A year of Starmer What do you think?

Annibach and * Jaberwok* I would say Clement Attlee was a left wing Prime Minister. The welfare state is a left wing project and he won an election for Labour to bring about the NHS, which was a very radical idea, and one that some Conservatives would like to change.
Labour won a majority of over 140 seats, not by watering down their ambitions but by sticking with their values.
Maybe the electorate has changed since then and become more right wing, but once a radical, forward thinking, caring party did win an election.

Casdon

He’s not untrustworthy in the eyes of most voters, although he has not fulfilled what the left of the party had pledged to do. Those are different things.

It wasn't the left of the party who promised to unite the party it was him.
Item No 4 on Keir Starmer's pledges
4. Promote peace and human rights

No more illegal wars. Introduce a Prevention of Military Intervention Act and put human rights at the heart of foreign policy. Review all UK arms sales and make us a force for international peace and justice.
And he is to be trusted

Apologies Annie I misread MP for PM. What about Wilson?

Annie was asking about left wing Prime Ministers, not MP's. There have been plenty of those, but P.M's? I can't think of a single one either!

Really trisher a far left Labour PM who sent troupes to N.Ireland , interesting, he wouldn’t have had Corbyn’s support if he had been an MP then

Kier is a North London Mafia Labour Party Member like Corbyn, he has no credibility within the Labour Party or out. Bussing in outsider candidates into Northern Parliamentary seats is so wrong. Labour had more credibility when they chose local candidates who had come up through local politics, they seem to be shooting themselves in the foot all the time

The Attlee government was elected after two world wars which changed society. The working classes wanted education, the nhs, a fairer, more just and equal society than their parents and grandparents had.
I’m in a red wall area. What I heard repeatedly was Labour was (especially its leader) soft on defence, put terrorists over our military, cared more about benefit scrounges (not my term) than working people. Islington isn’t Burnley, Blackburn, Wigan, Leigh. People felt ignored and looked down on.
It’s ironic that somehow, it’s not the leader or front bench to blame for that catastrophic defeat.

Jaberwok

Annie was asking about left wing Prime Ministers, not MP's. There have been plenty of those, but P.M's? I can't think of a single one either!

I gave an answer to this at 15.00.

Attlee was not a far left PM, he was a post war PM for 6 years then went to the Lords .

He was against the far right and far left of the party

Anniebach

Really trisher a far left Labour PM who sent troupes to N.Ireland , interesting, he wouldn’t have had Corbyn’s support if he had been an MP then

Annie troops were originally welcomed by Catholics in N Ireland, because they so distrusted the RUC. So actually few people objected, That came later.

The NHS and nationalised industries are considered far left nowadays, not then.

Ilovecheese

The NHS and nationalised industries are considered far left nowadays, not then.

Most things seem to be labelled far left these days. But no one ever admits which policies they don't like.

PGAgirl

Kier is a North London Mafia Labour Party Member like Corbyn, he has no credibility within the Labour Party or out. Bussing in outsider candidates into Northern Parliamentary seats is so wrong. Labour had more credibility when they chose local candidates who had come up through local politics, they seem to be shooting themselves in the foot all the time

You cannot make people vote far-left if they do not want to. I imagine that the far-left don't mind if the Tories stay in power then. Do they intend to remain as just a protest movement?

trisher so Corbyn would have sent troupes to N.Ireland ?

Anniebach

Attlee was not a far left PM, he was a post war PM for 6 years then went to the Lords .

He was against the far right and far left of the party

I have wondered about that, because of the nationalisation of industries. Was it considered just an emergency action that would change eventually or was it seen as a move forward? I find it hard to believe it wasn't seen as a swing quite far to the left but those were different times and different mindsets I suppose.

I do get the impression the far-left are stuck in the past. Not just in ideas but in the way they want to carry them out. The underlying intention is a good one. Better to want to make life better for all than to want it to be better for just a few.

But then ... the far-right are well and truly stuck in a time that never happened so perhaps getting stuck is a thing of extremes.

Oops, just seen other posts on this. Note to self; do not post until you have caught up with all the posts.

trisher

Apologies Annie I misread MP for PM. What about Wilson?

Wilson wasn't "far left".

The welfare state was actually the brainchild of a Liberal, Beveridge.

Iam64

The Attlee government was elected after two world wars which changed society. The working classes wanted education, the nhs, a fairer, more just and equal society than their parents and grandparents had.
I’m in a red wall area. What I heard repeatedly was Labour was (especially its leader) soft on defence, put terrorists over our military, cared more about benefit scrounges (not my term) than working people. Islington isn’t Burnley, Blackburn, Wigan, Leigh. People felt ignored and looked down on.
It’s ironic that somehow, it’s not the leader or front bench to blame for that catastrophic defeat.

I think your summary is much like the conversations I heard at the time Iam64. Going to your first paragraph of what the working classes wanted and then to what they don't like could it be partly that, although we got what we wanted, they have had 70 years to become rather outdated and moribund systems.

I am struggling at the moment because I like the sound of the Australian Pension System. (I need to find someone to tell me what is wrong with it). Just looking at our system - it's a mess. However, I do want to ensure that no one is in poverty or, to be honest, close to it, in their old age. Could different systems aiming to achieve long-held goals be an answer?

Being looked down on has come about because of wrong thinking over manufacturing, I feel. We should have kept learning and improving and leading the world but we threw the baby out with the bathwater. This was partly because of Thatcher's determination to destroy the unions and partly because they were determined to destroy her. Neither position improved people's lives or the country.

Iam64

The Attlee government was elected after two world wars which changed society. The working classes wanted education, the nhs, a fairer, more just and equal society than their parents and grandparents had.
I’m in a red wall area. What I heard repeatedly was Labour was (especially its leader) soft on defence, put terrorists over our military, cared more about benefit scrounges (not my term) than working people. Islington isn’t Burnley, Blackburn, Wigan, Leigh. People felt ignored and looked down on.
It’s ironic that somehow, it’s not the leader or front bench to blame for that catastrophic defeat.

What I've suspected about the red wall areas is that Labour were also suffering a backlash from a decade of tory austerity.

The Labour politicians best known to local voters would be the local councillors who had to undertake swingeing cuts to local services because of tory cuts to their budget allocations.

The tory candidates in the 2019 election were promising all sorts of money and 'action' to the local communities and telling them that Labour had never done anything for them. They're still doing this with the local elections coming up.

I'm surprised that no-one seems to have made this connection because it seems pretty obvious to me...

P.S I'm in a red wall seat.

growstuff

The welfare state was actually the brainchild of a Liberal, Beveridge.

Just found a nice piece to read later, on the Beveridge Report. One sentence immediately jumps out at me:

Contrary to what public health specialists might assume, the report is not primarily about health interventions but treats them as among the ‘‘allied services’’ included in a comprehensive scheme whose chief concern is the maintenance of employment and income.

When did anyone last hear talk about full employment?

Maizie I'm not in the slightest bit surprised. I don't live in a red wall constituency but I have close relatives and friends who do. They're actually doing OK financially, but they blame local Labour councils for the state of the town where they live, look down on those on benefits and have no time at all for identity politics. I know that most of them either didn't vote in the last election or voted Conservative after a lifetime of voting Labour.

I think the LP has got to be a lot more pro-active about the economy. I don't know if Starmer's shadow cabinet has the capability to do this.

Economist Simon Wren- Lewis's latest blog asks why Milliband, and the LP post Milliband, were so utterly passive that they just sat back and let the tories tell the nation the lies about the LP bankrupting the UK and causing the banking crisis. None of it wasn't true yet the LP never fought it, and haven't, right up to the present day.

So, all in all, there's an awful lot of damning perceptions of the Labour Party that any new leader has to overturn...

mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2021/04/labour-should-start-contesting-tory.html

Do you have a link to the piece Pippa?