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Labour Leader: Keir Starmer IV

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Mullardman said:
So am I..which is why I'd really like to see at minimum..a formal 'Coalition of the Left'..at the very least. That could start now.. and could send a very powerful message, whilst actually demanding little if any 'surrender' between the paries of the left. As I've already said.. the Tories have quietly formed a coalition with UKIP/Brexit Party and elements at least of EDL and worse. The left should be doing the same, so that their combined voter share enhances their power, rather than fragmenting it. Imagine the effect of a joint.. highly publicised 'War Cabinet' of left leaning parties..deliberately and loudly excluding the right. Just the existence of such a thing might start sending a powerful message.

However.. from what I know of Green policy apart from the obvious.. Green Social and Economic policy for e.g is in many respects 'Labour without the baggage'... and all parties.. including the Tories like to claim Green credentials. So.. the Green Party message needs to much more strongly point out the overall socio-economic benefits of it's policies..as opposed to just the easily mocked 'tree hugging' aspect...and the other Left parties need to do the same.

Thing is..all of that needs to be set against the whole 'messaging' thing..which is a very real factor.. and the 'strong leader' thing...which also plays well to the great unwashed.

Quite how all of that could be achieved is beyond me.. but as a start I'd say that all left of centre parties need to send out a consistent 'Anybody but the Tories' message.. whilst constantly calling them out on their sleaze, corruption, anti democratic activities, racism and failure to 'level up'.

It seems to me that people have abandoned Labour in droves ... not because they don't believe in the best aspects of Labour principle and ambition.. but because they have been very successfully convinced that Labour let them down. All that from the party which has presided over 10 years of austerity, racist immigration policy, 150000 Covid deaths and an absolute shambles of a Brexit... not to mention the likely break down of the fragile NI peace and the the break up of the Union.
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Agree with much of what you say except the sentence about people being successfully convinced that Labour has let them down. It implies that the perception that Labour has let them down is a victory for propaganda rather than a matter of substance. Surely the problem is that Labour *has* let people down; in the northern red wall areas by decades of neglect leaving to door open to a chink of hope from Brexit and everywhere else by attacking itself and creating an image of chaos.
 
It's a matter of perception and narrative; Labour haven't been in a position to implement any policies that could let down the people of those areas since 2010, the period that their vote share has declined.
 
Seeker_UK said:
It's a matter of perception and narrative; Labour haven't been in a position to implement any policies that could let down the people of those areas since 2010, the period that their vote share has declined.
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That's not quite true: they've been in power in local government, and in many places this is part of the problem. In other places (Preston!) they've used what power they have in local government to govern from the left, and they've been rewarded. Meanwhile the Tories' popularity in Hartlepool seems to have had as much to do with what the they've done in local government as their record in national government: Ben Houchen was re-elected as Mayor of Tees Valley with 73% of the vote, and he can currently be found extolling the virtues of a Green Industrial Revolution. The Tories are beating Labour from both the left and the right at the same time!
 
Seanm said:
That's not quite true: they've been in power in local government, and in many places this is part of the problem. In other places (Preston!) they've used what power they have in local government to govern from the left, and they've been rewarded. Meanwhile the Tories' popularity in Hartlepool seems to have had as much to do with what the they've done in local government as their record in national government: Ben Houchen was re-elected as Mayor of Tees Valley with 73% of the vote, and he can currently be found extolling the virtues of a Green Industrial Revolution. The Tories are beating Labour from both the left and the right at the same time!
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I think that's also partially true; people don't automatically link local and national politics.
 
Labour is in danger of losing support to the Greens https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-57157410

I'm not surprised. I suspect more and more people are thinking the Greens look quite fun and cheery compared to Labour's miserableness. I mean, look how much fun those Greens seem to be having in the photo in the link above!

I (very briefly) tuned into Jonathan Ashworth in the Commons yesterday. It was all very angry and miserable.

There was a passionate edge to Corbyn's anger and misery (albeit with a shambolic and incompetent edge too...), but Sir Keir's Labour is looking dull and miserable. Like his campaigning.
 
Labour seriously annoyed a lot of people over the Mayoral election etc, so I’d expect what was rock-solid support there to diminish a bit, but I’d not read it as a national trend. The Greens are on the way up though and will continue as long as Labour lack policies or moral integrity on just so many topics.
 
Seeker_UK said:
I think that's also partially true; people don't automatically link local and national politics.
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Not automatically, no. In fact nothing about the link between national and local politics is automatic: I think it's becoming clearer that it's all quite complicated and there are lots of ways of thinking about it.

There was a clip going around last week (Sky?) of two Hartlepool residents saying they'd switched from Labour to Tory because of the state of the hospitals, schools etc.: Labour had had their chance. It was discussed in the media as "Wow! These voters are really stupid and uninformed!" Political journalists might do better to ask whose fault it is, if people are so absurdly uninformed about the relationship between local and national government. But an even better question to ask might be: are they actually wrong?
 
Tony L said:
Labour seriously annoyed a lot of people over the Mayoral election etc, so I’d expect what was rock-solid support there to diminish a bit, but I’d not read it as a national trend. The Greens are on the way up though and will continue as long as Labour lack policies or moral integrity on just so many topics.
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Yes, I’m hoping that if the young get out to vote, that will benefit the Greens
 
Seanm said:
That's not quite true: they've been in power in local government, and in many places this is part of the problem.
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Greenwich has been Labour for fifty years. The previous council leader of 14 years Chris Roberts eventually stood down after numerous reports of bullying to go and work as a lobbyist for property developers. Before him Len Duvall (now the longest serving London Assembly Member) was leader. He was also employed by a property developer that owned great swathes of Thamesmead. Though no conflict of interest apparently.

I know Labour aren't the same as the Tories. But sometimes in local government the difference can seem quite slight.
 
paulfromcamden said:
Greenwich has been Labour for fifty years. The previous council leader of 14 years Chris Roberts eventually stood down after numerous reports of bullying to go and work as a lobbyist for property developers. Before him Len Duvall (now the longest serving London Assembly Member) was leader. He was also employed by a property developer that owned great swathes of Thamesmead. Though no conflict of interest apparently.

I know Labour aren't the same as the Tories. But sometimes in local government the difference can seem quite slight.
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Yes, Lewisham’s the same, unsurprisingly: It’s not that there aren’t good individual councillors but there’s zero accountability and little representativeness, just an iron conviction on the part of councillors that they know best and that sadly housing developers/central government hold all the cards, what can they do. It was canvassing in Lewisham in 2017 that I first heard someone say that they’d be switching to the Conservatives, because they wanted change. Took me aback at the time but it makes a lot of sense.
 
Seeker_UK said:
It's a matter of perception and narrative; Labour haven't been in a position to implement any policies that could let down the people of those areas since 2010, the period that their vote share has declined.
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Correct, but don’t expect it to make a dent in the propaganda.
 
The party of Blair, Brown, Straw, Blunkett, Clark, Woolas etc turns out to be oppressive and authoritarian? Who knew?!
 
notaclue said:
Labour is in danger of losing support to the Greens https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-57157410

I'm not surprised. I suspect more and more people are thinking the Greens look quite fun and cheery compared to Labour's miserableness. I mean, look how much fun those Greens seem to be having in the photo in the link above!

I (very briefly) tuned into Jonathan Ashworth in the Commons yesterday. It was all very angry and miserable.

There was a passionate edge to Corbyn's anger and misery (albeit with a shambolic and incompetent edge too...), but Sir Keir's Labour is looking dull and miserable. Like his campaigning.
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If the greens were in any danger of obtaining power Chuka Ummuna would have joined by now.
 
Seanm said:
Difficult not to conclude that Starmer just hates the public on principle, hates to see people gathering in public. Petty, authoritarian, unnecessary intervention from someone who’s turning out to be actually a bit of a douche bag, just on a basic human level:

https://www.theguardian.com/politic...nes-to-back-closures-at-popular-primrose-hill
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OTT though it sounds like he was responding to complains made by the residents he represents.

The "exclusivity for wealthy residents" angle is a bit disingenuous - there's social housing in Primrose Hill just as there is in pretty much all of Camden.
 
Seanm said:
Difficult not to conclude that Starmer just hates the public on principle, hates to see people gathering in public. Petty, authoritarian, unnecessary intervention from someone who’s turning out to be actually a bit of a douche bag, just on a basic human level:

https://www.theguardian.com/politic...nes-to-back-closures-at-popular-primrose-hill
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It’s impossible not to conclude the bottom of a barrel is being scraped. It’s just a poor article and is not unusual these days.
 
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