Keir Starmer Labour Leader

that emoji will probably be all over the torie whatsapp group when labour get about 40 seats at the next GE. Thats labours suicide pact at the moment - either laugh at lost voters who explain why they dont vote labour anymore or tell them they are thick and wrong. No skin off my back

I'm mainly laughing because your arguments are like a caricature from a decade ago. Maybe you voted Labour once i doubt it but you're way too far gone for me to bother to counter any of your nonsense points.

I'd suggest reading higher quality news sources for a start.
 
I’m not saying they couldn’t have done better, but they aren’t able to please their traditional base anymore and stay left. It’s impossible as far as I can see.

After spending the first part of my life (that I can remember) under a Labour government, thinking that Cameron was just a phase and the younger generation could get rid of them, I’ve fully accepted I live in a conservative country now.

Their traditional base is left.
 
Out of interest, what would make your family vote Labour again? That is the question the Labour party ought to be asking you.

To be honest its a lot of small stuff that adds up. Not being taken for granted is one thing. As i said, its dawned on people in places like Hartelpool that there have been plenty of labour governments that never did anything for them.

It was kind of belittling essentially to be branded a thick racist for voting brexit. That brexit positivity in working class areas was a fallout from years of soft immigration. I cant believe they refused to back it when they could clearly see that it was most popular in most of their constituencies.

they need to come back centre, the socialists and wokes are loud but few. If you tax the behinds off businesses it affects jobs.

local level as i say, roads needed surfacing for years, bin collections cut, crime is up, they barely even come and trim the verges anymore. Scrapped the local kids extra curricular sports and music stuff. You can blame central government but ultimately we all pay our council tax bills and the breakdown shows over 80% going on welfare spending.

Starmer needs to go. A knighted ex oxford lawyer, he cant be a man of the working class. No charisma, his paint colour would be brilliant beige. He provides No opposition, bad policies or mimicks of tory policies which the tories will do better. He comes on the news and says what he would have done two weeks ago as if he is a genius and hindsight doesnt exist.

he wasted the whole of pms questions on some pathetic smear attempt prattling on about where £58’000 of private money came from the other day. This allowed boris to reveal that labour spent £500’000 of taxpayer money on the same flat. That matters more to me, to be frank. He lost a pound and found a penny there. Must have been a useless lawyer.
 
I'm mainly laughing because your arguments are like a caricature from a decade ago. Maybe you voted Labour once i doubt it but you're way too far gone for me to bother to counter any of your nonsense points.

I'd suggest reading higher quality news sources for a start.

keep telling yourself that. Denial is the word. I voted labour til last election.
 
Seems the more sleaze they find on Boris the stronger he gets and as for Starmer.....
 
keep telling yourself that. Denial is the word. I voted labour til last election.

Why the hell would you have voted Labour? You're seemingly ignorant of all the good Labour have done for the working class and believe all the worst of the tabloid fed lines on welfare, immigration, identity politics?

It very much sounds like you're now voting aligned with your actual views.
 
To be honest its a lot of small stuff that adds up. Not being taken for granted is one thing. As i said, its dawned on people in places like Hartelpool that there have been plenty of labour governments that never did anything for them.

It was kind of belittling essentially to be branded a thick racist for voting brexit. That brexit positivity in working class areas was a fallout from years of soft immigration. I cant believe they refused to back it when they could clearly see that it was most popular in most of their constituencies.

they need to come back centre, the socialists and wokes are loud but few. If you tax the behinds off businesses it affects jobs.

local level as i say, roads needed surfacing for years, bin collections cut, crime is up, they barely even come and trim the verges anymore. Scrapped the local kids extra curricular sports and music stuff. You can blame central government but ultimately we all pay our council tax bills and the breakdown shows over 80% going on welfare spending.

Starmer needs to go. A knighted ex oxford lawyer, he cant be a man of the working class. No charisma, his paint colour would be brilliant beige. He provides No opposition, bad policies or mimicks of tory policies which the tories will do better. He comes on the news and says what he would have done two weeks ago as if he is a genius and hindsight doesnt exist.

he wasted the whole of pms questions on some pathetic smear attempt prattling on about where £58’000 of private money came from the other day. This allowed boris to reveal that labour spent £500’000 of taxpayer money on the same flat. That matters more to me, to be frank. He lost a pound and found a penny there. Must have been a useless lawyer.

I can relate to a lot of that. I was and maybe still am a Corbynista. I think he was a lousy politician but I liked his policies, but I feel just like this Labour party he failed to convince anyone who didn't already think like him.

Labours handling of Brexit was a shitshow. With a leader who probably wanted to be out and a party who wanted to be in. Even after that they failed to get across the message of "the vote is done, now lets get it to work best for Britain" and instead came out looking like they were trying to delay it for the sake of it. I'm personally not convinced it was the right move for the country, but it's done now - anyone in government should be voting to make it work.

The local stuff defintely i can relate to. In Derby they spent money re-furbing the council house whilst spending years making cuts elsewhere blaming it on central government cuts. The council has also always been massively inefficient. Got money for consultants, no money for public bins, or public toilets, got money for expensive vanity projects in the city centre, no money for trimming verges or flowers on roundabouts. In fact a roundabout near me was landscaped to look all nice and then the next year they removed the plants from it. They give out expensive contracts to mates but didn't put up xmas lights. Would send people around to pick up fly tipping almost daily, but took away free bulky waste collections. Lots of inept little own goals.
 
Why the hell would you have voted Labour? You're seemingly ignorant of all the good Labour have done for the working class and believe all the worst of the tabloid fed lines on welfare, immigration, identity politics?

It very much sounds like you're now voting aligned with your actual views.

The thing is, what is the Labour party doing to control it's own narrative? Outside of twitter who knows what the Labour party are about?
 
Why the hell would you have voted Labour? You're seemingly ignorant of all the good Labour have done for the working class and believe all the worst of the tabloid fed lines on welfare, immigration, identity politics?

It very much sounds like you're now voting aligned with your actual views.
If you want to believe that okay i guess
 
I can relate to a lot of that. I was and maybe still am a Corbynista. I think he was a lousy politician but I liked his policies, but I feel just like this Labour party he failed to convince anyone who didn't already think like him.

Labours handling of Brexit was a shitshow. With a leader who probably wanted to be out and a party who wanted to be in. Even after that they failed to get across the message of "the vote is done, now lets get it to work best for Britain" and instead came out looking like they were trying to delay it for the sake of it. I'm personally not convinced it was the right move for the country, but it's done now - anyone in government should be voting to make it work.

The local stuff defintely i can relate to. In Derby they spent money re-furbing the council house whilst spending years making cuts elsewhere blaming it on central government cuts. The council has also always been massively inefficient. Got money for consultants, no money for public bins, or public toilets, got money for expensive vanity projects in the city centre, no money for trimming verges or flowers on roundabouts. In fact a roundabout near me was landscaped to look all nice and then the next year they removed the plants from it. They give out expensive contracts to mates but didn't put up xmas lights. Would send people around to pick up fly tipping almost daily, but took away free bulky waste collections. Lots of inept little own goals.

Same here. Didnt they spend an inordinate amount of money on a velodrome up there as well?
 
Ok. I take the point about the large party membership.
But, I have to disagree again. This time around the strong policy direction.
Toward the end of the campaign, it became evident that policy was being made on the hoof and in reaction to the Tory campaign.
It may have started off reasonably clear. But very quickly, it got completely out of control and ended up like a spending pissing competition.

But it was the policy, or lack of it on Brexit which was anything but clear or strong.
It was a disaster and the result was the outcome of an unelectable leader and a shambles of a campaign.
Sorry, but that was the reality.
And yet we fall further in the midterms where the opposition party generally makes improvements.
KS said that 2019 elections were Labour’s worst in history add that to the midterm bounce and it should have been easy to have a resurgence for this election. Where is it?
 
This is a decent read on Hartlepool

https://unherd.com/2021/05/how-the-left-lost-hartlepool/

This bit made me smile

Unfortunately, the most vocal local Socialists — the Northern Independence Party — want a referendum on secession from the United Kingdom, will call their state Northumbria, and are not granting interviews to me.
It is a good article. Reckon there is a lot of truth in this quote: “Labour now is rich people telling poor people that other rich people are their problem.”
 
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Labour are done. Honestly have no idea how they recover from this without entering the political abyss for a considerable length of time.

I'm not sure a broadchurch approach to politics is viable anymore, or even if it ever was.

Blair is the only Labour leader to be elected in what, 50 years? Arguably that moment happened due more to the failing Tory politics of the time, and the axes meeting of two groups of Labour voters - liberal, metropolitan and the traditional working class votes.

They've lost the latter and the former will never be enough to win an election under the current voting system in the UK. They're on the pathway to becoming the new Lib Dems.
 
Labour are done. Honestly have no idea how they recover from this without entering the political abyss for a considerable length of time.

I'm not sure a broadchurch approach to politics is viable anymore, or even if it ever was.

Blair is the only Labour leader to be elected in what, 50 years? Arguably that moment happened due more to the failing Tory politics of the time, and the axes meeting of two groups of Labour voters - liberal, metropolitan and the traditional working class votes.

They've lost the latter and the former will never be enough to win an election under the current voting system in the UK. They're on the pathway to becoming the new Lib Dems.

Imagine if Scottish independence happens.
 
local level as i say, roads needed surfacing for years, bin collections cut, crime is up, they barely even come and trim the verges anymore. Scrapped the local kids extra curricular sports and music stuff. You can blame central government but ultimately we all pay our council tax bills and the breakdown shows over 80% going on welfare spending.

I find these comments really interesting. It’s like central Government, who have been in power for over a decade get a seemingly free pass for the lack of investment and cuts to services in places like Hartlepool? I get that local councils could make better decisions at times and there will always be differing opinions about where money is best spent... but the biggest driver to the lack of local investment in towns like Hartlepool is a lack of funding from central Government who mostly haven’t given a shit about towns like Hartlepool for years.

Council tax is a massive red herring. It makes up less than a quarter of local authority funding. It seems a bit bonkers to me to think “they haven’t invested in my area so I am going to vote for the party that has consistently cut funding for local services”:
 
Which tbf is mostly true but... we now live in a post truth world.

it's the classic conservative trick of equating university professors (and sometimes students or, in the US, baristas) with actually wealthy people - class becomes another cultural category rather than a material reality. it has worked wonders.
the reality of this graph cannot overcome these sentiments, it's "two sets of wealthy people"
who_has_the_most_wealth_.png
 
I find these comments really interesting. It’s like central Government, who have been in power for over a decade get a seemingly free pass for the lack of investment and cuts to services in places like Hartlepool? I get that local councils could make better decisions at times and there will always be differing opinions about where money is best spent... but the biggest driver to the lack of local investment in towns like Hartlepool is a lack of funding from central Government who mostly haven’t given a shit about towns like Hartlepool for years.

Council tax is a massive red herring. It makes up less than a quarter of local authority funding. It seems a bit bonkers to me to think “they haven’t invested in my area so I am going to vote for the party that has consistently cut funding for local services”:

Yep. And as someone who's worked for Councils over the years it's incredibly frustrating that people don't understand this simple fact. Council tax will need to go up to compensate for massive budget cuts from central government and the usual "what am I paying for?!" crowd will throw their toys out of the pram if their bin collection gets missed or a pothole isn't filled in quick enough. Meanwhile our taxes are being spent on royal yachts, decorating #10, dodgy PPE firms etc... and nobody bats an eyelid or has the common sense to draw a link between A and B.
 
It was kind of belittling essentially to be branded a thick racist for voting brexit. That brexit positivity in working class areas was a fallout from years of soft immigration. I cant believe they refused to back it when they could clearly see that it was most popular in most of their constituencies.

they need to come back centre, the socialists and wokes are loud but few.

It was the socialists that wanted to respect the referendum result, and the centrists who wanted to overturn it.

Schroedinger’s Corbyn strikes again
 
To be honest its not so much the policies as the people. Dianne Abbot, who labelled every terrorist attack in london an ‘incident’ then when that bloke attacked a mosque a ‘terrorist attack’. Jeremy corbyn who was pictured with hamas and hezbollah commanders and the ira, but got all woke about israel then denied antisemitism in labour. And the large numbers of nauseating labour wokes all over twitter etc. The refusal to acknowledge brexit. List goes on

A very honest assessment. You are quite right about the personalities. Unfortunately, politics has become more about personality and less about policy.
And whatever I think about him, Boris is a big personality.
 
I find these comments really interesting. It’s like central Government, who have been in power for over a decade get a seemingly free pass for the lack of investment and cuts to services in places like Hartlepool? I get that local councils could make better decisions at times and there will always be differing opinions about where money is best spent... but the biggest driver to the lack of local investment in towns like Hartlepool is a lack of funding from central Government who mostly haven’t given a shit about towns like Hartlepool for years.

Council tax is a massive red herring. It makes up less than a quarter of local authority funding. It seems a bit bonkers to me to think “they haven’t invested in my area so I am going to vote for the party that has consistently cut funding for local services”:

Council Tax is for many people the biggest monthly cost at well over £200.
 
It is good article. Reckon there is a lit of truth in this quote: “Labour now is rich people telling poor people that other rich people are their problem.”
Yeah, let's vote for the even richer people, that'll show 'em!

Can't believe the effect of over a decade of tory central government cuts destroying community services has led to record numbers of people voting for local tory control.
 
Same here. Didnt they spend an inordinate amount of money on a velodrome up there as well?

Oh yeah forgot about that. All whilst telling us we can't have park rangers in our local parks, and closing all the youth centres. Also whilst we're at it, they closed a perfectly good swimming pool to build a fancy expensive one with water slides.
 
Council Tax is for many people the biggest monthly cost at well over £200.

I don't disagree that council tax is high... but it makes up less than a quarter of local Government funding? They are massively dependent on central Government who have been cutting funding to local councils for years under the Tories... the Tories are the reason your council tax bill keeps going up and they are the reason that local councils don't have enough money for local services. They are the reason your bin collections have been cut etc.

It's like if you worked two jobs and one paid 75% of your annual salary... if that employer cut your wages by 10%, they are the ones who should face anger that you have to make more difficult decisions about what you spend your money on.
 
Yeah, let's vote for the even richer people, that'll show 'em!

Can't believe the effect of over a decade of tory central government cuts destroying community services has led to record numbers of people voting for local tory control.

It's because the very concept of "community" has been consistently chipped away at over the past 30/40 years, and we've now got people looking to conserve their lot - irregardless of how much/little they have.

It's not as simple as people choosing richer people to lord over them than the others (although that is what's happened). It's about recognising the similar mindsets and attitudes on display.
 
what have labour done for working class people? A labour govt means plenty of spending on freeloaders, but if you work what do you get? The road outside my parents house has needed resurfacing for 30 years. The bin collections have been cut. Labour council. Brexit was the final straw. Everyone in my household went away from labour for good. Wokism, soft policies on crime and immigration and free spending on bemefits doesnt connect with working class people.
You are and always have been a Tory. Why lie?
 
Council Tax is for many people the biggest monthly cost at well over £200.
If you're living in a house that is in a council tax band of over £200 a month, surely the people who live in the house will be paying over that in income tax? My council tax is under £125 a month, and between myself and my wife we're paying much more that in income tax.
 
Starmer should go. He's an utter cretin who doesn't deserve a single second more as leader.
 
To be honest its a lot of small stuff that adds up. Not being taken for granted is one thing. As i said, its dawned on people in places like Hartelpool that there have been plenty of labour governments that never did anything for them.

It was kind of belittling essentially to be branded a thick racist for voting brexit. That brexit positivity in working class areas was a fallout from years of soft immigration. I cant believe they refused to back it when they could clearly see that it was most popular in most of their constituencies.

they need to come back centre, the socialists and wokes are loud but few. If you tax the behinds off businesses it affects jobs.

local level as i say, roads needed surfacing for years, bin collections cut, crime is up, they barely even come and trim the verges anymore. Scrapped the local kids extra curricular sports and music stuff. You can blame central government but ultimately we all pay our council tax bills and the breakdown shows over 80% going on welfare spending.

Starmer needs to go. A knighted ex oxford lawyer, he cant be a man of the working class. No charisma, his paint colour would be brilliant beige. He provides No opposition, bad policies or mimicks of tory policies which the tories will do better. He comes on the news and says what he would have done two weeks ago as if he is a genius and hindsight doesnt exist.

he wasted the whole of pms questions on some pathetic smear attempt prattling on about where £58’000 of private money came from the other day. This allowed boris to reveal that labour spent £500’000 of taxpayer money on the same flat. That matters more to me, to be frank. He lost a pound and found a penny there. Must have been a useless lawyer.

This is what a number of people have said to me about labour and some media going on and on about this flat renovation and nobody gives a shit. All that happened is it turned out Labour fleeced half a million off the taxpayer :lol:
 
true yeah. Labour haven't disenfranchised and haemoraghed voters like me to the tories, its just me. Stay in your cocoon
I'm not a Labour voter while Kier is in charge so I do accept Labour has been losing voters. However, when you blurt out a bunch of moronic Tory attack lines, I know exactly what you're up to.
 
So very left hasn't worked, center left isn't working; Trump achieved success by pouncing on any slip ups or inconsistencies from the opposition and hammering them down the throats of undecided voters. I've seen little of this from Starmer and Boris is getting an easy ride.

As horrific as it may sound, does the left need to employ Trump tactics to have a chance in today's society?
 
it's the classic conservative trick of equating university professors (and sometimes students or, in the US, baristas) with actually wealthy people - class becomes another cultural category rather than a material reality. it has worked wonders.
the reality of this graph cannot overcome these sentiments, it's "two sets of wealthy people"
who_has_the_most_wealth_.png
You could probably substitute rich with elite, which I suppose is what professionals like lawyers must look like if you an unemployeed person in a disindustrialised town like Hartlepool. Not rich, but close enough; but in any case they are not like the people they want to represent.

I wonder, for example, why Labour didn't field at least a local brexiteer candidate, given their stance now is that they accept Brexit?
 
If you're living in a house that is in a council tax band of over £200 a month, surely the people who live in the house will be paying over that in income tax? My council tax is under £125 a month, and between myself and my wife we're paying much more that in income tax.

We are both retired.