Labour Leader: Keir Starmer IV
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gavreid
Pretty Words...
The truth is that Tory support has ebbed and flowed with virus (not the vaccine specifically) as the virus has actually become the opposition. If numbers stay down and there is no autumn wave the Tories will be riding the wave. On the other hand if the 1st gen vaccines fade over the next few months and variants take hold, then their support will drop away as the rocket runs out of fuel. Coupled with a collapsing health service and austerity 2, hard right Labour (certainly the most right wing incarnation of possibly any 'socialist party' since WW2) will have no discernible positions on anything, but there will be political space to fill...
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Tony L
Administrator
I can’t see it ever leading to a majority as anyone who has any real opinion on any political topic (democracy, accountability, environmentalism, racism, authoritarianism, internationalism, education, equality etc etc) will simply go elsewhere to a party with a moral compass and conviction.
Starmer just looks like another John Major at this point. Labour stand no chance with the ongoing growth of the real progressives (SNP, Greens, LDs etc) on one side, and the far-right merging so seamlessly into the Tories on the other. The best they can possibly hope for is to head up a minority government, but I doubt many of the smaller parties would agree to formal coalition given Labour’s hopelessly outdated or right-wing positions on electoral reform, Europe, independence, authoritarianism etc.
Joe Hutch
Mate of the bloke
That's too generous. Major won a General Election. A closer comparison would be with Iain Duncan Smith.
ks.234
Half way to Infinity
The promotion of Rachael ‘Tougher than the Tories’ Reeves suggests otherwise
gavreid
Pretty Words...
That's the fallacy of rightwing feminism. I hope they do elect a woman leader but not Thatcher reincarnated. Reeves is pretty much that, anti-union, rabidly anti-welfare, neoliberal etc etc...
Seanm
pfm Member
Do you mean the post after that? I can't see one immediately before. If the strategy is just "deciding on a few key policies" then that isn't really a strategy.
What distinguishes the obvious success stories like Preston is that local councils have taken the initiative and enacted what left wing policies *can* be enacted at a local level, based on a principle of community engagement. More generally (and this seems to have been especially the case in Wales), successful Labour councils have run campaigns rooted in local communities. Matthew linked to this article yesterday:
https://www.theguardian.com/politic...ow-importance-of-localism-and-positive-vision
In some ways all of that is straightforward enough, although it's hard work. But it will not become a national strategy under the current leadership, not just because policies like insourcing are ideological anathema to them but because they are committed to supporting the *worst* Labour councils, and to centralised control. Hence the disbanding of the Community Organising Units, which were an experiment in this kind of local engagement. That was completely irrational, from the perspective of Labour winning in places like Hartlepool, and anywhere really: completely rational, from the perspective of the personal interests of the people running the party.
Tony L
Administrator
They are actually in very real danger of looking anti-working class/northern women at this point IMO with the removal of Rebecca Long-Bailey and Angela Rayner, and the suggestion even Lisa Nandy may be on thin ice. To my mind these are all real assets and stand out from a sea of dull grey Westminster establishment conformity.
PS I fully expect Labour to be crap, because Labour, but even so I’m disappointed with Starmer. He really is hopeless.
Mullardman
Moderately extreme...
Sadly Tony, I think that you are confusing the relatively well informed membership of PFM, with the bulk of voters. Most Tory gains this time around came from them hoovering up Brexit voters..who abandoned Labour at least several years ago in favour of more simplistic, but more immediate argument. Even many of those questioned in 'yer typical BBC 'Vox Pops' stylee consistently come out with bollox like 'Labour always let you down'.. which coming from barely articulate people who were probably about 12 last time Labour held power...says all you need to know about many voters.
Briefly put.. huge numbers of voters have zero interest in politics between elections and precious little in depth understanding of either the issues, or the nature of our system. FFS.. millions continue to back Johnson as he quietly undermines Parliament and the Law in favour of his own dictatorship.
It's no use relying on the good sense of the populus in these times. there isn't enough of it about. The left (i.e anybody who isn't Tory or fringe fascist party) need a unifying and vocal firebrand leader, with a clear, simple message, who is prepared to 'stick it to' Johnson and his crooks by ACTIVELY pursuing them on the weaknesses and calling out their failures, whilst assigning the only success..i.e. Vaccination .. to those who have actually delivered it..which most defintely is not Johnson.
Labour in particular need to stop apologising for anything and everything. It's pathetic.
gavreid
Pretty Words...
Indeed. Prescott (obviously not a woman) was Blair's mouthpiece for the North. Importantly, someone supposedly with more left of centre ideas and with working class roots. Rayner doesn't pull it off and Starmer doesn't seem to have the nous to fill the role with somebody on the left of the party.
PS they don't really have any 'heavyweights' in the party anymore.
I wish he would win 42% of the vote like May.
Joe Hutch
Mate of the bloke
And that's what's surprising/disappointing about Starmer. A supposedly 'safe pair of hands', who manages to miss the easiest of catches, and who can't even see that he needs to complement his own blandness with a bit of passion. (Leaving aside the lack of vision, ideas, or even a clue about what Labour should do).
This is the reality and note the large drop in support for independents in the recent council elections. At present the two party system (labour+conservatives vs the rest) seems if anything to be hardening a touch. Labour is the viable alternative to the conservatives not the greens or libdems. Labour unquestionably needs some help to get it's act together but they are not too badly positioned given the current circumstances favouring the conservatives which is primed to change as the covid bounce fades and the social and economic decline bites harder.
The next objective is to get labour support back to something like parity with the conservatives in the next 12-24 months. That should make the conservatives think twice about calling an early election and by May 2024 the consequences of political mismanagement should be apparent to most.
In recent memory whenever Labour have been in the rare position of holding an overall majority in the House of Commons, a substantial proportion of the Labour contingent were MPs representing Scottish constituencies. However all of that is now firmly in the past. With the ascendancy of the SNP I don't know how Labour stand any chance of improving their situation in Scotland, never mind England where, apart from a few metro mayoralty victories in some cities their performance has been a disaster.
Keir Starmer's situation is interesting. He is a lawyer, and a barrister at that (former DPP no less) and as I see it politicians whose previous experience was years spent as barristers honing their advocacy skills in court rooms across the land tend to do quite well in getting their message across to the electorate about what they and their party are all about. My understanding of what barristers have to do (and I appreciate this may be generalising on a grand scale) is to lay out their case clearly and persuasively and in such a way that it carries the room, or in political terms, that their message, whatever that happens to be, cuts through (to potential voters). Of course part of the problem here is that said politician has to have the ability to inspire and have a message to get across, and to be able to make the electorate understand what his party is there for and why.
When he first became leader I thought Starmer was going to continue this trend as he in the very early stages of his leadership began to get the better of Johnson at the dispatch box at PMQs. Certainly I I am much more comfortable with the prospect of his becoming PM than I ever was with Jeremy Corbyn and he seemed to engender a lot of goodwill and bring in all wings of the Labour party behind him, despite their obvious and deep-seated differences.
As was mentioned upthread, there are parallels with Theresa May and I am beginning to see them more and more. Starmer seems not only to have squandered any goodwill he had at the start but he also seems to be desperately incapable of inspiring people to vote Labour. Like May he seems to be a charisma-free zone and now he is flailing. Everything he touches is turning to dust. Unless there is an unseen rabbit he can pull out of a hat any time soon then I predict that ignominy will be the ultimate destination of his political career, and in fairly short order.
Another predictable fall-out from this saga is it has given ammunition to the Corbynite left to come out swinging, saying if their man was still leader they would never have lost Hartlepool etc. Judging from a fair number of posts on this thread from the usual suspects some haven't moved on from 2017. I'd suggest that two reasons Corbyn did so well in 2017 are:
1) Theresa May (yes, her again)
2) Brexit (when a lot of woke students voted for him because they thought he would reverse it or at least force a second referendum).
It was NOT because left-wing Labour policies were hugely popular - I believe this was an illusion and for the left to continue to believe this is straw-clutching on a grand scale.
Even after all that, and with May being the insipid leader that she was, Corbyn still couldn't win an election and now that Boris is PM, if Labour were to lurch back to the hard left then I predict utter electoral disaster for them now.
Labour, as has also been mentioned in this thread, possibly need a change of name. "Labour" sounds 'laboured' right now. Also, here's a policy and a clear message they could encourage the nation to rally around:
Rail re-nationalisation.
It wouldn't, by itself, be sufficient to make me vote for them, but it's a start. It probably wouldn't do them any harm to start advocating electoral reform too, because under FPTP I seriously doubt they will ever be in a position to form a government on their own again.
Keir Starmer's situation is interesting. He is a lawyer, and a barrister at that (former DPP no less) and as I see it politicians whose previous experience was years spent as barristers honing their advocacy skills in court rooms across the land tend to do quite well in getting their message across to the electorate about what they and their party are all about. My understanding of what barristers have to do (and I appreciate this may be generalising on a grand scale) is to lay out their case clearly and persuasively and in such a way that it carries the room, or in political terms, that their message, whatever that happens to be, cuts through (to potential voters). Of course part of the problem here is that said politician has to have the ability to inspire and have a message to get across, and to be able to make the electorate understand what his party is there for and why.
When he first became leader I thought Starmer was going to continue this trend as he in the very early stages of his leadership began to get the better of Johnson at the dispatch box at PMQs. Certainly I I am much more comfortable with the prospect of his becoming PM than I ever was with Jeremy Corbyn and he seemed to engender a lot of goodwill and bring in all wings of the Labour party behind him, despite their obvious and deep-seated differences.
As was mentioned upthread, there are parallels with Theresa May and I am beginning to see them more and more. Starmer seems not only to have squandered any goodwill he had at the start but he also seems to be desperately incapable of inspiring people to vote Labour. Like May he seems to be a charisma-free zone and now he is flailing. Everything he touches is turning to dust. Unless there is an unseen rabbit he can pull out of a hat any time soon then I predict that ignominy will be the ultimate destination of his political career, and in fairly short order.
Another predictable fall-out from this saga is it has given ammunition to the Corbynite left to come out swinging, saying if their man was still leader they would never have lost Hartlepool etc. Judging from a fair number of posts on this thread from the usual suspects some haven't moved on from 2017. I'd suggest that two reasons Corbyn did so well in 2017 are:
1) Theresa May (yes, her again)
2) Brexit (when a lot of woke students voted for him because they thought he would reverse it or at least force a second referendum).
It was NOT because left-wing Labour policies were hugely popular - I believe this was an illusion and for the left to continue to believe this is straw-clutching on a grand scale.
Even after all that, and with May being the insipid leader that she was, Corbyn still couldn't win an election and now that Boris is PM, if Labour were to lurch back to the hard left then I predict utter electoral disaster for them now.
Labour, as has also been mentioned in this thread, possibly need a change of name. "Labour" sounds 'laboured' right now. Also, here's a policy and a clear message they could encourage the nation to rally around:
Rail re-nationalisation.
It wouldn't, by itself, be sufficient to make me vote for them, but it's a start. It probably wouldn't do them any harm to start advocating electoral reform too, because under FPTP I seriously doubt they will ever be in a position to form a government on their own again.
kendo
Prussian bot
Harsh but fair...
gavreid
Pretty Words...
With the Tories seeking to gerrymander future elections by reverting to FPTP for all elections and requiring the showing of i.d. to vote, there is a good opportunity to do so. Will they take?
Nick_G
pfm Member
Never thought she interviewed very well though, seems to lack depth and reiterate some preconceived agenda.
I know strategy is to choose three memes and repeat endlessly but it doesn't work for me.
If the present mess creates a gap for the Greens to squeeze up into a bit we'll all be better off.
Still feel it could be a touch early for that; i fundamentally don't get why conservatives and capitalists aren't all over environmental policy.
SteveG
pfm Member
I doubt it'll be for all elections as I can't see them supporting FPTP for the Scottish Parliament.
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