Starmer's vision quest
- Thread starter mjr
- Start date
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A risk from Starmer's perspective is when people tend to form options and it can then be difficult to change those opinions even if fact suggests they should. So Starmer comes to power and people have more open minds as they don't know what he'll be like. But too much inaction, bad news, bad decisions and they'll decide he's no use and even if he turns (some) things round, many decisions will be resistant to change or not change enough to recover votes even in time.
Ian
theclaud
Reading around the chip
Why should Starmer take Musk's repeated baiting?Its ephemeral. He'll be saying something else next week, and the week after. The British government does not have to dance to the tune of a capricious billionaire, regardless of who he is and what he owns.
Starmer's immediate issue is how to foster a productive relationship with Trump, because he has to. Getting into a slanging match with Musk, on Musk's terms would be foolish. Sometimes it is better to say nothing and not get sucked into every fight.
Starmer has one massive luxury...time. There is no election here for 4 years. People are attempting to judge the Labour administration now, which is a ridiculous stance, but it is symptomatic of a political landscape where many have lost faith in the traditional political class and have become accustomed to pulling down Prime Ministers.
Do you think there might be some connection between the "loss of faith in the traditional political class" and the rise of the far right? And do you think the traditional political class bears any responsibility for this?
My concerns about this are not so much about Starmer opening a Xitter account and posting back but more the amount of Fake News around these days and that Xitter seems a major source and that Musk in starting his attacks is largely using fake news (false/untrue fact) and bringing it to prominence to the public who thgen seem to lap it up without much questioning.Why should Starmer take Musk's repeated baiting?
To me it beggars belief how readily people seem to accept being fed their news and information from a far-right oligarch with vested interests and then how little they question it.
To a degree it's then fault of the public who accept this twaddle as much as Musk for creating and/or highlighting it but I do think it's having a disastrous impact on society and our long term prospects.
Government certainly could do more without getting into posting squabbles with Musk and without banning/blocking but they don't seem terribly interested. Maybe because it helped some of them eg to get the Brexit referendum result. Maybe politicians are now seeing the public as useful idiots.
Ian
One of Starmer's biggest challenges to stay in power is NHS. Fail on that and I can't see him being re-elected next GE. I'm completely unconvinced about his policy/decision making on this
Kicking social care reforms into the long grass is just going to ensure NHS bed blocking continues to constrain treatment because they don't have available beds. Plus, when the inquiry reports close to next election it will be at a time when parties are trying to demonstrate they have different offerings for the electorate, to put space between them not a time when they'll want to come together with cross-party consensus
But now Starmer is looking to expand ring fenced elective capacity in the NHS for treatments such as hip and knee replacement surgery to protect it from winter pressures and future pandemics. So will people be expected to schedule their serious flu or RSV infection so NHS don't have to turn them away from A&E because of scheduled hip replacements? NHS is resource limited so dedicate resource to specific non-urgent treatment will mean taking it away from urgent/emergency treatments. To me it's "robbing peter to pay paul" or maybe "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic".
And now, non-NHS issues no longer happening eg the specialist rape courts that were to be setup to try and reduce the backlog now look like it's also being kicked into the long grass as Government sets-up a wider review of courts policy.
Ian
Kicking social care reforms into the long grass is just going to ensure NHS bed blocking continues to constrain treatment because they don't have available beds. Plus, when the inquiry reports close to next election it will be at a time when parties are trying to demonstrate they have different offerings for the electorate, to put space between them not a time when they'll want to come together with cross-party consensus
But now Starmer is looking to expand ring fenced elective capacity in the NHS for treatments such as hip and knee replacement surgery to protect it from winter pressures and future pandemics. So will people be expected to schedule their serious flu or RSV infection so NHS don't have to turn them away from A&E because of scheduled hip replacements? NHS is resource limited so dedicate resource to specific non-urgent treatment will mean taking it away from urgent/emergency treatments. To me it's "robbing peter to pay paul" or maybe "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic".
And now, non-NHS issues no longer happening eg the specialist rape courts that were to be setup to try and reduce the backlog now look like it's also being kicked into the long grass as Government sets-up a wider review of courts policy.
Ian
Ian H
Legendary Member
Belief is another way of describing confidence in the government. There seems to be very little.
BoldonLad
Old man on a bike. Not a member of a clique.
- Location
- South Tyneside
Very true, IMHO. The truth / facts are not relevant, it is what people believe to be true that matters. Brexit was surely a glaring example.
multitool
Pharaoh
Perhaps you need to take a breath and remind yourself who just got elected with a massive majority, 411 seats, and compare it to Nigel Farage's 5 seats.
What is going on now on SM is just fluff and people will tire of it.
Rusty Nails
Country Member
Putting this in the context of 5 months of Labour rule vs 14 years of Tory rule I think that, at the moment, there is no belief in any government and many people voted against the Tories rather than for Labour. This is also an issue reflected across politics in the US and Europe.
So far Starmer has got off to a poor start in giving people too many clear, high profile and immediate opportunities to not believe in him, such as the heating allowance and WASPI issues, and not enough articulation of exactly how or when his policies are going to bring round positive change. Negative news always outsells positive news and people in this internet era like promises of jam this afternoon rather than tomorrow.
C R
Über Member
I know it is a subtle concept, but it is widely acknowledged that Labour didn't win the election as much as the Conservatives lost it to reform. Truss' seat is a case in point, the only reason Labour won that seat is because the right wing vote was split three ways, there was hardly any transfer of votes to Labour. Seats like that are more likely to move towards reform than to stay with Labour.
I'll carry on with my Kasandra impersonation and point out that the NSDAP had 12 seats after the 1928 election, 123 after the 1930 election, and 230 after the 1932 election. We all know what happened after that.
Rusty Nails
Country Member
The elephant in the room is that the rise of the far right is linked to immigration...whether here, in the US or Europe where people seem to have lost faith in "the traditional political class" i.e. politicians to resolve the concerns (whether justified or not) they have, and the far right know that populism on some issues is a powerful tactic.
C R
Über Member
That's back to front. We immigrants are the scapegoat put up to distract from the failure to curb the excesses of capitalism. The mainstream left was always more concerned with not upsetting the bosses than really addressing the erosion of the social contract, leaving the disenchanted open to hear an easy story of someone to blame.
It is too late for the social democracy to turn that discourse around even if they wanted. And looking at Starmer's lot, it isn't clear they want to. Guillotines are being sharpened.
Rusty Nails
Country Member
That may well be true but it doesn't address the issue of what to do about what is, after all, not just a UK issue. Politicians of the far right are weaponising it, it will not just be wished away on a cloud of distaste, and a realistic way to deal with it within the political framework we have has to be addressed or the far right will continue to take advantage.
The Crofted Crest
Active Member
I used this before and I still feel soiled. Can it in future be followed by "TM C R"?
(Sorry can't do superscript on phone.)
