Next Labour leader - Starmer and Rayner win

Sweet Square said:
Honestly I think Keir Starmer might get my vote. Clearly the public rejected Corbyn socialist approach and maybe someone with Starmer appeal can win over the public, as well as bring the party together during this difficult time.

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Starmer biggest problem, being a remain campaigner, could turn out to be an asset if leaving the EU turns out to be as bad as many believe.
 
Fiskey said:
But someone like Kier Starmer is (I imagine) no longer earning as much as he did when he was a lawyer (and bought his lovely houses). If someone like Kier proposes taxes on wealth as well as earnings, then fine. If just earnings there is a sense of pulling up the ladder once you've already climbed up.
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I expect that he will propose wealth taxes. The other argument is basically an argument for why taxes should never be raised for top earners which I don't think holds up to much scrutiny. Unfortunately real scrutiny only seems to apply to Labour these days! Not to mention you'd expect his earnings to shoot up after being PM (isn't that generally the case?)
 
Shamwow said:
I expect that he will propose wealth taxes. The other argument is basically an argument for why taxes should never be raised for top earners which I don't think holds up to much scrutiny. Unfortunately real scrutiny only seems to apply to Labour these days! Not to mention you'd expect his earnings to shoot up after being PM (isn't that generally the case?)
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Only with Blair, I don't think Brown, Cameron or May have earned any more than they did before becoming prime minister afterwards. Thatcher and Major also seemed to wind down. No idea before then.
 
MikeUpNorth said:
This article from the guardian in 2012 is worth reflecting on while we think about how to win back the traditional base:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/jun/05/why-working-class-people-vote-conservative

I think its central premise is right that those of us on the left often mistakenly think economics and helping the vulnerable is all people should care about.
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Interesting article. Worth a read and certainly shows a few flaws in this Labour party campaign.
 
Shamwow said:
First search I did on Cameron brought this up https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mi...d-cameron-pocketed-800000-within-13923919.amp

Major https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-1541096/Part-timer-Major-earns-163850000.html

CBA checking the others.
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I'd always be wary of papers estimating figures, as they have their own companies it should be fairly easy to estimate earnings from the accounts, which they haven't done in Major's case. They are also counting the book deals as a major part of their earnings calcultation, however these are normally donated to charity - definitely were by Cameron, Blair and Brown.

From what I understand Cameron was earning loads of money before he went into office. He and Samantha have massive family wealth anyway.
 
MikeUpNorth said:
This article from the guardian in 2012 is worth reflecting on while we think about how to win back the traditional base:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/jun/05/why-working-class-people-vote-conservative

I think its central premise is right that those of us on the left often mistakenly think economics and helping the vulnerable is all people should care about.
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This, plus the incessant bashing of people that have made something of themselves. For example, whenever Corbyn spoke about property owners or landlords it was all about bad ones who were greedy uncaring cnuts.

There are tens of thousands of 'working-class people in the UK who bought properties on buy-to-let schemes or inherited it from departed parents. Many like me work hard to ensure their tenants are treated fairly and looked after.

Most aren't stinking rich, but they object to be being made to feel like pariahs.

Of course the poor and distressed are important but their plight was the only message I heard coming out of the Labour camp this election.

What was on offer for the millions of folk that are not poor and distressed but also not stinking rich?
 
Fiskey said:
I'd always be wary of papers estimating figures, as they have their own companies it should be fairly easy to estimate earnings from the accounts, which they haven't done in Major's case. They are also counting the book deals as a major part of their earnings calcultation, however these are normally donated to charity - definitely were by Cameron, Blair and Brown.

From what I understand Cameron was earning loads of money before he went into office. He and Samantha have massive family wealth anyway.
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I doubt Starmer earned as much as Cameron or had as much wealth before parliament, if we're getting back to the question of whether it'd be hypocritical for him to increase taxes.

I just found those off a 2 second Google search, if you have other data let me know . They must make so much off speeches alone though, imagine what a former PM could charge for them.
 
Honest John said:
This, plus the incessant bashing of people that have made something of themselves. For example, whenever Corbyn spoke about property owners or landlords it was all about bad ones who were greedy uncaring cnuts.

There are tens of thousands of 'working-class people in the UK who bought properties on buy-to-let schemes or inherited it from departed parents. Many like me work hard to ensure their tenants are treated fairly and looked after.

Most aren't stinking rich, but they object to be being made to feel like pariahs.

Of course the poor and distressed are important but their plight was the only message I heard coming out of the Labour camp this election.

What was on offer for the millions of folk that are not poor and distressed but also not stinking rich?
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Better infrastructure for the country is a big benefit to everyone, I don't think Labour framed it in the right way in the last election. It should be heavily "we're investing in the country".

Real talk though, landlords can get fecked with this "poor landlords" bullshit. cnuts.
 
Shamwow said:
Better infrastructure for the country is a big benefit to everyone, I don't think Labour framed it in the right way in the last election. It should be heavily "we're investing in the country".

Real talk though, landlords can get fecked with this "poor landlords" bullshit. cnuts.
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I'm not crying 'poor landlords'. Just not always stinking rich and not generally total cnuts.
 
Honest John said:
I'm not crying 'poor landlords'. Just not always stinking rich and not generally total cnuts.
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Aye a lot of them do though. Landlords have had far too much influence in parliament since forever so I'm not going to feel sorry for them any time soon.

My Dad is a BTL landlord who is relying on it for much of his pension so I sympathise to an extent that not all Landlords are stinking rich but he still managed to vote Labour this time around.
 
MikeUpNorth said:
This article from the guardian in 2012 is worth reflecting on while we think about how to win back the traditional base:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/jun/05/why-working-class-people-vote-conservative

I think its central premise is right that those of us on the left often mistakenly think economics and helping the vulnerable is all people should care about.
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Reading the comments below that from 7 years ago just demonstrates that the attitude of some on the left to the working classes has not changed. Lots of "they're fooled by the media", "they don't understand what's best for them" etc.
 
Shamwow said:
Aye a lot of them do though. Landlords have had far too much influence in parliament since forever so I'm not going to feel sorry for them any time soon.

My Dad is a BTL landlord who is relying on it for much of his pension so I sympathise to an extent that not all Landlords are stinking rich but he still managed to vote Labour this time around.
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I get that but the Labour language has to change and not make a pariah out of someone like your Dad. They have not only got to win back their core voters to get in power, they need to convince some Libs and Tories to vote Labour too. Branding anyone who voted Tory as total vermin is not a good way to do that.

Edit: Your Dad will tell you that BTL landlords have been hit pretty bad with tax in that they can't claim mortgage interest as an expense anymore. It was the the Tories who borough that in. Lots are getting out.
 
Honest John said:
This, plus the incessant bashing of people that have made something of themselves. For example, whenever Corbyn spoke about property owners or landlords it was all about bad ones who were greedy uncaring cnuts.

There are tens of thousands of 'working-class people in the UK who bought properties on buy-to-let schemes or inherited it from departed parents. Many like me work hard to ensure their tenants are treated fairly and looked after.

Most aren't stinking rich, but they object to be being made to feel like pariahs.

Of course the poor and distressed are important but their plight was the only message I heard coming out of the Labour camp this election.

What was on offer for the millions of folk that are not poor and distressed but also not stinking rich?
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Someone on local radio was complaining about just this today. Labour policies didn't say anything about protecting landlords from bad tennants.
 
I think BTL landlords would greatly benefit from;

1. Housing benefit payments going directly to them.
2. Some sort of government based insurance scheme to protect them from deliberate damage by bad tenants.
3. Legal support to remove tenants who violate agreements.

I think tenants would greatly benefit from;
1. Some sort of government entity that would inspect homes before and after they are rented.
2. A govt entity which would help if landlords were not keeping homes in a decent state.
3. The right to remain in a tenancy outside of contract for upto 6 months, whilst they look for a new place.
4. The right to auto-renew tenancy if the landlord has no intention of selling. Mind you the landlord should have the right to charge upto 10% more than local average for the area/property if they want to.

I bet voters would be happy to vote for policies that give landlords and tenants protections.
 
Zlatattack said:
Someone on local radio was complaining about just this today. Labour policies didn't say anything about protecting landlords from bad tennants.
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Yes it is true. I wouldn't want to make an issue about it but I have had some pretty unpleasant experiences. One lot were 11 months in arrears. I knew they were doing hard drugs. So when I threatened court action they trashed the place with a pick. Cost me £10k including the lost rent.
 
Zlatattack said:
I think BTL landlords would greatly benefit from;

1. Housing benefit payments going directly to them.
2. Some sort of government based insurance scheme to protect them from deliberate damage by bad tenants.
3. Legal support to remove tenants who violate agreements.

I think tenants would greatly benefit from;
1. Some sort of government entity that would inspect homes before and after they are rented.
2. A govt entity which would help if landlords were not keeping homes in a decent state.
3. The right to remain in a tenancy outside of contract for upto 6 months, whilst they look for a new place.
4. The right to auto-renew tenancy if the landlord has no intention of selling. Mind you the landlord should have the right to charge upto 10% more than local average for the area/property if they want to.

I bet voters would be happy to vote for policies that give landlords and tenants protections.
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Nothing wrong with those at all in my view.
 
Much as many property owners want their properties to increase in value, I believe that there should be a massive project of house-building. Especially low-cost and social/council houses. This may cause a a short term dip in prices but as longer term tenants are given the right to buy then that should drive the market at the other end. What mustn't happen is additional social houses aren't built to replace those sold to tenants. This is why we are where we are now.

In my view this is the Tories' Achilles Heel and if they fail to do something about it they will be in real trouble in the future. Home ownership is a cornerstone of Tory ideology.
 
Honest John said:
I get that but the Labour language has to change and not make a pariah out of someone like your Dad. They have not only got to win back their core voters to get in power, they need to convince some Libs and Tories to vote Labour too. Branding anyone who voted Tory as total vermin is not a good way to do that.

Edit: Your Dad will tell you that BTL landlords have been hit pretty bad with tax in that they can't claim mortgage interest as an expense anymore. It was the the Tories who borough that in. Lots are getting out.
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We did some research on landlords this year and were surprised to find that over 90% of landlords only own one property. With the average UK rent at about £11,640 per year, minus about 10% of use a lettings agency and about 10% for repairs and upkeep, even on a property where there's no mortgage to pay, the average landlord is only pulling in about £9000 per year for a property. And that's the average, if you live in Rochdale you're pulling down about £4500 a year. That's no pittance but it doesnt make you a millionaire either, so it never felt sensible to make landlords a target.
 
Social Democratic parties in north/western Europe (not necessarily in other parts of Europe or globally) struggle since the end of New labour-type governments in the 00s.

It's not wrong to talk about persons, program details, specific circumstances but one shouldn't miss that there seems to be a more general trend. Other parties on the left like green/progressive parties can capatilize on this so its not just a general shift to the right. This makes it more complicated to analyze for the UK because Labour agreggates both tendencies to different extends due to fptp.

There are many potential explanations for this trend and it's hard to say which are true and which are just good stories. Its also hard to differentiate between cause and effect.

Daily politics aside, social democrats have to understand these structural causes and solve them or they'll lose relevance.

I think Corbyn can be seen as an attempt to do exactly that. As it turns out this wasn't successful.

Repeating that or just repeating new labour are imo both going to fail.
 
Honest John said:
I get that but the Labour language has to change and not make a pariah out of someone like your Dad. They have not only got to win back their core voters to get in power, they need to convince some Libs and Tories to vote Labour too. Branding anyone who voted Tory as total vermin is not a good way to do that.

Edit: Your Dad will tell you that BTL landlords have been hit pretty bad with tax in that they can't claim mortgage interest as an expense anymore. It was the the Tories who borough that in. Lots are getting out.
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He's still doing alright. Sorry your easy money maker is getting a bit harder.
 
EwanI Ted said:
We did some research on landlords this year and were surprised to find that over 90% of landlords only own one property. With the average UK rent at about £11,640 per year, minus about 10% of use a lettings agency and about 10% for repairs and upkeep, even on a property where there's no mortgage to pay, the average landlord is only pulling in about £9000 per year for a property. And that's the average, if you live in Rochdale you're pulling down about £4500 a year. That's no pittance but it doesnt make you a millionaire either, so it never felt sensible to make landlords a target.
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I seen other research this year saying it's more like 45%.
 
Shamwow said:
I seen other research this year saying it's more like 45%.
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To be fair I went to look up the report we had done, ours was in our region only not national, and it was for people with 1 or 2 houses, not just 1, so you could be right on a national basis. My bad. Point stands though, if you can't get on the housing ladder it must seem irritating that some people have more than 1 house, but its not like being a landlord makes you an oligarch.
 
EwanI Ted said:
We did some research on landlords this year and were surprised to find that over 90% of landlords only own one property. With the average UK rent at about £11,640 per year, minus about 10% of use a lettings agency and about 10% for repairs and upkeep, even on a property where there's no mortgage to pay, the average landlord is only pulling in about £9000 per year for a property. And that's the average, if you live in Rochdale you're pulling down about £4500 a year. That's no pittance but it doesnt make you a millionaire either, so it never felt sensible to make landlords a target.
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For a lot of people it only serves to make their pension liveable.
 
mad1max954 said:
Has anyone seen Blair's piece on the election loss on Sky news 'labour was marooned on fantasy island'? , I genuinely worry that he is absolutely right.

The country needs a strong central Labour and I worry that they are going to continue down this path. They were an impossible vote for anyone not completely on the left. iv just cut and pasted some of the article here

Mr Blair described Labour's general election campaign as a "combination of misguided ideology and terminal ineptitude" and claimed it was a "cardinal error" for current Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to have ever agreed to the election.
Labour "pursued a path of almost comic indecision" on Brexit that alienated both Leave supporters and Remain supporters, the party's former leader said.
He told an audience he was not criticising Mr Corbyn "as a person", but said the Labour leader's political ethos - which he described as "quasi-revolutionary socialism" - has "never appealed to traditional Labour voters" and "never will appeal".
He added: "The takeover of the Labour Party by the far left turned it into a glorified protest movement with cult trimmings, utterly incapable of being a credible government."
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Some credence to what Blair is saying, as there usually is to be fair to him, but once again he proves incapable of even a hint of introspection. Perhaps he'd like to address his own role in the decay of Labour and why the party has become, to use his words, a 'far left [party] turned into a glorified protest movement'. The most notable thing from his speech was not what he did say, but what he didn't. No tangible or meaningful prescriptions put forward other than some pretty nebulous pontificating about modernisation and the need to be in tune with the times. Sums up the intellectual vacuum gifted to the party by the centre once New Labour was on its last legs. It's like going to a GP who has no problem diagnosing what your problem is but when you ask him what the remedy is he just mutters some shit about 'you need to get better'.
 
BobbyManc said:
Some credence to what Blair is saying, as there usually is to be fair to him, but once again he proves incapable of even a hint of introspection. Perhaps he'd like to address his own role in the decay of Labour and why the party has become, to use his words, a 'far left [party] turned into a glorified protest movement'. The most notable thing from his speech was not what he did say, but what he didn't. No tangible or meaningful prescriptions put forward other than some pretty nebulous pontificating about modernisation and the need to be in tune with the times. Sums up the intellectual vacuum gifted to the party by the centre once New Labour was on its last legs. It's like going to a GP who has no problem diagnosing what your problem is but when you ask him what the remedy is he just mutters some shit about 'you need to get better'.
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Not one of Blair's better interventions. His breakdown and analysis is usually very good, even if he generally concludes that he was right all along. But I actually think he's missed the point here. He's seen lots of figures he knows from his old battle with the far left fail and he concludes they've failed because they're far left. But I dont actually think this failure can only be explained by reference to the the left-right spectrum. The rejection by middle England, for sure, but the failings in the Labour heardtlands is quite different. That's about a clash of social values rather than political values.
 
EwanI Ted said:
Not one of Blair's better interventions. His breakdown and analysis is usually very good, even if he generally concludes that he was right all along. But I actually think he's missed the point here. He's seen lots of figures he knows from his old battle with the far left fail and he concludes they've failed because they're far left. But I dont actually think this failure can only be explained by reference to the the left-right spectrum. The rejection by middle England, for sure, but the failings in the Labour heardtlands is quite different. That's about a clash of social values rather than political values.
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Yeah, I fully agree. An important point that the narrative of 'Labour went hard-left so voters rejected them' is missing is that these voters in the 'Red Wall' who supposedly found Labour's leftism too hard to stomach instead lent their support to a Conservative party that decided the likes of Ken Clarke were too sensible and moderate. That's not to deny Labour could have fared better with a more tempered agenda (although I'd argue it was mainly a failing of presentation rather than substance, but granted problems existed with the substance too), but we need to avoid these simplistic narratives however comforting they may be to some if we are to move the party forward from here.
 
I've read that the Labour Party has had 25000 new members sign up since the election in anticipation of the leadership race. How does the Labour Party vet that these are actually Labour supporters? I had a hardcore white nationalist classmate at uni openly boast about signing up and voting for Corbyn during the last leadership election.
 
marktan said:
I've read that the Labour Party has had 25000 new members sign up since the election in anticipation of the leadership race. How does the Labour Party vet that these are actually Labour supporters? I had a hardcore white nationalist classmate at uni openly boast about signing up and voting for Corbyn during the last leadership election.
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