Starmer just destroyed Sunak there.
Westminster Politics
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
I can't help but watch each week and still somehow be surprised at how shit Sunak is.
Also feel like Starmer was a bit too scripted, he could have ad libbed how ridiculous Sunak's responses were. So many opportunities to rinse Sunak for chatting utter shite.
If you pick through the desiccated bones strewn across Labour's policy graveyard you can still find enough consolation to vote for them I think.
They in any case have the crucial benefit of not being the Conservatives. It doesn't take a lot of positives beyond that.
This is a graphic but sadly accurate way of describing the exact situation we find ourselves in. How depressing.Still preferable to the guy stood next to your burnt down house, who’s carrying a Jerry can and a pack of matches, running on a promise to rebuild your house to the standard it was before it mysteriously got burnt down!
That's a very generous image, to assume he cares, or is prepared to acknowledge, that your house burnt down.
The Tories can’t copy a policy graveyard and claim it as their own
Sure. But I'd rather Bob the Builder turned up than some chap offering me commiserations and expecting me to be grateful for a wet wipe.
Like, I'm obviously being glib but concrete offerings and plans are undeniably scant.
Not sure how I left Gullis out, I can’t scroll a second through socials without seeing his face this week.
Because any offering is easily destroyed and straw manned into oblivion by the express, mail et al.
Ah yes, that old chestnut. Starmer is only pretending to be right wing so the papers don't smear him.
I'm sure he'll definitely pivot once in office
Pretending to be right wing? Good lord, I don't think he's right wing tbh.
But then again right wing nowadays to the left is anyone who isn't advocating for luxury automated communism.
Not really. In fact quite ironically thats a statement someone from the right would make, assuming those on the left simply want to seize the means of production and end enterprise. Even if you take someone deemed a 'radical leftist' like Corbyn, a large number of his policies were popular with the British public, especially when you detached Corbyn's name from them.
I mean you have Starmer trying to one up the Tories on immigration, you have his shadow chancellor suggesting a period of austerity would continue, his party are also following the Tory stance on initially refusing to back a ceasefire, supporting Israel's collective punishment of Palestinians and then demanding to remove the collective punishment accusations in parliamentary amendments. He's not exactly spiritually fist bumping Mussolini, but to be concerned that he's flirting with right wing sentiment doesn't automatically make you a proto-communist.
These magic policies that were popular that they voted for Corbyn in droves?
Oh wait, he had two bites of the cherry and the electorate handed the Tories a stinking majority. He was up against a DoA PM in May and utterly a spoilt jar of mayonnaise in Johnson and he still was battered.
In reality, having good ideas that are "popular with the British public" doesn't get you elected.
And getting elected IS THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS because it's the only way you can affect change.
I know most would prefer consistent, perma opposition so they can rage tweet and moan while the country is sold off for parts to some rich offshore cnut, but I'd prefer to at least attempt a change of administration so we can stop this rot.
Of course they are, Starmer is offering no targets, or is trying to erase anything that might be construed as a target for the Tories to either deride or to copy, at least at this stage. Once the firing pistol starts for the GE proper I would expect some selective major headline (costed) policy's to be revealed for term 1; a list of possibles for term 2 and a 'runners and riders' list for term 3..... of a future 3 term Labour government.
It's going to be a long haul, up hill most of the way, but effectively a 15 year plan set out in as much detail as he can, would be ideal for Starmer... just hope there is no more Covid hiding around the bend.
I'm responding to your point suggesting that those on the left hound Starmer for not being to the left of Trotsky. We can debate what made Corbyn unelectable, but the polling data suggests it wasn't his proposed policies. In fact going out on a limb, I'd wager Starmer would enjoy the same lead in the polls had he largely gone with the same manifesto Labour offered in 2019, voters ultimately found issue with Corbyn himself, the alleged affinity with the IRA/Hamas as well as his personality, not helped of course by the absolute hatchet job the media did on him. In short, this notion that those of us as traditionally Labour or even moderate voters are concerned with Starmer's alignment shift in recent months/years hardly puts us in the unwashed, student commie category. Its a lazy and nonsensical categorisation that dismisses some genuine concerns people have.
Precisely this. I don't know why its so hard to fathom that a party isn't entitled by default to votes from certain demographics or voting groups. Yes the alternative is worse, but people are entitled to not wanting to throw their hat into a ticket that they feel doesn't resonate with them, or even one that's crossed certain lines they personally have drawn themselves. That's essentially the virtue behind democracy. If Starmer fails to land himself in no 10 at a time the Tories have given him an open goal, then frankly he has no one else but himself to blame.
Shaming and ridiculing those who seem apprehensive in backing him despite some very reasonable concerns is also foolishly counter-intuitive and will almost certainly only get them to double down on their stance instead of convincing them to get on board.
This is the 2010 Conservative manifesto.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/apr/13/conservative-manifesto-at-a-glance
Compare that to what Starmer has been proposing.
Good Lord, indeed.
Yeah but he’s right. The Overton window has shifted massively in the last 10 years and the Tories of 2010 are just a bunch of lefties advocating for luxury automated communism.
Ok so talk to me about this hatchet job that apparently scuppered Corbyn's bid to be PM?
Because why wouldn't the same media do the same to Starmer? You're not making much sense, you raise the media taking all of Corbyn's policies and smashing them up and pulling everything possible out to discredit him, in no part helped by JC earnestness and lack of political nouce.
Perhaps because they've learnt from their mistakes and understand context/needing to bridge the divide to the Tory voter and not to leave yourself open for easy digs, smears and derision.
The fact that no Tory voter was ever going to vote for Corbyn is what, in combination with other factors, made him unelectable.
You need these people, like it or not. You can't have a majority without them. He's not marketing or campaigning for you, he's signalling to Tory literally voters that he isn't going to create a Marxist state run by Hamas and tax everyone 99%. He needs their votes.
You and others have concerns about this precisely because you're acting like student union politics undergrads. You want to see yourself reflected back at you when you look at politicians, which I think is folly and just another type of identity politics.
Pray tell, what of those policies did they actually enact?
It's all so weird, it's like people just want to be promised something regardless of it ever coming true.
Manifesto pledges are the dumbest concept, can literally promise anything and people will clap and cheer.
You know I might be wrong, Keir Starmer might be worse than the Tories, more right wing than them and after he gets elected he undertakes a campaign of national destruction that makes the last 15 years look like a picnic.
Alas a man with working class parents, a toolmaker and a nurse, named after the founder of the labour party who has been a human rights lawyer and civil servant most of his life, now in his sixties leading the political party he's been a part of for five decades will be no different to a private school educated - I've never met a poor person - billionaire banker with zero experience in life other than making millions for hedge funds and rolling back taxes he personally profits from and gives government contracts to his billionaire father in law.
Yeah, these two profiles of politician are identical.
Alas a man with working class parents, a toolmaker and a nurse, named after the founder of the labour party who has been a human rights lawyer and civil servant most of his life, now in his sixties leading the political party he's been a part of for five decades will be no different to a private school educated - I've never met a poor person - billionaire banker with zero experience in life other than making millions for hedge funds and rolling back taxes he personally profits from and gives government contracts to his billionaire father in law.
Yeah, these two profiles of politician are identical.
Again, you're creating some sort of dichotomy where we can either accept Labour for what they are now, or resign to 'protest politics', as if we were all nothing but a bunch of naive, Che Guevera t shirt wearing students. Like it or not some of the policy shifts Starmer has steered Labour towards is of concern to us. As someone who's painfully concerned about the environmental ramifications of climate change, I find it incredibly concerning for example that Labour have turned their back on their green pledges. I also find the Labour position on the Gaza war incredibly resentful and far too apologetic and accepting of genocide. These issues might not be the deal breaker for you since you seem adamant that some good tangible change will come out of his tenure as PM, but I'm afraid I'll have to disagree. If you don't resonate with these positions then that's fine, there's nothing else I can say to get you to empathise with them, likewise there'll be little to convince someone like me to vote for Starmer's Labour, regardless of the alternative.
And please, its very clear Corbyn received disproportionally hostile scrutiny from the media. I'd wager his overt principles on the Palestinian struggle clearly didn't help his cause.
That was a very good read.
Let's see if your man cleans this sort of thing up
The Labour Party is historically a left wing socialist party.
You think that there's no other way. The Labour Party was founded because people disagreed with your premise. You think you can hold Starmer to account when he's in power. How, when you won't hold him to account when he isn't in power? Why would he listen to you when he holds all the cards? Both of you talking so much nonsense. One of you is regurgitating "my father was a toolmaker, my mother was a nurse" and the other is up for rounding people up and sticking them in one big town to be ruled over by a tory MP. Starmer is no friend of the working man. He is an establishment stooge and won't make our lives any better. Some of us have seen it for a while. All of us will see it in due course.
See, this is the thing. Posters like you and Pseudo aren't socialists and neither are the people who have taken over the Labour Party. You want power, not fairness. You're excited because people like you are close to power and you hope it will benefit people like you, but you're also scared because you think people like me won't make it a certainty. That's why you get angry and resort to exaggerating. Calling posters who are turned off by Starmer and Co the same as shy tories, or tory enablers, or fantasists who are only interested in a perfect political party, is so disingenuous that it feels like projection. You're the shy tories. You're the ones who don't want to admit to liking right wing policies. But Starmer is allowing you to say it loud and proud.
You think that there's no other way. The Labour Party was founded because people disagreed with your premise. You think you can hold Starmer to account when he's in power. How, when you won't hold him to account when he isn't in power? Why would he listen to you when he holds all the cards? Both of you talking so much nonsense. One of you is regurgitating "my father was a toolmaker, my mother was a nurse" and the other is up for rounding people up and sticking them in one big town to be ruled over by a tory MP
. Starmer is no friend of the working man. He is an establishment stooge and won't make our lives any better. Some of us have seen it for a while. All of us will see it in due course.They're going to hold him to account by guaranteeing him their votes again five years later, this time to 'keep the Tories out'. He'll probably get the police involved he'll be that petrified.The Labour Party is historically a left wing socialist party.
See, this is the thing. Posters like you and Pseudo aren't socialists and neither are the people who have taken over the Labour Party. You want power, not fairness. You're excited because people like you are close to power and you hope it will benefit people like you, but you're also scared because you think people like me won't make it a certainty. That's why you get angry and resort to exaggerating. Calling posters who are turned off by Starmer and Co the same as shy tories, or tory enablers, or fantasists who are only interested in a perfect political party, is so disingenuous that it feels like projection. You're the shy tories. You're the ones who don't want to admit to liking right wing policies. But Starmer is allowing you to say it loud and proud.
You think that there's no other way. The Labour Party was founded because people disagreed with your premise. You think you can hold Starmer to account when he's in power. How, when you won't hold him to account when he isn't in power? Why would he listen to you when he holds all the cards? Both of you talking so much nonsense. One of you is regurgitating "my father was a toolmaker, my mother was a nurse" and the other is up for rounding people up and sticking them in one big town to be ruled over by a tory MP
https://www.ft.com/content/c2d56d45-c061-4d5a-bf4f-1eddd1fa7d25
this is why it’s pointless Starmer showing Labours hand too early
this is why it’s pointless Starmer showing Labours hand too early
There is no excitement about power or people like me.The Labour Party is historically a left wing socialist party.
See, this is the thing. Posters like you and Pseudo aren't socialists and neither are the people who have taken over the Labour Party. You want power, not fairness. You're excited because people like you are close to power and you hope it will benefit people like you, but you're also scared because you think people like me won't make it a certainty. That's why you get angry and resort to exaggerating. Calling posters who are turned off by Starmer and Co the same as shy tories, or tory enablers, or fantasists who are only interested in a perfect political party, is so disingenuous that it feels like projection. You're the shy tories. You're the ones who don't want to admit to liking right wing policies. But Starmer is allowing you to say it loud and proud.
You think that there's no other way. The Labour Party was founded because people disagreed with your premise. You think you can hold Starmer to account when he's in power. How, when you won't hold him to account when he isn't in power? Why would he listen to you when he holds all the cards? Both of you talking so much nonsense. One of you is regurgitating "my father was a toolmaker, my mother was a nurse" and the other is up for rounding people up and sticking them in one big town to be ruled over by a tory MP
You want fairness without any work, sacrifice or achievement then bemoan when it doesn't happen so you can stay lamenting "unfairness"
How, when you won't hold him to account when he isn't in power? - precisely because he has no accountability, he cannot affect any change.
That statement highlights why I have my view tbh, you want to hold the bloke without any power to account rather than the people who are in power.
You think those that understand that without power you cannot affect any material change, or crave power for powers sake are the ones who don't understand accountability.
I truly find it grim how many people want things to change but have no gumption or guts to change them.
Oh and to think I've paid literally any attention to any "policies" being discussed before a GE is ridiculous. Why would you? Again, people want something to read that makes them feel all warm and fuzzy and "represented'.
People would rather sit around and discuss fairness while vandals ruin the country.
There's no fight on the left.
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Or because he's materially improved people's lives. If not, guess what, he gets booted out.
I'm halfway through Kleptopia, it's great
Because the man who conned them to win the leadership of the leftist party crippled them as the first order of business.
Oh and I'm actually pretty close to a socialist in my worldviewThe Labour Party is historically a left wing socialist party.
See, this is the thing. Posters like you and Pseudo aren't socialists and neither are the people who have taken over the Labour Party. You want power, not fairness. You're excited because people like you are close to power and you hope it will benefit people like you, but you're also scared because you think people like me won't make it a certainty. That's why you get angry and resort to exaggerating. Calling posters who are turned off by Starmer and Co the same as shy tories, or tory enablers, or fantasists who are only interested in a perfect political party, is so disingenuous that it feels like projection. You're the shy tories. You're the ones who don't want to admit to liking right wing policies. But Starmer is allowing you to say it loud and proud.
You think that there's no other way. The Labour Party was founded because people disagreed with your premise. You think you can hold Starmer to account when he's in power. How, when you won't hold him to account when he isn't in power? Why would he listen to you when he holds all the cards? Both of you talking so much nonsense. One of you is regurgitating "my father was a toolmaker, my mother was a nurse" and the other is up for rounding people up and sticking them in one big town to be ruled over by a tory MP
And please explain why fairness involves sacrifice for the working man. I don't get that. Surely fairness involves those with the most sacrificing so that those with the least get some?
What sacrifice for what working man?
Polling suggested a stunningly high support for some of Corbyn's most radical policies (such as renationalizing public utilities and even banks). It was serious polling too, not just the occasional black swan. It's a bit of a mystery to me how the perceived middle ground in UK politics have nevertheless shifted in the opposite direction, so that when the Labour Party is out to angle for disaffected centre voters (which obviously is what they're doing) they take up policies that would have been considered to be wildly Tory a decade ago. It speaks to how the Tories, who have of course moved to the right, are still defining the political landscape in the UK.
While not particularly left-leaning myself, I think Labor is making a very grave error by seemingly setting policy on the basis of being a certain remove from Suella Braverman and another, somewhat smaller remove from Rishi Sunak. Mostly because that just keeps reducing politics to a game of perception and plausibility, and ignores that in the end it is actually about solving difficult and real problems. If you want to do that you have to think seriously about them, and not worry primarily about what you end up looking like. I mean, continue austerity? That is not actually a moderate, or sane, policy. The UK public sector is extensively dysfunctional because of a decade and a half of grave and chronic underfunding, everyone knows this. Cutting it further clearly has no potential to create any efficiencies, it will only make it worse. So Starmer's line on that issue doesn't just indicate he won't solve that problem, but actually something worse, namely that he's not seriously trying to.
The political center of gravity all across the West is sliding in the direction of the radical right, who are taking ownership of and exploiting the disaffection created by the policies of the hitherto dominant liberal-conservative right. Ultimately the left has to come up with a better answer than this unless they want to cede that space to the likes of Donald Trump, Suella Braverman and the AfD.
If I were British, I would probably still vote for him though. For want of an alternative.
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Yeah, right. He's offering to do nothing already.
It won't, it'll turn out people in wheelchairs are getting paid too much again.