Keir Starmer

[Bjornebye]

Just now, Captain Howdy said:

Jesus

Now thats creepy. 

[Captain Howdy]

Yep

[Barrington Womble]

6 hours ago, Captain Howdy said:

Amen, there was a clip of school kids singing the Corbyn song a while back, creepy as fuck.

It all feels a bit Nazi Germany to me

[Neil G]

On 16/05/2020 at 18:25, Numero Veinticinco said:

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. 
 

 

In the context, for a finite period during the pandemic and the recovery, it’s really not a big amount. Entering into a recession this deep and severe is not the time to be worrying about the deficit. Increased government spending will be needed to stimulate the economy, and a lot of it will be recouped from the increased economic activity that will result. If the government doesn’t act the recovery will be longer and slower which will carry its own massive costs to the exchequer in the medium to long term. This stuff isn’t radical, it’s standard soft left Keynesian economic orthodoxy.

 

Aside from the economic growth element, there’s also the cost to the NHS of a second wave of Covid caused by large numbers of people being forced back out to work to make ends meet. These costs will continue for long after the pandemic has passed due to long-term health problems experienced by survivors and a personnel and recruitment crisis caused by major staff burnout and trauma. If you’re concerned about government spending getting out of control then keeping as many people as possible at home and reducing the pressure on the NHS should be a top priority.

 

If the effect of such a policy is to prevent large scale destitution, stimulate economic recovery and save lives, the fact that rich people will benefit should be a secondary consideration. But, as I’ve said, it’s not the only option if that’s not palatable to you. I don’t lean strongly in favour of either of my solutions, I would be just as happy with deferred manageable repayments, in conjunction with real action on housing. 

 

 

On 16/05/2020 at 18:25, Numero Veinticinco said:

 

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. 
 

 

Millions of people being unable to afford rent, which for many risks resulting in eviction, is an entirely plausible scenario. You remember how bad things got for how many people after the crash under the coalition, you spent years arguing with SD over it. Well this is going to be like that on steroids. The economic shock will be greater and the crises in housing, low pay and job insecurity are much worse than they were 10 years ago.

 

On 16/05/2020 at 18:25, Numero Veinticinco said:

 

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. 
 

 

I’ve only gone off the most recent one in the UBI thread a few weeks ago. The only caveat you mentioned there was affordability. I wasn’t aware of your earlier posts on the subject, I’m sure I’ve read the inequality thread all the way through but I must have missed them.

 

If you object to rich people receiving government money they don’t need then whatever you support isn’t UBI, because it isn’t universal. The foundational premise of UBI is that everybody gets it regardless of means.

 

It’s not a major issue in the context of this discussion though, if I’d known about your other reservations I wouldn’t have referenced it.

 

On 16/05/2020 at 18:25, Numero Veinticinco said:

 

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.

 

 

3 months is the length of the moratorium on evictions, due to expire at the end of June, which was the context in which Labour made its proposal. Lots of people on low pay or out of work have stopped paying rent during this period as all their available income is going on non-negotiables like food and utility bills.

 

I don’t know where you’ve got the idea from that everyone is covered. Firstly a lot of people were made redundant in the weeks before the furlough eligibility date of March 19th. The hospitality industry in particular took a pasting. You can add to that the people who were already unemployed before the virus struck (1.36 million at the end of February), many of whom in normal times would be expected to have a reasonable chance of finding work before too long but who are going to struggle now, plus people who were due to start new jobs after March 19th who’ve missed out on the furlough scheme. 

 

As for those in employment on the 19th, many will be getting little or no furlough pay: people on variable hours or zero hours contracts, people working through temp agencies, self-employed people. For others, their full wages plus any benefits they were getting before the crisis weren’t enough to cover all of their living costs including rent as it was, so at 80 per cent of pay they’ll be struggling even more. And a lot of people currently on furlough will be facing redundancy when the scheme is phased out.

 

You’ve suggested that people who can’t currently afford their rent will be covered by housing benefit. That’s not the case. People still receiving housing benefit might be ok, but people who’ve moved onto universal credit will be left short. UC isn’t enough to cover essentials, either for the living costs component or the rent component, and as the latter is paid to the claimant rather than to the landlord as with housing benefit, people will be using it during the rent moratorium period to make up the shortfall in their living costs. The benefit cap is also hitting people hard, especially in London.

 

So there will be a lot of people who will be in serious rent arrears by the time the eviction moratorium ends, plus a lot more who’ll fall into that situation in the months that follow. I can’t put a precise or even an approximate number on it as we don’t know how bad the economic downturn will be, but all the available data suggests it will be enough to be a significant problem and one that Labour needs to speak up about more. Their low key approach is part of a worrying pattern: they’ve also failed to speak up with conviction on schools reopening and and on employees not getting adequate physical and legal protection in the workplace. You say outrage isn’t necessary - I say it’s the only thing that will work. When Starmer did kick off, over the NHS migrant surcharge, he got the government to change its policy. Corbyn did likewise with the furlough scheme before he stood down. Rational argument and gentle persuasion doesn’t work with this government - it takes public shaming to get it to change course.

 

Given that it was established in the coalition years how many people in this country are struggling with the cost of living, and given how you railed against SD’s defence of austerity during that time, I’m really surprised to see you downplaying the scale of the problem now, when none of the underlying issues have been addressed and the most vulnerable people in society are going to be hit again, en masse, even harder than they were under the coalition. I know you’re not dismissive of concerns about poverty and homelessness, anybody who’s read your posts on here knows that, but I don’t think you’ve grasped just how bad things are going to get for how many people without much bolder measures than Labour are proposing.

[mattyq]

 

[Section_31]

I don't think the voting intention stuff can be trusted until Brexit is well in the rear view, it still seems to be the be all and end all for many, as the Cummings saga revealed. It used to be two party politics, then it was leave or remain, when that's no longer 'the' issue we'll see where we are.

 

Will also be interesting to see what happens once the age of populism passes. When, godwilling, trump is no longer around, Johnson's bullshit will stick out even more when he's in the presence of world leaders.

[mattyq]

It's a start

Tories have lost 8% in a week and we've still got the rest of the covid, a big fuck off recession and an even more disastrous Brexit to come

All of which will hurt badly and all of which will showcase Johnson's unique shithousery and weapons grade fuckwittedness

[Section_31]

2 minutes ago, mattyq said:

It's a start

Tories have lost 8% in a week and we've still got the rest of the covid, a big fuck off recession and an even more disastrous Brexit to come

All of which will hurt badly and all of which will showcase Johnson's unique shithousery and weapons grade fuckwittedness

Genuinely interested to see where people will vent their anger next. A lot of this anger among ordinary folk is genuine and legitimate but has been channelled in the wrong direction, namely Trump and Johnson, it's belatedly dawning on them that they're not their friend. What happens next though?

[mattyq]

1 minute ago, Section_31 said:

Genuinely interested to see where people will vent their anger next. A lot of this anger among ordinary folk is genuine and legitimate but has been channelled in the wrong direction, namely Trump and Johnson, it's belatedly dawning on them that they're not their friend. What happens next though?

Million dollar question

It'd be nice if it involved tar & feathering the cabinet and big Nige

[Section_31]

7 minutes ago, mattyq said:

Million dollar question

It'd be nice if it involved tar & feathering the cabinet and big Nige

I wonder if devolution might be how it heads over here. People feel more kinship to their own cities and regions now than they do with the country as a whole in my view. If they perceive the likes of Burnham and Rotherham doing good stuff with housing and the likes, and also perceive Scotland and wales to have better protected their own people during Covid, we could see a complete emotional and mental severance with London and the political establishment. City states, in spirit if not completely in practice.

[A Red]

I think I like Starmer, seems good to me. Give him a Corbynite manifesto and he will lose, guaranteed.

[Neil G]

1 hour ago, A Red said:

I think I like Starmer, seems good to me. Give him a Corbynite manifesto and he will lose, guaranteed.

Define Corbynite manifesto. Bear in mind that we’ve already had two of them, they were quite different from one another and they resulted in very different vote shares.

[A Red]

10 minutes ago, Neil G said:

Define Corbynite manifesto. Bear in mind that we’ve already had two of them, they were quite different from one another and they resulted in very different vote shares.

The last one

[Guest Edwyn C]

I thought it was Corbyn not the manifesto that was the problem. Any specific 1 or 2 really significant policies from the manifesto you disagreed with? 

[Neil G]

1 hour ago, A Red said:

The last one

Your point is redundant in that case, as Starmer is clearly never going to run on anything as left wing as the 2019 manifesto.

 

Why don’t you consider the 2017 manifesto Corbynite? And do you think Starmer could win on something similar to it?

[Neil G]

1 hour ago, Edwyn C said:

I thought it was Corbyn not the manifesto that was the problem. Any specific 1 or 2 really significant policies from the manifesto you disagreed with? 

To be fair, a lot of Corbyn’s critics blamed both, and they had a point.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

3 hours ago, A Red said:

I think I like Starmer, seems good to me. Give him a Corbynite manifesto and he will lose, guaranteed.

Oh, well, if it's guaranteed we'd better not do that.

 

Out of interest, which policies from 2017 and 2019 do you consider too "Corbynite" for the electorate?

[Guest Edwyn C]

Yes fair enough. But that's a bit of a cop out. Let's have specifics, what policies specifically? Not you i mean the critics. 

 

I was Corbyn's biggest fan based on policies. This cult thing was laughable. He has no charisma. He seems like a nice fella but he is totally lacking in charisma. Any person of any sex, race, gender, class with the same policies i would have liked equally. 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

1 hour ago, Edwyn C said:

I thought it was Corbyn not the manifesto that was the problem. Any specific 1 or 2 really significant policies from the manifesto you disagreed with? 

The main stumbling block with the 2019 manifesto was a policy (which I happen to think was right, in principle, but which turned out to be a vote-loser) which would be more accurately described as "Starmerite" than Corbynite: the promise of a confirmatory vote. That allowed the Tories to make the election all about Brexit and to paint Labour as vacillating Remoaners.

[sir roger]

I thought there were a few mis-steps like the sudden trumpeting of the free wi-fi offering and the finances ( if not morality ) of the WASPI women policy suddenly being added.

 

Other than that , I cant see too many policies that would be a problem even to a centrist like Starme , and he has plenty of time to decide which are most important and pushed to the forefront of his own manifesto.

[Neil G]

22 hours ago, Edwyn C said:

Yes fair enough. But that's a bit of a cop out. Let's have specifics, what policies specifically? Not you i mean the critics. 

 

I was Corbyn's biggest fan based on policies. This cult thing was laughable. He has no charisma. He seems like a nice fella but he is totally lacking in charisma. Any person of any sex, race, gender, class with the same policies i would have liked equally. 

The problem with the 2019 manifesto wasn’t so much the policies per se as the way in which they were put forward. The new ones that hadn’t been in the 2017 manifesto were sprung on the voters at short notice without any time to get them used to the ideas behind them and persuade them that they were beneficial, achievable and affordable.

 

Aside from the Brexit referendum, the manifesto policies which damaged Labour the most were free broadband and the four-day week. Free broadband was seen by many voters at the time as an unnecessary perk, which played into the “free stuff for everyone” caricature of Labour under Corbyn. The four-day week was a much more complex policy which would have required months if not years of communicating to the electorate how it would be made to work, and a lot of voters thought it was completely unrealistic and poorly thought through. You can also add the pledge of compensation to the WASPI women - not actually in the manifesto - which committed Labour to more than £50bn of additional spending just days after the manifesto announced all its spending plans were fully costed, reinforcing the image of Labour as profligate and unable to manage the public finances.

 

The more ambitious your programme for government, the more time and effort you have to put into gaining understanding and acceptance of new policies. Labour didn’t do that in 2019. By contrast the popular policies from 2017, most of which survived through to 2019 and have been kept by Starmer - nationalising rail, mail, energy and water, higher taxes on the rich, investment in green energy, expanded free child care, abolishing tuition fees etc - had been on the political agenda for years beforehand and were widely understood and supported by the public, or at least by those sections of the public they were targeted at.

 

Labour’s presentation of their manifesto was a self-inflicted wound, and it’s understandable that a lot of voters were put off by it.

[Numero Veinticinco]

18 hours ago, sir roger said:

I thought there were a few mis-steps like the sudden trumpeting of the free wi-fi offering and the finances ( if not morality ) of the WASPI women policy suddenly being added.

 

Other than that , I cant see too many policies that would be a problem even to a centrist like Starme , and he has plenty of time to decide which are most important and pushed to the forefront of his own manifesto.

If he has promised to keep Corbyn’s manifesto pledges, what makes Starmer a centrist?

[Neil G]

1 hour ago, Numero Veinticinco said:

If he has promised to keep Corbyn’s manifesto pledges, what makes Starmer a centrist?

There’s no good reason to describe Starmer as being on the left of the party, even soft left, when nothing he’s said or done as an MP before or since the leadership contest bears that out. All of his actions since becoming leader have smacked of centrist triangulation and caution. His reluctance to speak out in support of trade unions is particularly telling.

 

The suspicion is growing that he’s not really committed to the pledges and only adopted them to win the leadership. His bizarre comment about “hating” having to sell himself to the members only adds to this. I’m a lot less confident that he’ll stick to the pledges than I was when he became leader.

[sir roger]

I voted for Starmer and thought he had such a big mandate that he had the perfect opportunity to bring on board the left and right of the party , but practically everything he has done since has appeared to be skewed to the centrist and right wing of the party. I believe he has now authorised a six-figure sum to be paid to private investigators to find out who leaked the document but has not made even the slightest criticism of the behaviour involved and has apparently found a place at head office for a guy implicated in the report while the 'investigation' is ongoing.

[Numero Veinticinco]

50 minutes ago, Neil G said:

There’s no good reason to describe Starmer as being on the left of the party

I'm not really talking about the party, fuck knows what state the membership is in at the moment; I'm talking about his position on the political spectrum. I think there is reason not to call him a centrist, at least if you base it on the political views he holds rather than internal Labour Party stuff following on from the Corbyn era. I think his views have probably become less radical since he was a member of young socialists, but he's still espousing the same sort of economic agenda now as he was then. He's clearly a socialist. He's not Corbyn - thank God - but he's also not Tony 'he's right wing, honest' Blair.

 

As an aside, and not in response to your or your post, I think the way we on the left poke at people not quite as left wing as we are is quite detrimental to the cause. If the centre or centre left, rather than the centre right and right, become the enemy to the left, then I've no business calling myself a left winger anymore. I know who my enemy is, it's Boris Johnson and the Conservative party. Beating them, even if it means pragmatism and doing what can win, rather than 100% perfection, is what's important to me right now. I think that's where Starmer is too. That's why, at least at the moment, he has my support. He certainly deserves time as nearly 60% of the party voted for him. 

 

One thing I will pick you up on is offering his comments about selling himself as proof of your suspicion that he's not committed to the pledges of the Corbyn era. Implying he was only saying it as a sales pitch. That, with the greatest respect to you as one of my favourite posters on this site, is horse shit. Those comments are about the leadership election where preceded the 'selling himself to the membership' comments with 'You're in your own party and you're up against colleagues, and very good colleagues, who you like. And it is a very odd thing to do. I'm very glad that that part of it is over I have to say', going on to say 'For me personally, I really hated selling myself to the membership and I much prefer leadership decisions as leader'. He's very obviously saying he didn't want to fight inside his own party, big himself up over his colleagues, and prefers leading the party. That's perfectly fine and normal reaction. He might well break his pledge about upholding Corbyn's agenda - how he breaks it and which parts he drops will be important to how I react to it - but those comments don't add to the case that he's more or less likely to. I think that's a dodgy conflation. As of now, he has pledged to keep those policy initiatives. That's where we are. 

 

EDIT: I will, of course, reply to your other post - thanks for putting as much time into it as you did. Always a pleasure discussing these things with you. Believe it or not, it does cause me to take a step back and see if what I think is... erm... still what I think and if it's right.