racist uncle about the points-based immigration system. No one here fails to grasp the lesser evil argument, demanding every single person you know assent to it is puritanical.
 
Seanm said:
Lads, hardcore leftists failing to vote tactically don’t swing elections. You’d think we all had a big red button handy saying More Tory Rule Hahaha! It’s a really pointless, moralising distraction. Think they’re worth voting for? Get out and canvas, persuade your kids to register to vote, tell your racist uncle about the points-based immigration system. No one here fails to grasp the lesser evil argument, demanding every single person you know assent to it is puritanical.
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I think this is a bit reductionist, TBH. If you don't assent to the lesser evil argument, do you disagree with it?
 
ks.234 said:
Apologies, I thought you might be able to articulate a coherent argument for your beliefs. My mistake.
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No need to apologise or admit to making another error of judgement.

If by beliefs you mean social and political values then by all means look no further than Centrist Dad who will vote for anyone that will provide free lawnmower blades so he can give the back lawn a nice quarter incher on a Sunday morning.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
I think this is a bit reductionist, TBH. If you don't assent to the lesser evil argument, do you disagree with it?
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The lesser of two evils argument falls down in three areas. First, historically; voting for Blair in 1997, far from being a small step away from the right has seen the right become more and more embedded and the Labour Party itself being pulled step by step further right. We are where we are, with low pay, insecure working conditions, more and more attacks on trade unions, more de-regulation for the rich, more privatisation and more cuts to public services.

Second, that Al Jazeera investigations show that the current Labour Party is corrupt and undemocratic to an alarming extent.

Finally, the current Labour Party campaigned against a Labour victory in the last two General Elections. How can a party that has campaigned for the current Tories possibly less evil than those the campaigned for?
 
ks.234 said:
The lesser of two evils argument falls down in three areas. First, historically; voting for Blair in 1997, far from being a small step away from the right has seen the right become more and more embedded and the Labour Party itself being pulled step by step further right. We are where we are, with low pay, insecure working conditions, more and more attacks on trade unions, more de-regulation for the rich, more privatisation and more cuts to public services.

Second, that Al Jazeera investigations show that the current Labour Party is corrupt and undemocratic to an alarming extent.

Finally, the current Labour Party campaigned against a Labour victory in the last two General Elections. How can a party that has campaigned for the current Tories possibly less evil than those the campaigned for?
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On your first point, can you be sure that the issues you cite there can be, and should be, laid at Blair's door? Had the Tories been reelected in 1997, might we just have got to here a whole lot sooner?

I get that the Labour party in its current state is a poor substitute for the party it could, and should, be. But if not voting for them (and I also get the argument that voting for them allows them to claim some sort of mandate), then who to vote for, and what will that bring about?

I, too, would much prefer to vote Green than vote Labour, but round here, the Green vote is a rounding error. If I and all the other disaffected Labour supporters in these parts switched to Green, they might elevate from 'rounding error' to 'retained deposit', or perhaps 'giving the Lib Dems a run for third place' at best. And if the majority in the constituency is in that zone of a scant few thousand votes, there's a big risk that the Greens do to Labour what the Brexit Party did last time out. I think that's too big a risk to gamble on.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
I think this is a bit reductionist, TBH. If you don't assent to the lesser evil argument, do you disagree with it?
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I mostly disagree with having it explained to me every time Labour are exposed as having done something heinous. It’s unnecessary, irrelevant, empty, censorious. Ultimately it’s an unconscious diversion tactic: people reach for it when confronted with the bleakness of the situation. They’d be better off letting that sink in a little IMO. Then they might be able to offer a suggestion as to what comes next, after we’ve got rid of the Bigger Evil. That’s something that can be discussed properly rather than just assented to.
 
sean99 said:
Again you ignore the alternative.
Gordon Brown failed to sufficiently regulate the banks and admitted later that this was the mistake. The conservatives engaged in wholesale financial deregulation during the 1980s and 1990s (1986 Financial Services Act). Plus it was the conservatives the privatized the utilities and railways - the latter almost as spite prior to being kicked out of office.
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It's very difficult now to point to lasting legacy of the Blair-Brown years beyond the PFI buildings. That it's just not the case for the Thatcher era. That is because Blair kept many of the regressive changes that the Tories made.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
On your first point, can you be sure that the issues you cite there can be, and should be, laid at Blair's door? Had the Tories been reelected in 1997, might we just have got to here a whole lot sooner?

I get that the Labour party in its current state is a poor substitute for the party it could, and should, be. But if not voting for them (and I also get the argument that voting for them allows them to claim some sort of mandate), then who to vote for, and what will that bring about?

I, too, would much prefer to vote Green than vote Labour, but round here, the Green vote is a rounding error. If I and all the other disaffected Labour supporters in these parts switched to Green, they might elevate from 'rounding error' to 'retained deposit', or perhaps 'giving the Lib Dems a run for third place' at best. And if the majority in the constituency is in that zone of a scant few thousand votes, there's a big risk that the Greens do to Labour what the Brexit Party did last time out. I think that's too big a risk to gamble on.
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I wasn’t trying to lay all the ills of neoliberalism at Blair’s door, but the fact that he at best slowed it down runs counter to the argument that it was a vote to take a small step away from it. By buying into neoliberalism, Blair took us further down the neoliberal road but at a slightly slower pace.

The more I have thought about neoliberalism, the more I am convinced that we need to get off that road entirely, it is a road to chaos.

We all have to vote with our conscience, and mine is that we don’t just need a different party, we need a different ideology.
 
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