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Sir Keir Starmer - Labour Party Leader

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    You pretty much just described Blair.

    I know two 'hard left' people who like Starmer. My mum left the Labour Party when they ditched Clause 4, but she likes him. I dunno if it's desperation or what.

    It angers me to have an MP who blows the 'family' dogwhistle, but Labour has always had strong elements of that.

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      He's Blair with far less charisma. It would be very odd having a Labour British PM who was to the right of the US President. It is rare even to have a Tory one in that position: Thatcher in Carter's last year; possibly Major in Clinton's first five (but that's a close call); Baldwin, Chamberlain and Churchill v FDR. The Empire complicates the picture up to and including Suez, in that the US was building a different form of soft power to the British imperial model, so you'd have Eisenhower looking more reasonable than Eden.

      'The family' is also a racial meme, I think, excluding BAME, just as it was under the old welfare state. Asylum seekers* would be an obvious exclusion.

      *Another Blair parallel: he was a cunt towards refugees.
      Last edited by Satchmo Distel; 10-01-2021, 18:53.

      Comment


        Just going back to Reginald Christ's interesting post, I'm not so sure it'll even pan out as well as that. A big difference between the long Tory reign of the 79-97 and the current Conservative one is that the Thatcherite governments felt like contiguous entities - even when Major took over, heralding a change in leadership style, the basic policy and character of the government remained. The current Tory period has been characterised by more ruptures at the top, so that each leader pitches themselves much more blatantly as a repudiator of their predecessor, such that you can appeal to voters as a wholly new broom. I mean, the "disaffection" that Boris Johnson's Brexit faction appealed to was pretty much an acknowledgement that previous Tory governments had been shit to them, even while they carried on being shit to them themselves. So Johnson and chums win as "insurgents" nine years into a Tory government that they'd all been a part of and contributed to.

        So, come 2024, Labour can't appeal to the "they've had 14 years" weariness, because Johnson and co will be acting like they've only had five, and five "uniquely difficult" years at that, from which sunlit uplands can still be glimpsed.

        Or perhaps everyone really will have noticed they're cunts by then. But I'm not betting loads on it.

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          It appears from this distance that Starmer is essentially following the Rahm Emanuel playbook after Emanuel was effectively barred from the Biden Administration

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            Honestly, I think it's a case of working towards 2029.

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              Or any election that can be forced before then as the Tory government falls apart for reasons totally unrelated to anything Labour might be doing as an "opposition"

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                I think 2029 is optimistic, sadly. The effects of the boundrary changes, our increasingly right-wing media added to by the hard right lines that will almost certainly come from GB News when it launches... Being honest I see no change of govt in my lifetime and my hope is that I'm still only a little over halfway through mine.

                I suspect Starmer will get two cracks at it though, the media will generally want him post for fear of having a candidate who doesn't subscribe to TINA replace him - the 2024 defeat will be painted as credible and comparissons with Kinnock and 1987 made.

                My guess with Starmers strategy if there is one, is that the fall-out from the coalition years is that England at least, has returned to a two-party state. Perhaps he reasons that those on the left and those in the centre with virtuous values, will just become so desperate to replace Johnson / Tories, our votes are guaranteed, and that it is the "middle ground" vote that WORRIES ABOUT THINGS THAT DON'T IMPACT ON THEM, EVER is the only set of voters that might, just might, switch over next time.

                But UK politics so utterly tribal these days, I don't see the 40% or so Tory vote dropping till their voters, er, drop off in significant numbers and that's not happening anytime soon.
                Last edited by super furry dice; 10-01-2021, 19:36.

                Comment


                  I'm really really worried about what the world will look like by 2029 (including how many of us will still have a meaningful vote.)
                  Johnson has already imposed some radical changes to constituencies and funding -and he's only just started,

                  There haven't been local elections in parts of Northamptonshire for five years

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                    Yeah for all the monstrous corruption, sclerosis and dysfunction of the US system, ours is easier to gerrymander and manipulate than theirs.

                    I'm fairly pessimistic parliamentary politics can get us out of all this at the moment tbh

                    Comment


                      Originally posted by wingco View Post
                      Honestly, I think it's a case of working towards 2029.
                      The chances of my liver holding out until then are virtually non-existent...

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                        The only counter to this is demographics - that there's a real young vs old thing going on, with the "young" now up to 45 years old. People do die and the ones coming up behind aren't going to gravitate rightwards the way they used to.

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                          That maybe a majority of under 45s will never own their own house in a country without rent control or meaningful tenants rights will be a big part in any new realignment. It will also kill the "aspirational" bollocks Labour have been peddling since Blair year zero.

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                            There are all sorts of other things that can be done with a young population when you aren't willing to meet their economic needs. Like pandering to racism. Orban here we come....

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                              Originally posted by E10 Rifle View Post
                              I'm not so sure it'll even pan out as well as that. A big difference between the long Tory reign of the 79-97 and the current Conservative one is that the Thatcherite governments felt like contiguous entities - even when Major took over, heralding a change in leadership style, the basic policy and character of the government remained. The current Tory period has been characterised by more ruptures at the top, so that each leader pitches themselves much more blatantly as a repudiator of their predecessor, such that you can appeal to voters as a wholly new broom. I mean, the "disaffection" that Boris Johnson's Brexit faction appealed to was pretty much an acknowledgement that previous Tory governments had been shit to them, even while they carried on being shit to them themselves. So Johnson and chums win as "insurgents" nine years into a Tory government that they'd all been a part of and contributed to.

                              So, come 2024, Labour can't appeal to the "they've had 14 years" weariness, because Johnson and co will be acting like they've only had five, and five "uniquely difficult" years at that, from which sunlit uplands can still be glimpsed.
                              Yes, that's distressingly plausible. Perhaps the Conservatives have realised the key to electoral hegemony is to embrace the concept of disruption. It doesn't matter if you're wreaking havoc as long as you can claim you're doing it in the cause of something.

                              It's also likely that Johnson won't be Conservative leader by 2024. He'll have outlived his usefulness to them once the pandemic has ended and he can be thrown overboard like David Moyes at Man United. He can be replaced then by a sleeker operator who'll eviscerate what remains of the British welfare infrastructure while looking "prime ministerial" doing so. What chance will Starmer have against someone who can effortlessly outflank him on racism and small-mindedness?

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                                think it's highly unlikely Johnson will be leader by the end of 2021. Murdoch's Times already running inside-the-Bunker stories about his incompetence and preparing to move to Hunt or Gove as soon as the party is persuaded

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                                  Yeah, the Tories are becoming like fucking Dr Who.

                                  Comment


                                    Originally posted by wingco View Post
                                    Yeah, the Tories are becoming like fucking Dr Who.
                                    except they cast a woman a lot sooner.

                                    Comment


                                      Starmer’s strategy was always Buggins’ Turn.

                                      Part of going after Corbyn was not necessarily about stopping him but making sure anyone who tried to follow him got stopped. RLB was sacked pour encourager les autres.
                                      Last edited by Snake Plissken; 11-01-2021, 10:36.

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                                        Now going after Chakrabarti too.

                                        imagine a Human Rights lawyer still caring about Human Rights

                                        https://twitter.com/clientjournoexp/status/1348650608228782081?s=21

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                                          Where's the Forde enquiry?

                                          (Having its terms of reference changed so nothing too embarrassing comes to light)

                                          https://twitter.com/jsternweiner/status/1348656095015952385?s=20

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                                            Not only did Keir lie, he’s really dumb...

                                            and I thought Dodds was smarter than this

                                            https://twitter.com/shirleymush/status/1349146766868934659?s=21

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                                              Any detail from that FT piece from behind the paywall?

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                                                Shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds will signal on Wednesday that the Labour party is backing away from the hard-left economic policies of former leader Jeremy Corbyn, seeking instead to fight the Conservatives on economic competence and protecting the UK’s recovery from the damage caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. In the annual Mais Lecture, she will cloak Labour’s strategy to become the UK’s next government in the latest thinking from international organisations such as the IMF, which recommends waiting until unemployment falls and the recovery is complete before thinking about the sustainability of public finances. As the first woman to deliver the flagship economics lecture in its 43-year history, Ms Dodds will mention “responsible” policies 23 times and will distance Labour from its 2019 general election programme by avoiding any reference to any of the ?83bn day-to-day annual public spending increases that formed the centrepiece of its manifesto. “We need a more resilient economy that can only be achieved through responsible economic, fiscal and monetary policy,” she will say.

                                                Asked why her setpiece economic speech would not mention plans to increase current public spending financed by higher taxes — the centrepiece of the party’s programme under Mr Corbyn — Ms Dodds told the FT in a pre-speech interview that the party would examine detailed taxation and spending policies in the normal way over the coming years. “The speech is 45 minutes long and attempting to set out the relationship between monetary, fiscal and other forms of economic policy in the long term, so it doesn’t have the kitchen sink in there,” Ms Dodds said. It’s not acceptable that we’ve had so many NAO reports that have highlighted problems [in government waste] and yet we still see a recurrence in those issues time after time

                                                Since taking charge of Labour last April, Keir Starmer has helped steer Britain’s opposition party back to a more stable footing following its heavy defeat at the 2019 general election. But he has been accused more recently of being opportunistic during the Covid-19 crisis. The speech by Ms Dodds, and one by the leader himself on Monday, are part of a plan to start setting out the opposition’s positions on the most important aspects of government. With distance being put between Sir Keir’s economic strategy and his predecessor’s, the new leadership want to fight the Conservatives on the overall strategy of economic policy rather than tax and spend. In recent months, first the IMF and more recently the OECD have advised advanced economies such as the UK to refrain from taking action to reduce the public deficit until the recovery from the Covid-19 crisis is close to being complete and central banks again have to raise interest rates from zero to prevent inflation from rising. Laurence Boone, the OECD’s chief economist, this month said countries should not start “tightening” fiscal policy by raising taxes or cutting public spending “in the one to two years following the trough of GDP”. This message now lies at the heart of Labour’s new economic strategy. In the months ahead, that would mean continuing to spend more than the Tories, Ms Dodds said, not insisting on the 5 per cent rise in council taxes that the government is expecting in April and not cutting the rate of universal credit. With fiscal policy taking more of the strain in helping the economy to recover quickly from the Covid-19 pandemic, she wants monetary policy to play a lesser role in the future.

                                                In her speech, Ms Dodds will argue that if monetary policy did all the work, as it did during the austerity decade after 2010, then it would “exacerbate inequality and concentrate economic gains in the hands of those who were already asset-rich, at the expense of those who rely on income from their labour”. This stance implies borrowing and debt would be higher under Labour and would allow the Conservatives to say that the party is soft on tackling weaker public finances.

                                                But Ms Dodds told the FT that the sustainability of the public finances should not be measured on an annual or five-year basis, but over a considerably longer period. Calling for a “responsible fiscal framework” based on “pragmatism, not dogmatism”, she will commit Labour to a rolling target of balancing the government’s current budget in the future, which would allow increased capital spending. There would also be an exception to the rule for times of crisis, which would allow for a delay in budgetary consolidation while the Covid-19 recovery was continuing, but Labour is planning two defences against inevitable Tory jibes about fiscal recklessness. The first is an idea from the Institute for Fiscal Studies that would set a “fiscal anchor”, stopping a free-for-all in public spending increases. The second is that Labour is determined to attack what it regards as Conservative waste in public spending during the crisis and put in place safeguards to prevent a repeat under a Labour government. It plans to give the National Audit Office a mandate to report to parliament each year on the effectiveness of government spending with ministers required to respond at each Budget. “It’s not acceptable that we’ve had so many NAO reports that have highlighted problems [in government waste] and yet we still see a recurrence in those issues time after time,” Ms Dodds said. “We need to have much more political accountability around those processes for the future.”

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                                                  he has been accused more recently of being opportunistic during the Covid-19 crisis
                                                  Blimey. And there's me thinking the exact opposite

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                                                    https://twitter.com/davies_will/status/1349275207920463873?s=21

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