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Keir Starmer's time is up

elbows said:
These days even the fucking tories probably have their own version of this lurking somewhere in their minds.
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Well I know its the wrong thread for it but having said the above here, this seems appropriate:

www.theguardian.com

The pandemic has opened up a deep rift within the Conservatives. It will grow | Polly Toynbee

How can Britain recover without greater public spending? The tax-cutting party has no answers, says Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

A stalemate on decisions, amid rows between a fiscally tight chancellor and a spendthrift prime minister, has unleashed this thrashing-about in Tory ranks. These dilemmas can’t be shelved, but there are no Tory-shaped solutions. Only state intervention, with higher spending and taxes, can confront climate catastrophe – for which, less than 100 days from Cop26 planetary decision-time, there is still no costed roadmap.

Johnson has options. With one bound he can abandon all pre-election promises: everyone knows the pandemic has changed everything. How easy to proclaim that the emergency means we must now rescue the NHS, education, social care and the social fabric itself: blood, sweat and taxes in a time of crisis. But that’s returning to the Conservative era before Thatcher, the more consensual “Butskellism” which his Thatcher-bred Tory generation detests. For them, the only true Conservative response to these crises is to do nothing, laissez-faire. Rely on the bogus old pretence that cutting “red tape”, “bureaucracy” and “inefficiency” yields a crock of gold at the end of a Tory rainbow.
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A post-Covid consensus with some parallels to post-war consensus politics makes sense, but the system is presently full of people who are divorced from reality. Some of them may yet get a clue, but its going to be messy.
 
Gramsci said:
Lambeth is run in similar fashion. Croydon came unstuck with its failed housing development company.

The other problem with Labour Councils run for years by the right is the entrenched senior officers whose whole careers have been based around serving New Labour.

It ends up as a one party state in some Boroughs

The advent of Corbyn led to influx of young people who were a blessing to us who for years had been dealing with One Party Lambeth over local issues

They actually helped. Labour Cllrs were either unhappy with this or in grudging way put up with them.

What the right want is not ordinary mass membership.

They want a small membership who are vetted by them. No one else is welcome

All my Labour Cllrs supported Starmer for leader.


.
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Good points well made. Croydon is close to my heart. The council officers had an agenda for two decades that didn’t change when the party in power changed.
They have demolished much of the town centre in preparation for a Westfield that will never come.

They borrowed over 500 million quid for nothing.

A council that can’t even mow the parks now. A council that has lost all key competent staff.

No accountability at all. All services are in crisis. Statuary meetings don’t happen.

Croydon will take generations to pay it back.

The councillors get discredited but the cabal of officers suffer nowt and many are now embedded elsewhere peddilling their commerce driven regeneration bullshit.
Most of the councillors who voted their agenda through have still no idea how much they were misled. So much wool in their heads it was child’s play to pull it down over their eyes.
 
TopCat said:
Good points well made. Croydon is close to my heart. The council officers had an agenda for two decades that didn’t change when the party in power changed.
They have demolished much of the town centre in preparation for a Westfield that will never come.

They borrowed over 500 million quid for nothing.

A council that can’t even mow the parks now. A council that has lost all key competent staff.

No accountability at all. All services are in crisis. Statuary meetings don’t happen.

Croydon will take generations to pay it back.

The councillors get discredited but the cabal of officers suffer nowt and many are now embedded elsewhere peddilling their commerce driven regeneration bullshit.
Most of the councillors who voted their agenda through have still no idea how much they were misled. So much wool in their heads it was child’s play to pull it down over their eyes.
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What concerns me that is relevant to this thread is that its local government where the ordinary person deals with Labour.

The right of the Labour Party derided Corbynists for not being seen as so called competent to run the economy. Yet Croydon is example of the right agenda going spectacularly wrong. And little is heard of it outside local press.

Makes one wonder whether the unreconstructed Blairites who Starmer seems to be working with are really the best people to turn to for "grown up" economic policies. It was after all Blair / Brown light touch regulation of the City that was one of the reasons for the economic crash.

On officers. My view is that ideologically driven right wing leadership had officers whose careers in local government led them to be imo not independent but part of the new Labour agenda.

Jo Negrini was in Lambeth then became Chief Executive in Croydon. Knowing her from Lambeth she was liked by my New Labour Cllrs as someone who got things done. Whatever residents thought. If they wanted a policy enacted she jumped to it This imo led to situation where the Chief Executive didn't warn Cllrs of dangers. In that way the officer class and the New Labour leadership were entwined. The senior officers careers were in Blairite Councils. They were loyal to them.

Imo if Starmer wants to look at something he should look at how Labour Party operates when its in power in local government.

How it deals with residents. Lambeth like to make out they are some kind of flagship Borough working with communities. The actuality is somewhat different. Cynicism about local government leads to low voter turnout.

These are all issues Starmer could be looking at rather than expelling marginal groups to make himself look hard.
 
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I have some experience of Lambeth (Progress) Labour. My memory is that they were spending a stupendous amount of public money on a 'cooperative' and 'commissioning' council that simply duplicated existing management structures, created all sort of contested spaces and drove away some of their most competent officers. And all this while slashing expenditure on frontline services. And lets not start on their weird obsession with demolishing council estates and doing sweetheart deals with developers. Remember next door Southwark being had over by Lendlease to redevelop the Heygate estate? (sold off for only £50 million and managing to turn 1200 social homes into less than 100.)

That's Blairism in government (national and local) - monumental incompetence allied to a wide-eyed naivety about the workings of free market capitalism. No wonder the right-wing press are giving Starmer a free ride!
 
brogdale said:
From an outsiders perspective, the Labour left were never nearly ruthless enough once they had a hand on the internal levers of power.
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Absolutely - with no theory of power or strategy to transform the party, they blew their chance. They won't get another!
 
ska invita said:
Business had no problem with Corbyn. "Corbynomics" got the seal of approval from major financial bodies, in fact they preferred it to Tory austerity, Starmer is a fucking clueless cunt
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I remember his economic policies being backed by some economists and opposed by another in the FT but who were the major Financial bodies that backed him ?
 
I think it was important that there was an actual plan met broad approval as opposed to no fucking plan from the other side. The financial industry can adapt and profit in pretty much any environment, but it needs the regulatory space and a known political framework to do this.
 
The39thStep said:
I remember his economic policies being backed by some economists and opposed by another in the FT but who were the major Financial bodies that backed him ?
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It was several years ago now so forget the details but remember it happening particularly after he gave a big speech on Peoples QE etc.
Heres David Blanchflower, the IMF and others nodding along - its a long time ago now i dont remember much more than that
www.theguardian.com

Jeremy Corbyn wins economists’ backing for anti-austerity policies

Former adviser to Bank of England among signatories to letter dismissing criticism of economic plans, saying they are ‘not extreme’
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
it shouldnt be a surprise when:
www.independent.co.uk

Higher taxes for rich will not harm economic growth, says IMF

Increasing inequality within countries could actually be harming economic productivity, the organisation warns in its biannual report
www.independent.co.uk www.independent.co.uk
keynesiasm is now orthodoxy, starmer is living in a time warp
 
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