Keir Starmer wants to prop up the wealthy and the powerful.
Labour members and trade unions are under attack because they want social change.
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Is Starmer finally getting his team together to fight back?
(196 Posts)Yesterday Keir Starmer was his usual self, knowledgable, patient with childlike behaviour, and cutting to the truth.
But I found Rachel Reeves (Shadow Chancellor), came up with all I could want and I wasn't the only one to notice. Paul Waugh, in his Huffpost email, was full of praise for the double act.
Starmer made all the right points. He cannily picked up on the fact that Johnson’s new plan would not only breach his manifesto pledges on tax, but it would also even breach his manifesto pledge on social care.
He did comment that it lacked drama. Something I think many of us have been hoping for and not seen. But then came Rachel Reeves. After a lack-lustre performance from Jesse Norman who tried to convince the Tory MPs that black is white and that this was very much a Tory policy in she stepped.
She used the soundbites Johnson et all are so well known for. When talking about the NHS and care workers she shouted over the Tories “last year the public clapped them, this year the Tories taxed them”. My heart began to lift a little.
Shouting successfully over the Tory pantomime she called out “this unfair, job taxing, manifesto-shredding, tax bombshell”. This sounded like politics, sometimes condemned, but in this instance getting over what many have seen to be the case.
She even did a "Johnson" and had the Labour MPs yelling ‘No!’ after a string of questions on the government's plan’s flaws, one of which had been handed to her by Sajid Javid’s blustering meets with the media: “Will it clear the NHS backlog this parliament? No! called back the opposition "And the health secretary says no.” she carefully added.
Great though it was to see the heart back in the LP she also filled out a little of what Starmer had hinted at re the Labour Party Plans. Starmer's agreement with ex-Chancellor Osbourne's "those with the broadest shoulders" widened out to "those who get their income from financial assets, stocks and shares, sales of property, pension income, annuity income, interest income, property rental income, inheritance income". As Paul Waugh noted, this list may be long enough to raise the money needed and do away with this iniquitous levy.
Those who are left or left-leaning please watch this speech. It may be a landmark; at the very least it will raise your spirits I think.
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000zkst/house-of-commons-08092021 - 08/09/2021 at about 1:15:10 in.
The denouement is coming at last, and not before time. I am fed up with the appalling, calculated behaviour of the left of the party.
No.
Don't you mean the appalling, calullated behaviour of the right of the party, who deliberately worked against Labour wining an election And now that they are under new leadership don't know what to do no ideas vision except attacking the left thousands have left.
Grany
What could be more embarrassing for Labour leader Keir Starmer than saying on TV that Labour would not re-nationalise key utilities, only to see the party make re-nationalising key utilities its policy on the same day?
How about his shadow Employment Secretary quitting because Starmer wanted him to speak against a plan to increase the minimum wage to a fair level?
That’s what happened at #LabourConference2021 on September 27.
In brief, Starmer ordered McDonald to argue against a £15 minimum wage and statutory sick pay at the same rate as the living wage – so McDonald quit.
In his resignation letter he made it clear that this was the last straw – implying that he had been running out of patience with Starmer for many months.
Let’s face it, the part of his letter when he said
After 18 months of your leadership, our movement is more divided than ever and the pledges that you made to the membership are not being honoured. This is just the latest of many
makes this plain.
Starmer’s own stance over minimum pay is clear. He thinks £15 is too much.
Right?
Oh, then why did he himself campaign for a £15 floor when he was trying to get Labour members to elect him as leader?
See for yourself:
Andy McDonald has resigned from the shadow front bench because Starmer's office instructed him to argue against a £15 an hour minimum wage.
Here is Keir Starmer, holding a banner that says 'fight for £15'. Footage from this picket was used for Starmer's Labour leadership bid. pic.twitter.com/x1c00gmRIe
— Liam Shrivastava (@LiamShrivastava) September 27, 2021
Footage from this picket was indeed used for Starmer’s leadership bid:
Video: When Keir Starmer backed £15 a hour wage.
pic.twitter.com/Ep9OEj7eaI
— Tory Fibs (@ToryFibs) September 27, 2021
“It will be the norm if we have a Labour government,” he said.
Liar!
It’s sickening to have this utter pondslime dragging a once-great pillar of socialism into disgrace.
You find it embarrassing because you want it to be. I find it six of one and half a dozen of the other.
There is a fight in Labour between the centre and the left. There is a fight within the Conservatives between the centre and the right (but they do it behind closed doors and deny the problem).
There is a man who probably appeals to 25/30% of the country at the head of the Conservative Party. There is one who appeals to a different 25/30% leading the Labour Party. There are idiots in both parties.
As for the £15 basic wage argument, yesterday a man most people have never heard of left a position most people didn't know existed. So far the far-left have behaved just as we (and probably the leadership) expected them to and produced a row a day; this was yesterday's. Did the left help anyone by it? I doubt it. But they can see power slipping away. Just like the Conservatives the members are more interested in that than the people they aim to represent. The same happens all the time in the Conservative party, where some use their votes to put pressure on the leadership. When they want him out we will hear more about the rows.
As for those who attach themselves to these parties, why do it? It's not as if you will ever be satisfied.
I have just seen this on twitter
No Grany that’s exactly the opposite of what I mean. If it wasn’t Starmer it would have been another leader who would have had to rescue the party to make it ultimately electable again. If you’re unable to grasp that the vast majority of the UK voting public, not ‘the right of the party’ or ‘the ‘media’ but the public will never again wear a left wing government you are on a loser.
GrannyGravy13
I have just seen this on twitter
The man who left was a Labour front bencher employment secretary.
What good is Mandelson friend of Epstein
It beggars belief that Mandelson has managed to worm his way back. I’m afraid with his input the Labour Party is now being slipped into Murdochs back pocket. There will be no discernible difference between us and the Conservatives. Both parties will dance to the oligarchs tune and the whole British public will suffer.
Someone needs to rescue the party from Starmer.
There is a left socialist Movment that the young back Its not going to go away. In the recent world transformed event a huge success with talks on many important subjects that need addressing right now which including climate change.
So let's say I throw my lot in with Starmer's Labour Party because it is centrist and therefore will get elected (I don't believe this for a minute) Please could someone tell me exactly which Labour policies will be part of that party? Because as far as I can see he is dumping everything vaguely Labour.
Poor Starmer must know (a) the sharks are circling and (b) he can’t trust his deputy - she’s in cahoots with the Corbyn supporters. Plotting …
The Labour party don't seem to know what a woman is. Neither do the Lib Dems and the Green party. Where do women go from here?
Seems the far left plotters are not in agreement , stabbing each other as well as Starmer.
A leadership election next ?
Gossamerbeynon1945
The Labour party don't seem to know what a woman is. Neither do the Lib Dems and the Green party. Where do women go from here?
While Johnson knows exactly what a woman is and behaves accordingly.
I agree. Where do we go?
^ but the public will never again wear a left wing government you are on a loser.^
I have to disagree slightly with you there, Casdon. I think that they would wear a left wing government fine, so long as they didn't know they were voting for one. Once in power they could do what they liked so long as it didn't cause crisis and hardship.
MaizieD.
Apparently, David Lammy has joined in now and said that women were like dinosaurs hoarding rights. You couldn't make it up! I looked at the SDP manifesto and it looks OK. For the first time in my voting life, I am politically homeless. Don't like Boris at all, so there is no-one to vote for.
The Bakers Union has severed ties with Labour Party after 120 years of affiliation.
Not looking good.
What is all this fuss about women and cervices?
Most women have a cervix, but a few do not (eg if the cervix has been removed as part of a hysterectomy)
Most men do not have a cervix but a few do (eg some transmen)
So what?
varian
What is all this fuss about women and cervices?
Most women have a cervix, but a few do not (eg if the cervix has been removed as part of a hysterectomy)
Most men do not have a cervix but a few do (eg some transmen)
So what?
It's some people's latest obsession varian. I always think if you are working zero hours contracts on minimum wage, using food banks, in substandard housing with children and struggling you won't be really concerned about who has a cervix, or what any politician thinks about who has or hasn't one.
I agree trisher
It's some people's latest obsession varian. I always think if you are working zero hours contracts on minimum wage, using food banks, in substandard housing with children and struggling you won't be really concerned about who has a cervix, or what any politician thinks about who has or hasn't one
I also think if you work full time, give the children their tea, do homework or clubs with them, put them to bed, save for your bills etc you wouldn’t be interested either!
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