Keir Starmer's time is up

[Larry O'Hara]

I'll add this to the how shit is the guardian thread but also relevant here I think. The Toynbee announcing that Margaret Hodge has found some sources of income that have never ever been noticed before.

Where do we find the £100bn needed to fix Britain? Margaret Hodge has the answer | Polly Toynbee

In the Commons, she ripped into the Tories’ economic mismanagement – and pointed a way forward for Labour, says Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee

www.theguardian.com

Had to get a kick in at Corbyn in the final paragraph, just couldn't resist it although as I recall the "extravagance" was pretty well just an end to the progressive austerity since the 80s and actually costed in 2017 and included tax evasion/avoidance" plus quantitative easing which fuels inflation when the left propose it even though the money is going to invest in infrastructure but which is fine when the tories do it even though it's largely going to pay off their covid-supplying mates or paying for their general balls-ups and doesn't touch the infrastructure

(and breathe ).


also hated by people on the non-left for protecting a paedophile as people here keep pointing out but unlike the antisemitism smear sneer seems not to bother Toynbee at all.

Then there is the little matter of benefitting from apartheid in South Africa…

 

[Elpenor]

More Tory talk from Starmer in this article, looking grim for those working in the public sector and those who use public services (and that would be virtually everyone in the country).

Keir Starmer: Labour ‘won’t turn on spending taps’ if it wins election

Labour leader to warn that Britain is in worst economic state for over 50 years and spending will need to be constrained

www.theguardian.com

As ever the Tories hate the public sector, and Labour increasingly do - plus they take them for granted.

 

[SpookyFrank]

There really is no point voting at the next election. It's all just create wealth by making people poorer. Which, helpfully, creates a perpetual crisis which is then used as justification for more cuts.

 

[brogdale]

There really is no point voting at the next election. It's all just create wealth by making people poorer. Which, helpfully, creates a perpetual crisis which is then used as justification for more cuts.

Cuts that require more and more public money raised from taxes on labour to be funnelled into corporate profits.

 

[Rob Ray]

That moment when John McTernan is saying "steady on I don't think we need to go quite so far to the right ..."

A word to the wise, Keir Starmer: whoever advised you to praise Thatcher got it wrong | John McTernan

He’s avoiding complacency, but there’s little point chasing diehard Tories. Focus on offering everyone else real change, says political strategist John McTernan

www.theguardian.com

 

[Smokeandsteam]

More Tory talk from Starmer in this article, looking grim for those working in the public sector and those who use public services (and that would be virtually everyone in the country).

Keir Starmer: Labour ‘won’t turn on spending taps’ if it wins election

Labour leader to warn that Britain is in worst economic state for over 50 years and spending will need to be constrained

www.theguardian.com

As ever the Tories hate the public sector, and Labour increasingly do - plus they take them for granted.

Starmer fancies himself as Wilson in 1964, in fact he's Callaghan in 1976.

Callaghan's historic role was to prepare the ground for the end of the 30-year social democratic era. The actual delivery of the project was a job for Thatcher who easily defeated a weak, divided and largely ‘rabbits in the headlights’ Labour Party in 1979.

Starmer's historic role is to prepare the ground - cloaked in identity politics/reform/morality language - for the destruction of universal public services (that were, of course, an integral core of the social democratic era that Callaghan announced the burial of).

Like Callaghan, Starmer's premiership will be short and chaotic, but key in effectively preparing the ground for a recomposed Tory Party under radical ‘new conservative’ leadership. An incoming Tory Government that will be pledged to properly undertake the job that Starmer has begun/prophesised but is popularly seen as too weak/too incompetent/too restrained by the vestiges of the labour movement (another relic of the social democratic age) to deliver.

History, as they say, does have a habit of repeating itself....

 

[PR1Berske]

 

[hash tag]

He really is talking himself out of a job. The longer it is until the election, the more likely this is to happen.

 

[PTK]

Starmer fancies himself as Wilson in 1964, in fact he's Callaghan in 1976.

Callaghan's historic role was to prepare the ground for the end of the 30-year social democratic era. The actual delivery of the project was a job for Thatcher who easily defeated a weak, divided and largely ‘rabbits in the headlights’ Labour Party in 1979.

Starmer's historic role is to prepare the ground - cloaked in identity politics/reform/morality language - for the destruction of universal public services (that were, of course, an integral core of the social democratic era that Callaghan announced the burial of).

Like Callaghan, Starmer's premiership will be short and chaotic, but key in effectively preparing the ground for a recomposed Tory Party under radical ‘new conservative’ leadership. An incoming Tory Government that will be pledged to properly undertake the job that Starmer has begun/prophesised but is popularly seen as too weak/too incompetent/too restrained by the vestiges of the labour movement (another relic of the social democratic age) to deliver.

History, as they say, does have a habit of repeating itself....

I think you make some very good points.

 

[Wilf]

He really is talking himself out of a job. The longer it is until the election, the more likely this is to happen.

Yes, I still don't take it as given that Labour will win a majority. There's just nothing there to put in front of the voters, no project, no sense of what will be different (probably because it won't be). Amazing to think that with everything they've done, the tories will have more coherent things to say in the campaign.

The other thing, and I really should know this, but are the current polls being applied to the old or new boundaries? Won't the boundaries at the next election elevate the number of votes on, on average, it will take to get a Labour MP?

 

[Whagwan]

Starmer invites his sister to the pub and won't even shout her lunch.

 

[redsquirrel]

The other thing, and I really should know this, but are the current polls being applied to the old or new boundaries? Won't the boundaries at the next election elevate the number of votes on, on average, it will take to get a Labour MP?

The 2023 review proceeded on different criteria than the 6th (2020) review.
The ultimate changes to constituency boundaries due benefit the Tories but only to a relatively limited degree.
It is less a case in increasing the number of votes Labour on average to return an MP, and more that there is an increase in constituencies in the south of England, at the expense of Wales, Scotland and the North.

EDIT: Two decent, if overtaken by events, pieces on boundary changes and voting efficiency from UK Polling Report (which I've just seen has been updated and renewed). 1, 2.

Also bear in mind that lots of the gains and losses will actually be very minor changes to ultra-marginals. If you are an MP with a majority of 50, then a very small change could flip your seat to another party... but unless the next general election is a carbon copy of the last one, it will make no difference to who wins the seat. You'd have held or lost that seat anyway depending on if your party goes up or down. The more important measure of the impact of the boundary changes will be the swing/lead needed by each party to win. Currently the Conservatives need to be about 11 points ahead of Labour to win an overall majority, while Labour need to be about 3 points ahead of the Conservatives for an overall majority - the important question is to what extent that changes (don't, I hasten to add, expect it to even up completely. A lot of that difference is down to factors other than boundaries).

 

[Serge Forward]

Starmer invites his sister to the pub and won't even shout her lunch.

Tight get. He thinks he's giving himself working class cred by association. Instead, he shows that he's an even bigger cunt. I bet his sister wasn't too happy to have her poverty used as a feature of his shit speech (if the story's even true that is).

 

[two sheds]

And every member of his Shadow Cabinet broke out into applause with a tear in their eyes when he said that to them.

 

[Dystopiary]

Don't forget that he and Reeves have been very clear they don't include people too disabled or sick to work in that little performance.

New Labour might go as far as pretending to care about working people, but for people on disability benefits there isn't even that fig leaf.

 

[PTK]

Starmer invites his sister to the pub and won't even shout her lunch.

What a mean man!

 

[singsongfun]

Did you know Keir Starmer’s wife, Lady Victoria, is Jewish?
A world of difference from the prejudice of Jeremy Corbyn.

 

[Rob Ray]

"I, a rich man, won't buy my sister lunch" is a weird flex.

 

[Sue]

"I, a rich man, won't buy my sister lunch" is a weird flex.

'Let her eat sandwiches!'

 

[Elpenor]

"I, a rich man, won't buy my sister lunch" is a weird flex.

We have to make tough decisions, suspect for him it’s an easy one though

 

[Elpenor]

Decided was a bit mean spirited

 

[Humberto]

Is it really neccessary? Who has the best take on mugging the guy off over trivialities.

 

[DotCommunist]

'Let her eat sandwiches!'

Corbyn famously stole his sarnies from veterans

 

[danny la rouge]

Starmer invites his sister to the pub and won't even shout her lunch.

Can we be certain he actually has a sister? That’s my first thought.

 

[ska invita]

just listened to it such bullshit

 

[littlebabyjesus]

How the fuck did we end up with this idiot?

 

[Lurdan]

Can we be certain he actually has a sister? That’s my first thought.

She was 'profiled' by the Mail in September 2021 after he used her situation as an example in a previous speech.

Revealed: Sir Keir Starmer's lowly-paid sister works 12-hour shifts on minimum wage for as little as £9.70 looking after the elderly at a Kent care home

etc.

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

My vote doesn't matter as I'm in a safe labour seat, but I'm now not even sure I want Labour to win the next election. The only problem with Starmer somehow managing to fuck it up is that the lesson some in Labour would no doubt learn from that is that they clearly weren't right wing enough.

The UK's undemocratic electoral system traps us in this two-party system. Like PSOE in Spain, Labour needs to split. It could even be worth having a few more years of the tories to make that happen. I don't know. We don't have Spain's electoral system. So we are faced with a bunch of options none of which are any good.

True. How many people positively vote for a candidate or party versus how many are voting tactically against the candidate/party they don't want to win? I think for lots of people it isn't a matter of voting for the best candidate but voting for the least worst, and that's a shit way to be deciding who governs us as a population and a country.

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

Cuts that require more and more public money raised from taxes on labour to be funnelled into corporate profits.

Yes. Utilities. The latest nonsense is more nuclear power stations, but of course the private sector has to have guarantees as to how much they can charge. And I'll hazard a guess that while the private sector is trousering the profits the public sector will be the one footing the bill for dealing with the waste for years to come. I think there should be a moratorium on new nuclear power plants until they've figured out how to safely deal with the nuclear waste they've already generated and will continue to generate.

Then there's privatisation of the education system, the academies.

Privatisation of health care. Make the NHS so bad that it has to be rescued by private healthcare. And that's before we get to the pandemic and PPE scandal and the white elephant Nightingale Hospitals.

And housing, sell off social housing* and pretty much stop building more, then give lots of public money to landlords. And then when that results in a housing crisis, pay slumlords heaps of money to provide temporary accommodation to people who can't afford to rent or buy because... you get the idea.

*Disclaimer: I'm part of the problem, I bought my council flat under the Right to Buy. I haven't sold it though, it's still my home.

 

[wow]

How the fuck did we end up with this idiot?

Listen to the voice of humanity