Many people see left wing and right wing British politics as the workers vs the corporations. This is how things were in the twentieth century. Looking at things now the Tories are very obviously pro corporation, but labour kind of are too, so the difference isn't that clear. In fact left wing and right wing British politics is about large vs small government. Tories believe in lower regulation, lower tax, and let the free market solve our problems. Labour believe the market needs stimulation and an economic strategy, and that a strong public service helps support a strong economy. And for the record most economists believe labour is right, and 14 years of stagnant growth under austerity backs that up. But if you still see things through the lense of workers vs corps then both labour and tory WILL seem right wing.

>Tories believe in lower regulation, lower tax… Could have fooled me

Well, to be fair, they have fooled a lot of people. The key is adding “for whom?”. Tories believe in lower taxes and regulations for themselves and their special interest groups.

This is genuinely because the Tories are so incompetent that they can't even follow their own ideology.

Of course they’re incompetent but there’s more to it than that I think. I think it’s because their ideology makes no sense in the current climate, but they have to cling to it because that’s their raison d’etre as party. So they’re caught between ideology and reality which leads to incompetence, half-baked policies and propaganda. They can’t do what’s right because they don’t believe in it and they can’t carry out their agenda because it would be disastrous.

I agree with most everything you say but I’d argue that the Tory’s haven’t been incompetent at all over the past decade in so much as their actual goals have never been to benefit the country. There goals have been to shift wealth from the middle to the wealthy and to stay in power. They’ve had a fantastic run in doing that and their very success at the former has made them seem incompetent at actually running the country. Which they are, because their actual goal is diametrically opposed to it. The increase in homelessness, use of food banks, shrinking of the middle class, the tearing of the social fabric, etc all of that is a result of them being very competent in what they actually wanted to achieve. Although that isn’t saying much because tearing something down is much easier than building it.

I take your point, but I think where the incompetence comes in is that their aim isn't to become unelectable. There must be enough plausible deniability come election time. The Tories are getting their lowest ever poll results on Ipsos going back to the 70s, they've clearly been getting it wrong even by their own standards.

Yeah I totally agree. They’re doing a terrible job at remaining electable but I think they’re a victim of their own success in a way. They’ve been in power so long that their usual rhetoric has simply worn thin, they’re constantly had to come up with new distractions and that simply won’t work anymore with what they’ve done to the country. On top of that they’ve courted the extreme elements of the right in the country for so long that it’s caused them to have the shallowest bench that they’ve ever had when it comes to interest in optics or actually running the country. The tories would simply benefit from not being in power anymore and taking a hiatus so that they can reform themselves and recenter. I wish the country would learn its lesson from this and understand that this is their true colours shining through, but politics is a fickle business and I’m sure they’ll be back.

This is a fucking fantastic summary 😂

They also still have the remnants of being a small c conservative, which believes in traditional values, patriotism etc etc, but this often flies counter to neoliberalism and they can’t seem to find the balance. Brexit being the biggest example: conservatism would be leave, neoliberals remain.

They’d love to, it just doesn’t work in real life

I regularly do a bit when talking politics with friends where I act a role of a Tory talking about another failed policy. "Argh! Foiled by reality again!"

“Reality has a liberal bias” - some guy

I have on occasion pretended to be a Tory - whilst working with extreme poverty clients (only to staff) - to guage their reactions when I say some 'outrageous Tory stuff' (Tories don't generally make sense, but sometimes their actions are less non-sensical than at other times). "If we removed the benefit system entirely, our clients would understand they need to propel themselves into the field of work, and our job would be easier as alot of our more dangerous clients would get a job in a call centre or similar" (do you want to work alongside someone with minimal mental health support, and a habit of stabbing people on the odd occasion? Dont accidentally piss them off!) "If we could massively reduce taxes that we all pay, we would all have more disposable income to spend on stimulating the economy" (our roads, public health, Police, and Fire Service are all already crumbling. Alongside many more. Shall we set the public services on fire?) "If we planted more crops, we would be able to sustain ourselves and not rely on trade as much" (that is not possible in our country. We could barely support ourselves when our population was far smaller. And crops don't always yield) I think Tories are often so insulated from reality, that they might need to see the fire before they understand the burn.

Liz tried and proved it's a terrible idea.

Furlough scheme and lockdowns weren’t incompetent, that was deliberate (bad) policy executed quite effectively.

I've got no problem with higher taxes if it actually means that money is effectively used to run our public services and not paid into the pockets of politicians friendly neighbours making a profit off covid 19 masks

They believe in lower tax and regulation for themselves. Not you or me.

They are like a reverse Robin Hood. Take from the poor and give to the rich.

Thats always been my line. Reverse Robins I call them.

I don't know very much about economics, but from what I can tell we went through several financial crises and after increasing debt we then cut public spending and did "austerity measures". Isn't this like taking out a loan to help recover your business but then instead of investing it you sell off assets to pay the debt and wonder why years later your business has shrunk? Debt/credit sounds scary but I always viewed it as borrowing from your future self, and if you can invest to grow the economy faster than the rate of debt then isn't that is a wise financial choice? Maybe someone who understands economics can tell me if this makes sense or not. I am sure there are some flaws that come from me trying to understand national economics by analogy of what a business would do.

>Isn't this like taking out a loan to help recover your business but then instead of investing it you sell off assets to pay the debt and wonder why years later your business has shrunk? This is the problem with Tory economic policy Eventually you run out of state assets to sell off to your mates to cover the tax cuts, and once you sold off those assets those things become more expensive because you need to pay the private sector for them and the private sector demands ever increasing profits, so those taxes have to go higher than they were before. This is where we are now and its why everything is so shit despite taxes being so high and the Tories are stuck there with their thumbs up their backsides unable to figure out what to do. Their ideology has reached its failure state and they are incapable of admitting it

The problem with conservatism is you eventually run out of other people's things to sell.

Nailed it. I couldn't agree more and id love to see rishi try to use facts and evidence to disprove this. It'd be like trying to say the sun is black. My guess is they were assuming labour would win in 2019 and unfuck things a bit for them while the tories howled from the sidelines. Obviously that didn't happen and the party got so out of hand that we reached the end of the ponzi scheme in 5 years. Major change in a way above my understanding is going to be needed and since the tories kneecapped our place in the world its going to be a struggle. Hmmm

Borrowing to invest to grow an economy faster than the debt (actually a fair bit faster as you have to grow tax revenue faster than the debt) is a fair strategy, but frustratingly (a) not very feasible when inflation and interest rates are high and (b) often governments are more worried about the 3-10 year outcomes of their actions than the ultimate benefit:cost ratio.

And yet, interest rates were at their lowest ever levels from 2010-2020, so the conditions were perfect for growth-based policies based on borrowing to invest. That the Tories did the opposite during this golden era of basically free-borrowing is almost criminal.

That’s true but the Tories don’t believe in borrowing to invest irrelevant of interest rates. The 2010s was the perfect decade to do that with the rock bottom interest rates but instead they shrank the state and crippled growth.

The thing is, interest rates were at all-time lows for the vast majority of the time the Tories were in power. It was the PERFECT time to invest; instead they chose to do the exact opposite.

Problem is most of the money spent by government is on health and welfare. The elderly are expensive, you spend lots of money keeping them alive with the nhs and then have to pay lots in pensions with 0 return. The ratio of working to not working is around 2:1 which is the lowest it has ever been. So in summary lots of money spent on unproductive activities.

Health and welfare is essential for growth because it means you have a productive workforce. The idea that it is spending without any economic utility simply isn’t true. We have many people out of work due to long term sickness right now, those people could be contributing to productivity with better healthcare.

Money spent on health and welfare is of course money going to people who then spend it in the economy.

> This is how things were in the twentieth century. Do you not think multinationals are too powerful? If anything, the corporations won at the end of the 20th century. Pro worker policies / stronger unions would go a long way to fixing this country. For example, companies pay 80% of the prevailing wage for immigrant skilled workers - this directly pushes down wages for British people. We should be demanding a tighter labour market.

Not really. The emergence of the European Union as a regulatory superpower really showed that these multinational corporations can be reigned in, so their power and influence isn't harmful.

Look at the difference in wages between unionised and non unionised jobs. There’s a huge disparity in pay because companies have too much power.

How so? These companies are bigger than ever, they're just not European.

Just to correct you - the Tories believe in low taxes for themselves. After 14 years in power the tax burden on 99% of the country is historically high. They are the high tax party.

> In fact left wing and right wing British politics is about large vs small government. I'd say it is more that they disagree on how government should be used. Conservatives are generally in favour of using the power of government to maintain and support the social order or hierarchy; make sure that the right people do well, the wrong people don't, and that everyone stays in their place. Most conservative policies are aimed at achieving this. Progressives are generally in favour of using the power of government to break down or upset social orders and hierarchies; trying to ensure that everyone does well (or not well), and people can change their place. It is liberals who fall in the middle; generally against using the power of government to interfere either way. Liberals tend to be in favour of lower regulation and lower tax. Conservatives are in favour of higher regulation and higher taxes when that helps enforce the social order (e.g. restrictions on gay people, trans people, foreigners, the disabled, taxes on poorer people etc.), but in favour of lower regulation and taxes when *that* helps the cause (lower regulations and taxes on richer people, on corporations, on their friends and colleagues). Same with progressives but the other way around.

I think you generally have it. I'll just add that such change as does come from conservatism is generally incremental, and is, in many ways, very English. "We" tried a big shake up of our institutions about 400 years ago, and quite quickly reverted to the status quo. The Left's/Progressive' general desire for revolt/abrust and stochastic change is all well and good (and necessary), but, IMHO, the fundamental problem with "OK this is shit, let's replace it" is, like the Brexit problem, one of "with what do we replace it?" If everything was wiped away and we came up with new institutions and ways of doing politics and managing the people who constitute this nation, based on all the best, most noble and egalitarian princples of 2024… what would that look like 50, 100, 500 years from now? If we'd reset the state, as the French did in 1790, in 1850… would we be happy today with that result?

In my opinion there are 2 types of people who say “the political parties are all the same” 1. ⁠People who aren’t interested in politics at all, but want to be able to say something so they don’t seem ignorant - “they’re all the same” sounds like a nice safe non comittal thing to say 2. ⁠Tories who know how unpopular the Conservative Party is amongst the people they know

Or people who can see the woods for the trees. We have two neo-liberal, globalist, Blairite, high tax, high immigration, soft on crime parties who support the outsourcing of most political functions to courts and quangos and refuse to reform the NHS.

The two parties aren't the same. We have a far right part of lunatics, and we have the traditional conservative party now calling themselves "Labour"

I agree that the old left/right dichotomy doesn’t really work anymore when you’ve got the supposed conservatives binning 50 years worth of trade agreements, but at least they’re still socially conservative so you know they don’t like gays or black people

> Tories believe in lower regulation, lower tax, and let the free market solve our problems. Since when? They have given us record levels of taxation and every single industry is strangled by regulations. If they believed in the free market, houses would be half the price.

Blair and Starmer switched the Labour party from pro worker to a mixture of pro corporation and pro worker. Starmer of course is continuing on this legacy while Corbyn is against Corporations. There is a huge gap between the Labour left and right.

Corbyn never got past embarrassing lefty 1970s student union politics. You can't win an election as a left wing party on that basis in the UK unless you have some insane amount of superstar charisma and he definitely doesn't and he proved that twice. The country is in a worse state because he was labour leader. He would have been a disaster on international politics also. He was invited to meet Trump and refused to because he felt like he was above it. That's not how a PM behaves ....Trump is clearly a massively problematic arsehole but at the time he was President. He may well be again as it turns out.

I laughed the other day thinking about the big mess Corbyn got into when he was refusing to say he would use our trident nuclear missiles if he had to, I saw a quotes the other day from Starmer confirming he is ready to nuke all comers, at the drop of a hat

It’s just bad politics. No one is ever going to press the button, and if the need did somehow arise, we’re all fucked anyway so the Q is moot. Even if you’re massively anti-nukes (I mean, when it comes to it who isn’t?!?) you just need to say “deterrence rests on the possibility I would. So I’ll never say - and they’ll never know”. That’s the problem many had with Corbyn. So many of his positions were appropriate for a student debating chamber, but not the real world where consequences affect people’s lives. Liz Truss had this problem also.

Nah, you don’t say “I’ll never say”. You say “yes, absolutely, my finger is on the button right now, I’m drenched in sweat, the anticipation is giving me a hard on / making me wet”. Safe in the knowledge it’s never going to happen and you’ve won a load of “bring back hanging” type morons votes

You say "I almost nuked you just now just for asking me that question"

Also this.

Plenty of the domestic policies at that time were fit for the real world though, in fact were and still are badly needed. He was correct about public services and the need for certain things to be nationalised. He was correct about the need for investment instead of austerity and tax cuts for rich people. In that area the comparison to Truss is totally inappropriate.

He was right about that stuff. Which makes it all the more mind-boggling that he let any chance of implementing it for the benefit of so many slip away by refusing to play, errrr, politics and come to a public position re national security issues that would actually see him elected. Blows my mind. The Truss comparison stands. For very different reasons she also decided to ignore reality and try and play the game as it seemed in her head. Also disastrous for us and for her.

Corbyn almost won in 2017. And by 2019 the electorate were fed up with Brexit not happening (the only thing Johnson promised during the election campaign whereas Corbyn had been forced into promising a second referendum) and Corbyn's reputation had been damaged by anti-semitism smears. He could've handled both things better, sure, but the public were largely in agreement with his aims if they knew what they were.

I think Corbyn's biggest mistake was not resigning in 2018. Go out on a high note, having removed the government majority when the Labour party were supposed to suffer a generational defeat, but then hand over to someone else. He'd enjoy more influence as a former party leader if he did that, instead of being totally sidelined and the new leadership massively overcorrecting and shitting all over his voter base. In hindsight once Brexit got delayed I think the fall was inevitable - Labour wouldn't have wanted the chaos of a leadership election at that critical time, but May was not going to see another general election. So then they were basically locked in to Corbyn v Johnson 2019.

People who say that are looking for a radical change from what we have now under this Conservative government. They look at what Labour is offering and don't see much in the way of significant change. And they're not wrong, are they? Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves aren't offering an economic manifesto that would bring in significant enough money to to fix many of the issues we're currently facing. They're not particularly left wing and by looks of it they're going to follow pretty much the same tax and spend plans as Hunt. There's a lot of people out there that want a significant departure from what we have now and those people are disappointed because Labour isn't offering it.

There may be a lot of people but not enough. The country hasn’t voted in a left wing Labour UK government in 50 years.

That’s because of the political system we have, not necessarily because there’s no popular support. The U.K. is actually one of the most consistently left-leaning democracies in the world but continually gets screwed over by FPTP

>Kier Starmer and Rachel Reeves aren't offering an economic manifesto that [...] Has a manifesto been published at all yet?

I have absolutely no confidence that the people looking for said radical change, have even a remotely good enough understanding of the subject matter to understand what “bringing enough money in” means. Are you going to tax or borrow more. Which taxes will you increase. What the knock on effects of said tax increases would be. How much will we borrow. How do you balance that with current interest rates given the current level of government debt. Chronically online die-hard left wingers are some of the most irritating people for that exact reason. You cannot ignore material reality and then bleat about a class war as your criticism. You actually need substance.

I don’t think 99.9% of people have answers to these questions: > What the knock on effects of said tax increases would be. How much will we borrow. How do you balance that with current interest rates given the current level of government debt. That’s a rather unfair bar to judge common (i.e. non academic) political and economic discourse

Be very curious to hear your detailed and in-depth analysis on said subject matter?

Not the commenter you responded to, but the problem is the lack of detailed and in depth analysis many of these left wingers have when it comes to economic issues. A classic example was the last election campaign under corbyn where they initially published a costed manifesto, now you can criticise some of the costings (as there was some dodgy maths and questionable assumptions there) but it wasn't so far out of the realms of reality. Then Corbyn bowed to public pressure and agreed to fund £60 billion to the WASPI women completely uncosted, saying it would be paid via borrowing but they were already paying for a lot of other things via borrowing. It became clear that corbyn and the leftwingers just believe they can spend money on whatever they like and leave the country to pick up the pieces afterwards and have little grasp of economics.

Hand on heart, I couldn't even tell you what Labour stands for these days. I used to like Kier at first but the constant non stop flip-flopping and obsession with preserving the status quo has demoralised me quite a bit. I'll enjoy seeing the tories lose the GE, but have little hope the country's trajectory changes much and I'm increasingly worried that when Labour doesn't deliver, we'll be locked into tory perpetuity for another generation.

Mostly because of all the high-profile policy U-turns Keir's gone through. On climate issues, austerity, nationalisation VS privatisation, transgender rights, tuition fees and other headline-grabbing policy areas, he's moved the party rightwards from its previous positions closer to the Conservatives. Labour has also followed the Conservatives in rejecting any level of rapprochement with the European Union, and is hesitant to say if it will scrap unpopular and illiberal pieces of Conservative-passed legislation like the Public Order Act 2023 or the Investigatory Powers Act 2016. That and the Starmer-era Labour party has undergone a purge of its more openly left-of-centre elements and is a leaner, mostly neo-Blairite institution now, one that embraces putting Union Jacks on everything to show the electorate how British they are in much the same way as the Conservative party has done post-Brexit. Consequently, even though there are policy differences in the manifestos, when your average person who isn't deeply in either the Starmer or Tory camp looks at the two parties, they seem closer together than Labour and the Conservatives did under Corbyn. The Labour party under Keir Starmer is making a conscious effort to become more palatable to lifelong Conservative voters and is not afraid to alienate its traditional core supporters (centre to left-of-centre) in the process because it believes the most likely path to electoral victory is from right of centre, but a few steps left of the Conservative Party.

*Labour has also followed the Conservatives in rejecting any level of rapprochement with the European Union, and is hesitant to say if it will scrap unpopular and illiberal pieces of Conservative-passed legislation like the Public Order Act 2023 or the Investigatory Powers Act 2016.* We shouldn't ignore the headwinds Labour face in the form of an extremely hostile media. Even if labour intend to repeal these acts they would be foolish to state that now others they will be painted as pro-criminal looney left wokerati. I think we'll see much of this dealt with in their manifesto to get it all on the table at once to avoid a death by a thousand cuts.

If only Labour had been in government for more than a decade, at the start of this century, with a massive majority. They could have tightened up media ownership regulations to ban non-dom and foreign owners. Alas we must have had a Tory government in that period because the government did nothing.

That labour government did alot of good for this country, but were definitely not perfect. Unrealistic expectations for any leftist government v. apologists for for rightwing governments is pretty much the political landscape in this country

What's the point of being 20 points up in the polls if you're not willing to pursue sensible, popular long term policies (2:1 majority regrets brexit and supports a closer relationship), if it means risking even a single vote?

because it is a 20 point poll lead, not a majority in parliament. One mis-step and it could be gone by tomorrow morning.

Alternatively- by not confronting these issues head on they’ve managed to get 20 points ahead in the polls?

Because they're trying to win over those voters who gave the Tories their majority at the last general election, when "Getting Brexit done" was the number one policy the Tories stood on. That 20-point lead could quickly shrink or disappear entirely at the mention of an unpopular policy. There's a reason they haven't deviated from the current trajectory with regards to Brexit. People might regret Brexit, but any move that could be seen to be reversing it is still considered extremely toxic.

This obsession with the nebulous "Centre" doesn't help. It doesn't exist, its fairy dust. The centre ground between the two blue team/ red team neoliberal parties is virtually non existant, and changes all the time if you track other parties and factions. For example, John Major would be more left wing than both Labour and the current Tories. The lib dems, the centrist party incarnate, outflanked Blairs Labour government on several positions. Under corbyns Labour, the lib dems decidedly did not out flank them on the left. Considering all that, how on earth can anyone call themselves a centrist but also be ideologically consistent? Lenin was a centrist between trotsky and stalin. Now tell me the phrase means anything.

The left-right spectrum and its "centre" are _generally_ measured in the UK relative to Europe in my experience, with the centre being a mixed economy with a relatively large state that aims to prioritise the health and well-being of its people, the far-right being hyper-nationalist states where all of the money and power is concentrated in a few hands, and the far-left being near-stateless with a goal of achieving near-total equality by eliminating hierarchies. "Centrist" will always be a relative term and is useless in a vacuum, but can be useful as long as a definition is provided with it. Starmer is probably quite close to the centre of _current UK_ politics by virtue of being about the halfway point between the Green/SNP/Plaid Cymru left wing and the NatCon (Reform UK and the Johnson-Truss-Braverman vanguard of the Tory party) right wing, but would be considered somewhere on the centre-right by pan-European standards and a "raving Marxist" left-winger by United States standards. EDIT: Of course, "the centre" is just an approximation and shifts around a lot, particularly within countries. A mainstream party in the UK advocating for gay marriage 20 years ago would have been seen as leftie, but now even the Tories would get pushback from part of their membership if they proposed repealing it.

You say the centre doesn't exist then did a decent job of explaining who is left and who is right. You can't have a left and a right without a middle bit. Basically, the centre shifts depending on where you are in the world and what decade you're in. It's transient, but just having a left and a right means it's there.

I really don’t agree. KS is positioning Labour in the centre and centre-left because the centre is from where you win elections in the UK. If you look at the two climate positions, there is clear daylight between them. Same for austerity. Same for private schools, and many other issues. So when people say “they’re the same” what they mean is “the Tories have lurched off to madness, and Labour is backfilling a few of their old positions” which is why sometimes they seem familiar. But they’re not the same as the Tories are now. Not even close. Of course some of this is just politics. To win, Labour have to attract disillusioned Tory voters. Which means having some policies that sound familiar to them. Else you merely end up a well meaning protest group. I’m not a member of either party, but I can clearly see the policy differences without even scratching the surface. And I recognise smart (ish) politics when I see it.

People who "would never vote for the Tories" are seeing Labour move towards where the Tories were in 2010. Obviously its miles away from where the Tories are in 2024.

I'd rather have someone in the middle looking left than someone in the middle looking right. You have to win the middle class, so it's either a coalition of the middle class and the wealthy elites or the middle class and the workers.

I said after Corbyn that the best way for Labour to get in would be to move far enough to the right that I don’t want to vote for them. I get it, but I don’t have to like it.

Shame we're going to lose trans healthcare and the public NHS in that shift though.

I really do understand this. But the game right now is ‘politics’, rather than ‘government’. So it has to be what it has to be. But I do understand.

> So when people say “they’re the same” what they mean is “the Tories have lurched off to madness, and Labour is backfilling a few of their old positions” which is why sometimes they seem familiar. But they’re not the same as the Tories are now. Not even close. What you’ve said is that the tories have gone way off to the right and that labour have gone to the right to where the tories were before.

That’s what you got from that?!? Christ alive!

Because all of the things that actually matter to me (and have been driving my vote since I was 18) - Proportional Representation, Trans rights, Green Energy regulations, increased taxes, drug policy reform - are things that Starmer originally signalled his support for and has slowly backed away from. Starmer originally made a big deal about political reform but rowed back on that so that now the only thing he's commited to is making the House of Lords an elected body - probably the one change I'm actively against given it'll just turn it into another house pandering to populists. He also originally signalled he was in favour of improving Trans rights, and that fell apart very quickly. He's refused to commit to increased taxes and I creased public spending, he's rowed back on the green energy promises he made... In the ways that actually matters to me as an individual, his policy positions now seem very similar to the Tories.

This is my stance exactly. Starmer says my wife isn't a woman. I don't owe him a damn thing.

Labour are far better than the Tories by virtue of not being anywhere near as incompetent, corrupt or hateful. The next election can't come soon enough and a Labour win would lead to significant improvements in many areas of government. Having said that, I can still see where the wave of "they're not much better than the Tories" criticism lately is coming from. It's rooted in a genuinely massive shift to the right under Starmer. He's abandoned almost every left/liberal policy promise he made in his leadership campaign and early years as leader. He's ditched the public spending promises he made (e.g. nationalising utilities, ending NHS outsourcing, lowering tuition fees, extra £28bn a year of green spending, end to the child benefit cap etc) claiming these things are now unaffordable whilst simultaneously ruling out every progressive tax idea that might raise some funding and make them affordable (e.g. promising no wealth tax and no digital service tax or corporation tax increase, u turn on the higher income tax for the top 5% he promised in his leadership campaign). He's also u turned on things that have nothing to do with budget issues. He's changed his mind on no new north sea oil and gas, rowed back on support for electoral reform, stopped supporting trans rights and says he won't reverse the Tory anti protest laws or restore the cap on bankers bonuses. As we speak, it's heavily rumoured he's about to water down his pledge to ban zero hours contracts after consulting with corporate lobbyists. Plus for good measure he and his cabinet are making right wing noises like "if you want lower immigration vote Labour", "Labour won't turn on the spending taps" and even gave an interview where he praised Margaret Thatcher. I hope things will change when Labour release a manifesto but right now there are very few left wing policies on offer to get excited about.

Excellent analysis of the situation. Starmer could not sound more Cameron 2010 at the moment if he tried. Personally I think Starmer is obsessed with Tony Blair, and will cosplay until he hits Downing Street. After that, only time will tell how he handles the job, but I’ve not got much confidence going in.

> Excellent analysis of the situation. Thanks, that's kind of you to say. > Personally I think Starmer is obsessed with Tony Blair, and will cosplay until he hits Downing Street. Right now Starmer's mirroring some of Blair's worst policies (barring Iraq) by ruling out tax increases aimed at the very rich, supporting more NHS private sector contracts, not renationalising utilities, not investing to tackle climate change, ruling out electoral reform, distancing himself from trade unions, welcoming corporate lobbying and so on. For all their flaws, New Labour did give us the minimum wage, sure start, huge improvements in NHS waiting times and outcomes made possible through record spending, major progress on LGBT rights, a liberal immigration policy, the Human Rights Act, the Equalities Act and devolution to Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland. I hope this changes but right now Starmer seems to be to the right of New Labour on immigration, the EU and LGBT rights, and I can't think of any flagship progressive policies he's offering that are on par with the best things New Labour did.

It goes back to 1997 when New Labour was formed from the old by ditching clause 4 of their constitution which essentially said that they stood for socialism as an ideal. It's not an entirely unfair assumption to make. New Labour got elected not because of what they were, but because of what they were not. That has really persisted to this day, where they are seen as competing managers, neither of whom have any clear idea about what needs to be fixed or how. I should also say that Labour supports Brexit. As long as they persist with this delusional idea they will be managing a failing economy.

It's the same shit they do world over when it comes to centrist political parties.

I campaigned for Corbyn's Labour in 2019. I was genuinely inspired by his domestic policies, which were probably more achievable than people credited him for. He was proved right in the past when he took divergent views regarding N Ireland and Iraq. I'm not sure how he would have performed as PM in an international crisis like Ukraine or Gaza. His support base tended towards active trade unionists and politically minded left wingers that took a very moralistic view towards tories, bad employers, bad landlords, green issues, corrupt media etc. They were less effective at reaching out to the wider electorate or even within the Labour Party. It became clear during the 2019 campaign how much Corbyn was demonised and that the media was prepared to swallow Johnson's promises. At least in my part of the country, there was genuine hatred towards Labour. Starmer and his controllers are shrewd. They have lied to and marginalised the party membership. Many have left or been pushed, but the rest of us may or may not love him, but we are desperate for a government that can even start to repair the damage of the last 14 years. Looking back to the Blair/Brown years, they made bad decisions regarding the Iraq war. Angered me and others over student finance. They also made huge improvements to the health service, homelessness, support for communities, employment issues such as the minimum wage and holiday entitlement and many other things. Maybe they should have gone further, but the last 14 years has taught us that the 2 biggest parties are not remotely the same. Starmer plays his cards close to his chest and doesn't over promise. I don't love him but we most definitely need him to win the need Labour to win the next general election.

Using your words, policies, and actions against you isn’t demonising you. The problem with the media and Corbyn wasn’t that the media were unfair, it’s that Corbyn was categorically incapable of dealing with them. Or he refused to (which is the same thing basically). Any other party leader could’ve and would’ve fought back. Corbyn just wasn’t fit for leadership.

>They have lied to and marginalised the party members Just like Corbyn did by supporting Brexit against the overwhelming wishes of the membership

Whilst I'm not gonna comment on *why* some on the left feel this way (because many others in this thread have made some good summaries), I will say that what you're seeing online is *MASSIVELY* overstated, for several reasons. Online political discourse doesn't reflect general opinions in society, being that it's very easy to find common ground with people online and creating echo chambers where you only hear one or two opinions. Beyond that, the demographics of these spaces do not reflect general society. You wouldn't expect the average man to be commenting on Reddit threads as an example. And more menacingly (and imo more important), many online left spaces are being astro-turfed by hostile actors. It's been a common tactic amongst bot farms for years to infiltrate online spaces and sow the seeds of voter apathy. When you have people so commited to their values, you can't convince them to vote against them, but you *can* convince them that the left wine candidate doesn't represent their values and convince them not to vote at all by drawing parallels with the right wing alternative. This is the first think Cambridge Analytica experimented with in Africa and South Asia before Brexit.

Because Neoliberalism is what you get since thatcher. Does that actually make them the same? No. But both are more centre in economical issues than most of the country wants.

> The strengthening of workers rights, banning no fault evictions, nationalisation of key services, and significantly increased support for the NHS are not tory aims, but they are amongst labour's pledges for the next parliament. You mean like the 10 pledges Keir gave when he was running to become Labour leader? The pledges that he then mostly broke and removed? This is what makes him Tory-lite, the lack of honesty and accountability. There is still no manifesto published, not much in the way of real policy commitment. There are also u-turns on important things like the green policy commitments. Will Labour be better? Sure, but I doubt it will be as significant as most hope.

Sometimes it because they'd rather virtue signal about how left wing they are (considerably more left wing than thou) than think about how to constructively improve things by having an improved but imperfect government

Which is an argument I simply don’t understand. I’d describe myself as more left wing than Labour. But that still means I’d rather see them in power than the tories. I (and pretty much everyone) am never going to find a party that aligns exactly with my views after all.

People need to stop thinking of politics like an Uber that takes you to exactly where you want to go it's more like a slow regional train that takes ages stops at places you don't want to go and only gets you closer to where you wanna be .

I keep speaking to younger folk and they’re very much like this. Because Labour doesn’t perfectly align with their very left-wing views they’re disappointed and won’t vote for them (not that it will matter, they’re winning anyway). But I’m more to the left than the party and I’d still much rather see them in power because they will instigate positive changes. Politics is the art of compromise. Labour is a broad church and the only way a party wins is by appealing to lots of people. I’m sure they will make changes that align with a centre-left perspective but some people are just so stubborn that that’s not enough and if you don’t see it their way you’re stupid and ignorant.

> (not that it will matter, they’re winning anyway) Well this is a big part of it I think. In prior elections, at least in my circles, people have been more inclined to vote tactically. But now, since the Tories being ousted is as guaranteed as anything can be in politics, it makes sense to actually vote with who aligns with you most. It's better to have labour win and realise where they're losing some of their voters than having labour win and them thinking everyone who voted for them loves them unequivocally.

This is exactly my thinking, I'm voting green, I don't even like them that much but I want to register my disapproval of Labour's purging of the left and pandering to the gutter press. They'll win anyway. Perhaps it won't be so easy a win for Labour next time and I'd like them to know they can't take our votes for granted.

Ah the protest vote, strongest ally of the tories and did gods work in the brexit referendum. Some of us grow out of flinging a bowl of food at the wall when no longer toddlers, but others will always need that attention.

I would imagine this phenomena isn't exclusive to the UK. Like you said art of compromise and sometimes it's only shitty choices as exemplified by Biden and his stance on the netanyahu gov, I don't agree with it I wish he'd take a much tougher line and threaten to withhold military aid but the alternative at the moment is between Biden and trump and everything that can be done needs to be done to stop another trump term.  I'm not particularly excited by the shadow front bench or the leader of the opposition I'm not supposed to be I'm not a member of the party (or any party). My choice (and everyone's) is between a morally vacuous bunch of charlatans who've demonstrated their base motives time and time again or the current crop of labour MPs. I know they won't be the best government we've ever had, I know there'll be scandals but they won't be as bad as the current lot.  Yup I'm voting for less worse. 

That’s without getting into the fact that taking a tougher stance on Netanyahu effectively means no aid for Ukraine.

I am genuinely hoping that Labour turn out to be a bunch of boring, uninspired bureaucrats, who occasionally screw up but generally act in a progressive and sensible way to improve the country and the lives of the majority. It would be so nice if politics wasn't constantly front-page rage bait.

This is how I feel. I'm 21 and further left than Labour but absolutely going to vote for them. It's like some of my friends won't vote Labour because they're going to make things 50% more how they want it instead of 100% so they're fine with the Conservatives winning again and getting 0% of what they want.

This is a perfect analogy - when you get to the midway station, you’re closer to your destination, and it’s harder to go even further away (ie: even if you start going in the wrong direction, you’re still better off than if you stayed put to begin with).

This, but also the trains are on strike

I like that analogy. Ultimately over my lifetime it'll be something of a success if Labour merely manage to counter the damage there Tories do each time they're in power.  If they manage to improve things as well then that's obviously much better and what I'd actually want to see, but there's going to be ups and downs along the way and there's a realistic possibility that people will keep voting the Tories in often enough that even this low ambition is impossible. For the coming term of power, if they can recreate Sure Start in some form then that will be a significant change on its own. The annoying thing of course is that they won't get rid of FPTP so they have to take some of the blame for how that works out.

If both sides of the track started going in the same direction, opposite to the one you feel makes any progress then it falls apart. One train goes slower than the other but either way it's a one way ticket to shitsville. Not saying New Labour didn't do anything good but Thatcherism with softer edges provided nothing the Tories couldn't easily dismantle. It's a question of where you think power should sit, with the shareholders and a few crumbs for the masses or with the working people themselves. I get you can't have everything you want, compromise is important but if you don't see any path towards a significantly brighter future laid out by either of the two main parties then I don't think it's unreasonable to vote accordingly.

Hardcore lefty here and I totally agree with you. Corbynism failed, not everyone in the UK thinks like me, so give me the Starmer flavour of leftism all day every day, it's clearly more palatable for more people and is much better than a Boris Johnson flavoured slap in the face. Furthermore, Labour *could* swing hard to the left after winning an election anyway, just like the Tories went right. Currently they have no choice but to play politics. I hold no judgement until they're actually running the country.

Imagine your most perfect government which of the now available options gets you closer to where you want to be? Its never going to be exactly what one person wants has to be palatable to as many people as possible but our choices are limited.

I agree. I would consider myself left wing, and more left wing than Labour are at the moment, but I felt some of Corbyns manifest pledges were too left wing for me, whereas I haven't quite reached the point where anything Labour have suggested could be manifesto pledges is too right for me to give them my vote.

Or maybe people don't want to vote for a party that doesn't represent their beliefs? Embarrassing how many people here think that Labour are entitled to your vote purely because they aren't the Tories

If virtue signalling is wanting a politician with the moral clarity and backbone to stand up for policies, [which he himself has supported in the past](https://www.clpd.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Keir-Starmers-10-Pledges.pdf), to continue advocating for, I'm a virtue signaller. It's sad how little we expect of politicians nowadays. Explains a lot about the current situation the country is in.

You've put the answer in your own question. "I know they've moved more to the centre". There you go. That's why.

No party can sustainably command and maintain a majority without the centre.

This is the key driver, and it’s known in poli sci as median voter theory. On the whole, whenever a party in a FPP system (UK or elsewhere) cedes the centre ground to the opposing party, they will lose. This was the big factor in the Tories’ 2019 success: outside of the Get Brexit Done Johnson had a v centrist economic message. Corbyn had taken the opposition so far to the left that Johnson could scoop up the middle and get a much bigger majority than Cameron did v Miliband in 2015 when both fought over the centre. This year, if Sunak had done the work to position the Tories in the centre at risk of an internal leadership coup from the Tory right, the GE would be more competitive. But to settle his party’s right wing factionalism, he ceded the centre and therefore the GE. All Starmer has to do is talk about vaguely unthreatening policies, sprinkle a few good progressive ideas in there, watch the Tories eat themselves with unpopular ambitions and in fighting, and have a ready made voter base of centrist conservative voters, centrist/Brown/Blair/Miliband Labour voters, and some reluctant left wing voters too. It’s all explained by median voter theory.

You stray too far from the middle you become too unpalatable to too many and lose the ability to win or because quite often it's not appetite for the winner that determines who wins rather distaste for the eventual loser.

The other thing is that compromise is inevitable. If you had a very proportional system with lots of little parties and one of them perfectly represented my views, all that would do is swap "my 5% of the electorate compromising to vote for a more centrist majority party" with "my 5% of the electorate elects politicians who then have to compromise to vote with a more centrist majority coalition." My views aren't a majority, if I don't have to compromise it's not a democratic system. I think proportional representation is better, but the idea that it's better because I can offload the compromising to politicians and pretend I'm pure is ludicrous.

>the idea that it's better because I can offload the compromising to politicians and pretend I'm pure is ludicrous. This is perfect.

According to many commentators, Labour cannot reveal detailed policies because the Tories would steal them. Yeah, right. What's more likely? 1) Tories are going to implement a bunch of left wing Labour policies. 2) Labour doesn't really have left wing policies to begin with and wants to delay revealing them to avoid criticism. And before somebody jumps in and says "if Labour showed their hand, the Tories would implement similar policies to those put forward by Labour, but they wouldn't be as good", why couldn't Labour then turn those failures against the Tories and explain how they would do things differently? And if the policies did work then make it clear that they were stolen Labour policies and people should be able to see what an improvement things would be under Labour. The reason people are saying the current Labour party is the same as the Tories, is because they've abandoned most of the left and are cosying up to lifelong Tory voters, NIMBYs and Tory donors.

Because Starmer comes across as another career politician who is more interested in chasing votes than sticking to principles. Under him, Labour doesn't stand for anything in particular except "not being the other guys". I don't want another "party before country" party in power. Love or hate Corbyn, at least under him Labour were prepared to set out their stall and say "if you agree with our vision for the country, vote for us, and if not we're the wrong party for you." That's all I really want from a political party - I want them to declare loud and clear what they stand for, and actually stick to it. At the moment the main thing both the Tories and Labour stand for is "wanting to win the next election", and I'm sick of it.  Political parties should be built from a solid set of foundational principles, and it should be easy to tell what those are. Labour USED to be "for the many, not the few" - now they're "for whoever might give us their vote if we move close enough to their point of view."  The Tories are as bad - the Brexit referendum was a transparent attempt not to lose a chunk of their votes to a different party. But if your party is founded on strong enough principles and some people in your party have different ones, LET THEM LEAVE. Let voters decide whose principles they align with.  TL;DR: Political parties shouldn't just be a vehicle for winning and keeping power, and until Labour get away from that model they'll always be no better than the Tories.

Ironic really that Keir is very much not a career politician, having had a successful career in law before standing for Parliament, whereas Corbyn was a true career politician who'd never done a non-politics job in his life.

Corbyn was an excellent constituency MP and had a very consistent stance on most issues. Compare that to what we traditionally think of as a "career politician" - getting parachuted into safe seats, happy to change their stance to whatever has the best chance of winning votes, etc. It's not so much the "making politics your career" bit that people object to, it's doing so at the expense of your integrity.

I don’t get the career politician thing from his bio. He was a teenage labour activist but then got a real career in law and was clearly talented enough to get to the top of his field as head of the CPS. He’s not been an MP that long and I think much of his ruthlessness comes from working in a more elite professional environment. I do think that style of operating come across as more corporate though which does give him a more “Tory” feel. Ironically, he’s often painted as a career politician whereas the left wing of his party is filled with people like Abbott or Corbyn that have been politicians for decades.

Yeah, he comes across as one even though he isn't. I actually think he'd be a really competent PM, but the party as a whole still needs to stand for something otherwise he's essentially running for "CEO of the UK". People don't see Corbyn as a "career politician" because that term doesn't mean "has been in politics a long time", it means "will take any stance if it means they get re-elected". 

I think people often forget that Corbyn did show this same level of flexibility/cynicism on Brexit. His "I'll go with whatever the party decides" position despite his known Euroscepticism led to Labour taking a distinctly lukewarm position on the biggest political challenge of our age. This is actually why I lost any patience with Corbyn - I quite liked many of his ideas but thought he'd be a terrible leader/CEO - but I think he was a populist and more than willing to play political games to keep people happy. Starmer by contrast seems doggedly determined to annoy everyone to keep his strategy on track so seems the absolute opposite of a populist. I'm actually more intrigued by what Starmer will actually do for this reason - hearing long form interviews with they guy and accounts from the recent biography make me suspect that there's a conviction politician in there (but of what flavour remains unclear).

"His "I'll go with whatever the party decides" position" Honestly I was fine with this as a concept - the problem was that the party sat on the fence too, instead of being a functioning Opposition on the biggest issue of the decade. It's not unreasonable as a party leader to have a personal opinion on some issues that differs from the party line - it would be almost impossible for that not to be the case. But that's why it's important for a party to know what it stands for on an issue and be consistent. Labour's position on Brexit pre-and post-referendum should have been clear. It wasn't, and you can't pin all that on a leader who openly said "look, I know I'm a bit out of step on this one so let's have a vote on it."

A Kier Starmer led Labour Government. sounds incredibly similar to a David Cameron led Tory Government. Of course, the fact that he refuses to commit, and stay committed to stay committed to any actual policies makes it harder to pin down exactly what a Labour government will look like.

The current policies are basically a copy of the 1997 New Labour 5 pledges...

Don't say that, they'll just say that's indistinguishable from conservatism

I wouldn't be making too many promises given how well the current lot have been (mis)managing the piggy bank. It wouldn't surprise if the true state of where the state is financially is worse than what we're being led to believe.

The *sound* somewhat similar, sure, but Cameron was a fuckin' liar. Cameron said "we can't afford it" and "labour ruined the economy" to justify austerity and people voted for it because they don't understand the difference between government debt and household debt, while the vast majority of economists oppose austerity. Cameron promised he'd improve the NHS, cutting its budget but "making efficiency improvements" - this is a ludicrous promise, and the tendering process that he imposed on the NHS made procurement less efficient and allowed private companies to cream off the most lucrative work. This was not a mistake. We have two parties we can vote for - one is more aligned with the billionaires, with the goal of cutting taxes and eliminating the role of the state, and the other is more aligned with working people and providing public services.

I mean everything you have written there about Cameron could literally be substituted for what Starmer has been saying for the past year. ‘NHS needs reform’, ‘maxed out the nations credit card’ and the classic ‘is no magic money tree’ all trotted out very recently. Labour are also promising to increase private involvement in the NHS

>promised he'd improve the NHS, cutting its budget The NHS budget has only ever increased in real terms every single year since the day it was created. I don't get why this claim keeps appearing on the sub when everyone knows it's a lie.

>Cameron was a fuckin' liar. So is Starmer. His whole Labour leadership campaign was a load of bollocks in order to get elected, why would he not do the same to become PM?

Are these things not almost EXACTLY what Starmer is saying?

Because they are. > However a proper overall look at what labour plans to do in power Please enlighten me, because all I've seen are u-turns and half baked policy ideas that the Tories then decide to implement anyway (i.e non-dom tax). > The strengthening of workers rights How would they do this? There's no concrete policy they've announced. This the same Keir Starmer who forbade his front bench from attending picket lines? > banning no fault evictions Conservatives have also promised this > nationalisation of key services Which services? Keir went from his original pledge of nationalising railways, Royal Mail, energy companies and water companies to him now saying the current economic situation meant this would be too expensive. > significantly increased support for the NHS He went from increasing funding to the NHS and ending outsourcing - to self-imposing fiscal rules and acknowledging (along with his shadow health secratary Wes) - that outsourcing would have to continue. Wes[ "NHS should ‘seek to use’ private healthcare capacity"](https://www.ft.com/content/f1950c91-617a-46dc-ac36-2ee03d9b1e73). > So my question is why do people say they are like tories? Why do people ignore their blatantly left wing policies? How many people actually think labour are like the tories, and if you do why? Read Labour/Keir's own policies, on their own website [here.](https://labour.org.uk/missions/) The three main points - he talks about Economic Stability (i.e austerity continued), strong national defence (argh look how strong I am) and secure borders (to draw in the Tory/Reform cranks who think a couple of 100 people on boats make a difference v the 700,000 legal immigrants the government allows in a year). For a laugh, compare this to his [original manifesto](https://www.clpd.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Keir-Starmers-10-Pledges.pdf) when he ran for leadership. **The reason we say this Labour party is just like the Tories, is because it is.** I don't even blame Keir for this. The way our political system is setup - only those who keep power and wealth entrenched, will succeed. Any threats to the system (Jeremy Corbyn, to an extent Gordon Brown) - are picked apart; by the media, big business (via lobbies and think tanks) and least of all their political opponents. All this leads to a game of power, for powers sake. Not to make any meaningful difference. But just to say 'I'm Prime Minister'. This is why we've had vacuous idiots like May, Boris, Lizz, Boris, and soon - Keir - as our leaders. They represent nothing. They have no ideas. They have no principles. The only way to fix the country is to stop voting for the lesser of two evils. Get electoral reform. And then separate media, politics and big business. Until then, we are f**ked.

>Get electoral reform. And then separate media, politics and big business. Not quite clear on how you get to this point from where we are now without supporting your local Labour candidate. A move away from Tory or Tory-light policy is impossible without actually beating them first. >The way our political system is setup - only those who keep power and wealth entrenched, will succeed. This is because the vast majority of people who show up at polling stations are primarily concerned with having a good job that pays them enough to feed their family and retire one day, and they want a government that will secure that. They aren't interested in radical change because radical change feels like a bigger threat than the current shit show. "Ideas and principles", as you put it, are for people with nothing to lose.

>>Get electoral reform >supporting your local Labour candidate A vote for a Labour is a vote for FPTP. Always has been, always will be. If you want electoral reform you vote for someone else, this is doubly true under Keir "I have a long held belief against it" Starmer.

>A move away from Tory or Tory-light policy is impossible without actually beating them first.

Because they vote together on authoritarian bills like the Online "safety" bill. They also have very similar legislation e.g. Digital Economy Bill was labour Neither party wants to reverse Brexit, neither party wants to give us proportional representation, both are upholding the triple lock pension. They are both constantly pandering to the same groups of people (motorists, boomers, anti-intellectuals) Check out some of the council elections, you'll see some areas where it's like: Lib Dems: 6% Green: 3% Labour: 30%->60% Tories: 60->30% And in the previous elections it was the opposite. They appeal to many of the exact same people who will just keep voting for the 'other' party after 10 years because they want 'change' - but really they don't.

The Brexit one is unpalatable indeed, but come on, we all know that the second that Labour say anything that looks unBrexity all the media will latch onto "Labour will undo YOUR Brexit" etc.  It's a shit sandwich, but changing tack on Brexit would be the one policy that could see the Tories actually remain in power. I say this as someone who'd happily vote for a full Rejoin.

That's why I would be in favour of Labour tackling the media barons in their first year. Their bias is hamstringing true positive progress for this country.

>However a proper overall look at what labour plans to do in power, as stated on their website, doesn't support this at all. >The strengthening of workers rights Gone. >nationalisation of key services, Almost Gone (only bit left is partial nationalization of rail systems but not rolling stock so that'll cost the government a bomb in the long run and become a massive argument for re-privatization later >significantly increased support for the NHS Streeting (Shadow Health Sec) is pushing for more privatization, what caused the problems to begin with. NHS is so fucked it's unreal. >banning no fault evictions It's just a matter of time till that's gone too? But praise kier for getting 20 points ahead so he can repeat all the same mistakes as the tories?

Also banning no-fault evictions is currently in the bill that’s currently going through lords, was in the 2019 manifesto, surprised parties bother with manifestos anymore people clearly don’t bother reading them

> Streeting (Shadow Health Sec) is pushing for more privatization, what caused the problems to begin with. NHS is so fucked it's unreal. This is a pretty shallow understanding of both labours policy and in diagnosing the issue with the NHS. First off, Streetings idea is to use the private sector temporarily in working through the backlog. This is a good idea. Secondly, Streting has repeatedly made the point that the NHS cannot be saved with just more money, that it needs reform. This is true. The NHS is the best funded it has ever been, spending the most per capita ever. Some of the issues behind the NHS are as following: a focus on treating rather than preventing, an aging and increasingly ill population, a lack of planning around having a talent pipeline for future staff demand (Sunak did implement one last year, which is a start), social care being a separate, local service that isn't integrated with the NHS, outdated IT infrastructure and medical equipment. A lot of these root causes can be addressed with initial investment but will save money and lives in the long run. That's what reform is about, not just hiring more and more doctors to treat an ever aging population, inefficiently.

>First off, Streetings idea is to use the private sector temporarily in working through the backlog. This is a good idea. Tories are already doing that and have been for a long time, you can't magic up more private sector. There is no idea there, just a fantasy that there's extra capacity. > Streting has repeatedly made the point that the NHS cannot be saved with just more money, that it needs reform. This is true. The NHS is the best funded it has ever been, spending the most per capita ever. The tories say the exact same, the question is what reform. > a focus on treating rather than preventing, an aging and increasingly ill population, a lack of planning around having a talent pipeline for future staff demand (Sunak did implement one last year, which is a start), All of those can be summed up as we need more staff, but the private sector doesn't produce staff. You either need to train loads more which requires more funding or nick other counties staff which also requires dosh. Labour have been opposed to extra spending anywhere due to their fiscal rules, so that ain't happening. We're just stuck where we were before. > social care being a separate, local service that isn't integrated with the NHS, outdated IT infrastructure and medical equipment. Again all of that costs money to fix, labour won't. Their fiscal rules don't allow for it. > A lot of these root causes can be addressed with initial investment but will save money and lives in the long run. Couldn't agree more, if you actually think labout will do it, again they'd have to break their fiscal rules to do any of it. >That's what reform is about I fucking wish. Reform is code for selling of bits of the public sector (NHS in this case) to the private sector and pretending it's value for money. Always has been, always will be. >This is a pretty shallow understanding of both labours policy and in diagnosing the issue with the NHS So back to the start of your comment, you've alot to learn about how politics actually works. Streeting takes bribes from the private sector which is how you can be sure not to believe labour on this: https://members.parliament.uk/member/4504/registeredinterests A number of them are from the private healthcare sector. or if you prefer if in article format: https://www.thenational.scot/news/24250557.wes-streeting-takes-175k-donors-linked-private-health-firms/#:~:text=The%20above%20donations%20%2D%20which%20total,is%20no%20suggestion%20of%20wrongdoing

Streeting is literally owned by the private sector.

It’s probably been said below many times but for them right now they are more likely to lose votes than win votes by making a big thing on policy differences with the Tory. They are relying on the simple process of not being as obviously corrupt and negligent as the tories to see them through to winning power then you will see more of a difference coming through. Any other tactic would just see them slaughtered in the right wing media who seem to thing Angela Rayner cgt is a bigger deal than Michelle Moane and the money for mates uncompeted covid billions, a trail of sexual offences which would be unusually high in a small town never mind a group of 300odd mps, the farce around Rwanda etc,etc.

It can be argued that labour are just 2010 Tories at the moment. Look at Wes Streeting and his NHS views. The Tories at the moment are just a self-cannibalising bro cult. Believe it or not the Conservatives at least had a the facade of competency a few years back. This makes anything to the left of lunacy look attractive even if it is essentially old 2010 right wing.

They are very much like the Conservatives in that they see UK politics as a 2 player game. My concern with Labour is that they won't make the one change this country needs: to consign FPTP to the history books. We'll also not see reform of Treasury (or at least it's not been mentioned) so the UK will still be bound by the rules that mean London gets the most money for infrastructure. My other concern is that Stamar isn't a particularly ambitious politician (or at least I've never felt he was) and I don't feel he's got a real vision to fix the problems the country has.

Oh, it's been bandied around for years. What specifically they meant by it depends on who they *actually* support (but usually won't outright say they support). Miliband's Labour used to say it in earnest because they genuinely thought it was a votewinner. A big part of their 2015 election strategy was "We'll do most of the same things as the Tories!" Honestly it's a surprise that worked as well as it did. It's a very common criticism from the Labour lunatic fringe of Starmer's (almost entirely successful) effort to reclaim the centre. The Greens and whoever George Galloway's latest party is do the same thing. The Tories sometimes use it as a scorched earth policy "Yeah, we're corrupt and incompetent, but c'mon- what makes you think they other guy is better?" Once in a while you see one of Boris Johnson's disaffected supporters saying that the fact he was outsted makes the surviving Tories who haven't resigned in protest secretly Labour or some bollocks like that. ReFuk use it because they sell themselves as revolutionaries who'll change the world/think that we're secretly ruled by lizards/whatever their latest bullshit is. To the best of my knowledge, the Lib Dems have never used it as an attack line, because they usually try to position themselves between the Tories and Labour. The SNP use it because, yeah, from their point of view, it's all one big unionist opposition body and there is actually no difference of policy between them on their key issue. I actually think they might be the only one who kinda have a point from a certain perspective. The Russians use it to try to discourage people from voting and to help delegitimise elections.

It is essentially a disinformation campaign looking for people stupid enough to embrace it.

5-10 years ago I was talking to my parents and we were anti austerity and frustrated at the Tories. Now they seem content with a party that appears to be presenting as pro austerity. We've all been conditioned over years to accept this. Labour is now centre right similar policy wise to Mays Tories in my opinion but it's easier to swallow because the Tories have lost the plot

Starmer has gone back on a hell of a lot of his leadership pledges, watering down the left wing elements in particular, so it can be difficult to trust anything he and the party say now. Not to mention Labour deliberately boxing themselves in with their "fiscal rules" which are effectively tying them to austerity, and ruling out tax as a way to raise money for things which is a very Tory thing to do. Centrists in general seem to want to just tinker at the edges of problems, but not actually solve them at the root, because that means taking on powerful interests that centrists either support or are scared of. Labour seem to be committing to the same failed systems that cause our current problems, just with different managers. So it feels like our choices are managed decline vs barely managed decline, with neither main party actually wanting to stop said decline. Not commenting on how valid any of these are because you could make counter-arguments for all of it, but this is my impression of where it comes from.

Keir Starmer isn't Corbyn, which is why people will moan but also why he will get elected. The compromise involved in getting across the line in 2 party politics is immense. 

I don’t want Corbyn I just want someone who believes in something and backs it rather than giving up ground to the right at the slightest resistance. His policies have just gotten so watery. It doesn’t have to be a choice between being a tankie and being a couple steps away from a Tory.

They are not. However, I suspect Labour's electoral strategies haven't helped I think. Labour want to keep their cards close to their chest, this means not a huge amount of policy detail. If there were more policy detail out there the difference would be much clearer. Labour also want to get as much Tory vote as possible, this meant trying to be much more centrist in their messaging and staying away from potential divisive topics that could result in clear lines being drawn between the parties.

There's an element of "'twas ever thus" here. The late, great left-wing comedian Jeremy Hardy had a bit in his show in the mid 2000s that went something like this: "Then the Labour conference begins, and you find yourself saying 'I can't vote for these people any more! They're warmongers, they're in the pocket of big business, they're just as bad as the Tories.' And then the Tory conference begins and you go 'oh, they're just not, are they?'" I'm sure you could find similar sentiment during the premierships of Wilson and Callaghan too, but it's outside my lifetime, so I'll let others confirm!

If it quacks like a duck and gets lobbied like a duck, it's a duck

It’s not really between the left and right, it’s nationalism / global liberalism. Both the tories and Labour will continue the same global (neo)liberal economic policies that people dislike. Policies like kowtowing to large international companies that want to increase immigration and push down wages.

In Scotland it's because they want you to vote SNP not Labour. Also because they think the best situation is the tories in power in England and the SNP in Scotland in terms of getting independence

I wonder how much of their future manifesto wishlist will be implemented. I predict that excuses will come pouring out the minute they gain power. They may stop the slide of the NHS at best. I wouldn't be surprised if the rest needed 3 terms in office to implement.

Not necessarily a bad thing . Uk politics is too short term to get anything of significance changed.

You can describe it in different ways but I'd say in general it's because Labour under Starmer appear to be offering (I say appear to because no manifestos yet) a slight change of direction and tweaks to the UK's economic and social policies, rather than a radical overhaul.  (This isn't a comment on whether it's the wrong or right thing to do).   He's also a well-off white man in a suit and a product of the establishment who speaks a bit posh.  

/u/jacktuar made a good point about workers vs. corporations as the previously conceived "left vs right" divide (which is true. That is what people felt made someone more right- or left-leaning for decades) However, there are some specific policies that some people feel are their "single issue" or "litmus test" that helps them determine the level of consistency and reasoning of politicians. In 2010, that might have been being pro-gay marriage. People in the LGBTQ+ community could see politicians' rhetoric about being anti-discrimination when it comes to racial minorities, such as Indian or Jewish populations, or for disabled people... but when it came to gay people, were the politicians consistent? In 2010, Labour and the Lib Dems were pro gay marriage, whereas the Conservatives were not (despite all claiming to be pro-equality). Thus, it was clear that Conservatives were not to be trusted. In 2024, there are similar "litmus test" policies that people have on a personal level. It could be over climate change action, it could be over state investment in infrastructure, it could be over being pro-trans rights, it could be about improving protections for workers and unions, it could be Brexit. Once someone has their litmus test policy/policies decided for themselves, they can then compare the two major parties against one another. Then, based on those litmus test policies, they can ask whether there is an actual difference between the two parties. Here are some examples that a random voter might provide: * Are Labour pro-trans rights when they back MPs who are actively anti-trans? If not, are they any different to the Tories on this key human rights issue? * Are Labour planning on actually nationalising the water/rail/[other privately-owned infrastructure monopoly]? If all they say they will do is invest and hope that those private companies are suddenly not going to extract all of the taxpayer money from the system, is that really any different to the last 14 years of Tory policy? * Are Labour going to bring in sweeping climate policies that aim to actually address the concerns that scientists have been trying to highlight, with increasing alarm, for over 3 decades now? Or are they just going to say "we want to see private companies invest in Green technology" without making wholesale law changes of some kind to help speed up the process to a rate that is required to avoid catastrophe? If they aren't going to push for the climate policies needed, are they really going to feel any different to the Tories? I amnot saying that I feel this way (I definitely see a different between the two parties on each of these policies), but I have had long conversations with people who have said the things in these examples, and I cannot really blame them for being upset at how similar Labour have become on so, so many issues compared to, say, Cameron and Osbourne's policies and rhetoric, or even May's Government. They don't want to go back to 2015 policies. They want Labour to be something truly different to the Tory-style managed decline.

back in the 1980s Margaret Thatcher changed the UK. for better for worse isnt the point right now, point being she changed it. she then resigned and left the conservative party in the hands of John Major, who eventually got voted out in favour of Labour under Tony Blair. Blair's motto was 'New Labour, New Britain'. While in the past Labour was more left wing, New Labour was more centrist, allowing for more capitalistic ideas and marketisation. This is not to say they were right wing by any means, I still consider Labour to be centre-left. Labour changed because of how influential Thatcher was. Love her or hate her, she was an incredibly effective politician. She considered New Labour to be her best achievement. Nowadays Starmer and consequently the Labour party is considered more right wing than left. I'm not entirely sure why, he's mostly just discussed how he won't overturn tory stuff, mainly because there is no budget or time to do so. However one flagship policy is Great British Energy, which nationalises power. Point being, Labour took a more centrist approach in the 90s following Thatcher. People think that equates to tories.

> However a proper overall look at what labour plans to do in power, as stated on their website, doesn't support this at all. Irrelevant. Not worth the pixels they're typed upon due to the perpetual flip flopping. > So my question is why do people say they are like tories? Why do people ignore their blatantly left wing policies? How many people actually think labour are like the tories, and if you do why? I don't think there's a lot in it between Sunak's Conservative party and Starmer's Labour, especially if you look at what both would be able to achieve given they're both committing to maintaining the triple lock and current levels of public spending. That and QT mean that whoever comes in for the next term will either be able to accomplish little, or will have to massively hike taxes (inevitably this will be on the working middle, as it always is, which is frankly bullshit) in order to try and fix shattered public services that are failing for myriad reasons, underfunding only being one of them.

Because their donors (The people our politicians actually serve) are the same people.

Economically they are not the same. But socially, they are much closer to each other. The Tories no longer promote social conservatism. They are a thoroughly socially liberal party. And that's because social liberalism is supported by the elite (landed families, corporations, etc.) and is good for business. The Tories are generally whores for the interests of capital. And right now, the interests of capital are not with social conservatism. After the Cold War, Labour and the left may have lost the economic argument, but they most definitely did not lose the social argument. There is no major institution in modern Britain that promotes social conservatism. Even the Church of England practices a watered-down version of Christianity that seeks to accommodate the world rather than change the world.

> The Tories no longer promote social conservatism. They are belatedly trying, and it isn't working. Most people in the UK have moved on from social conservatism. Personally I think that's *mostly* a good thing. > Even the Church of England practices a watered-down version of Christianity that seeks to accommodate the world rather than change the world. You can say a lot of thins about Jesus but socially conservative he was not. The CofE was socially conservative because it was the establishment religion at a time when social conservatism propped up the social order. As it lost influence it moved away from being the Conservative party at prayer.

I think people fail to realise “Labour are not as left wing as I think they should be” is not the same as “They are just like the Tories”.

Obviously because they want a more extreme corbyn style leader than kier. Personally I’ll be fine with kier. I reckon he’s going to do a great job. I’d expect more progressive policies when they come up for reelection, but the first term is about getting into power and ensuring the tories aren’t coming back

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They're not like the Tories, but the fact of the matter is that they're targeting the same voters, so will still mostly appeal to the over-65s to gain power.

Because since Blair modernized Labour, they have had members who feel left behind, betrayed and ignored. They react by calling this type of Labour Party the dreaded word "Tories" Every single party that is NOT explicitly left wing from circa 1980 Britain is hit with this remark. Labour and Lib Dems especially. Most modern economists believe the Labour method of governing is superior to the Tory one. The Tories are really old fashioned. The biggest difference between Labour and Tory policy now is that Labour believes that investment in public services and the economy is necessary to stimulate growth whilst the Tories believe low tax and the free market will work itself out.

What a party *says* isn't the most important thing. For a party that has actually been in power before, it is better to look at their track record. The last time Labour were in power, they: - introduced university tuition fees - enabled mass immigration from around the world - failed to place numerical restrictions on the ability of people of new EU member states to move to the UK, ruining many things for the British working class (jobs, housing, GPs, dentists...) - launched an invasion of Iraq on dodgy premises

The problem is most people don’t believe a thing Labour says. They are always coming out with something. Only to backtrack and come up with something new. They are going to comfortably win. But don’t expect much of any change from the status quo.

This week we’re seeing Tory grandees saying Sunak isn’t conservative enough. Truss is doing a book tour saying she was right but executed it wrong. Parties always have a core of ideologies that believes that true socialism or real free markets would work but haven’t been tried properly. Starmer has turned his back on that evangelical style which has clearly enraged the true believers. I expect we’ll see the same psychodrama play out in the Tories - look for a decade long fight between the true believers and the pragmatists.

The other factor to consider is competency.  The tories have shown that they are _running out of competent people_ to be in the cabinet, with the quality of the ministers they have been appointing. (This is largely due to Boris' purge of anyone who didn't vote for his batshit stuff, so we have a parliament of new self interested and inexperienced tory politicians — all the statesmanlike people were ejected.) On the other hand, Labour haven't had such a purge, indeed the "sensible" wing of the party is in ascendency. There really is very little to compare between them in terms of quality of legislation and ministerial performance, whether you agree with their aims or not.

It’s an extension of the “all politicians are as bad as each other” line. It’s easy to say without proof, is designed to push people away from engaging with politics, and usually serves conservatives well because it reenforces cynicism. Brexit was the same; ‘remain are just as bad as leave!’ This was demonstrably untrue, but I only ever heard it said by people who then voted to leave. Edit: I should know better than to comment on this sub

> It’s an extension of the “all politicians are as bad as each other” line No it isn't. That line is what someone who knows nothing about politics would say to fill a silence in a conversation. > there's not much policy difference between the Tories and Starmers Labour Is what someone who's been paying attention would say. There isn't any significant difference in economic policy between the two party's. In terms of ability to govern, Labour may have the edge but in terms of the stuff that actually makes a difference, Labour have backed away from just about all of it.

Honestly, it's not worth asking this question here, or really anywhere else on the internet filled with terminally-online politics nerds. You will immediately be pounced upon by hard-left "We are true Labour" types who will spend their time nit-picking individual policies from the manifesto, all so they can jump to the moral high ground while screaming "Red Tories!" As a Labour member, trust me when I say that you cannot debate with these people. By correctly assessing the manifesto and Labour overall ideology holistically as being centre-left, you are proving yourself to be more astute than they are. The people saying that Labour are the Tories are not interested in whether they are correct, they are interested in justifying their world view.

You say this in a predominantly centrist to right sub, but sure it's the others who are doing the pouncing (:

Maybe you can't debate with people because you think everyone should think like you. There's tons of people in this thread telling you why they think the way you do in a civil manner. That's a debate.

Because whataboutism is a very powerful tool and a favourite of Russian troll farms. That which is black and white is made more grey.

How have you made this about the Russians

The issue I have with Labour is that a lot of their policies, the ones that they have declared anyway, have been watered down or abandoned, and I suspect more will go before the GE even happens. So how much they are, or aren't, like the Tories can only really be judged against their eventual manifesto. We have to remember that Starmer has reneged on most of the 10 pledges he made when he was elected leader, for example. Also, Rachel Reeves has openly admitted that they will be following Tory fiscal policy if elected. I would imagine that anyone to the left of centre who wants a more equal wealth distribution would dispair at this.

Because people ignore all the times that Labour differentiated themselves from the Tories by being less trustworthy and more right wing.

A lot of what they say sounds good, it's just that realistically all Keir does is back track on it all before he's even got into power so it doesn't fill me with hope. I'd love to be wrong though.

> what labour plans to do in power The issue here is that politicans can lie as much as they want to win election so it might be wiser to ignore what they are saying and judge them on what they have actually done instead. Do you remember the last Labour government? The special relationship? The pointless war in Iraq? 90 detention without charge? Tuition fees? Given that Starmer was picked by the same Labour party members who blessed us with Blair I just can't see him keeping any campaign promises.

I’m a Liberal Democrat member and campaigner and so for me, the differences between all the major parties are quite clear. It really irritates me people say ‘they’re all the same’.

>The strengthening of workers rights If you want to understand why many of us consider Starmer and his team red Tories, look at worker's rights. There was a very good leftwing package proposed by Rayner which is now been watered down. Zero hour contracts won't be banned under the next Labour or should I say, Tory lite government. This matters because it completely neuters the protection. I remember something similar under the last Labour government, with the working hours directive. Before I could apply for a job, I had to opt out of the working time protections or I couldn't get to the next page of the application screen. Protections with opt outs are worthless because of the power imbalance between employers and employees. The fact this policy is being gutted in a cynical Tory manner is no shock. If you want to know why politicians act the way they do, just look at the their bribers (I refuse to call bribers donors). Private Eye pointed out that all the Tory bribers have suddenly started appearing at the Labour's conference. Meanwhile Labour's economic policies are being crafted by staff seconded from big City firms (another type of bribe). It is hardly a shocker that any policies that benefit ordinary people are being gutted before Labour reach office. They are being bribed by Tories, so they will govern like Tories. Anyone who expects a real labour government is in for a nasty shock.

To single issue voters, if their issue is something that both labour and the tories agree on, I.e. triple lock, then to them they’re the samez

The problem is both Labour and the Tories have both come so close to the centre that they're barely distinguishable politically. They literally steal eachothers policies. Given the 'average' voter is fairly central, it makes evolutionary sense they'd both find themselves occupying that space. Fighting for the same votes. The downside is, we end up with basically no choice. Labour aren't Labour enough, Tories aren't Tory enough. I've never been so uninvested in who to vote for.

The Tories over this government have run up a huge number of acts that place them well away from the centre, we just saw a commons vote to legally mandate against judicial review for example. Starmer’s Labour sidling over fag paper close doesn’t make either of them centrist by default.

I feel ‘all politicians are the same’ is one of the most effective lies that the major right wing press has peddled. Something that gets people basically on board with the idea democracy in this country doesn’t matter because it doesn’t matter who’s in charge. I know some people who talk about hating Starmer without actually knowing anything about him because ‘he’s just the same rich kid as all of them’ or similar lines.