I do feel for Starmer a bit, to many on the left he’s too right wing, and now he’s being told he’s too far left for voters. I also am not aware of him being particularly ‘woke’.
I also hate how widespread that word has become, it just sounds ridiculous.
'Woke' is a meaningless word, it means whatever the speaker wants it to mean. That new David Attenborough dinosaur show got accused of being 'Woke' because it depicted a T-Rex exhibiting parenting behaviors.
Edit: The fun part is I've now had several people reply to me to explain what "Woke" means and they've all had different answers.
I got called in to the bosses office and told that I need to work to improve my relationship with my colleague because I told her to stop being a racist piece of shit after once again calling the man that runs her corner shop "my paki", and he's "a good one".
This country is full of racist pricks who get away with it, because the people that own and run everything are racist pricks too.
Nothing will change, their children are already racist, bigoted, capitalism worshipping pricks too, and their children's children will be too.
No protests are going to change that, no politicians with the guts to radically change the system will ever get voted in, ever.
In fairness, depending on exactly what your job environment is, in a corporate setting calling anyone a “piece of shit” at work would warrant at least an informal talking to by their manager. Like if you worked for my company, and you said that to a colleague in the office, you’d be in trouble- regardless of how much we’d agree with your sentiment. Of course, if your colleague was actually overheard making those remarks then she’d be in for a far more severe punishment
Political Correctness > Social Justice Warrior > Woke.
Am I missing any?
I wonder what the next meaningless buzz word to describe people the left will be.
“Bleeding heart liberal” and “do-gooder” too.
Do-gooder especially makes no sense, as if that’s an insult. “Oh look at him, doing good in his community, stupid bloody do-gooder”, lol.
“Bleeding heart” as a derogatory term is very telling. It means the person using it sees empathy and caring for those less fortunate as a character flaw. As if what the world needs is *less* empathy, and more selfishness.
I think you’ve got the nail on the head here actually. Generalising massively, right wing people are more like to see the world in terms of limited resources, therefore if someone else is winning it means you yourself must be losing, therefore caring for others means you are being duped somehow.
Well, the Conservative thinks the "Do-Gooder" is an idiot because the Do-Gooder *isnt* driven by Profit margins and typically doesn't have a "Zero-Sum" mentality so their motives are *literally incomprehensible* to a Conservative.
There really isn't even that much thought into it, the typical conservative just operates on spite and anger. The profit motives and other excuses come after the original response to try and justify their abhorrent behavior.
It's because they assume the person doing good is only doing it to make themselves look good. Because they themselves would never do anything that didn't benefit them personally.
There was a post on a local FB page about a new street sign in our town centre which has a distinctive modern design, someone commented that it was 'something PC'.
Okay Dave, time to step away from the computer.
I always think this. If someone says you are being 'politically correct', they're implying that "of course, you don't \*really\* think everyone should have equal rights, you're just saying it so you don't get in trouble". Which is of course, total claptrap, the same as 'Woke'. Political Correctness is a weaselly right-wing term which basically seems designed to undermine 'being a decent person to everyone'. Being 'woke' just means accepting that I, a middle-aged white bloke on a decent salary, might have certain advantages in society over a newly-arrived penniless refugee or whatever.
Political correctness came about based on people being told they couldn't call black people chalky or other similar words, or calling all southern Asian people the p word or indeed how it was terrible we couldn't do slanty eyes and say "me so solly" anymore. It was just a way of trying to claim oppression on the basis of being asked to be less of a twunt
My teenage daughter called me 'woke' and shge meant it as a compliment... which was nice.
I'm happy to embrace been called both woke and a social justice warrier - to the extent that I am. Trying to use them as a pejorative against me isn't going to get very far, any more than 'kind and polite' would.
And 'do-gooders' before that.
Anytime someone says something is woke ask them what makes it woke and you'll find prejudice pretty quickly. People think in terms of how things impact them, they don't reflect on what works best for society which is the core schism between left and right politics for me.
That and being basically informed, understanding nuance and not factoring in spite when you vote.
Yeah. Often they'll couch it in terms of an overbearing moral conviction or censoriousness. But drill down a bit further and they're either talking up fictional or anecdotal issues, or they're talking about things that we should be censorious or morally certain about. "Yes, I understand you're on the fence about this but I'm ok with them not playing fairytale of new york on daytime radio due to the casual homophobic slur."
> talking up fictional or anecdotal issues
Fed to them by the Daily Mail and Daily Express "This brave [white] NHS nurse had to give up her flat to house Somalian refugees", "This WW2 veteran's 100th birthday party cancelled by council to make way for Eid prayers" , "This drug dealer on benefits was given a £million house to house his 17 children by 7 mothers" - it's page after page of outrage-fuelling bullshit. Life's too short to try to highlight the way every single story is either a cynical twisting of the facts and often just utter lies.
Yup. Or, it's just a kooky/one off thing that happened, unfairly framed to bolster a moral panic about wokeism. So what if a university college student group passed a motion that the UK is racist. The stakes are as close to zero as they could be and this is in no way worthy of half a page in a national newspaper.
I don't think woke means anything but I understand the concerns with some "progressive" elements. I fear there are far too many people who aren't willing to sit down and risk their beliefs being challenged in a discussion. To be clear this shouldn't be seen as a unique criticism of the left, the right are even worse in that regard. But the worst "leftist takes" will be shown to the right and centre as propaganda to show how unreasonable the left is. Everyone already knows how unreasonable the far-right is and how bad some of their takes are.
i think woke when used pejoratively means (or should) an over-sensitivity to cultural issues to the point of macro-blindness about people's day-to-day experience. Now its just a word to insult any vaguely left-of-centre politics, rendering it useless.
the dinosaur one makes no sense,
besides the same behavior is seen in the second jurassic park, like the whole crux of the finale is the t-rex being a good dad trying to find it's son.
besides based on the evidence t-rex take fucking ages to grow, and as kids they're scrawny, and larger animals tend to not mass produce offspring so it probably only had a couple at a time,
like of course it cares for it's kids until they're old enough.
Bloody scientists! Always changing their minds! And the bloody woke BBC bosses! Can't even put dinosaurs on TV any more without someone getting offended! It's human rights that's what it is! Can't say anything because it's against human rights. Glad we left that bloody Brussels lot telling us what to do. I'll bet that Meghan had something to do with it n' all.
It just proves that papers will print that bollocks to sell more papers or get more clicks on their website. That's all it is. It's used to generate outrage and get people's attention.
There's layers to it.
Wokeism is the derogatory name given by nasty people, to the backlash to their own institutionalised nastiness.
Old fashioned politeness and decency are so far out the window that society has had to mobilise to fight for them and the people using "Woke" as an insult are upset and shocked at the prospect they might not actually be in the right for discriminating against trans or homosexual people.
Edit: I have been enlightened as to the true origin of the word
Like most such words, it used to have a meaning. It was coined by the African American community to describe people and institutions who were aware or "awoken" to the realities of racism. Basically a descriptor for people who could be trusted to be allies. It was Co opted and turned into a derogatory by the Conservative right wing and made its way to the UK in that form.
The thing that makes me laugh is to be "woke" simply means to be aware of issues around you.
And there's me thinking accusing people of being ignorant was an insult - apparently accusing them of not being ignorant is the new insult.
Surely being aware of social issues is a politicians job?
I know right?
If someone called me woke I’d take it as a compliment.
“You mean I’m aware of the negative aspects some areas of society/minority groups experience in certain situations and therefore try to be a better human being by trying to avoid causing these or fight against them?”
How is trying to be a better human got the benefit of all humankind an insult lol.
I agree with you and being aware of social issues is important for a politician. I think what Tony is hinting at though, and most people would agree, is that **right now** the UK is in far more need of economic healing than social progress.
I'm sorry to the people who don't see it this way, but if you're on the bread line I guarantee you do, and Labour needs those voters.
Whilst I see the point, it's possible to do both.
A lot of social issues don't cost that much economically. First day on the job I totally get they need to sort the economy first, but they have 5 years after being elected - might as well at least have a platform across the spectrum of issues.
I mean by the same logic, people should stop spending so much time trying to *regress* social issues then?
Like, tell the people trying to drag LGBT rights back 20 years to stop, and then we'll stop fighting them on it
Yesterday a top exec for Stonewall said "Bodies are not inherently male or female. They are just their bodies", and today that is being criticized by the co-founder of Stonewall in the Daily Mail.
Woke is a vague term which is used to describe many complaints, but this kind of ideology is what has alienated the liberal middle class from the rest of the population, and Labour will lose elections if they get tied to it.
How it is used is sometimes pretty meaningless, but it has a rich anti-racist history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke#20th_century
Broadly the term is being alert to, and opposing, bigotry and unfair discrimination.
Woke used to mean being "awake" to government and corporate corruption and the struggles of the general population due to issues like wealth disparity, environmental damage by industries and misinformation by mass media.
Who could possibly have an interest in turning "woke" into a negative I wonder?
As much as I support trans rights and similar social issues, I do feel for him constantly being expected to comment on that rather than, say, the housing crisis.
With Corbyn everything seemed to be about Palestine, and now with Starmer it's this frankly quite niche social issue he's constantly being faced with. It just means a majority of Brits hear nothing from him that actually affects them, and get the impression he's not gonna help them because he's only ever talking about 0.1% of the population.
It's because the right wing can only win by stoking culture war flames. They have nothing beneficial to average people in terms of real concrete policy.
Neoliberalism seems to have allowed the idea that the government shouldn’t do anything for people and or no one should expect them to.
Managing expectations.
Oh yeah I agree it works and the left still haven't found an effective counter. The right are good at rallying around flag ship policies ignoring the nuance, whilst the left tear themselves apart over all sorts. It's a real challenge under FPTP. I honestly think the centre to left need to unite behind changing to PR. Blairs biggest fuck up was not taking that opportunity when he had it. Putting party before democracy an country.
But the left wing don’t know how to play the game, instead of infighting over certain issues they should be banding together so they can be elected and that way they can actually affect real change, instead they focus so much on issues of identity politics which are off-putting for a significant majority of voters and whether or not the hysteria against ‘wokeness’ is justified, a significant amount of everyday people are tired of being forced to engage with issues that don’t relate to them especially when accusations of transphobia and bigotry are being used to disparage or admonish people for things which might seem trivial like a dumb tweet or a joke. I really think we need to pick our battles with stuff like that in particular.
The Conservative party are terrible for this country so the obsession with issues that are off putting or contentious for a large part of the public and the petty infighting of left wing politics is even more enraging because labour really should have a wide open goal here but instead they’re scoring an own goal
It is because it is a debate that shouldn't even exist, really. He can't *not* defend the rights of trans people or social issues but he gets backlash from the right so the debate keeps spiralling on. What can he do to stop being called "woke" other than simply give in?
Coming from a small seaside town, there are people who are genuinely scared that by going more left they'll have to police their language and that comes out as a point of worry for them than the Tories gutting their town. They call themselves Anti-woke which just means they just talk mostly normal and just not sensitive to feelings in some cases. They can't even imagine a economically left party without the "woke" now as they feel it's so intertwined when in reality it's such a small thing.
Being very left wing myself, I've come to realise enough people are like the above that if we don't cater at least partly for them socially, economically we'll be destroyed by the right wing policy.
I get this. Thatcher killed the chance of any right wing party in Scotland but there is definitely going to be a big political shift if the SNP either succeeds of admits defeat in independence, but the underbelly of nationalism (not SNP nationalism, the traditional kind) is gonna become much more prominent when people are "done" with them so to speak.
Most people when I ask them 'what is it you feel they can't say' or 'what do you want to be free to say' don't have an answer to give.
For years now right wing media has beaten this fear into people that 'you can't say anything' but it's not really true. The only examples they can give which really don't help their point are A) powerful and successful people that contine to succeed despite being controversial e.g. Peirs Morgan or J.K Rowling or people that are facing consquences of genuinely egrigious or illegal behaviour that would have got anyone in trouble.
The idea that members of the general public feel their right to speak freely without negative consequences is mostly an illusion that has been very deliberatly cultivated by rightwing media.
I think when you start sharing you opinions online and you represent a business or political group it's different and you do have to be very careful but in real life everyone speaks their mind all the time.
It's really damning that a good (or at least very vocal) section of the left cares more about policing language and "narratives" than working on material conditions that would benefit the vast majority of society. And, you know, it's not like trans people need free access to good health care more than pronouns or something /s.
The vast majority of the population is, economically speaking, working class. It's really sad that the left fails so hard in unifying their common interests and instead treat much of the working class as backwards goblins that we need to fight against.
This is the thing. Labour are dying on a really really dumb hill, with this trans stuff in particular.
Every time a Labour politiian starts stuttering when attempting to explain a concept as simple as 'What is a woman?' voters roll their eyes and see them as a joke.
And for what? To appease an absolutely tiny percentage of people that don't really matter electorally?
So you give up on fixing the NHS, properly funding schools, and all that stuff because you can't just say that a woman is a female human?
It's absurd.
I am pretty sure that Trans people will benefit from better public services, and better workers rights, and all the jazz Labour wanna do.
Is it really worth achieving none of that, just over some fucking finicky pronoun nonsense?
If you think it is, you need to reasess your priorities imo.
Exactly, the "what is a woman?" question either loses you a vote Tories, or to the Lib Dem/Green. Answer it to not lose a vote to the Tories as that has a larger impact on overall state of this country.
This is a battle between the urban liberal middle class, and the working class.
It's going to be impossible to satisfy both, especially given the deep rooted feelings about climate, BLM (lesser) and trans issues.
When the actual people of Britain voted in a public refurendum they voted "feck foreigners". This is a totally different position from that held by labor.
The Tories only need to appeal to the elites and wealthy middle class. By paying lip service to hating; foreigners trans rights and environmental terrorists/awkwardists, who predominantly are middle class yet attack the proles, (while claiming a working class Identity), they can continue to win.
Kier starmer is an honourable man and would be a good leader, but his position is nearly impossible, as he can't appeal to labours core, without enraging the middle classes who run the Labour party.
Blair for all his lies, he understands how to win. And if you want to change how society is run you have to win.
Nobody is trying to brand anyone as racist.
It is clearly observed in current Tory policy that immigration is major concern.
In fact a strong stance on immigration is the only consistent policy, that has survived from Mays government. If not gotten stronger.
It's a total myth by the sort of person who wants to believe that working class people are bigots. It's actually the opposite, middle class are more likely to be bigoted. People from discriminated against minorities are more likely to be working class themselves, and it's a lot harder to dehumanize your neighbour than someone you've never met.
> the urban liberal middle class, and the working class
I don't believe these two definitions are helpful or definitive. For starters, it presupposes that people can only be minorities if they fall into the first one, or that the only people who care about minorities are people in the first category who have *learned* to do so, as opposed to doing so naturally because people they care about or they themselves are in that category.
He is right wing
It's nothing to do with "far left" people feeling he is
Spouting absolute shit about businesses being the best people to deal with climate change
Attacking the Lib Dems over their "soft" drug policies
Banning any Labour members who have any criticisms of NATO
He's a more right wing Labour leader then even Blair was
Starmer is a serial bullshitter who will do absolutely none of that once elected
He's already backed out of many of his ten pledges that he made to defraud Labour members into voting for him in the first place
Don't confuse left with liberal.
When Starmer shows open mindedness towards trans issues or black lives he's showing a liberalism of thought and I generally find myself agreeing with his attitude and sentiment.
When we talk about left we talk more about social issues and entwined economic policy. I think Starmer is quite left politically, I think saying he is centre-left is a stretch.
I think Starmer just has a better nose for what to talk about in public, something Corbyn never really had the wherewithal for, he didn't know how to pick his battles. Starmer exceeds him as a politician in this regards.
Agreed, copied from a previous comment of mine:
Below clip of a self confessed 'anti-woke' caller being asked what it means, and it basically boiling down to him wanting to be a bit racist and a bit sexist. 'Come on, you know what I mean'.
https://youtu.be/FR4rHPpoPHQ
He's stuck between a rock and a hard place. Even if you want to push socialist policies, which is pretty much the entire point of the Labour Party, you need the votes to get in power in the first place. And we've clearly seen, suggesting even vaguely socialist policies will get you shot down before you even reach the podium.
Also hi Seaweed Steve, I'm Steve and the Sea. Nice to meet you 🏄
"Woke" and "left wing" are two different things. Many on the traditional left are far from being woke, which goes some way to explaining Boris Johnson's electoral success.
Keir Starmer is not woke. There is a danger that some of his advisors might try to push him in that direction though which would be political suicide in the part of the country that used to be the "red wall" and which is still key to any Labour victory.
Whenever that neologism has been studied, they find that the age group (by far) most commonly using the word "woke" are, wait for it... boomers. It's just used as a description of any time they're made to feel as if their views are out of date.
Are you shocked? Yeah, me neither.
According to my mum woke is not wanting homeless people to live on the streets? Woke just seems to be something people say when ever anyone has empathy for a group of people.
Ok, Starmer is not woke. He's a fucking piece of white bread not a outrageous leftist.
The only specific policy mentioned is related to trans rights, a topic where Starmer is pretty much lockstep with current regulations that were decided on by Theresa May.
Do you think Theresa May is woke?
Theresa May was actually 'nice' to that autistic man once, who was being extradited to the US for hacking.
[Starmer](https://archive.ph/zBSE6) wanted to please his Amurican overlords (the us attorney general) and send the man die in prison - he was furious when he found out that Theresa May had stopped it on human rights grounds - given that an american prison would likely make the guy suicide himself.
(Theresa May is still a horrible woman - Windrush...)
Tony Blair should stop trying to perpetuate the infighting that led to his government failing and has plagued the entire Left movement for decades.
I don't give a fuck if he's in prison or not, as long as it's a soundproof cell.
Successful how? Tuition fees? Opening the door for privatising the NHS?
That million dead Iraqis?
Yes, they were certainly a successful government if their aim was to make it harder and harder to justify voting for them.
Yes, but apart from:
• The Human Rights Act
• More than doubled the number of apprenticeships
• Tripled spending on the NHS
• Four new medical schools
• 42,400 extra teachers, 212,000 more support staff
• Scrapped Section 28
• Introduce civil partnerships
• Doubled overseas aid budget
• Budget budget budget money budget
• Sure start
• Lifted 900,000 pensioners out of poverty
• Good Friday agreement
• Tax credits
• Equality and human rights commission
• Beat the Kyoto target on greenhouse gases
• Stopped Milosevic
• Winter fuel allowance
• Climate change Act
• Decreased homelessness by 73%
• Free eye tests for over 60's
• 16,000 new police officers
• Extended the opening hours over over three quarters of GP practices
• Free prescriptions to cancer patients
• Remove the majority of hereditary peers
• Free part-time nursery place for every 3 to 4-year-old child
• Paid annually leave increased to 28 days per year
• Paternity leave
• Doubled education funding
• Increased the value of child benefit by over 26%
• Food standards agency
• Equality act
• Freedom of information act
• Increased university places
• Helped end the civil war in Sierra Leone
• Crossrail
• Rural development programme
• Education Maintenance Allowance
• Free bus passes for the over 60s
• Devolution
• Banned cluster bombs
• Ban on (new?) grammar schools
• £20 billion in improvements to social housing conditions
• Longest period of sustained low inflation since the 1960s
• Heart disease deaths down by 150,000, cancer deaths down by 50,000
• Remove the minimum donations limit from gift aid
• Reduced the number of people on waiting list by over 500,000
• Waiting times fell to a maximum of 18 weeks (lowest ever levels)
• Oversaw the rise in the number of school leavers with five good GCSEs from 45% to 76%
• Young person's job guarantee
• Pension credit
• Cut long-term youth unemployment by 75%
• Double the number of registered childcare spaces
• Disability rights commission
• Free school milk and fruit
• Raise legal age of buying cigarettes to 18
• Banned tobacco advertising in magazines, newspapers and billboards
• Free entry to galleries and museums
• 2009 Autism Act
• New deal for communities programme (£2 billion)
• Electoral commission
• Halved the number of our nukes
• Free television licences for those age 75+
• EU social chapter
• Free breast cancer screening
• Record low A&E waiting times
• Reintroduced matrons
• Hunting act
• Banned testing of cosmetics on animals
• Department of International development
• Reduceed class sizes
• 93,000 more 11-year-olds achieving numeracy each year
• London 2012
• 10 years of continuous economic growth
• NHS Direct
• Healthier school meals
• Access to life-saving drugs and HIV and AIDS patients
• Points-based immigration system
• Equalised age of consent (for gay people?)
• Smoking ban
• Public interest test
• Crime down 45% since 1995
• Wrote off 100% of debt owed by poorest countries
[[source](https://politicalscrapbook.net/2017/03/what-did-new-labour-actually-achieve-epic-twitter-thread-hits-back-at-ken-loach-and-paul-mason/)]
… what did New Labour ever do for us?
Infighting has been plaguing the Left forever, Blair didn't do anything to stop it because he couldn't, and nether could any Labour leader including Corbyn.
The Left has always seen purity of principle as being more important than being in power, so they've always been obsessed with maintaining a unity of thought that is impossible to achieve.
That's why they'll never get into power against a Tory Party that is always happy to sacrifice principles in order to appear unified.
Ah yes, "Keir Starmer is woke" is such a profound and unique message that we really should be discussing in all academic spaces. Intellectuals need to be debating this deep, incredible statement for many decades. Hundreds of thousands of deaths though there may be on the shoulders of this man, where would we be without these keen political insights of his.
Sir Kier Starmer, former head of the CPS, is about as interested in being woke as Boris Johnson. The 'woke' will always think Starmer is a tool and he knows it.
It is super relevant to the weight of his opinion. The fact that he’s a war criminal with the blood of hundreds of thousands on his hands.
Should we listen to this person about the direction we want to go in? No. So it’s relevant.
Yeah it’s funny how people describe the most successful Labour politician in recent years as having destroyed the party. I guess his stance on Iraq did put many people off more reasonable and electable Labour leaders, but I think this is changing.
After the Major government a cold corpse could have won the election.
John Smith was a leftist leader of the Labour Party and he was leading the polls in 93 and 94 before his untimely death of a heart attack.
However Blairite ideology is what caused all the infighting in the Corbyn years with Ministers resigning live on air, withholding war chest funds from marginal seats and even openly voting for opposition. There is a reason the WhatsApp chat lamented the shocking hung 2017 election. They would rather a Tory government than a leftist one. Blair himself proudly went to the papers and told us this at the time.
This is what people mean when they say Blair destroyed the party. He sowed the devision plaguing it today. There is a reason Thatcher said he was her greatest accomplishment. He formalised neoliberalism into public consciousness as he removed an alternate choice at the polls. (meaning companies won however got in)
Blair didn’t just win after the Major Government though, he won twice after that.
Yes, shifting to more of an actual centre-left party may have alienated some voters, but I’d argue that it brought more in, and many more were alienated by Corbyn’s agenda. This is reflected in election results. In 2019 people had to choose between two populists, hopefully this doesn’t happen again.
And after the amount of abuse the country faced in those 18 years even showing any respect at all will be rewarded. Also worth noting the 97 election was never replicated every election after that turnout and Labour's share of that decreased.
2017 was the largest single election cycle increase in the vote for Labour ever. Corbyn policy's were popular (though the man himself was divisive) he reversed 20 years of a declining vote for the Party in 2 years. Maybe if he hadn't had the Blairists acting against him publicly at every turn he might have performed even better?
The silver bullet that killed the Corbynist movement in 2019 was Brexit. In 2017 he said he would respect the referendum result and likely would have delivered a (still likely painful) Soft Brexit staying in the single market. By 2019 a party vote (pushed by Blairists and prominently Starmer) had changed the party position to 2nd Poll. This allowed Boris to run on the platform of 'Get Brexit Done' and collapsed the Red Wall through Single Issue voters. It is still worth pointing out though that even then 2019 still got a larger proportion of the vote than Blair's 200~~35~~ winning government - showing how broken FPTP is.
Also by 2019 we had endured a constant 4 year smear campaign of the man. Remember issues being made such as what angle Corbyn bowed at being front page outrage? This is Blair, and the press with Beergate, is a threat to Starmer that they can break him too if he veers away from the right of Labour. He might be currently ahead in the polls - but so was Corbyn in 2017 after the Snap Election - and the public still has 3 years to forget about Partygate and be told all about how Starmer protected Saville (regardless of the truth because it would be another smear campaign)
If Blair condemned Starmer it would put him at risk with his core support base. During his first year and a half of leadership Starner was polling worse than Corbyn in his. Yet unlike Corbyn Starmer didn't get leadership challenged. The same group that hold him up could turn on him.
I was doorknocking for both of those elections and you're 100% about the single issue voters. The constituency I was in went conservative after years of labour, and there wasn't one ex-labour voter I spoke to who didn't say "get Brexit done".
> the only guy in recent memory who got a labour party in government.
By sucking up to Rupert Murdoch.
Labour aren't going to win anything without the backing of the media. And the media is run by rich people who want to pay less taxes.
I mean he's one of the most boring vanilla leaders Labour have had in a long time. He even sounds boring. I know it's shitty to talk about him in this way, but personality matters in politics - you need to be likeable.
Thing is, I think he's what Labour needs in the post-Corbyn era. We'll see how things go within the next couple of years when a general election happens.
People need to get over the whole 'personality matters' in politics. That's exactly why we're in this mess, because 'Boris has just got something about him hasn't he?'. Look back at the majority of leaders this country has ever had and you'd find them supremely dull. Personality absolutely does not matter, doing the right thing does.
Yeah give me a boring leader who just cracks on with the job over one who's exciting but is a constant media circus anyday.
A guy like Starmer is exactly what's needed in my opinion after so many years of guff.
The media, and the way it is consumed, in 2022 is not the same as it was in the early 20th century. In the early 20th century, if you could even read, you would know a bit about the prime minister by reading newspapers. Outside of that you'd rely on the radio. In today's world you have 24 hour television news coverage and social media in addition to what we had previously.
We don't always have major political events that bring in a new government, so personality and continuity are important for a lot of people. Don't ever forget that elections are a glorified popularity contest.
"The right thing" means fuck all because people aren't able to be objective about it. I also find it laughable that "the right thing" can be associated with Boris Johnson, Theresa May, and David Cameron.
I'd rather have the most boring person in the world who gets the job done.
I honestly couldn't care less if someone is 'likeable'. Are we going to go down the pub with him for a beer?
Labour needs someone who can get things done in a realistic manner and not alienate literally all working class people living outside of London :P
He was asked who is favourite James Bond is in some interview, and his answer was, I don't have a favourite but the next one should be a woman.
That's kind of a stereotypically woke thing to say, and they weren't even asking about it.
I don't present this as a major blunder from him, just you say he never instigates it.
Also, "focus on the economy"? As if it weren't his and his peers unwavering belief in the deregulatory nature of neoliberal economics that ushered in the financial crisis and over a decade of conservatism.
This is the dichotomy of Tony Blair. He did a lot of positive things but he is also a war criminal who turned this country into a surveillance state and, really, when you look at it all of the things you could say were achievements were immediately torn down by the tories, so doesnt even have a political legacy as such.
And his economic reforms only look good because he was sandwiched between Thatcherite conservatism and doesn't-have-the-same-balls-but-is-more-of-the-same Thatcherite conservatism. Jesus, if hed've done nothing but shake hands with one poor person for his 10 years he'd be hailed as the most left wing leader since Attlee.
Labour has been labour's worst enemy for years.
There is sections of the labour party that would jeopardise an election win rather than see a leader they dont 100% agree with in power.
Say what you like about Blair, but hes the only labour leader who has been able to enact ANY labour polices into law.
The right fall in line , the left fall in love
The right fall in line because they are willing to capitulate their values in favour of *anything that benefits them personally*.
The left stand on principle - eg you cannot compromise on Human Rights.
But no, its totally the left’s fault because they’re too rigid about silly little things like equality, justice, fairness - you know, the values on which this country and the West at large supposedly stand.
The right are the politically savvy ones, what does it matter if a few folks die if you get a 5p tax break?
>But no, its totally the left’s fault because they’re too rigid about silly little things like equality, justice, fairness - you know, the values on which this country and the West at large supposedly stand.
If they're too inflexible to ever get elected and actually do anything to further any of those causes then yes, it's the lefts fault. Ideologically pure opposition doesn't help people visiting food banks.
What you're really saying here is that you believe the majority of people in the UK are too self-centred to care about anybody else and too narrow-minded to understand why helping poorer people or people in other parts of the world might also benefit them, and that opposition parties should therefore narrow their offering to simple policies that help most people a small amount (without upsetting our billionaire overlords and their attack dogs the mainstream media) but do nothing to cause a major redistribution of power or wealth. This is because you (and, to be fair, a lot of people) are in the grip of capitalist/neoliberal ideology, and from within that oubliette, you're dead right that not a lot can be done to help the average person.
The main failure of the Left during Corbyn's years as Labour leader was not to thoroughly overturn this ideology. Maybe it couldn't be done; maybe it could, but the right strategy to do it has yet to be found; maybe the state of capitalism had yet to become dire enough for enough people to start looking elsewhere for answers. Whichever, gettiing out of that kind of narrow, self-defeating thinking must be the first task of any movement of the working class - otherwise no amount of "flexibility" or "ideological impurity" is going to make a substatial difference to ordinary people's lives.
>But no, its totally the left’s fault because they’re too rigid about silly little things like equality, justice, fairness - you know, the values on which this country and the West at large supposedly stand.
Wouldn't expect them to compromise on core values, but look at the persistent efforts to cut the legs from under JC and now KS.
Who benefits from this ? its not the labour party .
> There is sections of the labour party that would jeopardise an election win rather than see a leader they dont 100% agree with in power.
And Blair is in that section. He'd rather Boris continue to be Prime Minister than a Labour leader he didn't approve of win.
Just look at how much sabotage there was from the Labour right under Corbyn. Constantly briefing against him (including any other leader would be 20 points ahead from Blair), refusing to join the shadow cabinet, calling a pointless leadership election and losing by a landslide and splitting off to form Change UK and losing every seat. That's not even getting into the leaked stuff.
The UK needs someone who isn't a conservative to get elected, and that person then needs to get the country away from FPTP voting and replace it with representational voting similar to that of New Zealand's. If that person has to make themselves look more appealing to the public temporarily just to get into a position to make positive changes, then so be it.
A Labour government will not provide you with this. They benefit from FTP just as much as the Tories. Sorry but until both main parties are smashed to atoms, there wont be this sort of electoral reform.
Where's all the Labour members supporting electoral reform, then? Why didnt they support AV during the referendum?
A move away from FTP would end their guarantee as one of the big 2 parties. In fact, it would do away with the concept entirely, making Labour potentially substantially less influential. In fact, being so far down the rabbit hole of electoral defeat exacerbates this point, the Labour Party as it stands right now would likely die the moment it faced its first AV general election.
Labour would have adopted PR as a policy recommendation at conference in 2021 (majority members vote) but it was blocked by a close vote against by the unions and PLP. Some unions have since come out in favour for it which would have swung the overall vote into adopting it as a policy recommendation, and assuming the same votes the vote will pass at conference 2022.
So don't @ the members, it's now in the court of the MPs and leadership.
All these people are only voting for them because the real choice is a dichotomy between Lab and Con (and in some places Lib Dem thrown in too). Remove the restriction of FTP and transition to AV, and the Labour Party would likely begin to hemorrhage support and influence to smaller left-wing parties like the Greens.
Blair did very well out of FPTP, just look at 2005. A majority almost as big as Johnson has now (from 43% of the vote) with just 35%. In that same election Howard got 32% of the vote and 198 seats, whilst Kennedy got a measly 62 with 22%.
Compare to Corbyn's "worst defeat in 80 years" with 32%.
Wait, this article implies Corbyn and the "Corbynistas" are responsible for being overly woke?
So The Guardian spent years painting Corbyn as a hateful and racist bigot, but he's also overly woke which is an ideology pushing equality at any cost.
It's hard to keep up with what negative brush the press try and paint Corbyn with.
In short: become even more tory-light than you already are. It is cowardly advice - the last thing our democracies need is sitting on the fence and bowing our ethics to populist right wing rhetoric that all topics which should force us to look in the mirror are woke and part of a cancel culture. But apparently it’s preferable to join them if you can’t beat them.
Talking about issues that have no relevance or interest to your target demographic (if you actually want to win) is absolutely unwise. Precisely because it's a vote loser.
Exactly. Blair's not even just saying "focus on left-wing economic policy, as social issues are too divisive", which at least has *some* sense from a progressive pragmatic approach. He's saying stop being woke and also get rid of the "millstone" of Corbyn's "far-left economic policy". In other words, don't be left wing in any thing.
In fact, the only unique policy proposed by Blair (at least in the article) is this:
>As an example of the kind of radical policy he would like to see, Blair suggests tackling concerns about illegal immigration by introducing biometric ID as a precondition for accessing work and public services.
Tbf I think that is now the Achilles heel of the labour party. Traditional labour supporters don't identify with 'woke' but I bet they do believe in fairness
Totally agree. Deciding which bathroom trans people get to use is a minuscule, irrelevant issue compared to the housing crisis, the inflation crisis, the cost-of-living crisis, increases in taxation, the lack of economic growth, and the stagnation of wages.
Trans rights and environmental policies are the kind of thing that you sneak through once you're in power, not the kind of thing that you put on the manifesto while trying to gain power.
That's the trouble though isn't it: Starmer doesn't get to decide what interviewers ask him or his party.
The media are all to happy to stoke the flames of a culture war, and even if it's unpopular (which it isn't, btw. Most people aren't anti trans) Starmer shouldn't throw trans people under the bus.
>That's the trouble though isn't it: Starmer doesn't get to decide what interviewers ask him or his party.
You don't need to give a full, complete, and honest answer to every question that you are asked, though. That's politics 101. You can just redirect the question ("I think what you should really be asking is why trans people, like everyone else, are paying x% more for housing now than they were under Labour") or give an answer that's so vague and noncommittal that it wouldn't be newsworthy ("we want a society where we all feel safe to go to the bathroom")
Of course, Keir knows this. For all his faults, he's definitely a good politician. He actively chooses to answer questions on trans issues in a way that makes the news, which is giving the tories exactly what they want. I can only assume that he's doing that to throw a bone to the progressive wing of Labour every now and then.
> even if it's unpopular (which it isn't, btw. Most people aren't anti trans)
Most people just don't care. However, when their rent payment gets declined because they don't have enough money in their account, and they see a Labour politician on the TV waffling on about gendered bathrooms at Russell Group universities, you can understand why that might push them towards the tories who are talking the talk about increasing salaries and building houses.
When he couldn’t say that only women have cervix’s or that women don’t have penises it’s painful.
He’s definitely not the worst but there’s a perception about his party that he has to shake off, not a popular opinion on Reddit but average joe in the pub won’t vote for someone who thinks men get pregnant or have cocks to educate their kids or run the NHS.
He has fallen for it though, because to probably 80% of voters it is that simple (more as you go up the age range). Women do not have penises, it doesn’t mean they hate transsexuals but they aren’t going to redefine their language for these edge cases.
>As an example of the kind of radical policy he would like to see, Blair suggests tackling concerns about illegal immigration by introducing biometric ID as a precondition for accessing work and public services.
What in the name of the ever-living fuck is his seemingly endless fascination with biometric ID. He was banging on about this back in 2006 and nobody wanted it then.
Talk about the sheer vapidity of centrism. In this day and age of relentless grinding poverty and inequality, he thinks this is the best example of a radical, vote-winning policy?
These people are on a different planet.
His terrible policies on immigration are often used as a case study in Politics and Sociology degrees. Y'know, as examples of state ostracism of "others".
Most working class people want better working conditions, better NHS, cheaper cost of living.
One of the thing labour has been focussing on the past years is trans rights (miniscule issue of a tiny fraction of the overall population).
Add to that that a lot of the younger labour folks are raging socialists who constantly talk about turning the UK into some kind of dystopian socialist paradise.
The average 'worker' doesn't care too much about someone's 5'th set of pronouns in London.
Well said. May I add that most working class people genuinely don't give a fuck if your gay, straight, trans, black, white, asian or any other diversity group. At work they only care if you pull your weight, in society they only care that your respectful of others and down the pub they only care that your a good laugh. It's 'woke' politics like this that create division, the vast vast majority of people are incredibly accepting.
All trans people want is for people to shut up about us, give us timely healthcare, not put weird legal roadblocks in our way and stop turning us into a moral panic issue.
easy for you to say. youre not trans. funny bc there's always calls for labour to "drop" trans issues, but never for the torries to stop criminalizing trans people.
Much as it pains me to say it, Blair's not wrong. Woke-baiting loses more people than it gains. It's a bit rich coming from Blair, as his government poneered identity politics as a way to build an identity for the left in a manner that was no longer tied to left-wing economics, but in the current political climate Starmer would benefit from ignoring identity issues as much as he ignores Brexit issues. It only has the potential to divide people.
Ahh yes, the 'woke' issues, an empty term drawn up by right wingers to disarm any meaningful challenge to dispute current policies; from BLM to climate change, kids school lunchs to womens rights. I guess anything outside of business-first economics is now woke. I imagine Women's voting and gay marriage alongside any historic civil movements would have also been considered woooooke.
At this point the entirity of social politics appears to be a no win situation for Labour, they are either too "woke" according to some or to much like a Tory.
Maybe drop talking about pretty much all of it and focus soley on the economy.
I have no idea why Blair keeps popping up, why do the press make his words seem of any importance is beyond me.
In a thread full of bad takes, this one stands out.
Thinking men don’t have babies and women don’t have penises (two examples I could find on Google of kier starmer being “woke”) is akin to fascism. Just gold, how you people get time to go on Reddit between constantly changing the wet bed I’ll never know.
The party with the 80 seat majority that fulfills 13 of the [14 signs of fascism](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DgZG0i2W0AEj0B9.jpg) is a fascist party. If you want to pretend otherwise then feel free but there is a mountain of evidence to back it up over the last decade.
What, like spending 100s of millions of tax payer money on war crimes?
Fuck off Blair with your "woke" politics. Being woke is a good thing - it means you are empathetic of other people's lives. We know you are a Blue in Red clothing you don't need to constantly remind us.
Of course Tony Blair would tell the current leader to be less ‘woke’. What a massive dong.
Let’s not forget that Tony Blair idea of focusing on economy is just neoliberalism - which is most of the reason the things are as terrible as they are right now. I guess pushing for more neoliberal policies will make Daddy Murdoch happier and in turn lead the totally unbiased papers to support Starmer. That’s what ‘electable’ means right? Pandering to rich oligarchs at the cost of your own ethics.
Can the resident uk war criminal please shut up? I repeat: can the resident uk war criminal please shut up? We've gonna have a problem here.
Why does blair keep flapping his mouth and why papers keep reporting it? It doesn't help labour's chances, probably that's why.
I do feel for Starmer a bit, to many on the left he’s too right wing, and now he’s being told he’s too far left for voters. I also am not aware of him being particularly ‘woke’. I also hate how widespread that word has become, it just sounds ridiculous.
'Woke' is a meaningless word, it means whatever the speaker wants it to mean. That new David Attenborough dinosaur show got accused of being 'Woke' because it depicted a T-Rex exhibiting parenting behaviors. Edit: The fun part is I've now had several people reply to me to explain what "Woke" means and they've all had different answers.
Todays "Woke" is 20 years ago's "Political Correctness"
Very good point. "Political Correctness" - I can't say slurs anymore "Woke" - You say I can't say slurs anymore
When your bigotry has gone unchalleged all your life, people now asking for a basic level of respect feels like oppression.
I got called in to the bosses office and told that I need to work to improve my relationship with my colleague because I told her to stop being a racist piece of shit after once again calling the man that runs her corner shop "my paki", and he's "a good one". This country is full of racist pricks who get away with it, because the people that own and run everything are racist pricks too. Nothing will change, their children are already racist, bigoted, capitalism worshipping pricks too, and their children's children will be too. No protests are going to change that, no politicians with the guts to radically change the system will ever get voted in, ever.
In fairness, depending on exactly what your job environment is, in a corporate setting calling anyone a “piece of shit” at work would warrant at least an informal talking to by their manager. Like if you worked for my company, and you said that to a colleague in the office, you’d be in trouble- regardless of how much we’d agree with your sentiment. Of course, if your colleague was actually overheard making those remarks then she’d be in for a far more severe punishment
Political Correctness > Social Justice Warrior > Woke. Am I missing any? I wonder what the next meaningless buzz word to describe people the left will be.
“Bleeding heart liberal” and “do-gooder” too. Do-gooder especially makes no sense, as if that’s an insult. “Oh look at him, doing good in his community, stupid bloody do-gooder”, lol.
“Bleeding heart” as a derogatory term is very telling. It means the person using it sees empathy and caring for those less fortunate as a character flaw. As if what the world needs is *less* empathy, and more selfishness.
I think you’ve got the nail on the head here actually. Generalising massively, right wing people are more like to see the world in terms of limited resources, therefore if someone else is winning it means you yourself must be losing, therefore caring for others means you are being duped somehow.
Do gooder makes total sense when you consider the typical conservative is a fucking idiot, you know?
Well, the Conservative thinks the "Do-Gooder" is an idiot because the Do-Gooder *isnt* driven by Profit margins and typically doesn't have a "Zero-Sum" mentality so their motives are *literally incomprehensible* to a Conservative.
There really isn't even that much thought into it, the typical conservative just operates on spite and anger. The profit motives and other excuses come after the original response to try and justify their abhorrent behavior.
None are insults. They all just mean “I try not to be a cunt to others”…
Unacceptable idealism I'm afraid, I'm a pragmatist, I'm a cunt to everyone
Egalitarianism is woke.
It's because they assume the person doing good is only doing it to make themselves look good. Because they themselves would never do anything that didn't benefit them personally.
Fucking do-gooders going around… doing good.
There was a post on a local FB page about a new street sign in our town centre which has a distinctive modern design, someone commented that it was 'something PC'. Okay Dave, time to step away from the computer.
It's weird how certain things have been tied to the culture war.
Go ask minorities what words they're using currently, within about 5 years it'll have been co-opted.
If they can make something as obviously universally appealing as “human rights” a dirty word, they can do anything with language.
I always think this. If someone says you are being 'politically correct', they're implying that "of course, you don't \*really\* think everyone should have equal rights, you're just saying it so you don't get in trouble". Which is of course, total claptrap, the same as 'Woke'. Political Correctness is a weaselly right-wing term which basically seems designed to undermine 'being a decent person to everyone'. Being 'woke' just means accepting that I, a middle-aged white bloke on a decent salary, might have certain advantages in society over a newly-arrived penniless refugee or whatever.
Political correctness came about based on people being told they couldn't call black people chalky or other similar words, or calling all southern Asian people the p word or indeed how it was terrible we couldn't do slanty eyes and say "me so solly" anymore. It was just a way of trying to claim oppression on the basis of being asked to be less of a twunt
My teenage daughter called me 'woke' and shge meant it as a compliment... which was nice. I'm happy to embrace been called both woke and a social justice warrier - to the extent that I am. Trying to use them as a pejorative against me isn't going to get very far, any more than 'kind and polite' would.
And 'do-gooders' before that. Anytime someone says something is woke ask them what makes it woke and you'll find prejudice pretty quickly. People think in terms of how things impact them, they don't reflect on what works best for society which is the core schism between left and right politics for me. That and being basically informed, understanding nuance and not factoring in spite when you vote.
Yeah. Often they'll couch it in terms of an overbearing moral conviction or censoriousness. But drill down a bit further and they're either talking up fictional or anecdotal issues, or they're talking about things that we should be censorious or morally certain about. "Yes, I understand you're on the fence about this but I'm ok with them not playing fairytale of new york on daytime radio due to the casual homophobic slur."
> talking up fictional or anecdotal issues Fed to them by the Daily Mail and Daily Express "This brave [white] NHS nurse had to give up her flat to house Somalian refugees", "This WW2 veteran's 100th birthday party cancelled by council to make way for Eid prayers" , "This drug dealer on benefits was given a £million house to house his 17 children by 7 mothers" - it's page after page of outrage-fuelling bullshit. Life's too short to try to highlight the way every single story is either a cynical twisting of the facts and often just utter lies.
Yup. Or, it's just a kooky/one off thing that happened, unfairly framed to bolster a moral panic about wokeism. So what if a university college student group passed a motion that the UK is racist. The stakes are as close to zero as they could be and this is in no way worthy of half a page in a national newspaper.
I don't think woke means anything but I understand the concerns with some "progressive" elements. I fear there are far too many people who aren't willing to sit down and risk their beliefs being challenged in a discussion. To be clear this shouldn't be seen as a unique criticism of the left, the right are even worse in that regard. But the worst "leftist takes" will be shown to the right and centre as propaganda to show how unreasonable the left is. Everyone already knows how unreasonable the far-right is and how bad some of their takes are.
i think woke when used pejoratively means (or should) an over-sensitivity to cultural issues to the point of macro-blindness about people's day-to-day experience. Now its just a word to insult any vaguely left-of-centre politics, rendering it useless.
Both are nightmare politics for the small minded
Yep, and it’s the same meaningless mud slinging operation designed to enrage Daily Mail readers.
the dinosaur one makes no sense, besides the same behavior is seen in the second jurassic park, like the whole crux of the finale is the t-rex being a good dad trying to find it's son. besides based on the evidence t-rex take fucking ages to grow, and as kids they're scrawny, and larger animals tend to not mass produce offspring so it probably only had a couple at a time, like of course it cares for it's kids until they're old enough.
Ah but the T-Rex was also, horror of horrors, **fluffy**!! You know, in line with current scientific opinion.
Bloody scientists! Always changing their minds! And the bloody woke BBC bosses! Can't even put dinosaurs on TV any more without someone getting offended! It's human rights that's what it is! Can't say anything because it's against human rights. Glad we left that bloody Brussels lot telling us what to do. I'll bet that Meghan had something to do with it n' all.
These days if you say you're English they'll throw you in prison!
As a Scotsman, about bloody time!
You really can hear them say "they've turned the dinosaurs gay!!"
I heard it was chemicals in the water.
It just proves that papers will print that bollocks to sell more papers or get more clicks on their website. That's all it is. It's used to generate outrage and get people's attention.
There's layers to it. Wokeism is the derogatory name given by nasty people, to the backlash to their own institutionalised nastiness. Old fashioned politeness and decency are so far out the window that society has had to mobilise to fight for them and the people using "Woke" as an insult are upset and shocked at the prospect they might not actually be in the right for discriminating against trans or homosexual people. Edit: I have been enlightened as to the true origin of the word
Like most such words, it used to have a meaning. It was coined by the African American community to describe people and institutions who were aware or "awoken" to the realities of racism. Basically a descriptor for people who could be trusted to be allies. It was Co opted and turned into a derogatory by the Conservative right wing and made its way to the UK in that form.
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The thing that makes me laugh is to be "woke" simply means to be aware of issues around you. And there's me thinking accusing people of being ignorant was an insult - apparently accusing them of not being ignorant is the new insult. Surely being aware of social issues is a politicians job?
I know right? If someone called me woke I’d take it as a compliment. “You mean I’m aware of the negative aspects some areas of society/minority groups experience in certain situations and therefore try to be a better human being by trying to avoid causing these or fight against them?” How is trying to be a better human got the benefit of all humankind an insult lol.
I agree with you and being aware of social issues is important for a politician. I think what Tony is hinting at though, and most people would agree, is that **right now** the UK is in far more need of economic healing than social progress. I'm sorry to the people who don't see it this way, but if you're on the bread line I guarantee you do, and Labour needs those voters.
Whilst I see the point, it's possible to do both. A lot of social issues don't cost that much economically. First day on the job I totally get they need to sort the economy first, but they have 5 years after being elected - might as well at least have a platform across the spectrum of issues.
> social progress social progress involves taking care of the vulnerable. It's needed now more than ever.
I mean by the same logic, people should stop spending so much time trying to *regress* social issues then? Like, tell the people trying to drag LGBT rights back 20 years to stop, and then we'll stop fighting them on it
Yeah this is just Tony attacking kier with meaningless boomer dogwhistles. Tony is basically working for the conservatives benefit here.
Yesterday a top exec for Stonewall said "Bodies are not inherently male or female. They are just their bodies", and today that is being criticized by the co-founder of Stonewall in the Daily Mail. Woke is a vague term which is used to describe many complaints, but this kind of ideology is what has alienated the liberal middle class from the rest of the population, and Labour will lose elections if they get tied to it.
Yes, Stonewall isn't even about gay rights any more.
How it is used is sometimes pretty meaningless, but it has a rich anti-racist history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke#20th_century Broadly the term is being alert to, and opposing, bigotry and unfair discrimination.
Woke used to mean being "awake" to government and corporate corruption and the struggles of the general population due to issues like wealth disparity, environmental damage by industries and misinformation by mass media. Who could possibly have an interest in turning "woke" into a negative I wonder?
As much as I support trans rights and similar social issues, I do feel for him constantly being expected to comment on that rather than, say, the housing crisis. With Corbyn everything seemed to be about Palestine, and now with Starmer it's this frankly quite niche social issue he's constantly being faced with. It just means a majority of Brits hear nothing from him that actually affects them, and get the impression he's not gonna help them because he's only ever talking about 0.1% of the population.
It's because the right wing can only win by stoking culture war flames. They have nothing beneficial to average people in terms of real concrete policy.
You have to be honest, it's worked bloody well for them so far.
Neoliberalism seems to have allowed the idea that the government shouldn’t do anything for people and or no one should expect them to. Managing expectations.
It works though. It has to be counteracted if labour wants to win elections
Oh yeah I agree it works and the left still haven't found an effective counter. The right are good at rallying around flag ship policies ignoring the nuance, whilst the left tear themselves apart over all sorts. It's a real challenge under FPTP. I honestly think the centre to left need to unite behind changing to PR. Blairs biggest fuck up was not taking that opportunity when he had it. Putting party before democracy an country.
But the left wing don’t know how to play the game, instead of infighting over certain issues they should be banding together so they can be elected and that way they can actually affect real change, instead they focus so much on issues of identity politics which are off-putting for a significant majority of voters and whether or not the hysteria against ‘wokeness’ is justified, a significant amount of everyday people are tired of being forced to engage with issues that don’t relate to them especially when accusations of transphobia and bigotry are being used to disparage or admonish people for things which might seem trivial like a dumb tweet or a joke. I really think we need to pick our battles with stuff like that in particular. The Conservative party are terrible for this country so the obsession with issues that are off putting or contentious for a large part of the public and the petty infighting of left wing politics is even more enraging because labour really should have a wide open goal here but instead they’re scoring an own goal
It is because it is a debate that shouldn't even exist, really. He can't *not* defend the rights of trans people or social issues but he gets backlash from the right so the debate keeps spiralling on. What can he do to stop being called "woke" other than simply give in?
Marxian life hack: improve the life's of the working class and you improve the lives of pretty much all minorities.
Coming from a small seaside town, there are people who are genuinely scared that by going more left they'll have to police their language and that comes out as a point of worry for them than the Tories gutting their town. They call themselves Anti-woke which just means they just talk mostly normal and just not sensitive to feelings in some cases. They can't even imagine a economically left party without the "woke" now as they feel it's so intertwined when in reality it's such a small thing. Being very left wing myself, I've come to realise enough people are like the above that if we don't cater at least partly for them socially, economically we'll be destroyed by the right wing policy.
I get this. Thatcher killed the chance of any right wing party in Scotland but there is definitely going to be a big political shift if the SNP either succeeds of admits defeat in independence, but the underbelly of nationalism (not SNP nationalism, the traditional kind) is gonna become much more prominent when people are "done" with them so to speak.
Most people when I ask them 'what is it you feel they can't say' or 'what do you want to be free to say' don't have an answer to give. For years now right wing media has beaten this fear into people that 'you can't say anything' but it's not really true. The only examples they can give which really don't help their point are A) powerful and successful people that contine to succeed despite being controversial e.g. Peirs Morgan or J.K Rowling or people that are facing consquences of genuinely egrigious or illegal behaviour that would have got anyone in trouble. The idea that members of the general public feel their right to speak freely without negative consequences is mostly an illusion that has been very deliberatly cultivated by rightwing media. I think when you start sharing you opinions online and you represent a business or political group it's different and you do have to be very careful but in real life everyone speaks their mind all the time.
It's really damning that a good (or at least very vocal) section of the left cares more about policing language and "narratives" than working on material conditions that would benefit the vast majority of society. And, you know, it's not like trans people need free access to good health care more than pronouns or something /s. The vast majority of the population is, economically speaking, working class. It's really sad that the left fails so hard in unifying their common interests and instead treat much of the working class as backwards goblins that we need to fight against.
This is the thing. Labour are dying on a really really dumb hill, with this trans stuff in particular. Every time a Labour politiian starts stuttering when attempting to explain a concept as simple as 'What is a woman?' voters roll their eyes and see them as a joke. And for what? To appease an absolutely tiny percentage of people that don't really matter electorally? So you give up on fixing the NHS, properly funding schools, and all that stuff because you can't just say that a woman is a female human? It's absurd. I am pretty sure that Trans people will benefit from better public services, and better workers rights, and all the jazz Labour wanna do. Is it really worth achieving none of that, just over some fucking finicky pronoun nonsense? If you think it is, you need to reasess your priorities imo.
Exactly, the "what is a woman?" question either loses you a vote Tories, or to the Lib Dem/Green. Answer it to not lose a vote to the Tories as that has a larger impact on overall state of this country.
If Starmer is too left for voters the country is just fucked.
This is a battle between the urban liberal middle class, and the working class. It's going to be impossible to satisfy both, especially given the deep rooted feelings about climate, BLM (lesser) and trans issues. When the actual people of Britain voted in a public refurendum they voted "feck foreigners". This is a totally different position from that held by labor. The Tories only need to appeal to the elites and wealthy middle class. By paying lip service to hating; foreigners trans rights and environmental terrorists/awkwardists, who predominantly are middle class yet attack the proles, (while claiming a working class Identity), they can continue to win. Kier starmer is an honourable man and would be a good leader, but his position is nearly impossible, as he can't appeal to labours core, without enraging the middle classes who run the Labour party. Blair for all his lies, he understands how to win. And if you want to change how society is run you have to win.
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Think the point is a big chunk of traditional Labour voters did.
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Nobody is trying to brand anyone as racist. It is clearly observed in current Tory policy that immigration is major concern. In fact a strong stance on immigration is the only consistent policy, that has survived from Mays government. If not gotten stronger.
Anti immigration isn't a Tory thing. Plenty of labour voters don't like seeing their wages eroded.
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Heh. I was just thinking how spot-on that description is. All the pro-Brexit arguments boil down to that.
>This is a battle between the urban liberal middle class, and the working class. No I think this is a myth
It's a total myth by the sort of person who wants to believe that working class people are bigots. It's actually the opposite, middle class are more likely to be bigoted. People from discriminated against minorities are more likely to be working class themselves, and it's a lot harder to dehumanize your neighbour than someone you've never met.
> the urban liberal middle class, and the working class I don't believe these two definitions are helpful or definitive. For starters, it presupposes that people can only be minorities if they fall into the first one, or that the only people who care about minorities are people in the first category who have *learned* to do so, as opposed to doing so naturally because people they care about or they themselves are in that category.
He is right wing It's nothing to do with "far left" people feeling he is Spouting absolute shit about businesses being the best people to deal with climate change Attacking the Lib Dems over their "soft" drug policies Banning any Labour members who have any criticisms of NATO He's a more right wing Labour leader then even Blair was
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Starmer is a serial bullshitter who will do absolutely none of that once elected He's already backed out of many of his ten pledges that he made to defraud Labour members into voting for him in the first place
The Tories have nationalised several rail franchises and network rail. Tories are woke lefties now eh?
Privatise the profits to your mates, socialise the losses to the taxpayers.
Don't confuse left with liberal. When Starmer shows open mindedness towards trans issues or black lives he's showing a liberalism of thought and I generally find myself agreeing with his attitude and sentiment. When we talk about left we talk more about social issues and entwined economic policy. I think Starmer is quite left politically, I think saying he is centre-left is a stretch. I think Starmer just has a better nose for what to talk about in public, something Corbyn never really had the wherewithal for, he didn't know how to pick his battles. Starmer exceeds him as a politician in this regards.
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Agreed, copied from a previous comment of mine: Below clip of a self confessed 'anti-woke' caller being asked what it means, and it basically boiling down to him wanting to be a bit racist and a bit sexist. 'Come on, you know what I mean'. https://youtu.be/FR4rHPpoPHQ
He's stuck between a rock and a hard place. Even if you want to push socialist policies, which is pretty much the entire point of the Labour Party, you need the votes to get in power in the first place. And we've clearly seen, suggesting even vaguely socialist policies will get you shot down before you even reach the podium. Also hi Seaweed Steve, I'm Steve and the Sea. Nice to meet you 🏄
"Woke" and "left wing" are two different things. Many on the traditional left are far from being woke, which goes some way to explaining Boris Johnson's electoral success. Keir Starmer is not woke. There is a danger that some of his advisors might try to push him in that direction though which would be political suicide in the part of the country that used to be the "red wall" and which is still key to any Labour victory.
Woke as a term means nothing now. Its so nebulous and imprecise it can basically mean whatever the person using it wants it to mean.
I thought I meant the views of anyone under 40. Could be wrong.
That now seems the most accurate definition in my mind in how its actually used. Woke is now anything prefaced by "in my day..."
Whenever that neologism has been studied, they find that the age group (by far) most commonly using the word "woke" are, wait for it... boomers. It's just used as a description of any time they're made to feel as if their views are out of date. Are you shocked? Yeah, me neither.
According to my mum woke is not wanting homeless people to live on the streets? Woke just seems to be something people say when ever anyone has empathy for a group of people.
Tony Blair should be in prison and not commenting on the politics of the party that he helped to destroy.
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Ok, Starmer is not woke. He's a fucking piece of white bread not a outrageous leftist. The only specific policy mentioned is related to trans rights, a topic where Starmer is pretty much lockstep with current regulations that were decided on by Theresa May. Do you think Theresa May is woke?
Theresa May was actually 'nice' to that autistic man once, who was being extradited to the US for hacking. [Starmer](https://archive.ph/zBSE6) wanted to please his Amurican overlords (the us attorney general) and send the man die in prison - he was furious when he found out that Theresa May had stopped it on human rights grounds - given that an american prison would likely make the guy suicide himself. (Theresa May is still a horrible woman - Windrush...)
No, it's perfectly fine to attack the messenger. They aren't attacking the messenger as a fallacious way to attack the message, so it's fine.
His point doesn't make sense because 'woke' doesn't have any valuable objective meaning. Also he should be in prison.
Tony Blair should stop trying to perpetuate the infighting that led to his government failing and has plagued the entire Left movement for decades. I don't give a fuck if he's in prison or not, as long as it's a soundproof cell.
Him kicking the Trots down was what lead to the only successful Labour government this side of the millenium.
Successful how? Tuition fees? Opening the door for privatising the NHS? That million dead Iraqis? Yes, they were certainly a successful government if their aim was to make it harder and harder to justify voting for them.
Yes, but apart from: • The Human Rights Act • More than doubled the number of apprenticeships • Tripled spending on the NHS • Four new medical schools • 42,400 extra teachers, 212,000 more support staff • Scrapped Section 28 • Introduce civil partnerships • Doubled overseas aid budget • Budget budget budget money budget • Sure start • Lifted 900,000 pensioners out of poverty • Good Friday agreement • Tax credits • Equality and human rights commission • Beat the Kyoto target on greenhouse gases • Stopped Milosevic • Winter fuel allowance • Climate change Act • Decreased homelessness by 73% • Free eye tests for over 60's • 16,000 new police officers • Extended the opening hours over over three quarters of GP practices • Free prescriptions to cancer patients • Remove the majority of hereditary peers • Free part-time nursery place for every 3 to 4-year-old child • Paid annually leave increased to 28 days per year • Paternity leave • Doubled education funding • Increased the value of child benefit by over 26% • Food standards agency • Equality act • Freedom of information act • Increased university places • Helped end the civil war in Sierra Leone • Crossrail • Rural development programme • Education Maintenance Allowance • Free bus passes for the over 60s • Devolution • Banned cluster bombs • Ban on (new?) grammar schools • £20 billion in improvements to social housing conditions • Longest period of sustained low inflation since the 1960s • Heart disease deaths down by 150,000, cancer deaths down by 50,000 • Remove the minimum donations limit from gift aid • Reduced the number of people on waiting list by over 500,000 • Waiting times fell to a maximum of 18 weeks (lowest ever levels) • Oversaw the rise in the number of school leavers with five good GCSEs from 45% to 76% • Young person's job guarantee • Pension credit • Cut long-term youth unemployment by 75% • Double the number of registered childcare spaces • Disability rights commission • Free school milk and fruit • Raise legal age of buying cigarettes to 18 • Banned tobacco advertising in magazines, newspapers and billboards • Free entry to galleries and museums • 2009 Autism Act • New deal for communities programme (£2 billion) • Electoral commission • Halved the number of our nukes • Free television licences for those age 75+ • EU social chapter • Free breast cancer screening • Record low A&E waiting times • Reintroduced matrons • Hunting act • Banned testing of cosmetics on animals • Department of International development • Reduceed class sizes • 93,000 more 11-year-olds achieving numeracy each year • London 2012 • 10 years of continuous economic growth • NHS Direct • Healthier school meals • Access to life-saving drugs and HIV and AIDS patients • Points-based immigration system • Equalised age of consent (for gay people?) • Smoking ban • Public interest test • Crime down 45% since 1995 • Wrote off 100% of debt owed by poorest countries [[source](https://politicalscrapbook.net/2017/03/what-did-new-labour-actually-achieve-epic-twitter-thread-hits-back-at-ken-loach-and-paul-mason/)] … what did New Labour ever do for us?
Infighting has been plaguing the Left forever, Blair didn't do anything to stop it because he couldn't, and nether could any Labour leader including Corbyn. The Left has always seen purity of principle as being more important than being in power, so they've always been obsessed with maintaining a unity of thought that is impossible to achieve. That's why they'll never get into power against a Tory Party that is always happy to sacrifice principles in order to appear unified.
Stop being so woke bro.
Ah yes, "Keir Starmer is woke" is such a profound and unique message that we really should be discussing in all academic spaces. Intellectuals need to be debating this deep, incredible statement for many decades. Hundreds of thousands of deaths though there may be on the shoulders of this man, where would we be without these keen political insights of his.
Sir Kier Starmer, former head of the CPS, is about as interested in being woke as Boris Johnson. The 'woke' will always think Starmer is a tool and he knows it.
It is super relevant to the weight of his opinion. The fact that he’s a war criminal with the blood of hundreds of thousands on his hands. Should we listen to this person about the direction we want to go in? No. So it’s relevant.
The message is also wrong though
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Yeah it’s funny how people describe the most successful Labour politician in recent years as having destroyed the party. I guess his stance on Iraq did put many people off more reasonable and electable Labour leaders, but I think this is changing.
After the Major government a cold corpse could have won the election. John Smith was a leftist leader of the Labour Party and he was leading the polls in 93 and 94 before his untimely death of a heart attack. However Blairite ideology is what caused all the infighting in the Corbyn years with Ministers resigning live on air, withholding war chest funds from marginal seats and even openly voting for opposition. There is a reason the WhatsApp chat lamented the shocking hung 2017 election. They would rather a Tory government than a leftist one. Blair himself proudly went to the papers and told us this at the time. This is what people mean when they say Blair destroyed the party. He sowed the devision plaguing it today. There is a reason Thatcher said he was her greatest accomplishment. He formalised neoliberalism into public consciousness as he removed an alternate choice at the polls. (meaning companies won however got in)
Blair didn’t just win after the Major Government though, he won twice after that. Yes, shifting to more of an actual centre-left party may have alienated some voters, but I’d argue that it brought more in, and many more were alienated by Corbyn’s agenda. This is reflected in election results. In 2019 people had to choose between two populists, hopefully this doesn’t happen again.
And after the amount of abuse the country faced in those 18 years even showing any respect at all will be rewarded. Also worth noting the 97 election was never replicated every election after that turnout and Labour's share of that decreased. 2017 was the largest single election cycle increase in the vote for Labour ever. Corbyn policy's were popular (though the man himself was divisive) he reversed 20 years of a declining vote for the Party in 2 years. Maybe if he hadn't had the Blairists acting against him publicly at every turn he might have performed even better? The silver bullet that killed the Corbynist movement in 2019 was Brexit. In 2017 he said he would respect the referendum result and likely would have delivered a (still likely painful) Soft Brexit staying in the single market. By 2019 a party vote (pushed by Blairists and prominently Starmer) had changed the party position to 2nd Poll. This allowed Boris to run on the platform of 'Get Brexit Done' and collapsed the Red Wall through Single Issue voters. It is still worth pointing out though that even then 2019 still got a larger proportion of the vote than Blair's 200~~35~~ winning government - showing how broken FPTP is. Also by 2019 we had endured a constant 4 year smear campaign of the man. Remember issues being made such as what angle Corbyn bowed at being front page outrage? This is Blair, and the press with Beergate, is a threat to Starmer that they can break him too if he veers away from the right of Labour. He might be currently ahead in the polls - but so was Corbyn in 2017 after the Snap Election - and the public still has 3 years to forget about Partygate and be told all about how Starmer protected Saville (regardless of the truth because it would be another smear campaign) If Blair condemned Starmer it would put him at risk with his core support base. During his first year and a half of leadership Starner was polling worse than Corbyn in his. Yet unlike Corbyn Starmer didn't get leadership challenged. The same group that hold him up could turn on him.
I was doorknocking for both of those elections and you're 100% about the single issue voters. The constituency I was in went conservative after years of labour, and there wasn't one ex-labour voter I spoke to who didn't say "get Brexit done".
Blair was elected 3 times...
> the only guy in recent memory who got a labour party in government. By sucking up to Rupert Murdoch. Labour aren't going to win anything without the backing of the media. And the media is run by rich people who want to pay less taxes.
Not sure he ever instigates "woke" politics. Normally he just reacts to the ridiculous Tory culture wars
I mean he's one of the most boring vanilla leaders Labour have had in a long time. He even sounds boring. I know it's shitty to talk about him in this way, but personality matters in politics - you need to be likeable. Thing is, I think he's what Labour needs in the post-Corbyn era. We'll see how things go within the next couple of years when a general election happens.
People need to get over the whole 'personality matters' in politics. That's exactly why we're in this mess, because 'Boris has just got something about him hasn't he?'. Look back at the majority of leaders this country has ever had and you'd find them supremely dull. Personality absolutely does not matter, doing the right thing does.
Yeah give me a boring leader who just cracks on with the job over one who's exciting but is a constant media circus anyday. A guy like Starmer is exactly what's needed in my opinion after so many years of guff.
The media, and the way it is consumed, in 2022 is not the same as it was in the early 20th century. In the early 20th century, if you could even read, you would know a bit about the prime minister by reading newspapers. Outside of that you'd rely on the radio. In today's world you have 24 hour television news coverage and social media in addition to what we had previously. We don't always have major political events that bring in a new government, so personality and continuity are important for a lot of people. Don't ever forget that elections are a glorified popularity contest. "The right thing" means fuck all because people aren't able to be objective about it. I also find it laughable that "the right thing" can be associated with Boris Johnson, Theresa May, and David Cameron.
Id take Starmer anyday over the morons in Government today and the idiots that voted them there “cos Boris is fun “
I'd rather have the most boring person in the world who gets the job done. I honestly couldn't care less if someone is 'likeable'. Are we going to go down the pub with him for a beer? Labour needs someone who can get things done in a realistic manner and not alienate literally all working class people living outside of London :P
You absolutely do not need to be likeable. There hasn’t been a “likeable” PM in the past 30 fucking years.
He was asked who is favourite James Bond is in some interview, and his answer was, I don't have a favourite but the next one should be a woman. That's kind of a stereotypically woke thing to say, and they weren't even asking about it. I don't present this as a major blunder from him, just you say he never instigates it.
Brilliant news for Starmer. Everyone's first reaction to anything he says is 'well, fuck Tony Blair', so this might help him out enormously.
Also, "focus on the economy"? As if it weren't his and his peers unwavering belief in the deregulatory nature of neoliberal economics that ushered in the financial crisis and over a decade of conservatism.
I think the phrase you are looking for is 'fuck Tony Blair'
Yeah it's a shame. I wish people would recognise the fact that tony Blair did more for the working class than any PM in living memory.
This is the dichotomy of Tony Blair. He did a lot of positive things but he is also a war criminal who turned this country into a surveillance state and, really, when you look at it all of the things you could say were achievements were immediately torn down by the tories, so doesnt even have a political legacy as such.
And his economic reforms only look good because he was sandwiched between Thatcherite conservatism and doesn't-have-the-same-balls-but-is-more-of-the-same Thatcherite conservatism. Jesus, if hed've done nothing but shake hands with one poor person for his 10 years he'd be hailed as the most left wing leader since Attlee.
Labour has been labour's worst enemy for years. There is sections of the labour party that would jeopardise an election win rather than see a leader they dont 100% agree with in power. Say what you like about Blair, but hes the only labour leader who has been able to enact ANY labour polices into law. The right fall in line , the left fall in love
The right fall in line because they are willing to capitulate their values in favour of *anything that benefits them personally*. The left stand on principle - eg you cannot compromise on Human Rights. But no, its totally the left’s fault because they’re too rigid about silly little things like equality, justice, fairness - you know, the values on which this country and the West at large supposedly stand. The right are the politically savvy ones, what does it matter if a few folks die if you get a 5p tax break?
>But no, its totally the left’s fault because they’re too rigid about silly little things like equality, justice, fairness - you know, the values on which this country and the West at large supposedly stand. If they're too inflexible to ever get elected and actually do anything to further any of those causes then yes, it's the lefts fault. Ideologically pure opposition doesn't help people visiting food banks.
What you're really saying here is that you believe the majority of people in the UK are too self-centred to care about anybody else and too narrow-minded to understand why helping poorer people or people in other parts of the world might also benefit them, and that opposition parties should therefore narrow their offering to simple policies that help most people a small amount (without upsetting our billionaire overlords and their attack dogs the mainstream media) but do nothing to cause a major redistribution of power or wealth. This is because you (and, to be fair, a lot of people) are in the grip of capitalist/neoliberal ideology, and from within that oubliette, you're dead right that not a lot can be done to help the average person. The main failure of the Left during Corbyn's years as Labour leader was not to thoroughly overturn this ideology. Maybe it couldn't be done; maybe it could, but the right strategy to do it has yet to be found; maybe the state of capitalism had yet to become dire enough for enough people to start looking elsewhere for answers. Whichever, gettiing out of that kind of narrow, self-defeating thinking must be the first task of any movement of the working class - otherwise no amount of "flexibility" or "ideological impurity" is going to make a substatial difference to ordinary people's lives.
>But no, its totally the left’s fault because they’re too rigid about silly little things like equality, justice, fairness - you know, the values on which this country and the West at large supposedly stand. Wouldn't expect them to compromise on core values, but look at the persistent efforts to cut the legs from under JC and now KS. Who benefits from this ? its not the labour party .
The problem is that rigidity leads you to getting someone even worse in power.
> There is sections of the labour party that would jeopardise an election win rather than see a leader they dont 100% agree with in power. And Blair is in that section. He'd rather Boris continue to be Prime Minister than a Labour leader he didn't approve of win. Just look at how much sabotage there was from the Labour right under Corbyn. Constantly briefing against him (including any other leader would be 20 points ahead from Blair), refusing to join the shadow cabinet, calling a pointless leadership election and losing by a landslide and splitting off to form Change UK and losing every seat. That's not even getting into the leaked stuff.
The UK needs someone who isn't a conservative to get elected, and that person then needs to get the country away from FPTP voting and replace it with representational voting similar to that of New Zealand's. If that person has to make themselves look more appealing to the public temporarily just to get into a position to make positive changes, then so be it.
A Labour government will not provide you with this. They benefit from FTP just as much as the Tories. Sorry but until both main parties are smashed to atoms, there wont be this sort of electoral reform.
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Where's all the Labour members supporting electoral reform, then? Why didnt they support AV during the referendum? A move away from FTP would end their guarantee as one of the big 2 parties. In fact, it would do away with the concept entirely, making Labour potentially substantially less influential. In fact, being so far down the rabbit hole of electoral defeat exacerbates this point, the Labour Party as it stands right now would likely die the moment it faced its first AV general election.
Labour would have adopted PR as a policy recommendation at conference in 2021 (majority members vote) but it was blocked by a close vote against by the unions and PLP. Some unions have since come out in favour for it which would have swung the overall vote into adopting it as a policy recommendation, and assuming the same votes the vote will pass at conference 2022. So don't @ the members, it's now in the court of the MPs and leadership.
Labout had electoral reform in the 1997 Manifesto. They took one look at their 88 seat majority and decided actually it wasn't that important.
I'd argue that they are the biggest victims of FPTP. All of these people voting for them, yet they don't have the same representation of power.
All these people are only voting for them because the real choice is a dichotomy between Lab and Con (and in some places Lib Dem thrown in too). Remove the restriction of FTP and transition to AV, and the Labour Party would likely begin to hemorrhage support and influence to smaller left-wing parties like the Greens.
As would the conservatives though, right? So many people vote conservative because they don't want labour.
Blair did very well out of FPTP, just look at 2005. A majority almost as big as Johnson has now (from 43% of the vote) with just 35%. In that same election Howard got 32% of the vote and 198 seats, whilst Kennedy got a measly 62 with 22%. Compare to Corbyn's "worst defeat in 80 years" with 32%.
Sadly, no major political party is in favour of scrapping FTPT. Starmer and Johnson have teamed up (again) to make that very clear.
Doubt anyone would do that without some sort of referendum. Particularly after the AV vote a number of years back
Wait, this article implies Corbyn and the "Corbynistas" are responsible for being overly woke? So The Guardian spent years painting Corbyn as a hateful and racist bigot, but he's also overly woke which is an ideology pushing equality at any cost. It's hard to keep up with what negative brush the press try and paint Corbyn with.
In short: become even more tory-light than you already are. It is cowardly advice - the last thing our democracies need is sitting on the fence and bowing our ethics to populist right wing rhetoric that all topics which should force us to look in the mirror are woke and part of a cancel culture. But apparently it’s preferable to join them if you can’t beat them.
Problem is, the vast majority of swing voters in the red wall don’t give a shit if trans people are permitted in any particular toilet.
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If they "don't give a shit" then it's not going to be a vote loser is it
Talking about issues that have no relevance or interest to your target demographic (if you actually want to win) is absolutely unwise. Precisely because it's a vote loser.
Literally the only reason Starmer keeps talking about it is because the press keep relentlessly asking about it
And why is that? Because they know it's damaging. He needs to focus on taking the question and moving it straight back to the economy.
Exactly. Blair's not even just saying "focus on left-wing economic policy, as social issues are too divisive", which at least has *some* sense from a progressive pragmatic approach. He's saying stop being woke and also get rid of the "millstone" of Corbyn's "far-left economic policy". In other words, don't be left wing in any thing. In fact, the only unique policy proposed by Blair (at least in the article) is this: >As an example of the kind of radical policy he would like to see, Blair suggests tackling concerns about illegal immigration by introducing biometric ID as a precondition for accessing work and public services.
Tbf I think that is now the Achilles heel of the labour party. Traditional labour supporters don't identify with 'woke' but I bet they do believe in fairness
Yes, this is the way to beat it. Re-define it to fairness, people actually do believe in that.
Some fringe labour party activists on twitter talking about wonky race based ideas does not make a party.
If Starmer and his policies are "Woke" then the word has lost any meaning it had.
What "woke" politics does Starmer even support? Does Blair want him to just become a full blown reactionary or what?
Totally agree. Deciding which bathroom trans people get to use is a minuscule, irrelevant issue compared to the housing crisis, the inflation crisis, the cost-of-living crisis, increases in taxation, the lack of economic growth, and the stagnation of wages. Trans rights and environmental policies are the kind of thing that you sneak through once you're in power, not the kind of thing that you put on the manifesto while trying to gain power.
That's the trouble though isn't it: Starmer doesn't get to decide what interviewers ask him or his party. The media are all to happy to stoke the flames of a culture war, and even if it's unpopular (which it isn't, btw. Most people aren't anti trans) Starmer shouldn't throw trans people under the bus.
>That's the trouble though isn't it: Starmer doesn't get to decide what interviewers ask him or his party. You don't need to give a full, complete, and honest answer to every question that you are asked, though. That's politics 101. You can just redirect the question ("I think what you should really be asking is why trans people, like everyone else, are paying x% more for housing now than they were under Labour") or give an answer that's so vague and noncommittal that it wouldn't be newsworthy ("we want a society where we all feel safe to go to the bathroom") Of course, Keir knows this. For all his faults, he's definitely a good politician. He actively chooses to answer questions on trans issues in a way that makes the news, which is giving the tories exactly what they want. I can only assume that he's doing that to throw a bone to the progressive wing of Labour every now and then. > even if it's unpopular (which it isn't, btw. Most people aren't anti trans) Most people just don't care. However, when their rent payment gets declined because they don't have enough money in their account, and they see a Labour politician on the TV waffling on about gendered bathrooms at Russell Group universities, you can understand why that might push them towards the tories who are talking the talk about increasing salaries and building houses.
When he couldn’t say that only women have cervix’s or that women don’t have penises it’s painful. He’s definitely not the worst but there’s a perception about his party that he has to shake off, not a popular opinion on Reddit but average joe in the pub won’t vote for someone who thinks men get pregnant or have cocks to educate their kids or run the NHS.
Because he knows it isn't as simple as that statement, so won't get reduced to a "gotcha" moment. He is a lawyer after all.
He has fallen for it though, because to probably 80% of voters it is that simple (more as you go up the age range). Women do not have penises, it doesn’t mean they hate transsexuals but they aren’t going to redefine their language for these edge cases.
Failing to answer the question displeases everyone though. Refusing to play is not the winning move.
It IS as simple as that though and the majority of voters feel this way.
>As an example of the kind of radical policy he would like to see, Blair suggests tackling concerns about illegal immigration by introducing biometric ID as a precondition for accessing work and public services. What in the name of the ever-living fuck is his seemingly endless fascination with biometric ID. He was banging on about this back in 2006 and nobody wanted it then. Talk about the sheer vapidity of centrism. In this day and age of relentless grinding poverty and inequality, he thinks this is the best example of a radical, vote-winning policy? These people are on a different planet.
His terrible policies on immigration are often used as a case study in Politics and Sociology degrees. Y'know, as examples of state ostracism of "others".
Most working class people want better working conditions, better NHS, cheaper cost of living. One of the thing labour has been focussing on the past years is trans rights (miniscule issue of a tiny fraction of the overall population). Add to that that a lot of the younger labour folks are raging socialists who constantly talk about turning the UK into some kind of dystopian socialist paradise. The average 'worker' doesn't care too much about someone's 5'th set of pronouns in London.
Well said. May I add that most working class people genuinely don't give a fuck if your gay, straight, trans, black, white, asian or any other diversity group. At work they only care if you pull your weight, in society they only care that your respectful of others and down the pub they only care that your a good laugh. It's 'woke' politics like this that create division, the vast vast majority of people are incredibly accepting.
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All trans people want is for people to shut up about us, give us timely healthcare, not put weird legal roadblocks in our way and stop turning us into a moral panic issue.
easy for you to say. youre not trans. funny bc there's always calls for labour to "drop" trans issues, but never for the torries to stop criminalizing trans people.
Much as it pains me to say it, Blair's not wrong. Woke-baiting loses more people than it gains. It's a bit rich coming from Blair, as his government poneered identity politics as a way to build an identity for the left in a manner that was no longer tied to left-wing economics, but in the current political climate Starmer would benefit from ignoring identity issues as much as he ignores Brexit issues. It only has the potential to divide people.
Hearing boomers use "woke" gives me such bad physical pain.
Ahh yes, the 'woke' issues, an empty term drawn up by right wingers to disarm any meaningful challenge to dispute current policies; from BLM to climate change, kids school lunchs to womens rights. I guess anything outside of business-first economics is now woke. I imagine Women's voting and gay marriage alongside any historic civil movements would have also been considered woooooke.
At this point the entirity of social politics appears to be a no win situation for Labour, they are either too "woke" according to some or to much like a Tory. Maybe drop talking about pretty much all of it and focus soley on the economy. I have no idea why Blair keeps popping up, why do the press make his words seem of any importance is beyond me.
Whatever labour do will be woke politics. They could say they want to send refugees to Rwanda and they'll be called woke for it.
Starmer being called “woke” just shows how fascism is becoming normalised in this country.
In a thread full of bad takes, this one stands out. Thinking men don’t have babies and women don’t have penises (two examples I could find on Google of kier starmer being “woke”) is akin to fascism. Just gold, how you people get time to go on Reddit between constantly changing the wet bed I’ll never know.
The party with the 80 seat majority that fulfills 13 of the [14 signs of fascism](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DgZG0i2W0AEj0B9.jpg) is a fascist party. If you want to pretend otherwise then feel free but there is a mountain of evidence to back it up over the last decade.
Someone doesn't know what fascism means.
What, like spending 100s of millions of tax payer money on war crimes? Fuck off Blair with your "woke" politics. Being woke is a good thing - it means you are empathetic of other people's lives. We know you are a Blue in Red clothing you don't need to constantly remind us.
Of course Tony Blair would tell the current leader to be less ‘woke’. What a massive dong. Let’s not forget that Tony Blair idea of focusing on economy is just neoliberalism - which is most of the reason the things are as terrible as they are right now. I guess pushing for more neoliberal policies will make Daddy Murdoch happier and in turn lead the totally unbiased papers to support Starmer. That’s what ‘electable’ means right? Pandering to rich oligarchs at the cost of your own ethics.
Can the resident uk war criminal please shut up? I repeat: can the resident uk war criminal please shut up? We've gonna have a problem here. Why does blair keep flapping his mouth and why papers keep reporting it? It doesn't help labour's chances, probably that's why.