steviewevie

Yeah, well a lot of people can't remember 78/79 and will just see higher prices and their UC cut if they receive it, and for them it could be a hard few months.

Corbyn definitely offered an alternative. What Starmer goes on about in that essay could easily have been written by Johnson, or any other tory actually. But, I guess idea is to try and do what blair did in 97 and appeal to the centre ground. Trouble is, it isn't 97...and a lot of people are scarred from austerity, and now the pandemic, and want proper change. Really starting to feel both downbeat and apathetic tbh.

yeah, definitely....but they will only vote labour if they can trust they will make things better. But yeah, if this winter is bad, real bad, that will stick to this govt like the 2008 crash stuck to labour...so fingers crossed it's carnage.

Verdict on Starmer's essay...meh. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/23/keir-starmer-labour-road-ahead-centre-fabian-society

but will they be cheering him on in a year or two when they haven't seen the levelling up they were promised?

It's all here. https://fabians.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/The-Road-Ahead-KEIR-STARMER_web.pdf

yeah, a lot of it is bollocks, but if that's what he needs to do to try and win over people who have switched from labour to tory/libdem, or maybe liberal tories who don't like Johnson...then why not. Like you say, he has to win over a lot of people, and this probably won't be enough...he basically needs bojo's government to fuck it up to stand any chance.

Starmer...saying a bunch of stuff.....might work with getting back tory voters...is definitely not going to please many on the left...

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/sep/22/keir-starmer-essay-sets-labour-on-course-for-centre-ground

well, there's Starmer's 14000 word essay to look forward to...and somehow Politics For All have got hold of it...

I don't know, I think he's pretty safe for a while and wants to stay put. I have no idea who his successor coule be, Reeves I guess.

I don't know...I reckon he just wants to distance himself from corbyn as much as poss to try to appeal to red wall voters...so centre left on economy, but likes the queen, tough on crime, prepared to nuke etc etc. I reckon he's more milliband than blair, but...yeah...lets see. I've defended him like fuck on here, but it's getting harder and harder.

Anyway looks like bigger unions are asking for this electoral college decision to be postponed to give more time to go over and debate properly, which seems like a good idea. Take some heat out of it.

Errr...ok... For starters corbyn didn't bring in one member one vote, Milliband did. I am not that against the electoral college thing as I have argued with mattiloy about, although I think starmer risks turning conference into an internal labour fight instead of setting out his vision, and if that happens everyone will just switch off from it. Starmer is just making more and more enemies within labour. If he was polling well like Blair then you could argue that this could be the way to go, but he isn't, and I think it's all going to end badly.

Oh right.

Whilst Starmer starts a civil war Johnson is getting what could be a big win for COP26 with US and China making big pledges.

The govt have ignored JVCI.

Benn opposed omov as an alternative to just PLP and wanted trade union block votes. I guess he was worried about all the trots.

I mean, I'm playing devil's advocate a bit as not sure which is best method for making these decisions, but what I do know is this is pretty bloody risky from starmer.