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Labour Leader: Keir Starmer VII

Joe Hutch said:
And for such a ‘gifted politician’, Blair was remarkably prone to being impressed by obvious bullshitters such as G W Bush and Peter Mandelson.
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My theory about Blair's entanglement with GWB is that it came from the same sense of having a historic mission as his determination to reach agreement in Northern Ireland. It's one of the ironies of his premiership that this self-belief (or "Messiah complex") gave him both his greatest triumph and his greatest, darkest failure.

As for Mandelson... I really have no idea!
 
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Indeed. I think it also had something to do with an ‘emotional’ attachment to the USA, which was/is not uncommon for those who grew up in the 1950s/60s and saw the USA as representing everything that was new and exciting.
 
klfrs said:
Beating the tories is going to require a lot more than ill-conceived sloganeering.
ie paying the wages of the furloughed in pandemic was arguably a torygovernment idea. Does that make doing so a bad idea?
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It was a Labour idea, and ran totally against Tory principles, so a pretty good example of what KS is talking about. Could have been pushed much further, but…change of management. Good example, also, of something Starmer’s Labour could never have proposed.
 
ks.234 said:
No
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Makes you think, doesn't it.
Seanm said:
It was a Labour idea
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There are many 'furlough was my idea' claimants eg https://inews.co.uk/news/business/c...es-o-grady-furlough-scheme-rishi-sunak-633341
I previously wrote 'arguably a tory idea', and 'arguably' was the point.
ran totally against Tory principles
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Are you a student of politics?
The pandemic support was in keeping with principles of one nation tories.
Good example, also, of something Starmer’s Labour could never have proposed.
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Aside from crystal ball goggles, you think furlough was a Labour idea.
 
droodzilla said:
It really isn't.

I accept all the stuff about him being a gifted politician, and there's no doubt that he got a grip on the party (a grip that lingers to this day within the national and regional bureaucracy).

I give him a lot of credit for persevering with the Northern Ireland peace process, when some advisors said it could never work. This is his greatest achievement, in my view.

But I'm talking about substantive policy ideas and it became increasingly obvious in the course of the BBC documentary that Blair doesn't have many. He talks a lot about "modernisation" (then, and now) but there's almost nothing of substance to back it up (modernisation of what, and to what end?). I'm sorry, but I do try to give everyone a fair hearing, and I watched the BBC documentary with genuine curiosity (being a scientist). My conclusion remains that Blair was an extremely smart politician but that he is intellectually empty.
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You can’t have it all ways, it is the party & cabinet which decides on policies, the leader has to gain some consensus, make compromises & sell it to the electorate.

Blair was very media savvy, he would always be guarded in the confines of a documentary. Ultimately he was able to get across the detail & answer questions cogently.

I personally don’t like the raft of policy advisors that are around politics these days but leaders have never really been completely responsible for policy.

I am not sure how being a scientist is relevant in this instance, it does sound rather patronising & implies I should get back in my lane. Perfectly happy to do so.
 
How about the anti-Labour group rank in order of their preference..

Thatcher
Major
Blair
Brown
Cameron/Poodle boy
Cameron
May
Johnson
Sunak/Truss
 
Woodface said:
You can’t have it all ways, it is the party & cabinet which decides on policies, the leader has to gain some consensus, make compromises & sell it to the electorate.

Blair was very media savvy, he would always be guarded in the confines of a documentary. Ultimately he was able to get across the detail & answer questions cogently.

I personally don’t like the raft of policy advisors that are around politics these days but leaders have never really been completely responsible for policy.

I am not sure how being a scientist is relevant in this instance, it does sound rather patronising & implies I should get back in my lane. Perfectly happy to do so.
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It was in response to your "This is just projection because you don’t agree with him" comment. Point is, I try to bring my scientific training to bear on these matters (question myself, try to keep an open mind, especially when I know I have a strong bias). Going into the BBC documentary, I knew that Blair was never going to change my mind about his despicable role in the Iraq War, but I did expect to get a sense of his political philosophy and how that informs his policy choices. I was genuinely surprised to find there was virtually nothing there. A hollow man.
 
It's often overlooked today that Blair enacted very important progress, but 'a hollow man' is an accurate summary of him.
 
Actually, it looks like I'm wrong about Blair. He did have a compelling vision for the country after all:

FZ3mERSX0AI09yL


Sounds pretty cool, actually.
 
Seanm said:
Oh God.
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You have arrived? Some words for the wise -
Tony L said:
That said I/the rest of the mod team are concerned by the number of people posting exclusively about politics. The off topic area always used to be/was intended to be an area for contributors to the rest of the site to put the world to right. It has always been moderated. I am a life long anti-fascist and my website obviously reflects my views. But at present stuff is arriving so fast I and the rest of the team can’t keep on top of it.

I am obviously politically active on the site myself, but I produce many hundreds of pages of high quality content elsewhere on the site (classic and music rooms mainly). This is the balance I want and I’m not sure how to get back to that. I’m really uneasy about the folk who for some reason are finding what is primarily a music and audio site a place to join purely for political discussion. I don’t understand that.
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I actually think legislation around passive smoking was very significant, probably more so than the Good Friday Agreement. Minimum wage was also a milestone & has led to the movement for a ‘living wage’. Working tax credits have proved to be a very mixed blessing, do they lock people in low pay & subsidise/endorse ‘cheap’ labour?
 
An outstanding achievement was abolition of the hated Section 28.
Inconvenient for current provisional wing of LP due to the gender zeitgeist.
 
According to the latest Ipsos survey, it looks like a change of leader will not dramatically change the Tories electoral chances i.e. no sign of a Brown-like bounce for Liz Edam.

A Labour government led by Starmer holds a strong lead over a Conservative government led by Liz Truss in 12 of the 13 main policy areas.

Crucially, Starmer’s Labour also has double-digit leads over Truss’ Conservatives in being seen as more likely to improve public services (+13pts), reduce waiting times in the NHS (+12), reduce regional inequalities / levelling-up (+12) and offering Britain a fresh start (+10)
 
Labour is likely to improve some public services, reduce waiting times in the NHS, reduce regional inequality/levelling up and offering Britain a fresh start. Marginally.
 
Not battering the LP to beat the tories today?

When Labour came to power in 1997, people died whilst waiting 18 months for cardiac surgery. Labour got the waiting time down to 6 weeks.
 
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