And historically, people tend not to vote for candidates they don't trust or like. Hence why Corbyn oversaw Labours worst defeat in modern history. And no excuse put forward by the Corbynite outriders will distract from his catastrophic failure. The damage done by Corbyn needs to be repaired first.
Keir Starmer Labour Leader
- Thread starter Damien
- Start date
Those would be the years in which Keir Starmer lead Labour to adopt an ever more electorally catastrophic Brexit position *
I don't think that is true though. From what we've seen so far it is actually hard to determine how a Starmer government would have been substantially different from the Conservative one. If anything they'd have been less willing to engage in the scale of economic stimulus the Tories have done over fears it would be perceived as unaffordable. Renters are getting sod all from the current opposition as the Labour party is back in the hands of its landlord MPs. Taxing the wealthiest is off the agenda because it might not poll well.
One of the most appealing parts of the Corbyn project was it reframed politics in this country. i.e. it would dispute the fundamental, taken for granted essentials — Starmer is playing within that frame, and perhaps that makes him more 'electable', but if you recognise that Britain needs a transformational politics, it means it's honestly hard to care if he wins or loses.
In fact that's one of the most depressing things at the moment… if Starmer wins then we are in reality at least two election cycles, or ~14 years, away from any chance of that kind of government in the UK. If he loses, at least 9 years.
They are taking for granted their new voting base — young, precariously employed, renting — just as New Labour took the white northern towns and cities for granted. The problem is this voting base is much less loyal than the traditional Labour voter. They won't go Tory but I predict a return to > a million Green votes, and rightly so. Starmer's best route forward is to promise PR to keep this cohort on side for one last election.
* I think they were in a bind because of the nutty extremism of the FBPE, Lib Dem crowd and would probably have lost votes either way. But there is a lot of responsibility to spread around and Starmer shares that.
Complaining about excuses then immediately follows it up with one for Sir Keith. Textbook.
Yes, and we will see how Labour capitalise on that over the coming months. Again, your comparison just isn't valid. The last few years have caused a good deal of damage to the Labour cause. It will take a while to set that right.
It seems a lot of Labour voters who are on the further left side of the party, such as Momentum are using the fact that Labour aren't ahead in the polls approximately three months after Starmer took charge, as some kind of evidence that his politics won't work. This completely misses the point, that the reason Labour lost so many votes and sits firmly behind the Conservatives in the opinion polls is due to how things have been handled over the last 4 years or so. What was attempted from 2017-2019 did not resonate with voters at all. The party membership voted on a change in direction in recognition of that, rejecting the candidate favoured by the old leadership by a large margin. Starmer didn't have to 'lie about pledges' to gain support; people just didn't want more of the same.
That just appears to be an attempt to absolve Corbyn of responsibility, he was party leader, he could have appointed who he wanted.
I don't for a second think the polls are proof Sir Keith's politics won't work. I don't believe he has any politics to start with, hence why he's struggling to keep pretending to care about any of the 10 things he made his pitch to the membership 100 days into the job. He certainly doesn't have any principles.
It was a dreadful defeat and the worst campaign I can remember.
We know just how fickle the electorate is.
And so I can see no reason at all why Labour can not win the next election.
The Tories clearly have a big problem with trust as well as awful judgement.
I can see the public warming to Starmer.
He has to play very smart for the long game and keep his party united.
White supremacist tendencies with no political compass. That just seems a nonsense.
He's not a white supremacist, he hasn't got the commitment for something like that.
Those of us on the left already know that when Starmer loses to Sunak it will be Corbyn’s fault, and that Labour needs to move even further away from those politics
I'm not expecting them to be beating the Conservative party on really any polling tbh(The Tories have a lock on 40% of the electorate and that might never change regardless of how good or bad Labour is)but that tweet shows me Starmer and Dodds sitting back and acting as a "supportive" opposition hasn't worked.
Compare this to democrats in the US for example, now of course everyone on the left hates them but it's impossible to argue their strategy isn't working. I expected something similar with Starmer(Although with less good results due to the differences in American and British politics) but we've seen none of that, my disappointment with Starmer isn't that he's more to the right than the last guy but the fact he's a rubbish liberal.
Another major concern is whenever Labour have put forward an alternative it's pretty awful. Starmer talked a few days about a Tory policy being deadweight(Only a policy wonk knows what that means)and how we can't afford to be splashing money around(An argument from 2010). Dodds was only recently cheering the British public to go out and spend during an pandemic. And now Starmer has potentially ditched his number one pledge when he ran for leader. Which makes me think both Starmer and the social forces of his politics have no ideas.
Good post and completely agree with you.
Sunak as Tory leader would also help soften the nasty image of the Tory party which was built back up during the late Cameron years.
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I can. England will vote Tory. Again.
Still over 4 years to go. A week is a long time in politics.
Wait, you can't honestly believe this surely? You really think that a Starmer government would be the same or even worse than a Johnson government?
I can understand thinking that a centrist Labour government is not to your liking and certainly not exactly what you want.
Even if Corbyn apparently reframed politics, what does that actually mean unless they get into power? How has Corbyn's approach changed peoples', especially poor peoples' lives, in the UK for the better?
Realistically, if we had a PR government, I'd likely vote Green. If I were Scottish, I'd probably vote SNP, not because of independence but because generally their politics align more closely with mine than Labour do. But neither of those apply to me so I am stuck in a way voting for labour.
Despite his faults, I think the labour government under Blair and Brown did more for the disadvantaged in the UK than the Tory governments do. And that is my underlying thought process.
If you guys feel the British electorate were ready for Corbyn's politics or Corbyn himself, then I'd be interested to know why he failed so miserably and what you think he should have done after the last GE?
I'm tired of discussions about Corbyn to be honest and I'm tired of the despair and pain these Conservative governments continue to inflict on the population.
Maybe your understanding of black lives matter and what "Defund the police" actually means are on a par with Starmer then. I suggest you do some research and then revisit Starmers BBC interview which Farage enjoyed, agreed with and retweeted.
But I didn’t say that did. I just pushed back against the idea it would be infinitely better.
I think it’s reasonable to state that, even without being in government, the Corbyn opposition shifted public opinion on austerity and that has had a lasting impact in politics. But it’s a trade off. Starmer can do his constructive “we basically support the Conservatives” opposition for the next 4 years in an attempt to be electable. But if that fails you have failed to shift the dialogue on anything. This is already being seen re. renters, who now Labour has abandoned have no one standing up for them.
Corbyn was a flawed leader, and him and his team made plenty of missteps. But the policies were broadly popular.
UK politics is very broken. FPTP means lots of people who would really rather not be in the same political party are forced together, and that’s why these discussions continue.
But most of all I’m not going to be guilt tripped into voting for or supporting a mediocre Starmer lead Labour Party offering by the same people who were devastated at the 2016 result.
OMG Farage enjoyed it?! Starmer is a white supremacist. Confirmed!
Maybe your grasp on reality is as loose as Corbyn's was.
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so most basic research... lets go with wikipedia as its probably the most widley used form of quick research on the planet and usually gives a pretty good summary if not in depth extrapolation of arguments anyway...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defund_the_police
paragraph 1
So yeah defund the police means different things to different people but the abolition of police services falls within that spectrum
A lot of people of a certain political persuasion will be reading this and saying 'great', but there's not a lot of good news for Labour here.
Firstly, the polling isn't asking whether these similarities are good or bad, just whether there are similarities. So whilst some (including the talking heads who supplied the quotes) are reading 'similar to Tony Blair' and choosing to interpret that as a good thing, there's no guarantee those polled intended it as a compliment (YouGov data states that 21% of people polled in 2019 and 2020 held a positive opinion of Blair, and 54% held a negative opinion (compare to 23% and 60% for Corbyn)). Unless this data is qualified with data as to what proportion of the respondents perceive Blair positively/negatively, it's useless as a benchmark of how good a job Starmer is doing or will do going forwards. Those wanting a prediction with any sort of solid methodological backing should be asking for data on public opinion re: Starmer after 100 days to be compared to equivalent data collected following Blair's 100th day as Labour leader (or Corbyn's/Milliband's/Brown's).
Secondly, it's hugely worrying for Labour that Starmer's leadership of the party is seen as a clear break from Corbyn and they're still substantially behind the Conservatives in the polls. What that suggests is that the public feel that the issues preventing them voting Labour run a lot deeper than the leader. The talking heads in the article have embraced a satisfying fiction that they will be able to attribute their current and future failures to Corbyn, but the evidence doesn't back that up. If Labour's problems were widely believed by the electorate to have stemmed from Corbyn's leadership, we'd expect 2017 and 2019 to to return a lower Labour vote-share than 2010 and 2015 - which it didn't. We'd also expect a significant bounce now Corbyn is gone, which hasn't come to pass.
What we're seeing with Starmer isn't a return to the glory days of New Labour in 1997- a young party with exciting ideas capturing a renaissant national optimism, it's a return to the nadir of New Labour in 2010 and 2015 - a party of uninspiring professional politicians shackled by association with an unpopular spell in government and perceived fiscal incompetence.
In fairness, the actual poll does do some of those things even if the Sky write up doesn't.
I doubt he'd match up with Blair circa 94 but clearly above Corbyn and Miliband:
https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/3ym4butvfh/YouGov - Labour Leader Results.pdf
Unpopularity of Labour as a whole is still a big limiting factor
Lack of trust on the economy is a big part of that and is longstanding since 2010
@Ubik - Thanks for that context, I was quite surprised that they'd commissioned such a seemingly useless poll but couldn't be bothered to look into it. Bizarre journalism from Sky to omit the actual useful data.
Starmer's big popularity test will come when he starts getting a taste of the media coverage Labour leaders typically enjoy. To date, he's done nothing to tread on any establishment toes and has endeared himself to the right-wing press by setting himself against the left (both by running against RLB and by his maneuvering in-office). Unfortunately, the electoral reality is that Labour can't win elections by keeping their heads down and being uncontroversial. At some point he's going to have to ruffle some feathers, at which point he'll start getting a taste of what Corbyn and Milliband got from the the day their names appeared on the ballot.
Starmer's big popularity test will come when he starts getting a taste of the media coverage Labour leaders typically enjoy. To date, he's done nothing to tread on any establishment toes and has endeared himself to the right-wing press by setting himself against the left (both by running against RLB and by his maneuvering in-office). Unfortunately, the electoral reality is that Labour can't win elections by keeping their heads down and being uncontroversial. At some point he's going to have to ruffle some feathers, at which point he'll start getting a taste of what Corbyn and Milliband got from the the day their names appeared on the ballot.
Good points made here. Suggests not putting forward any policies is actually not the best strategy. Who’d have thought that?
'Came within a whisker of victory'
FFS, Labour won 55 less seats than the Tories and 2.5% less of the overall vote. How is that the outcome that some people have come away with from that election?
Also for this:
Is that not exactly what is happening now? We're still in the national crisis bit.
If Starmer and labour don't start piping up more often in the coming months, and putting forward more of their own policies, then yes, I agree that it will be shambolic.
A few thousand votes across certain seats hypothetically would have meant Labour could form a coalition. Of course that's a hypothetical ignoring other movements but it does lend weight to the slim margins argument.
The context of that election (Brexit being the biggest issue) and the progressive platform Labour stood on will mean to most Corbyn supporters that it was a positive step in the right direction with significant gains. Of course like finishing 2nd under Jose that all went to shit quite fast but it doesn't nullify previous progress.
Aye. Its spewing bias. Best left alone.
From The Independent. At any rate, the transformation from 2015 to 2017 was impressive. In such a short space of time Labour enjoyed their greatest rise in the share of the vote since 1945. To just dismiss it as ‘he still lost’ is blindly partisan and ignorant of the context of the situation Corbyn inherited. The Guardian is correct that in 2017 Labour’s upswing was due to the party’s ability to wrestle control of the narrative from the Tories.
Starmer’s strategy is letting the government dictate it. It’s going to be far more difficult to gain control of it the longer he leaves it and allows it to become entrenched, as happened with Labour’s cowardly yielding to the austerity argument. It’s a bold approach to be pinning your faith in some kind of impressive volte face from Starmer, as you seem to accept otherwise he’s just sleepwalking into another defeat.
In the middle of a national crisis he has no choice but to let the Tories control the narrative to a major degree. Any attempts to change the topic is completely unacceptable and if he engages in too overt an attack on the government at a time when they're still dealing with the pandemic is going to lead to a big backlash against Labour for 'putting politics above the national interest'. Starmer seems to be doing an excellent job so far of holding Boris' feet to the fire at PMQ's while projecting a calm, competent image to the country that contrasts well to Boris and his bumbling and dishonesty.
Restoring Labour to electability is going to take time, and anyone thinking he should be making radical steps right now is not thinking things all the way through. He's building a profile of a realistic Prime Ministerial candidate, letting the Tories have enough rope to hang themselves, and taking steps to remove Labour's rough edges and contentious positions. By the time this crisis ends they'll be seen as a serious party who can start laying out their own platform while stomping the Tories over their Corona failures and likely the failure of the Brexit strategy as it comes back to the forefront.
I really don't get this insistence on attacking Starmer from within right now, he's doing a good job in very difficult circumstances.
Of course he has a choice to challenge the official narrative. It would not be ‘playing politics’, it would be his duty, as a politician. Johnson has already tried the ‘playing politics’ card, it doesn’t work. It is not changing the topic at all, things like a wealth tax have everything to do with the pandemic and how we deal with it and who bears the greatest financial burden for it. Labour helped to bring the government down during the last genuine national crisis for its incompetence, I’m sure Chamberlain would have much preferred Labour adopted your rationale in 1939 as much as Johnson is content that Starmer seems to share it now. A national crisis is precisely the worst time to timidly acquiesce to the narrative set by its corrupt regime, as the costs of not challenging it are far greater.
1. From who? The Conservatives? The Conservative media? Damn, can't criticise the Conservatives otherwise they'll say the opposition aren't playing fair.
2. Boris Johnson is literally the current prime minister. Why the feck would this even matter.
3. The strategy that 43% of the population endorsed at the last election.
I'm not sure how you fix Labour's electoral chances, but I really doubt it is done through competent managerialism. If Labour want to exploit the management of coronavirus for votes, they should already be hammering at every opportunity how poorly the UK has done vs comparators.
My favourite line so far summing up Starmer's approach to COVID was where he said “I support the easing of restrictions but, unlike the prime minister, I’m not blind to the risks”. At least if you are blind to the risks you have an excuse.
imagine watching increasingly outlandish and fecked up weirdos who've been winning elections in recent times, from donnie T, to bolsonaro to modi etc. and still thinking people give a single solitary shit about professionalism and civility
Sorry but you're totally disregarding the reality of the modern media landscape. The press in the UK are overwhelmingly right leaning and if Labour start hitting the government too aggressively while they are still dealing day to day with the pandemic, the media narrative is going to quickly turn to Labour putting politics ahead of the public good. Currently Starmer is getting good press from media outlets that would usually treat Labour like a punching bag. This while the Tories are looking stupider and more corrupt every day.
It's a classic 'Don't interrupt your enemy while he's making a mistake' situation. The election isn't for years, have a bit of patience.
That’s odd, because in the media landscape I’ve read countless damning indictments of this current government’s handling of the pandemic among other contemptible things. The reason Labour has ‘good press’ right now has nothing to do with its policy of acquiescence to the government narrative, and everything to do with how much of a ‘threat’ they perceive Starmer to be to their livelihood.
It’s all well and good saying ‘don’t interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake’, but these mistakes are literally going to be counted in the amount of bodybags needed. So no, I’d very much prefer it if the leader of the opposition did at least try and scrutinise government policy during a global pandemic.
And the second part is the key point, isn't it. I'm almost certain Kentorio is right and you are wrong in your views of how the media would treat Labour acting aggressively now, but it's sort of redundant because there's material things that might be changeable which would have stopped people dying and the government has lurched from one U-turn to the other.
The difficulty is that I think Labour do have to present a conciliatory air at this point in order to have any voice in the debate because the Tories have successfully argued this to be a war - they'd be dismissed out of hand as playing party politics, scare mongering and being divisive if they didn't - but there's nevertheless significant areas where they could have achieved more.
Again though, I can't help but come back to the alternatives and think who would have been able to do it. It really was a meagre bunch to select from.
Lots of retrospective reasoning in this thread. If at the start of this pandemic we'd have said 'is it a good idea for the Labour leader to not robustly challenge the Tory record and narrative to seek greater electability during this pandemic?' How many reckon they'd actually have thought that's a great idea?
What a bizarre example to use, given Labour then went into a government of national unity and it helped them win the next election by a landslide.
We're in the middle of two overlapping crises, the health one is still very much ongoing and the economic one has barely begun to be felt yet. We don't even know what the unemployment figures are going to look like yet, what the shape of the recovery will be.
Have they not challenged them on PPE? On care homes? On testing? On tracing? They've been kinda wishy washy on schools and reopening, but tied that back to testing and tracing. There's a reason Johnson complains that Starmer is putting the country down every week, it's not because he's being a cheerleader for the government.
Which all sounds very fine and noble, except last I checked the Tories have an 80 seat majority, don't give a single feck what Labour have to say, and are going to feck up this pandemic response no matter how vocal Labour get about it.
Also I'm sorry but the blame for the bodybags sits solely on the Tories. I hate this idea that the opposition are somehow to blame for not opposing enough. If they do what you seem to want to do, it'll change nothing in the short term and make their chances of victory long term much reduced. Which would then lead to even more devastated lives as a result of all the Tories other horrible policies.
Tbf he has opposed hasn't he? And got them to go back on some policies?
Yes, by being clinical, reasonable and responsible. What I'm saying is he can't just go on some full scale assault right now without making people turn against Labour.