There is much discussion on Labour's electoral prospects in the media this morning. It is as if the coming week's local elections are turning attention to the general election that we must have in the next eighteen months or so.
Despite their continuing poll lead, there is no certainty Labour will win the next election. To do so it has to do three things.
First, it has to promise to make people better off.
Second, it has to tackle the problems caused by Brexit. It must stop saying it will make Brexit work and say it will do something a great deal better.
And third, it has to say it will pay public sector workers a great deal more or no one will believe a word it says about improving them.
The problem is that it cannot do the first and third of these because it is committed to austerity even though there is thirteen years of evidence that austerity does not work. And it cannot do the second because Labour has a totally warped view of democracy that is dedicated to denying people what they want, which now includes revisiting Brexit.
If only they tackled Brexit and abandoned austerity Labour would sail into office.
As it is it looks like they will limp into being a lame-duck administration.
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You are so right. Labour have been infuriating. The best way to avoid a potential stroke is to ignore them. They are a disaster. I can’t understand the reasons for their tin-ear approach. Due to Starmer and Streeting?
As far as the local election goes, in my area none of the candidates have made any pledges of what there intentions would be or even try to do if elected. There is no offer made for why you should vote for any one of them….
I might go down there and ask that question of what the individuals plans are, but as it stands there is no campaign or offer or representation. They are just people with a political party behind them and I can’t really see any difference between any of them just names. This problem excasberates when you then go to the next level of the party behind them where there is no difference there in any meaningful way either.
So when somone quotes the “suffragettes” and their extraordinary sacrifice in order to gain women the vote in democracy which brought about good changes it is with the candidates I feel most disgusted in my area with as they are the ones actually destroying democracy. I would go as far to say that, it’s not about what you will do more that you can get on the payroll and like winning a lottery ticket. For all the noise in the media the politics is totally silent on why I should vote and for what. They said democracy dies with a whimper and It is true but also very upsetting.
“vote the tories out” is not a way to run a campaign, I want to vote for what I think is the person who has the best vision for the area regardlessa of what party they are from. None of them it would seem have any pledge or vision just “hope you vote for me.” written on a card.
Starmer has to be a Tory infiltrator.
➡️ He is pro privatisation of the NHS https://tinyurl.com/4w9wyx32
➡️ Has reneged on a number of his leadership election pledges https://tinyurl.com/2p9566hf
➡️ He is anti-democratic:
—-➡️ Starmer has prevented the people of North Islington from being able to make a democratic choice for their representative.
—-➡️ You can not vote tactically (Alastair Campbell was expelled for admitting so) https://tinyurl.com/betrdcc4
—-➡️ You can not have your own opinions “if you don’t like the changes we have made, I say the door is open and you can leave.” https://tinyurl.com/329x6tmb
Bizarrely, Labour is a party that does not want people like me. Are there any other parties that refuse members?
This! I’m so over Labour. It seems hard to believe I actually joined the party, got my posters up and placard out, and proselytized for them back in 2017. Back then it seemed there was actually something to believe in, something to give one hope for a better future. Not now.
A friend of mine is standing (for the Greens) and on their leaflet it says what they would hope to do. Obviously whether any of that gets done rather depends on who else gets voted in, as it requires a majority to run a council. Fortunately the local candidates of various parties have had the good sense to agree a shared set of goals so that if a coalition is required (which is often the case) they already know what they would do, as a minimum. Any additional stuff would need to be negotiated, but given the reasonable level of trust that exists, this should work out.
All of this was in the teeth of intense pressure NOT to work together in any form from the various national party central offices (bar the Greens). They even threaten to expel members for talking to other parties!
There are alos people who claim that trying to work together is anti-democratic, as people should have choice, and a set of different programmes to choose from – even though only one party of the 5 major ones can actually get a majority. This is because only one has enough candidates. You’d be surprised how difficult it is to find people willing to stand!
Fully agreed.
And this is interesting too, because as well as not finding Stymied convincing it sets out that remedies are needed inside government as well as policy:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/apr/30/anthony-seldon-boris-johnson-at-10-biography-interview
Indeed – “…for the moment Starmer is disappointing, because there is this enormous desire for renewal. But Starmer seems micro when he could be macro, cautious when he could be passionate, dull where he could be inspirational.”
And earlier “The great prime ministers are all there at moments of great historical importance … But they have to respond to them well. … Johnson had Brexit, he had the pandemic, he had the invasion of Ukraine and incipient third world war. He could have been the prime minister he craved to be, but he wasn’t, because of his utter inability to learn.”
Well, I suppose a head teacher would say something like that!
What I find annoying about Labour is that support for a real alternative has arguably not been this high since 1945. After the war the Tories wanted to basically take us back to the good old, bad old days. Good for Tories, their backers and friends, bad for everyone else. Labour offered a genuine alternative, although based on the Liberal thinking of Keynes and Beveridge, it was radically different from what the Tories wanted. Labour won as they offered something new and different.
Eventually, the Tories did accept that change, but only because it was the only way they could get re-elected. They have always hated what came out of the post war change, the welfare state and state intervention in times of need. Their number one goal has always been to reduce the role of the state. They have never believed that the state can do some things better, like an NHS, or an affordable roof over your head.
After Brexit, covid, Putin’s war and a cost of living crisis that the Tories have used to impose austerity on the majority, while a minority, Tory backers, friends, spivs, speculators, greed-flation merchants are doing very well, more people than ever want an alternative, not more of the same. So, here are some things which Labour could do but will not.
1) Don’t fight the Tories on their battle grounds of emotion and hatred. Don’t resort to making it personal.
2) Expose the Tory myth that they are tax cutters. Expose the public debt myth. Tories always create more debt than Labour when in power, yet the public are sold the myth that it is the opposition that tax and spend.
3) Expose the myth that running the economy is like running the household budget. That is fantasy, total crap, there is no comparison.
4) Accept there is a role for QE and public spending for the public good. I can think of several areas of crisis that could be helped by this approach, the NHS and a genuine commitment to build affordable housing to rent for a start.
As for policies.
1) Apply to rejoin the single market and promote a more harmonious relationship with the EU.
2) Take back into public ownership gas, electricity, water and railways. These have failed as private companies and many have just become private monopolies. The water companies record on polluting our rivers and sea is a disgrace allowed by the Tories. Expose it. Make it clear that public ownership in those area of greatest public need and national security is in the nations best interest. I reckon it would be quite popular.
3) Commit to a green economy. No sticking plasters.
4) Commit to constitutional reform not just of the second chamber. Mandatory voting, reduce the voting age to 16 and introduce PR and I doubt we ever see another Tory Government.
5) A full commitment to the NHS (including dentistry) and no further privatisation.
6) Commitment to finally address the need for affordable housing. For most people a safe roof over your head is the most important step to a better life. The Tories free market approach is giving that security to less and less people as time passes. Labour need to recognise that the housing crisis has to be a high priority not an afterthought that will probably be forgotten about once in power.
Well, that’s a start. Unfortunately, I think New, new Labour, will probably miss this latest 1945 moment and it will soon become business as usual if they do win the next election. Truth is, right now they are only ahead because they are not the Tories. I know they have to win a FPTP election to get power, they need Tory heartland votes to win, but they need to offer more than Tory lite, otherwise, what’s the point?
Dead right MarP. We’ve just voted Green for the local elections, and will vote Green for the GE unless labour wake up and either come up with some decent progressive policies, or lead a proper tactical voting campaign which would probably mean them standing aside in favour of the LD’s here.
But at the moment, all we’re getting is: no to PR, no to tactical voting, no to being honest and sensible about the relationship with the EU.
Absolutely pathetic.
https://bright-green.org/2023/04/30/the-greens-are-aiming-to-go-from-2-to-16-councillors-in-east-hertfordshire/
They could also win Hereford, Lancaster, East Suffolk and Brighton and Hove.
No vote for me this year in County Durham, but beware of voting for independents. All the independents vote with the tories every time on Durham County Council.
They do not have to get back the red wall as third of the electorate did not vote ate the last election. These people already know how bad the Tories are so you are half way there already.
You’ve said it all except affordable renting, which is easily fixed by the government fixing rents which will destroy the BTL parasites, By doing this it will crash the housing market – if you only bought to make a profit, tough shit. This will mean that housing will once again achieve rational pricing – ergo making housing affordable and costing the tax payer nothing to achieve the desired result.
By introducing capital gains tax on all property transactions it will forever remove housing as a profit making asset and it will become what it always should have been – a necessity for a decent life. If you want to make money and why not – study the markets thoroughly and then invest, remembering – the basic that they work on different combinations of greed and fear
The French used to have a very sensible attitude to excluding housing as a profit asset – 100% capital gains tax on the first 2 years and then on a sliding scale over 18 years to a nil rate – imagine someone suggesting this to the klootzak Starmer – he just might have a cardiac event.
I think the answer is not CGT on all transactions – because mobility is important
I think charging on final disposal on lifetime gains is the right thing to do – and fair, and not hard to write the legislation although massive numbers would protest
A Brexit alternative will mean some kind of closer relationship with the EU and the single market. . But abandoning austerity is not compatible with the so-called Growth and Stability pact and it’s 3%/60% rules. The Germans are determined to get back to strict adherence to it and removing the numerous get-outs there have been in the last few years.
No one believes in that rule now because no one complies with it so that is not a good argument
Labour used to have a spectrum of members, but it now seems very right wing. I wonder what policies make one left or right wing in the party? The obvious candidates include:
➡️ Nationalisation of energy
➡️ Nationalisation of rail
➡️ Nationalisation of NHS
➡️ No privatisation of any part of the NHS
➡️ Adequate funding of public services
➡️ Abolition of the monarchy
➡️ Free education
➡️ Affordable housing
➡️ In/out of Europe
➡️ Adoption of the Euro
Are these then accumulative, or do some automatically make one a full-on lefty?
When Starmer was elected he said he would adopt most of these pledges, except for joining the Euro, obviously, which was never a labour pledge. He has reneged on all ten pledges, which is why socialists don’t trust him any more.
The local elections are important to show him that he cannot take voters for granted, particularly those he has kicked out of the party, at least 200,000.
I keep telling people who say they will not vote and would rather waste their vote than vote Starmer to at least vote green. The response is usually that it would be a wasted vote, but no vote is more wasted than a non-vote. These local elections should give some sort of power back to the people, if they are willing to use it.
Your last paragraph is very true JenW. I’ve been tempted to note vote in GE’s because the poxy FPTP has always disenfranchised me, but in the end I’ve always done so, up to and including 2019 tactically. I’ll plead guilty to not bothering voting in the European Parliament elections until I woke up after 2016 and voted for the last one (where thanks to the de Hondt system my vote did count) before Brexit, and I also plead guilty to only starting to vote in the council elections the last couple of times.
A vote for the Greens that doesn’t result in a green candidate winning is better than not expressing an opinion at all. Ditto a GE. This wasted vote stuff is more bollocks from the tories to try to get progressives to give up voting, and cynical blackmail from labour to try and corner the progressive vote.
I’d vote labour if they were credible as a progressive party, or if they led an anti-tory progressive voting alliance and were the strongest non tory in my ward or constituency, but they’re not doing either of those things are they?
They’re not….
They are claiming they could win my ward from a distant third last time
That’s amongst many things they say that I do not believe
All these people saying they dislike the current government but won’t vote Labour is music to the ears of the Conservative party.
Can’t these posters see that by splitting the anti-Tory vote and voting for a minor party such as the Greens – particularly in marginal constitutencies – the prospect of the Tories being re-elected again is not just a danger but highly likely?
If you assume that most people on here do not want another Conservative government then they are just going to have to hold their nose and vote for the opposition ABC (Anyone But Conservative) party most likely to win, ie Labour or Liberal Democrats
That the country is in dire need of reform and a change of direction is accepted. The first step is sending this corrupt and incompetent government into electoral oblivion
That is a problem Labour creates
Wh6 should they assume they can present a centre right austerity agenda and say the left must vote for it whilst denying electoral reform?
Agreed, but why should that make us increase the chance of another Tory GOVT??
Because that is what Labour will deliver?
He is at least as bad as Cameron
Greens may only be a “minor” party at the moment, but they are steadily moving into the mainstream and the local elections will see a huge increase in their vote and seats and may even take control of some councils such as Herefordshire, Mid Suffolk, Lancaster. East Hertfordshire and Brighton and Hove. They are the only party fully committed to tackling climate change and support for public sector workers getting pay rises in line with inflation. Disillusioned former Tory voters are turning to the Greens rather than the ineffective Labour and LD parties.
That’s good news Bill, if it turns out to happen. We need as many people to vote green as possible given the climate emergency. History and science are proving them to be right. And no whining from labour about splitting the progressive vote, thanks.
Sorry Robert, that’s just not on. The tories winning undeserved and unearned terms in government is a function of FPTP and labour’s own stupidity and arrogance. Labour refused to change FPTP when they had a golden opportunity in 1997, they won’t change it in future, and they won’t work to overcome it through an anti tory alliance.
The greens actually have genuine progressive policies and you feel would enact them if they got the chance. Labour far less so. So don’t blame progressive voters, blame labour.
To continually tack to the right on so many areas and then try to blackmail progressives into voting for them on the basis that voting for the greens splits the vote is a pathetic abnegation of responsibility on labour’s part. Why the hell is the voter supposed to vote tactically to get the tories out but labour makes no effort to work with other parties in a campaign to do so? Why the hell should progressive voters not vote for a party that stands for what they want and instead ‘hold their noses’ yet again to vote for one that stands for little of what they want because of a shit voting system left in place by labour and the tories?
Not voting tactically seems to me to be the only bit of the party rule book that Starmer stands by. Why should he expect members to vote for his party when he has refused to abide by what he stood for when elected?
Other parties are available
Virtually all the policies contributors say they want the Labour Party to support are actually Green Party policies. Is it really rational to vote for Labour and against what you think the vast majority of people in our country need? A large vote for the Greens would actually upend UK politics. Just imagine it!
Indeed!
Were they not labour policies before the green party existed?
To quote the Labour lady on the Laura Kuenssberg show on Sunday morning, “Any policy that we have has to be fully funded and costed.” Yet they’re never asked just what this means in practice and what the implications are – I’m confident they don’t actually know.
So am I
That lady saying all policy has to be funded and costed was clearly speaking with a forked tongue.
We’ve heard several Labour attacks on sewage being released into rivers, and never once a costing to prevent this.
We’re doomed I tell ya.
It’s what Simon Cooke calls Magic Wand Syndrome: “the absolute conviction that all we need for something to happen is for politicians to agree that it should happen”.
I have stated the solution a few times already – the insanity of flushing toilets. In a young household, 40% of water used is to flush toilets, further insanity is that this is treated aka drinking water – to produce safe potable drinking water doesn’t come for free. As you get older you need to use the toilet more often, in older households this can mean 60-65% of water is used/wasted flushing toilets.
It is easy to create systems to collect and compost human waste. Once created and steam treated all pathogens are killed. Such plants will require only a few operatives. Instead of polluting rivers and seas the resulting compost will be used to raise the fertility of arable land. Far too rational and sensible to ever come about.
https://weownit.org.uk/blog/5-reasons-why-regulation-won%E2%80%99t-solve-sewage-crisis-and-5-actions-would-help
For Stuart Crawford.
None of them include having the sort of toilets you advocate.
How does human waste get to the plants you suggest without using running water?
I hope that Laura Kuenssberg is replaced by someone like Mehdi Hasan. He has a good style, understands the politics, and doesn’t give interviewees a free ride. See many examples on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Mehdi+Hasan
I can thoroughly recommend his new book:
Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Win-Every-Argument-Debating-Persuading/dp/B0B6WWN5ZX/
Yes, I am reading that book.
I agree with nearly all the comments on this page. Maybe better the devil you know than the one you don’t.
My guess is that in a few months our government (did I get the right word?) will say – thanks to your hard work and restraint we are now in a good economic position. The money will flow and good times will seem to be back, then an election.
We don’t vote Labour and risk a tory government because it is the only tool we have to make Labour wake up and listen. Only by losing an election they clearly should have won and perhaps by those most complicit also losing their seats (a tenuous hope though that is) can we hope for Labour to become what this nation so desperately needs. Ah, but the arrogance of them – to believe that not only can they win in an electoral system that historically precludes them from power 3 times out of 4, but that they can actively refuse the very change that would guarantee them the premier seats in government potentially for perpetuity. Hmm, on reflection, do I mean arrogance or is this just Dunning Kruger writ large upon the long suffering shoulders of the British people?
If Labour win with a small majority the 30 leftwing MPs will gain more power.
In the Tao there is a line that has been a mantra of mine that has kept me alive a few times in my life – discard hope, grasp reality.
Like many others I see clearly that 97 was the best and last time to change the UK in a peaceful and truly meaningful way, that time has come and gone.
Lawyers – Will Shakespeare got it right centuries ago, I accepted that as fact as a young man. Starmer has emasculated the Labour party but in truth it lost it’s way before the end of the 1950s’. Slowly but surely the Nasties have gradually undone everything that was achieved post war.
If you have a Rosa Luxembourg mentality you will end up like her – discard hope, grasp reality.
Richard – mobility is not affected, only the price of property is. Indeed with drastically lower pricing, mobility is increased as is the ability for ordinary people to invest in their future.
I don’t agree
JenW – it requires thinking out of the box and is very simple. 10 gallon plastic bins with snap top lids. You remove the nibs on a normal toilet seat and have a rubber seal instead. The only time their are nasty smells is when you are using the toilet, I think most normal people have the capacity to handle this.All your kitchen waste goes in there as well.When the bin is nearly full you fir the snap top lid and place it outside your home for collection. Just like your normal waste and recycling is picked up via collection.
Instead of a very real problem and having to build very expensive sewage treatment plants it is composted, sterilized and used as totally safe compost enriching the arable land – no more polluted rivers or seas.
The only problem is that vested interests will lose out which is why it will never be adopted. The Chinese long ago used to call it ‘night soil’ and in the middle ages in Europe as a whole toilets used to be placed over ‘the midden’ where animal dung was put.
Along with this rational solution to a preoblem that need’nt exist ban a lot of very toxic ‘cleaning solutions’ as well.
In our forlorn trip around the UK looking for a piece of land that did’nt have a stupid price attached we stayed at a B&B that was an olg Georgian house. the owners were a Brummy couple who had lived there for over 17 years. They found when they bought the place that it had a Victorian brick built fosse septique (I’ve forgotten the English) they asked the Oswestry council, engineer and he told them that if they didn’t use any toxic cleaning agents (bleach etc.) they would never have to have it emptied. He was right, 17 years and counting.
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Yeah, right. And do you have one of those now? If not, why not?
Who are you going to pressgang into emptying them along with other waste?
I couldn’t have one, as having had two aortic dissections I am not supposed to carry anything weighing more than 5kg, so who would carry mine out to the pavement for collection?
You are welcome to go back into the past if you want. There’s a better system than that, and not quite so far back. When my eldest son was a year old we lived in a house with a toilet in a row across a footpath along with every other house’s. They were old miners cottages, and probably built for such a situation, where the soilmen came and emptied them, before plumbing was put in the street. Perhaps you ought to suggest that we also only have one electric point in our houses, as we had in that house.
I hope you still use newspaper cut into squares.
Far from going back into the past – it’s actually moving into a rational, cost effective and far healthier future. It’s bizarre that you gave the answer to your own question. Just as refuse vehicles collect household waste and recycling so the plastic containers can be picked up and a sterilised replacement would be left, every house would have spares for as many toilets as the house had.
One of our reasons for leaving the UK is the increasingly unfriendly and separate lives that so many UKers now ‘live’. We live in a small town where people are friendly and neighbourly, this is called normality here. When my wife began to suffer health problems even people I only knew in passing in other streets stopped to ask how she was. When I myself had to visit a nearby city hospital for an RDV/appointment our neighbour across the road, Odette made frequent visits to my wife, Odette is 88. A major difference between the mainland and the island is that if you say good morning when passing another human in many places in the UK they would think you mad or weird but that is the reality in most European countries and I have lived in 4. Whereas if you don’t recognise and greet a passing stranger here you are considered a freak or probably have mental health problems.
Facts – the UKs rivers are the most polluted in western Europe as are our beaches and seas. Fact – water shortages now and will be in the future a major problem. A minimum of 40% of all household water used is to flush toilets, with the elderly who use toilets more often that can easily rise to 65% +. Fact to use treated water which comes at a cost to flush toilets is totally irrational.
And what’s your response to the Victorian sicknesses that are returning to the UK now?
What’s your response to the energy crisis? One electric point in each house, or go back to gas mantles or coal fires?
I could never manage to get the water hot enough in the copper when putting coals underneath it. I could never manage to cook in the oven next to the fire. Sometimes hot air swirled round the oven, sometimes it didn’t.
What sort of toilet do you have?
I have a friend who lives on a farm near Richard. They have a septic tank, but they still have flushing toilets.