Starmer's vision quest

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D

Deleted member 49

Guest
By the way, it's started, Adam...

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What sort of homes....Council,affordable ?
Or relaxing planning for building on Green belt.
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multitool

Guest
If ever you wanted convincing proof that centrism is the way forward, Adam, here it is...


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Wobblers

Member
Liz Truss did. 300 billion of it. In one day.

Whatever happened to Truss?!

Okay, that's exactly your point: I'm just surprised that we're still having this conversation, after Liz's Trussterfark. Yes, with a fiat currency we can always magic up more money. The problem is, the value of money is based on what people (especially the markets) deem it to be. Create vast sums as Truss did and you'll find that people take fright, and value your currency a good deal less. Which, as it turns out, is something of a problem when you need to buy in food, gas, oil and other commodities priced in dollars. There isn't infintie latitude in the system to do what we please - spending can only be increased as long as it's perceived that the underlying economy will support it. The UK has the weakest economy in the G7 group (I wonder just why that might be?)

Inflation, BTW, is one of the most benign consequences of unrestrained spending - just ask anyone in Zimbabwe. Speaking of inflation, it was rising sharply even before Ukraine - and a central cause of that was the fiscal stimulus pumped into the economy during Covid. Note that the benefits of that stimulus was concentrated in the most wealthy - who cheerily spent their windfall with the inevitable inflationary results - while the worst effects in food, energy and housing have been experienced in the poorest in society. If you realy want to highlight a gross injustice @Adam4868, that would be a good place to start.
 
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Wobblers

Member
I'm enjoying watching the progress of the Labour campaign this far out, and how Starmer is trolling the tories and is now parking his tanks on Sunak's lawn.

It's objectively hilarious when you consider that the Tories are imploding before your eyes. Their Nat Con conference is a demonstration of just how much the right wing of the party hate their own party. Rees-Mogg has just proved it by openly accusing his own party of gerrymandering.

Starmer is pulling Sunak's ground from him. But he is also eyeing up post-election when Sunak will be ousted and very possibly the Conservatives will be atomised, and end up as a rump of hard-right culture warriors, who can then be largely disregarded.

Adam will hate this, but Starmer has done extraordinarily well. He's had to sideline the Corbynites, get some discipline back and start presenting the party as a serious force capable of government rather than the utter joke of Corbyn, Burton, Pidcock et al. We are barely 2.5 years from the utter disaster of Corbyn, and the implosion of the party.

I can't recall what exactly New Labour were doing at this point in the electoral cycle in there development but it would have been equivalent to about December 1995. New Labour put out their manifesto in July 1996, so those berating Starmer for not announcing big policies are being a little premature.

What we lack so far is the excitement and hope and the presentation of positive change rather than just being 'not Tory', but I'm not sure we can expect this just yet. Starmer has a year before he has to get the manifesto out. We are still a long way out from a GE and whilst the focus is on the mess the country is in he can afford to keep the focus on that and let the Tories sit in it.

If the Tories are imploding, why would anyone want to emulate them? What's the point? Given that they're despised by a large fraction of the electorate and distrusted by most of the rest, it seems rather more sensible to ensure you've got clear water between you and them, rather than adopt all their policies. At the moment, all Starmer seems to be doing is saying that he'll be just as evil as the Tories, but be more competent. Err, no. I prefer my evil politicians to be incompetent chumps: they're capable of wreaking far less damage that way. If Stamer's claiming to be a competent evil politico, that's an excellent reason to not vote for him.

And, no, Starmer hasn't been doing "extraordinarily well". He was doing very badly in the polls against Johnson: it wsa only after Partygate and Truss's disasterous 7 weeks that Labour have pulled ahead. He's done very little, Labour's lead is down to the failures in the Conservatives, not Starmer's actions. He's simply mediocre. A Blair without the charisma, or vision. The most charitable thing you could say about Starmer's leadership is that it's been consistently lacklustre and insipid.
 
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multitool

Guest
"Extraordinarily well" does not refer to current polling, but the journey from Labour being in the bin, to currently likely to get a majority.

You say he's only winning by default, and whilst that is partly true those votes could have gone to LD or Greens instead.

No, he's not Blair. He's not as good, but then most aren't. Blair was exceptional. I know it's cool to slag Blair off, and yes the Iraq war utterly destroyed his legacy, but (apart from Brown) he's been the only non-Tory PM since the 1970s. Like it or not, the centre ground is where the votes are found.
 
D

Deleted member 49

Guest
Inflation, BTW, is one of the most benign consequences of unrestrained spending - just ask anyone in Zimbabwe. Speaking of inflation, it was rising sharply even before Ukraine - and a central cause of that was the fiscal stimulus pumped into the economy during Covid. Note that the benefits of that stimulus was concentrated in the most wealthy - who cheerily spent their windfall with the inevitable inflationary results - while the worst effects in food, energy and housing have been experienced in the poorest in society. If you realy want to highlight a gross injustice @Adam4868, that would be a good place to start.
You allright Andrew 😁
The last Labour government apparently left us skint...then It turns out austerity, cutting public services, attacking disabled/poor people and taking money out of people’s pockets to get the debt down didn't actually work ! Sick of hearing sh1te like wages are driving inflation,there's no money,there is !
We can argue the details of it forever but we need change,stop profiteering from basic infrastructure,nationalise/publicly funded companies, transform the economy blah blah...for me it's redistribute wealth that's it.
 
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bobzmyunkle

Senior Member
Like it or not, the centre ground is where the votes are found.
The centre ground moves further and further to the right as Tool sits quietly* in his armchair waiting for the second coming of 'new' Labour.

* quietly apart from his astute and learned interventions on CC
 

theclaud

Reading around the chip
"Extraordinarily well" does not refer to current polling, but the journey from Labour being in the bin, to currently likely to get a majority.

You say he's only winning by default, and whilst that is partly true those votes could have gone to LD or Greens instead.

No, he's not Blair. He's not as good, but then most aren't. Blair was exceptional. I know it's cool to slag Blair off, and yes the Iraq war utterly destroyed his legacy, but (apart from Brown) he's been the only non-Tory PM since the 1970s. Like it or not, the centre ground is where the votes are found.

It's not a quantitative thing. There's no contradiction in thinking that Blair was a talented politician with ideas and vision and despising him and his politics. Starmer clearly aspires to be admired the way Blair was at the start. Also the government of 97 was initially a vehicle of considerable hope even amongst those of us who distrusted o'r even hated Blair. Starmer has been on a hope-crushing mission since he was elected leader.

Iraq didn't destroy Blair's legacy - it is his legacy.
 

multitool

Guest
It's not a quantitative thing. There's no contradiction in thinking that Blair was a talented politician with ideas and vision and despising him and his politics. Starmer clearly aspires to be admired the way Blair was at the start. Also the government of 97 was initially a vehicle of considerable hope even amongst those of us who distrusted o'r even hated Blair. Starmer has been on a hope-crushing mission since he was elected leader.

Iraq didn't destroy Blair's legacy - it is his legacy.

I hate this word in the context of debate, but....semantics.

Take Iraq out of the legacy and it would look very different. It was beyond catastrophic. Campbell is still punting the line that it wasn't a mistake. But Blair's years were comparatively good ones up until the economic crash of 08. Comparative being the key word, because the comparison should be made with what preceeded and succeeded his administration and not Adam's fantasy politics.

Blair's talent was communicating a message of hope, and being able to deliver some of it. It is clear that Starmer hasn't got that skill, nor Sunak, but then nor do most.
 

multitool

Guest

Worked it out yet?

Labour abstained. They didn't vote against the SNP bill, nor for it. Numerically they couldn't win it, so the Public Order Act remains anyway, but voting to overturn it gives the Tories the gift of saying that Labour are pro-chaos. Their client press would have it as their front page for days.

What you forget is that public sympathy DOES NOT lie with Extinction Rebellion or Just Stop Oil, regardless of how righteous they are. And public sympathy and optics is what matters in the business of winning and election.

We had 4 years of the Labour party being a student protest party and it got us 5 more years of Tory, Liz Truss, higher mortgages, an NHS being run into the ground and so on. These are the things that matter to the electorate.
 
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