The General Politics Thread v2.0 (AKA the "Labour are Cunts" thread)

[Jazzy G]

35 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

That's my genuine concern, and I don't think it's far off, nor do I think it's anything like the foregone conclusion people think it is that the Tories lose the next election or, that if they do, that Labour win in any significant sense. Because Starmer offers nothing, no alternative message, nothing beyond "I'm not them". And if, after four years of Not Them, thing don't measurably improve? Or, even if they do, if the Tories are able to convince us that they didn't? A Labour Party with no message and no mission will get destroyed at the ballot box by the next halfway competent Tory, because the media simply don't hold that party to account the same way they do Labour - they're happy to treat a change of leadership as a brand new party, even after thirteen years of government.

Transformative change should be born of national crisis. That's what the Beveridge Report was all about, that we could come out of World War 2 and into a country that actually looked after its people. Britain is far from alone in this, but I think it's a travesty that the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic wasn't - at any level of government or opposition - to give serious cause to reconsidering the way we structure our society, and where our priorities lay. And it's not that there weren't alternative messages out there - Labour under Starmer seem so much more obsessed with ridding themselves of the legacy of Corbyn, and of the Left in general, than with meaningfully opposing destructive Tory policy, or with supporting and standing up for the people the Labour Party is supposed to represent. 

The Labour Party Manifesto in 2019 argued for placing energy and water companies into public ownership, and since then we've seen skyrocketing energy costs and rivers full of shit. They argued for public ownership of rail companies and improved investment in transport infrastructure, and since then we've seen endless transport strikes and the cancellation of HS2. They were ridiculed for arguing for free and subsidised broadband, when a matter of months later everybody was having to work from home, home school, and do just about everything else online. All of these - and plenty more - are policies that the Labour Party should be pointing to as reasons that a Labour government wouldn't have got us into the mess that the Tories have, on multiple fronts, yet it's more important to them that they exorcise any sense of being seen as "left-wing" than that they actually offer an alternative to Tory neoliberalism, or any meaningful solution to our problems.

In the process of sacking off those policies, and distancing themselves from it, they've all but culled the left-wing of the party. And that means that if they win the next general election, and we get four or more years of Labour government, and things carry on much as they were, or even get worse, then what? There is still no alternative argument. Still no call for a fundamental reordering of our economy or our society, just two different colours of the same fundamental political ideology, only one gets to throw us crumbs of incremental change. But if a resurgent Tory Party, and likely one even more populist and even more fascist than what we're currently dealing with, judging by the trends of world politics, comes along to challenge that Labour government? Then we're fucked far worse than we are now. 

In the long-term, "Not The Tories" isn't enough.

It's absolutely this, Pat. The whole system needs ripping up and redesigning.

[Dead Mike]

2 minutes ago, jazzygeofferz said:

It's absolutely this, Pat. The whole system needs ripping up and redesigning.

I agree, but I don't think there's an appetite for this at all. Talk of big change terrifies British voters & as such headlines of 'Radical Policies' make it super easy for the Tories. 

Progressive change in the UK comes either from social pressure (Gay marriage vote. Cameron buckled but more Tories voted against than for) or from governments doing it quietly.

[Jazzy G]

Yeah, it's never going to happen and we're just going to sleepwalk into fascism unfortunately.

[LCJ]

1 minute ago, jazzygeofferz said:

Yeah, it's never going to happen and we're just going to sleepwalk into fascism unfortunately.

Could argue we’ve already been there for years. Especially since Brexit.

[Keith Houchen]

2 hours ago, tiger_rick said:

Completely agree with Pat and Geoffers but having a governing party who isn't those cunts IS the only thing I am interested in.

Hypothetical time. Had the tories not lurched further to the right and UKIP carried on with their increase in votes, they’d have been a likely opposition party. Would you have voted for them to get the tories out?

Or are there limits to how much you’d be  prepared to compromise?

[Loki]

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

The Labour Party Manifesto in 2019 argued for...

And was heavily rejected.  You might want these things, I might want these things, but if championing them means returning a hefty Tory majority then it's pointless to keep shouting them at the electorate.

12 minutes ago, Dead Mike said:

Progressive change in the UK comes either from social pressure (Gay marriage vote. Cameron buckled but more Tories voted against than for) or from governments doing it quietly.

Right, or more importantly, from governments that have earned the public's trust.  This is what Blair did - he had a 10 year plus plan and knew that first you had to WIN a general election and then introduce transformative policies in successive terms.  They won the 1997 election by promising to unfuck the country generally, and also an extremely popular policy in the Minimum Wage.  A lot of the root and branch stuff came later.

Corbyn may have said all the right things and pushed all the left-wing goodfeel buttons for us all but he achieved fuck all because he lost both elections.
 

[Dead Mike]

It's better to get to deliver some of what you'd like in power rather than moaning about getting none in opposition. The Tories have historically been good at keeping their paper dry and arguing about aims & priorities when they have the luxury of doing so. It's only been Europe/Brexit that's seen them diverge from this 

The idea that the Labour front bench etc would be the same after 18mnths in power as now seems bonkers. What part of British politics in the past 10yrs suggests this level of stability?

[JNLister]

1 hour ago, Dead Mike said:

Given the current polling it was inevitable the Murdoch press would start shifting. It happened when Major's Tories became toxic. Populist media can't be seen to be backing a loser for too long as nobody will want to buy what you're selling. 

The record of Murdoch never backing a loser has less to do with his direct influence (which I believe is significantly less than it was) and more to do with him following the crowd but shouting loudly. Contrasting stories in Scottish & English versions of the same paper show this. 

 

I suspect The Times will "reluctantly" endorse Labour and The Sun won't do an endorsement but will put out some shit about "We'd never tell our readers who to vote for, they are smart enough to make up their own minds."

[Chris B]

6 minutes ago, Loki said:

And was heavily rejected.  You might want these things, I might want these things, but if championing them means returning a hefty Tory majority then it's pointless to keep shouting them at the electorate.

The manifesto was:

• released too close to the election to be all that useful
• ridiculed as unrealistic ('magic money tree')
• associated entirely with Corbyn, who was painted as an extremist.

I don't think most people could tell you what was in the damn thing anyway - so it turning out to have actually countered most of what the tories are now doing is something that could be useful.

[Factotum]

Personally I think people are missing the point on Labour. What Starmer was trying to do was prove he was capable of Government. Whatever your thoughts on the Corbyn years, large swathes of people (rightly or wrongly) just thought Labour were a fringe bunch of radical lefties and wouldn't vote for them. 2019 was a disaster. Starmer had to rebuild the party back to something that you could see them as a Government. Policy in many ways was secondary. I would imagine in the run up to the election you'll start to see more 'big policies' emerge, especially economically.

Starmer is nowhere near my politics, he's far too centre ground with that dash of neo-liberalism, but I get what and why he has done what he has. If he walks into Number 10 in a year then it's been a brilliant tactic.

[MungoChutney]

3 hours ago, Loki said:

Let's hope that rumours of Corbyn standing for Mayor of London aren't true, that exactly the sort of divisive own goal that would gift the Tories endless news cycles.

Meanwhile, Labour have won the Rutherglen and Hamilton by-election from the SNP with a 20% swing.  This is huge as it suggests Labour could regain many of their traditional Scottish seats which would prove crucial at the next general election.  It also neatly counterpoints the narrative that Labour are only up in the polls because the Tories are so hated - they are also making ground against the SNP.

I don't think it's as huge as people think in terms of what it says about Labour/SNP. It's clear people don't want the Tories but a very similar seat up the road went 22% swing to Labour at a by-election a few years ago before the SNP won it back at the next GE. 

[BomberPat]

1 hour ago, Loki said:

And was heavily rejected.  You might want these things, I might want these things, but if championing them means returning a hefty Tory majority then it's pointless to keep shouting them at the electorate.
 

It's not about wanting things so much as selling imagined futures - it's all well and good saying that they were electoral failures in 2019, with every caveat on that, but look at everything that's happened since. There is no mainstream politician arguing for nationalisation/public ownership as a solution to rail strikes that have been ongoing for over a year, or for skyrocketing rent and energy prices. There have been transport workers, teachers, doctors, nurses and all manner of other workers out on strike, and the Labour front bench and leadership won't stand in support of them, and that makes me question at one point they can still reasonably be called a Labour party in the first place.

The world is a drastically different place to what it was in 2019, and it's not a matter of just recycling the 2019 manifesto, it's a matter of building on it and offering a new vision. Unfortunately, I think it's too late for that. The time was during and immediately after the height of the Covid pandemic. Now, people have got used to "normal" again and there won't be the political will for meaningful change, and we'll all suffer as a result. 

 

I just find the argument that he's done what he has to do to get into power extremely disheartening. If he isn't offering any change from the politics of austerity, neoliberalism, demonising immigration, and scapegoating minorities, why should I give a fuck whether he ends up in power or not? I'm not getting enthused for someone winning just because he wears a red tie, he needs to have something to offer, surely? I hate the idea that Starmer is the right leader because he's "electable", as if "electability" is an abstract concept that's somehow unrelated to the actual winning of elections - because Labour performed pretty dismally in 2021, and yet that doesn't seem to have been held as evidence of his lack of "electability" the way people would have argued it did for Corbyn. And I'm not saying this as a dyed-in-the-wool Corbynite - I thought he was a deeply flawed leader and that, initially, Starmer was the right man for the job, but he's done nothing but disappoint ever since.

I'd love to believe that, once in power, or even once on the election trail, he'll put out a brilliant manifesto of transformative policies, but he's given me no reason to believe that. He's abandoned every leadership pledge he had; all of which were the reasons I thought he was the right man for the job, and that he gave me some sense of hope. He's been fortunate enough to be in opposition against a succession of the worst governments we've ever seen, yet he's still far from a sure thing, and still isn't meaningfully holding the government to account or offering up alternatives. Why should I care?

And I know I can say all this with the privilege of living in the safest of safe Labour seats, but the only arguments anyone can offer are reasons to vote against the Conservatives, not to vote for Labour, and sooner or later he's going to have to stand for something, or else we end up in a far worse position than we're in now. 

[Factotum]

16 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

And I know I can say all this with the privilege of living in the safest of safe Labour seats, but the only arguments anyone can offer are reasons to vote against the Conservatives, not to vote for Labour, and sooner or later he's going to have to stand for something, or else we end up in a far worse position than we're in now. 

Good post, but I think you sort of answered your own questions really with it. How would Labour have got to this point any other way? Politics is just that, politics and you have to be cunning and pretty ruthless to ascend in it.

I don't expect Starmer to be some all conquering radical when he gets in, even though I think with the state of the country someone with radical ideas is probably what we need, but he had to get in first and he's about to achieve that.

[Ronnie]

3 hours ago, Dead Mike said:

The record of Murdoch never backing a loser has less to do with his direct influence (which I believe is significantly less than it was) and more to do with him following the crowd but shouting loudly. Contrasting stories in Scottish & English versions of the same paper show this. 

 

Yep. It's not hard to always back the winner when you routinely endorse whichever candidate is going to come first. These are from either side of the border a week before Polling Day 2015:

 

[Tim Healys Chutney Spoon]

We have the unfortunate situation of Kemi Badenoch as our MP. Frigging useless at the best of times and can't stand her. I'd be interested in voting for the most likely to oust her, however could I tell you whether they (or their party) would be any good? No idea! I definitely don't want Kemi as our MP any more, but I can't justify voting for someone that I know nothing about or what they stand for. I wouldn't vote elsewhere 'just because it's not Tory' but I want to see whether it's worth giving them a chance. So far Starmer and Co are failing miserably to entice traditional right of centre voters to come around to their policies. The stage we're at now (early campaigning days for the election) should be where Starmer is actually saying 'we will do XYZ and pay for it via ABC etc' rather than just saying 'Rishi is wrong'. Yes he is, but tell me what you're going to do differently!