I suspect and hope (and I'm perfectly willing to accept I could be giving them credit they don't deserve) that the apparent watering down of their green policy is a pre-emptive move to prepare the party for the coming economic crash that will hit when Brexit lands on top of Covid. It's likely to be a wildly unstable time, and the only potential narrative the Tories have is to paint Labour as even more economically irresponsible by saying 'we're in a crisis and Labour have these vast spending promises!'. Given how far away the election is, at this stage I'm ok with Labour playing clever and dodging Tory traps. If they still hold a watered down green policy in 2-3 years then I'll know it's ideological not just a temporary tactic for political expediency.
Keir Starmer Labour Leader
- Thread starter Damien
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I suspect and hope (and I'm perfectly willing to accept I could be giving them credit they don't deserve) that the apparent watering down of their green policy is a pre-emptive move to prepare the party for the coming economic crash that will hit when Brexit lands on top of Covid. It's likely to be a wildly unstable time, and the only potential narrative the Tories have is to paint Labour as even more economically irresponsible by saying 'we're in a crisis and Labour have these vast spending promises!'. Given how far away the election is, at this stage I'm ok with Labour playing clever and dodging Tory traps. If they still hold a watered down green policy in 2-3 years then I'll know it's ideological not just a temporary tactic for political expediency.
I think the problem with that approach (and I've long lost faith that is the approach) is that when the 'pivot' comes to a more radical policy you have to deal then with the inevitable attempts to frame the discussion in terms of irresponsibility. It is better, surely, to prime the public for radical policy ideas now, even if it causes a short term polling dip, and prime the public for that debate – as dangerously close to 'nudge theory' as that sounds – than to deal with that backlash in the run-up to an election?
I think that's ultimately the failure of a centrist Labour party. In 2025 Starmer may lose the election, the odds are that he probably will given the UK's fetish for voting in the Tories, if his 5 years of leadership has narrowed the limits of acceptable political discourse in this country so that 'centre' is the leftmost extreme permissible then I really do worry how extreme the Tories could end up being.
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Labour is not going to win without the left. Starmer is probably a closet Tory. The Tories will dump Boris and get someone else for the next election.
I get the left thinks Labour is not going to win without the left. I wonder if the left gets that others think Labour is not going to win with the left?
Labour should split and give people the choice
Labour should split and give people the choice
If Labour do not win the next election, Starmer (who I back 100%) will have to go down as the worst Labour leader in history.
The only people I've seen make that assertion are those who feel the need to have a British flag on their twitter handle, they're not potential Labour voters.
I'd love a UK of the left, it's my natural home, but realistically it's not the natural home of most English people. People keep talking about how popular individual left wing policies are, and its true, but package them into a hard left Labour party and the UK voters are too conservative to go there. Who knows, maybe having more years of the Tories crushing the poor under their feet will lead to that place, but even then I doubt it. People who are struggling are less likely to want to take risks. Radical change is seen as a risk. There's always something worse that could happen to people's lives, and the less you have the more you understand that.
After Corbyn and the temporary popularity of a strongly left wing party I believe the above more than ever. Literally the only scenario I see that results in left wing policies becoming a reality again in Britain is a centre-left Labour government coming into power and then proving they can be trusted before sliding further left. Of course if the people leading that government are genuinely just centre-left however they won't have any desire to move later, as we saw with Blair/Brown.
Even then though, I'd still take a centre-left Labour government over the Tories any day of the week, and I suspect that is our only realistic choice.
I think our assessment of the problem and diagnosis of it is pretty similar, to be fair, so I'm not sure that there's a great deal to add. Where I think we differ is on where the left of the party should be expected to come with the centre, and why those calls seem particularly hollow. We are, after all, not even a year past some serious factional infighting led from the party's centre to the point where there are some fairly well document attempts to undermine the party's election strategy.
If the left of the party is expected to enthusiastically come with the centre of the party it is fair to say, I think, that Starmer could have struck a more conciliatory tone. I thought some posters on here were initially too quick to dismiss Starmer, but I think most of them have been proven right that his is a party that is interested in offering little to them and is banking on 'we're better than the Tories' as its central offering to left wing voters.
That might be true, but it's easy to work out why such an offering provokes little enthusiasm, inspires little hope that things might change for the better, and is being met with barely contained derision given party unity was not considered a good enough argument just one year ago.
As things stand, I'll probably vote for Starmer's Labour if I live in a swing seat in 2025, but it will be with no real sense of enthusiasm. The parallels to Biden in the states seem particularly stark.
All of that might be necessary for Labour to deliver an election win, but that's not a certainty, and I think it's easy to understand why people aren't enthusiastic about a pragmatic, but ultimately less radical, Labour party replacing a party that was offering real change.
NinjaFletch said:
I think the left of the party wasn’t the problem though, they voted last time and we still lost horribly. Starmer is trying to recover all the other Labour voters and probably gambling on offering a limited range of left leaning policies closer to the election to draw the left back in.
Plus let’s be honest, on the left our position is pretty fecked anyway. If you have a choice between centre-left or Tories then you’re either going to vote centre-left or basically hurt yourself and your cause just out of spite/dogmatic ideology. Unless you’re fortunate enough to live in an area where the Greens actually have a chance of course (or outside England).
Because everyone that isn't far left has a British flag on their twitter handle? You've nicely answered my question anyway, you don't understand. Thank you.
Did Carrie Bradshaw write this?
It's almost impressive how Starmer has managed to spin straw into shit given that he started out with a decent amount of goodwill (or at least benefit of the doubt) from both the membership and the PLP. Winning the next election was always going to be a big ask, but uniting the party was as simple as doing what he said he'd do in his campaign pledges, which were as good a roadmap toward healing the factional splits and rebuilding the 'brand' as a centre-left party as Labour could have hoped for.
The problem is that almost everything he's done as leader has been part of an attempt to reach a compromise with a Labour Right who have no interest in compromise, and that pointless pandering has been uniformly counterproductive. The right want absolute control of the party and its policy platform and that goal is fundementally incompatible with both the 'broad church' approach Labour needs to win and the adoption of policies that makes sense in 2020. As we've seen, unless they get exactly what they want the right will agitate and cause problems, regardless of how many inches Starmer gives them.
On the other hand, the bulk of the left showed massive willingness to compromise on policy and control of the party by electing Starmer in the first place when there was a leftist candidate in the running. Most of the Labour lefties on here voted for him on the basis of his pledges to not abandon progressive policies and to end the factional backbighting. Broadly speaking, the left would have been content with having a voice at the table in the post-Corbyn era, instead it's been increasingly sidelined and ostracised. The course Starmer has chosen of alienating a willing left in an attempt to placate a right for whom it will never be enough has failed utterly to solve anything, and if it continues Labour is fecked for the foreseeable future.
The problem is that almost everything he's done as leader has been part of an attempt to reach a compromise with a Labour Right who have no interest in compromise, and that pointless pandering has been uniformly counterproductive. The right want absolute control of the party and its policy platform and that goal is fundementally incompatible with both the 'broad church' approach Labour needs to win and the adoption of policies that makes sense in 2020. As we've seen, unless they get exactly what they want the right will agitate and cause problems, regardless of how many inches Starmer gives them.
On the other hand, the bulk of the left showed massive willingness to compromise on policy and control of the party by electing Starmer in the first place when there was a leftist candidate in the running. Most of the Labour lefties on here voted for him on the basis of his pledges to not abandon progressive policies and to end the factional backbighting. Broadly speaking, the left would have been content with having a voice at the table in the post-Corbyn era, instead it's been increasingly sidelined and ostracised. The course Starmer has chosen of alienating a willing left in an attempt to placate a right for whom it will never be enough has failed utterly to solve anything, and if it continues Labour is fecked for the foreseeable future.
Well quite, but that 'horrible loss' occurred against a backdrop of huge factional infighting. It's at least worthy of consideration how much Labour's own infighting contributed to that. Even if it was ultimately negligible against a greater backdrop of voter apathy (a point I don't think has been suitably established), there is really not much analysis needed to work out why the left aren't enthusiastically throwing themselves behind a party now run by many of the ringleaders of that faction.
Whether there's a choice of not is by the by. In fact, if anything, it's precisely that that has led to the moaning, rather than a drift away to parties that do represent the left as would have happened in a PR system.
The only explanation for this post is either that you've spent absolutely zero time on Twitter (lucky you) or you're being wilfully blind, so I'm not sure you're in a position to accuse others of a lack of understanding.
I think Starmer is fine without the Left. To make an electoral impact protest votes need to be organised and courted. Is Momentum doing anything about that?
What? That's not what he said at all. In fact it's almost the opposite.
Well that's two explanations, but there is actually a third, a huge number of people believe Labour cannot win from the far left. You are correct about twitter.
Also, I have no idea who Carrie Bradshaw is.
If the Greens, Lib Dems and Labour agreed to act like adults and form a permanent coalition, the Tories would be fecked.
Large-Tent centralist-left would beat right wing.
Almost All Ministers are cnuts.
Large-Tent centralist-left would beat right wing.
Almost All Ministers are cnuts.
What's the best way Starmer could have handled this? You don't suspend him - you get criticism from one side and if you do, then you get it from the other. Just toxic all round. Corbyn could also have handled it better at the release of the initial report and maybe should have apologised if he actually cared for the Labour Party as it was reported he and Starmer had spoken on an agreed action the day before. Even his latest release isn't an apology, it would have deflated a lot of tensions. Its just two sides going at each other and the Tories watching on in glee for any respite from their incompetence.
You just lose any sense in your arguments with stuff like closet Tory. See that with a lot of other people on social media when that's all they have to criticise politicians they don't like.
The man has literally lived a life that disproves your suggestion. Starmer is closer to Blair than Corbyn but all three are miles away from Boris and Co.
The in-fighting just shows our vulnerability on the left though. If we walk away the party just slides even further right to make up the numbers, and if we stay then we lack the numbers to actually win. Bernie proved the point very well in America.
Sure, and as Smores has correctly stated the most likely group to be seen expressing that viewpoint are people who have very right wing politics who won't vote for Labour anyway and simply want a nice Tory party to pick from because the know Tory is a dirty word. As, for example, the right wing Twitter nobodies or readers of the Times who haven't quite twigged it's the Murdoch press yet. There's no amount of 'right' that the Labour party could move to appease those voters whilst remaining recognisably the Labour party.
I also think it's particularly worth highlighting that the evidence of both the most recent UK and US elections is that no matter where on the spectrum the left wing party is the right is going to attempt to smear them as being unrepentant socialists. It's one of the most ludicrous accusations that could be levelled at Biden who is the most middle of the world, dull centrist, imaginable in US politics (and out right, right wing by our standards). Labour could run on a policy base further to the right than the Tories and they'd still be 'socialists'; the obsession with policy position is just a failure to recognise that the right have given up any pretence of intellectual rigour in their arguments.
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You're sounding as if you don't think a far left Labour could win either, which is where I came in.
The perceived volume of anti semitism in Labour was much higher than the actual amount of incidents. There were reports highlighting and quantifying this. Pointing out this disparity while still wanting to fight and defeat anti semitism are not two mutually exclusive views.
He really is. He should be keeping the focus on the incompetent charlatans in office.
If Labour split in a FPTP system, they may as well just accept eternal Tory rule.
This is how the Tories got their big majority, Brexit party split Labour votes in some consituencies and the Lib Dems in others.
I think he was probably trying to do that but then the report and Corbyn popped up.
Too negative. Last time Labour shed the far left they gained power. I think they would again.
Not to mention the Brexit factor. Corbyn compromised with the Labour centrists on the second referendum approach. Ultimately this lost votes to the Brexit party in the red wall and beyond.
Of course there are many factors but already we have identified two which stem from the Labour centrists.
Totally agree on this. They will be called "hard left" by certain factions in the media too. People who don't look into policy and what "hard left" actually means may even believe it.
Define far left?
I think you need to revisit the makeup of the Labour Party MPs back in 1997. Assuming that is what you are mistakenly referring to.
He's then gone back on some of that in his latest statement. My response to your initial question was that Starmer was in a difficult position and a decision either way would have meant he got flak which then distracted on his concentration on the tories.
Sounds like you want a split as well then.
I appreciate it is a difficult situation to manage. Especially when you take into account the Tory spin and Tory supporting media spin. But navigating these right ropes is what politicians and moreso leaders have to do.
Hows that?
You're conveniently ignoring the biggest factor, which was Corbyn himself.
Well I read "we have identified two which stem from the Labour centrists", which sounds like you think you would be better off without them.
Not going to agree on that one I'm afraid. I think Labour's Brexit policy was reactive and flawed, but I don't really see how they could have realistically gone in to the election backing Brexit with any expectation of keeping Remain seats. In fact, they haemorrhaged votes amongst both Leave and Remain voters as it was. I also believe there's some more fundamental demographic shifts at play in those seats (or at least, the most recent analysis I've seen suggests there is, but I might have missed something). Starmer comes away with some amount of egg on his face for that, too.
I hope in the long run, when Brexit is shown up to be the idiocy that it is, that Labour's lukewarm reaction to it is seen rather more favourably. The damage is done and unfortunately we're leaving, but at least the Conservatives have to own their mess; I'm not sure that pretending that it's really a great idea after all (especially as polling shows that voters are increasingly thinking it's a bad idea in even greater numbers) does anything more than just chucking away Labour's position in the future.
Was he a variable from the much tighter 2017 election?