Keir Starmer

[Section_31]

13 minutes ago, Duff Man said:

 

It's wild that you have more of an issue with that - a parody account on Twitter - than you do the Labour leader dropping a commitment to raising taxes for top earners.

I do have an issue with it, I'd love to see John McDonnell's Britain realised, but Corbyn's Labour lost the election and now Starmer will be - and has been - pilloried repeatedly for not pursuing the policies of Corbyn's Labour, even though it lost and would lose again, and again and again. 

 

It's all very well for these people, and you know as well as me it won't be just one 'parody' account, it'll be all the usual suspects piling on today, proper champing at the bit. It's easy isn't it to call for this and that on Twitter or your own personal blog, not so easy to go out campaigning in the rain every weak getting your ear bent by ordinary folk about how much they hate Corbyn, only to be told by people who didn't even join Labour until 2015 what the working class really want, and that if they don't it's because they don't know what's good for them.

[Duff Man]

10 minutes ago, Section_31 said:

I do have an issue with it, I'd love to see John McDonnell's Britain realised, but Corbyn's Labour lost the election and now Starmer will be - and has been - pilloried repeatedly for not pursuing the policies of Corbyn's Labour, even though it lost and would lose again, and again and again. 

 

It's all very well for these people, and you know as well as me it won't be just one 'parody' account, it'll be all the usual suspects piling on today, proper champing at the bit. It's easy isn't it to call for this and that on Twitter or your own personal blog, not so easy to go out campaigning in the rain every weak getting your ear bent by ordinary folk about how much they hate Corbyn, only to be told by people who didn't even join Labour until 2015 what the working class really want, and that if they don't it's because they don't know what's good for them.

There's a lot of supposition, there. You don't know anything about these people or what their history is in terms of campaigning. Assuming they haven't done any just because they're also a shitposter on Twitter is pretty mad.

 

But that's not really the point I was making, anyway. I was highlight that leftists taking the piss out of Starmer/the party's direction on Twitter is ultimately meaningless. It's like fans venting their frustration on here over Achterberg's coaching abilities or something. But people with actual power, at the top of the party, dropping commitments to pledges they made during leadership contests is meaningful, for pretty obvious reasons.

[Section_31]

Just now, Duff Man said:

There's a lot of supposition, there. You don't know anything about these people or what their history is in terms of campaigning. Assuming someone hasn't done any just because they're also a shitposter on Twitter is pretty mad.

 

But that's not really the point I was making, anyway. I was highlight that leftists taking the piss out of Starmer/the party's direction on Twitter is ultimately meaningless. It's like fans venting their frustration on here over Achterberg's coaching abilities or something. But people with actual power, at the top of the party, dropping commitments to pledges they made during leadership contests is meaningful, for pretty obvious reasons.

 

It's not though, because it perpetuates the 'labour civil war' 'labour in crisis' narrative that will lose it the next election. No other party does it, no other party did it until Corbyn emerged. 

[Duff Man]

1 minute ago, Section_31 said:

It's not though, because it perpetuates the 'labour civil war' 'labour in crisis' narrative that will lose it the next election. No other party does it, no other party did it until Corbyn emerged. 

Does it? That narrative's been dropped pretty much since Starmer took over, and the only things that have kept it going were the leak and subsequent inquiry, the Left Out book, and the impending EHRC report. Not shitposting on Twitter. Who's referencing that 'group' at all when reporting on internal division in the Labour party?

[Duff Man]

And no other party does it?? Every party has internal division, it's just that it's more widely reported on for Labour, and only when it's convenient - which, again, is why you've seen those stories largely disappear since Starmer took over. They were almost daily during Corbyn's time, and that's because the press knew it was an effective stick to hit him with, not because people on Twitter were giving him shit (although there was obviously a fuck-tonne of that, too, from the likes of Luke Akerhurst etc).

[Bruce Spanner]

'Asked whether Starmer stands by his leadership campaign pledge to increase income tax for the top 5% of earners, his spokesperson replied: “Keir made those commitments during the leadership campaign, but we’re four years out from a general election and the next manifesto will set out our full tax policy at the time.”

 

Pressed further, he added: “Keir stands by the commitments he made during the leadership election, but in terms of our final tax plans they’ll be set out at the next election in the manifesto.”'

 

From the spokesperson, in July

 

I agree, it doesn't look good, but all I can imagine is 'don't rock the boat' whilst the Tories are sinking theirs.

[Duff Man]

In short Labour probably will lose the next GE, but it'll be far more to do with the press and the absolute weapons advising LOTO than leftist shit-posters.

[Numero Veinticinco]

58 minutes ago, Duff Man said:

It's a pledge she literally said is now gone.

Except, of course, she didn’t literally say that. I just watched PL, and she didn’t ‘literally say it’s now gone’. It wasn’t even claimed by the tweet (that was very quickly put into context). BTW, I don’t think - right now, when businesses are finding it very difficult - is the time to start talking about raising corporation tax. 
 

What I would say is that she was actually quite brilliant on PL. I don’t know how many of the pledges will eventually make it into the next manifesto, which is what counts, but it certainly hasn’t been announced on PL by Lisa fuckin’ Nandy 4 years out from an election. I personally think it was one of the dafter things Starmer has done, but I guess we will see. 
 

Going back to the thread. I don’t think his speech was particularly great today. There were some bits in there that hit quite hard, and others that were a bit half hearted. I guess some of it wasn’t aimed at me, but the turkeys who voted for a Tory Christmas.

[Numero Veinticinco]

39 minutes ago, Bruce Spanner said:

'Asked whether Starmer stands by his leadership campaign pledge to increase income tax for the top 5% of earners, his spokesperson replied: “Keir made those commitments during the leadership campaign, but we’re four years out from a general election and the next manifesto will set out our full tax policy at the time.”

 

Pressed further, he added: “Keir stands by the commitments he made during the leadership election, but in terms of our final tax plans they’ll be set out at the next election in the manifesto.”'

 

From the spokesperson, in July

 

I agree, it doesn't look good, but all I can imagine is 'don't rock the boat' whilst the Tories are sinking theirs.

That looks pragmatic to me, honestly. If the economy is as fucked by COVID as we expect and as fucked by Brexit as we think, we might be wise to just wait and see what the best approach is to fixing it. He should tax the wealthy, of course, and he should clamp down on tax avoidance, but how and when you tax the wealthy might have to change as might the corporation tax reversal. 
 

I hope we never have a PM who says ‘yeah, I know this will do more harm than good at the moment but I made a leadership pledge half a decade ago so I’m going to have to fuck the country over, lest some people only say I’m a bad man’. 

[Bruce Spanner]

3 minutes ago, Nummer Neunzehn said:

That looks pragmatic to me, honestly. If the economy is as fucked by COVID as we expect and as fucked by Brexit as we think, we might be wise to just wait and see what the best approach is to fixing it. He should tax the wealthy, of course, and he should clamp down on tax avoidance, but how and when you tax the wealthy might have to change as might the corporation tax reversal. 
 

I hope we never have a PM who says ‘yeah, I know this will do more harm than good at the moment but I made a leadership pledge half a decade ago so I’m going to have to fuck the country over, lest some people only say I’m a bad man’. 

 

Asked whether the first pledge had now been scrapped in light of the Labour frontbench recently expressing its opposition to any tax increases, Nandy replied: “I expect so, based on what you just said.

 

“In the middle of a global pandemic… the idea of raising taxes and squeezing people who are in work and trying to make ends meet is just completely the wrong priority for the country.”

 

Context and full information is always key.

 

Give the Tories enough rope and they will hang themselves.

[Duff Man]

She was asked if the pledge was gone and said “I expect so, based on what you just said [about frontbench opposing any tax rises]. In the middle of a global pandemic…the idea of raising taxes and squeezing people who are in work and trying to make ends meet is just completely the wrong priority for the country.”

 

If you don't think that means it gone, OK, I'm happy to leave it at that, as to me it means it is.

 

As for the party, it seems they're going to fuck flags in the hope an Australian oligarch doesn't call them Marxists, but he will anyway, so I'm excited to see how that one turns out.

[Duff Man]

Meet Keir's policy chief:

 

"He has something of an innovative policy chief in Claire Ainsley - one who doesn't believe in setting out detailed policies."

 

Great.

[Numero Veinticinco]

9 minutes ago, Duff Man said:

She was asked if the pledge was gone and said “I expect so, based on what you just said [about frontbench opposing any tax rises]. In the middle of a global pandemic…the idea of raising taxes and squeezing people who are in work and trying to make ends meet is just completely the wrong priority for the country.”

 

If you don't think that means it gone, OK, I'm happy to leave it at that, as to me it means it is.

 

As for party, it seems they're going to fuck flags in the hope an Australian oligarch doesn't call them Marxists, but he will anyway, so I'm excited to see how that one turns out.

‘I expect so’ by Nandy (who has no power to make policy decisions off the cuff on a TV show) four years out is not - factually - a dropping of the pledge. Even your own post quotes her talking about people in work making ends meet, I’m fairly confident she isn’t talking about the top 5% there; she is talking about the pandemic, not policy years away. If this is evidence of Starmer dropping pledges, it’s pretty flimsy. As you say, though; we clearly see this differently. I just can’t even see how - other than partisanship - you could logically come to a different conclusion. 
 

Still, we aren’t going to find out until the manifesto. Personally, I’ll be judging that manifesto on its own merits, not pledges from five years prior. If he includes the pledges and it doesn’t make sense to do so, it’s a shit manifesto. If he doesn’t but it’s a good manifesto, then great. 

[Numero Veinticinco]

6 minutes ago, Duff Man said:

Meet Keir's policy chief:

 

"He has something of an innovative policy chief in Claire Ainsley - one who doesn't believe in setting out detailed policies."

 

Great.

Who are you quoting there? 

[Jairzinho]

It's from this - 

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-54241844

[Bruce Spanner]

8 minutes ago, Duff Man said:

Meet Keir's policy chief:

 

"He has something of an innovative policy chief in Claire Ainsley - one who doesn't believe in setting out detailed policies."

 

Great.

 

In her 2018 book, "The New Working Class," Ainsley invokes the work of the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and his “moral foundations” theory — the idea that people's political choices are based on core moral values, among them care and fairness, but also principles typically associated with the right, such as respect for tradition and loyalty to community and nation. Individual policies are obviously important, Ainsley argues, but they are only as good as the values base that voters believe they grew from. “The context of what and whom the electorate thinks the party or candidate stands for,” as she wrote in the book.

 

The approach is now being put into practice. “First and foremost, the public need to see that Labour is changing and that’s what we’re trying to demonstrate,” said one senior Starmer aide. “But people also need to understand that Labour is trying to build people’s trust again. There’s no point having a policy if people don’t trust you to implement it — or believe that you’re ever going to be in power to do it.”

 

Or, in other words, to rebuild the red wall, you need to start with the “moral foundations.”

 

The days of me, you and Doris knocking on No 49's door and trying to explain stuff are lost to the wind.

 

Seems a smart cookie to me, head of The JRF for years as well so knows what shes talking about in relation to real issues.

[Duff Man]

6 minutes ago, Nummer Neunzehn said:

‘I expect so’ by Nandy (who has no power to make policy decisions off the cuff on a TV show) four years out is not - factually - a dropping of the pledge. Even your own post quotes her talking about people in work making ends meet, I’m fairly confident she isn’t talking about the top 5% there; she is talking about the pandemic, not policy years away. If this is evidence of Starmer dropping pledges, it’s pretty flimsy. As you say, though; we clearly see this differently. I just can’t even see how - other than partisanship - you could logically come to a different conclusion. 
 

Still, we aren’t going to find out until the manifesto. Personally, I’ll be judging that manifesto on its own merits, not pledges from five years prior. If he includes the pledges and it doesn’t make sense to do so, it’s a shit manifesto. If he doesn’t but it’s a good manifesto, then great. 

Dude she's asked about a very straight forward and specific pledge on taxing the top 5% of earners, so it'd be bit odd to reference people not in the top 5% in her answer for explaining why it's being dropped. It'd also be odd to say it's dropped if it isn't, but let's leave it as we'd just be going round in circles at this point.

 

As for partisanship, I don't have anything against Starmer. I do have a lot against the right of the party, that is fair to say, but I genuinely don't know where Starmer is on that particular spectrum yet. If anything I just think he's picked some fucking useless (and right wing) people to advise him - Blair's former aide etc, this non-policy policy chief who wants to shift things away from the economy - probably as he's still quite wet behind the ears. I also think it's not unreasonable to expect a pledge like the one above to be held unless there's good reason to drop it (obvs we disagree again there, too, so no need to re-litigate).

[Duff Man]

15 minutes ago, Bruce Spanner said:

 

In her 2018 book, "The New Working Class," Ainsley invokes the work of the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and his “moral foundations” theory — the idea that people's political choices are based on core moral values, among them care and fairness, but also principles typically associated with the right, such as respect for tradition and loyalty to community and nation. Individual policies are obviously important, Ainsley argues, but they are only as good as the values base that voters believe they grew from. “The context of what and whom the electorate thinks the party or candidate stands for,” as she wrote in the book.

 

The approach is now being put into practice. “First and foremost, the public need to see that Labour is changing and that’s what we’re trying to demonstrate,” said one senior Starmer aide. “But people also need to understand that Labour is trying to build people’s trust again. There’s no point having a policy if people don’t trust you to implement it — or believe that you’re ever going to be in power to do it.”

 

Or, in other words, to rebuild the red wall, you need to start with the “moral foundations.”

 

The days of me, you and Doris knocking on No 49's door and trying to explain stuff are lost to the wind.

 

Seems a smart cookie to me, head of The JRF for years as well so knows what shes talking about in relation to real issues.

It's flag fucking and 'traditional' family values, and Labour have been doing that shit since the early aughts, all to no avail. They'll be wearing help for heroes T-shirts next.

 

It's a strategy doomed to fail, though, and we've seen it many times. Hodgey dreaming up housing policy that made the BNP wet; Brown and his British Jobs for British Workers; Ed and his monolith of crackdowns. None of it had the desired effect of appealing to reactionary voters because they all believed the Tories/UKIP would go even further. All that's achieved with this tack is further validation of the right's arguments.

[Numero Veinticinco]

1 hour ago, Duff Man said:

Dude she's asked about a very straight forward and specific pledge on taxing the top 5% of earners, so it'd be bit odd to reference people not in the top 5% in her answer for explaining why it's being dropped.

Yes, it would be a bit odd to talk about people struggling making ends meet if she was talking about the top 5%. Now, unless you think she - the MP for Wigan, who talks about low wage and poverty in that same show - thinks the top 5% are the ones struggling, she is clearly referring to 'what was just said' by Jo Coburn. 

 

1 hour ago, Duff Man said:

It'd also be odd to say it's dropped if it isn't

Yes. It would, but she didn't say it has been dropped. You can infer her meaning all you want, but she did not say it has been dropped.

 

Here's what was actually said - all of it, from the show at 53:53.

 

Jo Coburn: Let's talk about the policies, because Keir Starmer has said many times recently (and Anneliese Dodds) that they don't want to raise taxes - it's a pledge we often hear from Conservative leaders, less so from Labour - but when Keir Starmer was running to be Labour leader - it was a different time - he had ten pledges; the very first pledge was to raise taxes; income tax for high earners and also corporation tax. Is that now gone?

 

Lisa Nandy: I'd expect so, based on what you'd just said, that, in the middle of a global pandemic where people are really struggling - they're not just losing their jobs, a lot of people are taking cuts in hours or cuts in pay in order to keep their jobs - the idea of raising taxes and squeezing people that are in work and trying to make ends meet is just the wrong priority for the county. 

 

You could ignore the correlation between the bits in bold and think she's saying 'fuck yeah, he's dropped the pledge and we're behind the high earner', but what you can't do is turn 'I would expect so because hard working people...' and pretend she is 'literally' confirming it has been dropped. She might expect it to be, based on an off the cuff remark, but what - as a matter of fact - she did not do was say that it has been dropped. She might expect it, she might even be right. It might end up being dropped. If they do not put the burden on the richest, I'll be fucking furious; but they also might do something quite different. With all that said, she didn't say - the word I'm using is 'say' - it has been dropped. You can say what you think she meant, as I will now: I think she meant that we aren't going to argue for tax rises whilst hard working people are struggling. 

 

Feel free to leave it, but I'll maintain that point. 

 

 

[Bruce Spanner]

37 minutes ago, Duff Man said:

It's flag fucking and 'traditional' family values, and Labour have been doing that shit since the early aughts, all to no avail. They'll be wearing help for heroes T-shirts next.

 

It's a strategy doomed to fail, though, and we've seen it many times. Hodgey dreaming up housing policy that made the BNP wet; Brown and his British Jobs for British Workers; Ed and his monolith of crackdowns. None of it had the desired effect of appealing to reactionary voters because they all believed the Tories/UKIP would go even further. All that's achieved with this tack is further validation of the right's arguments.

Maybe, but at this point then we’re a party without a county as ‘the homogeneous working class’ are, by and large, our voters, but they’re either right leaning, meaning they don’t want us and our ideology, or they’ve swallowed the lies of the Tories/Farage, which means they’re in need of ‘saving’ and showing what we have to offer, which is far more for them personally than they would have from the aforementioned and that takes time, trust and patience, things the political landscape hasn’t had for years because of the toxicity that’s been allowed to seep in.

 

At this point I don’t fucking know, political discourse has been distorted to such a degree that it’s not ‘real’ anymore and become so partisan and nasty that if you’re not calling someone a cunt on Twitter you’re not engaging and deserve to be shouted down by anyone who has a poster of Che Guevara/Maggie on their dorm wall.
 

Solutions? 
 

Not a clue, but I think positioning labour as the party that won’t let you down, have values and is genuinely looking out for you and yours is a pretty safe place to head and hopefully will lead to a return to sensible policy based politics, but I won’t hold my breath...

[Duff Man]

 

16 minutes ago, Nummer Neunzehn said:

Yes, it would be a bit odd to talk about people struggling making ends meet if she was talking about the top 5%. Now, unless you think she - the MP for Wigan, who talks about low wage and poverty in that same show - thinks the top 5% are the ones struggling, she is clearly referring to 'what was just said' by Jo Coburn. 

 

Yes. It would, but she didn't say it has been dropped. You can infer her meaning all you want, but she did not say it has been dropped.

 

Here's what was actually said - all of it, from the show at 53:53.

 

Jo Coburn: Let's talk about the policies, because Keir Starmer has said many times recently (and Anneliese Dodds) that they don't want to raise taxes - it's a pledge we often hear from Conservative leaders, less so from Labour - but when Keir Starmer was running to be Labour leader - it was a different time - he had ten pledges; the very first pledge was to raise taxes; income tax for high earners and also corporation tax. Is that now gone?

 

Lisa Nandy: I'd expect so, based on what you'd just said, that, in the middle of a global pandemic where people are really struggling - they're not just losing their jobs, a lot of people are taking cuts in hours or cuts in pay in order to keep their jobs - the idea of raising taxes and squeezing people that are in work and trying to make ends meet is just the wrong priority for the county. 

 

You could ignore the correlation between the bits in bold and think she's saying 'fuck yeah, he's dropped the pledge and we're behind the high earner', but what you can't do is turn 'I would expect so because hard working people...' and pretend she is 'literally' confirming it has been dropped. She might expect it to be, based on an off the cuff remark, but what - as a matter of fact - she did not do was say that it has been dropped. She might expect it, she might even be right. It might end up being dropped. If they do not put the burden on the richest, I'll be fucking furious; but they also might do something quite different. With all that said, she didn't say - the word I'm using is 'say' - it has been dropped. You can say what you think she meant, as I will now: I think she meant that we aren't going to argue for tax rises whilst hard working people are struggling. 

 

Feel free to leave it, but I'll maintain that point. 

 

 

 

She's asked directly about high earners, and whether Labour are going to drop a specific pledge to raise their taxes. She answers by saying she expects that pledge to be dropped. I mean this is just silly, but I respect that you've interpreted it another way.

[Numero Veinticinco]

She was asked more than that, as evidenced by the transcript and the video recording I linked. I haven’t interpreted it, I just judged by what she said. You have now correctly quoted that now, I’m glad about that. She expects something. I guess we will see if her expectations are correct. 

[Strontium]

It typefies the hard left, when the country is in dire straits and millions have lost or are about to lose their jobs and we're about to go through a disastrous No Deal Brexit, and all they want to talk about is taxing the rich.

[Bjornebye]

1 minute ago, Stront19m Dog™ said:

It typefies the hard left, when the country is in dire straits and millions have lost or are about to lose their jobs and we're about to go through a disastrous No Deal Brexit, and all they want to talk about is taxing the rich.

Making things up again. 

[Duff Man]

1 hour ago, Bruce Spanner said:

Maybe, but at this point then we’re a party without a county as ‘the homogeneous working class’ are, by and large, our voters, but they’re either right leaning, meaning they don’t want us and our ideology, or they’ve swallowed the lies of the Tories/Farage, which means they’re in need of ‘saving’ and showing what we have to offer, which is far more for them personally than they would have from the aforementioned and that takes time, trust and patience, things the political landscape hasn’t had for years because of the toxicity that’s been allowed to seep in.

 

At this point I don’t fucking know, political discourse has been distorted to such a degree that it’s not ‘real’ anymore and become so partisan and nasty that if you’re not calling someone a cunt on Twitter you’re not engaging and deserve to be shouted down by anyone who has a poster of Che Guevara/Maggie on their dorm wall.
 

Solutions? 
 

Not a clue, but I think positioning labour as the party that won’t let you down, have values and is genuinely looking out for you and yours is a pretty safe place to head and hopefully will lead to a return to sensible policy based politics, but I won’t hold my breath...

They may be right leaning socially, but not economically (well, less so, at least). I think the culture war is very much here whether we like it or not, and at some point Labour will have to take positions on all the issues people get most worked up about - brown people on rafts, The League Of Extraordinary Transgenders etc - and obviously I'd like the party to be as progressive as possible in those areas, but I think strategically it makes sense to simply state the party's positions - whatever they are - and then hammer home that the real problem for everyone is the economy and wealth redistribution, and that we're all fucked anyway if we don't do something about climate change.

 

Meeting the Tories on the battleground drawn up by their mates in the press for some good ol' flag humping does nothing to counter the attitudes and ideas that have got us where we are today, and probably won't even pay off in the end, anyway. Labour's entire front bench could dress themselves in Union Jacks every day for the next five years, never mentioning the economy again and Murdoch is still just as likely to call them commies and back Gove. I mean I understand the thinking behind it, given what happened to Corbyn, I just think it's wrong, morally and strategically, and there's plenty of evidence to back that up.