Starmer's vision quest

[Stevo 666]

Fire away.

https://ncap.cyclechat.net/threads/burnham.858/

Just did. In the end it won't make a huge amount of difference, just to how quickly and how hard we hit the wall of financial and fiscal reality. Will be interesting to see who he appoints as Chancellor.

 

[C R]

PZ Myers pointed to this thread in his blog

https://jorts.horse/@AnarchoNinaWrites/116795831653288247

Interesting how they go through the same diagnosis as we did regarding Starmer and political commentators.

 

[briantrumpet]

A good article from Vox highlighting the comparisons between Labour and US Democrats, and the futility for Starmer of trying to steal harsher immigration policies to woo right wing votes.

https://www.vox.com/politics/492756/keir-starmer-resigns-democrats

Starmer’s focus on looking for poll-tested cultural policies designed to win over voters lost to Reform was premised on a myth — that large numbers of far-right voters were open to voting for the center-left. Moreover, it necessarily meant compromising one’s own image in ways that made him seem both inauthentic and unprincipled, as if Labour under Starmer were trying to be something it obviously wasn’t and couldn’t be.

Those changes might have been acceptable if there was a new political identity to replace them. But Starmer also struggled to articulate a new North Star for the party, and for his personal brand of politics, that could attract a meaningful and enthusiastic base of support.

“Positioning himself as the custodian of a phantom center, Mr. Starmer treated most Labour supporters with contempt, as a partisan inconvenience and an obstacle to his project of national renewal,” the British journalist Samuel Earle wrote in the New York Times in May. “Yet he has also seemed too nervous to outline what that project might be.”

This might be the most salient lesson for American politics: that whatever one’s ultimate position is, be it left or center, compromising one’s own core identity is almost certainly a losing strategy. Political parties need affirmative visions that both animate their core supporters and create a clear sense of what they are and what they stand for.

Moderate politics can provide that vision: Both Bill Clinton and Tony Blair had versions of it in the 1990s. But Keir Starmer didn’t — and both he and his party are paying the price.

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

 

[briantrumpet]

FWIW...

 

[Badger_Boom]

There was a piece in the Guardian yesterday that was speaking to Leave voting areas and how they felt about their decision 10 years on. Several worked in the fishing industry and they said (as many of us pointed out pre and post the vote) that is was disastrous. The thing I will never understand is why people involved in industries that were so obviously going to be badly affected did not do even the most basic research around tariffs/quotas/trade deals/export changes etc.? I understand the argument that people want unicorns and believe in anyone that will try and sell them one, but that just simply isn't a valid excuse for anyone who now says "we were lied to". Yes you were, but you were also complicit and foolish in not doing your homework, particularly when there was so much evidence available for any given industry and the likely negative impact.

Or were (or even still are) aware on interested that some of those disasters were the direct result of the actions (actually inactions would be more appropriate) of Brexit's key proponent Nigel Farage MEP.

 

[Ian H]

Being sterner on Starmer.

View: https://x.com/i/status/2068987275409563745

 

[briantrumpet]

Here's the lunacy of Starmer's courting of Reform voters in one chart.

 

[C R]

Here's the lunacy of Starmer's courting of Reform voters in one chart.

View attachment 16211

From the no shıt sherlock department, sherley.

 

[icowden]

Here's the lunacy of Starmer's courting of Reform voters in one chart.

If you look at the voting intention share of the vote on Electoral Calculus, it's fairly plain that the people who voted Tory in 2024 have moved to Reform, pretty much exactly (along with most of Boris's cabinet) and the people who voted Labour have drifted to Green or Nationalist parties.

Both the right and the left have split. Reform doesn't court enough of the vote to win a majority, and neither does Labour or the Greens. If we had an election tomorrow the choice would be between the Tories propping up Reform or Labour, Lib Dems and Greens forming a coalition.

 

[briantrumpet]

Burnham has written to Labour MPs saying he's going to whip differently, more as it should be: the whips are a good way of gauging the mood of the PLP, and you're not going to endear yourself to your vote fodder, when you've got the luxury of a huge majority, by shooting the messengers.

I suspect it's another example of Starmer not being able or willing to change habits in opposition: he purged the Labour Party of the Corbynites, and it looks like he carried on with a similarly inflexible stance when in power. I'd guess that was at Blue Labour's bidding, given that Starmer seems to have been in their thrall.

 

[spen666]

Burnham has written to Labour MPs saying he's going to whip differently,....

What's this got to do with politics? Should be on a BDSM site surely?😱

 

[secretsqirrel]

Burnham has written to Labour MPs saying he's going to whip differently, more as it should be: the whips are a good way of gauging the mood of the PLP, and you're not going to endear yourself to your vote fodder, when you've got the luxury of a huge majority, by shooting the messengers.

I suspect it's another example of Starmer not being able or willing to change habits in opposition: he purged the Labour Party of the Corbynites, and it looks like he carried on with a similarly inflexible stance when in power. I'd guess that was at Blue Labour's bidding, given that Starmer seems to have been in their thrall.

View attachment 16214

While Badenoch is purging her party of candidates that support net zero and those who are against leaving ECHR, and replacing them with engineers, business people and shizzle.

The 2 major parties eat themselves.

 

[briantrumpet]

While Badenoch is purging her party of candidates that support net zero and those who are against leaving ECHR, and replacing them with engineers, business people and shizzle.

The 2 major parties eat themselves.

It started with Johnson demoting anyone who didn't profess Brexiphilia enough. Which was kind of unfortunate, as they were the only ones with normally-functioning brains and a sense of responsibility to the country, rather than the Johnson Party.

 

[Ian H]

Phil Wisdom, writing in the Western Morning News, describes Starmer's speeches -
...assemblages of shopworn clichés delivered in the tone of a driving instructor telling someone they'd failed their test.