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Labour Leader: Keir Starmer VI

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If what you guys are taking from all this is that things are looking up and that only an ideological puritan could think otherwise, don’t let me poop your party. I’m just quite a bitter and pessimistic person and it seems to me that politics has never been so detached from reality. Prime ministers sequentially installed and removed from office at the whim of newspapers nobody under 60 reads, the opposition leader lauded for having lied his way around the pesky democratic process and objectively heinous people pinging back and forth across the House of Commons wearing novelty masks. Chortles and backslaps. All this while we transition seamlessly from murderously bungled pandemic to all-but-ignored cost of living crisis. I just see no likelihood at all that any of these silly, self-interested people or the system they blew up the country to preserve are capable of addressing such problems or delivering any meaningful improvements, however modest, for anyone but themselves.

I mean I could be wrong in which case grand, I’ll be the first to admit it.
 
Sean, Drood, I get all that, too. Baby steps and all that. First we need to get the Tories out. If we replace them with a party which more closely resembles the Tories from Heath's day, rather than the current shower, I'd consider that a small victory.

I'm sympathetic to the 'burn it all down and start again' idea too, but where to start, and how to start? Getting Tories out and Starmer's Labour in is a start, and doesn't preclude the burning down at a later date, it just puts a brake on the pillaging in the meantime.
 
As someone who has never had any use for either Tory or Labour the whole Wakeford thing only reinforces my position. If I gave a shit about either entity I’d be absolutely furious right now. It is however exactly what I thought it was, so ‘meh’. If anything it is quite funny and certainly highlights just how institutionally broken the whole thing is.

The corporate equivalent would be actively headhunting the worst employee a competitor had to offer, the one with the poorest skillset, most hopeless attitude, and least alignment with your brand’s stated core values and ethos, and then parading that to be a victory. It is absolutely ridiculous. Comedically absurd. There is nothing more moronic than tribalism.
 
Seanm said:
If what you guys are taking from all this is that things are looking up and that only an ideological puritan could think otherwise, don’t let me poop your party. I’m just quite a bitter and pessimistic person and it seems to me that politics has never been so detached from reality. Prime ministers sequentially installed and removed from office at the whim of newspapers nobody under 60 reads, the opposition leader lauded for having lied his way around the pesky democratic process and objectively heinous people pinging back and forth across the House of Commons wearing novelty masks. Chortles and backslaps. All this while we transition seamlessly from murderously bungled pandemic to all-but-ignored cost of living crisis. I just see no likelihood at all that any of these silly, self-interested people or the system they blew up the country to preserve are capable of addressing such problems or delivering any meaningful improvements, however modest, for anyone but themselves.

I mean I could be wrong in which case grand, I’ll be the first to admit it.
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Being realistic and believing there won't be sweeping reform anytime before I'm in a wooden box doesn't mean I like what you describe.

A slow move in a left direction from the far right looks realistic to me. What is realistic to you? Can you and your friends confirm that's unacceptable to you and you're happy to accept a tory govt until Utopia arrives?
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
Sean, Drood, I get all that, too. Baby steps and all that. First we need to get the Tories out. If we replace them with a party which more closely resembles the Tories from Heath's day, rather than the current shower, I'd consider that a small victory.

I'm sympathetic to the 'burn it all down and start again' idea too, but where to start, and how to start? Getting Tories out and Starmer's Labour in is a start, and doesn't preclude the burning down at a later date, it just puts a brake on the pillaging in the meantime.
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LOL
 
Both Starmer and Wakeford have opened themselves up to accusations of bad faith.

Starmer because he said in Feb 2020 in a Twitter thread about reforming Labour Party rules:
Keir Starmer said:
The selections for Labour candidates needs to be more democratic and we should end NEC impositions of candidates. Local Party members should select their candidates for every election.
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Wakeford because in September 2020 he co-sponsored the first reading of a private member's bill to enable constituents to begin a recall petition when a sitting MP changes parties.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
Sean, Drood, I get all that, too. Baby steps and all that. First we need to get the Tories out. If we replace them with a party which more closely resembles the Tories from Heath's day, rather than the current shower, I'd consider that a small victory.

I'm sympathetic to the 'burn it all down and start again' idea too, but where to start, and how to start? Getting Tories out and Starmer's Labour in is a start, and doesn't preclude the burning down at a later date, it just puts a brake on the pillaging in the meantime.
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Do we get the democracy we deserve? Is it our leaders fault if we the electorate can’t agree on what we want?

We disagree on such a lot, but surely we can all agree that as a minimum we want decent health and education and looking forward we must take urgent action to do all we can to tackle climate change?

Why then do we accept such poor health and education services and looming climate catastrophe?
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
Sean, Drood, I get all that, too. Baby steps and all that. First we need to get the Tories out. If we replace them with a party which more closely resembles the Tories from Heath's day, rather than the current shower, I'd consider that a small victory.

I'm sympathetic to the 'burn it all down and start again' idea too, but where to start, and how to start? Getting Tories out and Starmer's Labour in is a start, and doesn't preclude the burning down at a later date, it just puts a brake on the pillaging in the meantime.
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Hi Steve, I respect your position, and the thought that's gone into it but, ultimately, the question of how much moral compromise we can stomach is one that each of us must answer for ourselves. For me, Labour ceased to be worthy of my support months ago, and I'm no longer interested in legitimising the system by voting for the infinitessimally lesser of two evils.

I'm not asking for "perfection" from the Labour Party - just something that is (e.g.) marginally more progressive than Milliband era Labour (my bar has become progressively lower). Instead, it looks like Starmer will be worse than Blair. The comparison is deliberate: I am sure that a Starmer government would be easier to bounce into foreign wars than a Conservative one, because it would feel it had "something to prove". In this, and one or two other respects, I think a Labour government might be worse than a Conservative one.

The parliamentary route to progressive change is closed for the foresseable future. I'll spend any political energy I have supporting young people who really are trying to change things for the better. There must be plenty of worthy causes out there.
 
droodzilla said:
Hi Steve, I respect your position, and the thought that's gone into it but, ultimately, the question of how much moral compromise we can stomach is one that each of us must answer for ourselves. For me, Labour ceased to be worthy of my support months ago, and I'm no longer interested in legitimising the system by voting for the infinitessimally lesser of two evils.

I'm not asking for "perfection" from the Labour Party - just something that is (e.g.) marginally more progressive than Milliband era Labour (my bar has become progressively lower). Instead, it looks like Starmer will be worse than Blair. The comparison is deliberate: I am sure that a Starmer government would be easier to bounce into foreign wars than a Conservative one, because it would feel it had "something to prove. In this, and one or two ther respects, I think a Labour government might be worse than a Conservative one.

The parliamentary route to progressive change is closed for the foresseable future. I'll spend any political energy I have supporting young people who really are trying to change things for the better. There must be plenty of worthy causes out there.
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Yes, and, like Clinton, rather more quietly but perhaps more certainly, he’ll be bounced into trying to reduce the deficit with the same long term consequences
 
He only took the seat with a margin of 400 votes. It must be one of the highest risk Red Wall seats for the Tories. Maybe he’s made a smart personal move.
 
I don’t really see compromise as the issue here: it’s not like I want a lot and Labour are offering only a little. I’d take a little if I thought it was real. Labour are IMO actively doing bad things that make the political situation objectively worse, and they’ll continue to do so. The question for me is, can you stop the leadership from doing these things while also helping the party win support from the Conservatives? I won’t say it’s impossible but it’s too much for me personally.
 
TheDecameron said:
He only took the seat with a margin of 400 votes. It must be one of the highest risk Red Wall seats for the Tories. Maybe he’s made a smart personal move.
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A dead cert for any Labour candidate if there’s even the slightest swing to Labour. If there’s no swing there’s no point anyway.

In another context you can see how it might be a smart move: if you want Tory voters to make the switch to Labour you can point to this guy and say, Well, he made the switch and that took a lot, you just have to put an X in a different box. But with these guys…
 
Seanm said:
The question for me is, can you stop the leadership from doing these things while also helping the party win support from the Conservatives? I won’t say it’s impossible but it’s too much for me personally.
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Iraq was the breaking point for me. 1997 was the last time I voted Labour*. They are just unfixable to me; authoritarianism, nationalist, cowardly and corrupt. Inviting a xenophobic benefit-cutting climate-science denying Tory arsehole into the ranks is just a logical continuation of Iraq, Brexit, flags, nodding through Tory authoritarianism etc. Labour’s gonna Labour.




*Aside from one misguided tactical vote more recently as I was afraid our disgraced and deselected expenses-fiddling ex-Labour sex-pest standing as an independent would split the vote and let UKIP in. Turned out the seat was so safe it was a waste of my time and I really should have voted Green for the national figure or just wiped my arse on the ballot sheet.
 
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