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Keir Starmer's time is up

JTG said:
I think Labour are particularly snookered because of demographic issues in that young people are over represented in the cities, which they are already winning handily, leaving behind their small town homes in, I dunno, County Durham or wherever, which then become ever more Tory friendly. There are more rural/semi-rural etc seats than there are urban/suburban ones and the upshot is that Labour need to win 2/3% more of the vote just to get parity in seats.

I'm pulling stuff out of my arse here so some bits of the above are up for debate but you get the picture.

There's loads more older people than there are younger ones as well. The people who are just about to retire are the ones who voted for Thatcher in their millions in 79/83 and have been doing so ever since. If you want to discuss w/c Tory pensioners then that's where you start and you're just not going to get them now.

There are signs that Labour may find it easier to take some of the indomitable blue suburbs around London before too long - they've got ever closer in places like Chingford, Uxbridge, High Wycombe etc in recent elections. People are moving out of London and bringing their politics with them - the politics of wanting to start a family but not being able to afford a house etc. But generally, things are pretty shit for Labour without some other change elsewhere, perhaps some revival of the Lib Dems that could take votes from the Tories
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One of the things that led to the Labour Party success in 1996, was the huge number of house repossessions carried out across the country stop. Croydon for instance had over 2000 properties repossessed within a short period of time. This completely changed the attitude towards the Conservative party with regard to Financial husbandry.


We are about to have a huge increase in unemployment at a time when household debt is higher thanit’s ever been. The number of repossessions for instance in the next year is going to be huge.

People say that governments lose elections rather than the opposition winning them. I’m not sure about this. But the financial storm that is coming it’s gonna be very very difficult for the Conservative party to endure.

Problem is is the Labour Party ship with no strategy or plan.
 
Smokeandsteam said:
How does the evidence posted above show that Labour is popular among self identified working class voters? Or that Labour’s support isn’t diminished among working class voters?

The evidence (if this is what you are referring to) indicates that even where self identification of class is factored in that Labour is relatively unpopular among working class voters regardless of NRS classification).


Vote%20by%20class%20and%20NRS%20current%20VI-01.png
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Call centre workers and dead end clerical jobs are C1 so that is misleading. The categories are outdated and biased towards "manual labour" as the defining features of being working class, but that hasn't been accurate for decades.

Is there any breakdown on how gig economy workers, minimum wage workers, and tenants vote? That would be more useful to gauge class in the 21st Century.
 
lazythursday said:
And this is where

Notable from that chart is the fact that despite all the discourse that Labour is now the party of London and has lost the north, actually the north remains the strongest region for Labour.
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Really hoping that the result of Starmer's flag waving is that the Northern Independence Party eats into their votes. :cool:

Edit: Actually I do think that could happen. Starmer is oblivious to the strength of regional identities. In the North East, "defending the region from Westminister/standing up for the region" is a vote winner and a common approach to campaigning, also loads of Geordies were cheering on Scottish independence. Not sure if Labour associating itself so strongly with Westminster is a smart move. I don't think the large population of people descended from Irish Catholics really give two shits about the Union Jack either.

Even among the far right it is usually the England flag which appeals, not the Union flag.
 
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JTG said:
Yeah I mean Labour remain strong in the north of England (lots of metropolitan areas) and metropolitan areas everywhere else as well. They're losing in small and medium sized towns and short of a reason for young people to stay in those places (maybe some kind of Green Industrial Revolution, who can say) I can't see that changing really

ETA: and wrt the smaller northern towns and semi rural seats that they lost last time around, they didn't lose loads of them by THAT much. Bishop Auckland looks a challenge now but places like Blyth Valley or NW Durham are a hair's breadth away from flipping back again. As you say, narratives have the north surfing a tidal wave of blue when most of the urban areas are deep red and the new swing seats are marginal to say the least
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I think we've had on these boards discussions about the Red Wall seats with some posters painting them as areas where young people are leaving in droves leaving an increasingly older population whose property when they die is snapped up by affluent Tories who want to live in the country. Thus hollowing out t what was once proud labour areas into Conservative ones and therefore there is very little Labour can do about it as it is fighting demographics.

Its true that cities tend to be younger however cities are aslo characterised by younger people coming into cities for work however as they themselves get older many leave the cities to start families and go else where. However the development of a lot of these convenient stereo types in trying to explain the decline of Labours vote in areas like the Red Wall have serious flaws and are contradicted by the Resolution Foundation report.
This study found that net emigration from and immigration to those areas was in fact very low. They also state that compared to the national average the average age compared to the UK average age is virtually the same ie middle aged not old, and that home ownership is actually broadly share d but has relatively low value.
The Red Wall is characterised by 68% of the population living in large towns and small cities which requires an economic strategy ( maybe a Green industrial Revolution,) that goes beyond simply improving connectivity between them or into medium and big cities. There is a lower skill base, a lack of growth, a lack of investment in new industries and a lower ratio of high value industry than city areas.
If Labour want to be patriotic in any sense then they should be patriotic to the North, Midlands and areas like the Red Wall.
 
The39thStep said:
I think we've had on these boards discussions about the Red Wall seats with some posters painting them as areas where young people are leaving in droves leaving an increasingly older population whose property when they die is snapped up by affluent Tories who want to live in the country. Thus hollowing out t what was once proud labour areas into Conservative ones and therefore there is very little Labour can do about it as it is fighting demographics.
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Yes, there has been a significant resurgence of late on here of the argument “it’s not us and our politics that’s the problem, it’s the wrong type of people who live in these areas who are to blame (that have voted Labour for the last 100 years)’.

I didn’t realise 68% of people could be characterised as typical ‘red wall’ types. Mind you, I only found our yesterday via Urban that 33% out of 100% meant something was popular. So you live and learn eh...
 
TopCat said:
One of the things that led to the Labour Party success in 1996, was the huge number of house repossessions carried out across the country stop. Croydon for instance had over 2000 properties repossessed within a short period of time. This completely changed the attitude towards the Conservative party with regard to Financial husbandry.


We are about to have a huge increase in unemployment at a time when household debt is higher thanit’s ever been. The number of repossessions for instance in the next year is going to be huge.

People say that governments lose elections rather than the opposition winning them. I’m not sure about this. But the financial storm that is coming it’s gonna be very very difficult for the Conservative party to endure.

Problem is is the Labour Party ship with no strategy or plan.
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Yeah I mean you touch there on the major difference as well. From Black Wednesday onwards Labour had a consistent lead (I don't believe they were behind in the polls at all for another 7/8 years or thereabouts) and Smith followed by Blair absolutely hammered the government on their economic failure, with the aid of a press who were quite happy to have a go as well. What have we now? A timid Labour Party and a pliant press. There's a tidal wave of shite on the way but absolutely no plan to alleviate it let alone take advantage, just the assumption that the tables will turn
 
The39thStep said:
I think we've had on these boards discussions about the Red Wall seats with some posters painting them as areas where young people are leaving in droves leaving an increasingly older population whose property when they die is snapped up by affluent Tories who want to live in the country. Thus hollowing out t what was once proud labour areas into Conservative ones and therefore there is very little Labour can do about it as it is fighting demographics.

Its true that cities tend to be younger however cities are aslo characterised by younger people coming into cities for work however as they themselves get older many leave the cities to start families and go else where. However the development of a lot of these convenient stereo types in trying to explain the decline of Labours vote in areas like the Red Wall have serious flaws and are contradicted by the Resolution Foundation report.
This study found that net emigration from and immigration to those areas was in fact very low. They also state that compared to the national average the average age compared to the UK average age is virtually the same ie middle aged not old, and that home ownership is actually broadly share d but has relatively low value.
The Red Wall is characterised by 68% of the population living in large towns and small cities which requires an economic strategy ( maybe a Green industrial Revolution,) that goes beyond simply improving connectivity between them or into medium and big cities. There is a lower skill base, a lack of growth, a lack of investment in new industries and a lower ratio of high value industry than city areas.
If Labour want to be patriotic in any sense then they should be patriotic to the North, Midlands and areas like the Red Wall.
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Fair dos.

Also has higher home ownership and closer to the national average income than other Labour strongholds. Stagnation rather than deprivation.
 
Rimbaud said:
Call centre workers and dead end clerical jobs are C1 so that is misleading. The categories are outdated and biased towards "manual labour" as the defining features of being working class, but that hasn't been accurate for decades.

Is there any breakdown on how gig economy workers, minimum wage workers, and tenants vote? That would be more useful to gauge class in the 21st Century.
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Quite so. The workers you mention may not be categorised as w/c and may not be self identified as such but it's pretty hard to argue that they're not unless you're fixated on flat caps and empty mills
 
JTG said:
Fair dos.

Also has higher home ownership and closer to the national average income than other Labour strongholds. Stagnation rather than deprivation.
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I wasn't having a go at you tbh as you did put a caveat on your remarks. I thought posting some research about the demographics would be useful if you or anyone else was inclined to further down that route.
 
Smokeandsteam said:
Where is the evidence that loads of Geordies were cheering on Scottish Independence coming from? According to this they’d be more upset about it than us in the Midlands and Wales:

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That says the North, doesn't say anything about the North East specifically. I'm mostly going by my own experience there, which is admittedly biased towards those of Irish Catholic heritage, but to me it is self evidently obvious that regional identity trumps national identity and that Geordies like and relate to Scots a hell of a lot more than Southern English. I don't think it is surprising that most of the people in the Northern Independence Party are from the North East, because its been frequent and increasingly serious pub chat about joining Scotland or something for years.

I found some polling to back that up:

www.chroniclelive.co.uk

North East more pro-independence that the Scottish, online map shows

Poll by our sister website Us vs Th3m suggests folk living in the region are more keen on a yes vote than those north of the border
www.chroniclelive.co.uk www.chroniclelive.co.uk

It just goes to show how wrong headed the push for flag waving Britishness is to "win back" the North (the North which is, was, and remains Labour's stronghold and which had increased majorities for Corbyn all across Northern cities). The North isn't homogenous white EDL members as middle class bigots in the south seem determined to believe. It is actually racially diverse, especially in the North West, it is mostly very urban and the urban population is generally socially liberal. Even amongst the white population there is a significant Irish population, particularly in Liverpool and Newcastle, who just aren't drawn to the notion of Britishness being pushed by Starmer.
 
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This is from yesterday, pretty bleak:



And there is an uncorroborated story on Twitter that they are advertising similar jobs with half the pay

and yet Keith does a vid supporting British Gas worker's strike:



There two things are completely at odds with each other imo.
 
All of that talk from Labour supporters about community organising, the development and training of the thousands who flooded into the party and building a mass movement. Gone within a year of Starmer being elected. I can only assume that if anyone with any politics is left in Labour its because the unmissable penny landing actually fell on their head.....
 
Smokeandsteam said:
All of that talk from Labour supporters about community organising, the development and training of the thousands who flooded into the party and building a mass movement. Gone within a year of Starmer being elected. I can only assume that if anyone with any politics is left in Labour its because the unmissable penny landing actually fell on their head.....
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Reasonable effort here from Dan Carden

The Scouse Exception

As many of Labour's post-industrial heartlands drifted rightward, Liverpool remained solidly red. The reason is clear: working-class community organising.
tribunemag.co.uk tribunemag.co.uk
 
The39thStep said:
I wasn't having a go at you tbh as you did put a caveat on your remarks. I thought posting some research about the demographics would be useful if you or anyone else was inclined to further down that route.
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Nah that's fine and always worth doing given that it's sometimes hard to separate assumptions from analysis from hard facts

I do think "Red Wall" in itself is a bit of an unhelpful grouping anyway given as it seems to have been invented 18 months ago for very specific reasons
 
teqniq said:
This is from yesterday, pretty bleak:



And there is an uncorroborated story on Twitter that they are advertising similar jobs with half the pay

and yet Keith does a vid supporting British Gas worker's strike:



There two things are completely at odds with each other imo.
Click to expand...


COU stuff is entirely in line with the ongoing purge of anything remotely left or "Corbynite" within the party. It took ages to get off the ground due to internal opposition from the bureaucracy and had what seems to have been some success (Putney - specifically Roehampton I think - and some other places where the effect appears to have been to limit losses when compared to other similar areas). I mean, aside from the electoral effect, the ethos is that Labour should actually be doing stuff in w/c communities and the party right hate that.
 
If Starmer is supposed to be a realist then he needs to realise that insincere bullshit won't fly with potential Labour voters. I understand that the Labour Party is given a much shorter leash, and that they have to get over a solid wall of privilege and elitism, and I hear the 'they can't do any good if they're not in power' line. But aping the manipulation of the Tories e.g. nationalism (amongst other tools the ruling class use such as scapegoating) is not the way to go.

The 'right way' is to be real. If he can't be that then he isn't the right man. People talk about the electoral successes of New Labour where they were heavily reliant on focus-groups and publicity manipulation. The reality is that Blair and co. knew how to convince people that they were on 'their side' and could offer them a better deal. And they then convinced enough people that they could get it done.

People are suffering. This isn't the time for a bland 'steady' appeal; it's time for argument. Blair and his operators knew their brief and could pull a few levers. They weren't always cautious and, lets be honest; shy. Above all he made his party electable. It's true he wasn't a leftist firebrand: he was Labour right-wing as far as I can tell. And he had flaws that dragged us into wars and hurt so many others. But he wasn't shy of publicity and confrontation and he certainly wasn't defeatist.

Honestly though, Blair's opponents were relative boy scouts compared to the set of cut-throats and plunderers that Starmer's Labour are up against. They are merciless. Starmer should attack them and lead, or stand aside.
 
ska invita said:
I think Clive L will stand for leader next time, and might even win. I think he's trying to position himself, not totally cynically, but with an eye on the top job. He's been outspoken several times since Starmer took over.
No idea what deeper positions he holds though
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I clocked your comment and thought about it while listening to Lewis being interviewed on Novara media last night (think the interview was earlier in the week).

He was abysmal. ‘A level’ cultural race theory combined with liberal popular frontism. His position is basically the same as Paul Masons (iirc Mason backed him for leader before swinging behind Starmer once CL couldn’t get the votes to go onto the ballot). Put simply: large sections of the working class - especially those not in cities, not young and not possessive of a postmodernist understanding of the world - are lost to ‘the left’. They are nativist/racist and beyond the pale.

Instead he proposes a liberal alliance of Labour, Liberal Democrat’s, Greens and Nats, the need for PR and coalition. Oddly, the young thrusting dynamic radical viewers of Novara lapped it up.

So you might be right therefore, that if Labour loses in 2024, that the approach he represents might be where Labour ends up. It’d be the settlement Blair and Mandelson always wanted: albeit cloaked in identity language.
 
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Smokeandsteam said:
Mind you, I only found our yesterday via Urban that 33% out of 100% meant something was popular. So you live and learn eh...
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I dig that for stalinists like you anything less than 98% is a disaster but in the normal world 'popular' isnt an absolute. Number two on the hit parade is still popular. Of course the point, which you missed by several miles, was boringly about the failure of social gradings to match the reality of who is working-class. You like to agree with this error because it helps you to claim your conservativism is the voice of the working class. You sound like you're trying to convince yourself more than anyone else.
 
My sense is that the vapid blue Labour approach they are adopting is the common sense position of the bulk of the party. Clive Lewis isn't angling for leadership rather fighting a rear guard action.
 
Knotted said:
My sense is that the vapid blue Labour approach they are adopting is the common sense position of the bulk of the party. Clive Lewis isn't angling for leadership rather fighting a rear guard action.
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I think its the position many believe voters in the 'red wall' seats adhere to, rather than the one they hold to themselves, iyswim. Many do hold such a view but I dont think its the 'vast bulk'
 
belboid said:
I dig that for stalinists like you anything less than 98% is a disaster but in the normal world 'popular' isnt an absolute. Number two on the hit parade is still popular. Of course the point, which you missed by several miles, was boringly about the failure of social gradings to match the reality of who is working-class. You like to agree with this error because it helps you to claim your conservativism is the voice of the working class. You sound like you're trying to convince yourself more than anyone else.
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I suppose some won’t have read the previous pages of the thread Belboid. But most will have. The point wasn’t, as you now claim, about the failure of social grading classification. It was that, in the debate about that, you claimed that ‘the evidence’ showed the Labour Party was ‘popular’ once social grading and self identification was taken into account. The problem was that the evidence didn’t show that. Bar among ABC1 voters who claimed to be working class where it showed Labour was marginally less unpopular. Your spinning, twisting and piss poor labelling isn’t going to change the evidence.

The irony of someone marooned in the dregs of what passes for a ‘left’ in the Labour Party banging on about the malign influence of the Stalinists is hilarious mind.
 
Smokeandsteam said:
The irony of someone marooned in the dregs of what passes for a ‘left’ in the Labour Party banging on about the malign influence of the Stalinists is hilarious mind.
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everyone should slate stalinists, and their influence. Just cos hardly anyone waves the flag explicitly for uncle joe doesnt mean his social conservatism and nationalism aren't quite widely reflected within the 'left.'
 
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