Secure is a good word

“Secure for life”

Have you thought about making a short public information film where you get some cuddly children’s TV characters

I don’t need to, plenty of people have already explained it in simple language. Here’s one..

Here’s another..

Powerful stuff in this. If only we had an equivalent to Sanders in UK politics. Starmer shoud pay close attention.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/20/joe-biden-action-bernie-sanders

The latest polling is showing a 4 point labour lead

Latest Westminster voting intention (26-27 Jan)

Lab – 41%
Con – 37%
Lib Dem – 6%
Green – 4%
Reform UK – 3%
SNP – 5%https://t.co/zagoLiHC6g pic.twitter.com/PpZtph1Xyz

— YouGov (@YouGov) January 28, 2021

You know that will trigger someone to watch new polling results obsessively until they find one with labour behind don’t you?

Obviously.

Anyway, let’s hope this is a tortoise and the hare situation, not a little blip. Fingers crossed…

You know that will trigger someone to watch new polling results obsessively until they find one with labour behind don’t you?

On the contrary, Binbins has managed to find the only recent poll with Labour in the lead. There’s a summary here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election#2021

Polling results now are like being 3 points ahead in rugby after 10 minutes – it’s the last 10 minutes that are interesting and the final score that counts. I appreciate I’ve come a little late to this thread as the 3,408th post, but all Sir Keir needs to do for now is keep showing himself to be competent and reasoned, and carry on asking awkward question to BJ. Then in three and a half years’ time start rolling out ‘greatest hits compilation’ clips of Brexit lies vs actual consequences, and Covid cock-ups – if that doesn’t sway the swing voters the UK (or what’s left of it) is doomed to become a one-party state.

https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/sir-keir-starmer-tells-lbc-he-supports-pms-perfectly-legitimate-scotland-trip/

Sir Keir told Nick Ferrari: “I understand he’s going to see a vaccine centre, going to talk to the NHS and I’d expect the Prime Minister to do that.

Does Starmer even know that the NHS in Scotland has nothing to do with the PM? I rather think he supports BJ on this because he’d do the same Union-flag flying thing himself.

Sir Keir needs to do for now is keep showing himself to be competent and reasoned, and carry on asking awkward question to BJ.

I think we can all agree that he is competent and reasoned, yet doesn’t seem to be landing many blows on a PM who has presided over 100,000 deaths. What he hasn’t yet done is give us any idea of what his Labour party is for, seemingly preferring to leave it to a 23 year-old footballer. If he thinks winning at PMQs is going to make an iota of difference to his party’s fortunes, he’s going to be sorely disappointed.

On the contrary, Binbins has managed to find the only recent poll with Labour in the lead. There’s a summary here:

I don’t actually go looking. It just popped up in my Twitter feed so I thought I’d share it.

With predictable results.

Do you need reminding that this time last year, at the fag end of Magic Grandads calamitous tenure, Labour had just handed the Tory’s a whopping great majority and were 26 points behind them in the polls?

I don’t actually go looking. It just popped up in my Twitter feed so I thought I’d share it.

With predictable results.

Predictable that I might be interested in whether the poll represents a trend or is an outlier? Why yes, guilty as charged. But you feel free to hold your telescope to your blind eye.

Do you need reminding that this time last year, at the fag end of Magic Grandads calamitous tenure, Labour had just handed the Tory’s a whopping great majority and were 26 points behind them in the polls?

It’s interesting that you feel the need to defend Starmer by comparing him with his predecessor.

I’m not ‘defending’ him as he doesn’t need defending. I’m pointing out that he’s shifted the poll ratings by 30 points in less than twelve months

I think we can all agree that restoring the potential electability of the Labour party from the political basket case it had become under the last regime is a good thing, yes?

Being a student protest group instead of an effective opposition and serious alternative government hasn’t really worked out well for anyone other than Boris and chums, has it?

What he hasn’t yet done is give us any idea of what his Labour party is for

He can’t because there are at least two descreete factions in labour, bluntly put, the corbynites and new labour under Starmer.

Until the party splits into at least 2 different logical parties or they unify themselves, it will still make them unelectable.

At the moment, Labour are at war with themselves, they have been for a long time, and that divde will cost them enough votes to never see the PM’s office.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership_approval_opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election

Some things strike me from this page,

1) Starmer / Johnson broadly seem equally popular.

that’s where we’re at, UK.

There’s more…

2) Unbelievably, people approved of Johnson all through lockdown #1, as if he was bravely doing his very very bestymost that he possibly could… but this isn’t the case any more.
3) Starmer has been universally approved of since aappointment to labours top job
4) nobody approves of Farage, Davey, or the Greens.
5) Sturgeon is universally approved, no doubt aided by turning up regularly and not being shit at telling everyone how covid is being handled
6) nobody liked Jeremy, ever.

all that aside

7) universally, Johnson + Sunak is preferred above Starmer + Dodds.

Taking (1) and (3) into account, I think Starmer may need another chancellor.

Maybe he needs a “colourful character”.

boris vs keir, trend since mid 2020

I think Starmer may need another chancellor.

He absolutely does. Contrast her appearances with that of Miliband. But I don’t see any reshuffle happening unless it is forced. Labour need to keep looking like a steady ship if possible, and avoid anything that allows the papers to portray them as an ongoing series of mutinies.

When I’ve seen Anneliese Dodds interviewed she actually talks a lot of sense, but she doesn’t seem to have any ‘presence’ at all.

Unfortunately the age we live in requires someone with more impact. Say what you like about Rishi Sunak, he knows about self-promotion and managing how he’s perceived by the electorate

yet doesn’t seem to be landing many blows on a PM

Its odd as Boris seems to have somehow survived every blow since campaigning for the 2019 GE began! I think the only blows that he wont survive are a vote of no confidence, (fingers crossed) another GE or he decides hes done and walks. Things that he and his party have been caught doing would have been resignations before

I agree with every word of that Binners.

I’m not ‘defending’ him as he doesn’t need defending. I’m pointing out that he’s shifted the poll ratings by 30 points in less than twelve months

They were losing by a lot, and now they’re losing by a little. I guess you’re easily satisfied.

There’s no election to lose right now. I’m hoping when the next election has come and gone, that we will have more Labour MPs than we have now. Many more. Enough to be in government would be ideal, but I still fear unlikely.

That’s the issue; ‘presence’ shouldn’t register in politics, but it does.

A bad business manager can go very far on bluster and bullshit if he says the right things to the right people.

There’s no election to lose right now.

In which case the opinion polls from the end of Corbyn’s tenure, and the recent one Binners spaffed himself over, are essentially meaningless.

They were losing by a lot, and now they’re losing by a little. I guess you’re easily satisfied.

Clearly not as easily satisfied as you. Like a lot of you those on the left, you seem an awful lot happier with a Tory government with a massive majority, the Labour party as popular with the electorate as a fart in a lift, but with your precious idealogical purity intact.

Anyway… that poll shows a 4 point lead, so your statement is factually inaccurate anyway

What he hasn’t yet done is give us any idea of what his Labour party is for

The only thing I and many others have heard is ‘we support the government’. That’ll be his political epitaph I fear.

In which case the opinion polls from the end of Corbyn’s tenure, and the recent one Binners spaffed himself over, are essentially meaningless.

The one opinion poll that really mattered at the end of Corbyns tenure – the one where you express your opinion in the voting booth – delivered an 80 seat Tory majority. Hardly meaningless.

We are all paying the price for the abject failure of the Corbynite ‘project’.

The party under Starmer seems to be successfully distancing itself from it, which is making them more likely to form a government. They’ve moved a long way in the last 9 months with regard to recovering some much-needed credibility and establishing an air of competence and fitness for office, that is so clearly missing from the shower presently in charge.

For some truly bizarre reason, that seems to really, really piss off those on the left, who clearly prefer a life of impotent placard-waving and petition signing, while endlessly retweeting #Jeremywasright into their 6th form echo chambers

I fear the next two years are going to be turgid, completely dominated by the negative effects of Brexit and the approbrium will be piled on Boris and his acolytes.

I wonder how eager many Tories are to boot out Boris right Now? Better to let him stew in his own cauldron of shit for a year or two, wait till the country hits absolute rock bottom and then stage an internal coup, reinventing themselves just in time for the next election.

The Tories are experts at this sort of thing. It’s something the Republcans in the US would love to be able to do but can’t. The cult of Boris is a lot more fragile than that of the orange one. I’m not knocking Starmer but my gut tells me Sunak will be the next PM and will fight and win the next election.

I think you’re bang on.

They’re going to leave Boris to stew. He’s clearly hating all this. This isn’t what he signed up for. He signed up for a big jolly, swanning around the globe, shaking hands and kissing babies (not his own, obviously). I think he saw himself more as a king rather than a politician who actually has to make tough decisions.

Theres going to be a hell of a reckoning when this is all done. A public inquiry into the whole shambles, PPE, corrupt contracts, the test and trace fiasco, appalling decision making. Boris and co are going to be in the dock and are going to have to carry the can for the lot as well as the mess of Brexit as it all unravels and the sunlit uplands fail to materialise to even the dimmest of Brexiteers

Whoever Starmer ends up going up against at the next general election, it certainly won’t be Boris. And I doubt many more of the collection of dimwits that make up the present cabinet will be there either

I’m not ‘defending’ him as he doesn’t need defending. I’m pointing out that he’s shifted the poll ratings by 30 points in less than twelve months

Correlation does not mean cause. I reckon its mostly Boris doing the hard yards himself.

Clearly not as easily satisfied as you. Like a lot of you those on the left, you seem an awful lot happier with a Tory government with a massive majority, the Labour party as popular with the electorate as a fart in a lift, but with your precious idealogical purity intact.

A purity so intense that Starmer was my second preference for leader, and I never voted for Corbyn. But I wouldn’t expect you to start admitting facts into your arguments, given your history. Much easier to parcel people you disagree with into neat little packages, ready to be abused.

Anyway… that poll shows a 4 point lead, so your statement is factually inaccurate anyway

It’s great that you’re able to disregard all of the evidence that contradicts your view, and cling on to the one titbit in your favour.

“If nothing else works, a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.”

This just popped up in my twitter feed:

Vaccine bounce, I suspect tory lead will only get bigger as vaccine rollout hits target in Feb & EU having shot themselves in foot
Electorates memories are short, even with UKs death toll

I agree. The same poll also showed Johnson as more popular than Starmer.

Electorates memories are short, even with UKs death toll

I refer you to comments I made some time ago about how the tories would ultimately benefit from covid. I never for a second thought they’d they’d get a massive helping hand from the EU though. Also news this morning that Boris and Sunak are planning a massive public spending splurge post-covid to turbocharge the recovery. Seems Starmer is destined to spend the next few years saying ‘I agree with Boris’. He’s screwed. Boris will increase his majority and Starmer will go down as one of the least effective labour leaders in history.

But he won a poll last week

Also news this morning that Boris and Sunak are planning a massive public spending splurge post-covid to turbocharge the recovery.

It’s been happening for a while: I can assure you that there’s never been a better time to apply for government grant funding.

It’s been happening for a while

Yup. I’m convinced Boris is a secret MMTer. He’s discovered that there’s a magic money tree and like all good populists is going to use it for maximum advantage. It’s going to be interesting to see what Starmer does. We could well have the odd scenario of a labour leader opposing tory largesse. Starmer is going to have to come up with something very imaginitive because right now he feels like a complete irrelevance.

He’s discovered that there’s a magic money tree and like all good populists is going to use it for maximum advantage. It’s going to be interesting to see what Starmer does.

Yeah. Boris knows which buttons to push that will be popular, even if he never delivers.

In a year or so after Covid has hopefully passed, the Tory’s can focus on divisive attacks on Labour, probably based on social issues.

Starmer and co. Need to start forming a solid economic and social stance which they can back up and really get behind to push back on the inevitable attacks that are coming.

At the moment Starmer does still seem a bit reactionary which has been ok for a while but that time is now slowly coming to an end.