A few thoughts on what Starmer has had to say this morning:
I think you can tell that I am underwhelmed.
So, too, it appears are the media.
As reboots go, it looks like this one has flopped already.
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The G’ listed some of the stuff – the statements/aspirations are often contradicted by gov policy.
“Raising living standards in every part of the UK.”: How about raising the minimum wage by 20%? 30%?
“Rebuilding Britain with 1.5 million homes in England and fast-tracking planning decisions” But housebuilders would then have a glut of houses. The aim is to control the flow, keep prices high.
“Ending hospital backlogs”. In which area (the easy or hard stuff?)? With what resources?
“Putting police back on the beat” Ignores the trend to big stations. Chief Constable to me (2000s): “I dislike big stations, useless coppers can hide – much more difficult in small stations”. (this is first hand one to one).
“Giving children the best start in life”: So drop the 2-child benefit limit (gives poor kids the worst start in life) and turbo-charge Sure Start.
“Securing home-grown energy” That would mean supporting local energy/community energy – but there is no support, there is no financing mech and GB Energy looks like a PE charter.
Starmer – out of his depth (was he ever in it?)
Thanks, Mike
See these notes added to Mike’s excellent post above: The G’ listed some of the stuff – the statements/aspirations are often contradicted by gov policy.
1 “Raising living standards in every part of the UK.”: How about raising the minimum wage by 20%? 30%?
— Yes, and how about taxes, as proposed in the Taxing Wealth Report, that make a serious impact on inequality. No half measures.
2 “Rebuilding Britain with 1.5 million homes in England and fast-tracking planning decisions” But house-builders would then have a glut of houses. The aim is to control the flow, keep prices high.
— Also, limit the number of square metres of accommodation any family is allowed to own – by rationing as in war-time or by annual charges at rates that increase exponentially.
3 “Ending hospital backlogs”. In which area (the easy or hard stuff?)? With what resources?
— See my note on 1
4 “Putting police back on the beat” Ignores the trend to big stations. Chief Constable to me (2000s): “I dislike big stations, useless coppers can hide – much more difficult in small stations”. (this is first hand one to one).
— Yes smaller stations and fewer cops in cars.
5 “Giving children the best start in life”: So drop the 2-child benefit limit (gives poor kids the worst start in life) and turbo-charge Sure Start.
— Absolutely and invest heavily (See my note on 1)
6 “Securing home-grown energy”. That would mean supporting local energy/community energy – but there is no support, there is no financing mech and GB Energy looks like a PE charter.
— Yes, more *renewable* home grown energy and, even more important, *serious* measures to reduce energy usage, starting immediately. Also, major public education. Let’s have scientists on TV every day (as in Covid) explaining the advantages as well as the need. As this is a matter of humanity’s survival, prevent ignorant people from misinforming and down-playing the dangers.
7 Starmer – out of his depth (was he ever in it?)
— I feel a bit sorry for him. I think he wants a more equal and a more socialist nation but he has accepted neoliberalism. He has probably never devoted the time to studying anything like the Taxing Wealth Report but if he was a student guided by Richard, surely he would be convinced by the logic. It’s really sad that he, other colleagues and his party have accepted gifts which have very probably influenced their judgement.
Thanks, Joe
Well done Mike for listing some very specific policies that Labour ought to have already prepared before they entered into government! If Mike can define these policies, how come Starmer and Labour can’t?!
“Well done Mike for listing some very specific policies that Labour ought to have already prepared before they entered into government! If Mike can define these policies, how come Starmer and Labour can’t?!”
Starmer’s plan was to ‘not do Corbyn’. With that policy-free dogma, everything falls into place.
When you disconnect yourself from the grassroots (even within your own party) outside Whitehall and live in a world of ‘advisors’, corporate business, Blairite ghouls etc, this is what you get. I don’t even understand the defeatist logic behind a ‘reboot’! Just get on with the job of enacting Labour policy! Unless of course you are a willing puppet of other interests……
Yet more pledges, soon to be broken like all his others.
A message to keir Starmer from The Doobie Brothers,
Don’t you feel it growing, day by day
People getting ready for the news
Some are happy, some are sad
Oh, we got to let the music play
What the people need
Is a way to make ’em smile
It ain’t so hard to do if you know how
Gotta get a message
Get it on through
Oh now mama, don’t you ask me why
🙂
Heh, justifiably excoriating.
Will someone save us from Starmer’s repetitious drivel about doing stuff (none of it anywhere near the scale of the work needed to fix this country) only in the name of the “working people”. Why does he continue to lean on such pap?
He nearly lost an election in which he ought to have buried the Tories for good. 40% vote share was not out of reach in July. It was Starmer’s maddeningly crippling caution that pulled the Labour vote share down to the disastrous low 30s. Starmer himself kept the Tories and the obnoxious Reform in the game.
Dear me.
Window dressing. It is Christmas after all.
With regard to housing, they have upped the cost floor threshold so that it makes it more expensive to buy your council house, but the older it is, the cheaper it will still be. The State must not get in the way of ‘aspiration’ even if it is sacrificing its own assets!! Oh no!
My authority has something like close to 400 right to buy (RTB) applications all trying to be squeezed in before the deadline. My authority is also doubling down on checking that these RTB applications are not bogus as there seems to be some very well off people on the housing waiting list!! Some of these units I have had built – they are less than 5 years old. Great. But it shows you that in other authorities, plagued by staff shortages that have encouraged fraud, public assets will be lost to fraud. It is as simple as that.
All that money that has been used to prop up rail privatisation as well. I remember when if BR used to go £1 or £2 million over budget the government was spitting blood. Now its funded much more than it ever was but fares keep being hiked – there is no relenting is there?
We’ve been paying for it all – and we’re going to pay for it all over again. And again. That’as Labour’s plan. And the profits that have walked out the door……………………?
All I have to say to Starmer is just show us the money please, or will you just bugger off – the man’s useless.
My teacher daughter & spouse were thoroughly irritated about that vague “record numbers ready to learn at five” pledge/promise/mission/milestone.
Measured HOW?
Base line for the milestone?
At FIVE?
Aspirational drivel (did he run that past his Deputy? She might educate him about the learning obstacles facing under fives.)
They both immediately said, “Surestart”, and pointed out how neurodiverse children currently can arrive at school having had ZERO interventions on speech & language. Also hunger doesn’t help brain development. Mould and pot noodle in a hotel room don’t help either.
Will “3rd children” without child benefit be covered by the pledge? HOW?
Maybe Starmer isn’t interested in that lower income demographic. We know Rachel Reeves isn’t, she said so before the election – LINO is “not the party for those on benefits”. Of course, if she popped down to her foodbank in Leeds, she’d discover how many working people also rely on benefits not to mention the sick, the disabled and the elderly, all of equal unique infinite value.
Every time McSweeney sends Starmer out for another desperate “relaunch”, he programmes him with even worse-sounding rubbish than the time before.
He isn’t just unconvincing, he is beginning to look excruciatingly, painfully RIDICULOUS.
Do ANY Labour MPs realise what DRIVEL he is coming out with?
I’m beginning to wonder if Ni*** F**a** is writing his speeches. Every time Starmer puts his donated suit and specs on, & spouts this fatuous rubbish, he recruits for Re**** UK.
During the Corbyn purge days, Ruth Smeeth was Starmer’s minder, she even stood next to him for his speeches looking very scarey. Nowadays, McSweeney is doing the ventriloquism.
Starmer criminally IMHO, wasted his 4 years as LOTO, because he didn’t get out and LISTEN to real voters, and he didn’t use the results to develop policies to deliver change. He’s got the “POWER” he prioritised (because of a Tory collapse, not any appeal of his own), but now he doesn’t know what to DO with it.
What really worries me, is that I’m not sure he has a clue as to how ridiculous he sounds, nor what he can do to bring about the “CHANGE” that so many desperately need.
So much to agree with in your comments on education in particular.
Does Starmer know about neurodiversity?
When people talk about the age at which children start school it is important to realise that (here in Scotland) the children are aged between
4 yrs 6months and 5 years 6 months – the youngest start in Europe. They are not all aged 5. There are historical reasons for such an early start, one of which was the desire for factories etc to get women back to work.
Even today the attraction of having to pay less for child minding is a huge factor for families whose child starts school.
The difference in development between an adult aged for example 35 and another aged 36 is non existent, not so with the youngest children. People will say –
“ Oh well, the youngest ones will catch up!” but why should they have to?
The ratio of adults to children in a nursery setting is 1:10. In a Primary School it can be 1:30. Even in the best managed primary 1 class children will spend more time sitting down and being quiet. They are obliged to.
This is not the way to develop language skills. Free play in a nursery is carefully planned and offered. It is designed to give the children a chance to develop skills, concentrate and learn. It will be carefully extended according to what a trained adult observes. In a Primary Class “play” is teacher organised and will tend to fit in with a curriculum.
Finland has one of the most well thought of and planned education systems. Children start formal education much later. Their results are world renowned. We are out of step with most other countries.
Being ready for school is an awful lot more than being toilet trained and able to sit quietly for long periods of time.
One of my sons started school at 4 and 5 days. He was a ‘rising five’ as defined in England, i.e. a late August birthday and so required to start in the first week of September of the year in whiuch he would be five.
In retrospect it was absurd, but we were told we could not appeal at the time.
I was 4 years 2 months @infants. For the first couple of years (perhaps up to 11) I felt stupid. One senses that education is badly organised/under funded.
I started at five but only had one term in reception. Others had three. It took time to recover from that.
Starmer is right that this needs work.
Getting his target wrong did not help.
Maintaining child poverty, as he is, shows he lacks conviction.
I was almost exactly 4 and a half when I went to school in Scotland. School starts in mid-August here and I was born in mid-February.
I was way too young. I was/am unfortunately, for me, left-handed too. Left handers were terrorised by sadistic teachers who were having none of it. We were treated like failures from the get-go.
Not a pleasant experience being made to feel like a square peg being squashed into a round hole at that age.
Left handed is still a crime. Heaven knows why. Like all neurodiversity, it threatens some.
Starmer is without doubt clueless, he is still locked in the rhetoric of election campaigning, dwelling on headlines without detail, spill sprouting anti conservative nonsense as though they are still in office, or harping on about the fantasy of a Blackhole with a nice £20 billion tagline or using the everything is broke which next year will be some dictionaries most used word.
The reality is this is not some homogeneous society, one suffers we all suffer, where every five year old can’t read or write, or the country has collapsed in to criminality and anarchy because unlike in Hollywood there is a copper on every corner.
The reality is more likely that if the government did absolutely nothing but ensuring the wheels of government moved, without political interference just to justify their existence, no need for bi annual budgets with a plus or minus few billion here or there the country would run ok.
All that is needed is when a problem arises they quickly and quietly solve it, no song and dance, so impossible five or six pillars. They just keep a steady eye on the big picture while the rest of get on with what ever we need to do, one maybe just keeping food on the table whilst for another it might be bringing a start up to market, even a five year old with good parents turning up at school with the ability to read, write and matriculate to a suitable level of a five/six year old.
So my message to Starmer and his bunch of deluded fools is simple, just do your jobs and cut the crap.
Why should a five year old need to read and write before getting to school?
Speaking, counting, eating, toilet training and dressing I get.
But why read and write?
I’m not sure why not. I see counting on the same level as reading and writing.
I started school at 4, by which time I had sorted speaking, counting, eating, toilet training, dressing, reading and writing. I spent a large part of my early education being bored to tears. During reading lessons, I would read the current book while the teacher helped those who had problems with the first page.
I was never much good at socialising, which wasn’t a problem as I usually had my nose in a book while the others were playing. By the time they were teaching us something new I was so used to being bored and staring out of the window that I dropped behind.
Education should be about teaching the child and if the child needs help with speaking, that help should be given when it is most needed. Education should not be seen as only the responsibility of the school – a child’s education should be continuing all the time. If the child needs help in other areas that needs to be recognised too.
Try parenting boys and see how reading and writing pre-school goes. It is a very different story from girls, which is one reason why Starmer irritated me. The failure to recognise this in education is serious.
I think my point is that education is for every child, and if a child attends school unable to speak (or count, or read etc) or able to read as well as the teacher, the education system has to ensure the necessary action is taken to ensure that child receives the best education for them. Surestart certainly helped with that, but there has been, for a very long time, a failure to treat each child according to their needs.
I don’t expect Starmer to do anything about that
This comment worried me and I have been thinking about it.
“Try parenting boys and see how reading and writing pre-school goes. It is a very different story from girls, which is one reason why Starmer irritated me. The failure to recognise this in education is serious. ”
It sounds almost as if you are suggesting that it is more important to recognise the educational needs of boys than it is to recognise the educational needs of girls, when they differ. Everything you have written (that I have read) means my interpretation cannot be true.
The educational needs of all children MUST be recognised and met, including the needs of those children whose parents are incapable of providing child-appropriate training, such as toilet training.
My comment was precisely about rwc8fnisinf differences.
Girls develop fine motor skills early, and boys gross motor skills. Boys want to abs need to run. Girls are happy to sit. Of course girls read and write earlier. You say you did, which is great. My experience (not typical, necessarily) is that this came later. But it isn’t a race. Both are avid readers. Both got good degrees. And it’s the bit about this nit being a race that matters. It isn’t, but some run it with handicaps. Boys don’t, as long as the differences are recognised. But children in poverty definitely do. All that has to be taken into account. We are talking about little people here, not automatons. And Starmer is doing nothing about poverty.
His text was littered with ‘people’ – ‘working people’ and ‘people’ who will hold him to account on the delivery of his ‘milestones’.
So he is putting ‘the people’ centre stage – almost talking to ‘the people’ directly, as he sideswipes civil servants, and the previous government.
But the key characterstic of Starmers Labour is that it just doesnt ‘engage’ -it isnt prepared to actually have a discussion or dialogue – an exchange of ideas – with ‘the people’ , and especially with those – eg Richard and others here – who actually have some expertese – on economic matters, health matters etc.
So he is talking to or making promises to , ‘the people’ while making sure he doesnt get too close – keeping them at a safe distance. He is not inviting people to respond now to what hes saying, or to send in their ideas – please no – – keep well away until 5 years time.
This is a key Labour internal contradiction.
He says how pragmatic the ‘people’ are – just wanting things to work – not overtly ideological.
Yet he is wedded to an ideology – which precludes him from doing the pragmatic thing of picking up Thames Water for next to nothing , and instead landing ‘the people’ with higher bills to keep TW in private hands.
Its not going to work – simultaneously appealing to ‘people’ – while enclosed in his hermetically sealed spacesuit which ensures hes never going to engage in a genuine dialogue with ‘people’ .
But thats what humans beings do – they are social , they engage with each other – directly . They agree or agree to disagree – but Starmer isnt human in that sense. ‘People’ have already stopped really listening to him – they know he doesnt listen to them..
Thanks
Starmer did yet another Tory / Blair impersonation, slagging off civil servants. The man has absolutely no leadership skills. He will need the civil servants to deliver his missions / milestones / whatever. Why should they bother to try when they have all been told they are useless.
I saw that.
It was shockingly bad and utterly inept.
Not only were these words atrociously badly chosen but his delivery of them was appalling
“land on desks around Whitehall with the heavy thud of a gauntlet being thrown down”
Agreed
And now there is this: https://www.irishnews.com/news/northern-ireland/british-government-has-turned-back-on-troubles-victims-Z3IDMD4GQJDCPP6I2QFPCRDJVM/?utm_source=Morning+Newsletter&utm_campaign=b618e3ff36-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_12_06_08_10&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_da6327494b-b618e3ff36-114816420&mc_cid=b618e3ff36&mc_eid=f0f2945457
I predicted as much. However it gives me no joy to be proved right, yet again. The British government will never willingly allow full exposure of their (ongoing) human rights atrocities committed here. It would reveal criminal complicity of far too many of their ruling class VIPs living and dead. I am enraged.
FIRST THEY CAME
By Martin Niemöller
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.
Poor Keir, poor Scottish labour. They are finally learning what it is like to have most of the press against you, pouncing on every error and twisting what is said. Soon they will be getting headlines screaming “Starmer defends/admits/fails to etc etc” and their every proclamation dissected by opposing parties. However, they were quite happy to see this happen to Scotland and the SNP, and indeed took part in gleeful attacks on the Scottish Govt at every opportunity
I do feel sorry for them as I know how frustrating and unfair it feels to be misinterpreted and attacked all the time. But, I also say hell mend them because they are still at it even while bleating about their own unfair treatment. Until they grow up and decide to work with others respectfully, to listen to other views and to learn from (and acknowledge) others successes they just have to put up with the flak they are getting
I think they are missing having Corbyn and the weaponisation of antisemitism as distractions.
They behaved abominably to discredit & oust him and the rest of the Labour left. I know the moral failings of these people, and I do not expect them to change. I want to see them discredited, disgraced and deposed.
In July Labour told me I had to support them to “GetTheToriesOut”. I declined. We got the Tories anyway, more Tory austerity, more Tory genocide, more Tory benefits cuts, more Tory monetarism, more Tory Brexit.
In 2029 they will tell me I have to support them “to keep F**a*e out”. I will decline.
Meanwhile, we have to spread an alternative economic message, about how public spending is financed. I’m pragmatic about most policies, except one. I have ZERO tolerance for the monetarist deception, “we can’t afford it”. I long for the day when no politician can get away with that, online, on TV or radio, in a keynote speech, hustings or manifesto.