We've stopped hangin? When did that happen?
Keir Starmer Labour Leader
- Thread starter Damien
- Start date
This ongoing attack on Starmer from the left is pretty sad. Novaramedia have this story as their leader I notice. Labour's policy is actually to improve housing benefit, which is literally paying peoples rent for them. But screw the facts, the pro-Corbyn left finally have the attack line they want and they're going for it.
Oh quit your whining. Can the cult not face criticism?
"Let us complain about things that aren't true in peace"
Twitter is both bad and meaningless, folks.
What’s not true?
Don't mind me I'm just finding it all very ironic.
The irony in calling those defending Starmer as being part of a cult, when Corbyn had a real life one created in his wake in the form of Momentum?
Or the irony in finding things to batter Starmer with, which aren't true, having long and consistently complained of the same about Corbyn?
Basically they're saying that Biden's policy is to cancel rents while Starmer's is only to defer rent and you have to pay it back over two years. Neither are the whole story.
Biden's policy is to suspend rent payments for low- to mid-earners but then have it paid to landlords out of federal funds down the line. (High earners will still have to pay outstanding rent themselves in the end presumably). Labour's policy is to defer rent payments but keep the ban evictions, and meanwhile increase the thresholds in the Housing Benefit system so its more generous and paid out more quickly. Your rent will be paid from the point you apply for HB.
Both policies end up in the same place - for low to mid-earners, you can't be evicted now if you can't pay rent and the state will pay it for you. For mid- to high- earners, if you don't pay you can't be evicted but will have to sort it out down the line.
There might be some differences with thresholds or the maximum value of rent payments that makes Biden's policy more generous, Labour haven't been specific about the numbers so its hard to be sure. On the other hand Labour's policy gets money to people much more quickly and of course, we already have an outright ban on evictions during the crisis in any case, which the US doesn't I believe. Either way, the complaint is not about the use of housing benefit vs another vehicle for rent payments, the complaint is that Labour are offering nothing on helping people with rent payments, which isn't true.
Both of those. The irony that you are still calling momentum a cult which just makes you sound like a cultist yourself and the irony that you're getting so wound up over what amounts to policy differences rather than the out and out wrecking that Corbyn put up with for 4.5 years.
He's also at net +9 compared to Johnson's +7. Still a lot of don't knows and he's still in his honeymoon period with the press, but a pretty decent start considering the circumstances.
I think he's going to kick Johnson's arse over time on a personal basis but the thing that scares me is how much of the Tory's 50% can we actually take considering they have all the Brexit voters at the moment.
Is the complain actually that labour are literally offering nothing at all?
No. Don’t see what you’re getting at there.
It's a good while til the next election, so hopefully Labour will have an honest policy on Europe by then that should gain votes, with the old anti-EU leadership long gone I'll be very disappointed if they don't.
If not then what are you even arguing against?
That they’re leaving the important bits out, as I explained above.
I hope so but not even a hope of an idea of what the situation will be like on 5 years I find it hard to imagine what that might be.
I agree that in comparing the Biden policy to Starmer's and the general criticism of Starmer's proposal that there has been an absence of nuance with a focus instead on populist slogans, but that does not mean that (a) Starmer's proposal is perfect or (b) that people are criticising him for 'offering nothing', because I've not seen anyone say that. He made five proposals, four of which are solid enough, but there is a legitimate criticism around the policy of allowing two years to pay off rent arrears, and if you look around the media you'll see that is not at all unique to Novara but coming from plenty of journalists who are by no means of the Corbyn left - the most prominent piece I've seen condemning it came from Stephen Bush in the New Statesman.
Welcome to politics mate.
Haha I’m no cultist by any means. Starmer is not infallible at all and he is guaranteed to make mistakes (as he already has done as shadow Brexit sec).
I and I imagine plenty of other rational voters (i.e. not Corbyn or Bojo fan boys) can appreciate a so far solid leader of the opposition.
Also, just because I’ve pointed out some obvious ironies doesn’t make me wound up in the slightest. However, if it makes you feel better in your sea of rage then by all means believe it. Ultimately, being a Labour supporter you must surely be hopeful that Starmer can continue building momentum (oops!) and chipping away at Boris Johnson and his utterly lightweight, incompetent and ultimately dangerous cabinet.
Thankfully, Corbyn and isn’t dominating the headlines to distract anymore.
Indeed. Labour slagging themselves off in public is the norm nowadays.
Alright mate, not sure what your overall point is to be honest apart from clearly being obsessed with Momentum to an amusing level.
Yeah I guess it's a shame that people who supported or enabled it while it suited them are not enjoying the fact that it didn't suddenly stop when they wanted it to.
At least it's not nearly as bad as it was for Corbyn. Starmer has been treated kindly which has been a big help to him so far.
I'm Labour through-and-through but I'll never forgive the media and large swathes of the Labour Party itself for the vilification of Jeremy Corbyn. Hilarious that people now expect unity after years of demonising and misrepresentation. You expect it from the rags, but a big portion of the slinging of shit came from people supposedly on the left. I'm now feeling very meh to it all.
This is a familiar road. You haven't seen people criticising Starmer unfairly, I have, neither of us can really know what the majority of left wingers truly think. Tribune, Canary and Novara all have articles criticising Labour for the rent deferral, while completely failing to mention that HB will pay it in many cases. But no doubt there are articles out there from leftwing media that offer a more nuanced debate on the policy too, which is certainly far from perfect. I guess the true direction of travel will become clearer over time.
If someone who had perpetually undermined Corbyn had won the leadership then they wouldn't have a leg to stand on, sure. But Starmer didn't, which is why its a shame he seems to be getting it in the neck.
He's really not getting it in the neck. You aren't going to be able to stop all unfair criticism especially as much of it is in good faith albeit misguided.
I'm sorry, what?
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the irony of so many people saying this directed at the left after the report showed the entire organisation was sabotaging corbyn ...
they saw tory rule as the lesser threat to their position and situation. they weren't wrong.
Wait for it
but it's going to be one of many many things that get memory-holed.
No, but it shows that there’s no benefit of the doubt being given. Doesn’t seem very fair on him, but as you say, such is politics.
Maybe if you'd paid more attention to the criticism rather than worrying about the poor defamation of Starmer you'd have seen that Labour's housing benefit proposal, which you're referring to as some sort of holy grail, is not the solution you seem to think it is. See Bush's piece:
It's not politics it's treating people as they treated you. I'll do a Sir Keir and reluctantly support the elected leader of the party, but only after he survives a leadership challenge (in which I say absolutely nothing whilst part of the party tries to stop him from defending his position at all) where I completely and publicly support his opponent.
He is being a tonne of benefit of the doubt, just not from everyone. A lot of Corbynites voted for him.
There are people being unfair to him as there always will be for everyone, but overall the left of the party has been very kind to him so far.
I'd be more sympathetic if it was wrecking rather than unfair criticism.
Edit: which might not even be particularly unfair
That isn't criticising the housing benefit idea, it's saying it makes the fifth point (the arrears deferral) irrelevant. It would inevitably be retrospective anyway.
It's definitely been a comms fail and they'll need to sharpen that up in future.
I love Bush's writing, but he's no policy wonk. Housing benefit can already be backdated, Labour don't even need to ask for that.
If it turns out lots of people didn't know that UC or HB existed and failed to claim then maybe it would be prudent for Labour to push for that backdate to be automatic or extended. Though given the rocketing take up of UC that doesn't look like a major problem. Bear in mind too Labour is also calling for an upfront grant payment for new claimants, designed to cover unexpected costs. HB is a complex benefit that has multiple thresholds and uses some weird systems to calculate the eligible rent. Its not unreasonable that Labour summed up extensions or changes to all those components as simply making it "more generous and speedy". Discussing those details really is wonkery.
And don't twist my words, I literally said the policy was "far from perfect" in the comment you quoted, so I'm not making it out to be without problems. HB and the housing element of UC are deeply flawed systems, I seem to spend half my life talking about housing benefit's problems. So any policy that uses that system is bound to have flaws too. If we knocked our heads together we could come up with a better alternative in an afternoon. But the major advantage of using the current system is that it can get money to people in less than the time it would take a civil servant to draft a white paper. That's a major plus so its not outrageous they've argued for its use.
It's pointless. You're dealing with people who think lenin69 and noscopelandlords360 larping on twitter is the same as actual party machinery actively fecking over the Labour leadership.Novara media most popular video is meme about telling Piers Moran they are communists, their second highest rated video is about joe biden, so both videos having feck all to do with the labour party and their subscriber count is less than 100,000. They are less influential in 2020 than Keyboard Cat 2020, who destroys them in both sheer numbers and quality control.
The British left is a small number of MP's in the labour party, left trade unions along with some trade unions leaders, activists groups and a couple of left think tanks, thats it! And so far been they have all been supportive of Starmer, until this changes the complaining about the ''left'' attacking the labour party or momentum as a ''cult'' is nothing but the dullest midlife crisis in human history. Twitter and online politics in general has melted the minds of many 40 something centre ''left'' dads, hopefully when this lockdown is over these people will realise there's more to life than frying you're brain akin to scene from a William Gibson novel and instead see the joy in such things as buying a second hand porsche, hair transplants, 90's trance, rediscovering coke and the ecstasy of routinely disappointing a 24 year old mistress.
This country deserves a better class of guardian readers tbh.
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If Labour’s policy is to backdate any rises in HB, surely that has to be explicitly communicated. You can backdate HB for a month if you’re a worker (wouldn’t this time period also need extending?) making a new application but would that apply to someone already on the system who has run into arrears prior to a policy that increases the amount of HB made available?
Seems to me the housing benefit proposal lacked a call for it to be applied retrospectively as well as an additional policy to pause rent while the system was implemented.