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Keir Starmer


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2 hours ago, Moctezuma said:

They are caught between a rock and a hard place, if they become more propositional and social democratic the press will annihilate them as we saw with Corbyn, if the do the roll-up-in-a-ball technocrats bit they start to lose their appeal amongst younger voters and the dispossessed (who are two camps who overlap significantly). The demographics and opportunity for even a hung parliament won't start arriving until 2030/2035 when more off the baby boomers who own their own home will have died off, that lot are in total lock step with the Conservatives now.

 

I do think for them to be viable long term they need to give the young a bit more, so as to keep them on board when that change in demographics arrives along with any associated economic collapse. The issue will be that they will lose a significant number of seats in the interim through the ongoing demographic and economic processes, constituency boundary reform, associations with losses and not being the on the inside of the pork barrel tent.

 

There is a significant possibility that England ends up becoming like Hungary in terms of politics at this point if Labour's collapse continues. This would be exacerbated by Scottish independence and migrant inflows linked to climate change.

 

8 minutes ago, RedKnight said:

Labour's support seems to be more middle-class liberals rather than your average working-class voter. That perception seems to push the more disengaged working-class votes away to the Tories.

Interesting analysis piece from Jessica Elgot in The Guardian. I agree with the piece that Labour can win in many places in the South, especially with the Tories doing nothing in terms of helping younger people to get on the housing ladder. I suspect a good number of the “Red Wall” seats are gone for a generation because they like that the Tories tough talk on immigration, and the Brexit vote is such recent history along with the culture war that’s followed it.
 

I think there’s some hope of traction in Scotland as well as Sarwar seems a canny politician and the SNP are a one issue party and I think people will start to see that. There’s also talk of Sturgeon quitting in the next year or two as she’s apparently warn out, she will be a huge loss for them. Labour just need to hope that Scotland doesn’t go for independence in the mean time, and the polls have narrowed massively recently on that issue.

 

The last bit of encouragement is that Johnson is so corrupt that it seems a matter of time before he will be forced to resign, and I’m not sure the Tories have anyone else who will get the same cut through.

 

Anyway, that Guardian analysis.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/04/local-elections-labour-must-take-advantage-of-changing-demographics
 

Local elections: Labour must take advantage of changing demographics

Analysis: party allegiances are shifting all over England and Keir Starmer has to ensure he makes the most of favourable trends
 

Just five years ago, London was a key political battleground and County Durham was a Labour heartland. But since Boris Johnson swapped City Hall for Downing Street, those situations appear to have reversed, with the capital a key base for the party.

 

Labour’s voters in London, however, could soon be leaving. And its hopes for long-term electoral gains hinge not just on winning back seats lost to the Conservatives in northern England, where the party is likely to suffer even further in Thursday’s elections, but on appealing to new, younger voters in the south priced out of popular cities.

 

Starmer’s office will be closely watching a number of southern races for signs of green shoots which, if absent, might indicate that Labour has a bigger problem – that it is failing to capitalise in areas where demographics are moving in its favour.
 

One key race is the West of England mayoralty, where there are hopes that former Labour MP Dan Norris can take the seat off the Tories, whose incumbent is retiring. If they do, it will be a promising sign that the strong Labour vote in Bristol, a fairly recent resurgence, is growing still – as well as in its commuter towns.

 

“This is the race that is going to show that Labour have a chance of making this kind of shift happen,” said Chris Curtis, senior research manager at Opinium.

 

Labour will hope to regain its majority in Crawley after two councillors quit to put the West Sussex council into no overall control. Control of the jointly managed Adur and Worthing councils on the south coast is also in the balance and even modest Labour gains would be promising as part of a long-term south coast strategy. Key targets are East Worthing, Shoreham and Worthing West.

 

Even places where Labour will not win overall are being watched for signs they could be part of a national election strategy. One contest mentioned by Labour aides is the Devon and Cornwall police and crime commissioner race, where the party is hoping to see evidence it is gaining voters in that area.

 

London is now viewed by the Conservatives as essentially as a lost cause to Sadiq Khan’s people’s republic, an attitude that has irritated Tories in the capital who point out their party still managed decent results in the 2018 elections.

 

If Khan’s dominance starts a trend, there are at least eight seats in Londonalone that Labour should hope to gain at the next election – including Johnson’s seat in Uxbridge.


“There are short memories here,” one Tory MP said. “The dominance of Labour in London is not historic. The Tories literally held Brighton Kemptown until 2017. We have to keep an eye on the seats Blair managed to win – and the seats where he came close and where the demographics have kept on changing favourably for Labour. So seats in Hertfordshire like Welwyn and Stevenage.”

 

There are already concrete signs of a shift in the south, which Labour knows it must exploit. Portsmouth South, where Labour finished third even in 1997, it has now won twice, a change that has little to do with converting Conservatives and far more to do with the opening of a university campus.

 

One Labour adviser said: “Over the last two years, lots and lots of people have moved out of London. That will have been accelerated by Covid. We read a lot about the red wall. No one has gone to Wycombe to find out what is driving down Steve Baker’s majority.”

 

Labour’s advance in national polls, which has recently been draining away, has never been at the expense of the Conservatives, instead coming almost exclusively from poaching the Liberal Democrat vote. In some areas, like St Albans, which the Lib Dems won in 2019, this could benefit the Conservatives. In others, it could start to see Labour challenge for seats in Somerset, Hampshire and Cornwall.

 

“The south-west has voters in quite a progressive, even radical tradition. They used to go Lib Dem,” one Tory MP observed. “Now they don’t really have anyone to vote for. A Labour party who wants to win nationally has to take those votes. They have to run Jacob Rees-Mogg [in North East Somerset] close.”

 

None of this is a replacement for winning back northern English seats, but would have to be done in addition to that, as well as making significant gains from the SNP in Scotland. Overall, Labour aides are braced for a punishing night in Thursday’s local and devolved elections, even beyond the totemic Hartlepool byelection where the media narrative has been focused.

 

Key councils like Bolton and Durham are likely to move from Labour to having no overall control. Labour will say that many of the most difficult results will come in councils like Sunderland where there have been no elections since 2016, an electoral lifetime ago in terms of political events, meaning the seats there have yet to shift definitively along with the national picture.

 

Curtis said Labour should not automatically view that result as an indication things are getting worse for the party: “There has been a significant realignment since those places last voted and many will just be catching up on that realignment.

 

“The next Labour party that wins a national election is not going to win back all of the red wall, it is not going to win back all of Scotland, or all the southern seats it could win, it will do a little bit of everything, and it will probably involve seats like Bournemouth and High Wycombe.”

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I honestly don't think the red wall is lost to the Tories, just to Johnson. A lot will depend on who their next leader is and what route they go down. Same goes for the states, I don't see how you can build a long term political movement solely on the undirected anger of the white working class.

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27 minutes ago, Section_31 said:

I honestly don't think the red wall is lost to the Tories, just to Johnson. A lot will depend on who their next leader is and what route they go down. Same goes for the states, I don't see how you can build a long term political movement solely on the undirected anger of the white working class.

 

As others keep saying you need to give them something tp vote for, it's not enough to give them something to vote against.

 

The country will change significantly over the next couple of years and what happens is anyones guess, but this rabble are sowing up disssent and opposition.

 

Two/three big policy announcement, or ideas that penetrate could have swung this, whilst hammering these cunts for everything they are doing/are going to do.

 

The policy I mentioned before about start up for youngsters is brilliant and is one of the reasons Slovakia has a booming start up economy, the same could be done here and it's relatively inexpensive bu the upsides are potentially huge. Labour are talking about something similar, but bigger in scope. Don't whisper about it scream about it as it's great and gives young people hope. The govenment keeps a holding in the company, so private equity and public can coexist in a mutually benificial way.

 

Housing is an easy fix. Young people can't afford house so build them, build in the use of apprentices and build a national model and then sell them at cost with the proviso that if/when they are sold the gov takes 40% of the profit and they can only be sold to other first time buyers, of those in need. You have market stimulation, access and jobs in a really simple, but effective policy. Set one of these up in councils with needs and shortages instead of councils having to playing fast and loose with regulations and building just to keep afloat, none of which local residents can realistically afford. This allows private and public housing to coexist and work for all and not just private rentiers.

 

It's not fucking difficult.

 

Just saying we're not the tories and we now support 'the will of the fucking people' is destructive nonsense.

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25 minutes ago, Section_31 said:

I honestly don't think the red wall is lost to the Tories, just to Johnson. A lot will depend on who their next leader is and what route they go down. Same goes for the states, I don't see how you can build a long term political movement solely on the undirected anger of the white working class.

 

Labour has been losing support in the North/Scotland/Wales long before Johnson became tory leader. 

 

As for not building a long term political movement solely on the white working class, true but it'll be impossible to gain victory by ignoring them.

 

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/politics/ed-miliband-says-labours-red-wall-was-crumbling-long-2019-election-defeat-2889325

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On 29/04/2021 at 11:56, Bruce Spanner said:

One step forward, two steps back for Labour.

 

Fucking idiots.

 

https://vote-watch.com/2021/04/28/breaking-labour-suspends-seven-councillors-in-peterborough-over-antisemitism-and-extremism/

 

'All were found to have shared antisemitic content, including the claim that Jews were carrying out ‘the final solution’ in Palestine. Others shared a vile video from an Islamic extremist and hate preacher who is banned from entering the UK.

 

Prominent Labour activists in Peterborough – Richard Strangward, Alan Gasparutti and Colin and Linda Watson – are also said to have been suspended, with VoteWatch having exclusively exposed candidate Gasparutti as having made numerous hateful comments on social media, including supporting the IRA and claiming ‘terrorism brings peace’.

 

Labour sources told Jewish News today it was “no surprise at all” to them that at least 14 individuals from the Peterborough party had been suspended.'

Shit like that would have been so easy to stamp on at a local level, if the hypocritical anti-Socialist pricks hadn't torpedoed the NEC's Code of Conduct.  Everything about that still boils my piss to this day.

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4 hours ago, Gnasher said:

Not just Hartlepool by the look of things, neo liberalism is dead, 

 

 

 

Although nationally not too bad, maybe certain pockets in the country?

 

 

Tory gains mean that neoliberalism is dead? Are you quite sure about that?

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2 hours ago, RedKnight said:

Labour's support seems to be more middle-class liberals rather than your average working-class voter. That perception seems to push the more disengaged working-class votes away to the Tories.

Labour has ignored the poor and working class for donkeys years. Take the case below, a case played out on almost  every high street in Britain, take the land owners driving down wages by flying in cheap workers, take the exploited restaurant and care home workers. Labour should be up in arms over these capitalist slave gangs, instead they say nothing, do nothing promise nothing. They should be promoting policies of long prison sentences and greater scrutiny for cases like below.

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cumbria-56988881

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1 hour ago, Section_31 said:

I honestly don't think the red wall is lost to the Tories, just to Johnson. A lot will depend on who their next leader is and what route they go down. Same goes for the states, I don't see how you can build a long term political movement solely on the undirected anger of the white working class.

Johnson is not popular in red wall seats. That's a myth. Johnson polled -3, Starmer +18 only a few months ago, although the successful vaccination program plus the loosening of lockdown laws will have boosted his popularity in the short term.

 

https://www.channel4.com/news/exclusive-poll-reveals-labour-leads-in-red-wall-constituencies

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1 minute ago, Strontium Dog™ said:

Isn't government spending through the roof at the moment?

Exactly. 

 

26 minutes ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

This is alive and well and thriving in the UK under the Tories. 

 

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The modern day tory party have zero interest in free market economics, see Cameron and Greensill and that's where they are at.

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1 minute ago, Strontium Dog™ said:

I should think that's a large part of it.

 

People like getting paid to sit on their arse doing nothing, who knew.

Pretty much, they are also allowed to take another job whilst on furlough plus the self employed have received four large payment cheques whilst being allowed to carry on working.

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42 minutes ago, Gnasher said:

Exactly. 

 

The modern day tory party have zero interest in free market economics, see Cameron and Greensill and that's where they are at.

"Free market economics" has always been a euphemism; it's certainly got nothing to do with a healthy, diverse economy. It just means free from regulations and taxes.

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3 minutes ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

These are not really normal circumstances.  It's been on the news and everything; I'm surprised you missed it. 

 

Not really relevant, is it. These people are not neoliberals under the criteria you posted.

 

1 minute ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

"Free market economics" has always been a euphemism

 

It definitely hasn't.

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Have to agree with SD here, it's not neoliberalism I don't think, it's some kind of weird state/private/cronyism like basically what you'd get in Russia or Uganda. Dunno what the political science tern is. Corruption maybe. But it's basically public money into a very select group of private pockets with access to that group closely controlled. Neoliberalism is about dismantling the state or pushing it to one side, this new model needs the state because it's a cash cow. 

 

 

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22 minutes ago, Section_31 said:

Have to agree with SD here, it's not neoliberalism I don't think, it's some kind of weird state/private/cronyism like basically what you'd get in Russia or Uganda. Dunno what the political science tern is. Corruption maybe. But it's basically public money into a very select group of private pockets with access to that group closely controlled. Neoliberalism is about dismantling the state or pushing it to one side, this new model needs the state because it's a cash cow. 

 

 

It's what neoliberalism has morphed into. It doesn't have much in common with it's 1970s version, and it has almost nothing in common with Adam Smith's version of Liberalism, but it is the consequence of a "greed is good" mantra. Some did well, some didn't. Those that did increasingly wanted to make it a closed shop to the point where, as you say, it's really not all that different to Russia or China. The state used to make a tiny amount of already very rich people even richer. Competition, one of the key facets of capitalism, has disappeared. And when the roulette-esque nature of the economy inevitably crashes you just bail it out with public money and tell everyone there is no alternative.

 

Luckily for them, people believed it. Many still do. Of all the subjects at school that are taught badly, economics is the worst of the lot. Most people have some idea about history, even if it's biased towards the country that they live in. But economics? There are people in the Question Time audience still conflating the economics of one person with that of a fucking country that can print its own money. Until that isn't the case, politics will just be a serious of tedious arguments about immigrants and pronouns.

 

 

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36 minutes ago, Section_31 said:

Have to agree with SD here, it's not neoliberalism I don't think, it's some kind of weird state/private/cronyism like basically what you'd get in Russia or Uganda. Dunno what the political science tern is. Corruption maybe. But it's basically public money into a very select group of private pockets with access to that group closely controlled. Neoliberalism is about dismantling the state or pushing it to one side, this new model needs the state because it's a cash cow. 

 

 

Spot on. The tories have learnt from countrys like Russia, state owned money siphoned off to the wealthy political elite.

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