To be perfectly honest anything right now to get rid of ****s like Raab, Johnson, Patel et al.

Blair and his ‘Tory Lite’, anything.

Anything to stop my country pursuing a xenophobic alt right agenda which is making us the laughing stock of the world and turning us into even more of a global irrelevance than we already were.

Internationalist, cooperative, grown up.

I’m amazed that someone who has apparently said so little and has no media coverage has managed to convince some posters that he is a Tory or the second coming of Blair.

The problem that I and a lot of others had with Corbyn and those around him was not policy-based. Apart from some fruit-loop ideas, there was broad approval of a lot of the policies. The problem was one of competence. You looked at the team he’d assembled and I wouldn’t personally have trusted them to run a bath, never mind the country.

I feel exactly the same when I look at the gang of lightweights, Brexiteer zealots, and rank incompetents that presently occupy the Tory front bench.

So there is a lot to be said about watching a man who looks serious, like he has thoroughly grasped his brief and is up to speed on all the details. Hardly an accusation you could level at Joris Bohnson. And just look how that’s playing out. He’s even lost the Torygraph. People talk about the press backing the Tory’s under any circumstances, but the press like to back winners. Hence the support for Blair. They didn’t want to be seen to be blindly following a Tory party mired in sleaze and corruption.

The mood at the moment of an anxious nation is to look for a feeling of security in a leader who could locate their own arse using both hands. Anyone seen our glorious leader of late? No. Because he’s hiding under his desk again, dreading next Wednesday where he will be dismantled at PMQs again.

see the Daily Fail are now going after his “socialist” credentials…. as he owns some land in surrey behind his house (that could be worth 10 mil with planning permission that it doesn’t have though the council is under pressure to provide planning permission…. yada-yada)

Won’t somebody think of the donkeys!!!

The next headline will be along the lines of “Kier boots out donkey sanctuary to profit from land sale”…

That’s it? After all the digging they’ve doubtlessly done, all the Daily Heil could could come up with is ‘man buys a field for his mum to keep some donkeys in’?

Not exactly Watergate, is it?

Well it is one of your Binbin Bingo top 5 slurs against Corbyn so…

Competency is everything for Labour. Labours recent policies of nationalising everything were not hated (in the main) because they were socialism but because they appeared to be reckless spending of money. Labour need to look competent and win over the voters who don’t trust them with the countries finances.

@ctk – Magic Grandads problem wasn’t so much keeping donkeys in his mums field, it was that he’d appointed them all as shadow cabinet members.

Seriously, if that’s all they’ve got on Starmer and they still published it, that’s pretty desperate.

I can’t see it making much difference to Boris being comprehensively dismantled again on Wednesday. Unless he sends Patrick Bateman in his place again. But he seems to have disappeared too as another member of our absentee government

Competency is everything for Labour. Labours recent policies of nationalising everything were not hated (in the main) because they were socialism but because they appeared to be reckless spending of money.

100% this.

Was happy to see:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/17/labour-to-plan-green-economic-rescue-from-coronavirus-crisis

Which is similar to what was proposed in the 2019 manifesto, but it’s now nicely framed in a way it applies to real people and real solutions.

Competency is everything for Labour. Labours recent policies of nationalising everything were not hated (in the main) because they were socialism but because they appeared to be reckless spending of money.

It wasn’t reckless.

Like you say – appeared to be reckless. There’s no money in the economy because of austerity.

Why do you think the Tories have pumped so much in recently? (Echo-ing some of Labour’s spend.) 200 Billion using the ways and means facility. Basically – printed money – although I don’t like that term. There will be no interest and it’s a debt by the government that won’t be paid back.

When we get used to the idea a red in the government’s spending is black in the private sector. There is no balancing of the books. This causes so much hardship.

That said Labour didn’t and won’t continue with this argument – they also talk of balancing the books because they’re terrified of the media reporting the finances as the household analogy.

Repeat after me the government’s finances are not the same as a household. They are the issuer and we are the user.

As for Career Starmer’s recent headline – I’m guessing this is the start. And who didn’t expect it? For all his ‘forensic’ courtroom dramatics – it won’t matter a jot in terms of Labour’s popularity. (Maybe his own clearly.)

The war for government is fought on emotion not forensic analysis – this just satisfies the pedants. What we want is progressive policies – and Labour need to capitalise on this now.

Anyone seen our glorious leader of late? No. Because he’s hiding under his desk again, dreading next Wednesday where he will be dismantled at PMQs again.

He’s been hiding since he was elected – clearly doesn’t do well with pressure in my book. He’s not going to last. Being dismantled by Starmer doesn’t account for much at all. PMQ’s have always been overrated as evidence of a parties’ success.

– it won’t matter a jot in terms of Labour’s popularity.

With Starmer in charge me and Mrs zip will both vote labour for the first time in our lives. ( I’m a lib party member )

What more can the Labour Party want out of him?

Votes  win prizes.

Lucy Powell on Sky aligning herself with government’s attitude towards schools. And walking exactly the same line.

I love New New Labour (so far). They are just a polite version of the Tories.

Kier Starmer

tee hee

Lucy Powell on Sky aligning herself with government’s attitude towards schools. And walking exactly the same line.

Interesting – it seems at odds with what Rachel Reeves said yesterday, again on Sky. Can’t find anything yet on Lucy Powell’s comments – have you got a link?

@Rone, yes I think if Labour got into power and nationalised water or the railways and it was successful then they could talk about the rest. Trying to convince people before they were elected was a losing battle- especially when they “crashed the economy and sold all the gold” last time they were in power.

Labour have a job to change the language around economics and spending- at the moment they are trying to fight in the Tories back yard. eg They should talk about the NHS as a % of GDP. There basically is a magic money tree and

Repeat after me the government’s finances are not the same as a household. They are the issuer and we are the user.

Labour need to look competent and win over the voters who don’t trust them with the countries finances.

For competent read ‘won’t change anything’. I’m not interested in the sort of competence which results in the state subsidising rich corporations and defending shareholder income whilst imposing austerity and cutbacks on taxpayers. It’s the same when people use the ‘responsible management of the economy’ argument. All this means is maintaining the system where money flows upwards to a tiny few whilst the general population are left to try and survive with shrinking incomes and rising prices. Even now with the pandemic you can see the message emerging of ‘be thankful you have jobs at all’. Well that’s not the sort of competence I’m looking for, and Starmer will be constantly reminded of that by those of us who voted for him every time he’s tempted to side with the landlords, spivs and CEOs.

What more can the Labour Party want out of him?

Someone who will retain those people who voted Labour in the past possibly?
Appealing to Libdem voters means excluding quite a few Labour voters.

Someone who will retain those people who voted Labour in the past possibly?

Retain them? You mean getting those who used to vore labour to do so again after they deserted the party in droves last December to elect Tory MP’s instead?

You mean getting those who used to vore labour to do so again after they deserted the party in droves last December?

Well the Tories are going to lose them soon. They are there to be snapped up. For a good % of them the non-appearance of deportation buses looking for anyone with a suntan will come as a shock.

It appears from around here that Starmer is upsetting the far to extreme left nearly as much as the hard to far to extreme right. As far as I am concerned that is a result in itself.

Starmer is upsetting the far to extreme left

He’s upsetting the 20th century state socialists, which isn’t hard because they’ll be upset at anyone who doesn’t use the word ‘bourgeois’ on a daily basis. Doesn’t really matter though cos there’s not many of them left.

You mean getting those who used to vore labour to do so again after they deserted the party in droves last December to elect Tory MP’s instead?

He’s not going to win them back. If there’s one thing I know about the heroic white working class northerner it’s that they put pride before reason and aren’t in the habit of admitting their mistakes.

Magic Grandads

(sic)

Corbyn gets it in the neck for his age but never Hodge who’s 5 years older. Curious.

Corbyn gets it in the neck for his age but never Hodge who’s 5 years older. Curious.

Age discrimination is ok if it’s someone you don’t like.

Some of the really magic commentators on the current crisis have been of the great-grandad variety: David King, Michael Marmot, Richard Wilkinson, Paul Nurse.

Eh?

I’m no fan of this constant appreciation of courtroom PMQs – but the way the RW press and the likes of JHB (M&S Katie Hopkins) jumped on him yesterday for a bit of vocal contortion was ridiculous but not unexpected.

Looks like Sir Kier “won” yesterdays PMQ’s after all. Nice U turn Boris.

What’s interesting is whether Starmer and labour had had any previous contact with the less unhinged elements of the Tory party before they raised this at PMQ’s.

Joris backed down because his own (sane, non-ERG headbanger) backbenchers made it clear this morning that if Labour tabled an amendment then they’d vote with them against the government.

That raises a very interesting dynamic, going forward. There are many Tory MPs who despise Johnson and the lunatics he’s surrounded himself with and certainly don’t share their rabid Brexity agenda.

Keep going Keir.

non-ERG

remind me, does ERG stand for ‘extreme recession group’?

anyway.

Maybe it’s my imagination, maybe something I drank last night, but it does appear sections of the media I would not have expected (as well as some Tory MPs, ye gods what is going on) are showing support for Starmer.

I think that Dom and Dommer are paying the price for leaving their usual press lap-dogs looking like idiots over the lifting of lockdown.

Even the Torygraph has been having a pop at Boris. And the Mail – THE MAIL FFS! – published an article by Piers Morgan (who seems to have become Boris’s nemesis) absolutely lambasting Boris and the government.

And Boris arrogantly pissed off one hell of a lot of Tory MPs when he sidelined all of them to exclusively appoint his useless Brexity nodding dogs to the front bench. I don’t think many will be feeling that loyal to this particular leadership given how they’ve dealt (or rather failed to deal) with all this.

Overall, I think we could be witnessing the slow detoxifying of the labour brand, post-Corbyn*

Fingers crossed

* awaits the usual Corbynite suspects to show up with the achingly predictable comments

* awaits the usual Corbynite suspects to show up with the achingly predictable comments

erm… ok

Overall, I think we could be witnessing the slow detoxifying of the labour brand, post-Corbyn*

Fingers crossed

Of course they’re detoxified. They’ve gone from having self declared revolutionaries in charge who threatened tear up the corrupt old order in the interests of the working population, to a solid establishment man backed by Lord Sainsbury who will tip the balance a little bit but won’t fundamentally change the system that makes the tiny few at the top rich and powerful. What a thing to celebrate.

Or you could look at it pragmatically and say; what is the least worst option here?

A Starmer-led labour government would be better than a Johnson-led Tory government in, at a conservative estimate*, about 120 million different ways.

In the same way that the Blair-led labour governments were approximately 90 billion times better than the 18-year horror show that preceded them, despite what the ‘revolutionaries’ would have you believe.

But by all means, you carry on agitating for your glorious socialist revolution while living under permanent Tory rule. I’m sure that will be the best option for everyone, comrade

*see what I did there?

Or you could look at it pragmatically and say; what is the least worst option here?

I’m not necessarily complaining. If he can win an election and smuggle labour policies in under the noses of the CEOs and billionaires by making them believe he’s their friend then fine by me. My only worry is that he’ll go the way of Blair and forget that he’s actually in the labour party.

glorious socialist revolution

I’d love to know what you think this is. I don’t think many on the left apart from a few socialist workers think this would be a good thing. Your view of the left seems to be as outdated as the things you think they want.

My only worry is that he’ll go the way of Blair and forget that he’s actually in the labour party.

If you believe the re-writing of history advocated by ‘the Left’. We’ve been here countless times on this and other threads, so I won’t bother listing them again (SureStart, Minimum wage, etc, etc, etc….), but the Blair government did a huge amount of good that a Tory government would never ever have countenanced for a second, and certainly won’t now.

To not acknowledge this is just daft, churlish and self-defeating. You may not view Corbyn and Co’s policies as particularly far left, but there simply aren’t the numbers who share your view to ever make it an electoral reality. Thats the bottom line.

So what Labour has to do is have a leader who appears competent enough to be electable – which they look to now have – who will advocate policies that are popular enough to win a general election by not scaring the horses.

It’s a simple enough theory. Quite difficult to achieve in reality

You may not view Corbyn and Co’s policies as particularly far left, but there simply aren’t the numbers who share your view to ever make it an electoral reality. Thats the bottom line.

There’s tons of evidence to suggest the policies weren’t the problem. The bottom line is that Corbyn wasn’t electable because he allowed himself to be diverted from his instincts on brexit (by Starmer primarily), and was disgracefully smeared as a racist by the rightwing press and many of his own MPs.

Anyway, that’s old ground. What Blair proved is that it takes more than a friendly establishment man with some competence to win. You also need to dilute the policies so that the billionaires and CEOs can be confident that their pay cheques are secure and their power and influence uninterrupted. Of course a war or two also goes down well, but lets not go there.

New from @IpsosMORI:

Almost half of Brits (46%) think Keir Starmer will change the Labour Party for the better

Just 9% say worse.

29% say no difference and 16% don't know. pic.twitter.com/fDHitP3XI3

— Keiran Pedley (@keiranpedley) May 22, 2020

We’ve been here countless times on this and other threads, so I won’t bother listing them again (SureStart, Minimum wage, etc, etc, etc….)

Absolutely – Blair could’ve been one of the great reforming Prime Ministers, and made a great start. Then he turned his attention to bombing brown people instead.