General British politics discussion thread

Tell me how

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121448697#Comment_121448697

He's Tory lite at this point, isn't he?

breezy1985

He needs to get over his weird fear of being painted as a socialist. Nobody is gonna think he is the next Corbyn so it's time he stopped bringing up all the "changes he has made"

Also Corbyn sent May running to the DUP and that was by being the most left Labour in years and the Tories were in a way better place. All Starmer has to do is act normal and it's won. He doesn't need to do all this Tory hole sucking.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121449365#Comment_121449365

If he's praising Thatcher I'm not sure it's even "Lite" anymore. That has to have lost Labour some votes if this gets legs.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121449984#Comment_121449984

That's the beauty of our disgraceful electoral system. You either vote Labour to kick out the Tories, you vote Liberal Democrat or Green and split the vote, or, finally, you stay at home. Only the first option will remove the Conservatives and everyone knows this.

Still, I can't defend him this time. Writing this drivel in the Telegraph of all places, one of the red tops sans red that did more than most to get us to this point. The insipid talk about innovation I could maybe stretch myself to just about tolerate but he's brought up immigration once again. Instead of letting the Tories fall on their sword, he's associating themselves with their toxicity. Setting himself up as the man who'll shut the door will only see his scalp added to the collection of others claimed by this issue.

Beyond stupid.

breezy1985

He better hope he has the big majority the polls predict because he is making plenty of enemies on the left of his party (and I don't the fringe left but the one that counts). They could have him over a barrel if it's a small majority.

Water John

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121450107#Comment_121450107

Then many of us wish him, a slim majority. That would mean a spectrum of interests would have to get seats at the cabinet table.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121450117#Comment_121450117

And may force him to bring in PR

A barnstomer majority and they would be thanking the FPTP gods, and then potentially get booted out in five years.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121450133#Comment_121450133

No way a majority Labour government brings in PR even if it's one at war with itself.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121450179#Comment_121450179

There's a rump of the party who realise that it would probably have them eternally in coalition and do push for it.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121450047#Comment_121450047

For sure but what if Starmer keeps doing this and suddenly you got cohorts of people thinking, well it's just the same isn't it? Labour suddenly seen as no great change and just plus ça change; Low turnout and the Tories squeak home.

Reading of a Labour leader write praise of Thatcher in the Torygraph is like some obscene fever dream; I didn't think Starmer was much of a leftie of any stripe but praising Thatcher just seems like a collosal miscalculation.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121450107#Comment_121450107

This is it: whatever about the fringe and more extreme left wing of the party, this kind of nonsense could eradicate the centrist-lefts and as you say that romping majority becomes a slim one. A couple of by elections later and who knows where that leaves Britain.

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121449365#Comment_121449365

He always was. Every Blairite is.

And we all know what Thatcher said about Tony Blair.

breezy1985

The really stupid thing isn't that he said something in an article/interview its that he doesn't need to do the article/interview at all.

There was absolutely no reason to go chasing votes in the Telegraph.

Water John

Glenys Kinnock has died. She was a strong campaigner on a number of issues and an MEP. Think I'm correct in saying that Neil Kinnock stood down from his position at the time, as people might consider there would be a conflict of interest on his wife being a member of the EU Parliament. So few with their principles around today. Made Minister for Europe by Gordon Brown.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/dec/03/glenys-kinnock-obituary

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121450474#Comment_121450474

Neil was UK Commissioner at the same time as Glenys was MEP

He was no longer leader of the Labour party by the time she became MEP; but he was still an MP.

I don't think he resigned from anything due to Glenys's positions.

Water John

It may have been when she took a position in the Gordon Brown cabinet? Remember hearing it in a documentary. Neil did it, not because of a conflict of interest, but that it might be perceived.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121450510#Comment_121450510

He had no role by that stage, or at least nothing important - stopped being Commissioner in 2004

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121450233#Comment_121450233

Someone during the week published video clips of his time as an international human rights lawyer talking in great detail and authority of the war crimes in the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. He knows full well as a human rights lawyer that much of what Israel is doing currently is completely illegal under international law and yet is either too weak or too compromised to call for a ceasefire. What does he actually stand for if he claims to be not like the Tories?

PommieBast

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121448908#Comment_121448908

Problem is the third party is almost certainly going to be the SNP by some margin.

Peregrinus

The commentator Chris Grey has a take on this which I think make sense as an explanation of Starmer’s torier-than-the-tories positioning.

Barring an Argentinian invasion of the Falklands, Starmer is certainly going to win the next election. Even if he adopted more honest and realistic positions on Brexit, immigration, etc as many of his supporters would wish, he will still win the election. So why doesn’t he adopt better policies?

The answer is that his ambition is to do more than win the next election. He spots a chance to smash the Tories for a long time; perhaps for a generation; perhaps for ever. 

The chance is created by the fact that Brexit has fractured the coalition between pragmatists and ideologues that normally hold the British right together. Tory votes are bleeding to Reform and if, as threatened, Reform runs a candidate in every GB constituency and if, as the polls suggest, they get something like 8%, 10%, of the national vote (or even more if Farage returns to lead the party) the right-wing vote will be split and under FPTP there is a chance that the Tories will be not just defeated, but virtually annihilated. 

The Tories’ main strategy to avoid this is a “Vote Farage, get Starmer” message. But the polls suggest that’s not really working. Potential Tory voters don’t hate Starmer like they hated Corbyn, and they know Labour are going to win in any case, so there is no cost to the ideological wing of the right casting a vote for Reform as a protest against Sunak. 

But if Labour puts forward a policy of rapprochement with the EU, or of sanity on the management of migration, or whatever, that opens up an opportunity for the Tories to argue that Brexit (or whatever) is imperilled, to galvanize the right-wing vote and to rally it around a single party which would of course be the Tories. Now, there's a difference between Tories and Labour. So, faced with the choice between a Tory government and a Labour government, a right-winger has a reason to vote Tory and not Reform. And while that’s probably not going to avert a Tory defeat, it could avert a Tory wipe-out. 

Hence Starmer’s Tory-lite strategy. The less difference there is between Starmer and the Tories, the less opportunity there is for the Tories to persuade right-wing voters that they really need to vote effectively against Starmer, and that the way to do it is to vote Tory, not Reform.

rock22

I cannot accept this is just about reducing the difference between the Tory and Labour parties. People already see this and are clearly of a mind to vote in a Labour government.

If Labour un der Starmer do win the next election they will prove that 1), the UK voters are either right or far right and 2), that a left- of- centre party can no longer get elected in the UK.

Endorsing the latter, by voting for Starmer's Labour , removes any last change of a real choice in UK politics. It is either far right Tory under Sunak or rightwing Tory under Starmer

"He spots a chance to smash the Tories for a long time; perhaps for a generation; perhaps for ever. " Perhaps, but is removing one Tory party by simply replacing it with another, albeit calling itself Labour, really such a great idea?

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121451278#Comment_121451278

If a political commentator or Starmer is actually thinking the Tories can be wiped out then they shouldn't be in the jobs they are in.

Timberrrrrrrr

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121451487#Comment_121451487

While they won't be "wiped out" they could end up with so few seats that they are not the opposition party.

Sam Russell

Well the Liberals were wiped out following the 1945 Labour victory.

VinLieger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121451487#Comment_121451487

If Farage actually managed to split the tory vote they would be annihilated well beyond any current predicted losses thanks to FPtP.

Water John

Its been pointed out before that if the UK didn't have FPTP, the Lb and Tories would each be two parties. So I can see if Starmer manages to split the Tories in two, it gives him a decade or more in power, a time scale needed to achieve major change.

Leroy42

Clearly, Starmer is looking to not just get the traditional Labour votes, which history shows us is a road to election loss, but to widen the base out to cover as many as possible.

Left voters are falling into the same trap as right voters, but can do because they tend to win. That they don't want to govern for everyone, this is their time and only they should be listened to. If Labour are going to secure a lasting lead, rather than just a passing protest vote, they need to take over traditional Tory areas.

Blair did it wonderfully, but despite his massive success, success Labour could only ever have dreamed of, many in his party never took to him and wanted a far more left agenda. Which would of course led to massive electoral loss, ie Corbyn.

It is better to be in power to get some of your ideas implemented than out of power and getting not only none of them but letting a party like the Tries have such power as they ride roughshod over everything

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121451567#Comment_121451567

That's not really true. The Liberals were already split in two before that and as it was a time of constant opening up of voting law there was a huge chance for a new party of power which Labour took well before 1945.

Absolutely no comparison to the traditional party of power suddenly coming third behind SNP or LD.

The Tories will be the official opposition and in 10/15 years will probably be back in power.

Water John

Well LB don't have to swing from Blair to Corbyn. Brown would have been a good PM. His grumpy personality tended to get in the way but one can clearly see form his writings and vision what could be done with a soft left Govn't.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121451636#Comment_121451636

The "traditional party of power" suddenly coming third has happened in the UK, but it was in 1918, not 1945. The Liberals, who had come first or second in every election since the party was established (and had come first much more often than second) came fifth (behind the Conservatives, the National Liberals, Labour and Sinn Féin). It was cataclysmic. After that, the Liberals never came first or second again.

So, though it is extremely difficult to shift either of the two established parties under the UK's electoral system, it can be done and it has happened.

Cameron isn't necessarily expecting a Strange-Death-of-Tory-England type eclipse for the Conservative party. In his wildest fantasies he might hope for that, but he'll still be very satisfied with something less, such as provoking a split in the party which, as Water John has pointed out, could keep them out of office for a decade or more (which would be a victory for Labour) and could mean that they could only get back into office as part of a centrist coalition (which would be a victory for the UK).

Major realignment in the UK party system are rare but they do happen, and the current rancorous split on the right is the kind of condition that has to prevail for a realignment to be possible. So, it's possible.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121451973#Comment_121451973

Yes and as I pointed out it is nothing like the current situation because 1918 was also the Representation Act which for the first time gave non land owning working class men the vote (also gave land owning women the vote).

Also the Liberals (National) actually came second in 1918 under Lloyd George. What you are looking at is the part of the liberal party that split because the opposed coalition.

The Liberal decline was a long slow one full of factors far more historic than just being very unpopular like the current Tory government.