Keir Starmer Labour Leader
- Thread starter Damien
- Start date
Getting rid of Nandy would be a big mistake.
Not an old chestnut, just basics of leadership. You have to bring people along with you.
People with scepticism you can’t bucket as being fearful, it’s more along the lines that they simply don’t believe in it.
However the listening aspect is key here, Labour for too long have been caught up in their echo chamber, believing that their approach would win votes. If a party wants to influence change then it needs to get power, it’s not going to do that by pontificating and turning off the mass electorate at the sides. I hate to say it, but it’s going to need wholesale change from Starmer for voters to take notice.
One of the worst prime ministers in the history of this country but Labour want to get a gun and keep shooting themselves. No wonder there isn’t any alternative. Thought some of the results were outside of Starmer’s control such as Hartlepool but have lost all respect for him with all of this. It’s worse than Corbyn.
It's like football transfer time on twitter at the moment, lots of 'ITK's making stuff up that sounds like it might be true and gullible people picking up on it if it suits their own narrative. I'll wait for genuine news before even thinking about it.
But yes, it would be a big mistake, if it actually happened, and wasn't just invented shite.
Wrong thread mate
Crickey. Another old chestnut. Of course Labour have been listening.
For someone who so enthusiastically espouses listening as the answer, it's surprising that you don't see fit to apply that virtue to your own discourse.
And really, are people so precious that the slightest perceived insult(it really wasn't even that, read it again) is enough for them to turn off entirely? I'm not buying it. If you can manage to vote right wing with some of the seriously odious figures on the far right, why is that okay but you can't ignore the extreme SJW types on twitter(or redcafe). Some of them might well be batshit crazy, but in general they are fighting for equality, not division and hate.
When the people they vote for instead literally bung money to their mates and through continued incompetence, cause the deaths of people in this county. No hyperbole needed. I don't believe that this feigned indignation to any perceived slight is anything other than that. It's simply a tactic to avoid talking about the real issues.
We need more socialism in this country. Now whether that is to nationalise some utilities, services and a couple of other key industries and stop. Or to go further and build an actual socialist economy is a really good discussion to have, or indeed, discuss why the status quo is the best option. I don't know many people left of myself on fiscal policies. But even I wouldn't launch us into a full blown destruction of capitalism. Some aspects of it do work well, when properly regulated. But there are also many examples of well run economies which don't rely so completely upon 'the market' to solve all issues in the way that we do.
Many, a majority in fact, in this country(multiple polls have shown over recent years) support the first step. Few support the second step, and even fewer are advocating for it. So the people who were (.........insert your own word here........) that Corbyn would 'take it too far' are probably those that need to be convinced. Rather than those who are staunchly freemarket.
I'd happily talk about this further, but I suspect that's enough for us to disagree on for one post.
If you have the apetite though, I'll gladly talk about the problems caused by mass immigration. Brexit. The lack of funding for poorer areas. The widespread feeling that white british people are being marginalised. Lack of affordable housing. Or anything else you feel Labour haven't been listening to.
So he is doing a Jose now? Throwing everyone under the bus?
Labour are completely fecked for a generation because of a number of demographic and media reasons, largely unrelated to Starmer, or Corbyn, and only inadvertently to Blair & Brown.. though they seem very intent on making it unnecessarily even worse
The major problems being..
1. That homeowning over 65s have an ungodly amount of sway over any elections in this country, as a byproduct of being from a post-war boomer generation, born into an unprecedented era of social funding and opportunity, who subsequently voted to lower their own taxes and incentivise property, whilst also having less kids than their parents - thus ruining society for anyone but them, and making it impossible to ever outvote them..
2. That most of their kids, or the kids of these kids (who were even lesser still) went off into the Cities to find work and opportunity - this is the Blair & Brown bit, who invested in education in Labour areas, but not the areas themselves - thus ensuring they didn’t take their newfound metropolitanism anywhere valuable vote wise, except to a place that was already in lock step anyway, but leaving their parents and grandparents in myriad former Labour towns, now bereft of all the clever young dynamic people that would normally begat the kind of investment needed to modernise said places... and also stop them reading the tabloids
3. That the overwhelmingly right leaning media in the UK has an obvious and avowed agenda to push the Labour Party as Right as it can, for obvious ownership reasons, and has thus very successfully, but much less accurately, managed to redefine the idea of “working class” and specifically the “Former Labour Red Wall” type of working class, as entirely the preserve of elder, white, retired and mostly home owning people in places with declining cultural relevance... in other words - location aside - not a million miles away from your general Tory voter
... Whilst ALSO managing to effectively demonise anyone in a City, regardless of their circumstances, race and statistically much greater chances of economic discomfort as “woke out of touch elites”... thus ensuring that any Labour failure, from either the left or centre, can be blamed on not being sufficiently in step with the kind of voters naturally inclined to vote Tory anyway.
What Labour has to decide, is whether it wants to accept this annoying but unfortunate reality, and try and build a party for the future, aimed at getting as many young people and non-voters on board as it can, for the eventual moment when it can potentially seize the zeitgeist...
Or, whether it wants to aim for a Hail Mary short term shot at “electability” by flagellating itself at the feet of Brexit votes this incarnation of the party has been openly calling idiots and trying to relitigate against for 5 years...but at the expense of all the newer and mostly younger voters it’s also been calling idiots too
What this current election shit show has hopefully shown (though it almost certainly won’t be heeded) is that the latter can’t be achieved by purposefully shitting on the base you already had, in the vein hope of placating both James O Brien and the kind of people his entire career is predicated on insulting ....
The idea that simply NOT being Jeremy Corbyn is enough to win has been conclusively rebuffed in this very thread, by the most prominently engaged Tory voter in his very first post! Where he claimed the push back against Brexit was the primary reason for his anti-Labour stance, and that “the socialists” were at fault for this!....meaning the only thing the aggressive Centrist attempt to turn Corbyn’s Labour into a “more electable” Remain party did, was conflate the only thing plausibly electable about him to the people they’re now trying to win over, with the thing they found most unelectable!.... and their solution to this was to replace him with the architect of this manoeuvre!...fecking genius guys!
In essence all this centrist incarnation of the party has achieved, is the impressive feat of calling both the Brexiters to the right of them that they want to win around, and the young disenfranchised lefty’s they want to keep, unreasonable brainwashed idiots, and then been implausibly baffled why nobody voted for them.
The major problems being..
1. That homeowning over 65s have an ungodly amount of sway over any elections in this country, as a byproduct of being from a post-war boomer generation, born into an unprecedented era of social funding and opportunity, who subsequently voted to lower their own taxes and incentivise property, whilst also having less kids than their parents - thus ruining society for anyone but them, and making it impossible to ever outvote them..
2. That most of their kids, or the kids of these kids (who were even lesser still) went off into the Cities to find work and opportunity - this is the Blair & Brown bit, who invested in education in Labour areas, but not the areas themselves - thus ensuring they didn’t take their newfound metropolitanism anywhere valuable vote wise, except to a place that was already in lock step anyway, but leaving their parents and grandparents in myriad former Labour towns, now bereft of all the clever young dynamic people that would normally begat the kind of investment needed to modernise said places... and also stop them reading the tabloids
3. That the overwhelmingly right leaning media in the UK has an obvious and avowed agenda to push the Labour Party as Right as it can, for obvious ownership reasons, and has thus very successfully, but much less accurately, managed to redefine the idea of “working class” and specifically the “Former Labour Red Wall” type of working class, as entirely the preserve of elder, white, retired and mostly home owning people in places with declining cultural relevance... in other words - location aside - not a million miles away from your general Tory voter
... Whilst ALSO managing to effectively demonise anyone in a City, regardless of their circumstances, race and statistically much greater chances of economic discomfort as “woke out of touch elites”... thus ensuring that any Labour failure, from either the left or centre, can be blamed on not being sufficiently in step with the kind of voters naturally inclined to vote Tory anyway.
What Labour has to decide, is whether it wants to accept this annoying but unfortunate reality, and try and build a party for the future, aimed at getting as many young people and non-voters on board as it can, for the eventual moment when it can potentially seize the zeitgeist...
Or, whether it wants to aim for a Hail Mary short term shot at “electability” by flagellating itself at the feet of Brexit votes this incarnation of the party has been openly calling idiots and trying to relitigate against for 5 years...but at the expense of all the newer and mostly younger voters it’s also been calling idiots too
What this current election shit show has hopefully shown (though it almost certainly won’t be heeded) is that the latter can’t be achieved by purposefully shitting on the base you already had, in the vein hope of placating both James O Brien and the kind of people his entire career is predicated on insulting ....
The idea that simply NOT being Jeremy Corbyn is enough to win has been conclusively rebuffed in this very thread, by the most prominently engaged Tory voter in his very first post! Where he claimed the push back against Brexit was the primary reason for his anti-Labour stance, and that “the socialists” were at fault for this!....meaning the only thing the aggressive Centrist attempt to turn Corbyn’s Labour into a “more electable” Remain party did, was conflate the only thing plausibly electable about him to the people they’re now trying to win over, with the thing they found most unelectable!.... and their solution to this was to replace him with the architect of this manoeuvre!...fecking genius guys!
In essence all this centrist incarnation of the party has achieved, is the impressive feat of calling both the Brexiters to the right of them that they want to win around, and the young disenfranchised lefty’s they want to keep, unreasonable brainwashed idiots, and then been implausibly baffled why nobody voted for them.
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Good point.
Issue i take with this is labour policies are universally popular in polling and in blind trials, especially under corbyn, but the second it comes to an election cycle they get drowned in press negativity and people repeating the same cliches against them with no factual basis. Then we say "we need a change in leader" that happens but it doesn't change anything, and we are back to policies again.
What on earth is going on here. Raynor and likely Nandy going too?
Quite unbelievable how out of touch they are with the people and the roots of the party.
Quite unbelievable how out of touch they are with the people and the roots of the party.
Completely agree with this.
Interesting thread. Khan is probably going to stay Mayor, as a result of the very people Kier has been alienating. It won’t stay that way however, I suspect the next general election will be a bloodbath for Labour with the black vote, unless Kier does a complete 180.
Very good post @Mockney
I want a Labour government, I don’t care what ilk at this point... and if the only way to get there ASAP is to sack off young people and chase the grey racist vote, fine, feck it....I want my kid to grow up in a non-Thunderdome future...But you can’t run the party on the aesthetic of a fecking Times editorial Remain columnist and then expect to win Brexiters back by saying “Hey guys, we got rid of the guy that we hated for being potentially too Brexity!”
It's not just me saying it, even Burnham today came out with the same thing. My opinion is still the same from the last general election (you can search on my post history on that). The results should indicate that they're not listening to the electorate (it was the same for the last GE), for example Labour thought in their mind that the best candidate to field in the by-election was a pro-remain candidate, in an area which voted predominantly for Brexit. How does the electorate there feel that Labour understand them? It's a hypothetical question, but it's simple things like knowing your audience which is just basic level campaigning. This is even before you get to policy stages, which I still don't think Labour are fully there on.
I agree that an extent of the discussion, certainly an obvious mention is around the economy around housing is one that will huge benefit from some socialist policy on. Nationalisation probably needs to be looked at on a case by case basis to see whether genuine benefits is achieved or whether the status of being nationalised is nothing more than a burden of debt to the tax payer. Government bodies/businesses don't tend to be the most competent or efficiently ran organisations.
Agree on that, however for some reason some of the Labour supporters seem to think the ballot can be won via Twitter. The people that need convincing are a silent majority and unfortunately that needs some true campaign management, not the piss up in a brewery approach that has existed for the last half a decade in Labour.
You're preaching to the converted on the problems and the reasons behind them we're on the same page, my issues are more around the campaigning and whether they'rhere. Policies and ideologies are only useful if you have power and majority to influence and implement them. Labour are going to have to start playing the game if they want to be more than just the marginalised opposition on the sidelines.
I see this argument all to often here, but essentially there weren't popular when it came to the all important election vote which is what matters. It's like Liverpool fans celebrating that they're top of the fair play league, it doesn't mean anything. So the justification that everything is ok, it's just that pesky press again, is a weak argument. It's boils down to weak decisions in leaders over the years, and hopefully now this is a wake up call for Starmer to start playing the game, clearing out some of the deadwood in the party, and put into place a team that the electorate can connect with.
do you want free internet? Yes please
the issue is the practicality of these policies, and the fact that they are cooked up in focus groups. Stand by your beliefs. Labour were just throwing out uncosted policies hoping something would stick.
That entire manifesto was costed, you can google it in 10 seconds. Also virtually every policy is made using focus groups to check its feasibility, Tory's included.
Which is why I indicated there's something else going on apposed to labour's policy positions, if they are supported by the electorate when it comes to base ideology, at least economically, but when the election comes they cant get elected? ive made other posts about this, but TLDR fptp Electoral system, Voter turnout in key areas, Tory's own the retiree's that are untouchable as a bloc, media bias, Brexit splitting voting lines more than any other party etc etc
Its not really, The main criticisms levied at labour over the past decade, outside of the blame game over the 2008 crash ( they had nothing to do with the US mortgage bubble bursting other than the fact the UK is a massive finance hub) and the generic "far left socialist bad", have been a rotation between "Weak leader/bad leadership" or "Bad policies/moving away from the electorate". Whenever 1 of these changes the focus swaps to the other, which at this point is clearly just a bait and switch to cover the fact that the cards are so far stacked against them ie 4 majorities in the last century against the most powerful electoral force in the western world, indicates a fundamental problem with our democracy.
Everything is not ok, there are problems with labour, the right of the party would rather have the tory's win elections than allow a shift the the left which is what the party membership wanted. the entire apparatus of the party structure internally is a joke, and rife with division. Left wing parties and movements all over the world tend to have this problem, they purity test each other while right wing groups will band together at clutch moments, which is how you get scenarios where christian voting blocks will back donald trump, someone so far away from christian values and ideals simply because he is for the time being "on their team" on a couple of issues, and wears a red tie not a blue one.
I find this sentence perfect in a way, honestly not taking a swipe at you here as this is a football forum, but the "Footballification" of politics, even in the way that sentence is structured, is analogous of the greater problem at work here. None of this vague critique, which is constantly levelled against labour is the problem, but people have continuously bought the narrative hook line and sinker, and if someone as sensible as I'm sure you are has bought it, then the electorate at large has as well. The general public are morons by and large, in every country, and have no idea what they're voting for.
Some chatter going on around Starmer's personal life. If the rumours are true, then he's just a compete idiot and will have to resign in the coming days.
Cheeky, PM me?
He has been leader for a year, how can he have no policies, no manifesto, no vision, no ideas? He is a vacuum and his fence sitting represents everything that puts people off engaging with politics.
Hold on to your hats guys. A lot of really stupid shit is about to happen.
Rayner is getting the blame for the campaign (for some reason) and has been sacked as chairman. She was apparently meant to be defending Starmer on Marr, now we have John mcdonnell going on who is normally quite diplomatic but has responded to the above news about Rayner by calling Starmer a coward.
And we haven't seen the full reshuffle yet.
Rayner is getting the blame for the campaign (for some reason) and has been sacked as chairman. She was apparently meant to be defending Starmer on Marr, now we have John mcdonnell going on who is normally quite diplomatic but has responded to the above news about Rayner by calling Starmer a coward.
And we haven't seen the full reshuffle yet.
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they were throwing out new policies like sweets, without any real direction.
It was not a coherent manifesto, and no the electorate didn’t believe it.
Local Elections over, general election 4 years away.
If there was ever a time to burn Labour to the ground and rebuild it, it’s now.
If there was ever a time to burn Labour to the ground and rebuild it, it’s now.
I have a feeling the next general election may be sooner than 2024.
why do you think that? With the fixed terms there’s no justification or desire to do so from the Tories. It happened previously due to brexit.
Only if Boris gets stabbed in the back by someone in the Tory party. He has no need to increase the majority
Labour will remain so long as election are done using the first past the post system. It’s in neither side’s interest to split the party completely
If Labour as still in disarray when Boris’ time is up you’re probably right. Whenever Boris leaves you’ll some cannibalism and I’m not convinced this 80 majority are united over anything other than Brexit and that’s been masked by the pandemic so far with BAU being virtually non-existent. So whoever wins the next Tory leadership race will need a general election to get a mandate within their own party.
Wow. What has actually happened to the Labour Party? First we saw it fall apart now we’re witnessing it self-imploding. What way back from all of this?
Without A Vision, Labour Is Heading For Catastrophe
The Budget this year hinted at the economic pain (in terms of significant tax increases and spending cuts) starting from around 2023/24. I can see them wanting to get an election out of the way before that. It was also in the Tory manifesto to repeal the Fixed Term Parliaments Act - as we've seen it doesn't really 'fix' terms anyway, plenty of ways around it.
One caveat would be that boundary changes (which look favourable for the Tories) aren't due to come in until 2023. I imagine they'd prefer to fight the next election on the new boundaries rather than the current ones again.