Last month Keir Starmer declared that Labour would “never again be a party of protest not public service”.
Yesterday nurses announced 48 hours of strikes because the government is willing to talk to them about any way to solve their pay dispute, the NHS staffing crisis and the appalling working conditions many NHS staff work under except increasing pay.
Nurses are striking because they are at the end of their tether.
They know that they cannot afford to live reasonably on what they are being paid.
What is more, they know that the chance of recruiting staff to work in the dangerous conditions in which they work is very low when inadequate pay is being offered.
And nurses know that what is at stake here is the future of the NHS. They know that the situation that they are in is unsustainable, which is why they are striking as a public service.
The last point is key: protest is public service. Protest is not the opposite of public service. Protest has always been the catalyst that has resulted in improved public service. It never came any other way.
Labour is now denying this, just as it is abandoning those who want to sort out the NHS and know what is needed to do that, who are the people who work in it.
Labour is wrong about protest. It is even wrong about protest when in government. Protest is exactly what creates transformative government that changes the status quo. But Labour very clearly has no desire to do that. Labour is now all about keeping things going, rotten as they are.
As a result we had Stephen Kinnock saying on Question Time last night that Labour would deliver 13,000 new police officers as a result of savings in government procurement. All progress is now apparently dependent on changing the photocopier paper supplier.
I despair of people so small minded.
I doubt their motives for wishing to govern. What is the point of them if not self aggrandisement?
They have none of the answers this country needs.
And they might well be our next government.
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I put a motion at St Ives Cornwall constituency Labour Party that we support all the strikes for better pay and conditions and inform the local press and the parliamentary Labour Party of this.
It passed unanimously.
Keir needs to be made aware of the gap between his views and that of members on this and other matters and I hope other clps will pass similar motions.
Islington North should be allowed to choose their candidate and keep Jeremy Corbyn if they want to.
Circulation of the new film ‘the big lie’ will publicise how he was internally wrongly discredited .
Starmer is just signalling.
I cleared out Corbynism.
I won’t tolerate dissent.
I am in charge, not you.
But. He’s not dumb, just a tad authoritarian.
The largest UK religion is ‘Protest’antism! Anyone who has brought up children or has taught knows that protest is fundamental to human development.
And ‘Stephen Kinnock’ is – a whole topic on its own. “Aggrandisement” is a good descriptor. As a youth in south Wales Labour Party we called them – Careerists.
Stephen Kinnock made me cringe on QT. Nothing like the gift for speaking or the charisma of his dad
Like alot of Labour people they have on the programme (Tracy Brabin embarrassing a few weeks ago), he offered little except to attack the Tories at every opportunity – fine but people get bored with it – and his policy statements were simplistic and vague (green growth?).
I can’t remember the last Labour politician (or any politician) I’ve been impressed with. Maybe it’s age but to me they seem such a low calibre these days
Zara Sultana impresses me- MP for Coventry. She has the guileless charm of Audrey Hepburn plus the passion of Joan of Arc.
I would like her to lead Labour or Independant Labour should such a party form.
Despite this weeks event, I’m still hopeful they won’t be ours.
That Labour’s neoliberal majority in the PLP has never had any desire to make any meaningful change has always been abundantly clear. I’d guess that at least in part their apparent boldness in admitting their true intentions has been enabled by the massive fall in support for the Tories leading them to feeling somewhat unassailable. I’m tempted to agree with them (at least in the short term) but then again 12 months before Truss took over I’d have laughed at someone telling me the Tories would be polling steadily in the low 20s within the year. This is further bourne out by Starmer’s invitation for anyone in disagreement with him to quit the party and in his efforts to ignore party rules with impunity and deny Corbyn the opportunity to be elected by his CLP as Labour candidate. The latter certainly made his mistakes and acted with some degree of naivety but always in good faith and plenty of significant policy ideas: a great MP and public representative but something of an inept politician. Starmer has proven himself to be an inveterate liar even in relation to the rest of his peers in the HoC. As for the rest of the Labour Party’s PLP members, most of them seem quite happy with their current direction and role, brainlessly larping as the self-identified ‘adults’. In the meanwhile the SCG seem to have discovered the formula for invisibility.
The only hope that I can forsee for change or progress in the near or mid-term lies with the Greens. They are and have been (since theiri change of leadership) promoting policies of public ownership while unreservedly supporting strikers and unions – the very issues (and stances) that should be the bread and butter of the Labour Party. I’ll vote and campaign for the Greens in the hope of adding even just one more to their number of seats however unlikely that may prove to be. At best I can only hope that Starmer’s majority following the next GE will be at best a very modest one requiring him and his cabinet to tread with at least some caution.
Richard,
Ministerial agreement has approved a 16% pay rise over two years for senior government lawyers on top of the 3% paid in August 2022 because of fears of a staff mass exodus.
Strange how NHS and local government employees do not rate such pay awards?
So agree with you Richard. ‘Small minded’ indeed. They probably want to say ‘Labour will not be ONLY a party of protest’.
It would be so easy to sound responsible and sound ready for government while still saying they are prepared to do what’s necessary – e.g. to stop sewage flooding rivers, to get energy prices paying for investment in renewables, and not for off-shore surpluses etc. etc.
In other words – they could easily include public ownership as an option if necessary without sounding ideologically wedded to it for its own sake. Surely that would be grown up politics – and that’s seems to be where the majority of the public is.
All your myth busting stuff on here – should be pushed at them – so they have to confront the debt / balanced budget issues head on. well before the election.
Laboured and stymied.
That’s Labour and Starmer I’m afraid.
Anybody who thinks Labour has ever been much more than careerist and right wing has not been in it.
I first joined in 1970 (when Israel was already using the anti-semitic smear against Labour students) and quit in 2003 over PFI and reneging on manifesto. I rejoined in 2015 and quit again, forever it seems , when Evans circulated the first list of verboten topics to CLPs and my local one refused a debate on those grounds (why pay subs to an organisation that restricts your human rights?).
For all that time, most CLPs and Regions were run as personal fiefdoms by small groups of right wing or trade union individuals, often occupying multiple positions at different levels. Nothing changed when the ‘men in suits’ arrived with Kinnock, and apart from the brief Corbyn Spring, that was it.
Starmer is far more within Labour practice, as opposed to the imagined tradition, than many realise.
John Griffin – you nailed it brilliantly. You can go back even further – why wasn’t the party called the Socialist or IMO, the Social Democratic party.
I walked away from my union UCATT and a joke of a party – the Socialist Workers party in 74 and politics in general because I could see clearly that they were not really serious about ‘change’. I had witnessed the massive armed police presence around the courthouse in Mould in the corrupt political trial of the Flying Pickets.
What a shame that trade unions or Labour didn’t have likes of Mick Lynch in the 70s. He stays focused and doesn’t let himself get deflected. The Labour party has always had a problem with presentation. They make the same mistake over and over again of defending remarks made by the Nasty party instead of attacking. The Nasties always use fear as a weapon at election time.
Mick Lynch states facts and he demolishes right wing news interviewers and Nasties with ease because he never strays from facts and he isn’t afraid to call someone a liar.
The Labour party has been a corrupt and ineffectual party for far too long. The country needs an honest defiant and true social democratic alternative with careful vetting of members to stop the likes of Tony the Liar, Gordon Gekko and BTL lawyers Like Starmer from joining. Never forget that it was Starmer who ruled that the cold blooded killers of the unarmed Brazilian lad, ordered by Cressida Dick to execute him had no case to answer.
I live in France and the rise of the ‘gilet jaune/yellow vests’ really shocked the French establishment by the simple fact that ‘they had no leader’ – they led themselves. The French press and TV stations tried their best to villify them – it didn’t succeed. I just don’t see an equivalent movement coming into being in the UK.
You have to be serious about change and you have to be ready to stand on the Front Line it is that simple.
i have to say, watching that speech, that was the first time i’d actually listened intently to any starmer speech since he took over the party.
My default position has always been ‘anything but conservative’ but the tone, mannerism, the content, how he came across, i found revolting. It’s a similar kind of feeling of revulsion i get when i hear Suella Bravermann speak on anything.
it was a speech born out of hate, it was a hateful flurry of words directed at effectively millions of people. It was disgusting.
And it’s not like it was even necessary, right? It was basically a message directed at the swing voting managerial class, who all get their opinions from the sunday times, and maybe a bit of Guardian.
But it also completely alienated, surely, millions of working class voters. WHat on earth are public sector workers going to think, listening to that?
I’ve never found it more difficult to vote for the least worst option then i have now – i gave Starmer the benefit of the doubt, thinking ok, he’s being politically savvy, he’s trying to cover off all the voting bases – but that speech was more then that, it was the first time i’d seen his true intent on it, and it was vicious. Nasty.
What a horrible person, in some ways he came across worse than Sunak! What a total disaster for the UK, more misery for the next decade.
What is the point in continuing to live here?
You ask good questions
I’ve already taken the decision not to live in the Fascist state and have relocated to the Caribbean.
Richard,
Starmer is ignoring the mood of the country. Labour is Tory lite parroting “economic orthodoxy”. Perhaps Labour is waiting to be anointed by Murdoch and it will be the “Sun what won it” again.
I couldn’t agree more. It’s noticeable how little flak he’s received from the RW press. I think he’s been tapped up as the next PM. He looks awkward though, as if he knows he’s betrayed something in himself. You can almost see the cognitive dissonance. Ultimately though he’s what the establishment wants. And what the establishment wants it gets.
It is hard to be optimistic looking at UK politics. We can only hope the darkest hour is before the dawn.
Starmer is only able to act as he does because he has union support on the NEC. The unions must be getting tired of the PLP thinking Labour is theirs to do with as they wish. It’s time the unions acted to reclaim the Labour party. If that means cutting the PLP loose to form a new party, so be it. The alternative is to abandon the Labour party altogether an start again. What we have now is worse than the Tories, because it pretends to offer an alternative, when clearly it craves only power without either vision or backbone.
I suspect change on this issue will be delivered by the unions in the end
I’m Green not Labour and have resigned myself to having to tactically vote at the next election living in a so called safe seat. Thankfully as I live in the South West, that probably means Lib Dem, not Labour, and they are at least honest and will work with other parties constructively.
I totally despair at the rhetoric coming out of Labour. As a former nurse from the Thatcher era, I understand how desperate NHS staff are and the appalling way they are being treated. It feels like Starmer is constantly saying what focus groups are saying they want to hear. But it’s totally tone deaf, because I think after all the corruption and lies most people are longing for honesty and integrity not more spin.
We need PR and collaborative not confrontational politics desperately. This toxic two party system serves nobody and we can do better than voting for the least bad option.
For a long time Ive argued that it is better to vote for Starmer than four more years of Tories. I still believe that. It is better we get Labour in than the Tories.
But once Labour are in, we need to create a new genuinely left wing party in order to put pressure on Labour in the same way ukip radicalised the Tories.
Looking at you Jeremy.
Not Jeremy
We have to do better than he did
I agree- that could happen. If Labour are slightly better than Tory then vote Labour – unless a leftwing party is available and makes headway.
Are the Greens improving and getting interested in the workers?
Starmer has jettisoned Socialism . At a time when socialism is needed as it was in 1945 it is ironical that the party that describes itself as democratic socialist is attempting to eradicate it for the foreseeable future. On every membership card it says the party is
Starmer has jettisoned socialism. Ironically, the Party that describes itself on every membership card a democratic socialist is determined to make sure the voters will not have the choice to vote for the only thing that can rescue our country. Orwell wrote in a famous essay in 1941 that the only way we could win this war was to implement socialism. The British people needed something to hope for if they were to survive total war. History proves he was right. The Attlee government changed our country out of all recognition. I come from the industrial working class. My grandad was miner sent down the pit at the age of 12. My Mum and Dad gave me chapter and verse on the hell that was the 10 30s. for working people. I came into the world just in time to benefit from the labour policies. Fear of unemployment, poor health, poverty ,poor diet,bad education was replaced by hope. KIDs from ordinary backgrounds went to university. Real full employment was there for the first time in history. Young people bought their own homes . Living standards rose . There was low inflation and low interest rates. Socialists like me want that back. If it can be done once it can be done again. The history of the Labour Party is replete with treachery from the Right. The present leadership is in the same mould as Ramsey McDonald , Jimmy Thomas, Philip Snowden, the Gang of Four , Reg Prentice, Desmond Donnelly and others too numerous to list. They all made a very good living from the Labour Party thanks to its hard working members and the Unions. They all did their bit to prevent the people from enjoying improved lives. In 2023 those who lived through the years of social democracy find ourselves wondering how we have regressed to something like the 193os and how it is the party I was a member of for 6 decades refuses implement the necessary remedies.