Keir Starmer Labour Leader

Shamwow said:
Good hand wave. You've already stated that you are okay with praising Astor and whitewashing her nazi views so no surprise there.
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Hardly a hand wave. What the Jews think about antisemitism in Labour is at the core of the issue and always has been. So ultimately, if Jewish people are happy that the right things are starting to happen, then that's what matters.

However, since you raise Astor specifically: yes, 100 years ago she was indeed an anti semite as well as generally racially unpleasant and bigoted in that way many aristocratic people could be at that time. I'm not defending that in any way. But it's also a crucial detail, which you leave out, that she is symbolic as the first serving woman MP and therefore, in a direct and historic way, the person who broke the monopoly of male power in parliament, and opened the door to the likes of Teresa May and Rachel Reeves. If Reeves had been celebrating her racism rather than that, then you could on that evidence call her anti semitic. But she was actually noting Astor's historically famous role as first serving woman MP on the anniversary of her accession to Parliament. Therefore you are just being disingenuous about Reeve's alleged anti semitism in a transparent attempt to present a false equivalence between institutional and pervasive anti semitism under Corbyn and supposed anti semitism under Starmer, but deep down you well know that.
 
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nickm said:
Hardly a hand wave. What the Jews think about antisemitism in Labour is at the core of the issue and always has been. So ultimately, if Jewish people are happy that the right things are starting to happen, then that's what matters.

However, since you raise Astor specifically: yes, 100 years ago she was indeed an anti semite as well as generally racially unpleasant and bigoted in that way many aristocratic people could be at that time. I'm not defending that in any way. But it's also a crucial detail, which you leave out, that she is symbolic as the first serving woman MP and therefore, in a direct and historic way, the person who broke the monopoly of male power in parliament, and opened the door to the likes of Teresa May and Rachel Reeves. If Reeves had been celebrating her racism rather than that, then you could on that evidence call her anti semitic. But she was actually noting Astor's historically famous role as first serving woman MP on the anniversary of her accession to Parliament. Therefore you are just being disingenuous about Reeve's alleged anti semitism in a transparent attempt to present a false equivalence between institutional and pervasive anti semitism under Corbyn and supposed anti semitism under Starmer, but deep down you well know that.
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The fact that you view the Jewish people as enitrely represented by these organisations is racist in itself, my brother does not feel represented by Marie van der zyl. My sister does not feel represented by the BOD, so where is their voice in all of this? Of course to someone like you, they are not worth consideration.

I'm sure Adolf Hitler was the first of something good too but we don't fecking commemorate that do we because he was a fecking Nazi. You don't commemorate Nazis - if you do then we call that being a Nazi sympathiser. Just because it's accepted by the mainstream doesn't make it okay - in fact that makes it even more dangerous as it normalises people who had abhorrent views like Astor. It's whitewashing the worst kind of racism, pure and simple and you are actively supporting this country having statues of fecking Nazis. What the feck is going on?
 
Shamwow said:
The fact that you view the Jewish people as enitrely represented by these organisations is racist in itself, my brother does not feel represented by Marie van der zyl. My sister does not feel represented by the BOD, so where is their voice in all of this? Of course to someone like you, they are not worth consideration.

I'm sure Adolf Hitler was the first of something good too but we don't fecking commemorate that do we because he was a fecking Nazi. You don't commemorate Nazis - if you do then we call that being a Nazi sympathiser. Just because it's accepted by the mainstream doesn't make it okay - in fact that makes it even more dangerous as it normalises people who had abhorrent views like Astor. It's whitewashing the worst kind of racism, pure and simple and you are actively supporting this country having statues of fecking Nazis. What the feck is going on?
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First, mainstream Jewish organisations were the ones who complained Jewish fears about antisemitism weren’t being listened to. If they now feel that is changing, that’s good enough for me frankly.

Second, I sincerely don’t know where you are going with your hitler analogy since Astor, despite some toe curling views, wasn’t a nazi. Choose any British hero from them last 200 years and you will probably find they were out and out racists - Churchill being one. Plenty of statutes to him though. Nobody is celebrating Churchill’s racism though when they look at his statue outside parliament.

I could just as easily argue the campaign against Astor and the women MPs who celebrated her achievement is motivated by good old fashioned sexism, because these arguments are otherwise so disingenuous.
 
Shamwow said:
The fact that you view the Jewish people as enitrely represented by these organisations is racist in itself, my brother does not feel represented by Marie van der zyl. My sister does not feel represented by the BOD, so where is their voice in all of this? Of course to someone like you, they are not worth consideration.

I'm sure Adolf Hitler was the first of something good too but we don't fecking commemorate that do we because he was a fecking Nazi. You don't commemorate Nazis - if you do then we call that being a Nazi sympathiser. Just because it's accepted by the mainstream doesn't make it okay - in fact that makes it even more dangerous as it normalises people who had abhorrent views like Astor. It's whitewashing the worst kind of racism, pure and simple and you are actively supporting this country having statues of fecking Nazis. What the feck is going on?
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Top post.
 
As things stand, I cannot see Labour winning a majority government without them making a strong recovery in Scotland, where they suffered an even worse result in 2019 compared to 2015 (a lower number of votes and a lower vote share). It will be interesting to see how Starmer plans to face that challenge. I wonder if not-opposing a 2nd independence referendum, while still opposing independence itself, might be the way to go, it would at least give them a distinct policy compared to any other party.

Labour were basically the big losers from both both of two huge constitutional referendums held when Cameron was PM. Their behaviour during the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, with them sharing a platform with the Tories, a former Labour chancellor Alistair Darling actually defending the record of the Cameron-led coalition government, and the Scottish Labour MPs getting off the train from London to tell the common-folk how to vote, left a bad image as was the final straw for many people who already angry at their long-standing arrogance and incompetence in Scotland. And as we know, in both the immediate term (with the 2016 summer leadership attempted coup), and at the last general election, the Brexit vote caused far more problems for them than the Tories.
 




Hadn't realised how many post-Miliband MPs were in there.
 
Sweet Square said:
You're an odd one nick.

Anyways you carry on white washing a nazi, it's working out brilliantly for you.
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Silly boy. I’m not white washing anything. I’m defending a labour MP (Reeves) against a smear.
 
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In my opinion most of the policies of Corbyn was good. He was the wrong man to deliver it. Starmer dragging it to the right is not going to win more votes.
 
Foxbatt said:
In my opinion most of the policies of Corbyn was good. He was the wrong man to deliver it. Starmer dragging it to the right is not going to win more votes.
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In your opinion. Fair enough.
But that was not the opinion of a large number of voters.

Labours problem was a massively unpopular leader.
And a confusing and largely unpopular manifesto.

I am in no doubt that had Starmer, or indeed others been the leader, then the election would have been closer.

Hard left policies are just not popular with the UK electorate.
 
Buster15 said:
In your opinion. Fair enough.
But that was not the opinion of a large number of voters.

Labours problem was a massively unpopular leader.
And a confusing and largely unpopular manifesto.

I am in no doubt that had Starmer, or indeed others been the leader, then the election would have been closer.

Hard left policies are just not popular with the UK electorate.
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Two important incorrect assertions here. Firstly, none of Corbyn's policies were hard left. Secondly, most of his policies were popular, they were just incredibly badly explained, announced too late for them to sink in, and sounded like bribes because they thought it was self explanatory why they were good ideas. Many of his policies were incredibly popular though, for example, increasing tax on the top 5% of earners and renationalising the railways.
 
The more boring explanation is that about half of the PLP leftwingers (judged here as those who nominated Long-Bailey) are of the 2019 intake, and are thus less likely to be given ministerial roles at this stage. Given that 8 of the 33 that nominated RLB are on the front bench, a further 2 in Abbott and McDonnell stood down, and another in Richard Burgon was Richard Burgon, it's not really much to read into.
 
TwoSheds said:
Two important incorrect assertions here. Firstly, none of Corbyn's policies were hard left. Secondly, most of his policies were popular, they were just incredibly badly explained, announced too late for them to sink in, and sounded like bribes because they thought it was self explanatory why they were good ideas. Many of his policies were incredibly popular though, for example, increasing tax on the top 5% of earners and renationalising the railways.
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This. There are a bunch of reasons for 2019 and actual left-wing policies are way down on that list.

The main reason for Labour's failure was the fact that to win an election in this day and age Labour have to cobble together a voter base out of groups who have strong and diametrically opposing views on basically all of the hot topic issues of our time, not least Brexit, immigration, foreign policy, Britain's colonial past, identity politics. Increasingly, voters in Labour's former heartlands have a completely different vision of what Britain should look like than voters in its metropolitan strongholds.

The second is that Labour absolutely blew their comms. Labour have a lot of baggage from their 2 most recent stints in government and whether you think it's deserved or not, if your party has a reputation for not delivering value for money in government, chucking out public spending pledges like they did during the campaign is dreadful optics.

If you go to an ex-mining area and ask a former Labour voter why they took their vote elsewhere this time they won't tell you it's because of their policy to raise the top rate of tax or invest in public services. They'll tell you Labour did nothing for their area last time round, or that they caused the crash, or that Corbyn hates Britain, or that the party cares more about immigrants/London elites/the EU than it does about 'normal people'.
 
TwoSheds said:
Two important incorrect assertions here. Firstly, none of Corbyn's policies were hard left. Secondly, most of his policies were popular, they were just incredibly badly explained, announced too late for them to sink in, and sounded like bribes because they thought it was self explanatory why they were good ideas. Many of his policies were incredibly popular though, for example, increasing tax on the top 5% of earners and renationalising the railways.
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Popular with who? Labour members, MPs, the population?
 
TwoSheds said:
Two important incorrect assertions here. Firstly, none of Corbyn's policies were hard left. Secondly, most of his policies were popular, they were just incredibly badly explained, announced too late for them to sink in, and sounded like bribes because they thought it was self explanatory why they were good ideas. Many of his policies were incredibly popular though, for example, increasing tax on the top 5% of earners and renationalising the railways.
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They were popular to the extent that people like free stuff. But in reality, most people were rightly skeptical. I could promise you the wealth of Aladdin's cave, which is very appealing on the surface, but when you ask how I'm going to find it, and I respond with 'i'll figure it out later,' you'd have serious doubts about my ability to deliver. There's only so many times you can tell people you're going to tax the shit out of the rich to pay for it before it sounds unrealistic. Afterall, most of those people you're trying to convince are employed by one of those rich taxmachines. Tempering your policies to make them more realistic will make a huge difference. Throwing in shit like free internet for everyone will not. The policies were not only poorly delivered, they were terribly conceived.
 
ivaldo said:
They were popular to the extent that people like free stuff. But in reality, most people were rightly skeptical. I could promise you the wealth of Aladdin's cave, which is very appealing on the surface, but when you ask how I'm going to find it, and I respond with 'i'll figure it out later,' you'd have serious doubts about my ability to deliver. There's only so many times you can tell people you're going to tax the shit out of the rich to pay for it before it sounds unrealistic. Afterall, most of those people you're trying to convince are employed by one of those rich taxmachines. Tempering your policies to make them more realistic will make a huge difference. Throwing in shit like free internet for everyone will not. The policies were not only poorly delivered, they were terribly conceived.
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I believe that all their policies could easily be paid for. Just look at how quickly the government could find £300bn quid for bank loans or £200bn for quantitative easing when the lockdown started. The problem is the Labour lot thought they'd won this argument that there was plenty of money in 2017 so they didn't even bother to explain and argue their case.

The way they announced their policies as if it was fecking bingo, "free broadband for you", "give full pensions back to the women who had them stolen", "reduce people's bills". It didn't matter whether they had thought them through, whether they were easy to deliver or not, it sounded like a bunch of last minute poorly conceived bribes.

I actually think Boris' plan for the broadband was much more mental than Labour's as it happens. Having given out god knows how many billions to BT to expand the broadband network, we still have one of the slower networks in developed countries and BT constantly get rapped by parliamentary committees about their pathetic progress.

https://www.computerworld.com/artic...ar-monopoly--of-rural-broadband--say-mps.html

Boris' plan seemed to be pretty much to just give them more money and carry on business as usual.

But yeah, nothing scary about Boris' plan. Corruption and incompetence are par for the course, Labour's plan sounds radical and ill thought through and it was their job to properly explain why it made sense. Or just, y'know, not announce it a few weeks before a bloody election.
 
TwoSheds said:
The population. The overwhelming majority think tax on the rich should increase and that the railways are a mess.

https://fullfact.org/economy/do-public-want-railways-renationalised/
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Ridiculous - just like his policies.

None of the policies were costed, they were just made up on the hoof to try and win votes - they didn’t solve problems. What was the rationale behind free broadband? Do we then have free water, free electric? Labour are the Party of anti-aspiration.
 
Dobba said:
Na, we have to draw the line somewhere. Like how Sir Keir is big on human rights but was more than happy drawing his line in a place that left him room to bow and scrape in front of the jug eared befriender of sexual predators to pick up his British Empire title.
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Classic Dobba.
 
TwoSheds said:
The population. The overwhelming majority think tax on the rich should increase and that the railways are a mess.

https://fullfact.org/economy/do-public-want-railways-renationalised/
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Deliberately didn't hold the tax part, just the railways bit. I don't know one person who thinks it's a good idea or one person who thinks Labour had thought the policy or cost through... hence curious and asked the question.

You say "the population" and link a poll to presumably back it up. The poll was 1,500 people asked right at a time when delays were being heavily criticised in the media. As the pollsters themselves say ..

“readers should be aware that a majority of respondents will not use trains regularly, and so there is a distinct possibility that the results will have been influenced by negative public discourse surrounding rail travel in the media at the moment.”

Like I say, just curious and wondered what was behind the comment. Personally, 900 people who may/may not use trains saying no (some no a lot, some no a little) while railways were getting panned in the media doesn't sound representative. If they'd asked 50,000 people, all at train stations, staggered across a year.. that would have been more representative?

As you say, how/when the policies were announced didn't inspire voters (though from speaking to people I know (not necessarily representative either), the personnel put them off more).
 
TwoSheds said:
I believe that all their policies could easily be paid for. Just look at how quickly the government could find £300bn quid for bank loans or £200bn for quantitative easing when the lockdown started. The problem is the Labour lot thought they'd won this argument that there was plenty of money in 2017 so they didn't even bother to explain and argue their case.

The way they announced their policies as if it was fecking bingo, "free broadband for you", "give full pensions back to the women who had them stolen", "reduce people's bills". It didn't matter whether they had thought them through, whether they were easy to deliver or not, it sounded like a bunch of last minute poorly conceived bribes.

I actually think Boris' plan for the broadband was much more mental than Labour's as it happens. Having given out god knows how many billions to BT to expand the broadband network, we still have one of the slower networks in developed countries and BT constantly get rapped by parliamentary committees about their pathetic progress.

https://www.computerworld.com/artic...ar-monopoly--of-rural-broadband--say-mps.html

Boris' plan seemed to be pretty much to just give them more money and carry on business as usual.

But yeah, nothing scary about Boris' plan. Corruption and incompetence are par for the course, Labour's plan sounds radical and ill thought through and it was their job to properly explain why it made sense. Or just, y'know, not announce it a few weeks before a bloody election.
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Based on what exactly? The Andrew Neil interview was a great example of just how woefully ill-thought-out Corybns plans were. He couldn't answer the simplest of questions (with something other than 'let me finish'). He genuinely said he believed the 0.1%, who contribute to nearly 30% of income tax, would happily accept his proposed tax hike because it was 'morally' right to do so. This of course, was after years of vicious attacks on the very people he expects to pay for his spending spree. At no point did he ever demonstrate proper costing.

The free broadband, the payments to WASPI women etc. were reactionary. He was losing the war long before then. They weren't the policies that made Corybns manifesto look ridiculous, they were just the final nail in the coffin. People already believed he hadn't properly planned how he was going to pay for everything, and throwing more promises into the mix that didn't appear in his manifesto just made it worse.
 
ivaldo said:
Based on what exactly? The Andrew Neil interview was a great example of just how woefully ill-thought-out Corybns plans were. He couldn't answer the simplest of questions (with something other than 'let me finish'). He genuinely said he believed the 0.1%, who contribute to nearly 30% of income tax, would happily accept his proposed tax hike because it was 'morally' right to do so. This of course, was after years of vicious attacks on the very people he expects to pay for his spending spree. At no point did he ever demonstrate proper costing.
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Why wouldnt they be able to afford more taxes? The top 0.1% of the UK have increased their share of the nation's wealth from 4.5% to 9% over the past 30 years. Clearly it hasn't made them bleed.
https://www.theguardian.com/inequal...-increased-wealth-same-amount-as-poorest-half
https://www.theguardian.com/news/20...poor-grows-alongside-rise-in-uks-total-wealth
 
ivaldo said:
Based on what exactly? The Andrew Neil interview was a great example of just how woefully ill-thought-out Corybns plans were. He couldn't answer the simplest of questions (with something other than 'let me finish'). He genuinely said he believed the 0.1%, who contribute to nearly 30% of income tax, would happily accept his proposed tax hike because it was 'morally' right to do so. This of course, was after years of vicious attacks on the very people he expects to pay for his spending spree. At no point did he ever demonstrate proper costing.

The free broadband, the payments to WASPI women etc. were reactionary. He was losing the war long before then. They weren't the policies that made Corybns manifesto look ridiculous, they were just the final nail in the coffin. People already believed he hadn't properly planned how he was going to pay for everything, and throwing more promises into the mix that didn't appear in his manifesto just made it worse.
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Based on literally the post you quoted. £500bn was hiding behind the back of the sofa for when the rich needed it. Where did that come from?
 
BeforeKeanetherewasRobson said:
Deliberately didn't hold the tax part, just the railways bit. I don't know one person who thinks it's a good idea or one person who thinks Labour had thought the policy or cost through... hence curious and asked the question.

You say "the population" and link a poll to presumably back it up. The poll was 1,500 people asked right at a time when delays were being heavily criticised in the media. As the pollsters themselves say ..

“readers should be aware that a majority of respondents will not use trains regularly, and so there is a distinct possibility that the results will have been influenced by negative public discourse surrounding rail travel in the media at the moment.”

Like I say, just curious and wondered what was behind the comment. Personally, 900 people who may/may not use trains saying no (some no a lot, some no a little) while railways were getting panned in the media doesn't sound representative. If they'd asked 50,000 people, all at train stations, staggered across a year.. that would have been more representative?

As you say, how/when the policies were announced didn't inspire voters (though from speaking to people I know (not necessarily representative either), the personnel put them off more).
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I "deliberately" couldn't be arsed.

You believe what you want to believe, most people would be happy for the wealthiest 5% of people to pay more tax to fund the NHS. Whether they care more about Brexit or immergants or whatever doesn't change that.

And the link even says, most other polls have found the same thing regarding the train service. Why are the French and German government's allowed to own bits of our railways and we aren't. Our current railway system has nothing to recommend it other than not having collapsed yet (because the government just agreed to nationalise their losses during the lockdown).
 
If anyone is still questioning the affordability of labour last manifesto considering the actions this tory government has taken over the last month then honestly you are beyond help.
 
TwoSheds said:
Based on literally the post you quoted. £500bn was hiding behind the back of the sofa for when the rich needed it. Where did that come from?
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Fancy producing any actual figures? Any actual data to support it?
 
Sweet Square said:
If anyone is still questioning the affordability of labour last manifesto considering the actions this tory government has taken over the last month then honestly you are beyond help.
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Imagine thinking we could take these actions if Labour had buried us in debt already.
 
TwoSheds said:
You believe what you want to believe, most people would be happy for the wealthiest 5% of people to pay more tax to fund the NHS. Whether they care more about Brexit or immergants or whatever doesn't change that.
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Of course they would. That isn't the point though, is it? Most people would be happy to be given a free house, too, that doesn't mean they believe it's a viable option. This notion that the 1%ers are going to sit idly by while we take billions more off them in tax is the point Corybnites don't want to address. It's why when Corbyn was questioned on it he invariably refused to answer.
 
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