He’s not going to out-racist the Tory party, is he? If that’s what people want they already have a home. The latter comment just sums up the obvious flaw in the strategy - he’s made a commitment that tries to please everyone, and all he’s achieved is winding up the bigots by acknowledging racism exists and antagonising much of the left for performative nonsense.
Keir Starmer Labour Leader
- Thread starter Damien
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He’s not going to out-racist the Tory party, is he? If that’s what people want they already have a home. The latter comment just sums up the obvious flaw in the strategy - he’s made a commitment that tries to please everyone, and all he’s achieved is winding up the bigots by acknowledging racism exists and antagonising much of the left for performative nonsense.
I think the racism required to get Clarkson to flatter you loses you far more BAME voters than it gains you middle aged white racists.
If you really believe Clarkson is such a racist he now decided to vote labour based on them being the party of choice for racism
No, I think he's being honest about his disgust regarding the Tories appalling handling of the pandemic and the Labour party is racist enough now that he's just about willing to throw them some support but will withdraw that before anyone actually has a chance to vote.
Conservatives
Eat out to help out
A plan for jobs worth up to £30 billion
Cutting Stamp Duty
vs.
Labour
It's important to support business, but meal deal vouchers don't substitute for effective public health messaging and measures
*these policies are all bad and dumb
Eat out to help out
A plan for jobs worth up to £30 billion
Cutting Stamp Duty
vs.
Labour
It's important to support business, but meal deal vouchers don't substitute for effective public health messaging and measures
*these policies are all bad and dumb
Or maybe Clarkson wanting to vote labour isn't symbolic of anything other than Labour's amusing self regard when it comes to racism (soon to be punctured by the EHRC).
Any other lead...you get the point by now.
On a serious note, the huge concern for Labour has to be the ability of the Tories to still poll as high as 40%+ regardless of how incompetent and shambolic they are.
Labour isn’t going to restore its image overnight (if it will at all). It’s still hungover from the Corbyn years and it will take more than a couple of months with a new leader in charge to convince the electorate that they are ready to govern.
Yes, because before the Corbyn years things were great.
But Starmer is winning in PMQ's.
I think the reasons the Tories are still polling so high might be down to the still held public perception of the Labour party as a whole. Unfortunately, the public perception of Labour might take years to change... fortunately, the next election is years away as well.
I'll be more interested in the polling after the fallout of a no deal Brexit.
Exactly, Labour need to pick their battles wisely.
My main point is I worry people underestimate the resilience of the core Tory vote in today’s milieu. It’s going to be a very difficult task - one not even entirely in Labour’s hands - to drag that number below, say, 40%.
I thought blaming current results on the last guy was just a football forum thing, what next 'Starmer is laying the foundations' for future leaders.
Personally think the polling is nothing to do with Starmer or even Labour. It's basically crisis polling plus Brexit hasn't imploded just yet so he's still getting that benefit. If Labour don't make the Tories hurt for their mishandling in say 6 months then I'll be worried.
Yup. Without UKIP to siphon off the hard right from the Tories, they have a very solid base which is very unlikely to move that much unless things go totally to shit, or the Lib Dems suddenly become credible.
Sad truth is that England is a pretty conservative country.
I'm not holding out too much hope. If they can't even see what a mess the tories have made of dealing with this virus, what hope is there?
Quite right.
Two things need to happen for Labour to be in a position to win the next election.
Boris and his party will continue with their arrogance resulting from their big majority.
The impending disaster of Brexit, on top of their shambolic handling of the Corona virus pandemic will gradually sap public confidence.
And their scatterbrained policies, such as subsidising people to go out for a meal with public money will build the feeling of lacking competence.
Kier Starmer has to gradually build a party that becomes a genuine alternative and one people still feel confident in voting for.
For a change, he has time on his side.
Meanwhile Reevers of Blood was on the Beeb refusing to confirm Sir Keir's pledge to increase income tax for the top 5% of earners (i.e. pledge no. 1) still remains in place.
We're in the midst of the biggest health crisis and about to experience the worst economic recession in a century but sure, let's criticise the LOTO for not having a completely irrelevant new policy to be scrutinised, even though they have come up with viable alternatives to government policy. Honestly, how do they even get into their profession?
What would be the utility of releasing policies now 5 years away from a general election, in the midst of a global pandemic?
That was embarrassing. Not going to be easy for Starmer to come up with stand out policies. But he does seem to be doing well on PMQ's for ever that is worth.
Unfortunately Sir Keith lost any ground to make this argument when he announced his 10 Pledges to dupe the membership.
What does this mean though? So he made 10 pledges to win the leadership...is it not perhaps reasonable to think that those might generally still be policy ideas?
I don't really have a particularly strong opinion of Starmer either way yet and think he dealt with the RLB situation very poorly.
But I don't really expect him to be releasing policy after policy currently, nor laying into the government at every turn. I think it also misreads the public mood as to what would be expected of an opposition leader, just months after an election defeat and still in the midst of a pandemic.
Announced in February before the pandemic was even classified as such. Of course he can make this valid argument. It's more important to focus on the awful policies of Bojo and his abhorrent cabinet.
The first nine words of Pledge No. 1 couldn't even be confirmed when it was asked about directly this morning. Add that to celebrating the vast majority of migrants' taxes being worth less than everyone else's in regards to NHS access (at odds with both Pledge 2 and 6), any interest in climate change being an issue for 5 years down the line, when it was going to be 'at the heart of everything we do' (Pledge 3), telling teaching unions where they can shove their namby-pamby concerns about "dying at work during a worldwide pandemic" (Pledge 7) and his god awful response to BLM and the racism demonstrated in the leaked report he did everything to keep under wraps (Pledge 9). So no, it's completely unreasonable to think they're still policy ideas. He'd ditched them in the time it took for his acceptance speech video to be recorded and uploaded.
Did someone tell him there was going to an election this year or something? Those bastards.
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Bingo.
*Enters thread. Reads a post about Starmers 'white supremacist instincts.' Exists thread.*
At this rate we may have to have an, 'Is it safe to enter the Kier Starmer' thread. It has gone rather toxic in here sine he sacked RLB. Are you serious? His pledges were made in view to the next election in 2024, but who in their right mind would start forming policies now before the fallout of Brexit and Coronavirus? And who in their right mind would think that a lack of policies 4 years before an election and in these circumstances means he has gone against his key pledges?As far as I can recall, he was all for ensuring that schools were fully safe before opening, which is what the unions wanted as well. He fought against the NHS surcharge and made the government u-turn on this issue. He has also advocated for a "green" recovery for jobs and described BLM as a moment for real change. So as far as I can see, he is keeping true to his key pledges. And rooting out any hint of Anti-Semitism to boot.
So "Cheers for your votes, now let's please never speak of them again until 2024. They're still definitely valid, unless journalists ask directly about them or we have a chance to demonstrate how strongly we hold them in what we do and say, you just need to trust us."
You‘re showing yourself up for your bad faith argument here. Nobody is saying never speak of them, they’re explaining to you why they’ve not yet been forged into concrete policies which is what you were originally criticising him for.
It's pretty unfair and bad faith of me to criticise something as vague as "Increase income tax for the top 5% of earners" (a direct quote taken from Pledge 1) not being turned into a political policy to increase income tax for the top 5% of earners, or even so much as being cited when a MP of that party is specifically asked about the party's stance on increasing income tax for the top 5% of earners.
I assume you missed the post which had Nigel Farage endorsing Starmers position on black lives matter?
Thank you for bringing this up. Some of the criticism of Starmer in this thread has bordered on the offensive. Insinuating white supremacist tendencies is just a nonsense. Criticising him for not focusing on his pledges during the biggest public health crisis we have experienced this century is completely tone-deaf, and would have lead to any policy releases either being ignored, or being construed as playing politics while people died.
It's going to take a while to build peoples trust back in the Labour Party after the last few years.
It's not exactly a bad faith argument to question how:
"Increase income tax for the top 5% of earners, reverse the Tories’ cuts in corporation tax and clamp down on tax avoidance, particularly of large corporations. No stepping back from our core principles."
has turned into a refusal to endorse from a shadow cabinet member to endorse the first clause of this pledge when specifically asked about it.
If you stand for election on a platform of 'Let's replace the statue of Nancy Astor with a 30ft tall statue Paddington Bear' (an unambiguously good policy) it's not bad faith to wonder how 6 months later when a member of your front bench is asked 'Should we replace the statue of Nancy Astor with a statue of Paddington Bear' they say 'Now is too early to commit to those kinds of things'.
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Not when the full economic impact of covid-19 and a potential no-deal Brexit, haven't been fully quantified yet.