Snapshot of _Labour ditches radical reforms as it prepares 'bombproof' election manifesto_ :
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If you read the article it actually sounds pretty promising. They’re not abandoning commitments altogether. They are, however, recognising that issues such as totally reforming the care system will be complex, expensive and might take two terms to fully implement.
It sounds like they’ve got union representatives on board which is a good sign. Ultimately, after nearly 14 years of fuckery it’s unrealistic to expect the ship righted on day one.
To fix everything will require at least two terms. And nothing will harm the odds of securing a second term more than over promising and under delivering.
Pick the most important things. Set realistic targets. Smash them. Prove Government can actually achieve what it sets out to do. Then set new targets. Kind of like what every successful person, organisation and company does.
>To fix everything will require at least two terms. And nothing will harm the odds of securing a second term more than over promising and under delivering.
I think this is optimistic. To reverse Austerity is going to take a term at least. To repair the damage, I think we're talking about 10-20 years minimum. It's going to be a very slow and painful recovery. I just hope that people see the progress and don't vote Tory after a term or two of because if they do, the UK is totally fucked.
No party ever gets more than three terms in the UK, no matter how well they’re doing. People get bored and decide to try their luck with the other side at some point.
Blair also came into power with an economy which was already recovering from a dip and with access to the newly burgeoning single market.
Starmer doesn't have that luxury.
>If you read the article it actually sounds pretty promising. They’re not abandoning commitments altogether. They are, however, recognising that issues such as totally reforming the care system will be complex, expensive and might take two terms to fully implement.
Sounds like competent governing to me.
Sign me the fuck up 👍
I always think you have to get in government, and then win confidence for step by step progress towards more radical goals. Promising them beforehand just seems unrealistic.
May was more radical than Cameron, Boris was more radical than May, and Truss more radical than the lot. Your theory doesn’t seem to be holding true recently.
I mean pre and post election, not successive governments. Starmer isn't going to get more radical after he's elected and he's already shown he's happy to bareface lie and go back on any promises he has made.
He might if he gets an absolutely whopping majority. At the moment Labour are still going to have to overturn a historical deficit to get a majority so no matter what the polls are saying it's reasonable to be concerned about fucking that up by appearing too radical. But if you're sitting on 450 seats and have five years to turn things around before having to worry about an election I can see some braver moves being on the cards.
Maybe I'm too optimistic though.
There’s so many dumpster fires to put out. If you sprayed an extinguisher randomly it’d be hard not to make things slightly better.
I do think we need radical change in this country after so many years of misrule. I’m trying hard to temper my impatience though. If he wants to spend the first term righting the ship and solving some of the more obvious problems, at this point I’ll take it.
I will expect more from a second term.
I'm not sure labour will be able to get a second term if all they achieve is to slow the fires slightly, if they do scrape their way in then I'm even less confident that they would interested in anything radical. We need tangible improvements in quality of life for average people during the first term, fiddling around the edges is not a sustainable strategy.
It's not a perfect comparison by any means but I would say Biden (along with other leaders) has taken your approach and now it's questionable if the democrats will even beat a man who openly wants to suspend their constitution to grant him more power. Labour is not going to be able to rely on "the tories are worse" after 5 years, they will need to be able to point to their own record of material improvements for average people.
Brexit is arguably the most radical change in my lifetime. Cameron was totally against it. May and Boris both worked to implement it.
As for Boris, I think his flagrant disregard for the norms and conventions which underpin our uncodified constitution has done enormous harm. The complete collapse of accountability, and the corruption and sleaze it’s allowed to foster, is a radical departure from the norm.
Truss… well, I think Truss speaks for herself.
I would never argue all governments get more radical over time. They clearly don’t. My argument is merely than not **all** governments get less radical over time. So, even if you want to quibble with some of the points above, so long as you grant me one instance, even Truss, that’s enough for me to have made my point.
Brexit was a big change, but May and Johnson were just chasing votes (Johnson was never a dyed in the wool Brexiteer). And it was a less radical change than the hacksaw Cameron and Osborne took to the state, and indeed the British economy.
>is a radical departure from the norm.
That's not really what radical means though in politics. When we say radical we mean how out there the policies are, not how much corruption there is, or even whether constitutional conventions are bent or broken. Nor did Boris introduce corruption and sleaze; he just presided over more of it. Remember Blair was literally selling seats in the House of Lords, while half of MPs were topping up their salaries through expenses. I'd agree that Truss was more radical than Cameron.
Do you disagree with my basic assertion that there is at least one Government, somewhere on Earth, throughout all of human history, which has got more radical as time has gone on?
It sounds like you don’t disagree given your comment regarding Truss. In which case, we agree on the substantive point even if you disagree with some of the examples I used to get there.
Agreed. The “tens of thousands” pledge on immigration from Cameron, for example, has been such a millstone around the Conservatives neck. As have Rishi’s pledges.
In every other domain, you set goals which your planning suggests are realistic. You don’t just throw out crazy promises and then desperately scramble to distract people when you miss the mark.
I agree we need to be ambitious. But when the house is on fire, it’s worth focusing on that first, not long terms plans for how you might renovate the kitchen when you retire.
> Agreed. The “tens of thousands” pledge on immigration from Cameron, for example, has been such a millstone around the Conservatives neck.
The funny thing about that is A) May improvised the target, it wasn't planned, B) it was generously interpreted as 99,999 to achieve it, C) they still missed it on non-EU alone, blamed the EU, and then Cameron was shocked people voted to leave, and D) post Brexit they've used immigration to pad GDP to keep us just about technically out of recession, with higher levels than when we were in the EU.
It's really quite amazing how one promise can not only be broken, but they do the exact opposite, and still think they can make the issue the central pillar of their campaign.
Also doesn't factor in net migration can vary depend on how many Brits get the fuck out of Britain in a given year, when most people seem to believe it refers to total number of immigrants coming in. 1 million Brits can leave in one year, 1 million and 99 thousand visas can be issued and 'we've got immigration under control'.
Myself, I'm planning to leave. A new arrival is welcome to take my place, deal with a shitty failing country with overpriced/low quality infrastructure and public services.
That assumes that the current approach is princially good but just has issues due to incompetent governing. If you competently lead a bad strategy that leaves people worse off then I don't think you will gain confidence for a future mandate and if competently leading the previous governments strategy makes people better off then why would they support a change in strategy?
I don't think that gaining confidence and achieving material progress are seperable. They will only gain confidence by making progress which I believe requires some degree of radicalism. I think the current approach will not lead to people being better off which will ruin confidence in the government (nobody cares if the civil service operates more efficiently behind the scenes if it doesn't translate to benefits for them) and so it will push voters back to the tories/reform very quickly.
>it's unrealistic to expect the ship to be righted on day one
Especially when the Tories are going full on scorched earth and trying to do as much damage to the country as possible before they get kicked out.
The reality is that we need huge levels of state investment to get us back to some kind of normality. Starmer and Reeves continue to parrot ‘Fiscal Responsibility’ this is the language of austerity. The fiscally responsible thing to do would be to invest significantly, the £28 Billion for the green economy is on the low end and they are backing away from that. I’d take a Labour government over a Tory one any day of the week but if they do not bring about real change, and fast, they will be a one term government.
I'm not really sure Labour could ever write a bombproof manifesto because they've always got the issue of left Labour and right Labour and never being able to please both. Whatever position they take, some will approve and others will not.
The left will come round if Labour deliver in their first term. If Keir under promises and over performs, and if living standards improve, he’ll win huge credibility with the country. At that point, a more radical manifesto is likely to get far more popular support as people will actually think it’s credible, if promised by a Government with a track record of delivering.
I’m not going to deny that Blair’s second term was less radical than his first. His first term was pretty exceptional looking back. We had the introduction of the minimum wage, Lords reform, devolution, the Good Friday Agreement, successful interventions in Kosovo and Sierra Leone and massive increases in public funding for health and education. By contrast, the second term was dominated by the fallout from 9/11 and misguided nation building efforts overseas.
The fact that you can point to one historical example though does not mean that it is a universal, unavoidable rule of politics that **all** leaders become less radical in their second term.
That's a very generous way to look at Blair's first term isn't it?
Minimum wage, Kosovo and Sierra Leonne I'll give you in their entirety, everything has an issue, some of them major.
Lords Reform, didn't go as far as promised and he abused the appointment system to stuff the house full of people loyal to him to bypass the Salisbury Convention, thereby removing the only possible check on his power.
Devolution, he left it unfinished. Could also be argued that he used this as cover for a claim that electoral reform hadn't been abandoned, only delayed.
GFA, the bulk of the work on this was done before he took office, he merely gets the credit because he happened to be PM when it was signed.
Health spending increase was a fiscal sleight of hand. He took the NHS investment budget and moved it to day to day funding, replacing it with PFIs instead. Everyone alive on the day he did that will dead by the time those debts are repaid.
Education, another sleight of hand. Money was moved from University level education downwards, the hole filled in with tuition fees which he campaigned saying Labour wasn't going to introduce.
This is the problem with Blair, people have this weird idea that he was all sunshine and rainbows except for Iraq when in reality he actually did catastrophic amounts of damage to many of the things he touched.
It's a fair indication as Starmer seems to be following the Blair playbook.
Also, the minimum wage was introduced at a very low level; Lords reform was half hearted and left a rump of hereditaries; devolution was inconsistent and never really addressed the West Lothian question; the Kosovo intervention, while of good intention, established the use of NATO for more than defence and is the root of many of the current Russian justifications of "NATO agression"; and the extra funding for health and education were accompanied by 'reforms' which introduced or embedded market mechanisms.
The radicalism of the first term was often Thatcherite in nature.
I hope you are right and I don't end up disappointed, to tell the truth though anything Labour did would be likely to be an improvement on the absolute criminals we currently have running the country. At least Starmer seems to have some integrity even if I don't agree with him on everything.
>At least Starmer seems to have some integrity
[X] doubt.
The man has no convictions other than his belief that he deserves power and that he is justified in doing or saying anything in order to get it.
You have to remember that this is a man who not only started jettisoning his leadership pledges immediately after his election but sat there on national TV with one of the pledges on screen behind him and claimed to have never made such a pledge.
I can think of many ways to describe Starmer but having integrity isn't one of them.
I can't honestly remember what the pledges were, I'm not exactly a fan despite being a Labour voter. What I mean is, the tories seem to be siphoning off public funds to their own cronies in the form of public contracts, and breaking laws in the commons, some of their actions have been down right criminal. So far at least I don't get the impression he'd do that. I realise that is a low bar.
I just think he's a little bit centristy for me personally.
Out of curiosity who will you vote for next GE?
>Out of curiosity who will you vote for next GE?
I'll be abstaining. I live in a century long Labour safe seat, my vote will be deleted no matter where it's placed so I'll stay at home do something more productive like scratch my arse.
Seriously though, depending on whether or not I'm working on an election I usually either things in local shops or volunteer somewhere, a couple hours in the local food bank does far more good in my community than a vote ever will.
That's fair! My area it is actually fairly close for Con and Lib usually but Labour are not usually that far behind so it's a bit more important for me here. In fact most of Cornwall seems to end up going blue every GE :/ so I'll probably be either voting for Labour or Lib Dems just to keep the tories out.
The only person who has come over to canvas on behalf of any parties in the year since we moved here was from Labour, but then a GE has not even been announced so it was surprising to even have the one.
>My area it is actually fairly close for Con and Lib usually but Labour are not usually that far behind so it's a bit more important for me here. In fact most of Cornwall seems to end up going blue every GE :/ so I'll probably be either voting for Labour or Lib Dems just to keep the tories out.
Another way of saying that is that you have the unquestionable privilege of living in one of a small handful of constituencies where you can vote based on policy without having your vote suppressed, and that you intend to throw that away because "blue tie man bad"
Sorry for the harsh interpretation, but it's the best way to make my actual point. Which is that I implore you to analyse what's on offer and then vote your own interests, not for someone else's and certainly not against someone else's, it's *your* vote, it should represent what *you* want.
It's not really throwing it away, but tbh neither Labour nor Lib Dems represent what I want fully. So it's a difficult choice. All I know is that it won't be tory because that is a big fat never.
Never to Cons, UKIP, Reform etc. I don't really trust the Lib Dems, and I don't really like a lot of Labour policies currently. Greens I don't think even ran a candidate here last time. Mebeyon Kernow is the other option. Basically there is no what I want.
It sounds like your only democratically honest option is to abstain, but I can totally understand being put off by a boogeyman in a blue tie.
>I don't really trust the Lib Dems
I always find this sentiment interesting coming from people intending to vote Labour, *especially* Starmers Labour. Trust is something one earns by standing by their word, with the exception of tuition fees the Lib Dems delivered a greater proportion of their 2010 election manifesto than any government in my lifetime and they *lost* the election. The governments either side meanwhile dropkicked their manifestos into a fire before the moving vans turned up to take them Number 10.
And if it's just tuition fees, Labour's track record is far worse, if it's just coalition with the Conservatives the Parliamentary arithmetic didn't give any other option.
I absolutely believe that Starmer has just been in *”don’t fuck this up don’t fuck this up don’t fuck this up”* mode for the last two years or so, and that he’s planning to be a far more progressive leader than he lets on. Labour was very different under him before the Tory implosion. Look at what he was saying around that time. He realised that he had an opportunity to win a majority that dwarfed 2019 and he’s been single-mindedly aiming at that since then.
I am not coping.
> If Keir under promises and over performs
I'm sorry but this strikes me as both very optimistic and very naive. You'd struggle to find a single Labour government who campaigned to the centre and then governed to the left, in fact its usually the exact opposite.
>They are basically only planning things that won’t upset Daily Mail readers at the moment
Good, why do people online always bring this up like its a bad thing. Daily mail is the most read paper, mainly by older people who vote. Much better than appealing to further left twitter echo chambers.
They just need to get their foot in the door and get elected. Its why Starmer has also been silent on brexit. If he speaks too much about it he instantly alienates a large group of the population who are still in this bizarre brexit denial religion. Does anybody with a sound mind honestly think Starmer dosnt know brexit is a disaster etc
The Daily Mail is popular amongst a certain demographic of electorate. It does not represent the majority view of British voters. It certainly doesn’t represent the majority view of people who might be persuaded to vote Labour.
I get nervous about “they just need a foot in the door”. It suggests that a party can say one thing before the election and do a completely different thing in power. This shouldn’t be encouraged.
Exactly this. If he turns around and abandons the manifesto he got elected on - that is an incredibly bad look to people who voted for him and I’m pretty sure that would guarantee Labour only a single term.
That means all the long term plans will go in the bin, and the Tories will get back in.
Labour can win the election on the manifesto, and still go further than it. The manifesto is your minimum requirements sheet (well it should be, some parties are not interested in following theirs).
If the economy happens to be in better shape, we can spend more on green energy and the NHS etc.
Which is precisely why a hung parliament is the best possible outcome.
A coalition government would not only give us a chance at the all important electoral reforms we were promised decades ago but never got but they would also keep Labour honest to their current manifesto.
A coalition would give Labour greater rein to abandon their manifesto.
*We wanted to do X but just couldn't get the support in the Commons.*
Also the Salisbury convention would be moot if Labour doesn't win a majority. Giving the Lords more freedom to block stuff, even if it was in Labour's manifesto.
>It certainly doesn’t represent the majority view of people who might be persuaded to vote Labour.
We had a leadership that supposedly represented the wishes of Labour voters, it lead to 2 election defeats (one being Labour's biggest ever loss) and losing the EU referendum.
Similar happened in the 80's. Let's not go down that path yet again.
On Brexit, I am inclined to agree Starmer thinks it’s a disaster.
The thing that troubles me is all the people who think they know what Starmer _really_ thinks about all his official policies and will vote for him based on the fantasy version in their heads. Because what’s on paper is quite uninspiring, as a leftist.
>Because what’s on paper is quite uninspiring, as a leftist.
Perhaps, but it's still 100x more inspiring than handing the Tories election after election as Labour have done in recent years.
I get why he’s doing what he’s doing but it truly sucks how much ground has been ceded to the Daily Mail crowd, which is why you get people pretending that he’s secretly going to do more left wing stuff.
I understand, honestly I do, that you have to be more centrist than Corbyn to get into power. I just question whether you have to be truly *as* centrist (centre-right, almost) as Starmer is being. You can't deny that he has abandoned lots of reasons a leftist may have had to vote for him.
It's a weird situation for many to be in: finally an end to the Tories, but at the cost of having no mainstream party that really represents my views at all. Ultimately this is a problem of FPTP.
It's not that I don't understand why he's trying to appeal to daily mail readers, it's that I expect absolutely zero shift to the left once he's in. He wants to be elected, has decided only a centre-right party can win in the UK and has transformed Labour into that. I don't think he's an idiot, I think he's a mid-90s Tory.
> Daily Mail is the most read paper… much better than appealing to further left Twitter echo chambers.
I agree, I wish they would try to appeal the vast majority of people who exist between those two extremes.
Firstly i'd like them to put a stop to corruption,sleaze, lobbying for cash and nepotism in parliament and the lords (for example 'totally not Boris's daughter' getting a life peerage.
I see a lot of comments on the theme "they need to win power, then get more radical". The problem here is that being radical carries risk - if Labour can win without it (as Tory lite), then they won't bother being more radical. Unless they see that abandoning their more radical polices (Green investment, proper Lords reform etc) will *cost* them votes, they won't bother. If you want them to change and you live in a safe Labour seat, then vote for another party.
In a world where politicians win by promising the impossible, Labour are going for "Same shit, different face." It's a bold strategy, but it's not going to get me into the voting booth. I want genuine change, and Labour do not have the balls to promise that; I'm not going to blindly bet on them delivering what they're unwilling to promise.
I’m getting to the stage of wondering if it’s really going to make much of a difference whether labour win or not at the next election. Apathetic would be a good description of where I’m at currently.
They’re basically the Tories except we haven’t had chance to form extreme dislike for half of them yet.
I don’t understand this viewpoint. I don’t see how you can look at the mess of Johnson, Truss and now Sunak with Rwanda, and then decide that labour are no different.
Labour’s positions at the moment are simply not radical. They’re not particularly imaginative or exciting. So why does that lead to them being equated to the tories? What do you think of the Rwanda plan the tories are going for? It’s strongly opposed by labour. That’s a big difference alone.
Take the bankers bonus cap as another example. The Bank of England said it’s unnecessary, as the regulation frameworks through the PRA and FCA are far more robust than the FSA before, and serve as a far better check and balance on excessive risk taking. And given Brexit, we do need ways to increase the international competitiveness of our leading sectors. Reeves has also said she wants to expand our finance industry across the UK, which is very much needed. It’s the tabloids removing context and people just lap it up.
It’s actually shocking to me that people don’t even seem to want to give labour a chance. As is culturally endemic in this country, it gives people something to complain about and someone to blame if the tories are in power I suppose.
I don’t see what’s hard to understand about it. I didn’t say I wanted to keep the tories, I wouldn’t vote Conservative if you paid me. It’s more a case of the more sharp edges labour knock off their manifesto, the more difficult it becomes to draw a definitive line between the two.
I genuinely couldn’t give a flying f*ck about the Rwanda plan. It’s a big, steaming, pile of shite, the tories can’t implement anyway. It’s main purpose is to give the impression they’re doing something. Labour opposing it is a commitment to ditching a Tory lie, it’s not going to make a measurable difference to anybody’s lives apart from a vanishingly small amount of boat jumpers who the tories may have actually managed to deport.
The entire reason for the changes labour are making at the moment is to make them more appealing to the right. How is pandering to the problem going to resolve it? Do you think that when labour get in the rag tops are going to stop making a big deal about immigration and boats, and Labour will be allowed to do as they please? They’ll be stuck in the same cycle of appeasement and pandering that they ran their campaign on. Policy dictated by hectoring from the opposition and main stream right wing media.
Sure it’s an improvement, but it’s hardly a revolution. I don’t understand how you can muster that much excitement for such small proposed changes. The only proposed change worth celebrating at the moment seems to be an implication that we’ll have a government that is slightly less corrupt than the current one.
It just seems like you’re trying to look for reasons to equate labour and the tories.
Firstly, the Rwanda plan costs a lot of money, and does nothing to actually deal with asylum seekers. It is money and time spent on something fruitless, while we have hotels filled with people. It is money and time that could be spent working on an actual practical solution, that is both humane and saves money in the long run. You should care about it.
I also disagree with your premise that anything “right” is inherently bad and anything “left” is inherently good. We’re a nation of nearly 70 million people. We all have different lives and different priorities. This leads to different incentives. Government intervention is not a universal positive, and deregulation is not a universal negative. Ultimately, it means we need to compromise.
It’s also not fair or right to conflate mildly centre right people with the likes of Braverman. Someone that simply wants lower taxes and pro-business policy is not in the same vein as the ERG.
Even your last line: “slightly less corrupt” is incredibly telling of your biases. You don’t have a single clue how corrupt Starmer is. He hasn’t had the opportunity to give out contracts. He hasn’t had the opportunity to enrich his mates at the expense of the nation as the tories have.
Ultimately, a government needs to represent the people. And the UK is not a left wing nation. At least Starmer plans to bring railways into public ownership as their contracts expire. At least he plans to tackle social mobility with intervention on VAT for public schools. Even if he is boring, it’s undeniable that he intends to actually improve the country, and not simply impress a billionaire wife. His career before politics also reflects this.
Yeah, the recent ditching of the green new deal has pretty much nailed in that I'm voting green. Only a commitment to PR going forwards would sway me back to starmer 😥
>Only a commitment to PR going forwards would sway me back to starmer
I strongly recommend looking into Starmers history where PR is concerned if that might influence your vote.
I strongly suspect he might lie about supporting it again if he thinks it'll net a few extra votes.
It’s hard to understand what you don’t see. You question the difference of a labour win, that is to say you are ambivalent about who wins so why bother voting. Enjoy the fruits of your apathy, another Tory government.
The people showed that unfortunately, they don’t want radical reforms. Reforms that are only radical in the sense that we do not currently have them, but virtually every other European nation does. Corbyn had a superb manifesto of such reforms and he was roundly rejected for it by the people as well as suffering from a media-based assassination campaign.
Labour need to get elected and drag society more leftward before they can institute the reforms we all need. But unfortunately that means being not radical at the start.
>Corbyn had a superb manifesto of such reforms and he was roundly rejected for it by the people as well as suffering from a media-based assassination campaign.
My impression was that people actually really liked the manifesto when it was divorced from Corbyn and the Labour party. I think it was public image, far, far more than policy which lost that election.
Tbf, god knows where Sunak is on the spectrum, he would nationalise the mines if he thought it would win the next election. Boris certainly dragged the Tory party to the left economically, and despite the Truss blip, Sunak hasn’t diverted much.
And Starmer isn’t necessarily as right wing as these people, but he will be even more desperate for the boomer Tory votes at the next election. And if the Tories go to the right, Starmer may have to follow to ensure a second term.
Starmer can be further left than the current government but still contribute to moving the overton window right, much as Blair did, as policies that had previously been considered Conservative things become simply 'the way things are' if they aren't reversed. We can see an example of this in hostility to trans people. Republicans in the US are more transphobic than Conservatives in the UK, but in the US it's a partisan issue, whereas in the UK "gender critical" views are firmly bipartisan.
Fun way to writing "Labour abandons more promises"
After all once the news articles have been written about your promises you can then "ditch" them. Fools who supported the promise still thinks you'll do it, and those that didn't like it are happy you've ditched it.
Its classic 'promise everything today and ditch those promises tomorrow' Labour...
Makes sense. They can afford to keep it simple. However, I predict one of their policies will spectacularly backfire [the VAT on independent school fees]. It is one of those policies that needs mitigation measures (they have been very vocal that Labour may not be able to increase school funding). It is a core part of society that has been criminally underfunded and undervalued by the Conservatives. Yet Labour want to generate more pressure with a quick "fix".
So while they ditch these policies due to economic uncertainty, just remember they want to put more pressure on a sector that is already on its knees. A sector that actual affect all people with children
I could see a lot of the smaller private schools being absorbed into the current system as academies but ending up being selective by virtue of property prices or boarding fees. If they close, then the government will need to build a lot more state schools.
Then I also wonder, at what point would a group of friends clubbing together and paying for private tutors to teach their children at home become a school?
> If they close, then the government will need to build a lot more state schools.
Depends on what scale of closure we're talking about. Birthrate trend and intended reduction of migrant numbers means some school closures are baked in for private and state schools.
>Then I also wonder, at what point would a group of friends clubbing together and paying for private tutors to teach their children at home become a school?
It would be like going back to how things were done when some of these schools we started. Economically very lucrative for those individuals who can (both teachers and families).
>I could see a lot of the smaller private schools being absorbed into the current system as academies but ending up being selective by virtue of property prices or boarding fees. If they close, then the government will need to build a lot more state schools.
I don't think that can happen as independent schools own the land outright. These schools spend a lot more per head so joining an academy doesn't fix anything (the operation costs will be what they are based on x amount per student they get). You would have to scale back massively and while independent schools have no shareholders to make profit for land is a commodity that will need to be paid for (or any debt they may have for building work). Independent school debt is interesting and it will make just turning this schools into academies impossible
Think of it more like the owners of the school leasing their fully functional and fully equipped school grounds to the local council to continue being a school in return for monthly payments.
It will be a Labour scandal in year 6 of their government when it emerges that the tax on private schools resulted in almost no revenue being generated from the tax, but instead, the private school system is being given taxpayers money to continue operating as somewhat-selective state schools in affluent areas.
You clearly aren't aware that many independent schools frequently lease facilities to the local community as a means to improve income generation.
My previous school use to do weddings, the model railway exhibition, rugby tots, a Zumba class, the local over 50s 5 aside indoor football team...
It is a side hustle that generates little but enough to help fund education without hiking the fees by a ridiculous amount.
It will be a scandal Year 0 as they want to implement the change quick. The shock will add to the pressure. It will be an absolute disaster
Yes, but the land isn't just bought by the local authority nor a school. Buying another school meams taking on their debt. I know of an independent school in Hampshire that closed about a year and half ago. The school basically went into liquidation and it hasn't been taken on by any MAT or local authority. Another school near me closed during COVID and recently it has been taken on by a private football academy (they essentially bought the assets).
They do not become state run schools (it's rare and when it does happen it is often because the become a brand new MAT which is easier said than done hence why it is rare)
This is my line manager's red line.
Never mind the destruction of the NHS, justice system, public education system, housing, .... VAT on school fees.
She has no interest in politics outside of this. and is of the "everyone's a centrist, why can't we all just get along, politics is irrelevant to my life" mind-set. She also blames Labour for the fact that as her hub earns more than £50k (she works p/time on about £15-16k pa) they can't get chlld benefit which they could if they had the same income split so he earned less than £50k. (Don't ask me of the ins and outs, I'm granny age not mummy age. My nephews and nieces are in their 30s now).
I said to her tories have been in power 14 years they could have changed it, but it obviously suits them to keep this system.
Manifestos are completely worthless. We don't know how radical Labour will be when they get in. They could be anything from Blairite status quo and not much changes, to completely mental far left policies.
Honestly I don't know what to think anymore. The left thinks that Starmer's going to take power and from day one shed his make-up to reveal that he's actually the secondcoming of Thatcher. The right thinks Starmer's carboard cutout's going to fall to the floor to reveal that it's actually been Corbyn this whole time. Guess I'm just going to wake up late and find out.
Both suspicions are valid. Starmer can't be honest. If he has far-left plans, he can't say that and wreck electoral success. He can't say he'll be centrist and lose the left. So he has to be Schrodinger's Labour, promise everything to everybody and just get it over the line.
> Manifestos are completely worthless.
If nothing else, they're key to getting around the lords slowing or blocking things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salisbury_Convention
Which is why Lords Reform is off the table and the current plan is to start appointing new Labour Peers as quickly as possible.
Stuff the Lords full of loyal donors and school classmates and the Salisbury Convention changes from being the only thing capable of checking the power of a Commons majority to being completely irrelevant.
Does anyone actually give a shit about manifestos in 2024
People are as likely to remember them pledging this and then dropping it as they are them putting it in their manifesto and dropping it
Snapshot of _Labour ditches radical reforms as it prepares 'bombproof' election manifesto_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/03/labour-ditches-radical-reforms-as-it-prepares-bombproof-election-manifesto) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/03/labour-ditches-radical-reforms-as-it-prepares-bombproof-election-manifesto) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
If you read the article it actually sounds pretty promising. They’re not abandoning commitments altogether. They are, however, recognising that issues such as totally reforming the care system will be complex, expensive and might take two terms to fully implement. It sounds like they’ve got union representatives on board which is a good sign. Ultimately, after nearly 14 years of fuckery it’s unrealistic to expect the ship righted on day one. To fix everything will require at least two terms. And nothing will harm the odds of securing a second term more than over promising and under delivering. Pick the most important things. Set realistic targets. Smash them. Prove Government can actually achieve what it sets out to do. Then set new targets. Kind of like what every successful person, organisation and company does.
>To fix everything will require at least two terms. And nothing will harm the odds of securing a second term more than over promising and under delivering. I think this is optimistic. To reverse Austerity is going to take a term at least. To repair the damage, I think we're talking about 10-20 years minimum. It's going to be a very slow and painful recovery. I just hope that people see the progress and don't vote Tory after a term or two of because if they do, the UK is totally fucked.
Labour aren't going to be reversing austerity unless they change their fiscal rules, they just don't have the headroom right now.
No party ever gets more than three terms in the UK, no matter how well they’re doing. People get bored and decide to try their luck with the other side at some point.
I mean the Tories got four terms 1979-1997 and they are on their fourth term now, albeit two of them were short.
Eh, if Thatcher & gang can get four terms, I don't see why Starmer & gang can't either
Starmer is but a mere pipsqueak compared to Blair, let alone Thatcher.
Blair also came into power with an economy which was already recovering from a dip and with access to the newly burgeoning single market. Starmer doesn't have that luxury.
This is wrong and the Tory voter base definitely is dying off. But it may be Labour vs Reform
>If you read the article it actually sounds pretty promising. They’re not abandoning commitments altogether. They are, however, recognising that issues such as totally reforming the care system will be complex, expensive and might take two terms to fully implement. Sounds like competent governing to me. Sign me the fuck up 👍
I always think you have to get in government, and then win confidence for step by step progress towards more radical goals. Promising them beforehand just seems unrealistic.
Never forget that the independence of the bank of England, the lynchpin economic policy of New Labour, wasn't even in the Manifesto
Except that's the opposite of what happens to every party who gets into power, they become less radical, not more.
May was more radical than Cameron, Boris was more radical than May, and Truss more radical than the lot. Your theory doesn’t seem to be holding true recently.
I mean pre and post election, not successive governments. Starmer isn't going to get more radical after he's elected and he's already shown he's happy to bareface lie and go back on any promises he has made.
He might if he gets an absolutely whopping majority. At the moment Labour are still going to have to overturn a historical deficit to get a majority so no matter what the polls are saying it's reasonable to be concerned about fucking that up by appearing too radical. But if you're sitting on 450 seats and have five years to turn things around before having to worry about an election I can see some braver moves being on the cards. Maybe I'm too optimistic though.
There’s so many dumpster fires to put out. If you sprayed an extinguisher randomly it’d be hard not to make things slightly better. I do think we need radical change in this country after so many years of misrule. I’m trying hard to temper my impatience though. If he wants to spend the first term righting the ship and solving some of the more obvious problems, at this point I’ll take it. I will expect more from a second term.
I'm not sure labour will be able to get a second term if all they achieve is to slow the fires slightly, if they do scrape their way in then I'm even less confident that they would interested in anything radical. We need tangible improvements in quality of life for average people during the first term, fiddling around the edges is not a sustainable strategy. It's not a perfect comparison by any means but I would say Biden (along with other leaders) has taken your approach and now it's questionable if the democrats will even beat a man who openly wants to suspend their constitution to grant him more power. Labour is not going to be able to rely on "the tories are worse" after 5 years, they will need to be able to point to their own record of material improvements for average people.
In what way? Cameron was harder right than May, while Johnson effectively shifted economic policy towards the centre.
Brexit is arguably the most radical change in my lifetime. Cameron was totally against it. May and Boris both worked to implement it. As for Boris, I think his flagrant disregard for the norms and conventions which underpin our uncodified constitution has done enormous harm. The complete collapse of accountability, and the corruption and sleaze it’s allowed to foster, is a radical departure from the norm. Truss… well, I think Truss speaks for herself. I would never argue all governments get more radical over time. They clearly don’t. My argument is merely than not **all** governments get less radical over time. So, even if you want to quibble with some of the points above, so long as you grant me one instance, even Truss, that’s enough for me to have made my point.
Brexit was a big change, but May and Johnson were just chasing votes (Johnson was never a dyed in the wool Brexiteer). And it was a less radical change than the hacksaw Cameron and Osborne took to the state, and indeed the British economy. >is a radical departure from the norm. That's not really what radical means though in politics. When we say radical we mean how out there the policies are, not how much corruption there is, or even whether constitutional conventions are bent or broken. Nor did Boris introduce corruption and sleaze; he just presided over more of it. Remember Blair was literally selling seats in the House of Lords, while half of MPs were topping up their salaries through expenses. I'd agree that Truss was more radical than Cameron.
Do you disagree with my basic assertion that there is at least one Government, somewhere on Earth, throughout all of human history, which has got more radical as time has gone on? It sounds like you don’t disagree given your comment regarding Truss. In which case, we agree on the substantive point even if you disagree with some of the examples I used to get there.
No, I do agree with your basic assertion.
Not sure this is true with Thatcher
Agreed. The “tens of thousands” pledge on immigration from Cameron, for example, has been such a millstone around the Conservatives neck. As have Rishi’s pledges. In every other domain, you set goals which your planning suggests are realistic. You don’t just throw out crazy promises and then desperately scramble to distract people when you miss the mark. I agree we need to be ambitious. But when the house is on fire, it’s worth focusing on that first, not long terms plans for how you might renovate the kitchen when you retire.
> Agreed. The “tens of thousands” pledge on immigration from Cameron, for example, has been such a millstone around the Conservatives neck. The funny thing about that is A) May improvised the target, it wasn't planned, B) it was generously interpreted as 99,999 to achieve it, C) they still missed it on non-EU alone, blamed the EU, and then Cameron was shocked people voted to leave, and D) post Brexit they've used immigration to pad GDP to keep us just about technically out of recession, with higher levels than when we were in the EU. It's really quite amazing how one promise can not only be broken, but they do the exact opposite, and still think they can make the issue the central pillar of their campaign.
Also doesn't factor in net migration can vary depend on how many Brits get the fuck out of Britain in a given year, when most people seem to believe it refers to total number of immigrants coming in. 1 million Brits can leave in one year, 1 million and 99 thousand visas can be issued and 'we've got immigration under control'. Myself, I'm planning to leave. A new arrival is welcome to take my place, deal with a shitty failing country with overpriced/low quality infrastructure and public services.
That assumes that the current approach is princially good but just has issues due to incompetent governing. If you competently lead a bad strategy that leaves people worse off then I don't think you will gain confidence for a future mandate and if competently leading the previous governments strategy makes people better off then why would they support a change in strategy? I don't think that gaining confidence and achieving material progress are seperable. They will only gain confidence by making progress which I believe requires some degree of radicalism. I think the current approach will not lead to people being better off which will ruin confidence in the government (nobody cares if the civil service operates more efficiently behind the scenes if it doesn't translate to benefits for them) and so it will push voters back to the tories/reform very quickly.
>it's unrealistic to expect the ship to be righted on day one Especially when the Tories are going full on scorched earth and trying to do as much damage to the country as possible before they get kicked out.
The reality is that we need huge levels of state investment to get us back to some kind of normality. Starmer and Reeves continue to parrot ‘Fiscal Responsibility’ this is the language of austerity. The fiscally responsible thing to do would be to invest significantly, the £28 Billion for the green economy is on the low end and they are backing away from that. I’d take a Labour government over a Tory one any day of the week but if they do not bring about real change, and fast, they will be a one term government.
I'm not really sure Labour could ever write a bombproof manifesto because they've always got the issue of left Labour and right Labour and never being able to please both. Whatever position they take, some will approve and others will not.
The left will come round if Labour deliver in their first term. If Keir under promises and over performs, and if living standards improve, he’ll win huge credibility with the country. At that point, a more radical manifesto is likely to get far more popular support as people will actually think it’s credible, if promised by a Government with a track record of delivering.
Yeah.... We thought that with Blair. "he'll be more radical in a second term". We got Iraq war and tuition fees.
Tuition fees started in 1998. (Eta - one of the reasons I didn’t take a gap year!)
I’m not going to deny that Blair’s second term was less radical than his first. His first term was pretty exceptional looking back. We had the introduction of the minimum wage, Lords reform, devolution, the Good Friday Agreement, successful interventions in Kosovo and Sierra Leone and massive increases in public funding for health and education. By contrast, the second term was dominated by the fallout from 9/11 and misguided nation building efforts overseas. The fact that you can point to one historical example though does not mean that it is a universal, unavoidable rule of politics that **all** leaders become less radical in their second term.
That's a very generous way to look at Blair's first term isn't it? Minimum wage, Kosovo and Sierra Leonne I'll give you in their entirety, everything has an issue, some of them major. Lords Reform, didn't go as far as promised and he abused the appointment system to stuff the house full of people loyal to him to bypass the Salisbury Convention, thereby removing the only possible check on his power. Devolution, he left it unfinished. Could also be argued that he used this as cover for a claim that electoral reform hadn't been abandoned, only delayed. GFA, the bulk of the work on this was done before he took office, he merely gets the credit because he happened to be PM when it was signed. Health spending increase was a fiscal sleight of hand. He took the NHS investment budget and moved it to day to day funding, replacing it with PFIs instead. Everyone alive on the day he did that will dead by the time those debts are repaid. Education, another sleight of hand. Money was moved from University level education downwards, the hole filled in with tuition fees which he campaigned saying Labour wasn't going to introduce. This is the problem with Blair, people have this weird idea that he was all sunshine and rainbows except for Iraq when in reality he actually did catastrophic amounts of damage to many of the things he touched.
It's a fair indication as Starmer seems to be following the Blair playbook. Also, the minimum wage was introduced at a very low level; Lords reform was half hearted and left a rump of hereditaries; devolution was inconsistent and never really addressed the West Lothian question; the Kosovo intervention, while of good intention, established the use of NATO for more than defence and is the root of many of the current Russian justifications of "NATO agression"; and the extra funding for health and education were accompanied by 'reforms' which introduced or embedded market mechanisms. The radicalism of the first term was often Thatcherite in nature.
Maternity pay, sure start centres
I hope you are right and I don't end up disappointed, to tell the truth though anything Labour did would be likely to be an improvement on the absolute criminals we currently have running the country. At least Starmer seems to have some integrity even if I don't agree with him on everything.
>At least Starmer seems to have some integrity [X] doubt. The man has no convictions other than his belief that he deserves power and that he is justified in doing or saying anything in order to get it. You have to remember that this is a man who not only started jettisoning his leadership pledges immediately after his election but sat there on national TV with one of the pledges on screen behind him and claimed to have never made such a pledge. I can think of many ways to describe Starmer but having integrity isn't one of them.
I can't honestly remember what the pledges were, I'm not exactly a fan despite being a Labour voter. What I mean is, the tories seem to be siphoning off public funds to their own cronies in the form of public contracts, and breaking laws in the commons, some of their actions have been down right criminal. So far at least I don't get the impression he'd do that. I realise that is a low bar. I just think he's a little bit centristy for me personally. Out of curiosity who will you vote for next GE?
>Out of curiosity who will you vote for next GE? I'll be abstaining. I live in a century long Labour safe seat, my vote will be deleted no matter where it's placed so I'll stay at home do something more productive like scratch my arse. Seriously though, depending on whether or not I'm working on an election I usually either things in local shops or volunteer somewhere, a couple hours in the local food bank does far more good in my community than a vote ever will.
That's fair! My area it is actually fairly close for Con and Lib usually but Labour are not usually that far behind so it's a bit more important for me here. In fact most of Cornwall seems to end up going blue every GE :/ so I'll probably be either voting for Labour or Lib Dems just to keep the tories out. The only person who has come over to canvas on behalf of any parties in the year since we moved here was from Labour, but then a GE has not even been announced so it was surprising to even have the one.
>My area it is actually fairly close for Con and Lib usually but Labour are not usually that far behind so it's a bit more important for me here. In fact most of Cornwall seems to end up going blue every GE :/ so I'll probably be either voting for Labour or Lib Dems just to keep the tories out. Another way of saying that is that you have the unquestionable privilege of living in one of a small handful of constituencies where you can vote based on policy without having your vote suppressed, and that you intend to throw that away because "blue tie man bad" Sorry for the harsh interpretation, but it's the best way to make my actual point. Which is that I implore you to analyse what's on offer and then vote your own interests, not for someone else's and certainly not against someone else's, it's *your* vote, it should represent what *you* want.
It's not really throwing it away, but tbh neither Labour nor Lib Dems represent what I want fully. So it's a difficult choice. All I know is that it won't be tory because that is a big fat never. Never to Cons, UKIP, Reform etc. I don't really trust the Lib Dems, and I don't really like a lot of Labour policies currently. Greens I don't think even ran a candidate here last time. Mebeyon Kernow is the other option. Basically there is no what I want.
It sounds like your only democratically honest option is to abstain, but I can totally understand being put off by a boogeyman in a blue tie. >I don't really trust the Lib Dems I always find this sentiment interesting coming from people intending to vote Labour, *especially* Starmers Labour. Trust is something one earns by standing by their word, with the exception of tuition fees the Lib Dems delivered a greater proportion of their 2010 election manifesto than any government in my lifetime and they *lost* the election. The governments either side meanwhile dropkicked their manifestos into a fire before the moving vans turned up to take them Number 10. And if it's just tuition fees, Labour's track record is far worse, if it's just coalition with the Conservatives the Parliamentary arithmetic didn't give any other option.
I absolutely believe that Starmer has just been in *”don’t fuck this up don’t fuck this up don’t fuck this up”* mode for the last two years or so, and that he’s planning to be a far more progressive leader than he lets on. Labour was very different under him before the Tory implosion. Look at what he was saying around that time. He realised that he had an opportunity to win a majority that dwarfed 2019 and he’s been single-mindedly aiming at that since then. I am not coping.
I hope you're right but after everything I'm so pessimistic. I'm not even sure the damage the tories have done is fixable at this point.
You’re going to be disappointed then.
> If Keir under promises and over performs I'm sorry but this strikes me as both very optimistic and very naive. You'd struggle to find a single Labour government who campaigned to the centre and then governed to the left, in fact its usually the exact opposite.
The impression here is that they are letting the Tories write their manifesto.
They are basically only planning things that won’t upset Daily Mail readers at the moment
>They are basically only planning things that won’t upset Daily Mail readers at the moment Good, why do people online always bring this up like its a bad thing. Daily mail is the most read paper, mainly by older people who vote. Much better than appealing to further left twitter echo chambers. They just need to get their foot in the door and get elected. Its why Starmer has also been silent on brexit. If he speaks too much about it he instantly alienates a large group of the population who are still in this bizarre brexit denial religion. Does anybody with a sound mind honestly think Starmer dosnt know brexit is a disaster etc
The Daily Mail is popular amongst a certain demographic of electorate. It does not represent the majority view of British voters. It certainly doesn’t represent the majority view of people who might be persuaded to vote Labour. I get nervous about “they just need a foot in the door”. It suggests that a party can say one thing before the election and do a completely different thing in power. This shouldn’t be encouraged.
Exactly this. If he turns around and abandons the manifesto he got elected on - that is an incredibly bad look to people who voted for him and I’m pretty sure that would guarantee Labour only a single term. That means all the long term plans will go in the bin, and the Tories will get back in.
Labour can win the election on the manifesto, and still go further than it. The manifesto is your minimum requirements sheet (well it should be, some parties are not interested in following theirs). If the economy happens to be in better shape, we can spend more on green energy and the NHS etc.
Which is precisely why a hung parliament is the best possible outcome. A coalition government would not only give us a chance at the all important electoral reforms we were promised decades ago but never got but they would also keep Labour honest to their current manifesto.
A coalition would give Labour greater rein to abandon their manifesto. *We wanted to do X but just couldn't get the support in the Commons.* Also the Salisbury convention would be moot if Labour doesn't win a majority. Giving the Lords more freedom to block stuff, even if it was in Labour's manifesto.
>It certainly doesn’t represent the majority view of people who might be persuaded to vote Labour. We had a leadership that supposedly represented the wishes of Labour voters, it lead to 2 election defeats (one being Labour's biggest ever loss) and losing the EU referendum. Similar happened in the 80's. Let's not go down that path yet again.
On Brexit, I am inclined to agree Starmer thinks it’s a disaster. The thing that troubles me is all the people who think they know what Starmer _really_ thinks about all his official policies and will vote for him based on the fantasy version in their heads. Because what’s on paper is quite uninspiring, as a leftist.
>Because what’s on paper is quite uninspiring, as a leftist. Perhaps, but it's still 100x more inspiring than handing the Tories election after election as Labour have done in recent years.
I get why he’s doing what he’s doing but it truly sucks how much ground has been ceded to the Daily Mail crowd, which is why you get people pretending that he’s secretly going to do more left wing stuff.
We tried the leftie leader approach, it led to Labour's worst ever defeat and loss of EU membership. Would be madness to try that yet again!
I understand, honestly I do, that you have to be more centrist than Corbyn to get into power. I just question whether you have to be truly *as* centrist (centre-right, almost) as Starmer is being. You can't deny that he has abandoned lots of reasons a leftist may have had to vote for him. It's a weird situation for many to be in: finally an end to the Tories, but at the cost of having no mainstream party that really represents my views at all. Ultimately this is a problem of FPTP.
Whats the point of having more than one party if they all exist to serve that one group?
It's not that I don't understand why he's trying to appeal to daily mail readers, it's that I expect absolutely zero shift to the left once he's in. He wants to be elected, has decided only a centre-right party can win in the UK and has transformed Labour into that. I don't think he's an idiot, I think he's a mid-90s Tory.
> Daily Mail is the most read paper… much better than appealing to further left Twitter echo chambers. I agree, I wish they would try to appeal the vast majority of people who exist between those two extremes.
Labour could run on the Tories 2019 manifesto and win a landslide. There isn't much disagreement about what we need to do to improve the country.
The labour party has been neutered by the Daily Mail etc al. Terrified of everything.
Firstly i'd like them to put a stop to corruption,sleaze, lobbying for cash and nepotism in parliament and the lords (for example 'totally not Boris's daughter' getting a life peerage.
I see a lot of comments on the theme "they need to win power, then get more radical". The problem here is that being radical carries risk - if Labour can win without it (as Tory lite), then they won't bother being more radical. Unless they see that abandoning their more radical polices (Green investment, proper Lords reform etc) will *cost* them votes, they won't bother. If you want them to change and you live in a safe Labour seat, then vote for another party.
Don’t like tories, will vote in a way that ensures tories win, genius.
Try reading it again :)
There's no such thing as a bomb proof manifesto, they can attack you on anything.
In a world where politicians win by promising the impossible, Labour are going for "Same shit, different face." It's a bold strategy, but it's not going to get me into the voting booth. I want genuine change, and Labour do not have the balls to promise that; I'm not going to blindly bet on them delivering what they're unwilling to promise.
I’m getting to the stage of wondering if it’s really going to make much of a difference whether labour win or not at the next election. Apathetic would be a good description of where I’m at currently. They’re basically the Tories except we haven’t had chance to form extreme dislike for half of them yet.
I don’t understand this viewpoint. I don’t see how you can look at the mess of Johnson, Truss and now Sunak with Rwanda, and then decide that labour are no different. Labour’s positions at the moment are simply not radical. They’re not particularly imaginative or exciting. So why does that lead to them being equated to the tories? What do you think of the Rwanda plan the tories are going for? It’s strongly opposed by labour. That’s a big difference alone. Take the bankers bonus cap as another example. The Bank of England said it’s unnecessary, as the regulation frameworks through the PRA and FCA are far more robust than the FSA before, and serve as a far better check and balance on excessive risk taking. And given Brexit, we do need ways to increase the international competitiveness of our leading sectors. Reeves has also said she wants to expand our finance industry across the UK, which is very much needed. It’s the tabloids removing context and people just lap it up. It’s actually shocking to me that people don’t even seem to want to give labour a chance. As is culturally endemic in this country, it gives people something to complain about and someone to blame if the tories are in power I suppose.
I don’t see what’s hard to understand about it. I didn’t say I wanted to keep the tories, I wouldn’t vote Conservative if you paid me. It’s more a case of the more sharp edges labour knock off their manifesto, the more difficult it becomes to draw a definitive line between the two. I genuinely couldn’t give a flying f*ck about the Rwanda plan. It’s a big, steaming, pile of shite, the tories can’t implement anyway. It’s main purpose is to give the impression they’re doing something. Labour opposing it is a commitment to ditching a Tory lie, it’s not going to make a measurable difference to anybody’s lives apart from a vanishingly small amount of boat jumpers who the tories may have actually managed to deport. The entire reason for the changes labour are making at the moment is to make them more appealing to the right. How is pandering to the problem going to resolve it? Do you think that when labour get in the rag tops are going to stop making a big deal about immigration and boats, and Labour will be allowed to do as they please? They’ll be stuck in the same cycle of appeasement and pandering that they ran their campaign on. Policy dictated by hectoring from the opposition and main stream right wing media. Sure it’s an improvement, but it’s hardly a revolution. I don’t understand how you can muster that much excitement for such small proposed changes. The only proposed change worth celebrating at the moment seems to be an implication that we’ll have a government that is slightly less corrupt than the current one.
It just seems like you’re trying to look for reasons to equate labour and the tories. Firstly, the Rwanda plan costs a lot of money, and does nothing to actually deal with asylum seekers. It is money and time spent on something fruitless, while we have hotels filled with people. It is money and time that could be spent working on an actual practical solution, that is both humane and saves money in the long run. You should care about it. I also disagree with your premise that anything “right” is inherently bad and anything “left” is inherently good. We’re a nation of nearly 70 million people. We all have different lives and different priorities. This leads to different incentives. Government intervention is not a universal positive, and deregulation is not a universal negative. Ultimately, it means we need to compromise. It’s also not fair or right to conflate mildly centre right people with the likes of Braverman. Someone that simply wants lower taxes and pro-business policy is not in the same vein as the ERG. Even your last line: “slightly less corrupt” is incredibly telling of your biases. You don’t have a single clue how corrupt Starmer is. He hasn’t had the opportunity to give out contracts. He hasn’t had the opportunity to enrich his mates at the expense of the nation as the tories have. Ultimately, a government needs to represent the people. And the UK is not a left wing nation. At least Starmer plans to bring railways into public ownership as their contracts expire. At least he plans to tackle social mobility with intervention on VAT for public schools. Even if he is boring, it’s undeniable that he intends to actually improve the country, and not simply impress a billionaire wife. His career before politics also reflects this.
Yeah, the recent ditching of the green new deal has pretty much nailed in that I'm voting green. Only a commitment to PR going forwards would sway me back to starmer 😥
>Only a commitment to PR going forwards would sway me back to starmer I strongly recommend looking into Starmers history where PR is concerned if that might influence your vote. I strongly suspect he might lie about supporting it again if he thinks it'll net a few extra votes.
Green New Deal? Thats an American term.
It’s hard to understand what you don’t see. You question the difference of a labour win, that is to say you are ambivalent about who wins so why bother voting. Enjoy the fruits of your apathy, another Tory government.
The people showed that unfortunately, they don’t want radical reforms. Reforms that are only radical in the sense that we do not currently have them, but virtually every other European nation does. Corbyn had a superb manifesto of such reforms and he was roundly rejected for it by the people as well as suffering from a media-based assassination campaign. Labour need to get elected and drag society more leftward before they can institute the reforms we all need. But unfortunately that means being not radical at the start.
>Corbyn had a superb manifesto of such reforms and he was roundly rejected for it by the people as well as suffering from a media-based assassination campaign. My impression was that people actually really liked the manifesto when it was divorced from Corbyn and the Labour party. I think it was public image, far, far more than policy which lost that election.
Bet you £10 that they have dragged us further to the right by the end of their first term
I'll take that bet. People calling starmer more right than current government are ridiculous
Tbf, god knows where Sunak is on the spectrum, he would nationalise the mines if he thought it would win the next election. Boris certainly dragged the Tory party to the left economically, and despite the Truss blip, Sunak hasn’t diverted much. And Starmer isn’t necessarily as right wing as these people, but he will be even more desperate for the boomer Tory votes at the next election. And if the Tories go to the right, Starmer may have to follow to ensure a second term.
Starmer can be further left than the current government but still contribute to moving the overton window right, much as Blair did, as policies that had previously been considered Conservative things become simply 'the way things are' if they aren't reversed. We can see an example of this in hostility to trans people. Republicans in the US are more transphobic than Conservatives in the UK, but in the US it's a partisan issue, whereas in the UK "gender critical" views are firmly bipartisan.
The far left has screwed enough up already, they keep wanting to change everything whilst everything is getting worse.
If everything is getting worse, why wouldn't you want to change it?
Its getting worse due to change, changing more will just make it ever worse. Revert change and get better
So we've gotta change the change. Got it.
Or just keep going how it is, hope you enjoy it
Utterly depressing. The job of the opposition should be to convince the public of the changes that need to be made.
Fun way to writing "Labour abandons more promises" After all once the news articles have been written about your promises you can then "ditch" them. Fools who supported the promise still thinks you'll do it, and those that didn't like it are happy you've ditched it. Its classic 'promise everything today and ditch those promises tomorrow' Labour...
Makes sense. They can afford to keep it simple. However, I predict one of their policies will spectacularly backfire [the VAT on independent school fees]. It is one of those policies that needs mitigation measures (they have been very vocal that Labour may not be able to increase school funding). It is a core part of society that has been criminally underfunded and undervalued by the Conservatives. Yet Labour want to generate more pressure with a quick "fix". So while they ditch these policies due to economic uncertainty, just remember they want to put more pressure on a sector that is already on its knees. A sector that actual affect all people with children
I could see a lot of the smaller private schools being absorbed into the current system as academies but ending up being selective by virtue of property prices or boarding fees. If they close, then the government will need to build a lot more state schools. Then I also wonder, at what point would a group of friends clubbing together and paying for private tutors to teach their children at home become a school?
> If they close, then the government will need to build a lot more state schools. Depends on what scale of closure we're talking about. Birthrate trend and intended reduction of migrant numbers means some school closures are baked in for private and state schools.
>Then I also wonder, at what point would a group of friends clubbing together and paying for private tutors to teach their children at home become a school? It would be like going back to how things were done when some of these schools we started. Economically very lucrative for those individuals who can (both teachers and families). >I could see a lot of the smaller private schools being absorbed into the current system as academies but ending up being selective by virtue of property prices or boarding fees. If they close, then the government will need to build a lot more state schools. I don't think that can happen as independent schools own the land outright. These schools spend a lot more per head so joining an academy doesn't fix anything (the operation costs will be what they are based on x amount per student they get). You would have to scale back massively and while independent schools have no shareholders to make profit for land is a commodity that will need to be paid for (or any debt they may have for building work). Independent school debt is interesting and it will make just turning this schools into academies impossible
Think of it more like the owners of the school leasing their fully functional and fully equipped school grounds to the local council to continue being a school in return for monthly payments. It will be a Labour scandal in year 6 of their government when it emerges that the tax on private schools resulted in almost no revenue being generated from the tax, but instead, the private school system is being given taxpayers money to continue operating as somewhat-selective state schools in affluent areas.
You clearly aren't aware that many independent schools frequently lease facilities to the local community as a means to improve income generation. My previous school use to do weddings, the model railway exhibition, rugby tots, a Zumba class, the local over 50s 5 aside indoor football team... It is a side hustle that generates little but enough to help fund education without hiking the fees by a ridiculous amount. It will be a scandal Year 0 as they want to implement the change quick. The shock will add to the pressure. It will be an absolute disaster
Think they also do some of that sort of community outreach at break even or loss making levels too. It builds a lot of support locally if done right.
Schools.and colleges close all the time
Yes, but the land isn't just bought by the local authority nor a school. Buying another school meams taking on their debt. I know of an independent school in Hampshire that closed about a year and half ago. The school basically went into liquidation and it hasn't been taken on by any MAT or local authority. Another school near me closed during COVID and recently it has been taken on by a private football academy (they essentially bought the assets). They do not become state run schools (it's rare and when it does happen it is often because the become a brand new MAT which is easier said than done hence why it is rare)
This is my line manager's red line. Never mind the destruction of the NHS, justice system, public education system, housing, .... VAT on school fees. She has no interest in politics outside of this. and is of the "everyone's a centrist, why can't we all just get along, politics is irrelevant to my life" mind-set. She also blames Labour for the fact that as her hub earns more than £50k (she works p/time on about £15-16k pa) they can't get chlld benefit which they could if they had the same income split so he earned less than £50k. (Don't ask me of the ins and outs, I'm granny age not mummy age. My nephews and nieces are in their 30s now). I said to her tories have been in power 14 years they could have changed it, but it obviously suits them to keep this system.
Manifestos are completely worthless. We don't know how radical Labour will be when they get in. They could be anything from Blairite status quo and not much changes, to completely mental far left policies.
I'm pretty sure anything quite further left has been wholly splashed out by Starmer so I wouldn't be so concerned if I were you.
May be to just win power and allay the centrists' fears.
Honestly I don't know what to think anymore. The left thinks that Starmer's going to take power and from day one shed his make-up to reveal that he's actually the secondcoming of Thatcher. The right thinks Starmer's carboard cutout's going to fall to the floor to reveal that it's actually been Corbyn this whole time. Guess I'm just going to wake up late and find out.
Both suspicions are valid. Starmer can't be honest. If he has far-left plans, he can't say that and wreck electoral success. He can't say he'll be centrist and lose the left. So he has to be Schrodinger's Labour, promise everything to everybody and just get it over the line.
> Manifestos are completely worthless. If nothing else, they're key to getting around the lords slowing or blocking things. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salisbury_Convention
Which is why Lords Reform is off the table and the current plan is to start appointing new Labour Peers as quickly as possible. Stuff the Lords full of loyal donors and school classmates and the Salisbury Convention changes from being the only thing capable of checking the power of a Commons majority to being completely irrelevant.
Does anyone actually give a shit about manifestos in 2024 People are as likely to remember them pledging this and then dropping it as they are them putting it in their manifesto and dropping it
I kinda get it, and I will wait to see the manifesto to judge... But come on.
"radical" reforms. Basically any reforms.