Keir Starmer Labour Leader

Jezpeza said:
can you explain why me and many like me should bust our balls and be expected to pay my mortage, council tax, the whole hog and get nothing in return? Then people get the same for nothing. Under the tories the handouts have decreased. At least they dont pretend to care. Ultimately thats whats turned heads. I havent always voted torie but the blind loyalty to ‘working mans labour’ is gone.
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Your mortgage pays for the house you chose to buy.

Council tax pays for bin collections, roads maintenance, street lighting, social care for the elderly and vulnerable, assistance for the disabled, emergency services, public transport, libraries, trading standards, environmental health, leisure centres, youth facilities. The income tax you pay, goes towards the same sort of stuff, plus free healthcare and education.

You seem like a sound fella, but do you really think asylum seekers come here and live the life of Riley? Maybe you should try swapping lives with one. In fact that sounds like a premise for a really good channel 5 TV show. Benefits swap.
 
Jezpeza said:
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.
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Out of interest, which media outlets do you read?
 
ZupZup said:
To be fair... they know them because these are exactly the people they have brainwashed along with their cheerleaders in the media.

You rail against 'wokism' but you could do with some in reality. You are the Daily Mail's wet dream. Someone who will swallow whatever they say and thank them for it... 'please Sir, can I have some more'.
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dont read the daily mail but if you like that fantasy by all means dream
 
Dan_F said:
You were complaining that 80% of your council tax goes on welfare, now you’re saying that people are getting free handouts. Next you’ll be blaming immigrants.

Maybe you need to have a think about why people need this kind of support. It couldn’t be that (Tory) government policies are continually punishing the worst off and do nothing to actually solving the root cause of these issues.

Take housing benefit, which I’m assuming is something you’re talking about? How is it possible that a family with two low paid parents, probably a mother working part time if the kid is old enough, can afford expensive private renting costs? A family home in my area costs over £1k a month before any bills. Even an average wage of say £26k is going to struggle with that, let alone those who earn well below it.

Yet you’re saying they just need to work harder. Isn’t it more about the lack of social or affordable housing, or the inability for so many young people to get on the housing ladder?
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i just benefited from a tory help to buy policy.
 
Drifter said:
Corbyn won Hartlepool twice both with big margins.
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The decline in votes between 17 and 19 for Labour were huge. The trend was well and truly in motion before yesterday.

The Brexit Party managed to pick up 10,000 votes there having never stood in an election before in 2019.

Hardly a victory cry for Corbyn. Or Labour. Or any of them.

Like I've said, Brexit has killed the party and I'm not sure it's going to survive the fallout over the next decade or so.
 
Dan_F said:
You were complaining that 80% of your council tax goes on welfare, now you’re saying that people are getting free handouts. Next you’ll be blaming immigrants.

Maybe you need to have a think about why people need this kind of support. It couldn’t be that (Tory) government policies are continually punishing the worst off and do nothing to actually solving the root cause of these issues.

Take housing benefit, which I’m assuming is something you’re talking about? How is it possible that a family with two low paid parents, probably a mother working part time if the kid is old enough, can afford expensive private renting costs? A family home in my area costs over £1k a month before any bills. Even an average wage of say £26k is going to struggle with that, let alone those who earn well below it.

Yet you’re saying they just need to work harder. Isn’t it more about the lack of social or affordable housing, or the inability for so many young people to get on the housing ladder?
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He's already blamed immigrants.
 
CassiusClaymore said:
Wow. You make them sound like a giant teet.
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this is exactly the problem. Someone has quoted the public services provided by all governments alike as a benefit of voting labour. Now you start to sling sly comments. You are not going to persuade me to vote labour by being like that. Or branding me xyz.

its the answer i keep landing at - as a working class man, what can labour do for me? As far as i see Nothing. They need to earn my vote not expect it
 
groovyalbert said:
The decline in votes between 17 and 19 for Labour were huge. The trend was well and truly in motion before yesterday.

The Brexit Party managed to pick up 10,000 votes there having never stood in an election before in 2019.

Hardly a victory cry for Corbyn. Or Labour. Or any of them.

Like I've said, Brexit has killed the party and I'm not sure it's going to survive the fallout over the next decade or so.
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This.

Party politics needs to die anyway. Its too tribal. The average voter doesn't even look at the issues or candidates voting record anymore. Are they labour/tory? Then I'm voting. Its nonsense
 
Jezpeza said:
i just benefited from a tory help to buy policy.
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Oh yeah? That’s completely irrelevant to much of what I’ve just written but happy for you.

I might be looking to purchase next year, and will probably benefit from a similar scheme. That’s done feck all to help the poorest in society that are relying on benefits though.
 
Dan_F said:
Oh yeah? That’s completely irrelevant to much of what I’ve just written but happy for you.

I might be looking to purchase next year, and will probably benefit from a similar scheme. That’s done feck all to help the poorest in society that are relying on benefits though.
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you just went on about affordable housing. I just gave up a rental property. What do you think people like me getting a boost and moving from rentals to a mortaged property thus lessening demand do to rental prices?
 
Jezpeza said:
you just went on about affordable housing. I just gave up a rental property. What do you think people like me getting a boost and moving from rentals to a mortaged property thus lessening demand do to rental prices?
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Nah you’re trolling. I’m out.
 
Jezpeza said:
you just went on about affordable housing. I just gave up a rental property. What do you think people like me getting a boost and moving from rentals to a mortaged property thus lessening demand do to rental prices?
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Help to buy and the stamp duty rule has increased house prices by a record amount during a year that most of the country was put on hold. There's no denying it's a great thing for the people who used those offers, but it was primarily designed to help big business and keep that sector alive rather than individuals.

It's completely artificial though and if there is a collapse in prices once furlough finishes and people potentially lose their jobs it won't go down quite so well.
 
balaks said:
What's false about it?
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The Labour vote in Hartlepool has been going down since 1997 with the one exception of 2017 and Corbyn.

None of the issues of welfare, immigration, neglecting councils raised in this thread have anything to do with Corbyn.

Issues that get flagged on the doorsteps because they're easy lines of recall come and go, Corbyn was just that. The structural issues remain and they were mainly caused by Labours legacy of Blair. I think some have amnesia and forget Labour were still pro immigration, high spend, PC culture back then, these aren't new attack lines.
 
Raven said:
I've heard tiny minded little racist Tories spouting this shit for 25 years. They were never Labour supporters, always Tories.
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It's strange, because my tiny minded father, Labour supporter forever spouts this shit all the time.
 
Jezpeza said:
this is exactly the problem. Someone has quoted the public services provided by all governments alike as a benefit of voting labour. Now you start to sling sly comments. You are not going to persuade me to vote labour by being like that. Or branding me xyz.

its the answer i keep landing at - as a working class man, what can labour do for me? As far as i see Nothing. They need to earn my vote not expect it
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You misunderstand me. I couldn't care less if you vote Tory or not. On the contrary, I'm more than happy to reap the rewards from it. ;)

Your second point is very valid though and you are right to feel that a vote should be earned and not expected.
 
Jezpeza said:
can you explain why me and many like me should bust our balls and be expected to pay my mortage, council tax, the whole hog and get nothing in return? Then people get the same for nothing. Under the tories the handouts have decreased. At least they dont pretend to care. Ultimately thats whats turned heads. I havent always voted torie but the blind loyalty to ‘working mans labour’ is gone.
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Based on the political views you've expressed in this thread, you're a Tory. And if these have been your views the whole time, you've been a Tory the whole time.

I'm not sure why it took you so long to realise you're a Tory but I don't think you can blame the Labour party for not catering to desires of right-wing voters. I mean it's not like you're describing positions that Labour have just recently shifted away from.
 
Hartlepool 2015 and 2019 were very similar results - Labour holding on despite losing a chunk of its support to a Eurosceptic party headed by Nigel Farage. The difference between 2017 and 2021 is that in 2017 Labour under Corbyn managed to win those voters back, whereas in 2021 Labour under Starmer couldn't. How people can try and spin that to be anything other than Starmer's failing is beyond me. Labour did so badly in this election that the Tories didn't need to pick up Brexit Party votes to win, they just needed to poll the same as they did in 2019.

If Labour had retained or improved on their 2019 vote share but still lost because of the Brexit Party vote going to the Tories that would have been understandable. In that situation Starmer's supporters could reasonably point to it as evidence that Corbyn was the problem and that rejecting him and his policy platform was a sound electoral strategy that was starting to pay off. But they lost vote share, and they need to look at why that is instead of peddling this pathetic line that somehow the ghost of Corbyn past is more of a turn-off to voters than Corbyn actually being leader was.
 
sullydnl said:
Based on the political views you've expressed in this thread, you're a Tory. And if these have been your views the whole time, you've been a Tory the whole time.

I'm not sure why it took you so long to realise you're a Tory but I don't think you can blame the Labour party for not catering to desires of right-wing voters. I mean it's not like you're describing positions that Labour have just recently shifted away from.
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maybe this is true. But on a wider scale i think there has been a blind loyalty to labour from many with these opinions for a very long time. These are themes that are echoed by many labour turned torie voters i know personally and also themes strong in the high brexit vote in many ‘labour strongholds’.
I dont see what labour are doing to try and reverse any of that.
 
I am intrigued to know what the brilliant political minds put Labour's defeat in Hartlepool down to?

Two years ago, we were called 'part of the problem' for suggesting that the election results were purely and simply a reaction to Brexit. Leave voting constituencies in the Midlands/North turning away from Labour and voting to 'get Brexit done'.

We were told Socialism was unpopular and Corbyn was unelectable. Despite that not really fitting with what we had seen in the previous GE when Corbyn had come within a whisker of being able to form a Socialist Government in the UK for the first time in decades.

Now, surely those people who belittled that as 'too simplistic', who ridiculed Corbyn and backed Starmer must now accept unequivocally that it WAS in fact solely down to Brexit? I just don't see how you can argue anything else?
 


Owning property fundamentally changes people politics, it makes them conservative. While the media of course plays a part and does blur some working class interests , imo the media gives answers to the reactionary politics that grow out of homeownership.

It's no surprise the argument of people on the dole getting awarded ''woke' tokens and free personal calls from the ghost of Hugo Chavez, comes from a homeowner.
 
Lentwood said:
I am intrigued to know what the brilliant political minds put Labour's defeat in Hartlepool down to?

Two years ago, we were called 'part of the problem' for suggesting that the election results were purely and simply a reaction to Brexit. Leave voting constituencies in the Midlands/North turning away from Labour and voting to 'get Brexit done'.

We were told Socialism was unpopular and Corbyn was unelectable. Despite that not really fitting with what we had seen in the previous GE when Corbyn had come within a whisker of being able to form a Socialist Government in the UK for the first time in decades.

Now, surely those people who belittled that as 'too simplistic', who ridiculed Corbyn and backed Starmer must now accept unequivocally that it WAS in fact solely down to Brexit? I just don't see how you can argue anything else?
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Of course you can. You can argue that the election results were down to Brexit and a host of other problems, including Corbyn.

The lack of nuance shown by people who insist on blaming one thing (be it Brexit, Corbyn or whatever) for Labour's decline is remarkable.
 
jeff_goldblum said:
Hartlepool 2015 and 2019 were very similar results - Labour holding on despite losing a chunk of its support to a Eurosceptic party headed by Nigel Farage. The difference between 2017 and 2021 is that in 2017 Labour under Corbyn managed to win those voters back, whereas in 2021 Labour under Starmer couldn't. How people can try and spin that to be anything other than Starmer's failing is beyond me. Labour did so badly in this election that the Tories didn't need to pick up Brexit Party votes to win, they just needed to poll the same as they did in 2019.

If Labour had retained or improved on their 2019 vote share but still lost because of the Brexit Party vote going to the Tories that would have been understandable. In that situation Starmer's supporters could reasonably point to it as evidence that Corbyn was the problem and that rejecting him and his policy platform was a sound electoral strategy that was starting to pay off. But they lost vote share, and they need to look at why that is instead of peddling this pathetic line that somehow the ghost of Corbyn past is more of a turn-off to voters than Corbyn actually being leader was.
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Starmer has not helped gain voters back, and has almost certainly been a deterrent as another "London, Eurocentric, Remainer, out of touch with former Labour heartlands".

But Corbyn was a turn off too, and what's probably swayed it more than anything from 2017 to now is that the Tories have gotten rid of May - who was trying to achieve the impossible with all the charisma of a dead fish - and opted for populist bluster and parade. They're a government that is genuinely seen to be doing what Hartlepool overwhelmingly voted for in the referendum, spearheaded by a relatable figure. Add to that the boost the vaccine roll-out has given the Tories, and there's enough to explain yesterday's results that go beyond the realms of Labour's control.

Labour need a complete re-set which will almost certainly only be possible after a few years in the political abyss. They've simply got no solid-ground to rely on outside of London and university cities. Leaders aren't going to change that around overnight, and there certainly aren't the characters in the party to do this currently.
 
Jezpeza said:
I said in an earlier post i guess that there was a blind loyalty effect and its gone
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Doesn't that mean you were never actually a Labour supporter, though, if the only reason you can think of why you used to be a Labour voter is "blind loyalty effect"? So how can you complain about Labour "losing Labour voters", when the only thing that apparently changed was you?
 
But he looks so much better in a suit than the last few Labour leaders, how could he lose? :(

The Mikel Arteta of politics.
 
Raven said:
Why does he vote Labour then? Have you ever asked him?
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We talk politics all the time, which is often very stressful. If you're looking for a cogent framework from which he derives a conclusion then I'm at a loss. Like most folk he's a gumbo of conflicting ideas, opinions and emotions out of which bubble up a bunch of positions. If pushed I'd say tradition and memory cause him to still vote Labour. He always has done. He remembers what the Tories visited on his town in the eighties. He spent his working life interacting with them and fighting his corner against their education policies. I'd say he still votes red because despite his belief that Labour have abandoned working class people in favour of a sort of minority driven US style liberalism they still represent the interests of the general poor more than the Tories. He recognises that despite the bluster and the rhetoric the abiding truth remains that the Tories couldn't give less of a shit for the people of places like Hartlepool. This makes him precisely the captive Labour have relied on for decades. Not really represented, not really helped and generally ignored even in the rhetoric.
 
nimic said:
Doesn't that mean you were never actually a Labour supporter, though, if the only reason you can think of why you used to be a Labour voter is "blind loyalty effect"? So how can you complain about Labour "losing Labour voters", when the only thing that apparently changed was you?
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i think theres a difference between supporters and voters. I think a lot more have questioned why they are voting labour. I’m not complaining about it its just an interesting topic.

if all the voters who ‘lent their votes to the tories’ have actually become disenfranchised, do you think that the labour party can only expect the old lib dem footfall? How are they going to reintegrate with voters?
 
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