Keir Starmer Labour Leader

I'm a hundred per cent up for the bats on this and if you building bastards butcher innocent bats I hope they invite their vampiric mates round to bite feck out of you.

Save the bats.
They're not birds you know.
 


Labour would use artificial intelligence to help those looking for work prepare their CVs, find jobs and receive payments faster, according to the party’s shadow work and pensions secretary.

Jonathan Ashworth told the Guardian he thought the Department for Work and Pensions was wasting millions of pounds by not using cutting-edge technology, even as the party also says AI could also cause massive disruption to the jobs market.
 
You know, when the world is run by AI, and the job market is cut (that scenario people are on about), what guarantees anything except a revolution?

What justifies X having Y billions when Z computers are doing all the work? That Marxian scenario of the means of production being such that the workers can simply take it, A.I. moves in that direction at a rather exponential rate.

Not socialist btw, just sociological. Right now the premise is: X invested in X' company and deserves Y billions because of the time put in despite A people, workers, constituting the manufacturing and marketing base of that profit margin. But when those people are fecked off, if and when, of course, and the entire superstructure is A.I., seems ripe for that Das Kapital solution. It's the wrong solution, because it doesn't work, and will never work, but it will be tried.
 
AI is the current buzzword for the managerial class when asked about how things will improve. 99% of them don't have a clue how.

The labour front bench had a meeting with google execs 3 weeks go.

This stuff is the result. They are the easiest marks in the world for con artists.
 
AI is the current buzzword for the managerial class when asked about how things will improve. 99% of them don't have a clue how.
The labour front bench had a meeting with google execs 3 weeks go.

This stuff is the result. They are the easiest marks in the world for con artists.
Also already seems to be a Tory policy

AI use widened to assess universal credit applications and tackle fraud

Department of Work and Pensions warned by auditor general about potential bias in algorithms
The government has widened its deployment of artificial intelligence to uncover welfare fraud, despite warnings of algorithmic bias against groups of vulnerable claimants.

In a £70m investment applying “advanced analytics” to requests for universal credit (UC), the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has extended the use of machine learning as it attempts to save more than £1bn from the £8bn-plus lost to fraud and error last year, audit documents scrutinised by the Guardian reveal.


The project does not appear to have been formally announced by the government, which has been accused of being secretive about AI in the welfare system. If extended, it has the potential to reach many of the 5.9 million people who claim UC.

After a trial last year using automated software to flag up potential fraudsters seeking UC cash advances, similar technology has now been developed and piloted to scan welfare applications made by people living together, self-employed people, and those wanting housing support, as well as to assess the
claims people make about their personal capital such as savings.

Welfare rights organisations and UN experts have previously said that extending the UK’s “digital by default” welfare system with machine learning without greater transparency risks creating serious problems for some benefit claimants.

https://www.theguardian.com/society...sess-universal-credit-applications-and-tackle
 
Your averaged unemployed person is waltzing into a job as a computer programmer? What miraculous benefit does AI have for that? For all sorts of things, you can see the utility of AI but the number of unemployed typically requires certain things, incentives, openings in the job market, and so on, and almost always at the very bottom level (minimum wage/zero hours) for that to improve. AI does feck all here beyond what a randomer in the Civil Service could do, I imagine, with a task-force and a few computational degrees.

AI can bring jobs to Enland if England goes down the superstructure route, which is desperate to do, of welcoming various firms over and giving them incentives to stay and start-up. That only actually works with housing programs (new-builds) because the demand, base, in England, is only coming from that avenue wherein the high-tech stuff is required over the top (minus defense and certain pharma/pure computational industries).

Still waiting for Starmer's detailed policy plan. Should have one now. It's maybe eight months out from an election, or a year? Still just bits and pieces here and there. Not saying costed manifesto, but Blair did have that a year in advance, no? First time around?

As another aside, think that this Tory government will rival, be three years short of, the Thatcher-Major reign of 79-97. Whatever you think about Thatcher, and that series of governments, they were pretty intelligent people with a fairly comprehensive idea as to how and why Britain should take certain economic directions. This 15 year period, now, by next year, or thereabouts, of Toryism has offered absolutely nothing. Just a manged decline and austerity and immigration hatred with Union-disaster moments therein. It's easily the worst government Britain has ever had, if you really think about it. You'd have to go back to the 19th century to find something similar or maybe George LLoyd.

Can anyone name a flagship Tory policy, worth keeping, or remembering, since 2010? I can't think of one. It's all been symbolic nonsense and depressing culture war shite. Gay marriage? I'll give them that, but it was trending that way anyway.
 
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No investment, great. Because 13 years of austerity have worked a treat.

Keir Starmer: ‘We can’t win power by spending. We need to reform and create wealth’
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jul/15/keir-starmer-we-cant-spend-our-way-back-to-power

He's the biggest Tory stooge in Labour history.

He mustn't have read this report. Our his Daily Mail focus groups haven't.

Austerity policies do more harm than good, IMF study concludes
Economists give strong critique of neoliberal doctrine ushered in by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s

https://www.theguardian.com/busines...es-do-more-harm-than-good-imf-study-concludes
 
UKIP really did a number on UK politics. The Tories have basically merged into UKIP post brexit and Labour have decided their easiest way to power is to just be the Tories pre-brexit.
 
It’s pretty crazy that Labour now has a leader who is probably more right wing than David Cameron. 13 years of shit Tory Governments and this is what we get offered?

I have a bad feeling the end of this decade is going to get very bleak as this failed abortion of Labour face an election against a populist right wing alternative.

Thoroughly depressing that as much as I hate the Tories… this version of Labour can get in the bin as well.
 
It’s pretty crazy that Labour now has a leader who is probably more right wing than David Cameron. 13 years of shit Tory Governments and this is what we get offered?

I have a bad feeling the end of this decade is going to get very bleak as this failed abortion of Labour face an election against a populist right wing alternative.

Thoroughly depressing that as much as I hate the Tories… this version of Labour can get in the bin as well.
I’m sad to say it but I really don’t think Starmer would even touch a progressive issue like gay marriage, that Cameron embraced, out of fear of how it would play in the ‘red wall’. He probably thinks all northerners are homophobic bigots, because that’s what a focus group told him.
 
It’s pretty crazy that Labour now has a leader who is probably more right wing than David Cameron. 13 years of shit Tory Governments and this is what we get offered?

I have a bad feeling the end of this decade is going to get very bleak as this failed abortion of Labour face an election against a populist right wing alternative.

Thoroughly depressing that as much as I hate the Tories… this version of Labour can get in the bin as well.
Yeah, it really is all the shitty end of the stick, isn't it. My only hope is that a sitting Labour government can be dragged to the left using the same kind of mechanisms that dragged the Tories further and further to the right over the past 7 years or so. Starmer is only ever a scandal away from being out on his ear.
 
Yeah, it really is all the shitty end of the stick, isn't it. My only hope is that a sitting Labour government can be dragged to the left using the same kind of mechanisms that dragged the Tories further and further to the right over the past 7 years or so. Starmer is only ever a scandal away from being out on his ear.

They will be dragged further to the right, not the left. Don’t kid yourself.
 
It’s pretty crazy that Labour now has a leader who is probably more right wing than David Cameron. 13 years of shit Tory Governments and this is what we get offered?

I have a bad feeling the end of this decade is going to get very bleak as this failed abortion of Labour face an election against a populist right wing alternative.

Thoroughly depressing that as much as I hate the Tories… this version of Labour can get in the bin as well.
You have to start from somewhere. It is utterly irrelevant what opposition can offer if they cannot hope to win an election to actually ever implement it. What Labour is currently offering isn’t what I would want to actively vote for, but I’d rather enter the polling booth with an option left of the Tories that has a chance of winning rather than a more idealised one that doesn’t have a chance.

Society is massively shifted to the right all across Europe, and unfortunately in our British electoral system it is extremely difficult to get voices elected that aren’t heavily representative of where the centre ground currently is.
 
You have to start from somewhere. It is utterly irrelevant what opposition can offer if they cannot hope to win an election to actually ever implement it. What Labour is currently offering isn’t what I would want to actively vote for, but I’d rather enter the polling booth with an option left of the Tories that has a chance of winning rather than a more idealised one that doesn’t have a chance.

I get that’s how you feel but to me, this is a false argument. The premise that Labour can only win against this dead duck version of the Tories by doing what they are doing now… I fundamentally don’t agree with or believe for one second. I think they could absolutely be more ambitious and it wouldn’t negatively impact their chances at all. The next election is an open goal, in my opinion.
 
Labour will win by default. They're making choices here. Choosing austerity-type programs. As if they want, intentionally, to drift right. I think that is the case.
 
This thread is just a joke. There's zero balanced discussion about anything to do with his leadership or the Labour Party, just bitter Corbynistas looking do to do what they can to keep the Tories in office. Its so ridiculously out of touch with the real world or what people think on the streets.

Yes he had his flaws and areas where criticism is deserved but this thread is hilariously fecking relentless. It's almost a parody. There's no discussion or balance on everything is just "why Starmer is a cnut this hour" Tweets from the last four years. There really needs to be another thread where those interested in politics can debate this flaws and this be left like a cake for the wasps at a picnic for those who just want to bash the guy for being electable
 
This thread is just a joke. There's zero balanced discussion about anything to do with his leadership or the Labour Party, just bitter Corbynistas looking do to do what they can to keep the Tories in office. Its so ridiculously out of touch with the real world or what people think on the streets.

Yes he had his flaws and areas where criticism is deserved but this thread is hilariously fecking relentless. It's almost a parody. There's no discussion or balance on everything is just "why Starmer is a cnut this hour" Tweets from the last four years. There really needs to be another thread where those interested in politics can debate this flaws and this be left like a cake for the wasps at a picnic for those who just want to bash the guy for being electable

What's your view on the two-child benefit cap?
 
This thread is just a joke. There's zero balanced discussion about anything to do with his leadership or the Labour Party, just bitter Corbynistas looking do to do what they can to keep the Tories in office. Its so ridiculously out of touch with the real world or what people think on the streets.

Yes he had his flaws and areas where criticism is deserved but this thread is hilariously fecking relentless. It's almost a parody. There's no discussion or balance on everything is just "why Starmer is a cnut this hour" Tweets from the last four years.

You should contribute to the counter argument then. Lets see the other side of the discussion.
 
What's your view on the two-child benefit cap?

Dislike it. But the left need to stop being so fecking naive and think that 'saying what we want because we don't care if we get elected' is fecking mad.

Labour opposition leaders have to be extremely careful to appear fiscally conservative when seeking election. Pretending that isn't the case is fine if you're not really bothered about the Tories staying in power.

It's politics. He was pressed this morning on more funds for NHS and the attack line waiting would have been 'Labour will spend too much'

You can't keep pretending what matters is saying what your own side wants to hear and not on saying things that get you elected. Labour cannot win by preaching to its own choir even though the Corbyn years had led to a generation of socialists who angrily demand that's all a Labour leader should do.
 
Dislike it. But the left need to stop being so fecking naive and think that 'saying what we want because we don't care if we get elected' is fecking mad.

Labour opposition leaders have to be extremely careful to appear fiscally conservative when seeking election. Pretending that isn't the case is fine if you're not really bothered about the Tories staying in power.

Corbynistas like Rayner would lose the huge gap because of this policy, this is your very serious and sane analysis?
 
the attack line waiting would have been 'Labour will spend too much'
30 points ahead in the polls. I think being a bit ambitious about spending for the NHS is scarcely going to sink the election bid.
 
30 points ahead in the polls. I think being a bit ambitious about spending for the NHS is scarcely going to sink the election bid.

The right (and seemingly left) wing attacks are going to be intense and relentless over the next year or so. Labour can't ever afford to be complacent. The biggest doubts people have over any Labour leader is their economic credibility. Blair understood that. I think deep down everyone understands it that's why those who have an interest in keeping Labour our of power - namely Tories and "socialists" well - represented in this thread have an interest in goading him into opening himself up to those attacks.
 
Sensible grown up politics is cheering on Labour every time they sound like a convincing Tory tribute act… or when they successfully get through another media appearance without committing to anything, whatsoever.

I wish there was another thread where we could all discuss the latest policy position Labour won’t commit to in the interests of fiscal prudence.

I’m just glad the political heavyweights have finally realised we can get out of this mess by simply, growing the economy.
 
The right (and seemingly left) wing attacks are going to be intense and relentless over the next year or so. Labour can't ever afford to be complacent. The biggest doubts people have over any Labour leader is their economic credibility. Blair understood that. I think deep down everyone understands it that's why those who have an interest in keeping Labour our of power - namely Tories and "socialists" well - represented in this thread have an interest in goading him into opening himself up to those attacks.
Blair had a costed manifesto at this point and a cohesive strategy regarding the next few years. Education, NHS, other stuff I can't be bothered to look up (crime and its causes, a slogan, but fed into economy).

Starmer has very little. He wins by default and so pisses off people, intentionally, to keep the polling lead (labour people). The ones he pisses off will either vote labour anyway or else not vote tory. That's his entire strategy at this point. Most will vote labour. 15-20 % polling gap. Will be 7% or so by the time the election is done.

You have this idea that what Starmer is saying now is strategy to win an election after which there comes an incredible Labour pivot. No. What he's saying now is precisely what he intends to do when elected. That's the problem.