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Labour Leader: Keir Starmer IV

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You either have it or you don’t. You don’t know until you try. Brown, Corbyn, Starmer. They just didn’t have it though Brown livened up in the Scottish Independence election. I think Starmer will resign in due course. Who could be resilient in the toxic clench of the Labour Party?
 
droodzilla said:
You are ignoring the essential point. Militant etc. were framed as dangerous cranks at the time, rather than respectable political opponents. With Corbyn it was the other way around and it was amlost every day for five years. Indeed, Mandelson and his merry band of ghouls are still kicking the corpse.

I won't bang on about it any more for now but the reason I insist on this point is not out of some misguided loyalty to Corbyn. It is because I believe that if we accept the relentless and systematic delegitimisation of the leader of the opposition with nothing more than a shrug ("same as it ever was") it opens the door to many other horrors. We are living through some of them right now.
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Yes, this is fundamental. Militant were a threat to the leadership from the crank fringes whereas what happened to Corbyn was a coordinated attack on the leader from the respectable heart of the party, the parts of the party in control of money, media and internal discipline. Militant was an external threat, what’s happening now is more of a Palace Coup.
 
wylton said:
I agree that he's hopeless right now, but continual swapping of leaders doesn't help. Labour need to re-design themselves from the ground up, but it's important that they keep their socialist ideals, else what's the point?
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No I agree. But no potential saviour could survive in this toxic cesspit at this time.I have misgivings about all but the undignified,disrespectful machinations by the left and right of this party are going to sink it.
 
SteveS1 said:
People are no longer Labour/Tory. The Tories have realised this. They (or rather Farage, Cummings and co) identified a socially conservative side to these areas which is pure emotion. They are able to go hell for leather for them because they are facing no pressure on their own heartlands from Labour. This strategy of trying to counter flag waving emotion with information is doomed to failure.* If you want to deal in colder facts and build new support, you need to be addressing a different demographic.
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Not necessarily. If the facts are on your side and you can set the topic of conversation then populism becomes much less effective particularly if it is based on lying. Examples of this are how the Swiss successfully tackled the threat of rightwing nationalism. This inability to have a conversation with the population and, to a fair extent, not having anything much to say if they did is at the heart of why the labour party is making so little headway against a government with a long and remarkably poor record.

Labour are in a decent position to win the next election if they can only get their act together. Making changes after a poor performance is of course the correct thing to do but if it is limited to a token reshuffle of the shadow cabinet and not a significant change in how they go about the job of getting elected... If the latter does get implemented it will be a while before we start to see the results. The worry is that as we wait after this cosmetic reshuffle it will just be business as usual.
 
notaclue said:
It's rapidly looking like Sir Keir has Mrs May levels of suitability for the job. Dull when campaigning, prone to panic, not a team player.

"“If they ever had the plot, they’ve completely lost it now,” said one frontbencher. … “At 7am yesterday, I would have said the chances of a leadership challenge were about 0% or as close to that as you could get,” said one exasperated Labour staffer. “By 7pm they were getting dangerously close to 100%.”" https://www.theguardian.com/politic...ings-labours-confidence-in-keir-starmer-slips

Probably in his mind, he imagined he was up to the task of leader because he thought he would be a natural at stuff like this:


Low levels of self-awareness, I suspect.
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In cases like this, low levels of self awareness are less a personal failing than the outcome of a collective project. Keir has been groomed by fixers like Mandelson within the party and encouraged by gormless centrist pundits outside of it:

https://twitter.com/iandunt/status/1233768468408864768?s=21

[URL]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/11/keir-starmer-tories-labour-leader-opposition[/URL]

It’s ChangeUK all over again: not very bright people encouraged by other not very bright people to overestimate themselves and then pushed over the top with no armour or weapons beyond a nice suit and an aura of professionalism. Then swiftly abandoned, with no consequences for the fluffers.
 
Del monaco said:
No I agree. But no potential saviour could survive in this toxic cesspit at this time.I have misgivings about all but the undignified,disrespectful machinations by the left and right of this party are going to sink it.
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Not sure we are seeing the same thing. Despite the strategy being almost certainly wrong and not widely supported the shadow team has held together quite well. There is dissent by members of the hard left that are out of power which is completely normal but those with positions have largely supported the team. If the strategy is changed to something easier to support (e.g. deciding on a few key policies) there would seem to be no reason for this cohesion to be lost. On the other hand, if the cohesion does start to crack it may fail rapidly because I don't think many have much confidence in the current strategy. None from the hard left obviously but we also haven't seen much passionate support from the centre left either.
 
h.g. said:
Not sure we are seeing the same thing. Despite the strategy being almost certainly wrong and not widely supported the shadow team has held together quite well. There is dissent by members of the hard left that are out of power which is completely normal but those with positions have largely supported the team. If the strategy is changed to something easier to support (e.g. deciding on a few key policies) there would seem to be no reason for this cohesion to be lost. On the other hand, if the cohesion does start to crack it may fail rapidly because I don't think many have much confidence in the current strategy. None from the hard left obviously but we also haven't seen much passionate support from the centre left either.
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I hope this is true.
 
h.g. said:
Not necessarily. If the facts are on your side and you can set the topic of conversation then populism becomes much less effective particularly if it is based on lying. Examples of this are how the Swiss successfully tackled the threat of rightwing nationalism. This inability to have a conversation with the population and, to a fair extent, not having anything much to say if they did is at the heart of why the labour party is making so little headway against a government with a long and remarkably poor record.
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OK, now consider why Labour were able to get around this in certain areas where the left happened to be in charge.
 
Seanm said:
OK, now consider why Labour were able to get around this in certain areas where the left happened to be in charge.
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Keen readers of this thread know by now that the left is in charge nowhere, because of the right wing's harsh regime of democratic centralism.
 
h.g. said:
Not sure we are seeing the same thing. Despite the strategy being almost certainly wrong and not widely supported the shadow team has held together quite well. There is dissent by members of the hard left that are out of power which is completely normal but those with positions have largely supported the team. If the strategy is changed to something easier to support (e.g. deciding on a few key policies) there would seem to be no reason for this cohesion to be lost. On the other hand, if the cohesion does start to crack it may fail rapidly because I don't think many have much confidence in the current strategy. None from the hard left obviously but we also haven't seen much passionate support from the centre left either.
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What is this “strategy” of which you speak? The current Labour Party has no discernible policy, ideology, conviction or moral compass. It is nothing more than a dull grey man in a dull grey suit cowering behind a flag.
 
Seanm said:
OK, now consider why Labour were able to get around this in certain areas where the left happened to be in charge.
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See my post prior to the one you are responding to. What needs to be done seems relatively straightforward and indeed the labour leadership has been saying it since Starmer took over. The problem is they don't seem to be doing much about it. They have also said and done other things like whipping to support a hard brexit which doesn't seem compatible with a progressive way forward to support the interests of working people. I expect Starmer and the leadership to change strategy and start better defining their position in order to hold things together. If not there is likely to be serious dissent with serious consequences for an opposition to this current government.
 
Tony L said:
What is this “strategy” of which you speak? The current Labour Party has no discernible policy, ideology, conviction or moral compass. It is nothing more than a dull grey man in a dull grey suit cowering behind a flag.
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The current strategy is to not be the conservatives, to not be the hard left, to not offend the socially conservative, to not take a position except when unavoidable and to occasionally snipe at low hanging fruit. As a strategy it relies on the majority becoming anti-conservative which hasn't happened yet but likely will as conditions deteriorate. The risk is that by standing for nothing much labour will cease to be seen as the opposition and the safe alternative to the conservatives. And if the conservatives change the rules and call an early election it is unlikely to be relevant for another 7 years or so.
 
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