A year of Starmer What do you think?

Exactly Doodledog! You've described many people who probably changed to Conservative very well. Before the last election I was bombarded by pictures of starving people and stories of those in poverty. Unfortunately, that probably had the reverse effect on the JAMs. They've been brainwashed by years of stories about benefit scroungers, but there is an element of truth. BTW I'm one of them.

PippaZ

Gossamerbeynon1945

Until Starmer ditches his TWAW opinion he will lose a lot of women voters. Does he really believe this statement? He needs to get a grip.

Important to you but fairly low down on the overall reasons for voting I would have thought.

I don't think most people care either, especially younger ones.

Growstuff - I think lots of women care.

I think there are lots of women who live and work with transwomen, so they understand TWAW and know it's the right policy for Labour.

Trisher - I have read a lot of your posts and you come across as an intelligent woman. Do you, deep down inside, really believe that Tran Women are Women?

growstuff

PippaZ

Gossamerbeynon1945

Until Starmer ditches his TWAW opinion he will lose a lot of women voters. Does he really believe this statement? He needs to get a grip.

Important to you but fairly low down on the overall reasons for voting I would have thought.

I don't think most people care either, especially younger ones.

I'm not sure they don't care, some will and some will be completely unaware but I don't think it will swing a vote in many cases.

A long piece

Keir Starmer Has Spent a Year Pushing Labour to the Right
BY

DANIEL FINN

jacobinmag.com/2021/04/keir-starmer-labour-party-leader-uk-left

Gossamerbeynon1945

Trisher - I have read a lot of your posts and you come across as an intelligent woman. Do you, deep down inside, really believe that Tran Women are Women?

I know that Transwomen face the same discrimination and even more victimisation that natal women. And if the person standing beside me looks like a woman, behaves like a woman and is recognised by society as a woman I do not see the need (and I certainly don't intend to) to look at her genitalia or ask for other evidence. Transwomen have lived and worked alongside others for years. They're not a new phenomena and they are no threat to me or other women.

They are no threat but are they women ?

So far I'm rather disappointed.

However, it has been a very strange time.

trisher I could have written your reply word for word, as it seems to be a stock response from you to any question about trans issues . Do you ever engage with posters and answer off the cuff? Sometimes it feels like listening to a politician on PMQ.

growstuff I’m not saying that people on benefits are scroungers. No doubt some will be, but there are people in work who don’t pull their weight- such is life - but that wasn’t my point.

It’s the way that people are often unable to get out of a JAM state, as every time they try, money is clawed back, pound for pound, so any sacrifices have been for nothing (apart from feeling like a mug/having a sense of satisfaction for having supported themselves).

I think that this is deliberate- partly because minimum pay rates are set to benefit employers, and partly to keep people in line. If you don’t keep on the right side of the line you will become one of ‘them’ - the people you have been taught to demonise.

I loathe means testing, as I see it as being responsible for this situation. Whether it’s pensions, care homes, entry to places of interest or assisted places on classes, it seems like the rich buy their way out of it, the poor get it paid for, and the JAMs get the worst deal.

If Sir Kier can solve that conundrum (Universal Benefit? A decent living wage?) I think he would get the respect and votes f swathes of the country, regardless of Brexit.

He’s got a problem at the moment in that Johnson seems to be going against some of his party eg not easing lockdown as fast as they want him to. And Keir will do what’s best for the country even if it means supporting Johnson. Which is, in the middle of a pandemic, the right thing to do imo.

Gossamerbeynon1945

Trisher - I have read a lot of your posts and you come across as an intelligent woman. Do you, deep down inside, really believe that Tran Women are Women?

I think they are people and I really don't understand some women's hatred of them. I personally know two. I don't care and the women I know who come into contact with them don't care.

I care a lot more that people who don't seem to have got over Corbyn are doing so much to harm the chances of a Labour government. There are people in this country who need a government which cares about them, who aren't necessarily the very poorest or downtrodden, and there are people who profess to be socialists who actually don't really care about them but are more concerned about waiting for some "pure" form of socialism.

Doodledog I wasn't disagreeing with you. I know very well how difficult it is to get out of the JAM situation. As I've written repeatedly, I'm one of them, so of course I know.

The only Labour PM to win three consecutive elections was Blair, the country wanted centre left . Since Blair and Brown we have had 12 years of tory government.

After Michael Foot was leader we had 18 years or tory government

Doodledog 07.04.21 at 18.58 - good post. I responded yesterday but the gransnet gremlins didn’t let me post.
Anniebach, good perseverance on the response of the electorate to Labour leaders they see as too much to the left - and to Blair
Tory governments don’t invest in public services. The austerity agenda should have given the LP an election win. I don’t share the view that some right wingers in the party led to its worst defeat.

I have just been reading the breakdown of labour party membership, majority London, majority high earners/middle class majority remain voters. Obviously membership of a political party is in itself an unusual activity but no wonder the views of the membership dont reflect the views of the voting public.

Iam I posted facts, wish the far left here could do the same,

Corbyn lost the general elections, no scheming within Labour HQ, no saying voters didn’t have minds of their own and followed the right wing press like sheep.

Oh without a doubt there was scheming, anyone who has any connection with the labour party, or any political party for that matter, know that there is always scheming. It's part of leading a party to manage it.

I do not believe party members schemed to lose a general election.

Starmer has decided to use false allegations of antisemitism as his principal weapon against the Left

Everything that Corbyn said was incontrovertibly true. The prevalence of antisemitism in the Labour Party was indeed ‘dramatically overstated’ in every conceivable way.

This propaganda campaign is not really about Corbyn as an individual. It’s a vicious attack on everyone who supported his political project after 2015.

The Labour left can either accept being presented as a uniquely malevolent force in British politics on the basis of sheer fantasy, or else defend the right of party members to state the facts without being subjected to disciplinary action.

The leading figures on the Labour left have been urging members to “stay and fight,” but so far it’s been all stay and no fight. They’ve brought a petition to a barroom brawl, and it’s little wonder that Starmer is now twenty points ahead in the battle he really cares about, against his inner-party foes. Whether they decide to stay in the Labour Party or take their chances outside, socialists in Britain should see Starmer in exactly the same way that he sees them, as an opponent to be fought against at every turn.

The Green New Deal was not radicalism for its own sake. It was radical because reality demanded it. Faced with the 2008 global financial crisis and its aftermath, the world-historic presence of China, Trump, the escalating climate crisis, and an unprecedented global pandemic, what more is needed to demonstrate this point? A politics that does not want to mobilize around these challenges, which prefers to deal in patriotic pastiche, forfeits any claim to be progressive.

Adam Tooze recently complained about this “retreat from radicalism” into a “dangerous dead-end.” Tooze was particularly concerned about Starmer’s willingness to junk the plan for ecological transformation:

Starmer and his team have set out to bury the left-wing policy agenda developed under Corbyn, replacing it with a bland managerial approach that promises as little as possible.

I think that Keir Starmer was the best choice out of the candidates who were put forward for the post.That doesn’t mean he was the best choice of course. He seems like a decent character, a family man, and is intelligent and speaks well, and keeps calm under fire. All good things but...that doesn’t mean he will be a good LOTO or in the future a PM.
Theresa May was all of those things and made a poor PM.
It was blindingly obvious that Corbyn would do badly and that traditional Labour voters wanted nothing to do with him.
So the Labour party have chosen somebody who is nothing like him as an antidote. I think he could do well ( with voters)
But he needs to unite the whole of the membership ( or as much as he can) and it’s this that is proving really difficult.
If he can’t unite the Party, but does really well with voters at the next GE and becomes PM, then those members with dissenting views will leave and over time be replaced with less
Far left wing views.

No one can unite the Labour Party , Corbyn plotted against
Kinnock and this after the disastrous Michael Foot election

trisher I could have written your reply word for word, as it seems to be a stock response from you to any question about trans issues grin. Do you ever engage with posters and answer off the cuff? Sometimes it feels like listening to a politician on PMQ.
I suppose I could just say "yes" but actually i think people who ask me something want a litle bit more. Sorry it's not spontaneous enough for you, but it's actually the way I think and generally write.
I do not believe party members schemed to lose a general election.
But Annie heaps of people do believe that and Starmer had an ideal opportunity to squash those beliefs, by allowing the investigation to report. He chose not to, which means either he didn't want to clean things up or he feared what would come out. Either way it's still lousy leadership.