Keir Starmer

[Antynwa]

1 hour ago, Jairzinho said:

I honestly just think they didn't know what to do. They had to fight a battle against the opposition, 95% of the media, and lots of their own MPs, and they predictably weren't sure how to deal with it. 

 

In 2017 it nearly worked. Brexit and, frankly, a worse campaign, ensured it couldn't in 2019. 

 

It's been said on here that Corbyn's supporters often see Corbyn as socialism. Like it hasn't existed before, doesn't now, or indeed didn't exist during his time as leader away from him. It's true obviously, but it's also true that he represented the first chance for a generation for it to be a reality. It is the reason that much bitterness still exists. It's the reason people don't have much time for politicians or media figures now saying "get behind the manager" etc. Because the people saying it are the people that did their utmost to prevent that once in a generation chance. 

 

 

Socialism in its purest form is rejected time and time again by a large majority of the electorate, I think that is what living in a political bubble like Liverpool can really hide. Just 10 minutes down the road in either direction of the city the politics are completely different, I'm not saying this is right I'm just saying we can live in our own echo chambers. Again Tony Blair who when you listen to his autobiography could be David Cameron was the last elected Labour lead in what 40-50 years?

 

The media point I think part of the problem is that our Left Wing Commentators are generally abysmal numerous examples of complete idiocy, Someone from Novara Media questioning why the brother of the Manchester bomber got the largest sentence given for such offences. Owen Jones being an absolute wet wipe. There isn't a predominant left wing news force other than perhaps channel 4 you could argue pushing a Left Wing agenda, not a socialist agenda but a left wing one. The labour voting areas that switched to Tory, they're not on twitter, facebook or consume media the way we do. They're reading the Daily Mail but they always have done - take my Grandad who passed away a few years ago.

 

Voted Labour all his life, but read The Times and Daily Mail. Never voted Tory, wanted immigration controls, ex-serviceman, but voted Labour. The far left of the party think that view is incompatible with someone who votes Labour and what happened last election was the conservatives did a fantastic job of convincing the working class that Labour was the party of the elite.  Now do I think he would have voted Tory last time around, no I don't. But I understand how others in that position did.

 

So yes the conservatives did a number on the media game, but that's because the far left of the party completely rejected the issues that those voters have been raising around Brexit, Immigration, patriotism and all the things associated with right wing politics, but still voted Labour. 

 

I am truly passionate about all of this, because I feel that we're pissing in the wind with the Labour party in its current form. I don't apologise for being what people would call a centrist, but I genuinely hold socialist and left wing ideals, I just have a different view as to how you implement them - the first step being getting into power. The far left of the party are morally right I think, but the poor people can't live off £5 food vouchers whilst being self congratulatory and 'right'

[Jairzinho]

I don't think it's a case of left v far left. It's simply old school Labour having left wing economic views and largely conservative social views, while rich middle class Londoners want to save the whales. How do you get both sets of people to vote for the same party? It's difficult.

 

As for "socialism in its purest form", well it certainly wasn't offered to the electorate by Corbyn. He offered some very moderate centre left social democracy. It was predictably painted as leninism. 

 

I do agree with you re the fannying around in the media. Stuff like Novara is very hit and miss. When they have actual economists on the conversations can be quite interesting. When they're just noshing each other off about some utterly obscure social policy you can see why they'd be detested by white van man.

 

Re - Blair, this stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum. It can't be transported to another era. It can't happen without a multitude of other stuff happening. The UK has changed, the world has changed.

 

I think a party that offers centre left economics and just shuts the fuck up about the queen, nukes, foreign policy, recycling, and transexuals wins an election. Liberals will either vote for them or vote Green or Lib Dem. They're less likely to vote Tory than white van man will if you offer the opposite.

[Gnasher]

 

[Brownie]

I'd hazard a guess that plenty of people who claim to be Socialist don't understand what Socialism is in its purest form. I mean, I consider myself towards the left but do I fuck think that the state should own all property, that's retarded.

[Numero Veinticinco]

36 minutes ago, Brownie said:

I'd hazard a guess that plenty of people who claim to be Socialist don't understand what Socialism is in its purest form. I mean, I consider myself towards the left but do I fuck think that the state should own all property, that's retarded.

Pass on my regards to Cherie. 

[Brownie]

1 minute ago, Numero said:

Pass on my regards to Cherie. 

*spits*

[Numero Veinticinco]

2 minutes ago, Brownie said:

*spits*

All I can think of his her comedy mouth. Funnily enough, I’d happily have all property owned by government, comrade. Or many homes owned by the state that is available to everyone. 

[Brownie]

Just now, Numero said:

All I can think of his her comedy mouth. Funnily enough, I’d happily have all property owned by government, comrade. 

Are you being serious?

[Numero Veinticinco]

1 minute ago, Brownie said:

Are you being serious?

Sure, yeah. That’s not to say I’d ban private ownership, I’d just aim to make it the worse option. It’s way too late for all of that, I’m not saying we can transition to that. I’m talking about a new country or something I devised from scratch. 

[Jairzinho]

Had no idea Marie Le Pen had an account on here. 

[Gnasher]

1 hour ago, Brownie said:

I'd hazard a guess that plenty of people who claim to be Socialist don't understand what Socialism is in its purest form. I mean, I consider myself towards the left but do I fuck think that the state should own all property, that's retarded.

 

Their is a rumour Angry of Tuebrook helped Arthur write chapter 5 but is to modest to admit it.

 

https://www.socialist-labour-party.org.uk/policies.html

[Bruce Spanner]

49 minutes ago, Gnasher said:

 

Their is a rumour Angry of Tuebrook helped Arthur write chapter 5 but is to modest to admit it.

 

https://www.socialist-labour-party.org.uk/policies.html

 

You see, I'm genuinely on board with a lot of that and agree with far more, but see little to validate the claims of success in an international world.

 

'Withdrawal for the European Union is a central party of the Socialist Labour Party’s international policy. Britain’s withdrawal from the EU would allow our country to develop and expand links with nations in Asia, Africa, South Pacific, Latin America, the Caribbean and Cuba which has endured 54 years of economic blockade and sanctions because the United States fears Socialism. Withdrawal from the EU would save Britain £170 billion a year.'

 

Where is this number plucked from as all predictions show contraction of GDP, how are we going to be able to effectively work with those countries as they're thousands of miles away and the EU is on our doorstep?

 

'The Socialist Labour Party policy on immigration/emigration is clear. A sensible and fair immigration policy should give priority to asylum seekers, citizens of Commonwealth countries and countries previously “ruled” by Britain limited to the number of people emigrating from Britain each year. This policy would have allowed 327,000 immigrants (including any emigrants who decided to return to Britain) to enter Britain i.e. the same number as emigrated out of Britain in 2014 (only 251,000 immigrants entered Britain in 2014. This sensible policy would allow immigrants to enter Britain irrespective of race, ethnicity or religion; this sustainable policy would revert to the policy which operated prior to 2004.'

 

This doesn't sit well with me and never has, maybe as it's because I'm younger and have had formative years in other places, but it is central to the 'socialist ideal' so unless there's an international movement that alllows freedom between countries this is archaic and I wouldn't be able to support, this really hurt when Starmer went back on his promise as the older I get, and having kids who I want to see everything this world has to offer, the opportunity to work and travel is a beautiful thing.

 

In an ideal world we would have the central themes and ideas, but ammended for the modern world as a global progressive movement which would benifit more than just those on this scrap of land. 

 

It's possible, but in this capitalist/neo-conservative narrative the only chance this has of happening is through revolution of one kind or another, but with everything that has happened and the rampent inequality there has been a global lurch to the right, counter intuitively, so that idea, sadly, isn't likely. We can argue until long in to the nIght about culprability and I'm sure we'd agree on most, but that doesn't change that this isn't something that can be wished away, it needs to be broken through and down.

 

So what then?

 

I drink with a load of old Trot's from time to time and it's beautiful to sing the internationale at kicking out time, but that isn't going to cut through. The world has massively changed and talk of taking back the means of production are far more complicated than they were generations back. The modes of communication are distorted to a degree that truth is becoming selective and a commodity in itself and that tempers everything.

 

I don't know what to suggest, but isolation and reopening the coal mines ain't it, and I'm sure most would agree?

 

 

[Antynwa]

4 hours ago, Jairzinho said:

 

  

 I think a party that offers centre left economics and just shuts the fuck up about the queen, nukes, foreign policy, recycling, and transexuals wins an election. Liberals will either vote for them or vote Green or Lib Dem. They're less likely to vote Tory than white van man will if you offer the opposite.

 

That's probably correct

 

[Anubis]

Are they sacrificing virgins to some dark ancient gods?

 

 

 

[Gnasher]

3 minutes ago, Anubis said:

Are they sacrificing virgins to some dark ancient gods?

 

 

 

Labour would probably be 5 points shorter if it wasnt for Marcus Rashford.

[sir roger]

The Tory vote is getting a USA type vibe these days  , never shifts no matter what. Was it 80% blame the public for this covid shit in a poll earlier today.

[Brownie]

16 minutes ago, sir roger said:

The Tory vote is getting a USA type vibe these days  , never shifts no matter what. Was it 80% blame the public for this covid shit in a poll earlier today.

50% odd blame the public, 20% odd the government.

[Gnasher]

7 hours ago, Brownie said:

50% odd blame the public, 20% odd the government.

The other 30% blame Jeremy Corbyn?

 

On another matter..

 

https://www.ft.com/content/5b231553-c881-46cc-b89e-c0823deec3b3

 

[Numero Veinticinco]

41 minutes ago, Gnasher said:

The other 30% blame Jeremy Corbyn?

 

On another matter..

 

https://www.ft.com/content/5b231553-c881-46cc-b89e-c0823deec3b3

 

Can you post the entire article?

[Bruce Spanner]

5 minutes ago, Numero said:

Can you post the entire article?

 

The FT is behind a paywall...

 

'Shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds will signal on Wednesday that the Labour party is backing away from the hard-left economic policies of former leader Jeremy Corbyn, seeking instead to fight the Conservatives on economic competence and protecting the UK’s recovery from the damage caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. In the annual Mais Lecture, she will cloak Labour’s strategy to become the UK’s next government in the latest thinking from international organisations such as the IMF, which recommends waiting until unemployment falls and the recovery is complete before thinking about the sustainability of public finances. As the first woman to deliver the flagship economics lecture in its 43-year history, Ms Dodds will mention “responsible” policies 23 times and will distance Labour from its 2019 general election programme by avoiding any reference to any of the £83bn day-to-day annual public spending increases that formed the centrepiece of its manifesto. “We need a more resilient economy that can only be achieved through responsible economic, fiscal and monetary policy,” she will say. 

 

Asked why her setpiece economic speech would not mention plans to increase current public spending financed by higher taxes — the centrepiece of the party’s programme under Mr Corbyn — Ms Dodds told the FT in a pre-speech interview that the party would examine detailed taxation and spending policies in the normal way over the coming years. “The speech is 45 minutes long and attempting to set out the relationship between monetary, fiscal and other forms of economic policy in the long term, so it doesn’t have the kitchen sink in there,” Ms Dodds said. Since taking charge of Labour last April, Keir Starmer has helped steer Britain’s opposition party back to a more stable footing following its heavy defeat at the 2019 general election. But he has been accused more recently of being opportunistic during the Covid-19 crisis.

 

The speech by Ms Dodds, and one by the leader himself on Monday, are part of a plan to start setting out the opposition’s positions on the most important aspects of government. With distance being put between Sir Keir’s economic strategy and his predecessor’s, the new leadership want to fight the Conservatives on the overall strategy of economic policy rather than tax and spend. In recent months, first the IMF and more recently the OECD have advised advanced economies such as the UK to refrain from taking action to reduce the public deficit until the recovery from the Covid-19 crisis is close to being complete and central banks again have to raise interest rates from zero to prevent inflation from rising. Laurence Boone, the OECD’s chief economist, this month said countries should not start “tightening” fiscal policy by raising taxes or cutting public spending “in the one to two years following the trough of GDP”. This message now lies at the heart of Labour’s new economic strategy. In the months ahead, that would mean continuing to spend more than the Tories, Ms Dodds said, not insisting on the 5 per cent rise in council taxes that the government is expecting in April and not cutting the rate of universal credit. It’s not acceptable that we’ve had so many NAO reports that have highlighted problems [in government waste] and yet we still see a recurrence in those issues time after time Anneliese Dodds 13/01/2021.

 

With fiscal policy taking more of the strain in helping the economy to recover quickly from the Covid-19 pandemic, she wants monetary policy to play a lesser role in the future. In her speech, Ms Dodds will argue that if monetary policy did all the work, as it did during the austerity decade after 2010, then it would “exacerbate inequality and concentrate economic gains in the hands of those who were already asset-rich, at the expense of those who rely on income from their labour”. This stance implies borrowing and debt would be higher under Labour and would allow the Conservatives to say that the party is soft on tackling weaker public finances.

 

But Ms Dodds told the FT that the sustainability of the public finances should not be measured on an annual or five-year basis, but over a considerably longer period. Calling for a “responsible fiscal framework” based on “pragmatism, not dogmatism”, she will commit Labour to a rolling target of balancing the government’s current budget in the future, which would allow increased capital spending. There would also be an exception to the rule for times of crisis, which would allow for a delay in budgetary consolidation while the Covid-19 recovery was continuing, but Labour is planning two defences against inevitable Tory jibes about fiscal recklessness. The first is an idea from the Institute for Fiscal Studies that would set a “fiscal anchor”, stopping a free-for-all in public spending increases. The second is that Labour is determined to attack what it regards as Conservative waste in public spending during the crisis and put in place safeguards to prevent a repeat under a Labour government.

 

It plans to give the National Audit Office a mandate to report to parliament each year on the effectiveness of government spending with ministers required to respond at each Budget. “It’s not acceptable that we’ve had so many NAO reports that have highlighted problems [in government waste] and yet we still see a recurrence in those issues time after time,” Ms Dodds said. “We need to have much more political accountability around those processes for the future.”

 

Sorry about the spacing, it's not too easy to c&p.

[Numero Veinticinco]

Thanks for that. I’m sure some will read the opening line about Labour stepping away from ‘hard-left’ economic policy (what? What hard left economic policy?) and feel like they’re going full Tory, but the rest of the article concentrates on how the Tories are going to be taking the piss over how soft they are. What it actually seems to be - though I guess we will have to actually wait to find out - is an attempt to make themselves look credible again, they haven’t really been that since 2008. Whoever is in charge in a few years is going to have a tricky time. Brexit and the fallout from COVID is going to make it hard to make any radical moves. 
 

What I want to see is a commitment to look after the vulnerable, the old, the sick; at this point I’m not that arsed about the utilities and rail. 

[Bruce Spanner]

6 minutes ago, Numero said:

Thanks for that. I’m sure some will read the opening line about Labour stepping away from ‘hard-left’ economic policy (what? What hard left economic policy?) and feel like they’re going full Tory, but the rest of the article concentrates on how the Tories are going to be taking the piss over how soft they are. What it actually seems to be - though I guess we will have to actually wait to find out - is an attempt to make themselves look credible again, they haven’t really been that since 2008. Whoever is in charge in a few years is going to have a tricky time. Brexit and the fallout from COVID is going to make it hard to make any radical moves. 
 

What I want to see is a commitment to look after the vulnerable, the old, the sick; at this point I’m not that arsed about the utilities and rail. 

Yeah, paint us as fiscally responsible and get rid of the irresponsible tag that’s been an albatross whilst still spending properly and improving accountability, sensible. 

 

I think there’s a genuine will for rail to be nationalised, not sure how likely it is, but it can’t be any worse than it is now and it’d be a hell of a lot cheaper. 

[Gnasher]

20 minutes ago, Numero said:

Thanks for that. I’m sure some will read the opening line about Labour stepping away from ‘hard-left’ economic policy (what? What hard left economic policy?) and feel like they’re going full Tory, but the rest of the article concentrates on how the Tories are going to be taking the piss over how soft they are. What it actually seems to be - though I guess we will have to actually wait to find out - is an attempt to make themselves look credible again, they haven’t really been that since 2008. Whoever is in charge in a few years is going to have a tricky time. Brexit and the fallout from COVID is going to make it hard to make any radical moves. 
 

What I want to see is a commitment to look after the vulnerable, the old, the sick; at this point I’m not that arsed about the utilities and rail. 

I sort of agree with you up until your last sentence. Im dont necessarily agree with the policy but agree with the front of making Labour seem economically credible to the average Joe. Back to your last paragraph why not take utilities and rail back into public ownership?  A. It's a popular policy. B. Its fairly easy to do. C. It could/should benefit millions of consumers. 

[Numero Veinticinco]

1 minute ago, Gnasher said:

I sort of agree with you up until your last sentence. Im dont necessarily agree with the policy but agree with the front of making Labour seem economically credible to the average Joe. Back to your last paragraph why not take utilities and rail back into public ownership?  A. It's a popular policy. B. Its fairly easy to do. C. It could/should benefit millions of consumers. 

I didn’t say it shouldn’t be done. It’s a matter of priorities during a financial crisis and during the fallout of Brexit. 

[Scooby Dudek]

The only thing I took from that, in relation to communist broadband, is how it has become acceptable to call anything that doesn't fit their defined acceptable narrative as hard-left, extreme left etc. 

We quite rightly laugh at Americans when they call Dems commies or socialists, but too me, that is the path we are taking in this country and it should be called out.

 

 

The argument of being seen to be economically responsible, is all fine and well and has been fought for decades. Again however, that fact the Tories waste/give millions to their cronies is conveniently ignore by the same cunts saying Labour can't be trusted. 

 

2017 only one party had their manifesto fully costed but obviously that party was economically irresponsible.