Labour: The Keir Starmer years

Sir Keir's won - are you happy with this outcome?


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It's not this guy. He was a bit older but fitter (as in bulkier), I can't remember his name and I'm sorry but I DONT HAVE THE RECEIPTS to prove it. I think he's deleted his MeetFighters profile. It was easily 8-10 years ago if not more.

He never said he was an MP but he did something stupid like emailing me his full name or texting from a number I could trace back. And that's like CATNIP for a guy like me really.
 
MeetFighters?! I'd want to meet THIS little lot obviously :disco:

Video Game GIF by CAPCOM
 
He's only saying this so he can get the votes from Tory voters. The staunch Labour voters will still vote for them because they have no one else to vote for, except in Scotland.
 
The left have always had a problem with free movement, hence "Lexit" - the theory is that cheap overseas labour devalues all labour and is therefore bad. If a company can get someone who has just arrived from a warzone to live in a mould-infested "studio flat" with 7 other workers and do the job for £12,000 a year, what's to stop companies demanding that of all of us? There is a theory among parts of the left that large amounts of immigration leads to poorer wages and conditions for all workers.

I'm yet to be convinced by this mainly because it misses the exploitation aspect. It accepts exploitation of people as inevitable and I think that it isn't. Still, I'm sure I can be schooled.
 
Keith is banging on about Lords reform and improving devolution today (and it's Gordon Brown that did all the work), but we also got this ABSOLUTE HORSESHIT.



Joining the single market, immediately taking down some of the trade barriers that went up in 2020, is probably the single action that could improve growth the most that could be taken right now, according to pretty much every economist and expert in the field!

Seems Labour has had enough of experts too :goodgrief:
 
There was a poll recently suggesting that 2/3 of people who voted Tory in 2019 but intend to switch back to Labour in 2023 would reconsider if Starmer threatened to reverse Brexit.

I understand that it's massively frustrating, but there's still a lot of people out there for whom it's an emotional, rather than a rational issue. The conversation is trending in the right direction, finally, and people are starting to wake up. But it's going to be a long-haul, not a quick fix.
 
There was a poll recently suggesting that 2/3 of people who voted Tory in 2019 but intend to switch back to Labour in 2023 would reconsider if Starmer threatened to reverse Brexit.

I understand that it's massively frustrating, but there's still a lot of people out there for whom it's an emotional, rather than a rational issue. The conversation is trending in the right direction, finally, and people are starting to wake up. But it's going to be a long-haul, not a quick fix.
That doesn't excuse lying though, does it?
 
It’s not just a Tory thing either. I agree with the sentiment that you can’t just keep reversing broad economic shifts that produce instability and ultimately a lack of confidence in the global markets. It’s not a simple as undoing a flawed deal such as Brexit, it’s too huge. I fucking hate it but what’s done is done. There’s no changing it for a generation. We have to develop relationships with Europe that echo what we had before - freer movement and freer trade, but with the acceptance that we don’t have the say or sway we used to have. The Tories have fucked it, but with a Labour government we can at least try and make it work and claw back some faith and understanding with our neighbours.

The devolution stuff is good.
 
I should say I don’t buy all the Tory-lite stuff that was going on recently though. When you’re that far ahead in the polls you really don’t need it anyway, but it also undoes a lot of the brand work in positioning Labour as a way out of this hellhole the Tories have left us in. Bit weird.
 
There was a poll recently suggesting that 2/3 of people who voted Tory in 2019 but intend to switch back to Labour in 2023 would reconsider if Starmer threatened to reverse Brexit.

I understand that it's massively frustrating, but there's still a lot of people out there for whom it's an emotional, rather than a rational issue. The conversation is trending in the right direction, finally, and people are starting to wake up. But it's going to be a long-haul, not a quick fix.

THIS! I can't believe people are so blinded by it. He can't turn around and say he wants back in without alienating an entire swathe of people who are potentially moving to Labour for the first time in a LONG time.

I've said it for years- as much as I was a Corbyn supporter personally, the UK is in its most hard right position for decades. It's necessary to move from the hard left to the centre-left to get Labour re-elected. You then start the gradual move back towards the left from there.
 
THIS! I can't believe people are so blinded by it. He can't turn around and say he wants back in without alienating an entire swathe of people who are potentially moving to Labour for the first time in a LONG time.

I've said it for years- as much as I was a Corbyn supporter personally, the UK is in its most hard right position for decades. It's necessary to move from the hard left to the centre-left to get Labour re-elected. You then start the gradual move back towards the left from there.
Some of us have other options than Labour, and lying like this isn't going to help him up here. Especially when on one hand he's all "Let's give Scotland more powers" but on the other "Let's deny them that thing they voted to stay in in 2016, because they were promised it wasn't going away in 2014".

It's not good enough.
 
You mean for Scotland? That wasn’t the point though was it? That’s an entirely separate issue with an entirely separate POV.
It's not separate at all! One of the biggest arguments in both Scotland and NI is wanting back in the EU, we both have pathways to do it, and if Labour aren't going to soften our relationship with the EU either, then they are also endangering the union they want to maintain!
 
I'm not actually a massive Starmer stan AT ALL, but it's a massively difficult situation he finds himself in. I just don't feel he's going to win from all sides whatever he does...
 
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I would imagine in the medium term Labour are probably resigned to being a minority in Scotland, and banking on at least having a more productive relationship with the SNP than the Tories do.
 
And quite right too. At this point it's basically a referendum on the euro, the NHS, and whether Northern Ireland wants to become more libertarian or not. Liz Truss would have sent a tsunami of cum down Whitehall if she'd managed to turn the UK into what Ireland is, with £60 a pop for a GP appointment and how much worse a tax haven it is over there. And anyone who thinks Ireland would become all that much better with the North's Sinn Fein added when they'll get most of the hard-right unionists too (some will leave, most won't) is on one, given it's hard to see Sinn Fein south of the border ever forming government without Fianna Fail as it is.

I get the emotional pull of the project given the history of the Troubles, but it's quite funny how reunification would basically be the worst political nightmare of most of the people most vocally in favour of it in terms of what it meant politically for Northern Ireland.
 
This kind of sums up my take on it. It's not as much of an issue for him to be accused of 'U-turning' if he just waits for the country to catch up with where he's at privately.

 
For what it's worth, I can't see any realistic Labour government not being forced into u-turning on the Single Market/maybe even as much as a Rejoin position and a second referendum (depending on how bad things get) once things get bad during the first term (I doubt Starmer will have the smooth sailing Blair did in his). The force of opinion at the activist and parliamentary rep level is just too strong - judging things now when he's at the peak of his strength and leeway with the party is a fools' game.

Cameron wouldn't have dreamed have making the first referendum pledge when he was at his strongest - it was when things started going badly that he got forced into it. And we're talking about a leader who fundamentally is sympathetic to the cause they'd be pushed into this time...
 
Not sure what reunification has to do with it either way given N.I. is in the single market, but you might want to take a look at how polling for that is going in N.I...


The point is that Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have movements that would lead to rejoining the EU proper (and NI they have a legal right to a referendum that Scotland and Wales don't), and that Labour policy influences how strong those movements are. EU membership is one of the biggest arguments for leaving the UK, and whilst NI might enjoy the single market, there are people both there and in the rest of the UK that want to pull it out of that, so it will remain a consideration there for a while.
 
It's not separate at all! One of the biggest arguments in both Scotland and NI is wanting back in the EU, we both have pathways to do it, and if Labour aren't going to soften our relationship with the EU either, then they are also endangering the union they want to maintain!

It is separate. You were lied to in the same way we were all lied to about the EU money going to hospitals. The whole thing was a sham. In the same way you can’t reverse Brexit with a click of fingers, you also can’t give different Brexit rules to different British countries because certain people didn’t agree. We don’t have to like it, but that’s how it is.

I fully support Scottish people fighting their fight because I’m not Scottish and as much as I would like a solid union I can’t pretend to understand what it means to have to deal with English governments when you’re not English. That all being said, right now you are a percentage of a percentage of an electorate and what you’re asking for just isn’t going to happen.
 
The point is that Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have movements that would lead to rejoining the EU proper (and NI they have a legal right to a referendum that Scotland and Wales don't), and that Labour policy influences how strong those movements are. EU membership is one of the biggest arguments for leaving the UK, and whilst NI might enjoy the single market, there are people both there and in the rest of the UK that want to pull it out of that, so it will remain a consideration there for a while.
They're never going to be able to pull Northern Ireland out of the Single Market. There's a very good reason that was so hard to do and fucked up our politics for a solid two years not that long ago in the first place!
 

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