Keir Starmer Labour Leader

nickm said:
Digging a hole with who though? Only with people who think that labour looking like an undisciplined rabble, doesn't matter.
Click to expand...

Huh? He's digging a hole in his own party already never mind the with people striking, the people going to strike and the people that will back them for it.

The more he tries to steal votes from the right the more he bleeds them from the left.
 
Blair was hated by the left long before Iraq and would have been even had Iraq not happened. Atlee and Wilson, despite the convenient revisionism, were despised contemporaneously by the hard left during their tenures who caused them just as much or more of a headache than any Tory opposition . Every successful Labour leader post-war has found themselves at loggerheads with the hard-left with Foot and Corbyn being the two exceptions. And that’s a very generous inclusive definition of the word ‘successful’


The hard left is the politics of principle and protest and by itself that isn’t a bad thing but people who are fundamentally indifferent to winning power aren’t the best people to lead political parties. Wanting to control the Labour Party means more to them than a desire to control the Commons ever has.

Again, this isn’t an immoral stance by any means - you could argue being motivated by principle and not power is laudable. But we need to stop pretending this isn’t the fundamental divide in the Labour movement - those who would compromise to achieve power and those who will never compromise and would be perfectly content if that meant they’d never win a general election as a consequence

The idea you can claim to actively seek power without compromising your principles or equally the idea you genuinely want power whilst also refusing to broaden your appeal beyond those who already agrees with you are two equally disingenuous arguments

Personally an imperfect Labour government will always be preferable to any Tory one but i know most on the hard left would disagree passionately with and would rather see Labour in opposition than see it in government implementing policies they’d see as ‘Tory lite’.
 
Last edited:
stw2022 said:
Again, this isn’t an immoral stance by any means - you could argue being motivated by principle and not power is laudable. But we need to stop pretending this isn’t the fundamental divide in the Labour movement - those who would compromise to achieve power and those who will never compromise and would happily if that meant they’d never win a general election as a consequence
Click to expand...
if you compromise the basics to achieve power, like health, housing, education, energy, and a living wage, then what is the point of power? this isn't the moment for centrist compromises. all centrism moves to the right by law of nature. this is because centrism does not really exist. there are people who have access to the above and there are people who do not. you choose which side you want to represent. a compromise that achieves these things is one most people will accept. a compromise that installs labour as government which operates to the same playbook as is the current one is not something most people will accept.

4m people in the uk use foodbanks. a quarter of the population skips meals because of poverty. 68% of the population chooses not to use heating because they can't afford it. you can't compromise with this if the compromise doesn't eradicate these conditions. it's dickensian.

in the worst inflation crisis and cost of living crisis since the great depression, starmer chose to sack the shadow transport minister for standing on a picket line and showing solidarity with the unions. in this same moment, corporate profits in the energy sector and pretty much everywhere else are going through the roof. the wealthiest continue to grow more wealthy. generational gaps that cannot be overcome by hard work. it's a debt trap. so what compromise can you make with that? starmer will run on these issues but will not tell anyone his plan to solve it. has not told anyone.
 
Last edited:
stw2022 said:
Blair was hated by the left long before Iraq and would have been even had Iraq not happened. Atlee and Wilson, despite the convenient revisionism, were despised contemporaneously by the hard left during their tenures who caused them just as much or more of a headache than any Tory opposition . Every successful Labour leader post-war has found themselves at loggerheads with the hard-left with Foot and Corbyn being the two exceptions. And that’s a very generous inclusive definition of the word ‘successful’


The hard left is the politics of principle and protest and by itself that isn’t a bad thing but people who are fundamentally indifferent to winning power aren’t the best people to lead political parties. Wanting to control the Labour Party means more to them than a desire to control the Commons ever has.

Again, this isn’t an immoral stance by any means - you could argue being motivated by principle and not power is laudable. But we need to stop pretending this isn’t the fundamental divide in the Labour movement - those who would compromise to achieve power and those who will never compromise and would be perfectly content if that meant they’d never win a general election as a consequence

The idea you can claim to actively seek power without compromising your principles or equally the idea you genuinely want power whilst also refusing to broaden your appeal beyond those who already agrees with you are two equally disingenuous arguments

Personally an imperfect Labour government will always be preferable to any Tory one but i know most on the hard left would disagree passionately with and would rather see Labour in opposition than see it in government implementing policies they’d see as ‘Tory lite’.
Click to expand...
The bolded is quite the myth. Do you remember Starmers leadership pitch? He was supposed to have progressive policies in a more electable package, stopping infighting and bring together the party, the perfect combination. That is what many of the, supposedly, "hard left" Labour members voted for.

They voted for compromise, they got the opposite from Starmer.
 
neverdie said:
if you compromise the basics to achieve power, like health, housing, education, energy, and a living wage, then what is the point of power? this isn't the moment for centrist compromises. all centrism moves to the right by law of nature. this is because centrism does not really exist. there are people who have access to the above and there are people who do not. you choose which side you want to represent. a compromise that achieves these things is one most people will accept. a compromise that installs labour as government which operates to the same playbook as is the current one is not something most people will accept.

4m people in the uk use foodbanks. a quarter of the population skips meals because of poverty. 68% of the population chooses not to use heating because they can't afford it. you can't compromise with this if the compromise doesn't eradicate these conditions. it's dickensian.

in the worst inflation crisis and cost of living crisis since the great depression, starmer chose to sack the shadow transport minister for standing on a picket line and showing solidarity with the unions. in this same moment, corporate profits in the energy sector and pretty much everywhere else are going through the roof. the wealthiest continue to grow more wealthy. generational gaps that cannot be overcome by hard work. it's a debt trap. so what compromise can you make with that? starmer will run on these issues but will not tell anyone his plan to solve it. has not told anyone.
Click to expand...
Very well said, couldn’t agree more. The problem is the Tories have rigged the game and for that reason it’s nearly impossible to win playing fair. One day I hope people fight back but I won’t hold out hope it will be in my lifetime.
 
jeff_goldblum said:
This is from the 1994 conference speech @nickm

"Over the past year we have put forward a range of detailed policies to fight crime, policies that are tough on crime, measures to tackle juvenile offending, to crack down on illegal firearms, to punish properly crimes of violence, including racial violence, to give victims the right to be consulted before charges are dropped or changed; and policies that are tough on the causes of crime - a comprehensive crime prevention programme, an anti-drugs initiative, long-term measures to break the culture of drugs, family instability, high unemployment and urban squalor in which some of the worst criminals are brought up."
Click to expand...
Fair enough, looks like my memory is wrong.
 
stw2022 said:
Blair was hated by the left long before Iraq and would have been even had Iraq not happened. Atlee and Wilson, despite the convenient revisionism, were despised contemporaneously by the hard left during their tenures who caused them just as much or more of a headache than any Tory opposition . Every successful Labour leader post-war has found themselves at loggerheads with the hard-left with Foot and Corbyn being the two exceptions. And that’s a very generous inclusive definition of the word ‘successful’


The hard left is the politics of principle and protest and by itself that isn’t a bad thing but people who are fundamentally indifferent to winning power aren’t the best people to lead political parties. Wanting to control the Labour Party means more to them than a desire to control the Commons ever has.

Again, this isn’t an immoral stance by any means - you could argue being motivated by principle and not power is laudable. But we need to stop pretending this isn’t the fundamental divide in the Labour movement - those who would compromise to achieve power and those who will never compromise and would be perfectly content if that meant they’d never win a general election as a consequence

The idea you can claim to actively seek power without compromising your principles or equally the idea you genuinely want power whilst also refusing to broaden your appeal beyond those who already agrees with you are two equally disingenuous arguments

Personally an imperfect Labour government will always be preferable to any Tory one but i know most on the hard left would disagree passionately with and would rather see Labour in opposition than see it in government implementing policies they’d see as ‘Tory lite’.
Click to expand...
I'm quite hard left in my views, I agree with everything here. Were being ruled by a bunch of baboons and yet the opposition appears to be on the verge of self destruction...
 
TrustInJanuzaj said:
Very well said, couldn’t agree more. The problem is the Tories have rigged the game and for that reason it’s nearly impossible to win playing fair. One day I hope people fight back but I won’t hold out hope it will be in my lifetime.
Click to expand...
Without winning elections how is anything going to change. We have a right wing press in cahoots with a military industrial complex that treats the left as commie traitors. Without winning power and control that ain't ever going to change.
 
Superden said:
Without winning elections how is anything going to change. We have a right wing press in cahoots with a military industrial complex that treats the left as commie traitors. Without winning power and control that ain't ever going to change.
Click to expand...
the last time a "centrist" won power from the "left", the "military industrial complex" received their biggest round of public to private wealth transfers since when? vietnam? you cannot win power from a "centrist" position and expect the "left" to come out of it better. also, starmer is in cahoots with the right wing press. he's literally doing their job for them. read that for what it is instead of trying to peer into some deeper underlying strategy. the man is out for the same agenda as the tories with an aesthetic facelift. starmer is to the uk what biden was to the us. the message is "nothing will fundamentally change".
 
Democracy has always been the biggest trick for the electorate. It doesn't matter which party is in power, they never serve ordinary people, it's literally all about power and control.

I gave up on politics years ago, it's the most pointless distraction going. So much time spent arguing over and over, causing divisions, lies, smears. It's just a game they play that we are pawns in. I honestly don't know why anybody bothers with it.

Unless enough people fight back and we have a revolution to set us free from the politically classes who are working against us, then you may as well shut up and put up. You never win against the machine.
 
neverdie said:
the last time a "centrist" won power from the "left", the "military industrial complex" received their biggest round of public to private wealth transfers since when? vietnam? you cannot win power from a "centrist" position and expect the "left" to come out of it better. also, starmer is in cahoots with the right wing press. he's literally doing their job for them. read that for what it is instead of trying to peer into some deeper underlying strategy. the man is out for the same agenda as the tories with an aesthetic facelift. starmer is to the uk what biden was to the us. the message is "nothing will fundamentally change".
Click to expand...

To be fair, there was a lot that Labour Government did which made sure my family's poverty was alleviated. Nowhere near as much as they could have done and should have done with hindsight and those giant majorities. On reading it back I don't think you are suggesting that they did no good, but just wanted to add my point.
 
Frosty said:
To be fair, there was a lot that Labour Government did which made sure my family's poverty was alleviated. Nowhere near as much as they could have done and should have done with hindsight and those giant majorities. On reading it back I don't think you are suggesting that they did no good, but just wanted to add my point.
Click to expand...
yeah i don't write off everything they did i just find it odd to use that government as a good example of centrism and election winning being a way to trump the mic. that's literally the entire problem with blair's tenure. or 90% of it.
 
neverdie said:
yeah i don't write off everything they did i just find it odd to use that government as a good example of centrism and election winning being a way to trump the mic. that's literally the entire problem with blair's tenure. or 90% of it.
Click to expand...

Yes, after 13 years of power there are very few lasting legacies that weren't undone by austerity and 12 years of Tory rule. I think Labour had an opportunity to entrench generational change - similar to Thatcher's legacy which we are still economically living with, or Attlee's welfare state which, while battered and bruised, has not been fully undone over 70 years later.
 
I've borrowed Labour's own list of their top 50 achievements in Government. Some are lasting - devolution in particular. Most however are linked to public spending and have been reversed by Tory rule, sadly:


  • Longest period of sustained low inflation since the 60s.
  • Low mortgage rates.
  • Introduced the National Minimum Wage and raised it to £5.52.
  • Over 14,000 more police in England and Wales.
  • Cut overall crime by 32 per cent.
  • Record levels of literacy and numeracy in schools.
  • Young people achieving some of the best ever results at 14, 16, and 18.
  • Funding for every pupil in England has doubled.
  • Employment is at its highest level ever.
  • Written off up to 100 per cent of debt owed by poorest countries.
  • 85,000 more nurses.
  • 32,000 more doctors.
  • Brought back matrons to hospital wards.
  • Devolved power to the Scottish Parliament.
  • Devolved power to the Welsh Assembly.
  • Dads now get paternity leave of 2 weeks for the first time.
  • NHS Direct offering free convenient patient advice.
  • Gift aid was worth £828 million to charities last year.
  • Restored city-wide government to London.
  • Record number of students in higher education.
  • Child benefit up 26 per cent since 1997.
  • Delivered 2,200 Sure Start Children’s Centres.
  • Introduced the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
  • £200 winter fuel payment to pensioners & up to £300 for over-80s.
  • On course to exceed our Kyoto target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
  • Restored devolved government to Northern Ireland.
  • Over 36,000 more teachers in England and 274,000 more support staff and teaching assistants.
  • All full time workers now have a right to 24 days paid holiday.
  • A million pensioners lifted out of poverty.
  • 600,000 children lifted out of relative poverty.
  • Introduced child tax credit giving more money to parents.
  • Scrapped Section 28 and introduced Civil Partnerships.
  • Brought over 1 million social homes up to standard.
  • Inpatient waiting lists down by over half a million since 1997.
  • Banned fox hunting.
  • Cleanest rivers, beaches, drinking water and air since before the industrial revolution.
  • Free TV licences for over-75s.
  • Banned fur farming and the testing of cosmetics on animals.
  • Free breast cancer screening for all women aged between 50-70.
  • Free off peak local bus travel for over-60s.
  • New Deal – helped over 1.8 million people into work.
  • Over 3 million child trust funds have been started.
  • Free eye test for over 60s.
  • More than doubled the number of apprenticeships.
  • Free entry to national museums and galleries.
  • Overseas aid budget more than doubled.
  • Heart disease deaths down by 150,000 and cancer deaths down by 50,000.
  • Cut long-term youth unemployment by 75 per cent.
  • Free nursery places for every three and four-year-olds.
  • Free fruit for most four to six-year-olds at school.
 
stw2022 said:
Blair was hated by the left long before Iraq and would have been even had Iraq not happened. Atlee and Wilson, despite the convenient revisionism, were despised contemporaneously by the hard left during their tenures who caused them just as much or more of a headache than any Tory opposition . Every successful Labour leader post-war has found themselves at loggerheads with the hard-left with Foot and Corbyn being the two exceptions. And that’s a very generous inclusive definition of the word ‘successful’


The hard left is the politics of principle and protest and by itself that isn’t a bad thing but people who are fundamentally indifferent to winning power aren’t the best people to lead political parties. Wanting to control the Labour Party means more to them than a desire to control the Commons ever has.

Again, this isn’t an immoral stance by any means - you could argue being motivated by principle and not power is laudable. But we need to stop pretending this isn’t the fundamental divide in the Labour movement - those who would compromise to achieve power and those who will never compromise and would be perfectly content if that meant they’d never win a general election as a consequence

The idea you can claim to actively seek power without compromising your principles or equally the idea you genuinely want power whilst also refusing to broaden your appeal beyond those who already agrees with you are two equally disingenuous arguments

Personally an imperfect Labour government will always be preferable to any Tory one but i know most on the hard left would disagree passionately with and would rather see Labour in opposition than see it in government implementing policies they’d see as ‘Tory lite’.
Click to expand...

Isn't his all a meaningless rant against the hard left? In reality the 'hard left' did compromise with Starmer, that was the whole deal. RLB was the uncompromising candidate and most turned away from that option.

The compromise is a soft left green agenda but we're yet to get that. Right now it's very much the right of the party who are unwilling to compromise from their ideological centrism, largely because they have no plan other than being Tory Lite and hoping the other guys feck it up.

There's a good chance Truss will go further right and Labour will be led further right themselves.
 
Smores said:
Isn't his all a meaningless rant against the hard left? In reality the 'hard left' did compromise with Starmer, that was the whole deal. RLB was the uncompromising candidate and most turned away from that option.

The compromise is a soft left green agenda but we're yet to get that. Right now it's very much the right of the party who are unwilling to compromise from their ideological centrism, largely because they have no plan other than being Tory Lite and hoping the other guys feck it up.

There's a good chance Truss will go further right and Labour will be led further right themselves.
Click to expand...
You’re absolutely correct. Starmer got in because the pledges he ran on were seen as a palatable compromise, people are understandably angry at him because he dropped all of them immediately and veered further right.

Aside from anything the base Starmer did have on becoming leader now has zero faith in him because who’s to say he won’t just drop his policies if he were to win? He has previous after all.
 
phelans shorts said:
You’re absolutely correct. Starmer got in because the pledges he ran on were seen as a palatable compromise, people are understandably angry at him because he dropped all of them immediately and veered further right.

Aside from anything the base Starmer did have on becoming leader now has zero faith in him because who’s to say he won’t just drop his policies if he were to win? He has previous after all.
Click to expand...
This hasn't happened though. It's exaggerated nonsense based on twitter outrage.
 
Fluctuation0161 said:
Are you sure about that?

Starmer: I’m ready to break pledges to make Labour electable
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/keir-starmer-labour-conference-pledges-b1928605.html
Click to expand...

We are talking about these pledges right?:

https://keirstarmer.com/plans/10-pledges/

He's walked back on common ownership saying it will only apply to rail due to the state of public finances. And the EU free movement situation. I guess because they don't want to fight another Brexit election after they lost the last one so badly.

Apart from that it's all pretty much in tact? As of now at least.
 
neverdie said:
the last time a "centrist" won power from the "left", the "military industrial complex" received their biggest round of public to private wealth transfers since when? vietnam? you cannot win power from a "centrist" position and expect the "left" to come out of it better. also, starmer is in cahoots with the right wing press. he's literally doing their job for them. read that for what it is instead of trying to peer into some deeper underlying strategy. the man is out for the same agenda as the tories with an aesthetic facelift. starmer is to the uk what biden was to the us. the message is "nothing will fundamentally change".
Click to expand...

This is very unfair to Biden. He actually had some policies. Not sure how many he's been able to get over the line but he came to power promising infrastructure investment, COVID relief payments, a focus on green policy and investment, and trying to stop and reverse the back slide of US democracy. His message was pretty clear on these things, at least about what he wanted to do.

I don't think people would be too upset if Starmer picked a handful of similar types of policy and really tried to drive them home while perhaps glossing over some of the more traditional Labour policies like more funding for healthcare, policing, "liberal" border policy (for which read not inhuman) etc. If you could clearly point to one or two Starmer policies it seemed like he really believed in I think lefties might give him the benefit of the doubt. I genuinely couldn't tell you one thing I think he'd do if he were PM. Maybe sort out the mess with legal aid in the justice system? And that only because his mate Lammy has always felt very strongly about it.

There's keeping your powder dry and then there's locking your powder in an airtight bank vault and welding it shut.
 
:lol:Just seen Frankie Boyle's joke from ages ago apparently about Starmer "looking like someone playing a Prime Minister in an old Spice Girls video".
 
TwoSheds said:
This is very unfair to Biden. He actually had some policies. Not sure how many he's been able to get over the line but he came to power promising infrastructure investment, COVID relief payments, a focus on green policy and investment, and trying to stop and reverse the back slide of US democracy. His message was pretty clear on these things, at least about what he wanted to do.

I don't think people would be too upset if Starmer picked a handful of similar types of policy and really tried to drive them home while perhaps glossing over some of the more traditional Labour policies like more funding for healthcare, policing, "liberal" border policy (for which read not inhuman) etc. If you could clearly point to one or two Starmer policies it seemed like he really believed in I think lefties might give him the benefit of the doubt. I genuinely couldn't tell you one thing I think he'd do if he were PM. Maybe sort out the mess with legal aid in the justice system? And that only because his mate Lammy has always felt very strongly about it.

There's keeping your powder dry and then there's locking your powder in an airtight bank vault and welding it shut.
Click to expand...
yeah you're right biden did actually run on a decent policy platform. it's his lack of implementation that has been the problem. he'll live or die by his recent reconcilliation bill and the chips bill. a lot of corporate giveaways but people won't care if it works. the irony is that corbyn had similar policies to biden minus things like state owned broadband. basic green new deal stuff.
 
Last edited:
Cloudface said:
We are talking about these pledges right?:

https://keirstarmer.com/plans/10-pledges/

He's walked back on common ownership saying it will only apply to rail due to the state of public finances. And the EU free movement situation. I guess because they don't want to fight another Brexit election after they lost the last one so badly.

Apart from that it's all pretty much in tact? As of now at least.
Click to expand...

"I promise that I will maintain our radical values" - quite obviously not happening at all, he is currently doing feck all to support strikers and trade unions

"the moral case for socialism" - the party is nothing close to being socialist at this point in time

Here's an article that illustrates how basically all of the pledges have been undermined by more recent actions/positions
https://www.express.co.uk/news/poli...oris-johnson-10-pledges-jeremy-corbyn-spt/amp

Plus the fact that most of these pledges still have absolutely no actual policy and are mostly vague promises to do something. If he actually cared about these pledges, why is there still no policy?
 
Labour need a VOC in starmer tbh. Pathetic leadership. Tories are there for the taking and his bullshit is leading to infighting when the party should be getting the Tories out.
 


Worth reading.

Key quotes:

Graham told The Observer: “Workers are being crushed here. I think there’s a real crossroads here for Labour. I don’t know anyone who thinks what happened to Sam Tarry is correct. He’s on a picket line. He’s talking about wages.

“Is Labour now saying that people should have a national wage cut? If you’re not keeping up with inflation, you are having a cut in pay.”

She said Unite’s funding of the party would be debated by union members at a meeting next summer, and warned that the last time the matter was debated it was “only narrowly won” and that it is “harder and harder to defend”.

“There’s no point giving money to a party that is basically sticking two fingers up to workers. It’s almost like an abusive relationship. You are the voice of workers in Westminster. We are their voice on the ground. I think it’s a very difficult conversation and I think that members will decide,” she said.
Click to expand...
 
SalfordRed18 said:
Labour need a VOC in starmer tbh. Pathetic leadership. Tories are there for the taking and his bullshit is leading to infighting when the party should be getting the Tories out.
Click to expand...
They need to do it quickly. Who would replace him realistically? There seems a dearth of even vaguely likeable talent in UK politics full stop.
 
Fluctuation0161 said:
No, it's just about purging the party so it becomes a bland Tory lite. That's been Starmers only real focus.
Click to expand...

I didn't vote for him (although to be fair I didn't vote for Corbyn either, so at least I am consistently predicting the winner poorly), and I anticipated that Starmer would run from his pledges as soon as he felt politically able to, but I genuinely believed for a long time that there was something of substance there, which most Labour members electing him for. As has been pointed out by myself and other - Blair actually had policies in opposition. He has.... nothing.
 
Gambit said:
Kick him out and get Andy Burnham in.
Click to expand...

He needs to be an MP, but surely there is someone who has announced they won't run in the next election who can step down early? Plenty to choose from:

MPSeatFirst electedPartyDate announced
Douglas RossMoray2017Conservative14 October 2021
Alex CunninghamStockton North2010Labour25 November 2021
Margaret HodgeBarking1994Labour2 December 2021
Barry SheermanHuddersfield1979Labour4 December 2021
******* HarmanCamberwell and Peckham1982Labour7 December 2021
Alan WhiteheadSouthampton Test1997Labour14 January 2022
Charles WalkerBroxbourne2005Conservative1 February 2022
Ben BradshawExeter1997Labour3 February 2022
Kate GreenStretford and Urmston2010Labour10 February 2022
Wayne DavidCaerphilly2001Labour11 February 2022
Paul BlomfieldSheffield Central2010Labour21 February 2022
Rosie WintertonDoncaster Central1997Labour27 February 2022
Margaret BeckettDerby SouthOct. 1974 (Lincoln)Labour25 March 2022
Nigel AdamsSelby and Ainsty2010Conservative9 April 2022
Crispin BluntReigate1997Conservative1 May 2022
Mike PenningHemel Hempstead2005Conservative17 May 2022
Adam AfriyieWindsor2005Conservative22 July 2022
Jon CruddasDagenham and Rainham2001Labour28 July 2022
 
You must log in or register to reply here.