“Centrist” is a charge laid at the feet of just about everyone, which is why the claim of “Centrism is over” draws the yawns. What mix of public and private ownership do we want? What mix of public planning and private planning? What mix of regulation and private systems? All up for discussion. People who want a different mix can still be called centrists. I’ll take a left of centre Starmer, or Burnham over the alternatives to the right, thanks, but just anyone can be called a centrist. The “reductionist” use of the word is common place now. People well to the right have claimed it. People well to the left have been labelled it.
Cheers @willard id only really thought about them in the terms of what the ICO guidance gives.
That is a much, MUCH more difficult problem though
Absolutely. And removing a big chunk of the market (legal access to children) for these USA based companies is one way to push them towards taking responsibility for their content. I think many non-USA countries will go far further in future... not just a ban and/or more restrictions on them using children, but restricting how they can use the rest of us as well.
The companies should be fixing this stuff. There should no need for the government to restrict who they can access. Maybe in the long term this will happen. In the meantime kids need protection from them. Parents and guardians need help from the rest of us.
Trouble is the companies like what they are doing as it’s generating them revenue, they care little for the content they host and don’t want to accept responsibility.
I loved social media when it was in its infancy but it’s just turned into a vehicle to push hate and stupidity to the masses 24/7.
I loved social media when it was in its infancy but it’s just turned into a vehicle to push hate and stupidity to the masses 24/7.
I'd have banned smart phones for children during the hours to, at and from school so that they could at least get away from it for eight hours. Similar to cigs and alcohol bans.
Schools have their own policies on possession and parents need to parent during the rest of the time (I'm under no illusions about the difficulty of that as the parent of a former-teen).
Quite happy for them to have non-smart phones for their safety during those hours if that's what their parents deem necessary. Much less pressure to have an £800 phone too.
The thing for me at this point is that Kier Starmer hanging on is actively damaging the Labour Party. Nothing will get done in the next six months, and anything that is accomplished might be undone. They saw this affect the Tories and capitalised on it, and I see no difference why the same won't happen in reverse.
In reality the hard cold logical answer is that Starmer probably should stay as leader - he was while Labour was in opposition and led them to a reasonable victory - but the reality and perceptions are different and him clinging to his position makes it look like he's desperate for power and the trappings of office that go with it.
- he was while Labour was in opposition and led them to a reasonable victory
He didn't have to lead anything and just happened to be in charge. The country had had enough after 14 years of the Conservatives; even the Conservatives had had enough of the Conservatives.
Labour achieved the lowest vote share ever recorded for a winning party, albeit with the third largest Labour majority, which says more about our voting system
In reality the hard cold logical answer is that Starmer probably should stay as leader
Changing leader isn't a good thing IMV, simply because it'll no doubt make UK loan repayments even more expensive. The hard truth is that he's made too many unforced errors
The cold hard logic that Starmer should stay has been utterly demolished unless you want Labour to sink and you have ridiculously low expectations of your leaders.
Reeves staying out of the public eye is your extra clue too. Although I cannot imagine a scenario where she now will carry on too.
This week will either be Starmer's resignation or more resignations by Ministers. (Although it will test how stubborn he is but given he flip flops last week's 'I'm-not-going-anywhere'should be taken with a pinch of salt).
neither Starmer or Burnham are centre left
Nationalisation of what's left of railways, GB Energy, and the wealth fund, The worker's rights bill, the changes the min wages rules, the changes to the Tory's minimum service level strike rules. VAT on private school fees, ending non-dom status, doubling the private plane tax, changes to CGT, changes to inheritance tax, farms inheritance tax, renters rights bill, free childcare and breakfast clubs, phasing out the remaining hereditary peers. scrapping the 2 child limit. Oh, and forgot the buses re-regulation bill for councils to follow what Burnham's done in manchester and the £2 max fare.
There are plans to lower the voting age to 16, leasehold reform, the Hillsborough act (finally) Cares sector wage min thresholds.
Insert what have the romans ever done for us picture here @binners.
7th PM since Brexit?
My bet is that Burnham will become the next 'most hated PM' in a line stretching back to Cameron. In the 30 years between 1978 and 2007, we had 4 PMs - Thatcher, Major, Blair and Brown. In the 10 years since Brexit, the average is a new PM every other year.
My bet is Burnham won’t be leader it will be someone like Al Carns or Darren Jones.
Its beginning to look, like Starmer may actually do the right thing and resign. He's a dead man walking now and standing as a candidate will just prolong the agony. Hopefully he'll step down and they can get on with crowning the king in the north so we avoid months of political infighting (we'll at least until everyone turns on Burnham around October).
Starmer has done a lot that most of his critics would think is really good if they only knew about it. The problem is in the social media age we appear to be ungovernable.
The RW press are staying quite low key at the moment but as soon as Andy Burnham gets in the cries of illegitimacy will be deafening. AB is a dead man walking. It is going to be a shit show
If anyone thinks that Burnham is going to get an easier ride, they haven't been paying attention.
If you think a party that sticks with tory austerity by keeping the same financial limits, goes even harder on immigration to the detriment of the country, follows a hard brexit line, promises more privitisation of the NHS, promises no tax rises and has no significant redistribution of wealth or investment in stuff the poorer folk need like housing or public transport is in any way left of centre all that shows is how much the overton window has shifted
A couple of nationalizations of failing utilities / failing train companies is irrelevant. any government would have had to do this. They were forced kicking and screaming into removing the two child benefit cap
A programme of renationalisation promised? Not a chance it will happen. labour now is a centre to centre right party wedded to the failed neoliberal financial model as compared to the general European parties.
Where is the massive housebuilding programme? where is the economic stimulus via investment ? where is the programme of redistibution?
Trump has just announced starmer has gone.
Labour have quietly done some good things now 2 years of infighting that better be worth keeping the racist slug out of power
Thought I'd do a bit of fact checking on Starmer's 10 pledges. 21% of asylum seekers are still in hotels, free breakfasts is for a minority, the minimum wage hasn't matched infaltion on stuff poor people spend their money on, railways are a shambles, six water companies paid no bonuses, NHS still on a drip and you can't magic doctors out of thin air, private schools pay VAT, Great British Energy exists.
So both Nickc and TJ have good points. There's some good news in the detail but the bigger picture is inertia. What hope for rejoining the EU when he's bickering about youth mobility. Austerity when everyone one knows that when the building is strong everything else goes well - build low energy homes FFS. As for climate, it's still being ignored as an issue when it's the single biggest issue facing humanity (he says from a place with 40°C + forecast for the coming days).
If you think a party that sticks
Those are actual bills this govt has actually passed that are by any definition you care to use; centre left.
Insignificant fiddling around the edges - the main direction is centre right on the critical stuff as I pointed out.
Where is the redistibution? Where is the stimulus to the economy, why continue with tory austerity? Why continue with xenophobic tory immigration policy and indeed go further? Why continue to insist on a hard brexit position?
all the critical policy positions are right wing.
Trump has just announced starmer has gone.
While banging on about increasing oil drilling and immigration being the UK’s big problem.
Trump is taking us to a hell where the planet burns and white supremacists own politics.
Steamer isn’t our problem, Trump is. Farage is. As we will soon see if Starmer moves aside.
Steamer isn’t our problem,
Steamer isn't our solution either
(Are we calling him Steamer now?)
Steamer isn’t our problem,
He's literally our problem because 'we' put him in government and he's not enacted the substantial change we needed from day one. He led the country further down the right-wing path that literally leads to Trumpification. MEGA anyone?
This whole tidying up of Starmer's first couple of years is absolutely ridiculous.
Of course there's other problems too.
(The others you mention we can't do anything about).
Feel for Starmer. He did a lot of good stuff that got basically no publicity. He also scored some own goals which left me to conclude he and his team are not quite as on the ball as I expected them to be. But ultimately he's been far better than any other recent PM.
My feeling is that he's had his character assassinated through social media by powerful, often foreign interests and Burnham is saying nothing that gives me any hope that he can avoid the same fate.
I think we're heading in the direction of being effectively controlled by those powerful interests and I don't know where that will leave the ordinary working person, undoubtedly worse off but by how much I'm not sure.
Worse, I strongly suspect we're going to see some serious social nastiness along ethnicity lines occuring in this country over the next decade. Anyone likely to be affected by that, which includes members of my family, should start thinking about having an exit plan, imo.
I know people who have, sadly. If you are Muslim or Jewish, and have a professional in the family that can take their work elsewhere, why wouldn’t you? But reporting back, their chosen host countries are going the same way. This social change is happening everywhere (at different rates). Being an English (first) speaking country might make it easier to move us, but nearly all countries are getting moved.
Are we calling him Steamer now?
My phone is. If autocorrect has forgotten him, perhaps we all will have soon enough.
Feel for Starmer. He did a lot of good stuff that got basically no publicity. He also scored some own goals which left me to conclude he and his team are not quite as on the ball as I expected them to be. But ultimately he's been far better than any other recent PM.
My feeling is that he's had his character assassinated through social media
This is my position too. We've had chaos in political leadership for the last (roughly) 10 years, and it seems to coincide quite closely with the ability for every gobby clever dick in the country to take to the cesspools of Farcebook/****tter/whatever to throw comment and criticism around. It used to be down toTV news and print media to talk about what's happening, but now there's eleventeen versions of 'the truth' circulating about everything, most of which are complete bollocks. This does not help one jot. Its not progress, frankly.
My feeling is that he's had his character assassinated through social media by powerful, often foreign interests and Burnham is saying nothing that gives me any hope that he can avoid the same fate.
I think we're heading in the direction of being effectively controlled by those powerful interests and I don't know where that will leave the ordinary working person, undoubtedly worse off but by how much I'm not sure.
Sadly, I think this is pretty much bang on. It's going to be open season on Burnham as son as he gets into number 10. I do think Andy is a bit more inclined to give them a fight though, as he demonstrated during covid when he took Boris and the government on. He seemed to relish that fight and that was where the whole 'King of the North' moniker came from.
The problem with Starmer has been his timidity. This labour government has done a lot of decent things, but it's as if they're trying to do it without anyone noticing, in case it upsets the Daily Mail. The comms have been unforgivably bad, allowing Fargage and the right wing press to dictate the narrative.
Andy is s lot more media savvy in his comms and use of social media etc, as his Makerfield campaign demonstrated. He'll be a lot more on the front foot and not just responding to events like Starmer was
Anyway... the lecturn is out on Downing Street. Looks like this is the end of the line
Feel for Starmer. He did a lot of good stuff that got basically no publicity. He also scored some own goals which left me to conclude he and his team are not quite as on the ball as I expected them to be. But ultimately he's been far better than any other recent PM.
My feeling is that he's had his character assassinated through social media by powerful, often foreign interests and Burnham is saying nothing that gives me any hope that he can avoid the same fate.
This is pretty much my take on it as well. It's weird because personally I don't think Starmer has done a particularly bad job although there have been a few weird decisions along the way. But, there has been so little talk of what the government has actually done, that I think people just feel they aren't really doing stuff.
In an age where people have attention spans of a few minutes, if stuff doesn't change almost instantly then people blame the person trying to make the change & think that someone else will do better.
People also seem to expect better everything; fix the potholes, fix the NHS, stop the boats, put more police on the streets, more public transport etc. etc. but then aren't willing to pay more tax to fund it.
I am happy to be proven wrong, but if Burnham becomes PM I can't really envisage what he will be able to do differently to change things enough to satisfy the countries supposed need to 'sort things out'.
Ode to Joy in the background 😂
So Starmer has resigned. Agree with what has been written above. Starmer just suffers from greyness, imagine the social media frenzy if John Major was in charge. At least he wont have to put up with monster in the states trolling him.
And the next PM will only get a few months of grace before the RW media dives in. And Trump.
I'm of the same view as @stumpy01. It's really disappointing that Labour have not learnt anything from the cluster **** that was the last conversative government and have instead dived head first down the infighting path. Burnham looks to me like a poor choice for PM.
Gone. Thread closed
It's really disappointing that Labour have not learnt anything from the cluster **** that was the last conversative government and have instead dived head first down the infighting path
It's not really comparable to the Tories who fight like rats in a sack. The labour leadership hasn't seen any of that drama. This has looked inevitable for a while and the whole party seem to have just accepted it. I can't imagine there will be any type of leadership battle. This will be a coronation
What hope for rejoining the EU when he's bickering about youth mobility.
The tide is turning quite quickly, but you have to wait until the country is gagging for it and Farage has been dealt with, otherwise it'll be a disaster. 55 or 60% pro rejoin isn't enough.
but it's as if they're trying to do it without anyone noticing, in case it upsets the Daily Mail.
Because as many people have commented, the media think that they can dictate who the PM is, and they've been proved right time and time again. I doubt it will change with Burnham TBH.
Shame, Starmer seems like a good guy. He's dull and has made a few mistakes, but overall he seems OK.
But, I will reiterate what I said 6 months in to his term. Labour came in with a huge majority and all he needed to do was avoid scandal and make people feel a bit better about life in the UK. He did none of those things. He talked about immigration, lost cabinet members and everyone still feels skint.
So I'll say that same about Burnham, give people something to be pleased about and avoid any scandals. Good luck...
Burnham looks to me like a poor choice for PM.
The question anyone making that decision needs to ask is who can keep Farage and his gang out. Its probably the only thing that actually matters. I haven't seen anyone else's name in the mix who looks like they have a hope of doing that. Burnham might.
Mistake from the wider Labour Party IMO. The various opposers, both legitimate and, let’s say less so, now have 2-3 years in which to tear the incoming PM down. The same as they’ve done with KS.
Burnham looks to me like a poor choice for PM.
Which is great, so who are you putting in instead? It's all well and good saying "not him", but who else instead?
THEGUARDIAN.COM The tide is turning quite quickly, but you have to wait until the country is gagging for it and Farage has been dealt with, otherwise it'll be a disaster. 55 or 60% pro rejoin isn't enough.
Don't forget less than that was enough for us to leave apparently.
but it's as if they're trying to do it without anyone noticing, in case it upsets the Daily Mail.
Because as many people have commented, the media think that they can dictate who the PM is, and they've been proved right time and time again. I doubt it will change with Burnham TBH.
The front page of the Mail has already started on Burnham, he's not even in yet.
Really good (quite long) read about how it all went wrong for Starmer.
I'm looking forward to the next Seldon book.
