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Keir Starmer


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4 hours ago, Brownie said:

If they go down the route of the likes of Blunkett and Adonis today then they'll lose more than you think.

 

Agreed. 

 

If they have a similar manifesto to 2017 under Starmer they might have a chance of a hung parliament, but if they go down the centrist route then they will struggle even more than last year. They've lost the majority of the Brexit vote and the Scottish vote, they can't afford to lose any more. 

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On 10/05/2020 at 07:22, Numero Veinticinco said:

Forgive me. I clicked the link, skipping what was below it assuming it was a copy of the article. I see you put suggestions in there. 

 

I don’t think your first suggestion - for government, who is already paying a huge amount of people’s wages, to pay people’s rent - is fully thought out. I haven’t run the numbers, but how much would it cost, what is the scale of the issue, who will be eligible and for how long, etc. These are important factors before deciding to support a policy that would essentially just be handing tax payer money to (likely) fairly wealthy landlords. On the face of it, I would be as disappointed in Labour as you seem in their response if this was their solution. 
 

Your second option - increasing the length of the repayment period - seems like the same solution but, ya know, longer. That would suggest the strength of the response is based on length of repayment. I’d say that some renters would easily be able to repay in two years and some not. Some might well be able to pay the rent on the 80% of wage they receive. Depending on how the numbers crunch, it might be sufficient for the overwhelming majority. 

 

Off the cuff, I’d say a two year repayment window is probably an okay solution but it is likely that there’s a better solution, I have an idea for one myself but haven’t run the numbers. What I’m not convinced by is the emphasis you seem to be putting on this. You obviously care about this, but I’m not convinced it warrants the kind of focus, media blitz, petitions, bailouts, etc that you suggest. 


The total annual cost of private rent in the UK is a little over £50bn.

 

https://www.landlordtoday.co.uk/breaking-news/2019/8/uk-rental-sector-generates-more-than-50bn-in-rental-payments-each-year

 

Even if the government were to pay all of it, an additional £50bn per year isn’t an unreasonable amount to spend in the face of the worst economic crisis for 300 years, when consumer spending and corporate investment are going to fall off a cliff and the government will need to pick up the slack. I’m assuming the additional amount the government would have to pay is less than the headline figure in the article as it will include universal credit, which the government currently pays already. Introduce means testing and the required expenditure falls further. I’m not generally a fan of means testing but it’s another option.

 

I don’t like the idea of the government lining rich landlords’ pockets any more than you do, but if the alternative is millions of people being made homeless or burdened with unsustainable debt, to me it’s self-evidently the lesser evil. On the understanding that a Labour government in the not too distant future will take concrete steps to redress the imbalance between landlords and tenants and reduce the dependency on the private rental sector, I would be prepared to let it pass on this occasion.

 

You said on another thread that you support UBI in principle. Any UBI policy set at a level high enough to be worthwhile will give billions of pounds of public money every year to wealthy people who don’t need it. It will be in perpetuity rather than a temporary measure as I’ve proposed, and it will involve giving them money they wouldn’t otherwise get, whereas under my proposal landlords wouldn’t get any more money than they would anyway if tenants were able to continue paying rent themselves. Plus, one of the main objectives of UBI as advocated by the left is to ensure everyone has enough for a basic standard of living, which would include covering rent. Even if you don’t think UBI should cover rent, I don’t see how you can reconcile your support for it with your opposition to this. 

 

If this isn’t deemed politically or economically viable, the second option I suggested was to defer repayments for longer and spread them over a longer period. You’ve admitted you haven’t looked into the numbers here - you need to. 

 

63 per cent of private renting households have no savings:

 

https://england.shelter.org.uk/media/press_releases/articles/almost_half_of_working_renters_only_one_paycheque_away_from_losing_their_home

 

46 per cent of children in privately rented properties are living in poverty: 

 

https://www.housing.org.uk/news-and-blogs/news/half-a-million-more-children-in-poverty-in-private-rented-homes-than-ten-years-ago/

 

I haven’t been able to find figures for the number of private renters who have no discretionary income after rent, bills and food, i.e. couldn’t realistically afford a significant rent increase without going into debt. But based on the preceding stats and the fact that so many people rent privately because they’re on low incomes and can’t afford a mortgage, I’m comfortable extrapolating that they represent a significant number, certainly in the hundreds of thousands at least. 

 

Labour’s proposal effectively amounts to a 12.5 per cent increase in rent over two years (3 months missed payments spread over 24). That’s an average of over £100 a month extra in London and over £80 elsewhere. If that had happened without coronavirus it would have caused serious problems for a lot of people. As it stands now, with so many people already falling into debt due to redundancy and/or furlough and a global depression about to hit jobs and wages, it could be catastrophic. And a lot of the renters worst hit financially will be the people who are most at risk from the virus, including the NHS staff and other key workers we merrily applaud each week. Of course Labour should be being more bold and vocal about it. It’s exactly the kind of injustice the party was created to fight.

 

Aside from the immorality of it, it’s economically illiterate. The post-pandemic recovery will be dependent on revived consumer spending, and leaving low paid workers to spend their wages on unmanageable rent arrears rather than spending in the local economy will stand in the way of this. Deferred interest-free repayments spread over a longer period to make them more manageable makes sense on every level.

 

The only other proposal I’ve seen widely advocated is rent cancellation. I’m not in favour of it as it would be a nightmare to implement, politically, practically and legally. As it’s more radical than my proposals I’m assuming it’s a non-starter for you also.

 

I’d be interested to hear your suggestion. I’m not especially bothered if you can’t attach numbers to it, I’m more interested in the general principle.

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On 13/05/2020 at 18:59, Section_31 said:

Nah it's infinitely worse than Facebook. By and large people on Facebook are people you know and you can delete anyone who's acting a knob. I need a twitter account for work but even when I go out of my way to avoid following anything remotely controversial, the fucking thing shows me tweets because someone I know is following someone who's tweeted it or likes their tweet.

 

Virtually everything on there, no matter how innocuous, quickly descends into pure bile.

 

It created trump, contributed to echo chamber politics and social views, and has slowly but surely eroded the basic manors that people had had instilled in them over centuries into what and what isn't an appropriate thing to say, all led by 'influencers' who are otherwise untalented but see it as a quick and easy to build a brand, any brand.

 

I don't think people realise how much science goes into social media, they have teams of psychologists looking at stuff like dopamine levels and reward behaviour, not much different to gambling. That's gradually bled from the virtual into the real world and turned us into a race of attention seeking morons incapable of digesting anything remotely demanding. Consequences are there for all to see.

 

Combine that with all the heinous shit at companies the likes of dominic Cummings have had dealings with and you realise it is actual an industry of dark arts that's actively rewiring our brains and playing us like a fuckung fiddle.

 

There's been a trend for years of people in silicon valley actually ditching social media, including the guy who invented the Facebook like button, which says it all.

 

It's like an old Dr Who invasion story.

 

All social media is a feminine space according to my Doctor friend. Make of that what you will..

 

 

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23 hours ago, MegadriveMan said:

 

Agreed. 

 

If they have a similar manifesto to 2017 under Starmer they might have a chance of a hung parliament, but if they go down the centrist route then they will struggle even more than last year. They've lost the majority of the Brexit vote and the Scottish vote, they can't afford to lose any more. 

The secret of winning an election is winning those groups back and no spending the whole time worrying about keeping a smaller and smaller base completely onside. The last 2 years should show us that. We were told labour had to sit on the fence over Europe. Anything else would be political suicide. And then we went on to have that election - they very votes labour were trying to protect, they lost. 

 

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35 minutes ago, Barry Wom said:

The secret of winning an election is winning those groups back and no spending the whole time worrying about keeping a smaller and smaller base completely onside. The last 2 years should show us that. We were told labour had to sit on the fence over Europe. Anything else would be political suicide. And then we went on to have that election - they very votes labour were trying to protect, they lost. 

 

 

Labour didn't have much of a choice in 2019 though. They couldn't support leaving with no deal or the Johnson deal, so the best Brexit option they could offer would have been to respect the referendum result and renegotiate a new deal, which isn't what the Labour membership wanted? Labour never had a chance in 2019.

 

I agree with you that Labour need to win back those leave voting working class and scottish voters, but I don't see how Starmer is the right person to do that?

 

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18 hours ago, Neil G said:

The total annual cost of private rent in the UK is a little over £50bn.

 

https://www.landlordtoday.co.uk/breaking-news/2019/8/uk-rental-sector-generates-more-than-50bn-in-rental-payments-each-year

 

Even if the government were to pay all of it, an additional £50bn per year isn’t an unreasonable amount to spend in the face of the worst economic crisis for 300 years

Well, we shouldn't be blasé about how much money that is. Our entire budge for defence spending is £49bn. The entire deficit is £19bn. All education costs in the UK costs £89bn per year. £51bn might not seem like an unreasonable amount to spend to you, but it seems a gigantic amount to me. If anything, it reinforces my initial gut feeling about the 'just pay everyone's rent' option. My position is that it is a fucking epic amount of money for the government to pay landlords, and before I were to support something like that I'd need to be convinced that the problem warranted it. Not that my support means anything in real terms, of course. 

 

18 hours ago, Neil G said:

I don’t like the idea of the government lining rich landlords’ pockets any more than you do, but if the alternative is millions of people being made homeless or burdened with unsustainable debt, to me it’s self-evidently the lesser evil. 

Woah, hold on. Since when is 'millions of people being made homeless or pay their rent' a realistic proposition? I don't even think burdened with unsustainable debt is on the table, considering current support for those requiring housing benefit, etc. Even for private renters, there's a large percentage of support. I'm not arguing that people don't need some help due to this current crisis, I'm arguing that you're going overboard with how bad the problem is and, in turn, the required level of intervention - at least in the first options - seems excessive because of it. 

 

18 hours ago, Neil G said:

You said on another thread that you support UBI in principle.

That's certainly going to need some clarification. I've mentioned how sceptical I am of UBI here a couple of times. The first is here, where I say I'm sceptical of it. The second is here, where I say that I'm sceptical of it, that I would need to see the mathematics behind it, and that I think it's unnecessary to pay wealthy people UBI. The only other time I've mentioned it is the one you just referred to, which I can't for the life of me find but I'm pretty sure there was a caveat in there. I've always had issues with UBI, with two main factors being the affordability (which would have to be calculated based off the actual amount; 100 per month is very different to 1000 per month for example) and the other being fairness of the universal nature of the payment. I actually have the same issue with Child benefit. I think the redistribution needs to be tweaked so that more goes to those who really need it and less or none to those who don't. 

 

18 hours ago, Neil G said:

I haven’t been able to find figures for the number of private renters who have no discretionary income after rent, bills and food, i.e. couldn’t realistically afford a significant rent increase without going into debt. But based on the preceding stats and the fact that so many people rent privately because they’re on low incomes and can’t afford a mortgage, I’m comfortable extrapolating that they represent a significant number, certainly in the hundreds of thousands at least. 

 

Labour’s proposal effectively amounts to a 12.5 per cent increase in rent over two years (3 months missed payments spread over 24). That’s an average of over £100 a month extra in London and over £80 elsewhere. If that had happened without coronavirus it would have caused serious problems for a lot of people. As it stands now, with so many people already falling into debt due to redundancy and/or furlough and a global depression about to hit jobs and wages, it could be catastrophic. And a lot of the renters worst hit financially will be the people who are most at risk from the virus, including the NHS staff and other key workers we merrily applaud each week. Of course Labour should be being more bold and vocal about it. It’s exactly the kind of injustice the party was created to fight.

 

Okay, I'm going to have to ask you to look once again at these figures. The numbers you include here are for 3 months rent that haven't been paid at all. Why would this be the case? Either people are getting 80% of their wage, or they're already on some sort of housing benefit. I'm not sure where you get your averages from, but assuming they're right you should be able to drop that number significantly. I'd be happy with stretching the time longer for those who need it, but I'm sure a good amount of people can afford that. I think the scheme has a good foundation but the numbers, which I should look at but you also couldn't find, aren't easily crunched. Look, my point here is that yes, of course there should be help for those who need it and can't pay. I'm not comfortable just blanketing that group and paying the rent that amounts to several times the GDP of a small nation, at least without some serious need. Certainly not to save the wallets of landlords, who - and to answer your final question - should be the ones applying for mortgage breaks and passing the savings along to their tenants. 

 

Again, I appreciate you're passionate about this and I hope it goes without saying that I'm not interested in seeing people homeless or struggling (I don't think many people on this site have that type of view), but I think the solution should match the problem, I think it should protect the tenant, but also the economy. There's surely a middle ground, and I don't think there needs to be quite the outrage that you're suggesting. An adjustment, maybe.

 

 

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5 minutes ago, MegadriveMan said:

 

Labour didn't have much of a choice in 2019 though. They couldn't support leaving with no deal or the Johnson deal, so the best Brexit option they could offer would have been to respect the referendum result and renegotiate a new deal, which isn't what the Labour membership wanted? Labour never had a chance in 2019.

 

I agree with you that Labour need to win back those leave voting working class and scottish voters, but I don't see how Starmer is the right person to do that?

 

Labour had it’s worse result for decades.  A while ago they won landslide victories by appealing to a broad variety of people. It’s not that hard is it? 

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36 minutes ago, MegadriveMan said:

 

Labour didn't have much of a choice in 2019 though. They couldn't support leaving with no deal or the Johnson deal, so the best Brexit option they could offer would have been to respect the referendum result and renegotiate a new deal, which isn't what the Labour membership wanted? Labour never had a chance in 2019.

 

I agree with you that Labour need to win back those leave voting working class and scottish voters, but I don't see how Starmer is the right person to do that?

 

Well I think labour had lots of choice, they just chose to try and wriggle through it being all things to all men. They allowed the Tory right to dictate the agenda and chose to be passengers rather than offer any type of alternative. 

 

Starmer will make a difference because whole swathes of the electorate just didn't trust Corbyn. It's clear following just the initial commentary he will get a fairer crack of the whip off the media than Corbyn ever did. If he can stop labour in-fighting, that will also be a help, because it doesn't play well to the neutral. Part of the skill of being a leader is to take people with you, not just people who are naturally on your side, but those who are not. I don't know if Starmer has it yet, but he's head and shoulders above anyone who chose to stand in the leadership election and I would say he already appears more capable as a leader than Corbyn. And he's smashed Johnson in PMQs.

 

Europe won't be part of the agenda at the next election. We've 4 years to see if Starmer can cut the mustard, I think he's done a pretty good job so far, certainly better than I was expecting - my expectations were not high, I reluctantly voted for him in the leadership election because of the low quality of the other candidates. 

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I think Labour might have lost a few of those red wall seats for good, I think the fact Labour is seen as a metropolitan party means those old industrial town votes are gone. 
 

I think where they can win though is in the Home Counties, in places that Blair won like Milton Keynes, Stevenage, Watford, Hastings etc. They won’t win a clear majority, but there’s no reason they can’t be the largest party in a hung parliament. 

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He also has the advantage of being able to take back some of the "borrowed" votes. The cretins in northern towns that voted Tory to "get Brexit done". Well, presumably some of them will return to voting Labour. Especially after a few years of seeing the utter destruction Brexit plus a Tory government will do to the country. 

 

He's got a much easier job than Corbyn due to timing, not having half his party actively sabotaging their own chances, and a media that is both more in line with his views and less able to run on 1980s socialist baggage type stories, so hopefully he'll take advantage. 

 

For a multitude of reasons it still seems incredibly difficult to see what in the absolute fuck will happen.

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33 minutes ago, Jairzinho said:

He also has the advantage of being able to take back some of the "borrowed" votes. The cretins in northern towns that voted Tory to "get Brexit done". Well, presumably some of them will return to voting Labour. Especially after a few years of seeing the utter destruction Brexit plus a Tory government will do to the country. 

 

He's got a much easier job than Corbyn due to timing, not having half his party actively sabotaging their own chances, and a media that is both more in line with his views and less able to run on 1980s socialist baggage type stories, so hopefully he'll take advantage. 

 

For a multitude of reasons it still seems incredibly difficult to see what in the absolute fuck will happen.


I don’t see it as easy as that.

 

You have given the working class the opportunity to feel middle class, through exploitation of EU migration rules ironically, and they will cling on to this and feel this is, without stealing a mantra, the new normal and voting Conservative isn’t an issue any more as the labour movement, and all that entails, was lost to the wind a long time before this clusterfuck.

 

They/we now know what it is now to have cleaners, cheap builders, cheap babysitters etc and it’s become quite comfortable in accepting mediocrity whilst being able to castigate our lessers, for somebody else to be expected to do the shit jobs, and feel grateful for doing them.

 

What you give with one hand you take away with the other and the psychological parameters are now set to expectation.

 

 

 

 

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6 minutes ago, Bruce Spanner said:


I don’t see it as easy as that.

 

You have given the working class the opportunity to feel middle class, through exploitation of EU migration rules ironically, and they will cling on to this and feel this is, without stealing a mantra, the new normal.

 

They/we now know what it is now to have cleaners, cheap builders, cheap babysitters etc and it’s become quite comfortable in accepting mediocrity whilst being able to castigate our lessers, for somebody else to be expected to do the shit jobs, and feel grateful for doing them.

 

What you give with one hand you take away with the other and the psychological parameters are now set to expectation.

 

 

 

 

I don't disagree with you but, still, Starmer's situation is/will be immeasurably easier than Corbyn's last year.

 

Like others have said, I guess he's going to have to target the volvo man or whatever the cunt is called now.

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1 hour ago, Vincent Vega said:

I think Labour might have lost a few of those red wall seats for good, I think the fact Labour is seen as a metropolitan party means those old industrial town votes are gone. 
 

I think where they can win though is in the Home Counties, in places that Blair won like Milton Keynes, Stevenage, Watford, Hastings etc. They won’t win a clear majority, but there’s no reason they can’t be the largest party in a hung parliament. 

I don't think those seats are lost at all, not least because it's not like the Tories represent those people. The last election was an election the Tories wanted to fight on Europe and labours mid ground position allowed them to appear strong (when in fact they were in disarray too). Now Johnson might be able to keep appealing to those base emotions about nationality. But the question will be are "patriotic" reasons going to be high on the agenda in 4 years. Personally I think the aftermath of this current crisis and whatever shit show we've got coming over Europe (economically) will be the deciding factor. If Starmer is able to hold Johnson to account as well as he has in PMQs so far (and I don't mean just that environment, he needs to start winning across the media too) well for me there's every chance those votes can be won back. I think Scotland is a little different because the SNP.are to the left anyway, so SNP is a place I can imagine many Scottish labour voters feel comfortable. But that can swing 2 ways as well - economically this crisis may make.it even more tough for the SNP in the Scottish parliament and if they're not successful there, it could have knock on implications to UK votes and.rhat on turn could benefit labour if labour appears strong and sympathetic to Scotland's needs. 

 

Now is not the time.to give up, but it is the time for labour to have a leader who realises he needs to win back people who are naturally aligned to the party, whilst also trying to win back traditional swing voters. 

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3 hours ago, Rico1304 said:

Labour had it’s worse result for decades.  A while ago they won landslide victories by appealing to a broad variety of people. It’s not that hard is it? 

 

That was the main part of the reason why they lost so many voters though.

 

Farage and Ukip took the working class vote away from them because they didn't feel represented by the Labour Party anymore. It's a similar story in Scotland, during the 2015 Independence referendum you had the tories and Labour sharing the same stage which projected this idea of there being no difference between the two parties. 

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3 minutes ago, MegadriveMan said:

 

That was the main part of the reason why they lost so many voters though.

 

Farage and Ukip took the working class vote away from them because they didn't feel represented by the Labour Party anymore. It's a similar story in Scotland, during the 2015 Independence referendum you had the tories and Labour sharing the same stage which projected this idea of there being no difference between the two parties. 

 

Aye, either tha' o' the Sassenach cunts tellin' us wha tey do, ya ken me?

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2 hours ago, Vincent Vega said:

I think Labour might have lost a few of those red wall seats for good, I think the fact Labour is seen as a metropolitan party means those old industrial town votes are gone. 
 

I think where they can win though is in the Home Counties, in places that Blair won like Milton Keynes, Stevenage, Watford, Hastings etc. They won’t win a clear majority, but there’s no reason they can’t be the largest party in a hung parliament. 

Imagine thinking labour are the party of the metropolitan elite but not a party led by a former London mayor, Eton and bullingdon multimillionaire. 

 

If you're from the north of England and poor and you voted Tory you're a spaz and deserve what's coming to you, simple as.

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18 minutes ago, Section_31 said:

Imagine thinking labour are the party of the metropolitan elite but not a party led by a former London mayor, Eton and bullingdon multimillionaire. 

 

If you're from the north of England and poor and you voted Tory you're a spaz and deserve what's coming to you, simple as.

That’s why you got fucking hammered. You don’t respect your voters and want them to vote you’re way because you know what’s good for them.  Way to go, how’d that work out? 
 

You need more people to vote Labour. Make Labour more attractive. It’s been done before. 

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