Keir Starmer's time is up

[Smokeandsteam]

By the sounds of it, this relaunch is aimed at reassuring people that "we are the tories".

No. The actual message is “we are the competent Tories”

 

[littlebabyjesus]

We are the Tories you always hoped for.

 

[PR1Berske]

The six "milestones" are these. To say they're reheated would make a Wetherspoons kitchen blush.

Higher living standards in every part of the UK by the 2029 – Starmer does not say by how much higher. Plans for a numerical target appear to have been dropped

Building 1.5million new homes over the course of this Parliament. But govt admits that house numbers won’t start to rise significantly until 2027

Routine operations within 18 weeks for 92% of patients by 2029, a level last hit in 2015

An extra 13,000 neighbourhood police

75% of five-year-olds reaching a good level of development, up from 67.7% at present

Decarbonising the electricity grid by 2
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[2hats]

The six "milestones" are these. To say they're reheated would make a Wetherspoons kitchen blush.

Higher living standards in every part of the UK by the 2029 – Starmer does not say by how much higher. Plans for a numerical target appear to have been dropped

Building 1.5million new homes over the course of this Parliament. But govt admits that house numbers won’t start to rise significantly until 2027

Routine operations within 18 weeks for 92% of patients by 2029, a level last hit in 2015

An extra 13,000 neighbourhood police

75% of five-year-olds reaching a good level of development, up from 67.7% at present

Decarbonising the electricity grid by 2
030

Share

The seventh milestone looks most promising.

 

[Artaxerxes]

Not convinced by these new London Underground names tbh

 

[Chz]

View attachment 453711

Not convinced by these new London Underground names tbh

Made me chortle, because it was fun to see the Men Who Like Trains go absolutely apoplectic over the Overground rebranding.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

So the method is hard neoliberalism. Supply-side economics, get the private sector to do the borrowing, make sure the rich get richer.

The rhetoric is more LibDem.

What do we want?

GRADUAL CHANGE

When do we want it?

IN DUE COURSE

And what is it they are actually promising?

By the time of the next election, you may be starting to notice that things are almost as good as they were after five years of Cameron and Osborne's vicious austerity.

And that's if all this mad economics stuff works as they hope it will work. Which it probably won't. There isn't a Plan B in case it doesn't work. The method comes first. There is no other way.

 

[The39thStep]

All very early 2000s isn't it? A handful of modest and achievable targets dressed up by or as missions, milestones and pledges whose performance will be massaged by bean counters and a convenient narrative.

 

[PR1Berske]

Unions disquiet at Kier's language:

Keir Starmer's civil service criticism 'Trumpian', says union boss - BBC News

It comes after the PM said too many civil servants "are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline".

www.bbc.com

 

[Elpenor]

He’s not quite gone full Braverman, but close enough

 

[littlebabyjesus]

All very early 2000s isn't it? A handful of modest and achievable targets dressed up by or as missions, milestones and pledges whose performance will be massaged by bean counters and a convenient narrative.

Yes. And the method by which those modest targets may be achieved is by making the rich richer. It was the same in the 2000s. Making the rich richer isn't some unfortunate side-effect that can't be avoided. It's the aim.

 

[The39thStep]

Yes. And the method by which those modest targets may be achieved is by making the rich richer. It was the same in the 2000s. Making the rich richer isn't some unfortunate side-effect that can't be avoided. It's the aim.

For the sake of transparency they should measure this as a risk factor

 

[kabbes]

Agree with all the above. Plus, it’s politically blind too. The result even if successful will be people feeling that things aren’t really any better in five years. Starmer thinks that he can just reason people into ignoring that personal lived experience— he thinks that he can point to meeting his targets and people will go, “oh! In that case, well done.” But that’s not how it works. Politics in the wild is not some debating chamber where you win the argument through clever logic and then everyone votes for you.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Also building a million houses sounds great but if they're all in low quality, poorly-planned developments lacking proper infrastructure that's going to piss off a lot more than a million people.

 

[Elpenor]

Starmer reminds me of when I worked for an organisation that had a call centre and my team though not part of the call centre was also judged on telephony

Every morning the previous days stats came round marked up in traffic light colours - Red / Amber / Green. Answer time, how many callers abandoned, how many calls bounced from me to a colleague as I didn’t answer, length of call

Having all these green was important. A number of peoples jobs involved collating these stats, and there were meetings about these stats for all the managers to discuss them

None of these stats measured anything useful like whether the caller was actually helped, how effective my guidance was, did they have to call again with the same problem etc

So when I see Starmer I can imagine him saying “my stats are all green” to a voter who doesn’t give a shit because there is no NHS dentist for over 100 miles and their kids are being taught in an overcrowded classroom with a leaking roof

 

[two sheds]

Also building a million houses sounds great but if they're all in low quality, poorly-planned developments lacking proper infrastructure that's going to piss off a lot more than a million people.

and all over the green belt.

Funny how there seem simple solutions to a lot of these problems - like thousands of second homes and empty houses that could be compulsorily purchased or even confiscated if the owners are shown to be profiteers.

 

[SpookyFrank]

I'm not against building some whole new towns. But if there was a plan for that we'd have heard about it by now.

Looking at the state of developments in the past 10-20 years it also seems like joined-up planning is a completely lost discipline in this country. There's a new town near me and it's a bleak place. They built the houses, then the school, then put in the town centre as an afterthought.

There is a train station at least.

 

[two sheds]

Indeed, although there are whole villages and towns in Cornwall and elsewhere which are deserted for 50 weeks of the year just to give some arseholes a couple of weeks holiday a year and a nice little investment at the expense of everyone else.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Indeed, although there are whole villages and towns in Cornwall and elsewhere which are deserted for 50 weeks of the year just to give some arseholes a couple of weeks holiday a year and a nice little investment at the expense of everyone else.

And building new homes in Devon and Cornwall is just pouring water into a leaky bucket until something is done about second home cunts and airbnb leeches.

Simplest of law changes; you can't run a residential property as a business without planning permission. With no grandfather rights for people already doing so. Make them pay business rates as well, pay for commercial waste collection, all the stuff businesses are supposed to do.

 

[The39thStep]

Starmer reminds me of when I worked for an organisation that had a call centre and my team though not part of the call centre was also judged on telephony

Every morning the previous days stats came round marked up in traffic light colours - Red / Amber / Green. Answer time, how many callers abandoned, how many calls bounced from me to a colleague as I didn’t answer, length of call

Having all these green was important. A number of peoples jobs involved collating these stats, and there were meetings about these stats for all the managers to discuss them

None of these stats measured anything useful like whether the caller was actually helped, how effective my guidance was, did they have to call again with the same problem etc

So when I see Starmer I can imagine him saying “my stats are all green” to a voter who doesn’t give a shit because there is no NHS dentist for over 100 miles and their kids are being taught in an overcrowded classroom with a leaking roof

I remember the Youth Justice Board's Inspection of our Youth Offending Team. This generated a large headline report on failing to enter such and such on a database, the number of visits recorded within 72 hours of visiting, and things like that without commenting at all on the fact that youth crime had fallen, which presumably was its entire justification for the YOTs being.

Customer satisfaction would be a great target for a government to have.

 

[DotCommunist]

Starmer thinks that he can just reason people into ignoring that personal lived experience

I saw a lot of well heeled american journos and wonks trying the same thing and well, now they've lost they blame the left, the trans, wokery and ignorant plebs. Blame anything save their tone deaf 'but the chart says you've never had it better' stuff

 

[kabbes]

Simplest of law changes; you can't run a residential property as a business without planning permission. With no grandfather rights for people already doing so. Make them pay business rates as well, pay for commercial waste collection, all the stuff businesses are supposed to do.

They’re starting to do that (to some degree) in North Wales. It’s a great idea.

 

[nino_savatte]

"We need to be in power to change things" said the Starmerites in the years before the election. Now that they're in power, everyone can see what many of us could already see: namely, the right of the party is power-crazed and bereft of ideas. This latest relaunch is yet more proof of their intellectual poverty.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Elite liberalism sounds the first alarm of panic. As usual the issue is perception/communication/social media/the revolting plebs/Starmer’s personality free zone.

Anything, but them. Them and their politics.

We cannot afford for Starmer’s government to fail. Because Farage is lying in wait | Jonathan Freedland

It is not enough for the Labour leader’s ‘milestones’ to be achieved. Voters must feel the improvement in their daily lives, says Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland

www.theguardian.com

 

[Rob Ray]

And yet the thinking inside Starmer's camp appears to continue to be "we need to say we're changing things, slag off woke, shag some flags and be mean to migrants" as though this isn't the exact same agenda that's done for liberal regimes worldwide. If I were a betting man I'd lay an early one that Labour's a one-term government, based on the current trend (and I don't see them coming up with anything else). The only question is how the right reorganises itself to beat them.

On wokeness, patriotism and change, Kamala Harris’s defeat has lessons for Starmer | Deborah Mattinson and Claire Ainsley

Two former senior advisers to Labour analyse the clear messages from US voters’ preference for Trump

www.theguardian.com

Thing that gets me with these idiots it there's not a single nod to the fact Trump didn't win because of some massive shift towards greater popularity. He got 77 million votes in 2024 vs 74m in 2020, beating Harris only because she lost votes (74.9m in 2024 vs Biden's 81.2m in 2020) on a ticket which was not in any way left-wing other than in the propaganda of the Trump campaign. Starmer meanwhile also lost votes (9.4m vs 10.2m in 2020) and won only because of a Tory split. The problem has been failing to get out their own side. Yet rather than think "hm maybe our current strategy is a problem" they're intently focusing on doing the same but more of it. Bonkers.

 

[Brainaddict]

And yet the thinking inside Starmer's camp appears to continue to be "we need to say we're changing things, slag off woke, shag some flags and be mean to migrants" as though this isn't the exact same agenda that's done for liberal regimes worldwide. If I were a betting man I'd lay an early one that Labour's a one-term government, based on the current trend (and I don't see them coming up with anything else). The only question is how the right reorganises itself to beat them.

On wokeness, patriotism and change, Kamala Harris’s defeat has lessons for Starmer | Deborah Mattinson and Claire Ainsley

Two former senior advisers to Labour analyse the clear messages from US voters’ preference for Trump

www.theguardian.com

Thing that gets me with these idiots it there's not a single nod to the fact Trump didn't win because of some massive shift towards greater popularity. He got 77 million votes in 2024 vs 74m in 2020, beating Harris only because she lost votes (74.9m in 2024 vs Biden's 81.2m in 2020) on a ticket which was not in any way left-wing other than in the propaganda of the Trump campaign. Starmer meanwhile also lost votes (9.4m vs 10.2m in 2020) and won only because of a Tory split. The problem has been failing to get out their own side. Yet rather than think "hm maybe our current strategy is a problem" they're intently focusing on doing the same but more of it. Bonkers.

I think the only conclusion you can draw after a while of watching these failures is that all these centrists are hard-line ideologues in their own way, though they've been good at disguising it. They fucking hate the left and they will do anything to avoid challenging capital too hard, because they are on the side of capital. Anything up to and including sabotaging their own chances of long-term power. They are True Believers in the right of KPMG and BP and Blackrock to be in charge. Nothing else can explain what otherwise appears to be pure idiocy.

 

[Brainaddict]

And if you want to know how they explain it to themselves, I think it's that they believe in Meritocracy, and they think those are the people who have shown merit. 'Merit at what' is a question they have a huge ideological blind spot for.

 

[PR1Berske]

I'm not against building some whole new towns. But if there was a plan for that we'd have heard about it by now.

Looking at the state of developments in the past 10-20 years it also seems like joined-up planning is a completely lost discipline in this country. There's a new town near me and it's a bleak place. They built the houses, then the school, then put in the town centre as an afterthought.

There is a train station at least.

Cottam near Preston is a great example of how not to build a new town. A new railway station was suggested over 15 years ago, and it's still at the planning stage this year because of a disagreement with a housing developer about how much money they'll give as part of the deal to build homes near the proposed site. In the years I've lived here Cottam has grown from fields to hundreds of rabbit-warren estates, all in that beige/orange look with porthole windows, with occasional buses and one primary school. Classic example of homes being prioritised over anything else.

 

[Pickman's model]

I think the only conclusion you can draw after a while of watching these failures is that all these centrists are hard-line ideologues in their own way, though they've been good at disguising it. They fucking hate the left and they will do anything to avoid challenging capital too hard, because they are on the side of capital. Anything up to and including sabotaging their own chances of long-term power. They are True Believers in the right of KPMG and BP and Blackrock to be in charge. Nothing else can explain what otherwise appears to be pure idiocy.

Centrist is short for dollar and centrist

 

[Smokeandsteam]

And yet the thinking inside Starmer's camp appears to continue to be "we need to say we're changing things, slag off woke, shag some flags and be mean to migrants" as though this isn't the exact same agenda that's done for liberal regimes worldwide. If I were a betting man I'd lay an early one that Labour's a one-term government, based on the current trend (and I don't see them coming up with anything else). The only question is how the right reorganises itself to beat them.

Good post. The above is spot on.

The bind is twofold. Most significantly, the existential problem is that elite liberalism doesn’t actually have a vision, a project, a plan for what it wants to do beyond capturing power and some managerial tinkering at the margins. It’s an empty shell of policy tweaks and reviews.

As such there is no substance around which it can build support and maintain it. Despite what Starmer and co think, people aren’t stupid. They can see the vapidity and that explains why the story of the GE was the collapse of the Tories rather than the ascent of Labour.

The second problem is that on the issues above - reducing migration, an appeal to the national interest, other issues that its focus groups tell them are important - elite liberalism just isn’t very good at delivering outcomes and solutions. Part of the reason for that is that it doesn’t actually understand the problem from its rarified vantage point but it’s also partly that they just aren’t very good at politics. It’s not the civil servants Starmer was railing against who are useless: it’s his ‘ideas’ that aren’t fit for purpose.

I’ve been predicting for over a year that Starmer’s - if he survives that long - legacy will be to usher right populism into power in Britain at the next GE. To expect him, or any of the other witless clowns prominent in the husk of the Labour Party, to develop an effective response is akin to expecting snow to feel warm.

Add in some self inflicted blows - the cruelty of the attacks on poor children and pensioners, the idiocy of going to war with farmers, the free gear Keir stuff and the weird obsession with banning things and here we are.