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

[Devon Malcolm]

13 minutes ago, ReturnOfTheMack said:

Is he actually trying to lose the next election?

'The Sun Backs Starmer' incoming any day now.

[d-d-d-dAz]

16 minutes ago, ReturnOfTheMack said:

Is he actually trying to lose the next election?

It’s a well trod path. Blair did this in the run-up to elections, too. The wager is that most of your votes are solid as people have given up on the Tories all together, so you have the freedom to wander onto the right wing lawn and clean up any stragglers.

[ReturnOfTheMack]

Yeah, and I'd get it. But Thatcher is such a massive issue button in the North it seems an insane call.

[Loki]

This is what he said, in The Sunday Telegraph:

 

Quote

"Every moment of meaningful change in modern British politics begins with the realisation that politics must act in service of the British people, rather than dictating to them... Margaret Thatcher sought to drag Britain out of its stupor by setting loose our natural entrepreneurialism.  Tony Blair reimagined a stale, outdated Labour Party into one that could seize the optimism of the late 90s.  A century ago, Clement Attlee wrote that Labour must be a party of duty and patriotism, not abstract theory."

 

 

 

[RedRooster]

11 hours ago, ReturnOfTheMack said:

Yeah, and I'd get it. But Thatcher is such a massive issue button in the North it seems an insane call.

And in Scotland. There are plenty of towns here still suffering because of decisions she made. In some instances, it’s not so much about the decisions that were made  - it was about the way these were steamrollered through with little to no support for those affected.

And heck, when it comes to privatisation, I’d struggle to think of one example where this has made anything better.

He’s already ahead in the polls, saying things like that is only going to upset people. Compare your Labour to New Labour if you must, but praising Thatcher has little upside.

[Lion_of_the_Midlands]

I disagree about it not having an upside. He's writing in the Telegraph and he's playing to the readership. He needs dissafected Tory voters to vote for him rather than drift of to Reform. He must know that the left wing of his own party are not sold on him so to win he has to get votes from somewhere. All he needed to do was also mention Winston Churchill and World War II and he would have plucked all the heartstrings of the Torygraph readers. Like Dev said earlier, the endorsement of The Sun is surely only week's away. 

[Loki]

24 minutes ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said:

He's writing in the Telegraph and he's playing to the readership.

He undoubtedly is but that's not all he's doing - as he also praised Clement Atlee who presumably isn't beloved of Torygraph readers.  He's referencing three PMs who transformed Britain, and one of them is Conservative to emphasise his point.  I'm not sure he's hanging a picture of Maggie on his wall just yet.

What he's doing in this article is making an intellectual, and political argument about the Labour Party, and how he believes it has been transformed into one that is capable of winning over voters, winning an election and governing the country.  He's trying to persuade reluctant voters that they can vote Labour to enact change, rather than not voting out of a sense of political malaise, essentially.

Quote

It is in this sense of public service that Labour has changed dramatically in the last three years. The course of shock therapy we gave our party had one purpose: to ensure that we were once again rooted in the priorities, the concerns and the dreams of ordinary British people. To put country before party.

None of that was easy but it was necessary. Often, it meant taking the path of most resistance. It meant not just listening to those who felt unable to vote for us but understanding them and acting. The public do not have outlandish or unreasonable expectations. They expect taxpayer money to be spent wisely, our security and our borders to be prioritised and a politics that serves them rather than itself. On each of these, we are now ready to deliver.

The key words there are "ordinary British people".  Now, neither you or I believe that Telegraph readers represent "ordinary British people" but that's shorthand for "not just left wing voters".  

I absolutely can see this article alienating some natural Labour supporters, particularly as there are some easily cherry-pickable quotes.  He's also quite openly shitting on the direction of the party under his predecessor, despite being in that predecessor's shadow cabinet.  I guess his bet is that there are more wavering and disillusioned centre-ish voters who want change than left-wing voters who will withdraw their vote from the party as a result of his attempts to woo the other side.  Time, and polls, will tell I guess.

 

Edited December 3, 2023 by Loki

[RedRooster]

1 hour ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said:

I disagree about it not having an upside. He's writing in the Telegraph and he's playing to the readership. He needs dissafected Tory voters to vote for him rather than drift of to Reform. He must know that the left wing of his own party are not sold on him so to win he has to get votes from somewhere. All he needed to do was also mention Winston Churchill and World War II and he would have plucked all the heartstrings of the Torygraph readers. Like Dev said earlier, the endorsement of The Sun is surely only week's away. 

Reform might win seats - I’m not ruling that out - but it won’t win power and it’s very, very unlikely to have any real impact on who is in power post-election. He should be more concerned, at this stage about losing current Labour voters to the Lib Dems, SNP and even the Green Party. When you’re this far ahead in the polls, praising Thatcher is a mad thing to do. I can’t imagine anyone is going to be swayed to vote Labour because of a mild Thatcher endorsement, but because of how divisive she is, there’s every chance he’ll lose voters, particularly in Scotland where she is despised.

While that might not matter enormously now, it may end up being a problem come the next election, once the Tories have regrouped and determined what they want their party to be.

47 minutes ago, Loki said:

He's referencing three PMs who transformed Britain, and one of them is Conservative to emphasise his point.  I'm not sure he's hanging a picture of Maggie on his wall just yet.

True, but the headlines today are variations of ‘Starmer praises Thatcher’, and very often people don’t look beyond that.

Edited December 3, 2023 by RedRooster

[Devon Malcolm]

54 minutes ago, RedRooster said:

True, but the headlines today are variations of ‘Starmer praises Thatcher’

And the headlines are true, because that's what he did.

[Jazzy G]

1 hour ago, RedRooster said:

Reform might win seats - I’m not ruling that out - but it won’t win power

If it hadn't been for interference from the Labour Party Reform almost did win power in spite of everything that was going on about him in the media. 

 

[d-d-d-dAz]

1 hour ago, RedRooster said:

Reform might win seats - I’m not ruling that out - but it won’t win power and it’s very, very unlikely to have any real impact on who is in power post-election. He should be more concerned, at this stage about losing current Labour voters to the Lib Dems, SNP and even the Green Party. When you’re this far ahead in the polls, praising Thatcher is a mad thing to do. I can’t imagine anyone is going to be swayed to vote Labour because of a mild Thatcher endorsement, but because of how divisive she is, there’s every chance he’ll lose voters, particularly in Scotland where she is despised.

While that might not matter enormously now, it may end up being a problem come the next election, once the Tories have regrouped and determined what they want their party to be.

True, but the headlines today are variations of ‘Starmer praises Thatcher’, and very often people don’t look beyond that.

Whilst I don’t disagree with any of this, you’re talking about politically engaged people.

There’s a far bigger mass of people, still today, who don’t really know what left or right wing is, or what isolationism is versus internationalism. They just vote for people who seem capable.

Thatcher won lots of elections, Blair won lots of elections not because lots of people could at any given time put into words why they were supporting a neo-liberal Atlanticist (or why they were supporting Thatcher. lol.), but because they seemed capable of governing by lots of people who just want life to continue as normal without their needing to engage.

Even with the rise of Twitter and the craving for ideological purity, there’s still people who will just vote for who feels like the sensible choice (or who want to vote way again). And that’s what Starmer’s doing, he’s trying to win that amorphous blob in the middle who want to feel safe and oblivious. It’s the Biden pitch; “I’ll govern like old times, with good sense, and you can go back to not thinking about politics other than once every four years.”

It’s also smart politics for Starmer, personally. If you’re going to win an election, you want to do it with a broad church of voters so you have cover to not cave to the more ideological amongst your rank. “Sorry, can’t rise taxes above 50% for the highest earners because we can’t lose upper middle class voters… no, sorry can’t increase inheritance tax because we can’t lose those pensioners who turned to us.”

No one wants to win power without any logical reason to ignore the John McDonnell’s or Peter Bone’s of the world. Otherwise you get Liz Truss, and the system revolts and fucks the government up the Overton window.

It’s only the last few years when Brexit turned everything into a house of mirrors and suddenly we were governed by lunatics. Ideology used to be the job of pressure groups, and the governing party were just supposed to be dull administrators, and I think that’s what Starmer is trying to work towards. If he can drop a few Corbyn’s and Abbott’s on the way, and the pick up some faceless middle class disinterested people on the way, I imagine he’d be delighted.

I couldn’t imagine not voting for Labour at the next election, really. Even if he came out and said the Rivers of Blood speech had some good lines. I’d take a lifetime of Tony Blair over what we’ve had since Cameron and his mob first got in. A Labour government, even one that has to make concessions to the middle or even the right, is always better than a Conservative one. 
 

 

Edited December 3, 2023 by d-d-d-dAz

[RedRooster]

I’m not sure where you’re from @d-d-d-dAz, but I find posts like yours really interesting, as they potentially show the variations between different parts of the UK. I’m from Scotland - near Glasgow - and I’d say most people here are very politically engaged, even if it’s only to the extent of being pro-union or pro-independence. And people have very strong views on the Tories. They have their supporters of course, but they’re harder to find (except in the Borders, Dumfries and Galloway and Aberdeenshire) are some are only pro-Tory through the lens of unionism. 

I think the Labour Party here has made mistakes too - being too vehemently anti-referendum. There are definitely votes to be won from disillusioned SNP supporters by keeping a neutral stance on the issue. Heck, I really like the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, but couldn’t vote for him because they’re against the very idea of ever holding a referendum which just seems anti-democratic. 

I find myself increasingly in a position where I can’t accurately argue what is best for Labour in England because, I’ve come to realise, the attitude of voters there are often very different; and I do get the impression that they skew more to the centre right than people do here. Having not lived among it, I think I’m less able to assess impact of certain decisions. 

[Devon Malcolm]

 

[Keith Houchen]

I’m qwhite interested in the anti racist mathematics to be fair. 
 

If the sugar plantation owner had 25 slaves, and 5 of them are pregnant as a consequence of him raping them, how many slaves will he have in a years time?

None, motherfucker because it’s 1958 and we are 50 miles outside Havana and Fidel is going to win. 

[d-d-d-dAz]

JHB has done Angela Rayner in there, and there’s a real knowingness to the tone of the copy too.

Weird thing is, there was a time when maintaining friendships across the divide, as it were, was to be admired. But, I think that time has probably passed, and Rayner will have to brief to the press that JHB secretly murders Ethiopian children with needles, and JHB will say in return that Rayner had an affair with Harry or something.

Still, the comments are fun..

Edited December 4, 2023 by d-d-d-dAz