... I think that England is so far gone that Keir Starmer should actually embrace his 'Sir' title instead of rejecting it to appeal more to the working class.
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Not sure, he has kinda earned his title, he hasn't just hung around Westminster for a few decades.
No doubt, by the lowly standards of the honours system he deserves it, even if it should be abolished in favour of something with no archaic royal ties. I'm just saying that the working class Little Englander seems to love and look up to someone with a title in their name.
I think that would normally be true, but when they find out he's a Sir because of human rights and helping out people they can't stand it won't last. I suppose prosecuting MPs for the expenses stuff might get him a few brownie points.
I can't twitter is life
Nice to see some old Jess hits popping up though, like when she called the cops on travellers or lied about Mcdonnell and refused to take it down
... Yeah, just occurred to me that him actually deserving the recognition wouldn't help him as much as if he was, say, knighted for Seal clubbing or services alongside Jeffrey Epstein or whatever the hell. Disregard my theory. :c
Lol, imagine having an award for Seal clubbing. Yeah, I watched the Starmer video and halfway through I realised it was a who's who of people conservatives hate. Either side could run that as a party political broadcast.
The play with rejoining the EU should be forward thinking. You know Leave's going to go south. It's a shit move. But you can't have your leader arguing for rejoining now. The right time was over the last 3 years. The only party advocating for Remain nationally was the LDs, who were terrible at politicking in their own way, so at this point, it's been 3 years since anyone really attempted to fully argue for the EU across the whole UK.
I think you need to give someone some free reign to jab at Brexit as a concept for the next 5 years. Don't let them be in leadership, but don't go all "crush the saboteurs" on them either. Leadership can say "we'd have done this better" while someone else (preferably a really young MP with career aspirations) can say "yeah, by not doing this in the first place."
No more being behind the ball on this. Don't take this election as "let's be pro-Brexit now." The next election is far enough away that some of the effects of leaving will already be felt. And when it all blows as a terrible fucking idea (which it is, and always has been, no matter who's argued for Leave), you've got this backbencher who can step up in a decade or two and say "I was always right on this, with the young people of the 2010s (who will now make up a larger share of the voting public in the future) and I can bring that sort of forward-thinking in leadership."
By definition, now that Bojo has 5 years, any strategy has to be a long game. Don't get bogged down in trying to win the 2019 GE because that one already passed and the politics of 2024 won't be the same as 2019. Try to predict where the electorate will be (and I've given my opinion above and elsewhere, but people are free to disagree; my point is that any strategy not aimed at the future electorate is a bit pointless).
I think you need to give someone some free reign to jab at Brexit as a concept for the next 5 years. Don't let them be in leadership, but don't go all "crush the saboteurs" on them either. Leadership can say "we'd have done this better" while someone else (preferably a really young MP with career aspirations) can say "yeah, by not doing this in the first place."
No more being behind the ball on this. Don't take this election as "let's be pro-Brexit now." The next election is far enough away that some of the effects of leaving will already be felt. And when it all blows as a terrible fucking idea (which it is, and always has been, no matter who's argued for Leave), you've got this backbencher who can step up in a decade or two and say "I was always right on this, with the young people of the 2010s (who will now make up a larger share of the voting public in the future) and I can bring that sort of forward-thinking in leadership."
By definition, now that Bojo has 5 years, any strategy has to be a long game. Don't get bogged down in trying to win the 2019 GE because that one already passed and the politics of 2024 won't be the same as 2019. Try to predict where the electorate will be (and I've given my opinion above and elsewhere, but people are free to disagree; my point is that any strategy not aimed at the future electorate is a bit pointless).
The next couple of years is going to be all about leaving and other assorted conservative fuckery at home, the party doesn't have to become anti EU, but it has to deal with reality and that is we are still going through the exit.
I agree, that's why I said they can't let the rejoin crowd into leadership. I just think it's a mistake to not get some quotes now from some backbenchers in deep Remain seats who can look like prophets in a decade or so who can say they called it.
The line should simply state something like, "democratic will is being carried out [appeals to the leavers] but we'll always remain open to ensuring the best future for our nation"
What's the position on EU nationals, i.e there is a date that they had to of been in this country to stay under settled status?
anecdotal, but my brother in law who works for a large drugs company was saying they are having a lot of EAL leaving the UK
anecdotal, but my brother in law who works for a large drugs company was saying they are having a lot of EAL leaving the UK
Looks like 30/6/2021 if a deal is agreed, 31/12/2020 if not. So as it currently stands by the end of this year as a worst case.
Anecdotal but still useful: the EU residents in the UK that I know don't trust a single word that the Home Office/Government say about their rights and are all weighing up their options with going back to live somewhere in the EU - unfortunately when people have houses/pensions/careers/etc established in the UK, this isn't an easy task to undertake so will take a while.
Yeah, I'd definitely agree with applying as soon as possible. No saying what fuckery they might do in the meantime.
Also anecdotally for me, the company I work for employs a lot of non-UK citizens. They used to want to come to the UK since our wages are generally higher, they can improve their English, the career prospects are better, it's somewhere they want to live (permanently or at least for several years) and even if they return home it would look good to have a UK company on their CV. Now they generally want to work from home or join another office in the EU and maybe come over for a short placement (maybe a month) to learn the ropes.
Our UK office is currently 100% UK staff, which is pretty crazy considering the history of around 25-35% other-EU citizens we had before 2017.
The brain drain is very serious.
I think this is superb from Rebecca Long-Bailey:
Particularly love "For some, there will be a temptation to compromise on our anti-racist and internationalist principles. Let me be clear: as leader I will never throw migrants or BAME communities under the bus. Never again will our party put 'controls on immigration' on a mug. It would be a betrayal of our principles, and of our core supporters and activists. We must defeat Johnson and the nationalist right, never pander to them."
Particularly love "For some, there will be a temptation to compromise on our anti-racist and internationalist principles. Let me be clear: as leader I will never throw migrants or BAME communities under the bus. Never again will our party put 'controls on immigration' on a mug. It would be a betrayal of our principles, and of our core supporters and activists. We must defeat Johnson and the nationalist right, never pander to them."
I keep seeing this garbage promoted on twitter
They really do exist in some other world where because of Brexit you'll be making deals in so many markets. What crap.
They really do exist in some other world where because of Brexit you'll be making deals in so many markets. What crap.
If Keir Starter doesn't win this, it'll be another 10 years in the wilderness for Labour. Two failed elections on Corbynism should be warning enough that Rebecca Long Bailey isn't the right person to lead the party.
So, is anyone going to pay the £25 fee to become a member and cast their vote?
I have to admit that I'm surprised, because I'm sure that there was some hype about Lavery entering the race.
I have to admit that I'm surprised, because I'm sure that there was some hype about Lavery entering the race.
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Already a member so I'll be voting. Perhaps I'm a tad more politically aligned with RLB but Starmer is still my guy. I don't think a potential Opposition leader has ever fit the cause more in a very long time.
If some melt like Starmer wins, then it will mean the loss of at least 100k members and infighting will not stop at grassroots level.
Time for the party to go one way or the other. I suggest getting rid of 100MPs (actually going for deselections this time) is prefereable to losing the mobilised core of the party, which is committed to policies that the public actually likes.
Well I would actually like a realignment and healthy separation but that needs to happen when the voting system changes, because the Tories will always get 30%+ and the left of labour only manage that with all the stars aligned.
Any members leaving because Stamer is "too right wing" is probably a good thing for getting a Labour government again in my lifetime. The tankies, militants and other communists will never help get a government elected in the UK.
It's fine to prefer RLB to Stamer, but if you're only in the party to be a cheerleader for woke communism then you aren't doing anything useful. Stamer is not some red Tory melt.
It's fine to prefer RLB to Stamer, but if you're only in the party to be a cheerleader for woke communism then you aren't doing anything useful. Stamer is not some red Tory melt.
If Starmer doesn't win I'm going to start voting for the greens. If I'm wasting my vote I might as well give it to the people I'm most politically aligned to ie The Greens.
i enjoy how both the strong pro-corbynites and the stupidest right wing columnists both subscribe to the same delusion that the labour membership is full of hardliners.
most members voted for corbyn twice because everyone else in the party tried to argue ed miliband was just too left wing, then undermined corbyn and didn't give him a fair chance by forcing another election only a year later.
despite the misleading impression given by cranks on twitter, the average labour member is an older public sector worker who reads the guardian, thinks austerity and leaving the eu are bad, and likes both corbyn and starmer.
most members voted for corbyn twice because everyone else in the party tried to argue ed miliband was just too left wing, then undermined corbyn and didn't give him a fair chance by forcing another election only a year later.
despite the misleading impression given by cranks on twitter, the average labour member is an older public sector worker who reads the guardian, thinks austerity and leaving the eu are bad, and likes both corbyn and starmer.
One small silver lining from the election is the loss of some hardliners from the right of the party, some of them are long overdue for being got rid of. I don't think they would have even settled for Starmer once the threat of Corbyn becomes history.
Every time I see Starmer called a Blairite I can't even process what that means.
I don't think the policies are the issue, as Starmer has said the issue is trust, there wasn't a lot of trust that Corbyn could deliver the 2017 manifesto, and the response to that in 2019 was to promise even more, just a terribly misguided approach in my opinion.
I also think the other reason someone right of Corbyn will do better is that the tone of the far left of the party does not work outside of metropolitan areas, a lot of people live outside major cities because they hate major cities, so messages like 'the rest of the country is falling behind London and the South-east' are border line offensive. I don't know what the right message is for those areas but I know the far left one has not worked.
I also think the other reason someone right of Corbyn will do better is that the tone of the far left of the party does not work outside of metropolitan areas, a lot of people live outside major cities because they hate major cities, so messages like 'the rest of the country is falling behind London and the South-east' are border line offensive. I don't know what the right message is for those areas but I know the far left one has not worked.
agree. best case for starmer is he's politically savvy enough to have spent years in the shadow cabinet loyally delivering corbyn's brexit line and being on-board with the project, yet centrist corbyn-sceptic remainers also think he's their man
I'd argue that's not the tone of the far left, they're angry that the cities have so much and the rest of the country is being starved. The tone has never been "oh these poor provincials don't even know how good London life is, we must help them!" except when the right are just making up what the left think. They want to take away from the cities if anything.
I think its more personal than that, I've never seen anger about big cities when I'm in rural England, what I've seen a lot is people thinking that I look down on them because I live in a city.
That's why I think 'public ownership' falls so flat as a policy in these areas, rural England doesn't see public ownership as their ownership, they see it as some twat in London running the trains instead of some twat in Germany.
Labour lost 60 seats under Corbyn and a leader hand picked by the current top team to be the successor won't win over the electorate. That's not a wild assumption to make.
I'm also not responsible for choosing or moulding Labour policies. But I'll tell you, the electorate didn't care for them so that's why we're on the mess we're in now.
Not what I said. You said "Corbynism", not me, so what bits of "Corbynism" policy do you think should be changed to appeal to these people
I'm not disagreeing that they think that, cause they're told that. That's not the tone of the left.
I've told you, I'm not in charge of shaping Labour policy but I realise that Labour have to offer the voters something different to even get a sniff at Larry's litter tray.
From the Guardian live blog, Jess 2020 still going well
"Jess Phillips, the Labour leadership candidate, has said she is opposed to holding a second referendum on Scottish independence. Speaking on the BBC's Good Morning Scotland programme this morning, she said:
Same Jess who agitated for Brexit ref 2 for ages, and wanted to go for rejoining yesterday until she got made fun of, then changed her mind
"Jess Phillips, the Labour leadership candidate, has said she is opposed to holding a second referendum on Scottish independence. Speaking on the BBC's Good Morning Scotland programme this morning, she said:
Phillips also said she thought one of the reasons why Labour lost in Scotland was that it did not necessarily have a clear position on the two big constitutional questions of the day (Brexit and Scottish independence). On Brexit, Jeremy Corbyn said he would be neutral in a second referendum on the topic. And, although Corbyn did not support Scottish independence, he did not rule out allowing Scotland to hold a second referendum on the issue."
Same Jess who agitated for Brexit ref 2 for ages, and wanted to go for rejoining yesterday until she got made fun of, then changed her mind
Right, so what different thing do you want. This isn't a hard question, I'm not asking you to write a manifesto or run for leadership
I'm not sure "centre-left" is really what they need to aim for, but they need to look realistic rather than having a manifesto that looked like it had been generated by a "socialist bingo" meme. I know people on left twitter have a massive hate-boner for incrementalism, but campaigning on "DO ALL THE THINGS!" just doesn't work. My advice would be to focus on a few (relatively popular) left-wing policies and push that message hard. And make sure that the messaging is in terms that everyone can relate to, rather than the language of woke-twitter, politics students and the "metropolitan elite".
As specific examples of policy, Labour need to drop trying to nationalise everything at once since no one believes they can do it or pay for it (it doesn't even matter if they can, if people don't believe that they can). If you aren't an actual socialist (i.e. the vast majority of the UK voting public) then the benefits of nationalisation versus privatisation will not be immediately obvious. It just sounds like abstract or meaningless political ideology.
Pick one industry that needs nationalisation (water or trains seem like the easiest to argue for), work out a plan for how to do it and explain exactly what nationalisation will do to improve services for the average person. Do not make this a flagship policy. If Labour win, they do their plan and show that it worked, then use this to argue for more nationalisation.
Instead we got "free gigabit broadband for all" as the only policy anyone remembers from the manifesto, which is probably the most out-of-touch policy you can imagine.
For the other failing privatised monopoly industries, just push a tough-talking message that you won't be using taxpayer's money to bail them out every time they run into trouble. If/when they do run into trouble and need a bailout, you can use it to justify nationalisation in the future.
A lot of why Labour lost was due to messaging. Massive radical socialist changes were not credible and the scattershot policy announcements meant that they were unable to counter Boris's simple claims to "Get Brexit Done" and "Build more hospitals". Labour's most popular policy was to invest in the NHS, but they expressed it in purely anti-American/anti-capitalist language and vague claims that the Tories would destroy the NHS. Meanwhile Boris claimed he would increase NHS spending and build 40 hospitals. It was a lie but it was a concrete promise to do a thing with clear benefits to normal people. "More hospitals" provides a clear benefit, while "stop Boris selling the NHS to the Americans" requires a lot of understanding of how the NHS operates, how it can be 'sold' and the many complex ways that American trade deals will undermine the provision of services.
A lot of the problem was that while we know Boris lies, most people also think Corbyn lies, that all politicians are liars and that they might as well vote for the liar promising more hospitals because he'll have to at least build a few after promising to build 40, right? (oh my sweet summer child) Similarly, the "Actually the Tories are only adding 31,000 more nurses and lying about 50,000" arguments were a complete failiure, since people just thought "Well, 31,000 is still a lot of nurses - have Labour even said how many they'd hire?"