It seemed like a morning when a poll was required:
Are Keir Starmer's six new pledges good enough to persuade people to vote Labour?
- No (74%, 372 Votes)
- I don't know (14%, 69 Votes)
- Yes (12%, 59 Votes)
Total Voters: 500
Loading ...Remember, I am not asking if they persuade you. I am asking if you think they will persuade the currently unpersuaded, which is who they are, apparently, aimed at.
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Persuade? No, I think not. The pledges are not intended to give reasons for someone who tends towards supporting another party (or not voting at all) to vote for Labour. They are intended to provide as little reason as possible to change a vote away from Labour. Labour are already ahead and the Conservatives have lost. It is all about Labour not losing that lead.
Most voters haven’t twigged yet that Starmer made up his ten pledges to get himself elected. He certainly didn’t cost them out because now he says the country can’t afford them! So if they haven’t worked that out then his latest six pledges will not be viewed with any suspicion!
“Based on the moral case for socialism, here is where I stand” :-
https://www.clpd.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Keir-Starmers-10-Pledges.pdf
Caveat: I didn’t bother costing them out of course as any responsible politician would because I knew I’d be telling you after I’d got the leadership job we couldn’t afford them anyway. What price socialism ha ha ha!
“Another future is possible.” hmm
More like “the future never happens, here are 10 pledges that will make you feel good to vote for us.”
I will likely vote Labour next time just to get rid of the Tories, not because I trust the party or its leader. Labour are not good, they’re just less worse.
As for the pledges, I don’t believe anything Starmer says.
There isn’t an option “Very sadly they probably will”.
And BTW, as Bob Hope said, I am celebrating the 60th anniversary of my 21st birthday today.
Happy birthday
Pledges = more noise from LINO. Actions & statements often speak louder than pledges. Extract from G’ today:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/may/16/starmers-gear-change-shows-inevitability-of-labour-election-victory
The article maintains the G’s usual standards of……..shamelessness and sycophancy wrt LINO.
“As Rachel Reeves laid out her plans for the economy, it was the Boots chief executive, Sebastian James, who stood alongside her. David Cameron is – or at least, was – a frequent visitor to James’s Tuscan villa; and the the pair are pictured alongside their fellow Old Etonian Boris Johnson in that famous photo of the Bullingdon Club. But now, he said, he was backing Labour as the best chance to revive the high street.”
So familiar faces (btw Boots – owner: Walgreens of lllinois USA) lining up to support safe pairs of hands that have been groomed to follow the neo-liberal party line. US corporations have little interest in reviving anything and in the case of James, I’d hazard a guess that the last time he was in a UK high street was a very long time ago (geological time?).
UK serfs – a vote for LINO is a vote for “Dismal No-Change” as suported by Tories.
I noticed the cynicism of this
I loved the Orwellian “DoubleSpeak” in the following:-
“If anything, it was the Labour leader’s speech itself that was the least groundbreaking, a reassertion of his promises and rhetoric on how Labour was now the party of core issues, not fringe obsessions.”
As if his original ten pledges to gain the leadership and which he now says we mostly can’t afford weren’t “core issues” and not “fringe obsessions. The Guardian is disgusting it should be ashamed for its sycophancy!
What is LINO, other than floor covering?
Labour In Name Only
“You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”
A majority of people have been fooled for 14 years. Conservatives are doomed whatever they now do because people have stopped being fooled; ” if you haven’t done it in 14 years” you never will.
Labour will probably be elected, but many will vote in spite of knowing that Labour’s pledges are b**ls**t. So, no, Kier’s pledges are unlikely to persuade anyone who has not already decided, despite his moral bankruptcy, to vote for him.
So in summary Starmer will say I’ll be doing this and that then five minutes later I won’t because we can’t afford it but vote for me because at least I have good intentions unlike the Tories. You might think a so called progressive newspaper like the Guardian would think hang on a minute lets investigate how the country’s money system works to see if progressive policies are affordable it’s morally bankrupt not to do so given the misery and deaths caused by the lack of such policies. But no they won’t! Britain in a nutshell all bleeding heart but no action!
You appear disappointed in the event of a Labour victory? Is this how you really feel?
I will be profoundly unexcited and deeply worried by a Labour victory because I find it very difficult to spot real differences between them and the Tories
@ Peter Colledge What’s disappointing is having so-called leaders who say “the country can’t afford it” in response to badly needed policies yet these so-called leaders refuse point blank to do any homework on how the country’s monetary system really works despite centuries of spending from the Ways and Means Account which is automatically filled with money created from thin air as government implements its spending plans!
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/sites/bartlett_public_purpose/files/the_self-financing_state_an_institutional_analysis_of_government_expenditure_revenue_collection_and_debt_issuance_operations_in_the_united_kingdom.pdf
Pledges.
Missions.
Steps.
The five steps do seem rather like the missions:
https://labour.org.uk/missions/
My five concerns are:
1. Can Starmer and Labour be trusted?
2. Does the new legislation go far enough?
3. What is the level of private sector interference/influence in the above?
4. What is the level of public sector investment in the above?
5. What about foreign policy, voting reform and transport?
Here’s a July 2023 article by Starmer which reveals how useless he is:-
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/15/labour-approach-britain-failed-tory-rebuild
Not difficult to re-word it and put a Tory MP’s name to it! Tells you all you need to know why Britain’s in a sorry state!
I think most voters know this is just another word salad. You could say summertime is salad time!
This current version of the Labour isn’t everything that I would like to see, but some of it is quite good and a step in the right direction. A lot of the negatives in Labour are still better than what the Tories will do if they stay in power. In my area I think STOPTHETORIES.VOTE will be a Labour vote. I have in the past voted Green, and look where that got us in the current FPTP system we have.
I admire your optimism and wish I could share it
I wouldn’t put it as optimism, it is simply that what Labour have is better than what another Tory administration would do. I just see the political reality we are in under FPTP system. I would much prefer to vote Green in this election as I have in others. I just think if we don’t get the Tories out things in this country will get worse, it is that bad…and STOPTHETORIES.VOTE is telling me in my area that is what I will need to vote for unfortunately. If that changes and I can vote Green then I will do so. Unless FPTP changes I don’t see any other option but to try and push Labour into listening to people like you, and others, because we could do so much better.
I’m hoping that if Labour does manage to take power it will do more than it says it will, and I say that because from what I have seen when past Labour governments when talking about bold policies it tends to get scared into backing down by Tory talking points and then media destroying Labour into submission even though they were costed policies from Corbyn to what we see now with Starmer. Labour in, Starmer out if he doesn’t change course to do things that are perfectly possible as you have pointed out in some of your videos, another way is possible if he listens. How we make him listen I have no idea.
Is there a politician with the moral backbone to say their party’s No1 pledge is to eradicate poverty? (And who could object to the principle?)
It is surely an indictment of our politicians, and their criminal negligence, that a rich country like the UK still harbours poverty. So many of our problems stem from this one fact. Those of us who are well off, or rich or obscenely wealthy are so because so many live in poverty. The result is grotesque inequality. Many health problems can be traced to poverty, an impoverished diet rich in sugar has roots in poverty, poor health and access to quality healthcare likewise, so too housing, educational outcomes and chances, employment, opportunities for leisure, travel, participation in politics and so on and on, all circumscribed, restrained, restricted to a greater or lesser degree by poverty.
To tackle poverty from the non-neoliberal viewpoint that this is one of the fundamental obligations of government as part of the social contract between those elected and the citizenry, it would require, among other things, redistribution and investment – in infrastructure, health services, education, housing, employment, climate change mitigation and more.
Unfortunately, it won’t happen because neoliberalism and its offspring, feral capitalism, has poverty built-in as a necessary condition.
The eradication of poverty – alongside the other few at curses of modern civilisation – has always been what I am about.
People will vote Labour not because of Keir Starmer but because of Rishi Sunak. Sunak’s ego is Labour’s greatest asset and it will win them the election.
So sad that many will vote Labour expecting wonders but also a lot just expecting crumbs! In reality the Labour Party lost its capacity to do much good nearly fifty years ago when it succumbed to the dead hand of Neoliberal Monetarism mainly thanks to Dennis Healey. Now it would seem Rachel Reeves is providing the latest continuity of this ideology for the very rich!
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=50005
Yes, I agree. Inviting in the IMF was the turning point, when an American style of thinking about society and the economy was imposed as a result. As I recall, the first scalp the IMF demanded was education: no more egalitarian, visionary thinking, thank you very much. It’s rather like the import of infected American blood (blood taken from the most deprived and desperate members of US society, for a trifling price) to produce Factor 8. The poison was introduced and since has been remorselessly working its way through our society.
The Washington Consensus has a lot to answer for….
I don’t think in 50 years of voting, with our current system, I’ve ever voted ‘for’ any party just ‘against’ the others. Most of the voters Starmer needs to attract to win are in the middle, not highly political and just want a competent Government, not caring that much about the name on the tin. The Tory Governments we’ve had since 2016 have been SO obviously incompetent with evidence voters can’t miss Sunak is continuing this and doing Starmer’s campaigning for him.
Starmer trades on his probity as an ex DPP, yet is head of an organisation that eschews transparency and human decency. As equally as it treats ‘the wrong sort of Jewish member’ with distain, so it treats its activists – in this case a desperately grieving Palestinian.
As Maya Angelou said ” when people show you who they are, believe them”
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/freedom-of-information/labour-accused-racism-palestinian-dalloul-neder-angela-rayner-subject-access-request-gaza/?utm_source=SEGMENT%20-%20Newsletter%3A%20oD%20weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Labour%20accused%20of%20%27racism%27%20following%20transparency%20failure&_kx=yXiv5PbbtCEcAQMvoD5i1nt-8CB0dAyPAgFNlpGfI8n1STm44pmezYiTqQvpKOZ7.YjCYwm
Starmer’s Labour party is indeed transformed from Labour. It is unrecognisable, and not in a good way.
I am with Maya Angelou