Labour Leader: Keir Starmer IV
- Thread starter droodzilla
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PsB
Citizen of Nowhere™
Which is the whole point, obv.
Tony L
Administrator
To my mind this is a huge part of the problem. It demonstrates how our politics hasn’t moved forward at all from the historical class wars of the elite landed gentry vs. slaves, mill workers, miners etc. We need a better system as countless millions of us are neither of those things in any way imaginable. I have no more use for a trade union than I have for an offshore tax haven. We really need 21st century representation that understands there will never again be full employment, ‘jobs for life’ etc and adapts to a whole new, and IMHO, far better world. That will obviously involve wealth redistribution, fair taxation, UBI etc, but the two dinosaur parties are stuck 100+ years ago in most respects.
Seanm
pfm Member
What's not true? To whom does "governing wisely" matter? And what's "the longer term"? The Conservatives have mismanaged things disastrously for more than 10 years. Austerity has killed hundreds of thousands of people, immiserated millions and destroyed the basic machinery of governance and care; the union is breaking apart; the economy has become a means of extracting wealth and funnelling it to tax havens; we have effectively placed sanctions on ourselves by leaving Europe in such a stupid manner. When the time came for the Tories to face the music, what happened? The entire media-political establishment circled the wagons and waged holy war on Labour instead, and pensioners climbed over each other to shaft their grandchildren, resulting in a Tory landslide. They did this, partly, because they *benefited* from austerity. And partly because their brains have been destroyed by the most toxic media system in the world.
Then the Tories killed another couple of hundred thousand people, and were rewarded *again*! I don't think they've ever been more popular!
That's some bubble. Eventually it will burst I suppose: but it won't be over them, or their supporters. The consequences will be suffered by those who have no political representation or agency. Labour will be gone by then, I'd have thought, because if they won't provide that kind of representation and agency there's literally no point to the them. The establishment no longer needs a B team.
Your faith is as strong as ever! But it won't save you
. We had a chance to stop the Tories while they were weak and regenerating, but it's too late now. There's nothing to oppose them: the media and the opposition parties destroyed themselves trying to stop Corbyn. They don't even regret it!
Seanm
pfm Member
Are you sure that unions are the problem here.
notaclue
pfm Member
I mean, surely impossible https://twitter.com/patrickkmaguire/status/1390687211184705541
If, and it's a massive if, that were to happen, Starmer would have to go.
If, and it's a massive if, that were to happen, Starmer would have to go.
mandryka
pfm Member
What's not true? To whom does "governing wisely" matter? And what's "the longer term"? The Conservatives have mismanaged things disastrously for more than 10 years. Austerity has killed hundreds of thousands of people, immiserated millions and destroyed the basic machinery of governance and care; the union is breaking apart; the economy has become a means of extracting wealth and funnelling it to tax havens; we have effectively placed sanctions on ourselves by leaving Europe in such a stupid manner. When the time came for the Tories to face the music, what happened? The entire media-political establishment circled the wagons and waged holy war on Labour instead, and pensioners climbed over each other to shaft their grandchildren, resulting in a Tory landslide. They did this, partly, because they *benefited* from austerity. And partly because their brains have been destroyed by the most toxic media system in the world.
Then the Tories killed another couple of hundred thousand people, and were rewarded *again*! I don't think they've ever been more popular!
That's some bubble. Eventually it will burst I suppose: but it won't be over them, or their supporters. The consequences will be suffered by those who have no political representation or agency. Labour will be gone by then, I'd have thought, because if they won't provide that kind of representation and agency there's literally no point to the them. The establishment no longer needs a B team.
Your faith is as strong as ever! But it won't save you
Clearly the death of others doesn’t matter. For each person, all that matters is that they are alive and that they have the possessions and status which give their life meaning. Harping on about the mortality caused by austerity or by the way the health crisis was managed, Boris’s blunders, is a red herring. No one cares.
(Still, well put Sean, and much appreciated.)
Tony L
Administrator
No, I’m not saying that at all. I’m just pointing out that a whole binary system framed on the historic inequality of working class poverty vs. all-powerful Tory elites doesn’t seem to be working too well this century. The Tories and their oligarchy are still there, for sure, but fewer and fewer people identify with Labour, whatever their class or employment status. We certainly have a Trump, but we do not have anything even approaching an Obama or Biden to counter it. Labour are just out of time and out of place. They are obsolete.
Arkless Electronics
Trade: Amp design and repairs.
Spot on. Unfortunately...
Starmer is the worst leader Labour have ever had, hence my "how much are the tories paying him" comment up thread. I literally can't think of a Starmer policy or of what he stands for!
They need another actual socialist leader like Corbyn, to be Momentum lead, to get rid of all the moderates and new labour tory lite types, to be proudly remain and to promise to take us back into the EU etc. Basically they need to come off the fence and make sure leavers/racists/pensioners/the wealthy etc know Labour are their enemy.
Forget about the 40% of the people who are complete ****s and will always vote tory and replace them with the young and the "I've never voted before" types on all the run down estates etc. That 40% cannot be persuaded to vote Labour anyway short of Labour promising to expel black people, Eastern Europeans and Muslims!
Labour need to get the 40% or more who never vote out to the polling booths as the vast majority of these people will be natural Labour voters. On the huge sprawling council estates etc where the poorest and the immigrants live and probably only 10% of people vote in elections Labour should virtually be facing harassment charges for the lengths they should be going to in an all out push to get them registered to vote!
I do not and have never in fact seen Labour going for the jugular as it were and hammering it down peoples throats just what evil self serving corrupt twats the tories really are, how voters are being "turkeys voting for xmas" if they vote tory, what the tories true motives are etc etc.
"You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs " as they say and Labour should (metaphorically) be dynamiting egg delivery lorries!
I’ve seen tweets from Richard Burgon about the need for the Labour leadership to “urgently change direction and “championing the popular policies in our recent manifesto”.
When you look at 2017, he may have a point, as Corbyn did better than anyone since Blair, but then he won against a weak PM in Theresa May and then suffered Labour’s worst election defeat in years in 2019.
I don’t think a return to Corbynism is the answer. Labour has lost touch with the working-class voter in a small town, who voted Brexit and has concerns about immigration. The party needs to reconnect with these voters and its traditional roots and work out what it stands for. It has increasingly become a party for the middle class and metropolitan city voters. The type that read The Guardian.
Boris and his dodgy texts to Dyson and his sleaze isn’t the people’s person that some think he is, but it’s Labour’s job to convince them and come up with a better alternative. They’re failing miserably currently and too many people in the party are in denial about it.
When you look at 2017, he may have a point, as Corbyn did better than anyone since Blair, but then he won against a weak PM in Theresa May and then suffered Labour’s worst election defeat in years in 2019.
I don’t think a return to Corbynism is the answer. Labour has lost touch with the working-class voter in a small town, who voted Brexit and has concerns about immigration. The party needs to reconnect with these voters and its traditional roots and work out what it stands for. It has increasingly become a party for the middle class and metropolitan city voters. The type that read The Guardian.
Boris and his dodgy texts to Dyson and his sleaze isn’t the people’s person that some think he is, but it’s Labour’s job to convince them and come up with a better alternative. They’re failing miserably currently and too many people in the party are in denial about it.
Brian
Eating fat, staying slim
Replying to your comment, drood rather then the tw*t on tw*tter.
It’s not really so astonishing. The signs are that people don’t like Labour moving to the centre-right and that they wanted brexit. I’ve said it all along, Labour should have stood firmly on taking the UK out of the EU once the result of the referendum came in. Their domestic policies are far superior to the tories but that doesn’t matter anymore.
General question for the Labour critics who claim to also dislike the tories. I’ve asked this before and the thread nearly exploded but it is a serious question. Who are the left leaning members of Labour who can take the party forward? Even as a newly formed party. They can’t all be right wingers.
paulfromcamden
Baffled
Brian
Eating fat, staying slim
Really?
According to the article linked, this is what Corbyn said that you have basically turned into a headline of ... Corbyn is ‘blaming immigrants for driving down wages’.
It looks like a very fair comment to me.
F#@#ing spot on. Starmer needs to take the gloves off because those Bstsrds don't fight fair.
Tony L
Administrator
I don’t think it is a question of leadership anymore. It is one of both scope and of systemic failure. Just not being Tories isn’t enough by any stretch, and by trying to appeal to both “patriotic” Daily Express reading ex-UKIP voters and metropolitan Guardian reading “woke” types ensure they get neither and end up haemorrhaging votes from all possible directions.
There are some decent MPs in Labour, there always have been, but we are just somewhere else entirely now. Somewhere that this old politics simply does not work. It is unfixable.
Labour is dead. RIP.
What happened was that the crash had not begun in earnest. People's standard of living was pretty much the same, services degraded but still running, businesses less healthy but most still running, covid actions distorting the background levels,... Who cares who is governing the country while things are pretty much the same? Let's vote for the jolly chap off the telly. Now you seem to think things will not deteriorate markedly while I think they will. When they do I expect people to invest a bit more thought in how they vote and to hold those responsible more to account because they will now know it matters. We will only have to wait to find out.
Brian
Eating fat, staying slim
Not arguing. Who are the left leaning Labour MPs who need not be dead is the question. I really don’t care what a party is called as long as it can challenge the tories. They are not all dead in the Labour party.
Seanm
pfm Member
I'm not saying this can't happen, just that it's pure faith to believe that it must, or that the Tories will carry the can when it does. They have lots of political options available to them to keep the show on the road - including most of the economic policies that Labour had abandoned - and recent history tells us that they can easily shift the blame if it does all end in tears.
Reversing Brexit or crashing house prices are the only obvious ways that I can see for them to seriously piss off their base. If those two things hold, and no counterforce emerges to actively challenge them, they're golden.
TheDecameron
Unicorns fart glitter.
“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
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