UKH

Depressingly accurate depiction from Joe...

https://twitter.com/PoliticsJOE_UK/status/1356195611561889797?s=19

Seems to me that Corbyn was too lefty and Starmer is too centrist. 

Corbyn was too scruffy and Starmer is too smart.  

I may not be 100% a Starmer fan, but between him and the current idiot I know who I'd rather was in charge.  

Someone has a *lot* of time on their hands 😂

Joe isn't some Corbynite blog with a grudge either, it's a non partisan media website that makes its money through advertising and if this is the way they're framing it then this is becoming the mainstream view. 

Centrists should be worried, it might be easy enough to dismiss my warnings as the bitter rantings of a left wing fanatic but surely this is becoming a more and more obvious to all now that Starmer's performance has been pathetic. Starmer's Labour are still 2% behind in the polls even though they get a free pass from the media and the Conservative government have presided over the needless loss of 100,000 lives and are almost universally seen as incompetent and corrupt. Starmer's own approval rating falls month after month as the more people see of him the less they like him. Who would have thought that "broadly agreeing" with your opponents direction of travel would fail to win the support of people who would like an alternative to right wing government?

That's quite funny, but to be fair to him he knows full well the UK will never elect a left-winger, a-bit-left-of-centre is the best you're going to get (cf. Blair etc).  So he's got more chance than Corbyn will ever have.

Joe isn’t Corbynite, but you would have to be pretty one eyed to think it is non-partisan.

It happens to be a bias that i largely agree with, but that doesn’t make it non-partisan.

The post is a bit of a laugh, it would be pretty silly to take it seriously.

Well it got Tony Blair elected

We need to be absolutely clear on this important point ... it’s keir not kier.

The continual in-fighting of the Labour party doesn't help either

Latest YouGov gives Labour a 4 point lead. However, these polls are so volatile, I won’t claim anything other than going from the worst defeat in nearly a century to neck and neck.

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2021/01/28/voting-int...

I think Keir is a decent bloke, orders of magnitude above that blustering fool on the other team. He has done a good job, but not an excellent job. They are not distinguishing themselves from the tories.

If Lab had focused on remaining, they might have had a blue wall defection. Instead they pandered to the small percentage of Lab supporters who wanted brexit. As a result, they lost the lot: supporters, the election and brexit.

He needs to stand for something, rather than just saying 'it could be done better'.

If he stands only for doing things better, that’s a good thing in my book.

Enough with rubbish ideologies.

Yes, its good to hold the other team to account. but its not enough.

We are at a point in history, where we have gone through massive global change, as well as UK specific change. Now might be a good time for some big ideas.

And the quality of their MPs who seem to have been selected primarily to satisfy diversity targets and their ability to try really hard not to pronounce the letter "t" to give the impression they were brought up in a London sink estate. 

We don’t need big ideas we need incremental improvement.

Big ideas are f*cking us up because the world is too complex, too many unintended consequences.

I'd argue, that this is exactly to time for big ideas. Carbon net zero, universal basic income, global healthcare inequality etc. If they are not proposed and acted upon, then some other minor crisis will take the focus. Or worse, another group with a divisive agenda will submit their projects as the one true way. 

You need both. You need something to aim at and possibly achieve as a massive jump forward alongside the smaller steps.

Pragmatic goals, even ambitious ones, I say yes. Such as carbon net zero.

But ideological projects, no thanks.

Whats your definition of ideological? Pretty much by definition all goals are ideologically based in terms of what they want to achieve.

There is a "broad agreement" with how to deal with coronavirus: lockdown and ease when appropriate. On that nearly everyone agrees. Starmer has specifically criticised the government all the way through over its lateness and unwillingness to lockdown and its relaxation of loackdown, specifically at Christmas. He's criticised on schools, A-level/GCSE results, free school meals, universal credit cuts, council tax rises, ending of furlough, eviction cancellations, procurement, provision of PPE, and many many more.

In depth opinion polling has shown the majority of the public believe Starmer has been *too* critical of the government. Support of governments during national crises is a consistent phenomenon as most people like to believe that the government is in control and the opposition actually get very little airtime for anything.

If you actually look at Labour's actual policy positions, you'll see that they sit squarely left of centre. Once the pandemic begins to subside they might get more bandwidth to be able to get some notice taken.

The JOE video is pretty funny, but is based on an echo-chambered very-online-left opinion that, frankly, the majority of the electorate couldn't give too shits about, even in the rare instances that they're aware of it.

I think he'll live.

I would argue that ideaological pertains to an ideology as opposed to a realist approach to problems. For instance eugenics was an ideology based on the idea that you could improve the species through genetics, Neo-libralism is an idealology based on a free market being good for everything, communism is an ideology based on the idea of the state run by the people rather than elites.

Ideology is the practice of trying to shoe-horn reality into a given concept.

I don't think there is anything I could write that sums it up better than the first reply I read on Twitter:

David P. @southlondonscum · Feb 1Replying to @PoliticsJOE_UK

Nice to see you guys campaigning for the @Conservatives. If only we had some way of knowing how a more left wing candidate would perform in a general election.

Neck and neck is a position that wasn't given a chance in hell just after the last election.

Seems to me Labour are far far better placed than was expected.

So now is it time to have unquestioning support for the glorious leader? You know, like the less left wing members of Labour demonstrated last time round?

The flaw there is what is a realist approach? It seems mostly deployed by those unwilling to admit that they are as ideologically driven as anyone else.

What is "realistic" changes over time as different ideologies gain and lose dominance.

In fact closer analysis of the polling shows that Labour's position has improved more in the seats they have lost and in marginals than in the seats they hold. This vindicates Starmer's approach in that he is winning back the seats Labour must win back rather than looking for plaudits from those who already support him. Labour's last leader did the opposite and repelled a lot of working class voters who shared none of his cultural ideology. This is where the middle class members of Momentum etc go wrong. They fail to see that their outlook on life is quite different to the majority of people who should be voting Labour so while the Twitterati will applaud that little video the majority of voters will look on with hostile disinterest.

Alan Johnson, a working class lad done good, puts it perfectly here: https://www.ft.com/video/905431b0-7109-42e3-b0a8-14a2910e40bb

The realist approach is the pragmatic one. Ideologies tend not to be pragmatic

Hmmm. Bit of a circular definition there.

Political ideologies are simply the set of ideas about how a state should be run and generally how to get to that position. They can be of varying probability especially over the long run.  There is pretty much never going to be the case where there is just one approach available so your proposal fails.

If we are going to get into the class thing again, Starmer is a QC who has a nurse mum and a toolmaker dad.  That is working class made good I'd say.  He has picked a former teenage mum who left school early as his deputy.  She knows what real life is like.  

Quite Starmer is the epitome of what most working class parents would want of their son yet the "socialists" critical of him sneer at his success.

They don't understand that his cultural conservatism (relatively speaking), a respect for his country and the rule of law, sits comfortably with his socialist principles.

No, of course not. But the most vociferous criticism of the current Labour leader seems to be coming from the most committed supporters of the previous one. You might remember him: the one that lost an election, sat out the referendum then lost the next election, handing the manifestly incompetent Boris the majority to push through a hard Brexit.

As an interested outsider, it seems to me that there are plenty on the left of Labour who would rather have a hard-left Labour leader of the opposition than a centrist Labour prime minister.

From what I can judge they're slowly drifting away into their own echo chambers. Most of the party is behind Starmer and he now controls the NEC so there's little the "socialists" can do other than make silly videos.

All I can say is, if this is true, Labour supporters will need to hope he can mop up England as I can’t see this going down well in Scotland. 

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/feb/02/labour-urged-to-focus-on-f...

I spotted this today (first image) so I did some research (second image). Made me laugh, but a good illustration of the mentality.

i before e, except after k. Sadly I find Keir uninspiring and doubt he can win an election, he's just a bit bEIge. 
Obviously plenty of time until the next election, but come on Labour, you must be able to find someone better.

That's a strange interpretation of the last election. Labour's plan was to offer us another referendum with remain Vs almost remain on the ballot paper which is one of the two reasons they lost so badly. They didn't pander to Brexit supporting Labour voters, they totally alienated them, that's why they voted Tory for the first time in their lives. The only way they could have been more remain was to go all Lib Dem and cancel Brexit outright, how well did that work out for Jo Swinson? She's probably the only person who had a worse election night than Corbyn.

The idea of a blue wall defection to Corbyn is just laughable, it's about as likely as a Momentum defection to UKIP.

Labour were unclear about what they wanted for a long time. Corbyn being in favor of leave. Some of the unions were split. Many in the party wanted to stay. The message from the top seemed to be follow the tories. (Based on a flawed, non binding vote, to appease some of the swivel eyed loons in the tory party.)

Labour could have said, we will be 100% remain, you were sold a lie in the referendum. (There was quite a lot of debate around what was promised, I seem to remember. Easiest deal ever etc.) They would have picked up tory voters who wanted to stay. They would inevitably loose some traditional, leave supporting, labour voters along the way. If people wanted brexit they could vote tory. If they wanted to stay, they could vote labour. With red and blue offering the same outcome, it came down to personality and PR. (No one reads the manifestos.)

Obligatory guardian quote.

So it’s a pro-remain party now? Well, not exactly. The unions also agreed that if Labour wins a general election before Brexit has been agreed, Labour should pick up where the Tories left off by negotiating to leave, and leave open the option of campaigning against remaining in the ensuing referendum on their own deal. Tory Brexit: bad. Labour Brexit: good, even if it’s remarkably similar to the Tory deal, which seems likely given the narrow economic and political tramlines within which the EU is operating. What matters, apparently, isn’t the principle of Brexit so much as who gets to be in charge of it.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/09/labour-second-referen...

That's superb! Totally sums Starmer up! The more I find out about him, the more he makes Tony Blair seem like Tony Benn. In his attempt to woo "Middle England" he will probably lose Labour's core support in the North while jettisoning Corbyn's impressive headway in gaining the youth vote. FFS - he was interviewed and started crapping on about "family values"! That's Tory talk, for Christ's sake!

Awesome!

He's about to lose the few Labour voters left in Scotland to the SNP and Greens and grab a few Orangemen from the Tories.

I think we have a different view of what ideology is. I would argue that the above is why ideologies fail

It all looks a bit silly. But I think Labour loses votes in three main areas; patriotism, economic competence and identity politics. Under Corbyn, the patriotism issue became a really big issue, especially with regard to the IRA. Starmer isn’t being particularly brave, but he is trying to fix the electoral poison. 
I don’t agree with this assessment. I don’t think Labour are in general worse on patriotism (rather than national exceptionalism) or economic competence, but this is where they need to alter the public perception. 

They're not going for patriotism, they're going for jingoistic, MAGA style flag hugging.

It's the logical end game of placing style ("electability") above substance ("ideology"). Get a bunch of focus groups together, and find out how to appeal to the base instincts of the masses. Follow the Tories down the same hole that they followed UKIP down ☹️

PMSL 

After his predecessor's unhealthy relationships with foreign terrorists and wanting to ask the Russians nicely if they had poisoned British citizens in Britain Starmer needs to convince the electorate that he and his party are actually on the same side as they are and that he and his party have an affection for the country they live in. Having the country's logo, the union jack, in the background when he says stuff in public is part of that strategy along with the stuff about making the country a great place to grow up in and a great place to grow old in.

I realise you'd love him to behave like a fascist demigod but he has done nothing like that and he won't.  Labour understand it's important to show you care about your country and leave the flag shagging fascism to AOUB, UKIP and the EDL.

So not dissimilar to the centrists who spent the last few years rabidly attacking the left of the party. I cant really blame the left for returning the favour although if anything they seem a lot more muted probably because they can see the downsides whereas the centrists seem content with a hard brexit if that meant they could wrestle the party rightwards.

This is despite the fact Starmer did stand on a left wing platform but seems to have immediately thrown that away.

There is also the practical reason that the problem with going the centrist approach was well demonstrated last time round. If you chase the tories rightwards then mildly leftwing policies suddenly become "hard left" and rabid hard right policies become normal. That gives a real risk we end up like the USA where even the progressive leftie liberal communists are centre right by any sensible standard.

It really isnt healthy to only provide a centre and a hard right wing option to the population.

I agree with that point but there are plenty of UK political parties to the left of Labour's current position and they don't get many votes. I'd suggest that is because few UK voters want to vote for them. 

Few English voters want to vote for them. 

There's plenty in Scotland who do.

Why would you think that?

I'd like him to behave like the pragmatic left wing opposition leader his credentials suggested he might be.

They want to "use... veterans" for their branding. Not support them, not raise awareness of their issues, use them. They want to move away from the scruffy guy who actually goes and talks to the veterans behind the scenes, in favour of looking smart and waving flags.

It's jingoistic and opportunistic branding, pandering to the English right. 

You can’t win a general election without pandering to the English right. It’s by far the biggest demographic in the UK. But your point is fundamentally wrong. If you can’t stand in front of our flag and say you’re proud of it, the public won’t vote for you.

Starmer can’t win the next election - the rebuild is too big a job. 

Corbyn might be gone for now, but those that supported him are still sitting as labour MPs and the public won’t forget that. I wouldn’t vote for them while Dianne Abbott and her ilk are Labour MPs.

If Labour wants to be in power in the next 10 years they need to focus on purging the far left; changing the power structure so the far left can’t get back in and succession planning so the next leader is a moderate centerist.

So the UK is just destined to remain a right wing state, because the English are innately right wing? 

Well I’d say the UK leans right as a whole which is what matters for a general election. Always has and probably always will.

Whether a right wing government is inevitable depends on your point of view.

A socially conservative government is always inevitable (see Corbyn spectacular loss in 2019). The public likes family values, law and order and doesn’t like immigration.

A socially conservative, but economically left leaning government is always a possibility, although it would be tough to do. The public don’t  mind higher public spending (if it’s spent on people like them) and higher taxes (if they don’t pay them).

If the socially conservative, but economically left government is your idea of left wing, then no, the UK won’t always have a right wing government. 

Oh FFS. That’s just pish.

The wording is that of the PR consultancy as they presented to the party. It is not the party's language or agreed strategy.

What's clear is Labour has large parts of the country it needs to convince that it actually likes the country it wants to govern and it doesn't sneer at people who like it either. 

It’s been embarrassing to watch Starmer’s failure to hold the government to account over their mismanagement of this crisis and his refusal to stand for anything. He’s only been prepared to speak up with minor criticism of detail. He’s spoken up limply when shamed to do so by the examples of Burnham and Rashford, and he’s switched his position on lockdown at the last moment when the government were already making noises that they were going to make the change. Johnson can’t believe his luck.

Where will I find these left of centre policy positions? It’s hard to have faith that Starmer intends to deliver any left of centre policies when he has exclusively sided with the right wing faction of the party that considered free school meals to be a “trot” policy and hoped that the policy platform of Owen Smith in the 2016 leadership election was ”a genius plan to pretend these are his policies and then when enough people have voted for him he just quietly sheds policies”. These lot aren’t left of centre, they’re solidly right wing in outlook.

Forget my own criticism of Starmer though. He's just not doing well on centrist terms, he's 2 points behind in polling (except for a recent outlier from Yougov) against what's been widely held to be the most incompetent and corrupt government in history. He's got the advantage of not being demonised as Corbyn was but and that looks to have given Labour an initial bonus of 3-5 points when Starmer took over in April. The Tory lead collapsed due to the Barnard Castle affair.

Starmer's failure to distinguish Labour from the Tories is not cutting through. I don't believe that a left wing successor to Corbyn would be polling so badly. Corbyn was 7 points ahead in polling until the Boris bounce.

The public always want to get behind the government in a crisis and give them the benefit of the doubt regarding competence and having a plan because the alternative is just too frightening. When the current situation eases this will naturally drop away and Labour will have more space to get their different message across.

I think you should also have more faith in Boris Johnson and a cabinet chosen for Brexit loyalty over competence or voter-appeal. Johnson and the rest of them will do lots more publicly inept and insensitive things, and some of the chickens will come home to roost for their past lies and incompetence. This will further lower public support. 

Go on then, explain to me who you think it's "pish" that the Scots are more likely to vote for traditionally left wing concepts such as free prescriptions, resisting privatisation of services, nuclear disarmament, and fee free university tuition than the English?

Do you think it's just an accident that the English keep voting for privatisation and restrictions to education and healthcare for the poor and working class?

You could just about slide a fag paper between Corbyn's manifesto and the SNPs on most issues - other than nuclear disarmament where Corbyn actually went against one of his major life ambitions in fear of going a step too far against the English right.

Yet we're constantly told that his manifesto would never win a UK election, while the SNP wins landslide after landslide in Scotland.

Why is it "pish" that the Scots vote more left wing than the current position of the Westminster twins?

Over 10 million voters is not a ‘few’.

Particularly when compared to 1.2 million.

I suppose one question would be: given that you think Labour's policies under Corbyn were so in tune with the Scottish electorate, why did their share of the Scottish vote drop by almost 18% in the 2015 General Election to 24.3% then fell even further to 18.6% in 2019, putting them below the Conservatives?

https://electionresults.parliament.uk/election/2015-05-07/results/Location/...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50789131

The shadow cab. were working on free school meals for weeks before Rashford became involved and it's only because he's a widely liked apolitical figure that they acquiesced to it. Having an 80-seat majority means you can ignore the opposition at will unfortunately. You'll find the left wing policies in the statements of the members of the shadow cabinet who are in charge of their briefs and trying to build their profiles from nothing.

Government popularity in a crisis is common and something the level of the pandemic means very little space for an Opposition party to get their message out. From the total collapse in trust in Labour prior to Starmer taking over he's objectively done pretty well in initially changing the party's image for the public.

Corbyn's net popularity after 10mths of leadership was -41. Starmer's is +8. I'll leave the counterfactuals to you.

What's needed is more broadbrush post-pandemic policy direction setting so that his detractors left and right can stop projecting their baseless takes on that blank space.

Ah, I see. So your gripe is more with NatanP's original assertion that few in the UK would vote for them, rather than my point that Scotland shouldn't be tarred with that brush?

Now you’re just being a ****.

This article by James Bloodworth is a good exposition of this point:

https://thecritic.co.uk/the-uniquely-british-thing-about-the-labour-party/

Well, as a left leaning Scottish former labour voter, my response might be slightly biased towards my own feelings, but I'd say there's a couple of main reasons:

1) labour have been in decline in Scotland for a long time due to their shift to the right, and whilst the election of JC might have given some hope of a return to the left, with the PLP fighting it tooth and nail it was far from certain to amount to anything, so was a bit early to start thinking of going back when the eventual outcome would always be decided between the largely English PLP and the largely English membership. 

Weakening the SNP/Scottish Green support by shifting to Labour would have been quite a gamble, and as subsequent events have shown would indeed have been futile.

2) That election was fought against the backdrop of the conservative pledge to hold a referendum on EU membership. Scotland is largely for EU membership, the only strong voices for remain were the SNP and the Lib Dems. Labour were non-commital and Corbyn is a Eurosceptic. Those in Scotland who did want to leave the EU of course were drawn to the Tories target than labour.

???

Genuinely confused as to what might be upsetting you in what I've said?

I’m not upset. You’re just being obtuse, twisting my words and patronising.

Nothing unusual in that. It’s what seems to define discussions on UKC these days.

Edit: rereading your comments I retract what I’ve said above. I can see we’ve misread our discussion based upon n my original misunderstanding.

My point is that there are proportionally similar possible labour voters in England and Scotland. The difference is far thinner IMO than data supports. Scottish voters have an ‘out’ - the SNP. English voters are kind of stuck between the main 2.

No worries, thanks for clarifying and I'm glad we were just at cross purposes 🙂

If that's the case, why is a socially progressive manifesto "unelectable" in England, but electable in Scotland?

English voters were offered an "out" from the Tory Vs Tory-lite options they've had since Blair, and didn't take it.

Possibly a combination of relative wealth and a lack of leaders offering a socially progressive manifesto.

Who’s the ‘out’ now though? Labour hijacked by far left, Tories on the right and the Lib Dem’s deemed unelectable via the FPTP system and lack of forgiveness for siding with DC.

I’m trying to see that England isn’t really that different from Scotland. But maybe it is.

I think some of it is to do with messing around with constituency boundaries.  The rest is to do with the people who hate anyone who isn't "our kind of people" who would vote for anyone with a blue ribbon.  They are terrified of single mothers/drug dealers/muslims/asylum seekers etc etc and anyone that might lower their house prices and not mow their front lawns nicely. 

Corbyn offered a manifesto that was socially progressive, the English voters rejected it, and then the PLP rejected Corbyn on the basis that the English electorate would apparently never agree to vote for it.

They brought in a fairly left wing leader, but seemingly on the grounds that he drop all mention of left wing politics and try to make himself appear right wing to the English electorate by aping Johnson.

There is no out now, because labour have decided it was an unelectable course.

Either it is, or the labour party have got their whole strategy wrong in going back to chasing the right wing vote again.

Fair points. Probably too far left and too much historical baggage. 

I’ll accept your original point, to a degree. But there’s far more things at play than just left vs right. South of Birmingham and SE far wealthier than Scotland plus individual personalities. NS rated far higher. Wonder what support would look like with a different leader?

There may have been some merit in that in the earliest stages of the crisis but it has long been obvious that there has been an urgent need to outline a different vision from Boris Johnson's "herd immunity" which has unleashed 100,000 excess deaths and crashed our economy while other countries have protected their citizens suffering a few a 10's of deaths while everyday life and their economies go on close to normal.

If he can't make a case for a better alternative in the face of this this unprecedented disaster when can he make the case for change? Starmer has acted more like a cheerleader for Johnson than an opponent and will not be able to separate himself from the blame when it is over.

I think Johnson's government are corrupt but I don't believe they are incompetent. The crisis has unfolded as close to what they intended as was politically possible. We were told to prepare for herd immunity at the start and that is pretty much what has happened except for some forced interventions that they have done their best to undermine.

Near the start of the pandemic the Tory government first announced a £350bn bailout for business. It was only after further pressure from Corbyn's Labour and the unions that the much lauded furlough scheme to protect workers incomes was announced. There's no way this scheme came naturally to the Tories it took an opposition that was prepared to oppose and since Starmer's brand of meek acquiescence took over the opposition benches the Tories have been let off the hook and have been quietly rolling back their support for workers.

Very much agree with your last sentence here - lets see him set out his policies, it's about time we were given at least a hint of what he might stand for. Then we'll only be left with the issue that we can't trust a word that he says.

You may be right that Starmer could have done more to articulate a different vision. I think there has been too much "noise" from the pandemic to do that effectively and he was better to concentrate on trying to reset the public's view of Labour so that enough of them saw a Labour government as a viable option but there certainly are risks in taking such a low key approach for so long.

On Johnson and the secret and successful conspiracy to hill 100,000+ UK citizens by pursuing herd immunity, we'll have to disagree. Where you see an evil mastermind, I just see an out of his depth chancer, with a talent for making up stories to please Telegraph readers.

'Then we'll only be left with the issue that we can't trust a word that he says.'

On what grounds do you say that? 

Too right it's a risk. Lets stretch credulity for a minute and imagine that Starmer's war on the left is just a front and he actually intends to deliver some reformative policies. When the GE comes around and the big reveal finally happens, the public aren't going to accept it, he hasn't prepared the way. He's not planting seeds in the national conversation to get people talking about whether things can be better, instead he's letting Boris Johnson set the agenda and he's going to be boxed into a corner when the GE comes.

He said it loud and clear in front of the nation. He said we had to prepare to lose our loved ones and he didn't put a number on it but you could work it out with some very simple maths. They're no stupider than you or me and they have access to the best possible advice to explain the implications of their policy choices.

Well, he said he stood for party unity and an end to factionalism then as soon as elected he has made war on the left wing faction of the PLP and most of the membership. He was elected on the basis of his 10 left wing sounding pledges but has clearly surrounded himself by the right wing faction of the party who have fought tooth and nail against these sort reforming policies.

Has the obligatory Marina Hyde link been posted yet?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/05/britons-drama-keir-st...

Here's an example from todays news of what will happen if you wont oppose and make an argument for your big ideas (presuming he has any). Your opponent will move onto your turf. While Keir Starmer is appearing in the Mail trying to chase Tory votes (who obviously will prefer Starmer to Corbyn but are never going to switch their vote if Starmer does end up offering real reform), Boris Johnson has outflanked him on the left. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55960355 

"Boris Johnson is planning to reverse controversial reforms of the NHS in England, a leaked document reveals.

The changes would see a reduced role for the private sector.

It would sweep away reforms introduced by David Cameron's government in 2012."

I'm sure the proposed reforms are superficial at best but now if Starmer chooses privatisation in the NHS as a battleground, usually a big strength for Labour, he will appear to be a follower rather than a leader.

I really do not agree that Starmer is making "war on the left wing faction of the PLP and most of the membership".

He is however making moves to deal with the ingress of a completely different and separate organisation - Momentum. This organisation has worked its' way into the Labour Party in order to gain power that would be impossible to obtain if flying under their own colours.

Now that Starmer is in charge the moderates that were forced out are returning. The Labour Party under Starmer understands that you cannot change the country if permanently in opposition, something Momentum (and Corbyn) couldn't understand, and because of that we have Johnson and his hangers-on.

Hopefully the next government will be a Labour one, which is possible under Starmer. Of course there are those who are simply jealous of this, and they never really belonged in the Labour Party in the first place - maybe the Communist Party, where people are told what their views are, but not Labour.

I saw that story about Conservative NHS policy leak too and had much the same thoughts. There certainly are challenges / difficulties / problems for Labour whatever they do.

Ultimately the problem for Labour is that a lot of us actually do want Tory-lite policies. If by that you mean a market economy and private ownership as it stands (apart from some obvious cases like rail) with a bit better services (especially the NHS) than we have now and not much higher tax (preferably the tax increases and benefits cuts only apply to "them").

"A lot" is not a majority though. Before the last two elections when polled independently about policies without knowing which party they came from, a majority supported Labour's policies. 

Of course. A left wing campaign group has no place in the right wing Labour Party.

Maybe they would find belonging if they could find a party which is constituted to be a democratic socialist party which seeks to create a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many not the few?

Correction - A FAR left wing campaign group THAT BROOKS NO DISAGREEMENT WITH ITS' EXTREME IDEOLOGY has no place in the DEMOCRATIC Labour Party.

The Labour party suffers from attempting democracy unlike the Tories. Essentially grassroots in Labour want to have power, decide leaders, policies etc. And they have much more democratic voice than Tories. Which is fine but.. the more they do this the less Labour get in to power. The opposite view in the party  is provided by top down realists,/centralisers/right wingers who want to get a chance of power. Those in the grassroots are enthusiasts, and they tend to be driven left wingers because everyone else gets bored. So its democracy and failure or controlling top down undemocratic control.

Behave yourself, which of Corbyn policies was far left? Because we've spent more money,many times over, than we were told would bankrupt the economy.

I really don't get where this FAR left comes from, because it was nothing of the sort, so far left the Tories have stolen some of the policies. Other than quoting media BS, where's the FAR bollocks coming from?

I wasn't a fan of Corbyn, but really let's try and keep things real. I often end up defending him, because of ludicrous comments like this.

He did want to steal the shares of listed companies. That was pretty far left.

Unlike Thatcher and her wrecking crew’s rapacious sell-off of national assets to her chums and like-minded associates? Assets bought by the likes of you and me indirectly and sold for a song.

It's the FPTP Westminster system and the Tory/Labour duopoly it creates that is the underlying problem.

Both Tories and Labour have decided that the same group of total dickheads are necessary if they are to get a majority in Westminster.  The Tories are nasty to immigrants and wave flags as a distraction because the c*nts are too stupid to notice they are being ripped off when they feel all patriotic and superior to immigrants. 

Now Starmer feels the way to go is to act like a Tory and wave union jacks and not fight to reverse Brexit in case it p*sses them off instead of trying to explain to these morons they should be watching the money not the flags.

Sooner Scotland is out of this broken system and these moron filled Brexit constituencies have zero influence on our government the better.  

Not sure steal is the word, there were going to be paid for them IIRC.

Using the word STEAL only goes to prove, facts didn't really count in the demonising of the FAR left, agenda.

I think the idea was to take back essential services from foreign ownership and the exporting of funds out of the UK.

As Greenbanks said above you might say they were stolen from US in the first place.

It could be construed as theft if they didn't pay the market value of the shares and the owner didn't want to sell. They were bought in good faith. 

You've changed your tune....

Once again Starmer is in a very tricky situation not of his own making... He really does have to be careful about heaping opprobrium or contempt on the Tories, as however incompetent they may have been they do have a defence, that they were 'doing their best' dealing with an unprecedented crisis. One wrong word from Starmer could play very badly indeed. 

Thankfully even Corbyn seems to have gone  a little bit quiet, maybe he has finally realised that not everything can be blamed on the Tories, and that his brother has been quite embarrassing enough for both of them.

Doesn't that cut both ways? When they were sold originally, are you sure they were sold for market value, and what about the missing income for all those years? Further more what about the increased prices we're paying, to make sure there's a dividend for the investors.

Really, we should be asking for the company, and the money back

In what way?

I used to give Starmer some credit for being rational and pro-EU.  But he's decided to pretend to be a Tory and go after the same pro-Brexit demographic.  It's a bad situations when both major parties in a two party duopoly are courting the same group of complete dickheads.

English voters you mean?

Do you have a private pension? 

I do not, or I have a small one from about 30 years ago, which will probably buy me a loaf of bread.

But we could still have nationalised industries and pensions, we had them before they all got sold off.

Yes. Well that, the enduring cult of brexit, our moribund electoral system and the rampant Scottish independence movement.

jk

The problem with a forced cheap buy back is you will be massively devaluing millions of people pensions instantly. All those people who took it upon themselves not to rely on the state, to put money away every month etc. Not to mention it would make the uk financial sector a global laughing stock and kill any future investment. All at a time when the uk is mired in debt and needs external investment.