mattiloy

Labour being taken over by Thatcherites is good because Ian Dunt said so. Look how smart we are.

Not true though is it. Its a convenient excuse. The tories are not unpopular because they have too high taxes, they are also not less unpopular since they started to cut tax. Starmer’s labour is ruled by a Thatcherite clique, they are dispersing the myth that all of their Thatcherite nonsense is a product of politics rather than will through unofficial channels through friendly journo/commentator pieces. Done in a way to make idiots think they’re big brains who get politics whilst everyone else complaining about ’red tories’ are the dafties. But with public sentiment regarding the tories as it is, there is simply no reason to be dishonest about their intentions. Because they arent. This is them. Red tories.

The guardian is a liberal paper. Its opinion pieces are usually indiscernible from the main liberal paper over here Dagens Nyheter. It gives a little space to leftists such as Jones and Monbiot but a cynic could say that this is sort of balance-washing in the same way the beeb will throw a leftist on question time once every blue moon. Jones is hated because he uses the little space he gets as a soapbox to campaign and usually to amplify issues that both the right and the liberals don’t like. Also because he himself can be quite belligerant in his media appearances, presumably knowing as he does that in the clickbait landscape that this is the best way to amplify those views. It’s probably his celebrity thanks to that and his bestsellers that means the guardian keeps him on despite his polemicism as regards their usual editorial position. In the end, loathe him or love him, I guess people care enough about what he writes to buy the paper. The same can’t be said for the other dullards they have on columns.

But New Labour were more right wing in power than they were in the election campaign so…

The more you post in this thread, the dumber you are.

He’s here now professor politics. Make way everybody, here comes the politics understander!

Why did public attitudes change? In the post war era people were happy to invest in public infrastructure and pay more taxes. Can it be that the intellectual capitulation of the nominally left wing party to the neoliberal thatcher/reaganite consensus of the 80s has directly contributed to the erosion of the credibility of left wing economics? If so, is the route back to double down and undermine your own economic philosophy? Seems farfetched.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/19/police-investigate-labour-selection-contest-over-computer-misuse-claims https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/03/22/labour-party-selection-sam-tarry-angela-rayner/ The former DPP who went rogue.

Blair came to power at a time when the global economy was going gang busters and ramped up the public spending and everyone had a nice few years. Unfortunately it was all smoke and mirrors, funding profligate current account spending and ineffective reforms by flogging off assets and PFI and now you have little to show for it. Had they won in 2010, alastair darling was committed to austerity promised greater and deeper ’swingeing cuts’ than the tories. Philosophically there is a fag paper’s difference between Blair and Cameron. And now their heirs Starmer and Reeves reaffirm this time and again in both words and deeds but for some reason people have decided that they shall disbelieve what Starmer and Reeves say and do and instead hold on to some odd fiction that they are secret radicals. Presumably because they are at least nominally still ’Labour’ and the association of that brand with doing good things has still not completely died.. yet. I predict another decade of austerity, underfunded public services, paternalistic authoritarianism and overseas interventionism. But dont say I didnt warn you!

I know folks are desperate for something other than tory rule but how do you manage to just ignore everything Starmer’s Labour say and do and make up your own version of who they are? In a decade or so, the only thing that will remain of another lacklustre New Labour govt will be another insufferable odd couple podcast with Starmer and David Cameron chuckling their way through wacky political anecdotes and into the hearts of centrist dads everywhere, their despicable records long since forgotten.

https://x.com/bbcpolitics/status/1746460963534934358?s=46 God Starmer looks absolutely tiny compared to Cameron here