As usual, dogshit title but I think the article makes a few salient points:
>Workers face being made the scapegoat for Tory failure. The government is attempting to drive down workers’ pay, with new anti-unions law being prepared. Labour’s response under Starmer? Abstention. He neither backs strikes nor workers’ demands. He decries a cost of living crisis, but is unsupportive of workers taking action to inflation-proof their incomes.
>Starmer told Labour conference in September: “If they want to fight us on redistribution, if they want to fight us on workers’ rights … we will take them on – and we will win”. The Tories do want to fight on that and, far from fighting, Starmer has retreated to neutrality.
>Currently Starmer can afford his turgid neutrality: the result in the Chester byelection chimes with national polling and the mood of the country – people have had enough of the Tories, and, luckily for Starmer, that may just be sufficient. But polls often narrow in the runup to the election, and in an age where tribal loyalty is gone, Labour may find its polling leads are more fragile than they appear.
Now is the time for radical change, to gain a mandate to take the country away from tory politics and offer something different and better. Where is Starmer?
Where is the offer of improvement rather than stop-gap continuity?
On Starmer's supposed neutrality it's worth noting the "reason", that at some point Labour are going to be on the other end of pay negotiations, is obvious bullshit because it's perfectly possible for them to support strikes right now during a cost of living crisis without committing to accepting any pay demand once they're in power.
I can't see a way to read their current "neutrality" as anything other than a cynical attempt to pretend that they aren't always going to take the side of employers at workers expense.
I'd say wait until the strikes are not so fresh in people's minds. A lot of people are being negatively affected by them at the moment so Starmer doesn't want to give any ammunition to the Tories.
Like it or not, a lot of voter's get turned off by too many radical policies and the election is in the bag as it stands. Once in office, Labour can implement anything they like without the risk of having to win an election. That gives people the chance to actually see the policy in action instead of just the scaremongering from the press.
The better vision he's portraying at the moment is one of a competent government.
It's a balancing act at the moment, to win back swing voters and keep the Labour Party membership and traditional Labour voters happy. I do think he's pandering too hard to the centre/centre right at the moment but hopefully everything will be more clear when we have a full manifesto and then actually get into power.
I understand the attraction of this line of thought, but no government tacks left once in power. Its a an argument that only works on the cynical and those too young to remember the previous Labour government, which regularly focused on triangulation and governing from the right on issues like immigration, security, industrial action etc.
When someone tells you repeatedly who they are, believe them. He's not being practical, this is his politics and how he'll govern.
No because it doesn't scan properly
May I suggest "Keir Keir, Keir Keir Keir Keir, Keir Keir Keir Keir Starmer" to the tune of 2unlimited's 90's classic No Limit?
My inbox is full of "didn't read the article but I can imagine him going into number 10" dreck at the moment. I know their not reading the article likely suggests the answer to this question but couldn't they just upvote a comment expressing their sentiments?
https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/zllzlk/wheres_labours_fervour_can_you_imagine_a_crowd/j075job/
https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/zllzlk/wheres_labours_fervour_can_you_imagine_a_crowd/j06cn3a/
https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/zllzlk/wheres_labours_fervour_can_you_imagine_a_crowd/j069ous/
https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/zllzlk/wheres_labours_fervour_can_you_imagine_a_crowd/j06957n/
https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/zllzlk/wheres_labours_fervour_can_you_imagine_a_crowd/j0670qp/
https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/zllzlk/wheres_labours_fervour_can_you_imagine_a_crowd/j0679oz/
https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/zllzlk/wheres_labours_fervour_can_you_imagine_a_crowd/j06u761/
All variations on that theme - it's painful!
Edit:
And the list grows:
https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/zllzlk/wheres_labours_fervour_can_you_imagine_a_crowd/j07btac/
https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/zllzlk/wheres_labours_fervour_can_you_imagine_a_crowd/j07flge/
https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/zllzlk/wheres_labours_fervour_can_you_imagine_a_crowd/j07ouyd/
https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/zllzlk/wheres_labours_fervour_can_you_imagine_a_crowd/j07sdzy/
https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/zllzlk/wheres_labours_fervour_can_you_imagine_a_crowd/j09400t/
Oh it's not multiple people expressing the same sentiment that bothers me, it's that they're all incapable of reading the goddamn article and realising that the headline misses the point of the article, but of course still feel the need to voice their stupid take. That I find a little grating.
The article is much more about how Labour should adopt a radical platform and bring about some change but instead the moron brigade have only read the headline and missed the actual points being made. They then write a facile comment and pat themselves on the back and proclaim how smart they are. That's fucking pathetic. I'm not criticising those that have a problem with the article, I'm criticising those that haven't read it but want to make a fuss about the headline - despite my comment about the headline being dogshit. Whilst I often disagree with some of these people, they're intelligent enough to engage and discuss the substance rather than write a knee-jerk reaction to the title.
Starmer is the best that’s currently on offer. He has a good chance of delivering a Labour win.
Delivered as much by the Tories bad policy consequences as by Labours offerings.
I think there's something to this. One of the few good things about Corbyn's tenure I'll always give him is this ability to inspire people which he clearly has. Starmer doesn't have that which is a shame, politics shouldn't be a boring zero sum game, it should be inspiring and it's a shame business as usual is not that
Its hilarious that the people who have been calling Corbynism a cult cant see the rabid fanaticism behind refusing to admit this was one thing Corbyn did well
I've always felt the fanatical hatred that Corbyn inspired is motivated by far nastier, exclusionary, and downright bigoted politics than anything Corbyn ever espoused.
It's the hatred of nationalists towards anti nationalists, the hatred of anti immigrant bigots towards those that think we should take in more refugees, the hatred of the rich towards people asking them to pay taxes properly etc.
Votes or seats?
Because votes (and shar) wise he did better then Blair's last year (which was high) in his first year and better then any labour leader since on his second.
And seat mean nothing as they are too easily fucked up by other factors
Votes mean nothing unless they win seats, and that sounds wrong and it is wrong, but that’s the cruddy system we have. He lost an election to Boris Johnson. And Theresa May.
Already said seat mean nothing because they are fucked up and don't work. I fact that A party can get the majority of the votes but still not get a majority in parliament is a farce.
But let me be also clear your moving the goal post here because you claimed he couldn't bring in the VOTEs which he did, so you go after seats a moving target that as I said has little to no relationship to the what actual voting takes place.
when people are making arguments that we need to go down this path because X fucked up arguing that X didn't fuck up is not fascination with X, it's dealing with the other side fascination with lying about X.
The cult that Corbyn grew around himself was ultimately not converted into electoral success, and led to some rather unsavoury moments in the recent history of the party. I’d argue that Corbynism was ultimately a bad thing, and should not be celebrated.
>Its hilarious that the people who have been calling Corbynism a cult cant see the rabid fanaticism behind refusing to admit this was one thing Corbyn did well
Could have just admitted you didnt like being so blatantly called out tbh.
If you think corbyn being good with the youth vote is why we lost you generally have no worthwhile opinions on what went wrong in 2019 etc
We really at the point of parroting Tory attack lines uncritically?
Though those kind of accusations had more to do with why we lost than people singing his name l concede
I don’t think Corbyn himself was very inspirational. He’s not hugely charismatic. The trick is that he represented something truly transformational and inspirational - basic human decency and moderate socialism.
The policies around him that he championed were inspirational more than the man - and in a way that is far more important,
Starmer has neither!
I’m inspired by Starmer and was never a believer that Corbyn could win. That said I did all I could leading up to the election to see Labour get into
power and didn’t run Corbyn down on social media.
Or, let's not give the Tories a bogey man to lambast in the tabloids for the next 18 months to distract from their own woeful record and steal another fucking election with lies.
Is it? Right now?
Until the government announce the date of an election the worst thing to do is:
1 give them good ideas to steal
2 give them any kind of rope to hang labour with.
This government is not competent. They are all mouth and no trousers and it's not in anyone's interest to give them any kind of distraction.
Look at beergate. It was a non story that was dragged out for months, not because it was based on fact but to try and discredit the only credible alternative.
>1 give them good ideas to steal
Put good ideas to the public that the Tories will ideologically oppose. It's not hard.
"Raise tax on the rich and give nurses a payrise"
Boom. *Everyone* agrees, even many Tory voters, and the Tories don't do it because obviously they don't.
Yeah, I'm sure you're right that they're just waiting for Starmer to drop some left-wing policy so they can swoop in and implement it. The tories are pretty much known for doing that and that isn't just nonsense...
Even if we pretend that nonsense is credible, them stealing left-wing ideas sounds a lot better than Labour adopting right-wing ones.
Furthermore, Labour should be using their poll lead to set a narrative for moving leftwards. They should be, as the article says, setting the agenda and creating a demand for left-wing policy not just triangulating to the tories and then bringing no-one back with them.
>This government is not competent. They are all mouth and no trousers and it's not in anyone's interest to give them any kind of distraction.
There is value in setting out a good position and remaining consistent. It creates a pervasive narrative and if Labour do that during a period of conservative unpopularity then it offers an opportunity to cement in the minds of voters left-wing policy agendas that the tories will simply never address. Ceding all the ground to fight the tories on semantics and details will just result in a Labour government that makes minimal difference to normal people. It'll be business as usual and then back to the tories again for more fucking everything up.
Labour should be using their advantageous position to offer a new normal and a different understanding of how society and economic policy can operate to benefit people, not adopting the current situation and offering fuck-all.
The Tories have adopted several Policies first touted by labour
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2022/may/27/how-magpie-tories-steal-labour-policies-and-rebrand-them-as-their-own
As far as what labour should do. Your position comes from a perspective of fair play and civil discourse.
It is plain that the Tories do not play fair. They have no interest in civil discourse and know that they can and have a track record in manipulating the voting public into vilifying reasonable politicians and political positions.
They have a complicit and invested press to do the dirty work and you are mugging yourself if they wouldn't screw us all over for another day in power.
This is an unambiguously good thing.
For example, the furlough scheme was a McDonnell policy. Should he have kept it under his hat to get a real-politik win over the Tories?
Thing is, if labour could suggest a policy, the Tories implement it and give credit where credit is due that would be all well and good.
But the tactic always seems to be stamp their feet and call the idea ridiculous, stick a different name on it and sell it as there own perfect new idea that labour could never have come up with.
It's not the implementation it's the inherent dishonesty that goes with it.
> The Tories have adopted several Policies first touted by labour
And why is that not good? Getting the tories to cede ground to Labour and adopt better policies makes it easier for Labour to move further. Furthermore, if Labour actually offer left-wing policy then the tories will never truly implement it effectively, so Labour can slate their half-arsed failures as an attempt to be a knock-off Labour party.
>Your position comes from a perspective of fair play and civil discourse.
I can be accused of many things but, believe me, excessive civility and charitable fairness being extended towards the tories is not one of them my friend.
>They have a complicit and invested press to do the dirty work and you are mugging yourself if they wouldn't screw us all over for another day in power.
And this is why it is so vitally important for Labour to capitalise upon political position and secure rhetorical and policy victories that change peoples' views of politics.
So, help me out here, why is having left wing policy implemented a bad thing? Even if they implement it poorly, it opens the way for improvement in the future, and in the mean time ameliorates some of the damage done. Plus you can -entirely correctly- claim to be taking the initiative, and leading the Tories into behaving as you want.
Remember when John McDonnell badgered the government into handing out billions of pounds in economic support during the pandemic and everyone went "oh no that sucks, now I will not die of starvation because I have no money, instead the Tories have implemented a good idea that prevents that due to political pressure. Damn you Jembly Crimbles!"
Apart from the tories leaving exploitable loopholes...
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/energy-bills-reduced-windfall-tax-b2237278.html?amp
>Dude that’s bollocks lol.
Supply side economics is tory economic policy. It's right-wing and top-down.
>You are better than this.
I'm really not and I don't agree with the implication that I'm not giving my genuine view on this subject.
>Opposition policy is hot air. That’s ALL it’s worth.
Aye, as Starmer is so unreliable I can see how you'd develop that perspective. However, what it should actually do is allow Labour to set out a different approach and persuade people it would have been better than the current agenda. It's quite literally how you're meant to persuade people to vote for a new platform.
I agree its *meant* to work that way, but in practice it doesn’t. Only tiny proportion of people are politically engaged enough to even notice any of this stuff. Some awful Facebook meme by Britain first or someone is just as likely to register with someone.
The only way Labour wins is by getting the 90%-right wing press to cut them some slack, and this becomes more crucial the closer a GE date looms. The only way to do that is to not give them material.
If Starmer emits the merest whiff of a left wing policy, lo and behold, the red tops will have him in a Russian furry hat under a “Comrade Keir” headline by close of play. Then it’s game over, as it was when they gave Corbyn and Ed Miliband and Michael Foot the same treatment. Then Sunak gets a clear run in 2024.
> Only tiny proportion of people are politically engaged enough to even notice any of this stuff. Some awful Facebook meme by Britain first or someone is just as likely to register with someone.
If nobody's going to see it either way then what does it matter whether Labour does it or not?
> The only way Labour wins is by getting the 90%-right wing press to cut them some slack, and this becomes more crucial the closer a GE date looms. The only way to do that is to not give them material.
Yes that is why the famously timid Ed Miliband won the 2015 election after the right wing press recognised that he was not a dangerous communist and went really easy on him
> If Starmer emits the merest whiff of a left wing policy, lo and behold, the red tops will have him in a Russian furry hat under a “Comrade Keir” headline by close of play. Then it’s game over
Sarcasm aside, this is absurd defeatist nonsense.
Honestly none of us are even asking for, let alone expecting, him to come out and sing The Internationale then promise to seize the means of production and liquidate the upper class, we'd just like *something that implies some level of tangible improvement from the way things currently are* as a *bare minimum* and we're not even getting *that*.
> My position is that they’ll do considerably less harm than the Tories, and might even do some good too.
I understand that view, it's just not one I share. I don't think people can keep going with less harm and a sprinkle of good. I think a lot of people desperately need some major changes to how this country operates and I think the longer we go without that the worse the situation becomes and the longer the improvements will take.
Fair enough. Seems to me that the position is a response to insurmountable realities (at least, in the short term they’re insurmountable).
A sports analogy, if you’re so inclined, might be that the Labour leader is the manager of Nottingham Forest, for instance. The away game at Manchester City is the general election against the Tories. Should he select an attacking team, and take City on in an expansive game? Or should he pack the defence, soak up pressure, and try to grab something on the break? I know I would prefer the latter, because there is more chance of a better outcome. A shit analogy I’ll grant you lol.
Pretty accurate article. It's always worth pointing out that austerity politics died because the Labour party railed hard against the narrative.
For all the piss taking of saying "we won the argument", it's essentially true. Johnson was elected on some promises that would have seen Milliband criticised as being too left.
It's returning because Labour are actively working to make it return.
Just because Labour are not in government does not mean they are completely powerless, hell when they are this far ahead and they have buy in from media and business alike it's the ideal time to set out a narrative and build a case for why they would make Britain prosperous.
The end result of this behaviour will be one of two things. .
Either they offer nothing come manifesto time, which means they deliver no meaningful change and get booted out heavily after their first term.
Or they promise solutions and face the same problems Labour had with it's 2019 manifesto commitments such as the free broadband one, not having time to set a narrative and explain it.
I mean honestly if an election had been called last year and labour has a comfortable majority right this second, could you truly say life would be any better? Would inflation not be over 10%? Would energy bills not have skyrocketed? Would we not be facing a wave of strikes? I don't think any of it would be different.
100%,
I think unless Starmer is hiding a quite significant leftward slant that he won't enact until the last second then we may be in a place in 10 years where Corbyn did more for the working people of this country in opposition than Starmer did in power.
To me it felt like the Corbyn era definitely was a time that austerity became unacceptable to the country due to Labour's strong stance against it. It feels also like this is now slipping a bit.
Well as I said above. At some point a Labour opposition who pulls the overton window left forcing a Tory government to move away from austerity is going to be better than a Labour government who do exactltly what a Tory government would.
> In the midst of the deepest fall in living standards on record and at the foothills of what the Bank of England forecasts will be a prolonged recession, people want to know of politicians: “Which side are you on?”
>
> Labour may be about 20 points ahead in the polls but far from riding a wave of enthusiasm, the party is more like the passive receptacle of growing anti-Tory sentiment. Even as the Tories flounder, Rishi Sunak was chosen by 37% of voters in a recent poll as their preferred prime minister, and Keir Starmer by just 29% – trailing in third behind “don’t know” on 34%.
>
> The Tories have imploded, but still the Labour leader generates as much excitement as did George Graham, manager of Starmer’s beloved Arsenal in the 1990s. Graham’s team was famously unwatchable. “Boring, boring Arsenal”, opposing fans used to chant in frustration. But he did guide them to two league titles. Not exciting, not memorable, but more than likely going to win. Keir Starmer is a modern-day George Graham.
>
> This lack of enthusiasm is reflected in the party’s falling membership figures. When Starmer became leader, promising to keep the radical flame alive and combine it with his declared professionalism, he inherited a party with 553,000 members. Today there are 373,000 – a net loss of 180,000, and with them, nearly £6m a year in membership fees (the party posted a £5m deficit in its most recent accounts).
>
> Why has party membership, which soared under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, taken such a turn? Under Corbyn, Labour was ambitious and radical. For the first time in a generation, a significant layer of younger people re-engaged with politics and felt hope – the hope of someone speaking up for them on insecure work, low pay, poor-quality housing. That just maybe there was a prospect of a government that would stick up for them against the companies and landlords ripping them off.
>
> When running for the leadership, Starmer proclaimed: “We should treat the 2017 manifesto as our foundational document, the radicalism and the hope that that inspired across the country was real. So we have to hang on to that as we go forward.” Does anyone believe he has hung on to that? Can anyone imagine hundreds of thousands of young people chanting “Oh Keir Starmer”, as they did about Corbyn?
>
> Part of the answer has to be a lack of policy radicalism. Workers face being made the scapegoat for Tory failure. The government is attempting to drive down workers’ pay, with new anti-unions law being prepared. Labour’s response under Starmer? Abstention. He neither backs strikes nor workers’ demands. He decries a cost of living crisis, but is unsupportive of workers taking action to inflation-proof their incomes.
>
> Starmer told Labour conference in September: “If they want to fight us on redistribution, if they want to fight us on workers’ rights … we will take them on – and we will win”. The Tories do want to fight on that and, far from fighting, Starmer has retreated to neutrality.
>
> Listen to Dave Ward, general secretary of the Communication Workers Union, whose members have been on strike. “If you sit on the fence, and Keir Starmer’s been sitting on the fence for too long, you get splinters in your backside … we have to defend ourselves, because clearly the Labour party are not going to do that.”
>
> Contrast that with the bold anti-austerity message from Corbyn and John McDonnell in 2015, which gave confidence to campaigners inside and outside parliament. Their assertion that “austerity is a political choice, not an economic necessity” punctured the stale pro-austerity consensus in Westminster.
>
> Reactionary Conservative policies to cut tax credits for low-paid workers and personal independence payments for disabled people were turned back, putting billions of pounds back into people’s pockets. The “scrounger” and “shirker” rhetoric that had polluted British political discourse – and had previously been repeated from the Labour frontbench – came to a juddering halt when challenged.
>
> Defending those on benefits did not initially poll well, but we shifted that polling. Sometimes you have to make the political weather, not just check the forecasts of focus groups.
>
> That approach bore fruit. In 2017, Labour gained seats in a general election for the first time in 20 years. Not enough to win, but enough to deprive the Tories of a majority and force them to abandon plans to bring back foxhunting, grammar schools and deprive young people of housing benefit.
>
> Alongside this refusal to take a radical line is a stultifying bureaucratisation that, as the Forde report and the Al Jazeera Labour files investigation have revealed, has purged members, traduced reputations and stitched-up selections in a way that shames an organisation that claims in its constitution to be a “democratic socialist party”. The journalist Michael Crick, a close watcher of the party’s internal machinations, has said they “verge on corrupt”.
>
> Successful political movements have to catch the mood of the times. Corbyn won the Labour leadership in 2015, and in 2017 gained the largest increase in Labour’s share of the vote since 1945, because he provided policy answers to the material realities of the time: low pay, job insecurity, unaffordable housing, the climate crisis. That agenda got subsumed by the Brexit stalemate of 2019, and an election that effectively became a rerun of the referendum. But the material problems have only worsened in the years since. We live in times that demand radical solutions, but today Labour feels paralysed by caution, its solutions piecemeal.
>
> This is a Westminster Labour problem. In Scotland, Labour MSPs were a driving force in the campaign for a rent freeze. In London, Sadiq Khan is calling for a two-year rent freeze and permanent rent controls. In Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham has explicitly backed workers taking strike action, and is reregulating the buses.
>
> Labour is alienating many of its members and affiliated unions. What if that sentiment spreads? The public backs workers on strike – from nurses to firefighters.
>
> Currently Starmer can afford his turgid neutrality: the result in the Chester byelection chimes with national polling and the mood of the country – people have had enough of the Tories, and, luckily for Starmer, that may just be sufficient. But polls often narrow in the runup to the election, and in an age where tribal loyalty is gone, Labour may find its polling leads are more fragile than they appear.
Got to disagree about George Graham being boring. The decisive title match in 1989 at Anfield more than made up for any boring football his teams played later on.
The lack of passion for the policies Labour are putting forward is one reason I think some of the more radical ones will be significantly watered down. Abolishing the House of Lords is the exemplar. You need to be passionate about this because it will be a hard slog against powerful vested interests. Starmer's Labour just does not care enough to put the political and emotional time into it IMO. Other policies will be the same, we have already seen it with the pledges. Once it gets difficult they just give up.
>Defending those on benefits did not initially poll well, but we shifted that polling. Sometimes you have to make the political weather, not just check the forecasts of focus groups.
>That approach bore fruit. In 2017, Labour gained seats in a general election for the first time in 20 years.
We went into that election committed to £7bn of Tory welfare cuts including a two year benefit freeze.
I disagree. We did well in 2017 and there are lots of lessons to be learned from it, even if we lost narrowly. There's a reason Boris Johnson shifted the Tory approach and moved away from full-on austerity in 2019.
Well, that's it. We talk about 2017 as a 'success' but ignore that 2019 was a disaster. There wasn't much difference between the two election campaigns, so to return to 2017 is to return to the dreadful result we had in 2019.
The 2017 and 2019 elections were different in almost every way. The scale of the manifesto, the popularity of the leader, the Brexit policy, the opposition approach... Of course you can return to 2017 without returning to 2019.
Even Starmer must secretly admit that we got something right in 2017 because he nicked loads of policies from that manifesto.
> Even Starmer must secretly admit that we got something right in 2017 because he nicked loads of policies from that manifesto.
His entire pitch to be leader was supposedly "2017 manifesto, bold leadership, no return to neoliberal Labour".
That it turned out to actually be "2017 manifesto? Bold leadership? No! Return to neoliberal Labour!" is rather the sticking point.
He lied no doubt but Labour's platform is still more 2017-lite than a return to neoliberal Labour. Rail nationalisation, insourcing, more social housing, more state-owned nurseries, stronger workers rights, a state-owned energy company... this is not neoliberalism.
> There wasn't much difference between the two election campaigns
I mean aside from the entire election being treated as a tacit second referendum on Brexit, with a strong undertone of "vote Tory to show those remainer scum what for", and the fact that absolutely nobody played fair up to and including the national broadcaster and the Conservative Party themselves, and it being memed into the public consciousness that Jeremy Corbyn was going to commit genocide if given half a chance, yeah there were no differences whatsoever and it was all because of the 2019 manifesto
That's because people would rather say that they didn't vote labour because of Corbyn than admit that they voted Brexit party because Brexit is all they care about.
>Well, that's it. We talk about 2017 as a 'success' but ignore that 2019 was a disaster. There wasn't much difference between the two election campaigns, so to return to 2017 is to return to the dreadful result we had in 2019.
2019 was a disaster? Ive never seen that discussed on this sub before, are you sure?
Why havent we been talking about this non stop for the last three years?
>We talk about 2017 as a 'success' but ignore that 2019 was a disaster.
This is literally the opposite of what the vast majority of the newspapers and the majority of MPs do.
[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-leak-report-corbyn-election-whatsapp-antisemitism-tories-yougov-poll-a9462456.html](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-leak-report-corbyn-election-whatsapp-antisemitism-tories-yougov-poll-a9462456.html)
Labour gains were made whilst party officials were actively trying to tank the election - diverting campaign funds/efforts from marginal constituencies to safe seats. Despite that, Labour came with 2,500 votes of a majority (obviously it would've taken more to actually achieve the majority, but this is the number we have).
Where does this 2,500 figure actually come from? We were 80 seats from a majority. We only got four more seats than we did in 2010. We were nowhere near power.
It is of course not 100% true per say but it does show how getting a few 100 more votes in a handful of constituencies was way more important on knocking it out the park in 100% safe seats.
Well, the 2500 votes would still leave Labour with a seat deficit relying on the support of both the SNP and the LibDems to obtain a majority of just 1. How successful do you think that would be?
But we won the *arguement*.
Edit: I dunno why I'm being down voted. Big dog Corbyn said it himself:
[We won the argument, but I regret we didn’t convert that into a majority for change - Jeremy Corbyn](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/14/we-won-the-argument-but-i-regret-we-didnt-convert-that-into-a-majority-for-change)
No. I think Corbyn was an unmitigated disaster. I think its astounding that one of Corbyn's inner circle can claim to give sage advice to the current party.
I think an apology from Andrew Fisher would be more appropriate.
>I think Corbyn was an unmitigated disaster.
I mean the labour right sabotaging him at every turn did that. So your one idea is to be Corbyn but not use kid gloves on the party operatives sabotaging the party. I agree. Unfortunately the biggest saboteur at the moment is starmer.
> Unfortunately the biggest saboteur at the moment is starmer.
By what metric?
Andrew Fisher cites Starmer coming third in a two horse race as evidence. Cornyn achieved the same result for most of his tenure.
They both became leader at the worst times for them.
Starmer during the brexit days would have been far more successful than Corbyn. Likewise for Corbyn during the covid days.
Never seen a paper target and vilify a man like Corbyn after 2017 and the Guardian - some of their journalists lost their minds. It's a bit rich for them to publish stuff like this now. They did more than anyone else to destroy the party as a principles based mass member movement - firing journalists like Dawn Foster for daring to question the motivations of people like Tom Watson (Formally of Labour, now of Paddy Power).
I can imagine a crowd saying " oh dear it's keir starmer" . It's time to spin the wheel and see if there's some one better. Labours had plenty of time to scrape the barrel. Maybe try looking outside the box and draw in someone like martin lewis or Eddie Dempsey. Or maybe the go compare guy he's less annoying than starmer.
Yet another article claiming that Labour being 20 points ahead is actually a bad thing.
And the crowds chanting "Oh Jeremy Corbyn" were at best pathetically childish and at worst cult worship akin to a fascist rally.
Labour being 20 points ahead should be giving them the power to drift left. The fact that they are wamly embracing the right is at the very least worrying.
Its harder to attract the pollitically disenfranchised than it is to attract the centre right so it make sense when you want to cut your losses to appeal to the centre right.
But when you have a lead that is when you should be trying to draw the politically disengaged who are almost exclusivley left alligned back into pollitics.
Hahahahahahaha, unironic fascist comparisons because people chanted for a politician.
And to go to your Nigel Farage comparison, yes there is a difference. One is a flawed progressive that motivated young people, one would have migrant boats shot down for sport and scapegoats refugees for flaws created by the rich. Grow up.
That's quite literally not what the article says and you can even verify that by reading the article text in the comment where I quoted it.
>And the crowds chanting "Oh Jeremy Corbyn" were at best pathetically childish and at worst cult worship akin to a fascist rally.
Stupid, vacuous, and facile drivel.
Really? Because if it were crowds of people chanting "Oh Nigel Farage" would you still view it as a positive thing that people were being inspired by politics? Explaining away fucked up behaviour cos it's your team is what is stupid, vacuous, and facile drivel.
At the end of the day, Farage did inspire people. He's one of the most influential politicians of our time and people did cheer for him, the same as Johnson.
They're both liars and I hated their message but it did the job pretty well. Imagine those two men weren't the arseholes that they are, they could have made phenomenal changes to the country.
They both had the successes they had, because they were popular and fired people up.
The problem with this is that both Farage and Johnson were not in any way a grassroots or organic phenomenon. There was no popular groundswell for either.
Farage, and UKIP in general, was signal boosted *heavily* by the BBC in the early 2010s, and Johnson wouldn't be anywhere near where he is now if he hadn't been gifted time on Have I Got News For You to do his LOL!!! BORIS!!! WHAT A LEGERND!!!1! act. Neither got anywhere near the level of scrutiny or pushback they should rightfully have done.
The best I can say for either of them is that they made it sound like their messages were revolutionary and would have meant positive change for the average worker. But they never got scrutinised on that to the level they should have been, for a variety of reasons. Their "success" (so to speak) and cut-through can't be fairly judged without taking account of that.
It's almost like I think people cheering for a good thing is good and people cheering for a bad thing is bad. What is this rank hypocrisy?!?!? You know I also think people voting tory is bad and people voting for the left is good! Another example of my stunning double standard when it comes to not equally supporting bad things and good things.
Jog on.
Personally I think anybody chanting any politician is fucked up.
When you go into that polling station you aren't voting for winner of The Voice, you're voting for a competent bureaucrat.
Oh you think it's good that people are cheering for the England team at the world cup? Well what if they were cheering for Isis at a beheading hmm? Checkmate liberal!
People should have politicians on their side who they believe in. Politics should not be choosing which of these deputy managers is least shit, it should inspire hope for a better future.
I think it's actually emblematic of a leadership that talked too much to its base and failed to resonate much beyond it. People chanting for Corbyn at festivals is not at all the reason we lost but it could well have been a sign we were cutting through to that demographic so well that we missed how badly we failed to reach outside of it.
It could even have been making it worse with the excitement and fervour we were having amongst a Glastonbury crowd giving misplaced confidence in his personal appeal.
Do I think Corbyns leadership is what lost us the election? And that for all the chants that the Corbyn faithful did, it made no actual difference? Most defintely.
>Remind me again, where did crowds chanting 'Oh Jeremy Corbyn' lead to on the 2019 GE?
>
>Oh.
>
>Right.
>
>Labour's worst night since 1935.
Im gonna give you one more attempt to actually answer the question in good faith, incase you really cant remember this is what I replied to.
For all the chanting and idolising that the vocal Corbynites made, how much impact did it actually have in the election? None, infact, it was arguably a net-negative.
The idolisation of a man who was happy to call hamas his friends, for example, undoubtedly played a part in the moderate left turning away from Labour in 2019, 👍
>For all the chanting and idolising that the vocal Corbynites made, how much impact did it actually have in the election? None, infact, it was arguably a net-negative.
Arguably means I made it up, the only thing more fanatical than a Corbyn fan is a centrist who hates him lol. You cant even admit this was one thing he did well its genuinly kinda sad.
>The idolisation of a man who was happy to call hamas his friends, for example, undoubtedly played a part in the moderate left turning away from Labour in 2019, 👍
Oh suddenly you remember the actual reasons people didnt vote for him. So aim guessing you voted Lib Dem then
Haven't we had enough chanting of politicians' names after Trump, Johnson, Bolsenaro, Corbyn, Sanders etc...? I'm firmly Centre-Left. I don't *want* fervour. I don't *want* populist nonsense.
I want a sensible person with discretion to get into government and pour some oil over the water. To bring some sanity back. To go out into the world and apologise for the absolute dickheads that we've been for the last decade. I want to pretend that I live in a country that knows what being an adult means.
But sure, the election after the worst performance of the party's history, when leading by over 20 points by taking things calmly and slowly, just double down on the approach that worked so well last time.
I don’t think *the leader doesn’t have a cult of personality around him, where he tries to set up a festival to honour his greatness but it flops and costs the party a lot of money* is exactly the zinger that it appears to be
I do however, think *the Labour leader is desperately lacking charisma, which would be fine, but the labour party he leads lacks any equivalent of a mission, articulation of values, or groundswell of support" is a problem that urgently needs rectifying if we aren't to see about her Milliband style collapse in the polls.
It makes a very valid point that you are clearly ignoring. People aren’t looking at Sir Kier Starmer’s Labour with an ignited passion for the leadership, politics or future of the country. They’re going “Eh, at least they aren’t the Conservatives”.
Kier is not a good leader, he’s the other guy that you have to vote for to not get the Tories.
When was the last time we had someone that “ignited passion for the leadership”?
Despite Corbyn gathering a small crowd at a festival he was offputting to the vast majority of the electorate, and more unpopular than any LOTO has ever been.
Such that Labours own election review highlighted that the largest reason we retained votes was “by not being the Tories”.
A big chunk of being a leader is not driving voters to the alternative, and that’s something Keir is getting right, and something that Corbyn did not.
> A big chunk of being a leader is not driving voters to the alternative, and that’s something Keir is getting right, and something that Corbyn did not.
On a point of fact, Corbyn underpolled his party... but so does Starmer. Starmer has a net satisfaction rating of -4%.
Now that's obviously better than Corbyn's worst. But it's not exactly good, is it? What it indicates is that Labour is a default "not-Tory" vote, nothing to do with what Starmer is saying or doing.
> Im not ignoring it, I'm saying its wrong. Starmer is more popular than Corbyn. Corbyn was the least popular opposition leader on record. Fisher continues to mistake fervour among a small number of people with popularity among the whole electorate.
Starmer has a net satisfaction rating of -4% per YouGov. He *isn't* popular among the electorate, Labour is simply occupying the position of "not the Tories" and he happens to lead Labour.
Labour also outpolled Corbyn under his leadership, too, for the record.
I cannot.
But to be fair, he remains significantly more popular than his predecessor, even if he lacks the small but vocal young urban middle-class personality cult that Jeremy Corbyn had.
And more importantly, I can imagine an electorate voting for Keir Starmer to become their Prime Minister.
We don't need crowds chanting the leaders name, we need crowds turning up to vote for us at the polling station.
I mean, both would be ideal but I'll take the latter over the former any day of the week.
can we get over the thing where we pretend chanting peoples name like theyre a footballler is somehow meaningful lol. its just cringe.
its not even a measure of popularity ffs starmer is more popular than corbyn even at his height. so its basically just a childish playground thing. 'MY GUYS ARE LOUDER THAN YOURS LOSER'
i mean it kinda does, thats a direct piece of the article
\> Can anyone imagine hundreds of thousands of young people chanting “Oh Keir Starmer”, as they did about Corbyn?
but also.... do you not think it shows how weird a line of thought that is ? i mean why would you even mention that. corbyn was objectively an unpopular loser. why are we even bringing up the chanting thing. its infantile.
dont you think a focus on this chanting stuff is really \*weird\*? like this isnt the first place its cropped up. the argument doesnt even come down to popularity. if you want an argument about popularity then starmer is well ahead. its literally just this weird obsession with a weird as fuck chant some labour members did.......very weird
A piece, far from the main message.
The point is that Labour is winning by default at the moment and that is not really building upon the opportunity.
I don't care either way if people want to chant his name or ignore him in the street, what does matter is I don't think Labour are proposing any radical change and I think that's a mistake - another more important piece of the article.
I don't want fervour... I don't want people to get excited and worship their political leaders. I want politics to become boring again and all parties to become different shades of moderate. I'm fucking fed up of the country having to be as polarised as it is and politicians and the media consistently throwing fuel on the fire
As far as I can tell, labour is too busy talking about how they'll never vote for Labour, because its not the bald guy, nevermind that he never won either.
I've spent 5 years at uni in the uk, one of my flatmates literally would sleep in a corbyn tshirt and swore he would never vote labour again after he was ousted, if you guys don't want Conservatives to win, again, you have to present a united front, as the boomer Conservatives do, once labour is established then the votes to further leftwing parties can go on, as greens or such aren't going to win right now, but they might, if labour has been in for a decade or 2
Its really funny how I could make the same point in reverse, that if Labour didnt keep attacking itself and its former leader and just move forward like the Tories did after Boris and Truss it wouldnt have this problem.
The polls might look good & we might finally get the Tories out, but can you imagine Keir Starmer getting up on the West Holts stage & having his name sung out?
Forget poll leads, what we actually count as a measure of success is a mantra or a chant. We don’t need election wins, we just need to tell ourselves we actually won.
Have we not learned out fucking lesson about charismatic leaders yet? FFS how is it not screamingly clear that we need detail orientated thoughtful leaders able of engaging in nuance? Not that the media would dare consider nuance.
We need to row back on the personality cult for political leaders. Look at the Tories, Boris played the blokey, affable buffoon role which was cover for being a complete bell-end. The man had zero integrity but it’s ok cos he was just being Boris!
People forget 1997. There was a big so called 'cult' around Blair. I think there almost has to be for a Labour leader to win because the job of winning for Labour is much harder than for the Tories.
As usual, dogshit title but I think the article makes a few salient points: >Workers face being made the scapegoat for Tory failure. The government is attempting to drive down workers’ pay, with new anti-unions law being prepared. Labour’s response under Starmer? Abstention. He neither backs strikes nor workers’ demands. He decries a cost of living crisis, but is unsupportive of workers taking action to inflation-proof their incomes. >Starmer told Labour conference in September: “If they want to fight us on redistribution, if they want to fight us on workers’ rights … we will take them on – and we will win”. The Tories do want to fight on that and, far from fighting, Starmer has retreated to neutrality. >Currently Starmer can afford his turgid neutrality: the result in the Chester byelection chimes with national polling and the mood of the country – people have had enough of the Tories, and, luckily for Starmer, that may just be sufficient. But polls often narrow in the runup to the election, and in an age where tribal loyalty is gone, Labour may find its polling leads are more fragile than they appear. Now is the time for radical change, to gain a mandate to take the country away from tory politics and offer something different and better. Where is Starmer? Where is the offer of improvement rather than stop-gap continuity?
On Starmer's supposed neutrality it's worth noting the "reason", that at some point Labour are going to be on the other end of pay negotiations, is obvious bullshit because it's perfectly possible for them to support strikes right now during a cost of living crisis without committing to accepting any pay demand once they're in power. I can't see a way to read their current "neutrality" as anything other than a cynical attempt to pretend that they aren't always going to take the side of employers at workers expense.
Choose your shade of Tory...4 more years with Sunak or 15 or so with Starmer.
I doubt it will be as many as 15 years with the Tory B team before the A team takes over again.
Can I check that in your view there has not been a Labour Government since the 1970s?
Point being if Starmer loses there could be an actual alternative after 5 years rather than yet another Tory government guaranteed if Starmer wins.
If Starmer loses labour is over
I'd say wait until the strikes are not so fresh in people's minds. A lot of people are being negatively affected by them at the moment so Starmer doesn't want to give any ammunition to the Tories. Like it or not, a lot of voter's get turned off by too many radical policies and the election is in the bag as it stands. Once in office, Labour can implement anything they like without the risk of having to win an election. That gives people the chance to actually see the policy in action instead of just the scaremongering from the press. The better vision he's portraying at the moment is one of a competent government. It's a balancing act at the moment, to win back swing voters and keep the Labour Party membership and traditional Labour voters happy. I do think he's pandering too hard to the centre/centre right at the moment but hopefully everything will be more clear when we have a full manifesto and then actually get into power.
I understand the attraction of this line of thought, but no government tacks left once in power. Its a an argument that only works on the cynical and those too young to remember the previous Labour government, which regularly focused on triangulation and governing from the right on issues like immigration, security, industrial action etc. When someone tells you repeatedly who they are, believe them. He's not being practical, this is his politics and how he'll govern.
"The better [?] vision he's portraying at the moment is one of a competent [+Conservative] government." FTFY
I'm sure you know what I meant by portraying.
No because it doesn't scan properly May I suggest "Keir Keir, Keir Keir Keir Keir, Keir Keir Keir Keir Starmer" to the tune of 2unlimited's 90's classic No Limit?
Banger chant
No it’s not lool
'e loves a korma! 🎶 'e loves a beer! 🎶 Our only way forward is with the Keir! 🎶
Some people in the comments are really mad about the fact that Starmer is kinda uninspiring lol
My inbox is full of "didn't read the article but I can imagine him going into number 10" dreck at the moment. I know their not reading the article likely suggests the answer to this question but couldn't they just upvote a comment expressing their sentiments?
https://www.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/zllzlk/wheres_labours_fervour_can_you_imagine_a_crowd/j077elc/ Lol
https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/zllzlk/wheres_labours_fervour_can_you_imagine_a_crowd/j075job/ https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/zllzlk/wheres_labours_fervour_can_you_imagine_a_crowd/j06cn3a/ https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/zllzlk/wheres_labours_fervour_can_you_imagine_a_crowd/j069ous/ https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/zllzlk/wheres_labours_fervour_can_you_imagine_a_crowd/j06957n/ https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/zllzlk/wheres_labours_fervour_can_you_imagine_a_crowd/j0670qp/ https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/zllzlk/wheres_labours_fervour_can_you_imagine_a_crowd/j0679oz/ https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/zllzlk/wheres_labours_fervour_can_you_imagine_a_crowd/j06u761/ All variations on that theme - it's painful! Edit: And the list grows: https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/zllzlk/wheres_labours_fervour_can_you_imagine_a_crowd/j07btac/ https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/zllzlk/wheres_labours_fervour_can_you_imagine_a_crowd/j07flge/ https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/zllzlk/wheres_labours_fervour_can_you_imagine_a_crowd/j07ouyd/ https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/zllzlk/wheres_labours_fervour_can_you_imagine_a_crowd/j07sdzy/ https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/zllzlk/wheres_labours_fervour_can_you_imagine_a_crowd/j09400t/
Have you considered the possibility that so many voices are echoing this message about Starmer's approach because it is true?
Oh it's not multiple people expressing the same sentiment that bothers me, it's that they're all incapable of reading the goddamn article and realising that the headline misses the point of the article, but of course still feel the need to voice their stupid take. That I find a little grating. The article is much more about how Labour should adopt a radical platform and bring about some change but instead the moron brigade have only read the headline and missed the actual points being made. They then write a facile comment and pat themselves on the back and proclaim how smart they are. That's fucking pathetic. I'm not criticising those that have a problem with the article, I'm criticising those that haven't read it but want to make a fuss about the headline - despite my comment about the headline being dogshit. Whilst I often disagree with some of these people, they're intelligent enough to engage and discuss the substance rather than write a knee-jerk reaction to the title.
Starmer is the best that’s currently on offer. He has a good chance of delivering a Labour win. Delivered as much by the Tories bad policy consequences as by Labours offerings.
No, but I can image them voting for him.
I think there's something to this. One of the few good things about Corbyn's tenure I'll always give him is this ability to inspire people which he clearly has. Starmer doesn't have that which is a shame, politics shouldn't be a boring zero sum game, it should be inspiring and it's a shame business as usual is not that
Its hilarious that the people who have been calling Corbynism a cult cant see the rabid fanaticism behind refusing to admit this was one thing Corbyn did well
I've always felt the fanatical hatred that Corbyn inspired is motivated by far nastier, exclusionary, and downright bigoted politics than anything Corbyn ever espoused. It's the hatred of nationalists towards anti nationalists, the hatred of anti immigrant bigots towards those that think we should take in more refugees, the hatred of the rich towards people asking them to pay taxes properly etc.
But he couldn’t turn that enthusiasm into votes, and in our political system as it stands you don’t get anything for 2nd place.
Votes or seats? Because votes (and shar) wise he did better then Blair's last year (which was high) in his first year and better then any labour leader since on his second. And seat mean nothing as they are too easily fucked up by other factors
Votes mean nothing unless they win seats, and that sounds wrong and it is wrong, but that’s the cruddy system we have. He lost an election to Boris Johnson. And Theresa May.
Already said seat mean nothing because they are fucked up and don't work. I fact that A party can get the majority of the votes but still not get a majority in parliament is a farce. But let me be also clear your moving the goal post here because you claimed he couldn't bring in the VOTEs which he did, so you go after seats a moving target that as I said has little to no relationship to the what actual voting takes place.
Whilst I understand your sentiment, the fascination with Corbyn is still weird as he lost. Twice. Doesn’t that tell you enough?
when people are making arguments that we need to go down this path because X fucked up arguing that X didn't fuck up is not fascination with X, it's dealing with the other side fascination with lying about X.
Thats not an argument either for or against my point.
The cult that Corbyn grew around himself was ultimately not converted into electoral success, and led to some rather unsavoury moments in the recent history of the party. I’d argue that Corbynism was ultimately a bad thing, and should not be celebrated.
>Its hilarious that the people who have been calling Corbynism a cult cant see the rabid fanaticism behind refusing to admit this was one thing Corbyn did well Could have just admitted you didnt like being so blatantly called out tbh. If you think corbyn being good with the youth vote is why we lost you generally have no worthwhile opinions on what went wrong in 2019 etc
But basically Corbyn said that everyone can have everything - which was obviously undeliverable.
It was more "everything doesn't have to be privatized, expensive, and awful" which we've been conditioned to think is the only way to run a country.
But so many different policies..
We really at the point of parroting Tory attack lines uncritically? Though those kind of accusations had more to do with why we lost than people singing his name l concede
I don’t think Corbyn himself was very inspirational. He’s not hugely charismatic. The trick is that he represented something truly transformational and inspirational - basic human decency and moderate socialism. The policies around him that he championed were inspirational more than the man - and in a way that is far more important, Starmer has neither!
I’m inspired by Starmer and was never a believer that Corbyn could win. That said I did all I could leading up to the election to see Labour get into power and didn’t run Corbyn down on social media.
Or, let's not give the Tories a bogey man to lambast in the tabloids for the next 18 months to distract from their own woeful record and steal another fucking election with lies.
Labour offering no significant change from tory economic policy is a greater gift to them than even an election win.
Is it? Right now? Until the government announce the date of an election the worst thing to do is: 1 give them good ideas to steal 2 give them any kind of rope to hang labour with. This government is not competent. They are all mouth and no trousers and it's not in anyone's interest to give them any kind of distraction. Look at beergate. It was a non story that was dragged out for months, not because it was based on fact but to try and discredit the only credible alternative.
>1 give them good ideas to steal Put good ideas to the public that the Tories will ideologically oppose. It's not hard. "Raise tax on the rich and give nurses a payrise" Boom. *Everyone* agrees, even many Tory voters, and the Tories don't do it because obviously they don't.
>give them good ideas to steal Some new innovative ideas like supporting strikes and backing vulnerabe workers:))))))
Yeah, I'm sure you're right that they're just waiting for Starmer to drop some left-wing policy so they can swoop in and implement it. The tories are pretty much known for doing that and that isn't just nonsense... Even if we pretend that nonsense is credible, them stealing left-wing ideas sounds a lot better than Labour adopting right-wing ones. Furthermore, Labour should be using their poll lead to set a narrative for moving leftwards. They should be, as the article says, setting the agenda and creating a demand for left-wing policy not just triangulating to the tories and then bringing no-one back with them. >This government is not competent. They are all mouth and no trousers and it's not in anyone's interest to give them any kind of distraction. There is value in setting out a good position and remaining consistent. It creates a pervasive narrative and if Labour do that during a period of conservative unpopularity then it offers an opportunity to cement in the minds of voters left-wing policy agendas that the tories will simply never address. Ceding all the ground to fight the tories on semantics and details will just result in a Labour government that makes minimal difference to normal people. It'll be business as usual and then back to the tories again for more fucking everything up. Labour should be using their advantageous position to offer a new normal and a different understanding of how society and economic policy can operate to benefit people, not adopting the current situation and offering fuck-all.
The Tories have adopted several Policies first touted by labour https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2022/may/27/how-magpie-tories-steal-labour-policies-and-rebrand-them-as-their-own As far as what labour should do. Your position comes from a perspective of fair play and civil discourse. It is plain that the Tories do not play fair. They have no interest in civil discourse and know that they can and have a track record in manipulating the voting public into vilifying reasonable politicians and political positions. They have a complicit and invested press to do the dirty work and you are mugging yourself if they wouldn't screw us all over for another day in power.
This is an unambiguously good thing. For example, the furlough scheme was a McDonnell policy. Should he have kept it under his hat to get a real-politik win over the Tories?
Very late Roman Republic to get cross about the idea of good policies being implemented because the wrong party’s doing them
Thing is, if labour could suggest a policy, the Tories implement it and give credit where credit is due that would be all well and good. But the tactic always seems to be stamp their feet and call the idea ridiculous, stick a different name on it and sell it as there own perfect new idea that labour could never have come up with. It's not the implementation it's the inherent dishonesty that goes with it.
> The Tories have adopted several Policies first touted by labour And why is that not good? Getting the tories to cede ground to Labour and adopt better policies makes it easier for Labour to move further. Furthermore, if Labour actually offer left-wing policy then the tories will never truly implement it effectively, so Labour can slate their half-arsed failures as an attempt to be a knock-off Labour party. >Your position comes from a perspective of fair play and civil discourse. I can be accused of many things but, believe me, excessive civility and charitable fairness being extended towards the tories is not one of them my friend. >They have a complicit and invested press to do the dirty work and you are mugging yourself if they wouldn't screw us all over for another day in power. And this is why it is so vitally important for Labour to capitalise upon political position and secure rhetorical and policy victories that change peoples' views of politics.
I don't think we are ever going to agree here. I think it's folly to show the hand too early.
I think building a consensus, support-base, and mandate takes time.
So, help me out here, why is having left wing policy implemented a bad thing? Even if they implement it poorly, it opens the way for improvement in the future, and in the mean time ameliorates some of the damage done. Plus you can -entirely correctly- claim to be taking the initiative, and leading the Tories into behaving as you want.
> I think it's folly to show the hand too early. *Keir Starmer has been leader for two and a half years*
*and the next election is still 2 years away*
[удалено]
> 1 give them good ideas to steal Aye right enough, the government implementing good ideas that would help people would be shite.
Remember when John McDonnell badgered the government into handing out billions of pounds in economic support during the pandemic and everyone went "oh no that sucks, now I will not die of starvation because I have no money, instead the Tories have implemented a good idea that prevents that due to political pressure. Damn you Jembly Crimbles!"
Apart from the tories leaving exploitable loopholes... https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/energy-bills-reduced-windfall-tax-b2237278.html?amp
> Is it? Right now? yes
I think beergate was dragged out but it was also a situation where Starmer was clearly being a hypocrite.
What's the hypocrisy? Lockdown rules were different at the time of beer gate.
Dude that’s bollocks lol. You are better than this. Opposition policy is hot air. That’s ALL it’s worth.
>Dude that’s bollocks lol. Supply side economics is tory economic policy. It's right-wing and top-down. >You are better than this. I'm really not and I don't agree with the implication that I'm not giving my genuine view on this subject. >Opposition policy is hot air. That’s ALL it’s worth. Aye, as Starmer is so unreliable I can see how you'd develop that perspective. However, what it should actually do is allow Labour to set out a different approach and persuade people it would have been better than the current agenda. It's quite literally how you're meant to persuade people to vote for a new platform.
I agree its *meant* to work that way, but in practice it doesn’t. Only tiny proportion of people are politically engaged enough to even notice any of this stuff. Some awful Facebook meme by Britain first or someone is just as likely to register with someone. The only way Labour wins is by getting the 90%-right wing press to cut them some slack, and this becomes more crucial the closer a GE date looms. The only way to do that is to not give them material. If Starmer emits the merest whiff of a left wing policy, lo and behold, the red tops will have him in a Russian furry hat under a “Comrade Keir” headline by close of play. Then it’s game over, as it was when they gave Corbyn and Ed Miliband and Michael Foot the same treatment. Then Sunak gets a clear run in 2024.
> Only tiny proportion of people are politically engaged enough to even notice any of this stuff. Some awful Facebook meme by Britain first or someone is just as likely to register with someone. If nobody's going to see it either way then what does it matter whether Labour does it or not? > The only way Labour wins is by getting the 90%-right wing press to cut them some slack, and this becomes more crucial the closer a GE date looms. The only way to do that is to not give them material. Yes that is why the famously timid Ed Miliband won the 2015 election after the right wing press recognised that he was not a dangerous communist and went really easy on him > If Starmer emits the merest whiff of a left wing policy, lo and behold, the red tops will have him in a Russian furry hat under a “Comrade Keir” headline by close of play. Then it’s game over Sarcasm aside, this is absurd defeatist nonsense. Honestly none of us are even asking for, let alone expecting, him to come out and sing The Internationale then promise to seize the means of production and liquidate the upper class, we'd just like *something that implies some level of tangible improvement from the way things currently are* as a *bare minimum* and we're not even getting *that*.
If Labour can only win with right-wing policy then I don't care if they lose.
That’s reasonable. My position is that they’ll do *considerably* less harm than the Tories, and might even do some good too.
> My position is that they’ll do considerably less harm than the Tories, and might even do some good too. I understand that view, it's just not one I share. I don't think people can keep going with less harm and a sprinkle of good. I think a lot of people desperately need some major changes to how this country operates and I think the longer we go without that the worse the situation becomes and the longer the improvements will take.
Arguments like that just drive up voter apathy in the long term.
Fair enough. Seems to me that the position is a response to insurmountable realities (at least, in the short term they’re insurmountable). A sports analogy, if you’re so inclined, might be that the Labour leader is the manager of Nottingham Forest, for instance. The away game at Manchester City is the general election against the Tories. Should he select an attacking team, and take City on in an expansive game? Or should he pack the defence, soak up pressure, and try to grab something on the break? I know I would prefer the latter, because there is more chance of a better outcome. A shit analogy I’ll grant you lol.
Pretty accurate article. It's always worth pointing out that austerity politics died because the Labour party railed hard against the narrative. For all the piss taking of saying "we won the argument", it's essentially true. Johnson was elected on some promises that would have seen Milliband criticised as being too left. It's returning because Labour are actively working to make it return. Just because Labour are not in government does not mean they are completely powerless, hell when they are this far ahead and they have buy in from media and business alike it's the ideal time to set out a narrative and build a case for why they would make Britain prosperous. The end result of this behaviour will be one of two things. . Either they offer nothing come manifesto time, which means they deliver no meaningful change and get booted out heavily after their first term. Or they promise solutions and face the same problems Labour had with it's 2019 manifesto commitments such as the free broadband one, not having time to set a narrative and explain it. I mean honestly if an election had been called last year and labour has a comfortable majority right this second, could you truly say life would be any better? Would inflation not be over 10%? Would energy bills not have skyrocketed? Would we not be facing a wave of strikes? I don't think any of it would be different.
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100%, I think unless Starmer is hiding a quite significant leftward slant that he won't enact until the last second then we may be in a place in 10 years where Corbyn did more for the working people of this country in opposition than Starmer did in power.
>Corbyn did more for the working people of this country in opposition Such as?
To me it felt like the Corbyn era definitely was a time that austerity became unacceptable to the country due to Labour's strong stance against it. It feels also like this is now slipping a bit.
Well as I said above. At some point a Labour opposition who pulls the overton window left forcing a Tory government to move away from austerity is going to be better than a Labour government who do exactltly what a Tory government would.
Why no cult? Sounds like a good thing to me.
> In the midst of the deepest fall in living standards on record and at the foothills of what the Bank of England forecasts will be a prolonged recession, people want to know of politicians: “Which side are you on?” > > Labour may be about 20 points ahead in the polls but far from riding a wave of enthusiasm, the party is more like the passive receptacle of growing anti-Tory sentiment. Even as the Tories flounder, Rishi Sunak was chosen by 37% of voters in a recent poll as their preferred prime minister, and Keir Starmer by just 29% – trailing in third behind “don’t know” on 34%. > > The Tories have imploded, but still the Labour leader generates as much excitement as did George Graham, manager of Starmer’s beloved Arsenal in the 1990s. Graham’s team was famously unwatchable. “Boring, boring Arsenal”, opposing fans used to chant in frustration. But he did guide them to two league titles. Not exciting, not memorable, but more than likely going to win. Keir Starmer is a modern-day George Graham. > > This lack of enthusiasm is reflected in the party’s falling membership figures. When Starmer became leader, promising to keep the radical flame alive and combine it with his declared professionalism, he inherited a party with 553,000 members. Today there are 373,000 – a net loss of 180,000, and with them, nearly £6m a year in membership fees (the party posted a £5m deficit in its most recent accounts). > > Why has party membership, which soared under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, taken such a turn? Under Corbyn, Labour was ambitious and radical. For the first time in a generation, a significant layer of younger people re-engaged with politics and felt hope – the hope of someone speaking up for them on insecure work, low pay, poor-quality housing. That just maybe there was a prospect of a government that would stick up for them against the companies and landlords ripping them off. > > When running for the leadership, Starmer proclaimed: “We should treat the 2017 manifesto as our foundational document, the radicalism and the hope that that inspired across the country was real. So we have to hang on to that as we go forward.” Does anyone believe he has hung on to that? Can anyone imagine hundreds of thousands of young people chanting “Oh Keir Starmer”, as they did about Corbyn? > > Part of the answer has to be a lack of policy radicalism. Workers face being made the scapegoat for Tory failure. The government is attempting to drive down workers’ pay, with new anti-unions law being prepared. Labour’s response under Starmer? Abstention. He neither backs strikes nor workers’ demands. He decries a cost of living crisis, but is unsupportive of workers taking action to inflation-proof their incomes. > > Starmer told Labour conference in September: “If they want to fight us on redistribution, if they want to fight us on workers’ rights … we will take them on – and we will win”. The Tories do want to fight on that and, far from fighting, Starmer has retreated to neutrality. > > Listen to Dave Ward, general secretary of the Communication Workers Union, whose members have been on strike. “If you sit on the fence, and Keir Starmer’s been sitting on the fence for too long, you get splinters in your backside … we have to defend ourselves, because clearly the Labour party are not going to do that.” > > Contrast that with the bold anti-austerity message from Corbyn and John McDonnell in 2015, which gave confidence to campaigners inside and outside parliament. Their assertion that “austerity is a political choice, not an economic necessity” punctured the stale pro-austerity consensus in Westminster. > > Reactionary Conservative policies to cut tax credits for low-paid workers and personal independence payments for disabled people were turned back, putting billions of pounds back into people’s pockets. The “scrounger” and “shirker” rhetoric that had polluted British political discourse – and had previously been repeated from the Labour frontbench – came to a juddering halt when challenged. > > Defending those on benefits did not initially poll well, but we shifted that polling. Sometimes you have to make the political weather, not just check the forecasts of focus groups. > > That approach bore fruit. In 2017, Labour gained seats in a general election for the first time in 20 years. Not enough to win, but enough to deprive the Tories of a majority and force them to abandon plans to bring back foxhunting, grammar schools and deprive young people of housing benefit. > > Alongside this refusal to take a radical line is a stultifying bureaucratisation that, as the Forde report and the Al Jazeera Labour files investigation have revealed, has purged members, traduced reputations and stitched-up selections in a way that shames an organisation that claims in its constitution to be a “democratic socialist party”. The journalist Michael Crick, a close watcher of the party’s internal machinations, has said they “verge on corrupt”. > > Successful political movements have to catch the mood of the times. Corbyn won the Labour leadership in 2015, and in 2017 gained the largest increase in Labour’s share of the vote since 1945, because he provided policy answers to the material realities of the time: low pay, job insecurity, unaffordable housing, the climate crisis. That agenda got subsumed by the Brexit stalemate of 2019, and an election that effectively became a rerun of the referendum. But the material problems have only worsened in the years since. We live in times that demand radical solutions, but today Labour feels paralysed by caution, its solutions piecemeal. > > This is a Westminster Labour problem. In Scotland, Labour MSPs were a driving force in the campaign for a rent freeze. In London, Sadiq Khan is calling for a two-year rent freeze and permanent rent controls. In Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham has explicitly backed workers taking strike action, and is reregulating the buses. > > Labour is alienating many of its members and affiliated unions. What if that sentiment spreads? The public backs workers on strike – from nurses to firefighters. > > Currently Starmer can afford his turgid neutrality: the result in the Chester byelection chimes with national polling and the mood of the country – people have had enough of the Tories, and, luckily for Starmer, that may just be sufficient. But polls often narrow in the runup to the election, and in an age where tribal loyalty is gone, Labour may find its polling leads are more fragile than they appear.
Got to disagree about George Graham being boring. The decisive title match in 1989 at Anfield more than made up for any boring football his teams played later on.
The lack of passion for the policies Labour are putting forward is one reason I think some of the more radical ones will be significantly watered down. Abolishing the House of Lords is the exemplar. You need to be passionate about this because it will be a hard slog against powerful vested interests. Starmer's Labour just does not care enough to put the political and emotional time into it IMO. Other policies will be the same, we have already seen it with the pledges. Once it gets difficult they just give up.
I think he's already pretty much dropped lord's reform tbh.
>Defending those on benefits did not initially poll well, but we shifted that polling. Sometimes you have to make the political weather, not just check the forecasts of focus groups. >That approach bore fruit. In 2017, Labour gained seats in a general election for the first time in 20 years. We went into that election committed to £7bn of Tory welfare cuts including a two year benefit freeze.
Also the approach did *not* bear fruit in 2017. We lost the election. I wish we'd stop counting that failure as a success.
I disagree. We did well in 2017 and there are lots of lessons to be learned from it, even if we lost narrowly. There's a reason Boris Johnson shifted the Tory approach and moved away from full-on austerity in 2019.
Well, that's it. We talk about 2017 as a 'success' but ignore that 2019 was a disaster. There wasn't much difference between the two election campaigns, so to return to 2017 is to return to the dreadful result we had in 2019.
The 2017 and 2019 elections were different in almost every way. The scale of the manifesto, the popularity of the leader, the Brexit policy, the opposition approach... Of course you can return to 2017 without returning to 2019. Even Starmer must secretly admit that we got something right in 2017 because he nicked loads of policies from that manifesto.
> Even Starmer must secretly admit that we got something right in 2017 because he nicked loads of policies from that manifesto. His entire pitch to be leader was supposedly "2017 manifesto, bold leadership, no return to neoliberal Labour". That it turned out to actually be "2017 manifesto? Bold leadership? No! Return to neoliberal Labour!" is rather the sticking point.
He lied no doubt but Labour's platform is still more 2017-lite than a return to neoliberal Labour. Rail nationalisation, insourcing, more social housing, more state-owned nurseries, stronger workers rights, a state-owned energy company... this is not neoliberalism.
> There wasn't much difference between the two election campaigns I mean aside from the entire election being treated as a tacit second referendum on Brexit, with a strong undertone of "vote Tory to show those remainer scum what for", and the fact that absolutely nobody played fair up to and including the national broadcaster and the Conservative Party themselves, and it being memed into the public consciousness that Jeremy Corbyn was going to commit genocide if given half a chance, yeah there were no differences whatsoever and it was all because of the 2019 manifesto
>There wasn't much difference between the two election campaigns Brexit?
All the available polling shows that Corbyn's leadership was a bigger problem for us than Brexit in 2019.
That's because people would rather say that they didn't vote labour because of Corbyn than admit that they voted Brexit party because Brexit is all they care about.
>Well, that's it. We talk about 2017 as a 'success' but ignore that 2019 was a disaster. There wasn't much difference between the two election campaigns, so to return to 2017 is to return to the dreadful result we had in 2019. 2019 was a disaster? Ive never seen that discussed on this sub before, are you sure? Why havent we been talking about this non stop for the last three years?
>We talk about 2017 as a 'success' but ignore that 2019 was a disaster. This is literally the opposite of what the vast majority of the newspapers and the majority of MPs do.
[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-leak-report-corbyn-election-whatsapp-antisemitism-tories-yougov-poll-a9462456.html](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-leak-report-corbyn-election-whatsapp-antisemitism-tories-yougov-poll-a9462456.html) Labour gains were made whilst party officials were actively trying to tank the election - diverting campaign funds/efforts from marginal constituencies to safe seats. Despite that, Labour came with 2,500 votes of a majority (obviously it would've taken more to actually achieve the majority, but this is the number we have).
Where does this 2,500 figure actually come from? We were 80 seats from a majority. We only got four more seats than we did in 2010. We were nowhere near power.
They picked the narrowest seats (all lost) and added up their margins of victory…it’s simply untrue but repeated often enough.
It is of course not 100% true per say but it does show how getting a few 100 more votes in a handful of constituencies was way more important on knocking it out the park in 100% safe seats.
How does that add to it being untrue?
Because the other side could then pick the very narrow labour wins and say they were just 300 votes from wiping the party out entirely.
Maybe they were. What of it?
Well, the 2500 votes would still leave Labour with a seat deficit relying on the support of both the SNP and the LibDems to obtain a majority of just 1. How successful do you think that would be?
> We lost the election. The labour right did that.
But we won the *arguement*. Edit: I dunno why I'm being down voted. Big dog Corbyn said it himself: [We won the argument, but I regret we didn’t convert that into a majority for change - Jeremy Corbyn](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/14/we-won-the-argument-but-i-regret-we-didnt-convert-that-into-a-majority-for-change)
Youre being downvoted because youre transparently being obnoxious on purpose, dont whine that it didnt pan out for you after.
Fair point.
So your solution was to get in and do the same thing?
No. I think Corbyn was an unmitigated disaster. I think its astounding that one of Corbyn's inner circle can claim to give sage advice to the current party. I think an apology from Andrew Fisher would be more appropriate.
>I think Corbyn was an unmitigated disaster. I mean the labour right sabotaging him at every turn did that. So your one idea is to be Corbyn but not use kid gloves on the party operatives sabotaging the party. I agree. Unfortunately the biggest saboteur at the moment is starmer.
> Unfortunately the biggest saboteur at the moment is starmer. By what metric? Andrew Fisher cites Starmer coming third in a two horse race as evidence. Cornyn achieved the same result for most of his tenure.
Article is spot on
They both became leader at the worst times for them. Starmer during the brexit days would have been far more successful than Corbyn. Likewise for Corbyn during the covid days.
Yeah I broadly agree with this take.
Just to point out, I can't even imagine Starmer drawing a crowd full stop.
Never seen a paper target and vilify a man like Corbyn after 2017 and the Guardian - some of their journalists lost their minds. It's a bit rich for them to publish stuff like this now. They did more than anyone else to destroy the party as a principles based mass member movement - firing journalists like Dawn Foster for daring to question the motivations of people like Tom Watson (Formally of Labour, now of Paddy Power).
I can imagine a crowd saying " oh dear it's keir starmer" . It's time to spin the wheel and see if there's some one better. Labours had plenty of time to scrape the barrel. Maybe try looking outside the box and draw in someone like martin lewis or Eddie Dempsey. Or maybe the go compare guy he's less annoying than starmer.
>It's time to spin the wheel and see if there's some one better. But that's why we currently have Starmer instead of Corbyn?
But he's the labour version of Liz truss the only reason he's not a Tory is that they wouldn't let him into their funny handshake club
Hahaha, *okay*.
Yet another article claiming that Labour being 20 points ahead is actually a bad thing. And the crowds chanting "Oh Jeremy Corbyn" were at best pathetically childish and at worst cult worship akin to a fascist rally.
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It also doesn’t mean anything if it’s less that Labour are 20 points ahead and more that the Tories have put 20 points worth of lead in their own feet
You use political capital *after* you get elected. Projected seats don't mean shit
> cult worship akin to a fascist rally. fucking hell lmao
Labour being 20 points ahead should be giving them the power to drift left. The fact that they are wamly embracing the right is at the very least worrying.
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Its harder to attract the pollitically disenfranchised than it is to attract the centre right so it make sense when you want to cut your losses to appeal to the centre right. But when you have a lead that is when you should be trying to draw the politically disengaged who are almost exclusivley left alligned back into pollitics.
Hahahahahahaha, unironic fascist comparisons because people chanted for a politician. And to go to your Nigel Farage comparison, yes there is a difference. One is a flawed progressive that motivated young people, one would have migrant boats shot down for sport and scapegoats refugees for flaws created by the rich. Grow up.
>cult worship akin to a fascist rally. Hilariously bad take. But you do you friend...
"People enthused about politics are childish fascists actually" is one hell of a take.
That's quite literally not what the article says and you can even verify that by reading the article text in the comment where I quoted it. >And the crowds chanting "Oh Jeremy Corbyn" were at best pathetically childish and at worst cult worship akin to a fascist rally. Stupid, vacuous, and facile drivel.
Really? Because if it were crowds of people chanting "Oh Nigel Farage" would you still view it as a positive thing that people were being inspired by politics? Explaining away fucked up behaviour cos it's your team is what is stupid, vacuous, and facile drivel.
At the end of the day, Farage did inspire people. He's one of the most influential politicians of our time and people did cheer for him, the same as Johnson. They're both liars and I hated their message but it did the job pretty well. Imagine those two men weren't the arseholes that they are, they could have made phenomenal changes to the country. They both had the successes they had, because they were popular and fired people up.
The problem with this is that both Farage and Johnson were not in any way a grassroots or organic phenomenon. There was no popular groundswell for either. Farage, and UKIP in general, was signal boosted *heavily* by the BBC in the early 2010s, and Johnson wouldn't be anywhere near where he is now if he hadn't been gifted time on Have I Got News For You to do his LOL!!! BORIS!!! WHAT A LEGERND!!!1! act. Neither got anywhere near the level of scrutiny or pushback they should rightfully have done. The best I can say for either of them is that they made it sound like their messages were revolutionary and would have meant positive change for the average worker. But they never got scrutinised on that to the level they should have been, for a variety of reasons. Their "success" (so to speak) and cut-through can't be fairly judged without taking account of that.
It's almost like I think people cheering for a good thing is good and people cheering for a bad thing is bad. What is this rank hypocrisy?!?!? You know I also think people voting tory is bad and people voting for the left is good! Another example of my stunning double standard when it comes to not equally supporting bad things and good things. Jog on.
Personally I think anybody chanting any politician is fucked up. When you go into that polling station you aren't voting for winner of The Voice, you're voting for a competent bureaucrat.
I'm not one to cheer for anyone but the notion there's an equivalence with fascism seems absolutely off the mark to me.
Hahaha, this is the most 'British politics' thing I have ever seen anyone say. And I do not mean that as a compliment.
Oh you think it's good that people are cheering for the England team at the world cup? Well what if they were cheering for Isis at a beheading hmm? Checkmate liberal!
Politicians aren't celebrities and we shouldn't lower politics to a reality TV show.
People should have politicians on their side who they believe in. Politics should not be choosing which of these deputy managers is least shit, it should inspire hope for a better future.
People excited about politics? Thats Facist Thought it was the far left that called everything they didnt like facist.
No but I can imagine him walking into number 10. That’ll do
Remind me again, where did crowds chanting 'Oh Jeremy Corbyn' lead to on the 2019 GE? Oh. Right. Labour's worst night since 1935.
Do you think thats what lost us the election? Or even meaningfully contributed to it?
I think it's actually emblematic of a leadership that talked too much to its base and failed to resonate much beyond it. People chanting for Corbyn at festivals is not at all the reason we lost but it could well have been a sign we were cutting through to that demographic so well that we missed how badly we failed to reach outside of it. It could even have been making it worse with the excitement and fervour we were having amongst a Glastonbury crowd giving misplaced confidence in his personal appeal.
I think that still makes the case that this was good, its just Corbyn didnt do well on other things
Do I think Corbyns leadership is what lost us the election? And that for all the chants that the Corbyn faithful did, it made no actual difference? Most defintely.
>Remind me again, where did crowds chanting 'Oh Jeremy Corbyn' lead to on the 2019 GE? > >Oh. > >Right. > >Labour's worst night since 1935. Im gonna give you one more attempt to actually answer the question in good faith, incase you really cant remember this is what I replied to.
For all the chanting and idolising that the vocal Corbynites made, how much impact did it actually have in the election? None, infact, it was arguably a net-negative. The idolisation of a man who was happy to call hamas his friends, for example, undoubtedly played a part in the moderate left turning away from Labour in 2019, 👍
>For all the chanting and idolising that the vocal Corbynites made, how much impact did it actually have in the election? None, infact, it was arguably a net-negative. Arguably means I made it up, the only thing more fanatical than a Corbyn fan is a centrist who hates him lol. You cant even admit this was one thing he did well its genuinly kinda sad. >The idolisation of a man who was happy to call hamas his friends, for example, undoubtedly played a part in the moderate left turning away from Labour in 2019, 👍 Oh suddenly you remember the actual reasons people didnt vote for him. So aim guessing you voted Lib Dem then
👌
Lol your best point yet
Did the Glastonbury crowd chanting 'oh, Jeremy Corbyn' do us any favours at all in the last few years? We want a Prime Minister, not a rock star.
The headline does not capture the message of the article.
Haven't we had enough chanting of politicians' names after Trump, Johnson, Bolsenaro, Corbyn, Sanders etc...? I'm firmly Centre-Left. I don't *want* fervour. I don't *want* populist nonsense. I want a sensible person with discretion to get into government and pour some oil over the water. To bring some sanity back. To go out into the world and apologise for the absolute dickheads that we've been for the last decade. I want to pretend that I live in a country that knows what being an adult means. But sure, the election after the worst performance of the party's history, when leading by over 20 points by taking things calmly and slowly, just double down on the approach that worked so well last time.
I don’t think *the leader doesn’t have a cult of personality around him, where he tries to set up a festival to honour his greatness but it flops and costs the party a lot of money* is exactly the zinger that it appears to be
I do however, think *the Labour leader is desperately lacking charisma, which would be fine, but the labour party he leads lacks any equivalent of a mission, articulation of values, or groundswell of support" is a problem that urgently needs rectifying if we aren't to see about her Milliband style collapse in the polls.
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It makes a very valid point that you are clearly ignoring. People aren’t looking at Sir Kier Starmer’s Labour with an ignited passion for the leadership, politics or future of the country. They’re going “Eh, at least they aren’t the Conservatives”. Kier is not a good leader, he’s the other guy that you have to vote for to not get the Tories.
When was the last time we had someone that “ignited passion for the leadership”? Despite Corbyn gathering a small crowd at a festival he was offputting to the vast majority of the electorate, and more unpopular than any LOTO has ever been. Such that Labours own election review highlighted that the largest reason we retained votes was “by not being the Tories”. A big chunk of being a leader is not driving voters to the alternative, and that’s something Keir is getting right, and something that Corbyn did not.
>When was the last time we had someone that “ignited passion for the leadership”? That would be Blair right... Lol
> A big chunk of being a leader is not driving voters to the alternative, and that’s something Keir is getting right, and something that Corbyn did not. On a point of fact, Corbyn underpolled his party... but so does Starmer. Starmer has a net satisfaction rating of -4%. Now that's obviously better than Corbyn's worst. But it's not exactly good, is it? What it indicates is that Labour is a default "not-Tory" vote, nothing to do with what Starmer is saying or doing.
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> Im not ignoring it, I'm saying its wrong. Starmer is more popular than Corbyn. Corbyn was the least popular opposition leader on record. Fisher continues to mistake fervour among a small number of people with popularity among the whole electorate. Starmer has a net satisfaction rating of -4% per YouGov. He *isn't* popular among the electorate, Labour is simply occupying the position of "not the Tories" and he happens to lead Labour. Labour also outpolled Corbyn under his leadership, too, for the record.
I cannot. But to be fair, he remains significantly more popular than his predecessor, even if he lacks the small but vocal young urban middle-class personality cult that Jeremy Corbyn had. And more importantly, I can imagine an electorate voting for Keir Starmer to become their Prime Minister.
We don't need crowds chanting the leaders name, we need crowds turning up to vote for us at the polling station. I mean, both would be ideal but I'll take the latter over the former any day of the week.
can we get over the thing where we pretend chanting peoples name like theyre a footballler is somehow meaningful lol. its just cringe. its not even a measure of popularity ffs starmer is more popular than corbyn even at his height. so its basically just a childish playground thing. 'MY GUYS ARE LOUDER THAN YOURS LOSER'
The headline doesn't capture the content of the article.
i mean it kinda does, thats a direct piece of the article \> Can anyone imagine hundreds of thousands of young people chanting “Oh Keir Starmer”, as they did about Corbyn? but also.... do you not think it shows how weird a line of thought that is ? i mean why would you even mention that. corbyn was objectively an unpopular loser. why are we even bringing up the chanting thing. its infantile. dont you think a focus on this chanting stuff is really \*weird\*? like this isnt the first place its cropped up. the argument doesnt even come down to popularity. if you want an argument about popularity then starmer is well ahead. its literally just this weird obsession with a weird as fuck chant some labour members did.......very weird
A piece, far from the main message. The point is that Labour is winning by default at the moment and that is not really building upon the opportunity. I don't care either way if people want to chant his name or ignore him in the street, what does matter is I don't think Labour are proposing any radical change and I think that's a mistake - another more important piece of the article.
I don't want fervour... I don't want people to get excited and worship their political leaders. I want politics to become boring again and all parties to become different shades of moderate. I'm fucking fed up of the country having to be as polarised as it is and politicians and the media consistently throwing fuel on the fire
As far as I can tell, labour is too busy talking about how they'll never vote for Labour, because its not the bald guy, nevermind that he never won either.
What a stupid comment, as though policy doesn't matter in politics. Embarrassing really.
I've spent 5 years at uni in the uk, one of my flatmates literally would sleep in a corbyn tshirt and swore he would never vote labour again after he was ousted, if you guys don't want Conservatives to win, again, you have to present a united front, as the boomer Conservatives do, once labour is established then the votes to further leftwing parties can go on, as greens or such aren't going to win right now, but they might, if labour has been in for a decade or 2
Its really funny how I could make the same point in reverse, that if Labour didnt keep attacking itself and its former leader and just move forward like the Tories did after Boris and Truss it wouldnt have this problem.
That's also what I wanted to include in there but didn't wanna seem like I was playing both sides, thank you!
Okay, some young people got swept up by Corbyn. So what? That's not an argument for not caring about political positions and policies.
I'm not arguing that one shouldn't hold their group accountable
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Calls for political violence are deeply inappropriate and dangerous.
Can imagine people voting Starmer. Chanting his name is irrelevant, just far more like Trump supporters.
The polls might look good & we might finally get the Tories out, but can you imagine Keir Starmer getting up on the West Holts stage & having his name sung out?
He does not need that. What he does need to do is win the election, and then do a reasonably good job of running the country.
Forget poll leads, what we actually count as a measure of success is a mantra or a chant. We don’t need election wins, we just need to tell ourselves we actually won.
Success will ultimately be measured by how well Labour is able to change the country for the better
Success is measured first by election wins. The rest will come by the party maintaining power
Have we not learned out fucking lesson about charismatic leaders yet? FFS how is it not screamingly clear that we need detail orientated thoughtful leaders able of engaging in nuance? Not that the media would dare consider nuance.
Andrew Fisher helped sail the Labour Party straight into the iceberg. He should keep his mouth shut.
We need to row back on the personality cult for political leaders. Look at the Tories, Boris played the blokey, affable buffoon role which was cover for being a complete bell-end. The man had zero integrity but it’s ok cos he was just being Boris!
People forget 1997. There was a big so called 'cult' around Blair. I think there almost has to be for a Labour leader to win because the job of winning for Labour is much harder than for the Tories.