A year of Starmer What do you think?

MaizieD Thank you so much for that link to Chris Grey. I found it very interesting and it pretty much chimes with my own thoughts.

Blair had to court Murdock get him to write good things about him and Labour' Blair even became godfather to Murdocks children.

For writing favourable things in his newspapers Murdock wanted access to government and became a frequent visitor to number 10 he wanted favours pay back.

What a way to run a democracy with Murdock having all the say. Is there no other way to get into power?

For instance not being bought and paid for.

What about the Levason 2 enquiry that was abandoned.

In 2018

The culture secretary, Matt Hancock, confirmed that the government would drop plans for the second phase of the Leveson inquiry into press standards launched in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal

Blair’s legacy was Corbyn ?

Blair won three elections and by the end of his reign New Labour had morphed into the Tory Party. You couldn't put a sheet of Bronco between them. I was never convinced of his belief in socialism and his legacy is a Labour party that has never recovered its purpose under any subsequent leader. I think Starmer is an honest man but he has not chance of thriving in the current ' nobody gives a monkey's' climate.

trisher you quote Thatcher, can we assume you believed every thing she said ?

Anniebach

trisher Blair won 3 elections, 3 consecutive elections.

So he did Annie by promising much he failed to deliver and using socialism to gain power. He then did all the things in my earlier post. Is winning any use if all you do is seed the ground so the Tories can reap the benefit?
Where are the council houses he could have built?
Where is the legislation needed to protect the Trade Union movement and so limit the use of Zero hours contracts?
It's always struck me as very Newsspeak to begin a war in the Middle East and then become a Middle East Peace Envoy

trisher Blair won 3 elections, 3 consecutive elections.

trisher Wed 12-May-21 14:07:20

Not Blair again. Why not Blair? It seems Johnson finds him and how he governed very interesting. Even setting up a No.10 Delivery Unit on the lines of Tony Blairs.

I would not call a party that got 17% of the vote a spent force.

JenniferEccles

Is it just a simple fact that there is no appetite in this country any more for a Left wing party, or at least not in sufficient numbers to lead them to victory?

It seemed a straightforward problem at first didn’t it- get rid of Corbyn and his unpopular far Left policies, but he’s gone yet Labour is still struggling to engage with their core voters, who, as we have seen with the recent elections, are turning to the Conservatives.

Maybe it’s simply the end of the road for traditional Socialism, but we need an effective opposition to hold the government to account.

What’s the answer? I don’t know.
The Lib Dems are also a spent force, and I suspect many people would struggle to name the leader

That is a bit of a simplistic assumption I think

Brexit and vaccine would have made up the bulk of the vote. Imo

Is it just a simple fact that there is no appetite in this country any more for a Left wing party, or at least not in sufficient numbers to lead them to victory?

It seemed a straightforward problem at first didn’t it- get rid of Corbyn and his unpopular far Left policies, but he’s gone yet Labour is still struggling to engage with their core voters, who, as we have seen with the recent elections, are turning to the Conservatives.

Maybe it’s simply the end of the road for traditional Socialism, but we need an effective opposition to hold the government to account.

What’s the answer? I don’t know.
The Lib Dems are also a spent force, and I suspect many people would struggle to name the leader

Not Blair again. The man who successfully managed to con the whole Labour movement, won two elections then scuppered the party, took us into an illegal war, made his fortune and left. He was as Margaret Thatcher remarked her greatest legacy. He's the reason we now have no social housing (he could have built some), privatised education (academy schools) and the NHS up for grabs. Not forgetting the millions of people who died because of him and are still dying. I sometimes wonder how he dare say anything. He's never accepted responsibility for his actions.

How can the Labour Party change ? Always has been and always
will be the far left v centre left

Disappointing

MaizieD

^Labour has no appeal for people who want to get on.^

That's ridiculous. The Labour movement has always been aspirational. What about Blair and 'Education, Education, Education'? Labour might have rejected Blair, but they haven't rejected principles like that.

In my experience MaizieD is correct in that this is many people’s perceptions. Both my parents were from large working class families and we also lived in working class areas when I was growing up. Most of my parents’ siblings and their children equated voting Tory with going up in the world, my friend and her husband are both from Hartlepool and they say the same thing about their families who still live there. Thatcher’s right to buy policy reinforced this and how you change this attitude is a big problem. Starmer hasn’t really got the message across about what their policies are and how they will benefit voters in the red wall constituencies. Certainly passing the buck to your deputy and then having a spat with her isn’t helpful at all. I don’t often agree with Tony Blair but he has said today that without change the Labour party will die.

I don't think you can defeat a party in government by accusing them of not having policies or a vision if you haven't either yourself. What Johnson wants/does is irrelevant.

Grany

Starmer has a lack of vision

Also the lowest approval ratings. Yougov

m.youtube.com/watch?v=0cvrOTJHsOU

The Beginning of the End of Labour? | Liam Young

m.youtube.com/watch?v=F5FaAFM9_MA

What is Johnson's vision. Every single bit so far has been a lie.

Well, I understand that Keir will be touring the country this summer to tell people what his vision is. So I, for one will go along to hear him if I can. Most political time is taken up with brexit (yes, there are still things to be ironed out), Independence for Scotland and the pandemic (yes, it hasn’t actually gone away) the latter of which he has worked with the government because it’s what’s best for the country. Can anyone tell me what Johnsons vision is other than levelling up which is an empty phrase and I’ll be interested to see if anything happens about that in the coming years. Oh, and social care which seems to have been brushed under the carpet with along with safe cladding on housing.

Starmer has a lack of vision

Also the lowest approval ratings. Yougov

m.youtube.com/watch?v=0cvrOTJHsOU

The Beginning of the End of Labour? | Liam Young

m.youtube.com/watch?v=F5FaAFM9_MA

During the Thatcher years the government was condenmed by the Royal Statistical Society for having redefined unemploment 19 times!

“Labours Not Working’. Remember that slogan MaizieD? I do.

So do I, Ug. And Thatcher promptly shut down our heavy industries and added another two million to the unemployed register.

the official definition in the UK is the percentage of people aged 16-64 (meaning most working-age people) who do paid work for at least an hour per week.

fullfact.org/economy/employment-since-2010-definition/

This is the definition that has been used for at least the last decade. By tory governments.

Do you call one hour a week 'employment'? I think you might have felt the pinch if you were one of the people counted as 'employed' under that definition.

I’ll never forget the Thatcher years when we were terrified every week that my husband would be made redundant. Remember ‘get on your bike’. I used to cry and say I didn’t want to move to another part of the country and uproot my children. As for university degrees I do agree that some degrees seemed a waste of time but there’s more to university than just learning. When I was at grammar school in the 60’s even though I did very well academically no one ever told me I could go to university and, coming from an incredibly poor family I just left at 16. During the Blair years my daughter went into teaching and she said was a joy but she gave up a few years ago dispirited by the class sizes and lack of funding.

Labour interested in giving children a good education?
Why then have they been so determined to close grammar schools ?

erm....equality of opportunity??

"Welfare" is a US term increasingly used here to isolate and scapegoat people who are on benefits.

Urmstongran

^The Labour movement has always been aspirational. What about Blair and 'Education, Education, Education'?^

Hahaha!
Nothing at all to do with massaging the unemployment figures under Labour then? “Labours Not Working’. Remember that slogan MaizieD? I do.

Blair wanted as many students in uni as possible. Taking an ‘ology’ that often was not vocational, led nowhere and to nothing and kept the students off the unemployment figures. So many kids taking a medja studies course, believing they’d be working for the BBC in some capacity, only to end up working in a supermarket or a nail bar ...

That phrase was used in the 1970s. Actually Labour isn't working- But in fact unemployment rose under the Tories- Highest 1984 and fell under a Blair government. Since the Tories came back it has been rising again and yet they inherited Blair's university policy!

Labour interested in giving children a good education?
Why then have they been so determined to close grammar schools ?

The Labour party is not aspirational. It seems to positively want to keep people dependent on welfare.
Their core voters?