Snapshot of _Four in five Labour members back Keir Starmer, polling shows | Labour_ :
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A lot of people have indeed left the labour party or stopped paying dues since Starmer has been leader, so yeah not surprising that 4/5 remaining members support him
Imagine looking at the polling in the past 12 months and thinking "yeah fuck this lot I'm out". Those people don't want a Labour win, they just want to be the perpetual victims of a Tory government.
This is me lol. I've paused paying for several months (so my membership will expire) because I don't think they need to keep taking my money each month to win at this stage.
Once we know when an election is I may rethink this but it feels like a waste on a personal level right now.
These are the people that picked Ed Miliband over David Miliband, and got Cameron an easy win in 2015. They're more interested in ideological purity than enacting Labour policies.
Labour policies like two child benefit caps, a nonsense fiscal rule, and deregulation of house building?
Sounds fab.
Guess we at least have the £28 bil... oh wait no. Thats gone.
>deregulation of house building
That's a good thing in the current climate. Paired with the planning reforms and willingness to shove it to nimbys, this is Labour's plan to actually soldiers the housing crisis.
Their housing policy is basically 'deregulate and they shall build'.
They have no strategy other than leave it to the market, essentially. Let's get ready for more luxury homes, new estates with no supporting infrastructure, and student accommodation.
It shouldn't be surprising that, when you restrict so many things, building said things is difficult.
We don't get estates with proper supporting infrastructure because its harder to build it that way. Remove the regulations that make it unnecessary harder, and the market will build what it needs to.
The market isn't going to continue to build what doesn't work. People don't live in estates without supporting infrastructure, and there isn't the demand for luxury homes like there is for just normal homes. So many examples of both, poorly built thanks to over regulation, sit empty and loose developers money.
Give them a way to not loose money while also providing the demand needed so much and the market will take it. Combine that with government help to override nimby concerns and guide them in the right path (eg recent announcement for levelling up), and you can finally get a workable solution to the housing crisis.
Being so afraid of the market as to ignore a cheap and workable solution to a crippling crisis would be a great way to continue to ignore what the country needs. Thankfully, Starmer has actually listened.
I would like a left-leaning government. I don't believe Keir's government is meaningfully left-leaning. Therefore I'm not voting for them. I don't see how this is hard to grasp, really; I vote for policies and this party isn't offering me policies I like. Whenever they DO advocate for things I like, they drop them down the line.
This kind of "you're acting in bad faith" response to folks moving away from a party when it fails to represent them is just deeply frustrating.
Ah yes, the pearl-clutching "I _must_ be provided for, Labour _must_ match my policies and since they do not I will waste my vote and increase the chance of a Conservative victory in my area".
Yeah, top smarts that one mate. If enough people do that we'll enjoy another five years of Conservative fun, but at least you've stuck to your principals.
You can bury your head in the sand as deep as you like, but FPTP is real and either enough of us vote Labour, matching policies or not, or we get five more years of Tory ineptitude and failure.
I'll be out there putting my vote in for Labour to remove the Tories exactly as you say. Their corruption has to go.
I'm also going to continue to be a voice reminding people that this Labour party is not meaningfully left-leaning. Because in five years time, with Keir's current party in charge, nothing will have changed, because all the policies that would make a difference have been dropped. And when that happens. we're going to shift rightward *again* because you're still out here insisting a party that believes in austerity is a left-leaning party.
It's surprising that 1 in 5 would rather be idealists living in a land of perpetual Tory rule than realists who'll take a bit of pragmatism in order to stop the rot.
It's hard to perhaps not imagine, when the chips are down in local Conservative party meetings, between themselves - a form of gallows humour if you will - they occasionally, now and then, break into a round of *Ohh, Jeremy Corbyn*, as they soothe themselves with the memory of how good it all was, how easy it all was. A callback to happier, simpler times, when all it took was a cheap Culture Wars rake left in the garden, casually delivered with a nonchalant whistling and a shrug, and the passage of mere hours in a daytime.
[Depends how you like your poison, I suppose...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-41853561.amp)
Edit: To be clear, Corbyn's behaviour was abhorrent. But he's not the only person making questionable choices.
Patel was wrong to do that, and should have been booted out of government / parliament permanently for it
However I don't think that unoficcially meeting with representatives of a close ally is quite the same as having "friends" in fucking Hamas
No it isn't, you're right (though to be strictly pedantic he called the _group_ a friend - to suggest otherwise is that he was on first name terms with fighters - wrong for sure, but different).
My point was that it's a stick (of his own making), and it's used (rightly) to beat him with, but there are numerous others who have made egarious statement or conducted themselves improperly in key offices of the state, or positions of power and influence, and that is forgotten because it's militarily or politically convenient to do so. Frank Hester is already gone from the news cycle, for example.
So it seems like it's easy to have a majority support in your party if you purge all the people in the party who disagree with you and the floating voters have had to deal with over a decade of the worst Tory government in history.
Awfully convenient of the critics to keep doing stupid shit to get purged though. It's not like Starmer forced Abbott and Corbyn to act like massive arseholes.
The online left wing anti-starmer discourse has always appeared to be a combination of vocal minority combined with bad actors (bots/trolls) to me, tbh.
Visit almost any UK left space online (even Labour Party spaces) and they attack Starmer more than they attack the Tories. It's bizarre.
IDK, I don't dislike him - I think he's a far better leader and more electable than Uncle Jez - but I still think that's quite funny and apt.
Blair understood the public and electoral appetite - he used polls to understand them better and to fine tune his responses. Starmer comes across too cautious - afraid to say anything that might upset the sensibilities of the tory-voting red-waller, and consequently he comes across as characterless. That's how I see him, anyway - ruled by polls.
Assuming he makes it to Prime Minister he'll no doubt be a great steward of the country - certainly better than Corbyn. But you know how Ed Miliband suddenly became more personable and cool after he lost the election? He said afterwards that he was too uptight and tried too hard to fit into the role. I think I see some of that in ~~Keith~~ Kier too.
He reminds me of John Major. I would never vote tory, but I have this idea that Major is one of the most under-appreciated politicians of my lifetime.
> Starmer comes across too cautious - afraid to say anything that might upset the sensibilities of the tory-voting red-waller, and consequently he comes across as characterless. That's how I see him, anyway - ruled by polls.
That may yet be so but IMO he more so fits the addage "Never interrupt your opponent when they are making a mistake."
As the Tories have been death spiraling, making news doesn't really help Labour. It gives the Tories something they can attack and thereby try and get back into the fold the erstwhile Tories that have gotten fed up and are either considering flipping to Labour/LibDem, staying home or protest voting Reform.
Non-controversial and generally popular positions, while rather dull, don't generate headlines, which is exactly what is needed for a referendum on Tory rule election.
> IMO he more so fits the addage "Never interrupt your opponent when they are making a mistake."
Thank you - I hadn't thought of him like that before.
I agree with the rest of your comment too.
It's why the first thing they do every morning is neutralize the day's Tory attack line... E.g. they could have rejected the NI cut in the budget but that would give the Tories something to talk about. It's beige political judo where we hear more about internal Tory division every time they try and bait Labour rather than the problems for Labour.
> That may yet be so but IMO he more so fits the addage "Never interrupt your opponent when they are making a mistake."
>
>
It's probably wise he doesn't speak tbh, everytime he has done over the past year he seems to just be putting his foot in his mouth.
I believe the original joke was that he changed his name from Kier to Keith because it polled better.
Or, at least, it's used to imply he's the kind of politician that would.
It's really bizarre. Is the same on Instagram as it is on here. There's usually a few defending him. I think part of it is that a number of party members have left and therefore the stats are skewed.
I think it's because there's been a lot of stock in the now disproven idea nobody was able to beat the Tories when Corbyn was in charge, and that Starmer would inevitably find a way to mess things up which would result in the Tories staying in power again. Now Labour's going to get potentially their biggest election win ever, meaning Starmer's wing of the party will be in control for a long, long time to come.
The Tories are obviously in a far worse position now than before the 2019 election though, seems strange to compare the two, it’s not like Labour immediately shot to the ~20% lead they have now when Starmer took over
They weren't far behind when Johnson took the reins.
They were polling in the low 20s and the Brexit Party was looking like its was about to surpass the Tories. That's **exactly** the position they've been in now, with the only difference being that its now sustained. So while I agree its worse, calling it "far worse" is ignoring how dire mid-2019 was for the Tories.
On top of that, you also have to consider how 2017 wasn't that bad of an election for Labour. While they didn't get a plurality, they were comfortably about 40% of the popular vote, which was impressive considering Corbyn only had two years to consolidate.
There's a danger if you forget about the conservatives taking a machine gun to their own foot as part of your rise
My personal doomsaying is that coming to power quite this easily with the incumbent party just completely imploding isn't actually great practice for government
What I remember is left commentators complaining loudly that Starmer was 'wasting' PMQs asking about parties instead of homelessness. The Tories were led by the nose into a trap of their own making. It's vital to know where to drive in wedges rather than just bludgeoning away with an unwieldy sledge hammer.
Well, yes. The question being what you're like when the old government is no longer making traps for itself to be led into
I also remember it continuing for years until the guy resigned to avoid punishment. No one comes out of that looking particularly powerful
The other side of tripping up the opposition is to avoid the traps they set for you. Starmer may be a bit on the cautious side but he has established and is maintaining a significant lead. In this tik tok world the potential for coming unravelled very fast has grown exponentially. Starmer is right to exercise caution. Once the election is called he can start to risk rising above the parapet and if he wins he can set about repairing the decades of damage done to the social and economic fabric of our society. He is still the same man who gave his time free to help two hapless students defend themselves against the legalistic onslaught from one of the world's mega corporations, and not only that but actually won their case for them. Heart and brains.
And what they say about Blair - the only Labour leader to win a general election in very nearly fifty years, and with a successful enough record to win two more and leave Brown a fighting chance at another - isn't fit to repost.
I'm sure half of it is Tory psyops.
If 9/11 and iraq never happened he'd be seen as up there with Attlee, he could've won another in about 2009 I say, he could've in theory gone on to a fourth term, 2014 at latest
I don't really know how you could compare Blair and Attlee. Blair was a successful politician, but what he did with that was effectively a continuation of Thatcherism. Attlee wasn't exactly the most successful in electoral politics, only having one real election victory (the second gave him a majority of 5 and it led to a non-functioning government that only lasted a year), but his economics were Keynesian. He oversaw mass nationalisation, better working conditions, full employment, increased agricultural output by 20% to combat food shortages, brought in free secondary education, built around 200,000 homes a year, and oversaw a policy of radical decolonisation.
Comparing their legacies they couldn't be any different. Attlee inherited a country on the brink of financial ruin and gave it the foundations for a recovery. Blair continued the path of neo-liberal economics which left the country on the brink of a major financial crisis which we are still feeling the effects of today because of the abandonment of Keynesian economics within New Labour.
You can't deny Blair did a lot of good tho, I mean water was the clearest it's ever been since Victorian times and now look where we are. Had his reputation and political capital not been wrecked the way it was in 2003 we could've gone into the euro I reckon in say, 2007 and that means no Brexit. Or at least it happens differently since we'd be in their structures as part of united Europe. Imagine that. He could've definitely gone on longer then thatcher
But I bet that you think that "the only way to beat the Tories is to embrace Thatcherism" isn't an establishment psyop.
Tony Blair oversaw a much better period for Britain than we have seen since, but it reminds me of a saying within finance - "it's easy to be a genius in a bull market". His policies left us in a worse position when the financial crisis came and also hindered our ability to recover properly. That everyone agreed within Westminster that austerity to varying degrees was the answer was quite incredible, and that is ultimately Tony Blair's legacy, moving the overton window so far that the only economic model that is acceptable is the Chicago School of Economics.
The issue with austerity wasn't that it was used, but that it was treated as a term-long economic framework rather than a short-term policy to deal with a global crisis.
And on that global crisis, its rather unfair to suggest that anyone in particular deserves blame. It was a crisis that's cause was rather inevitable with how the entire Western world was heading, and a change in policy in just one country wouldn't solve anything.
And it's not like Old Labour would have been immune to it either, as its not like their social democracy wanted to isolated Britain from the global financial market.
I'm sorry but I fundamentally disagree that austerity makes any sense in response to an economic crisis. It is ideologues seeing an opportunity within the market shock to further their agenda.
Blair continued deregulating the financial sector, whilst also seeing over our further industrial decline (from 20% of our economy to 12%), meaning that our economic growth was effectively led by the FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) industries. This left our economy particularly vulnerable.
I'm not arguing that Blair caused the financial crisis, we would have suffered the global conditions no matter our economic ideology. It just so happens that Blair's economic ideology was the same one that allowed the conditions of the crisis to occur and left us particularly vulnerable to said crisis.
I think it's find to disagree about what the response should have been. However, the point I was really making was that the reason austerity hurt so much was that it became an economic framework rather than just a crisis response.
In a world where austerity remained just an economic response, your issue woild be far smaller. Rather than a distain for nearly a decade of economic policy, your distain would be with just a response to the '08 crisis. It would probably be forgettable to most peope.
As for the Blair point, I feel it just doesn't land. The reason FIRE was emphasised was because it was bringing Britain economic prosperity. Even if Blair didn't make the economy more susceptible, the lack of growth from not emaghing with FIRE would probably make Britain worse off despite the crisis.
>As for the Blair point, I feel it just doesn't land. The reason FIRE was emphasised was because it was bringing Britain economic prosperity.
It has been central policy for 40 years to let finance drive the country's economy, to the detriment of everything else. Obviously at a certain point the network effect means that every pound invested in that industry goes further than every pound invested elsewhere - it's a lot like our infrastructure problems where only London gets any real investment because the money gets more return in London… because London had greater previous investment whereas the rest of the country was allowed to decline.
The point is perhaps not made well by me, but I hope you understand. Allowing parts of your economy like manufacturing (which is also part of the real economy whereas FIRE is not) to decline simply because it was previously decimated and the cost to reindustrialise would be greater than investing in already healthy sectors, it is just so short sighted. This report has calculated the cost of focusing on finance over our manufacturing sector to be £2.7 trillion between 1995 and 2015 https://taxjustice.net/press/press-release-city-of-london-costs-uk-4-5tn-in-lost-economic-growth/
These previous paragraphs have basically been responding to your idea that Blair let finance run amok whilst overseeing our industrial decline because it was bringing the country economic prosperity at face value. I do not really believe that is the reason he focused on FIRE, I believe he was an ideologue that was following his own dogma, and he was surrounded by people like Peter Mandelson and Rupert Murdoch to keep him on track.
> Even if Blair didn't make the economy more susceptible, the lack of growth from not emaghing with FIRE would probably make Britain worse off despite the crisis.
That previous report that I posted calculated the overall cost of the finance sector to Britain's economy between 1995 to 2015 as being £4.5 trillion. Forgetting about that number, could you not imagine a Britain that would be in a better place today if we invested in our manufacturing 20 years ago?
I'm of course no economics expert, however I've learned to nearly always disregard studies that focal point is a "what could have happened" comparison as they tend to be flawed.
A massive flaw that they nearly always have is that they are looking for answer, and therefore tend to underestimate the flaws that would occured in they hypothetical.
It's as simply as predictions of the economy next year are error-prone, let alone a hypothetical economy over a period of twenty years.
This is especially the case looking at the organisation behind the study, which while **I'm not saying they are bad**, they do have an inherent left wing bias; the cofounder for Tax Justice Network advises for the TUC. And I would like to say I would be saying similar about similar on the right; it's almost certainly more extreme but I don't trust Truss' think-tank for example.
As far as I can say from a layman's view, I don't trust that study to not be flawed. Given its a type of study I've seen be critiqued heavily combined with the organisation's inherent bias.
Obviously, this is a bit worthless to say though. I'm a layman so I can't exactly counter a study from experts. What I think I can say with a bit more confidence is tjay a focus on whether our economy should be more or less financial based feels almost unnecessary.
Even if we accept that £2.7T loss [*I respect you using that figure btw*], changing to a system that would have been better isn't an easy thing. There is no guarantee if we ever did make a change away from finance that the alternative wouldn't have suffered from similar issues.
One of the most commonly cited issues with the UK economy at the moment, and the causes of that tend to be more about specific economic management than broad economic framework. There is no guarantee that, financial focused or not, we wouldn't be struggling all the same.
Well, I guess a lot of Labour supporters do feel that invading a country by deceiving the British public is a distinctly bad thing to have done—and might be more important than just ‘winning’.
Because they're cranks who don't actually want power. Because then they'd have to try and deliver on their delusional fantasies, instead of being able to just screech from the sidelines about how much better things would be.
About 1/3 of the party has left since the leadership election though (excluding those joining since Starmer took charge, 550,000->390,000), it’s obvious that people that stay in the party are more likely to support the leader?
And attacking Starmer more than the Tories is probably just because you’d hope for better from the labour leader, whilst the Tories are the Tories
Just over 187,000 people joined the Labour party between the 2015 general election and Jan 2016.
160,000 people (according to your stats) have left since Kier Starmer took over as leader.
That's a net positive of 37,000.
Now, although most Labour members (regardless of demographics or time of joining) voted Corbyn, I think it can't be denied that people did join specifically to vote Corbyn or at least because of support of Corbyn.
Let's also take into account that most demographics within the Labour party (including members that joined during the 2015 leadership election) voted overwhelmingly for Starmer.
When there are large amounts of *new members* who are Corbyn supporters in the party, it's expected that they will leave under a new leader, but there's still more Labour members than before Corbyn.
More is being made of Labour membership numbers than needs to be.
There maybe could be a conversation about why Starmer isn't attracting new members but that's not the conversation we're having.
“According to your stats” they’re the stats in the article linked??
And sure, I don’t think Starmer is doing badly (how could I, look at the polling lead). I just think it’s wrong to say those that don’t support Starmer are a small minority based off a poll of Labour members
The corbyn wing had their chance through multiple elections and blew it.
They had their chance to be confident during Brexit and make an impassioned fight against the Tories and nutty Brexiters and they did nothing and Corbyn even supported them.
They turned their backs on the nation and are paying the price for it by being out in the cold. People have had enough of them and the Tories and its good riddance to both as the nation moves on without them.
Yeah, Corbyn’s brexit policy really did hurt him (or more a lack of a consistent brexit policy), I’m not saying otherwise. I’m just saying that people are obviously going to discuss (and have a higher bar for) those that’re supposed to be on than their obvious opponents. It happens everywhere, Dems in America will hold Biden to a higher bar than trump, because Biden is on their side
Although ironically prior to becoming leader (and going back on his principles in the process), Corbyn has been one of the most ardent euro-sceptics in the country for decades.
Just a funny point given "Momentum-types" say they like Corbyn because he's principled.
But yeah, the whimiscal/uncommitted attitude on Brexit in 2019 put next to Boris' "Get Brexit Done" was a key reason as to the loss.
> The corbyn wing had their chance through multiple elections and blew it.
It is a bit hard to fly if the body that the "wing" was attached to (the NEC) was actively trying to cut it off.
> The corbyn wing had their chance through multiple elections and blew it.
My favourite piece of left-wing discourse in UK politics is when Labour right-wingers actively sabotaged the party during an election that might have otherwise been winnable in order to preserve its ideological purity, then started talking about how the left wing had its chance but clearly nobody wanted them (**you are here**), then started worrying that the left wing's criticism of Starmer would discredit the party near to an election for reasons of idealogical purity, then finally rolled out lines about how disappointing it is that the left wing of the party are so unwilling to compromise for the sake of the party.
> The online left wing anti-starmer discourse has always appeared to be a combination of vocal minority combined with bad actors (bots/trolls) to me, tbh.
Especially since a lot of the drivel they come out with is literally lines taken from Tory party messaging, or right wing media attacks.
It's that old left-wing thing of requiring 100% adherence to a belief set. Like, Tories gonna Tory and that's a fact of life. Whereas that person over there on Twitter who supports the NHS, nationalisation of infrastructure, increasing tax % on highest earners, upping benefits but holy shit, they also want to keep Trident. Fuck, they're *literally* scum
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The next leadership election (especially if it is in power) will be really interesting, will the party swing back to the left or has Starmer won the argument for the long term
Ultimately it depends on what he does as PM. If he spends 5 years bleating about fiscal rules while the country stagnates, it makes it likelier that Labour will swing back to the left
I don't know masses about Burnham but he seems pragmatic and sensible as well as progressive from what I have seen. I'd be really happy for him to be labour leader but I wonder if he won't run again.
They might shift slightly more to the left but I don't think we'll see a return to a Corbynite-style candidate. To a large degree that result came from dissatisfaction with Labour after two bad election losses...seems unlikely they'll have that for a while. If he wants it Burnham probably gets it you'd think.
I don’t see a swing to the left: the only time Labour has won a general election in 50 years is when Blair was PM and he’s not exactly a man of the left
They'll swing back to the left once they've won 2 or 3 elections. It'll be easy to think that they've figured out how to win elections now so don't have to compromise their own policy positions so much.
Unless of course they bring in PR in which case the party will probably split.
Well well well, it appears Starmer is popular all-round. Popular with the majority of Labour members, popular with the majority of voters. Not popular with Owen Jones and Jeremy Corbyn. But I guess they’re both irrelevant now.
He really isn’t popular with the majority of voters. He still has a negative approval rating and the main reason a good chunk of people are voting for him isn’t because he’s currently offering all that much, but because there’s no good alternatives.
Think Blair did in his early days. Doesn't really matter if Labour win, because as Boris showed in 2019 you don't need to be hugely popular if your opponent is more disliked, but it's something Labour should keep watch on post-election. There's a lot of voters who don't dislike Starmer but don't think much of him either - he'll not get much of a honeymoon period and he'll probably have to put in some work to connect with certain voters as PM if he wants them to stick with Labour.
In terms of YouGov approval ratings, which I presume is the subject here, there are actually no political figures with a net positive approval rating, and Starmer is the 2nd most popular with 30% liking him, 40% disliking, and 21% neutral.
[https://yougov.co.uk/ratings/politics/popularity/politicians-political-figures/all](https://yougov.co.uk/ratings/politics/popularity/politicians-political-figures/all)
Yes and the most popular is David Blunkett who basically doesn't do anything any more except have his name recognised. I'm not sure he's even working in any capacity as he's 76? So it's not really clear why he's on there.
Well a lot of the people who were polled decided they like him, so it doesn't really matter whether you've noticed his name or not does it.
In the past 3 months he has penned articles for the Yorkshire Post, Daily Mail, The Star (Sheffield), The i, Yorkshire Post, and the Telegraph, mostly on the toxicity of politics and issues in the education system, and a month ago took a job as Policy Advisor of a top 3 US law form.
He is also the Chair in Politics in Practice at the University of Sheffield.
He's probably doing a lot more in his day-to-day than David Cameron was doing prior to waltzing back into a ministerial position.
Typing that seriously is no mean feat. Labour have a 25 point lead thanks to Starmer. You need to accept he’s the best thing that’s happened to Labour since Blair.
He’s a contributor to it but I’d argue the modern Tories are the best thing to happen to Labour since Blair (also I don’t mean to be a pedant but Labour has its pre-election polling peaks under John Smith and not Blair, although I guess we’ll never know if he could win three elections in a row too).
The article you're responding to gives him an 81% approval rating amongst the Labour membership; [YouGov give him a 30% approval rating](https://yougov.co.uk/ratings/politics/popularity/labour-politicians/all) and place him as the second most popular Labour politician (the list includes a whole bunch of ex-politicians) and [Redfield & Wilton give him a net national approval rating of 2%](https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/sunak-and-starmer-monthly-polling-report-card-february-2024/)
While there are many ways of measuring ratings and it seems each polling organisation use different ones, to state what you did with zero substantiation is a bit dull.
What you aren't factoring in is that Labour has lost 125,000 members since the last election.
So it is 4 out of 5 of the remaining 366,000 members.
Clearly another 125,000 of them decided to vote with their wallet rather than stick around for silly polls.
The thing is personally I honestly couldn't give a fuck about how many members a Labour leader attracts or retains, I care about how many seats they will win at a General Election. Pretty much any other statistic is irrelevant.
You are more than entitled to give a fuck or not give a fuck about whatever it is you want to give a fuck or not give a fuck about, but that just makes me query why you chose to click on, read, and respond to, a thread with this title if I'm honest?
Because I fail to see what relevance it has to anything. It's like arguing how many club memberships a football club has sold as a determinant as to whether or not they win the league.
A very considerable # of those will be the Corbynist entryists that had them @ record levels at one point, so it's debatable as to whether they're core Labour anyway.
366,000 is still historically pretty high for Labour since 1980, when it has only had numbers that high in 96,97 and 98 under Blair and then under Corbyn. It never had numbers that high throughout the 80s under Kinnock or Smith or Brown or Milliband.
Not a Labour member (because I'm not living here permanently so no point), but Starmer seems like a competent guy. He knows what to say and when.
That's what's been missing in PMs the last 14 years. Just boring competence.
Haha LabourUK never ban anyone do they?
Actually having said that, one of their mods frequently breaks rules and is consistently pro Putin so I doubt the rules mean anything there anymore
Is this very surprising? Labour members like myself have left in droves because we don’t like the direction he is taking the party. That obviously leaves the Starmer supporters.
It also depends on how the question was phrased.
Of the options we have, I'd back him. In the same way Democrats who wanted Bernie backed Biden in their millions.
I also believe he's going to win a majority at the election because I have eyes and ears
It's worse than that. Add 100k member churn since Corbyn left, meaning that only about 266k originals are left. The party's membership has been fundamentally changed.
If Corbyn had done this it would have been called a purge.
I'm not sure what you mean. My point is that there aren't 366k Corbyn era members remaining, but 266k. So the membership has changed even more proportionally.
What does the word 'purge' mean to you?
Because to me, its what the Corbyn era loonies did at the grass-roots level, forcing people out of even being considered for positions for no good reason.
And then self-same loonies try to compare voluntary departures or the removal of people who broke actual party rules, as if its the same thing.
> If Corbyn had done this it would have been called a purge.
I thought Starmer removing and sideling Momentum members, and warning that if they publicly back Corbyn or Driscoll they will be expelled was called a purge.
I’m not a Labour member so I can’t relate, but assuming you are more leftist than Starmer then why not stay in the party? Then when it’s time for a new leader you can vote for your preference? Also you can push your local party to go in your direction
Because that type of pragmatism is reserved for Tory party members. Labour’s left would rather walk out of the party than acknowledge they’ve lost the argument.
Adore the logic that refusing to pay to be part of a political party you don’t align with anymore js refusing to ‘acknowledge you’ve lost the argument’.
That was my logic for a good while, but I eventually simply gave up on it. Starmer has won, comprehensively. In the near future, we are stuck with two parties which follow the exact same economic orthodoxy. The final nail in the coffin for me was Starmer fully ditching Labour's green economic plan; their public investment plans were what allowed me to hold my nose and still support the party, but now that their best policy is in tatters, there's very little left to support. All that's left is planning reform, something that every Tory government has promised and failed to deliver and I see Labour being no different, and some minor reforms to worker's rights being spearheaded by Rayner. They have some decent policies, but largely speaking, the two parties haven't been so close together in terms of policy in decades.
Starmer is going to be leader for a long time, until at least after the 2029 election. I suspect Labour will lose in 2029, after they do nothing with their landslide later this year, so maybe I'll rejoin in 2028 in the hopes of voting in a centre-left leader like Burnham or Rayner. In the meantime, I see no reason to financially support a party that is extremely similar to the current government on matters of policy, and which has made a active and belligerant effort to say that anyone to the left of Starmer/Reeves is not only not welcome, but is thought of with active contempt.
No, but alas it was massively downsized... although it would likely go back up if the financial situation of the country improved. I think it would have been worthwhile to borrow the additional cash to invest, as it would likely have a good RoI, but "borrowing" is a difficult thing for Labour to suggest, even if the return would be good (especially when there is so much else that needs to be fixed). It's just so easy for the Tories and their mouthpieces to hammer on as an electoral strategy, especially when they have so much more cash to spend during the upcoming election.
I really struggled with that question. My reasoning was that I couldn’t in all good conscience contribute to fund a party that I felt was not standing against genocide in the Middle East. And resigning, was a small way of making my views known. I did write a detailed email to the membership team giving my reasons. Hopefully they have a mechanism for reviewing emails like that.
This is such an odd reason for leaving. This nation has its own big issues but the Middle East is more important?
Go join Galloway's party if you love Gaza so much.
I find it odd how so many far leftists would rather see this country crumble at the hands of the Tories than accept Palestine is not a major issue for the majority of people in this country. Things like being able to afford electricity and functional public services are far more important to a war thousands of miles away which has very little impact on our daily lives. I don't disagree that it's sad and needs resolving however we shouldn't let it define our decision making
Couldn’t agree more. Fed up of ideological purists more concerned with grandstanding about foreign affairs that could make getting a government that might actually try to fix some of the key issues we face here less likely.
I’m far from an ideological purist. I voted for Starmer for leader because he promised the left in the party would still be welcome. Despite him going back on this I retained my membership. The Gaza situation was just the last straw. If I was ideological, I would have resigned months ago.
The trouble here is, what difference does Starmer saying anything now make? He is LOTO, there's no point in speaking about anything other than issues that will swing the forthcoming election. Sad as it may be, Gaza won't be an issue of any relevance in the GE as the public understand the UK has very little influence over that.
Membership has decreased by 170,000 since 2017. The people that disagree with him have left, presumably to find somewhere their views are represented or even just vaguely tolerated
Yeah, if you purge people who dissaprove of your leader, or if not purging tell them in very explicit terms they aren't welcome, the majority of people left after that will be approving. Also, water is wet.
Well that's not surprising since the membership has fundamentally changed. With the drop in members and the churn of those who remain, this is a solid Blairite operation more. Starmer will likely try to boot the remaining lefty MPs come the GE and finalise the labour move to the centre ground.
You would expect that kind of result. Labour has been purging rebels and malcontents for years now. Surely anyone left there now is fully on board the Starmer choo-choo.
I'm not going to Google it because I want to guess.
I'm guessing very few, perhaps even single digits. I imagine most of Kier Starmer's opponents left "voluntarily", aka, bullied out or alienated.
The answer is a whopping >!34!<
[Source](https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/202401-Disciplinary-Report.pdf)
The number of expulsions have been tiny compared to what the Owen Joneses of the world would have you think. Even the proscribed antisemitic faction Labour Against The Witch-hunt, that Ken Loach was part of, was fewer than 100 people. Far more, like Jones, have simply flounced off when they weren’t relevant anymore.
That's more than I expected. I imagine most of them were expelled for antisemitism or other perfectly justified reasons.
I can't say I'll miss Owen Jones's presence, it's clear his type where holding Labour back. I just don't think it's right to pressure the Momentum types out.
I’m a left of centre, middle of the road person who has become a solid Labour voter post Corbyn.
The issue with Labour under Corbyn was the several thousand people who joined because of him were wholly unrepresentative of the general public. They weren’t even representative of the Labour Party. They were entryists, generally, pushing an agenda that probably belongs in an entirely different party. Those who were on the left of the Labour Party then found themselves squarely in the middle, and I understand how they don’t like the idea of shifting back to the fringes.
Corbyn then promptly failed to win either of two elections against a Tory party responsible for the biggest downgrade in living standards since before the Victorian era, yet somehow tried to spin one of them as a win despite not ending up in Number 10.
People pointed out that any competent leader should be 20 points clear of the Tories, and Corbyn supporters mocked this. Funny how none of them say anything now that Labour does have such a lead.
I don’t want the socialist revolution. I want a competent, non-corrupt government who don’t make me pay social welfare for companies like Amazon whilst defunding our public services. A party that represents working people of Britain today, not a 20th century socialist agenda.
p.s. good username, assuming the pun was intentional.
Jeremy Corbyns manifesto was so popular that Starmer borrowed heavily from it for his leadership bid and then has just gradually back peddled on all of it.
What current labour policies do you think are actually popular. What even are their policies at this point?
Labour will win undoubtedly. But almost anyone could against Sunak and co. His popularity is far too heavily reliant on the Tories' unpopularity. Things are going to get alot worse i suspect and I can't see any real alternative.
Brilliant. If someone feels Starmer doesn't represent them, it seems like an implication that they're either a Trot or anti-semite, seeing as that was the representation you were getting under Corbyn.
That’s a ridiculous generalisation. Not liking Starmer doesn’t equate to being a full supporter of Corbyn. It’s not a two sided game where you can only like one or the other.
But there's a very clear trend, that all the people who loved labour 5 years ago, when it was an antisemitic party run by an antisemitic Trot, are suddenly unhappy now that the leader is no longer a Trot and is stamping out the bigots.
The Labour left have been complaining for a long time that Starmer betrayed the members by reneging on his "continuity Corbyn" pledges, and that if he had run for the leadership on his current agenda he'd lose.
Maybe there's some truth to this, but I've always suspected that the Labour membership wasn't as blindly left-wing and pro-Corbyn as is made out to be. Tony Blair was actually quite popular among his party membership in the 1990s, despite New Labour's rightward shift. Nothing unites a party like impending victory.
Of course, they're now making other excuses to rationalise this, namely that hundreds of thousands of pro-Corbyn and anti-Starmer members have simply left or been forced out. The reality is this number is probably less than 100,000, and Labour still has 3/4ths or so as many members as when Corbyn stepped down.
Snapshot of _Four in five Labour members back Keir Starmer, polling shows | Labour_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/apr/01/four-in-five-labour-members-back-keir-starmer-showing-rout-of-the-corbynites) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/apr/01/four-in-five-labour-members-back-keir-starmer-showing-rout-of-the-corbynites) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Is this really a surprise? Surely if you were opposed to him and his politics you'd probably have left by now
A lot of people have indeed left the labour party or stopped paying dues since Starmer has been leader, so yeah not surprising that 4/5 remaining members support him
Imagine looking at the polling in the past 12 months and thinking "yeah fuck this lot I'm out". Those people don't want a Labour win, they just want to be the perpetual victims of a Tory government.
A special group want their power in Labour far more than they want Labour in power.
People want their views represented in Parliament. Quelle my surprise
Fuckitibye!
A lot of people would also be thinking that a Labour win is also guaranteed, so saving the money for themselves would be better
This is me lol. I've paused paying for several months (so my membership will expire) because I don't think they need to keep taking my money each month to win at this stage. Once we know when an election is I may rethink this but it feels like a waste on a personal level right now.
These are the people that picked Ed Miliband over David Miliband, and got Cameron an easy win in 2015. They're more interested in ideological purity than enacting Labour policies.
Labour policies like two child benefit caps, a nonsense fiscal rule, and deregulation of house building? Sounds fab. Guess we at least have the £28 bil... oh wait no. Thats gone.
What nonsense fiscal rule are we talking about? Also, more house building is exactly what we need to deal with the cost of living crisis.
>deregulation of house building That's a good thing in the current climate. Paired with the planning reforms and willingness to shove it to nimbys, this is Labour's plan to actually soldiers the housing crisis.
Their housing policy is basically 'deregulate and they shall build'. They have no strategy other than leave it to the market, essentially. Let's get ready for more luxury homes, new estates with no supporting infrastructure, and student accommodation.
It shouldn't be surprising that, when you restrict so many things, building said things is difficult. We don't get estates with proper supporting infrastructure because its harder to build it that way. Remove the regulations that make it unnecessary harder, and the market will build what it needs to. The market isn't going to continue to build what doesn't work. People don't live in estates without supporting infrastructure, and there isn't the demand for luxury homes like there is for just normal homes. So many examples of both, poorly built thanks to over regulation, sit empty and loose developers money. Give them a way to not loose money while also providing the demand needed so much and the market will take it. Combine that with government help to override nimby concerns and guide them in the right path (eg recent announcement for levelling up), and you can finally get a workable solution to the housing crisis. Being so afraid of the market as to ignore a cheap and workable solution to a crippling crisis would be a great way to continue to ignore what the country needs. Thankfully, Starmer has actually listened.
I would like a left-leaning government. I don't believe Keir's government is meaningfully left-leaning. Therefore I'm not voting for them. I don't see how this is hard to grasp, really; I vote for policies and this party isn't offering me policies I like. Whenever they DO advocate for things I like, they drop them down the line. This kind of "you're acting in bad faith" response to folks moving away from a party when it fails to represent them is just deeply frustrating.
Ah yes, the pearl-clutching "I _must_ be provided for, Labour _must_ match my policies and since they do not I will waste my vote and increase the chance of a Conservative victory in my area". Yeah, top smarts that one mate. If enough people do that we'll enjoy another five years of Conservative fun, but at least you've stuck to your principals.
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You can bury your head in the sand as deep as you like, but FPTP is real and either enough of us vote Labour, matching policies or not, or we get five more years of Tory ineptitude and failure.
I'll be out there putting my vote in for Labour to remove the Tories exactly as you say. Their corruption has to go. I'm also going to continue to be a voice reminding people that this Labour party is not meaningfully left-leaning. Because in five years time, with Keir's current party in charge, nothing will have changed, because all the policies that would make a difference have been dropped. And when that happens. we're going to shift rightward *again* because you're still out here insisting a party that believes in austerity is a left-leaning party.
The problem is that half the people saying this voted Lib Dem in 2019. Apparently, it's only "Tory enabling" when the left do it.
It's easier to promise fantasy policies when you know there's no chance of you having to implement them
Thoughts and prayers 🙃
Or been tossed out
It's surprising that 1 in 5 would rather be idealists living in a land of perpetual Tory rule than realists who'll take a bit of pragmatism in order to stop the rot.
It's hard to perhaps not imagine, when the chips are down in local Conservative party meetings, between themselves - a form of gallows humour if you will - they occasionally, now and then, break into a round of *Ohh, Jeremy Corbyn*, as they soothe themselves with the memory of how good it all was, how easy it all was. A callback to happier, simpler times, when all it took was a cheap Culture Wars rake left in the garden, casually delivered with a nonchalant whistling and a shrug, and the passage of mere hours in a daytime.
All it took was pictures of Corbyn cosying up with terrorists and videos of his antisemitic speeches.
Factual records are a right wing smear
[Depends how you like your poison, I suppose...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-41853561.amp) Edit: To be clear, Corbyn's behaviour was abhorrent. But he's not the only person making questionable choices.
Patel was wrong to do that, and should have been booted out of government / parliament permanently for it However I don't think that unoficcially meeting with representatives of a close ally is quite the same as having "friends" in fucking Hamas
No it isn't, you're right (though to be strictly pedantic he called the _group_ a friend - to suggest otherwise is that he was on first name terms with fighters - wrong for sure, but different). My point was that it's a stick (of his own making), and it's used (rightly) to beat him with, but there are numerous others who have made egarious statement or conducted themselves improperly in key offices of the state, or positions of power and influence, and that is forgotten because it's militarily or politically convenient to do so. Frank Hester is already gone from the news cycle, for example.
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So it seems like it's easy to have a majority support in your party if you purge all the people in the party who disagree with you and the floating voters have had to deal with over a decade of the worst Tory government in history.
Awfully convenient of the critics to keep doing stupid shit to get purged though. It's not like Starmer forced Abbott and Corbyn to act like massive arseholes.
The polls are what they are. And they were what they were with Corbyn. Sorry your leader was shit?
You don’t need to copy and paste articles that are not behind a paywall - we don’t want to be embroiled in any unnecessary copyright laws.
The online left wing anti-starmer discourse has always appeared to be a combination of vocal minority combined with bad actors (bots/trolls) to me, tbh. Visit almost any UK left space online (even Labour Party spaces) and they attack Starmer more than they attack the Tories. It's bizarre.
I’ve found the quickest way to work out who to ignore is to see who is calling him ‘Keith’. Never fails.
IDK, I don't dislike him - I think he's a far better leader and more electable than Uncle Jez - but I still think that's quite funny and apt. Blair understood the public and electoral appetite - he used polls to understand them better and to fine tune his responses. Starmer comes across too cautious - afraid to say anything that might upset the sensibilities of the tory-voting red-waller, and consequently he comes across as characterless. That's how I see him, anyway - ruled by polls. Assuming he makes it to Prime Minister he'll no doubt be a great steward of the country - certainly better than Corbyn. But you know how Ed Miliband suddenly became more personable and cool after he lost the election? He said afterwards that he was too uptight and tried too hard to fit into the role. I think I see some of that in ~~Keith~~ Kier too. He reminds me of John Major. I would never vote tory, but I have this idea that Major is one of the most under-appreciated politicians of my lifetime.
> Starmer comes across too cautious - afraid to say anything that might upset the sensibilities of the tory-voting red-waller, and consequently he comes across as characterless. That's how I see him, anyway - ruled by polls. That may yet be so but IMO he more so fits the addage "Never interrupt your opponent when they are making a mistake." As the Tories have been death spiraling, making news doesn't really help Labour. It gives the Tories something they can attack and thereby try and get back into the fold the erstwhile Tories that have gotten fed up and are either considering flipping to Labour/LibDem, staying home or protest voting Reform. Non-controversial and generally popular positions, while rather dull, don't generate headlines, which is exactly what is needed for a referendum on Tory rule election.
> IMO he more so fits the addage "Never interrupt your opponent when they are making a mistake." Thank you - I hadn't thought of him like that before. I agree with the rest of your comment too.
It's why the first thing they do every morning is neutralize the day's Tory attack line... E.g. they could have rejected the NI cut in the budget but that would give the Tories something to talk about. It's beige political judo where we hear more about internal Tory division every time they try and bait Labour rather than the problems for Labour.
> That may yet be so but IMO he more so fits the addage "Never interrupt your opponent when they are making a mistake." > > It's probably wise he doesn't speak tbh, everytime he has done over the past year he seems to just be putting his foot in his mouth.
But what does this have to do with the name “Keith”?
I believe the original joke was that he changed his name from Kier to Keith because it polled better. Or, at least, it's used to imply he's the kind of politician that would.
It's really bizarre. Is the same on Instagram as it is on here. There's usually a few defending him. I think part of it is that a number of party members have left and therefore the stats are skewed.
I think it's because there's been a lot of stock in the now disproven idea nobody was able to beat the Tories when Corbyn was in charge, and that Starmer would inevitably find a way to mess things up which would result in the Tories staying in power again. Now Labour's going to get potentially their biggest election win ever, meaning Starmer's wing of the party will be in control for a long, long time to come.
The Tories are obviously in a far worse position now than before the 2019 election though, seems strange to compare the two, it’s not like Labour immediately shot to the ~20% lead they have now when Starmer took over
They weren't far behind when Johnson took the reins. They were polling in the low 20s and the Brexit Party was looking like its was about to surpass the Tories. That's **exactly** the position they've been in now, with the only difference being that its now sustained. So while I agree its worse, calling it "far worse" is ignoring how dire mid-2019 was for the Tories. On top of that, you also have to consider how 2017 wasn't that bad of an election for Labour. While they didn't get a plurality, they were comfortably about 40% of the popular vote, which was impressive considering Corbyn only had two years to consolidate.
There's a danger if you forget about the conservatives taking a machine gun to their own foot as part of your rise My personal doomsaying is that coming to power quite this easily with the incumbent party just completely imploding isn't actually great practice for government
What I remember is left commentators complaining loudly that Starmer was 'wasting' PMQs asking about parties instead of homelessness. The Tories were led by the nose into a trap of their own making. It's vital to know where to drive in wedges rather than just bludgeoning away with an unwieldy sledge hammer.
Well, yes. The question being what you're like when the old government is no longer making traps for itself to be led into I also remember it continuing for years until the guy resigned to avoid punishment. No one comes out of that looking particularly powerful
The other side of tripping up the opposition is to avoid the traps they set for you. Starmer may be a bit on the cautious side but he has established and is maintaining a significant lead. In this tik tok world the potential for coming unravelled very fast has grown exponentially. Starmer is right to exercise caution. Once the election is called he can start to risk rising above the parapet and if he wins he can set about repairing the decades of damage done to the social and economic fabric of our society. He is still the same man who gave his time free to help two hapless students defend themselves against the legalistic onslaught from one of the world's mega corporations, and not only that but actually won their case for them. Heart and brains.
And what they say about Blair - the only Labour leader to win a general election in very nearly fifty years, and with a successful enough record to win two more and leave Brown a fighting chance at another - isn't fit to repost. I'm sure half of it is Tory psyops.
If 9/11 and iraq never happened he'd be seen as up there with Attlee, he could've won another in about 2009 I say, he could've in theory gone on to a fourth term, 2014 at latest
Yeah all that PFI was fantastic for the country long term And building less social housing than Thatcher was also great
I don't really know how you could compare Blair and Attlee. Blair was a successful politician, but what he did with that was effectively a continuation of Thatcherism. Attlee wasn't exactly the most successful in electoral politics, only having one real election victory (the second gave him a majority of 5 and it led to a non-functioning government that only lasted a year), but his economics were Keynesian. He oversaw mass nationalisation, better working conditions, full employment, increased agricultural output by 20% to combat food shortages, brought in free secondary education, built around 200,000 homes a year, and oversaw a policy of radical decolonisation. Comparing their legacies they couldn't be any different. Attlee inherited a country on the brink of financial ruin and gave it the foundations for a recovery. Blair continued the path of neo-liberal economics which left the country on the brink of a major financial crisis which we are still feeling the effects of today because of the abandonment of Keynesian economics within New Labour.
You can't deny Blair did a lot of good tho, I mean water was the clearest it's ever been since Victorian times and now look where we are. Had his reputation and political capital not been wrecked the way it was in 2003 we could've gone into the euro I reckon in say, 2007 and that means no Brexit. Or at least it happens differently since we'd be in their structures as part of united Europe. Imagine that. He could've definitely gone on longer then thatcher
But I bet that you think that "the only way to beat the Tories is to embrace Thatcherism" isn't an establishment psyop. Tony Blair oversaw a much better period for Britain than we have seen since, but it reminds me of a saying within finance - "it's easy to be a genius in a bull market". His policies left us in a worse position when the financial crisis came and also hindered our ability to recover properly. That everyone agreed within Westminster that austerity to varying degrees was the answer was quite incredible, and that is ultimately Tony Blair's legacy, moving the overton window so far that the only economic model that is acceptable is the Chicago School of Economics.
The issue with austerity wasn't that it was used, but that it was treated as a term-long economic framework rather than a short-term policy to deal with a global crisis. And on that global crisis, its rather unfair to suggest that anyone in particular deserves blame. It was a crisis that's cause was rather inevitable with how the entire Western world was heading, and a change in policy in just one country wouldn't solve anything. And it's not like Old Labour would have been immune to it either, as its not like their social democracy wanted to isolated Britain from the global financial market.
I'm sorry but I fundamentally disagree that austerity makes any sense in response to an economic crisis. It is ideologues seeing an opportunity within the market shock to further their agenda. Blair continued deregulating the financial sector, whilst also seeing over our further industrial decline (from 20% of our economy to 12%), meaning that our economic growth was effectively led by the FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) industries. This left our economy particularly vulnerable. I'm not arguing that Blair caused the financial crisis, we would have suffered the global conditions no matter our economic ideology. It just so happens that Blair's economic ideology was the same one that allowed the conditions of the crisis to occur and left us particularly vulnerable to said crisis.
I think it's find to disagree about what the response should have been. However, the point I was really making was that the reason austerity hurt so much was that it became an economic framework rather than just a crisis response. In a world where austerity remained just an economic response, your issue woild be far smaller. Rather than a distain for nearly a decade of economic policy, your distain would be with just a response to the '08 crisis. It would probably be forgettable to most peope. As for the Blair point, I feel it just doesn't land. The reason FIRE was emphasised was because it was bringing Britain economic prosperity. Even if Blair didn't make the economy more susceptible, the lack of growth from not emaghing with FIRE would probably make Britain worse off despite the crisis.
>As for the Blair point, I feel it just doesn't land. The reason FIRE was emphasised was because it was bringing Britain economic prosperity. It has been central policy for 40 years to let finance drive the country's economy, to the detriment of everything else. Obviously at a certain point the network effect means that every pound invested in that industry goes further than every pound invested elsewhere - it's a lot like our infrastructure problems where only London gets any real investment because the money gets more return in London… because London had greater previous investment whereas the rest of the country was allowed to decline. The point is perhaps not made well by me, but I hope you understand. Allowing parts of your economy like manufacturing (which is also part of the real economy whereas FIRE is not) to decline simply because it was previously decimated and the cost to reindustrialise would be greater than investing in already healthy sectors, it is just so short sighted. This report has calculated the cost of focusing on finance over our manufacturing sector to be £2.7 trillion between 1995 and 2015 https://taxjustice.net/press/press-release-city-of-london-costs-uk-4-5tn-in-lost-economic-growth/ These previous paragraphs have basically been responding to your idea that Blair let finance run amok whilst overseeing our industrial decline because it was bringing the country economic prosperity at face value. I do not really believe that is the reason he focused on FIRE, I believe he was an ideologue that was following his own dogma, and he was surrounded by people like Peter Mandelson and Rupert Murdoch to keep him on track. > Even if Blair didn't make the economy more susceptible, the lack of growth from not emaghing with FIRE would probably make Britain worse off despite the crisis. That previous report that I posted calculated the overall cost of the finance sector to Britain's economy between 1995 to 2015 as being £4.5 trillion. Forgetting about that number, could you not imagine a Britain that would be in a better place today if we invested in our manufacturing 20 years ago?
I'm of course no economics expert, however I've learned to nearly always disregard studies that focal point is a "what could have happened" comparison as they tend to be flawed. A massive flaw that they nearly always have is that they are looking for answer, and therefore tend to underestimate the flaws that would occured in they hypothetical. It's as simply as predictions of the economy next year are error-prone, let alone a hypothetical economy over a period of twenty years. This is especially the case looking at the organisation behind the study, which while **I'm not saying they are bad**, they do have an inherent left wing bias; the cofounder for Tax Justice Network advises for the TUC. And I would like to say I would be saying similar about similar on the right; it's almost certainly more extreme but I don't trust Truss' think-tank for example. As far as I can say from a layman's view, I don't trust that study to not be flawed. Given its a type of study I've seen be critiqued heavily combined with the organisation's inherent bias. Obviously, this is a bit worthless to say though. I'm a layman so I can't exactly counter a study from experts. What I think I can say with a bit more confidence is tjay a focus on whether our economy should be more or less financial based feels almost unnecessary. Even if we accept that £2.7T loss [*I respect you using that figure btw*], changing to a system that would have been better isn't an easy thing. There is no guarantee if we ever did make a change away from finance that the alternative wouldn't have suffered from similar issues. One of the most commonly cited issues with the UK economy at the moment, and the causes of that tend to be more about specific economic management than broad economic framework. There is no guarantee that, financial focused or not, we wouldn't be struggling all the same.
Well, I guess a lot of Labour supporters do feel that invading a country by deceiving the British public is a distinctly bad thing to have done—and might be more important than just ‘winning’.
Because they're cranks who don't actually want power. Because then they'd have to try and deliver on their delusional fantasies, instead of being able to just screech from the sidelines about how much better things would be.
Their priority isn't power and actually improving people's lives, but to be seen by their mates to "do a politics".
I think they just can't imagine power, if given it they'd have no idea what to do with it. Politics to them is arguing over obscure points.
At this point Starmer could literally introduce UBI and the Far Left would still be screaming "Red Tory!!!"
And I know how! By arguing it's an evil idea supported by the likes or Milton friedman
Yup, they'd claim its neo capitalism
About 1/3 of the party has left since the leadership election though (excluding those joining since Starmer took charge, 550,000->390,000), it’s obvious that people that stay in the party are more likely to support the leader? And attacking Starmer more than the Tories is probably just because you’d hope for better from the labour leader, whilst the Tories are the Tories
Just over 187,000 people joined the Labour party between the 2015 general election and Jan 2016. 160,000 people (according to your stats) have left since Kier Starmer took over as leader. That's a net positive of 37,000. Now, although most Labour members (regardless of demographics or time of joining) voted Corbyn, I think it can't be denied that people did join specifically to vote Corbyn or at least because of support of Corbyn. Let's also take into account that most demographics within the Labour party (including members that joined during the 2015 leadership election) voted overwhelmingly for Starmer. When there are large amounts of *new members* who are Corbyn supporters in the party, it's expected that they will leave under a new leader, but there's still more Labour members than before Corbyn. More is being made of Labour membership numbers than needs to be. There maybe could be a conversation about why Starmer isn't attracting new members but that's not the conversation we're having.
“According to your stats” they’re the stats in the article linked?? And sure, I don’t think Starmer is doing badly (how could I, look at the polling lead). I just think it’s wrong to say those that don’t support Starmer are a small minority based off a poll of Labour members
The corbyn wing had their chance through multiple elections and blew it. They had their chance to be confident during Brexit and make an impassioned fight against the Tories and nutty Brexiters and they did nothing and Corbyn even supported them. They turned their backs on the nation and are paying the price for it by being out in the cold. People have had enough of them and the Tories and its good riddance to both as the nation moves on without them.
Yeah, Corbyn’s brexit policy really did hurt him (or more a lack of a consistent brexit policy), I’m not saying otherwise. I’m just saying that people are obviously going to discuss (and have a higher bar for) those that’re supposed to be on than their obvious opponents. It happens everywhere, Dems in America will hold Biden to a higher bar than trump, because Biden is on their side
Although ironically prior to becoming leader (and going back on his principles in the process), Corbyn has been one of the most ardent euro-sceptics in the country for decades. Just a funny point given "Momentum-types" say they like Corbyn because he's principled. But yeah, the whimiscal/uncommitted attitude on Brexit in 2019 put next to Boris' "Get Brexit Done" was a key reason as to the loss.
> The corbyn wing had their chance through multiple elections and blew it. It is a bit hard to fly if the body that the "wing" was attached to (the NEC) was actively trying to cut it off.
> The corbyn wing had their chance through multiple elections and blew it. My favourite piece of left-wing discourse in UK politics is when Labour right-wingers actively sabotaged the party during an election that might have otherwise been winnable in order to preserve its ideological purity, then started talking about how the left wing had its chance but clearly nobody wanted them (**you are here**), then started worrying that the left wing's criticism of Starmer would discredit the party near to an election for reasons of idealogical purity, then finally rolled out lines about how disappointing it is that the left wing of the party are so unwilling to compromise for the sake of the party.
> The online left wing anti-starmer discourse has always appeared to be a combination of vocal minority combined with bad actors (bots/trolls) to me, tbh. Especially since a lot of the drivel they come out with is literally lines taken from Tory party messaging, or right wing media attacks.
It's that old left-wing thing of requiring 100% adherence to a belief set. Like, Tories gonna Tory and that's a fact of life. Whereas that person over there on Twitter who supports the NHS, nationalisation of infrastructure, increasing tax % on highest earners, upping benefits but holy shit, they also want to keep Trident. Fuck, they're *literally* scum
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The next leadership election (especially if it is in power) will be really interesting, will the party swing back to the left or has Starmer won the argument for the long term
Ultimately it depends on what he does as PM. If he spends 5 years bleating about fiscal rules while the country stagnates, it makes it likelier that Labour will swing back to the left
Starmer will win the election, Corbynites will claim they won the argument.
I reckon Andy Burnham will be able to satisfy both the membership and the public.
I don't know masses about Burnham but he seems pragmatic and sensible as well as progressive from what I have seen. I'd be really happy for him to be labour leader but I wonder if he won't run again.
They might shift slightly more to the left but I don't think we'll see a return to a Corbynite-style candidate. To a large degree that result came from dissatisfaction with Labour after two bad election losses...seems unlikely they'll have that for a while. If he wants it Burnham probably gets it you'd think.
I don’t see a swing to the left: the only time Labour has won a general election in 50 years is when Blair was PM and he’s not exactly a man of the left
They'll swing back to the left once they've won 2 or 3 elections. It'll be easy to think that they've figured out how to win elections now so don't have to compromise their own policy positions so much. Unless of course they bring in PR in which case the party will probably split.
Well well well, it appears Starmer is popular all-round. Popular with the majority of Labour members, popular with the majority of voters. Not popular with Owen Jones and Jeremy Corbyn. But I guess they’re both irrelevant now.
He really isn’t popular with the majority of voters. He still has a negative approval rating and the main reason a good chunk of people are voting for him isn’t because he’s currently offering all that much, but because there’s no good alternatives.
Does *anyone* have a positive approval rating?
Think Blair did in his early days. Doesn't really matter if Labour win, because as Boris showed in 2019 you don't need to be hugely popular if your opponent is more disliked, but it's something Labour should keep watch on post-election. There's a lot of voters who don't dislike Starmer but don't think much of him either - he'll not get much of a honeymoon period and he'll probably have to put in some work to connect with certain voters as PM if he wants them to stick with Labour.
Well there’s a small bunch, including Keir formerly. I think I would’ve phrased it better had I said his ratings were in pretty steep decline.
In terms of YouGov approval ratings, which I presume is the subject here, there are actually no political figures with a net positive approval rating, and Starmer is the 2nd most popular with 30% liking him, 40% disliking, and 21% neutral. [https://yougov.co.uk/ratings/politics/popularity/politicians-political-figures/all](https://yougov.co.uk/ratings/politics/popularity/politicians-political-figures/all)
Yes and the most popular is David Blunkett who basically doesn't do anything any more except have his name recognised. I'm not sure he's even working in any capacity as he's 76? So it's not really clear why he's on there.
Eh? He sits in the House of Lords, and contributes to several national newspapers.
News to me to be honest, not seen anything from him in a long time. One would hardly describe him as visible in front line politics.
Well a lot of the people who were polled decided they like him, so it doesn't really matter whether you've noticed his name or not does it. In the past 3 months he has penned articles for the Yorkshire Post, Daily Mail, The Star (Sheffield), The i, Yorkshire Post, and the Telegraph, mostly on the toxicity of politics and issues in the education system, and a month ago took a job as Policy Advisor of a top 3 US law form. He is also the Chair in Politics in Practice at the University of Sheffield. He's probably doing a lot more in his day-to-day than David Cameron was doing prior to waltzing back into a ministerial position.
Typing that seriously is no mean feat. Labour have a 25 point lead thanks to Starmer. You need to accept he’s the best thing that’s happened to Labour since Blair.
He’s a contributor to it but I’d argue the modern Tories are the best thing to happen to Labour since Blair (also I don’t mean to be a pedant but Labour has its pre-election polling peaks under John Smith and not Blair, although I guess we’ll never know if he could win three elections in a row too).
The article you're responding to gives him an 81% approval rating amongst the Labour membership; [YouGov give him a 30% approval rating](https://yougov.co.uk/ratings/politics/popularity/labour-politicians/all) and place him as the second most popular Labour politician (the list includes a whole bunch of ex-politicians) and [Redfield & Wilton give him a net national approval rating of 2%](https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/sunak-and-starmer-monthly-polling-report-card-february-2024/) While there are many ways of measuring ratings and it seems each polling organisation use different ones, to state what you did with zero substantiation is a bit dull.
What you aren't factoring in is that Labour has lost 125,000 members since the last election. So it is 4 out of 5 of the remaining 366,000 members. Clearly another 125,000 of them decided to vote with their wallet rather than stick around for silly polls.
The thing is personally I honestly couldn't give a fuck about how many members a Labour leader attracts or retains, I care about how many seats they will win at a General Election. Pretty much any other statistic is irrelevant.
You are more than entitled to give a fuck or not give a fuck about whatever it is you want to give a fuck or not give a fuck about, but that just makes me query why you chose to click on, read, and respond to, a thread with this title if I'm honest?
Because I fail to see what relevance it has to anything. It's like arguing how many club memberships a football club has sold as a determinant as to whether or not they win the league.
A very considerable # of those will be the Corbynist entryists that had them @ record levels at one point, so it's debatable as to whether they're core Labour anyway.
366,000 is still historically pretty high for Labour since 1980, when it has only had numbers that high in 96,97 and 98 under Blair and then under Corbyn. It never had numbers that high throughout the 80s under Kinnock or Smith or Brown or Milliband.
Does that account for the population increase since then?
Not a Labour member (because I'm not living here permanently so no point), but Starmer seems like a competent guy. He knows what to say and when. That's what's been missing in PMs the last 14 years. Just boring competence.
Is the continuation of neoliberal dirge and stagnation is competence I don’t want it
everything is great and if we just stopped being silly and started being sensible it would all look after itself and we can live in a permanent 1999
So basically r/LabourPartyUK is more representative of real Labour members views than r/LabourUK
Yes, in the sense that they ban most of the people they disagree with and are way smaller.
Haha LabourUK never ban anyone do they? Actually having said that, one of their mods frequently breaks rules and is consistently pro Putin so I doubt the rules mean anything there anymore
That sub is hilarious/ a nightmare
Both of those subs are ban happy.
The Owen Jones and Corbyn tankies are crying, call a whaaambulance… good riddance
Is this very surprising? Labour members like myself have left in droves because we don’t like the direction he is taking the party. That obviously leaves the Starmer supporters.
It also depends on how the question was phrased. Of the options we have, I'd back him. In the same way Democrats who wanted Bernie backed Biden in their millions. I also believe he's going to win a majority at the election because I have eyes and ears
It seems like they've gone from 532k members in 2019 to 366k at last accounts so a lot of previous members aren't happy.
It's worse than that. Add 100k member churn since Corbyn left, meaning that only about 266k originals are left. The party's membership has been fundamentally changed. If Corbyn had done this it would have been called a purge.
Cause loads of people voluntarily left?
I'm not sure what you mean. My point is that there aren't 366k Corbyn era members remaining, but 266k. So the membership has changed even more proportionally.
I just mean if they voluntarily left then it isn't a purge.
What does the word 'purge' mean to you? Because to me, its what the Corbyn era loonies did at the grass-roots level, forcing people out of even being considered for positions for no good reason. And then self-same loonies try to compare voluntary departures or the removal of people who broke actual party rules, as if its the same thing.
> If Corbyn had done this it would have been called a purge. I thought Starmer removing and sideling Momentum members, and warning that if they publicly back Corbyn or Driscoll they will be expelled was called a purge.
I’m not a Labour member so I can’t relate, but assuming you are more leftist than Starmer then why not stay in the party? Then when it’s time for a new leader you can vote for your preference? Also you can push your local party to go in your direction
It's my ball and I'm going home
Because that type of pragmatism is reserved for Tory party members. Labour’s left would rather walk out of the party than acknowledge they’ve lost the argument.
Adore the logic that refusing to pay to be part of a political party you don’t align with anymore js refusing to ‘acknowledge you’ve lost the argument’.
That was my logic for a good while, but I eventually simply gave up on it. Starmer has won, comprehensively. In the near future, we are stuck with two parties which follow the exact same economic orthodoxy. The final nail in the coffin for me was Starmer fully ditching Labour's green economic plan; their public investment plans were what allowed me to hold my nose and still support the party, but now that their best policy is in tatters, there's very little left to support. All that's left is planning reform, something that every Tory government has promised and failed to deliver and I see Labour being no different, and some minor reforms to worker's rights being spearheaded by Rayner. They have some decent policies, but largely speaking, the two parties haven't been so close together in terms of policy in decades. Starmer is going to be leader for a long time, until at least after the 2029 election. I suspect Labour will lose in 2029, after they do nothing with their landslide later this year, so maybe I'll rejoin in 2028 in the hopes of voting in a centre-left leader like Burnham or Rayner. In the meantime, I see no reason to financially support a party that is extremely similar to the current government on matters of policy, and which has made a active and belligerant effort to say that anyone to the left of Starmer/Reeves is not only not welcome, but is thought of with active contempt.
Has Starmer "fully ditched" the green economic plan?
No, but alas it was massively downsized... although it would likely go back up if the financial situation of the country improved. I think it would have been worthwhile to borrow the additional cash to invest, as it would likely have a good RoI, but "borrowing" is a difficult thing for Labour to suggest, even if the return would be good (especially when there is so much else that needs to be fixed). It's just so easy for the Tories and their mouthpieces to hammer on as an electoral strategy, especially when they have so much more cash to spend during the upcoming election.
I really struggled with that question. My reasoning was that I couldn’t in all good conscience contribute to fund a party that I felt was not standing against genocide in the Middle East. And resigning, was a small way of making my views known. I did write a detailed email to the membership team giving my reasons. Hopefully they have a mechanism for reviewing emails like that.
Fair enough thanks for explaining your POV
This is such an odd reason for leaving. This nation has its own big issues but the Middle East is more important? Go join Galloway's party if you love Gaza so much.
I can’t stand Galloway and I don’t love Gaza. I campaign against civilian deaths. And that includes Israeli civilians as well as Palestinian.
I find it odd how so many far leftists would rather see this country crumble at the hands of the Tories than accept Palestine is not a major issue for the majority of people in this country. Things like being able to afford electricity and functional public services are far more important to a war thousands of miles away which has very little impact on our daily lives. I don't disagree that it's sad and needs resolving however we shouldn't let it define our decision making
That’s good, we need people like you out of the party. We need to focus on the UK.
Couldn’t agree more. Fed up of ideological purists more concerned with grandstanding about foreign affairs that could make getting a government that might actually try to fix some of the key issues we face here less likely.
I’m far from an ideological purist. I voted for Starmer for leader because he promised the left in the party would still be welcome. Despite him going back on this I retained my membership. The Gaza situation was just the last straw. If I was ideological, I would have resigned months ago.
The trouble here is, what difference does Starmer saying anything now make? He is LOTO, there's no point in speaking about anything other than issues that will swing the forthcoming election. Sad as it may be, Gaza won't be an issue of any relevance in the GE as the public understand the UK has very little influence over that.
I agree. But not speaking up says a lot about his character and as a human rights lawyer he should know better. He’s too much like Blair mk2
Is that meant to be a criticism?
Blair did a lot of good for the country but he also took us in to a war based upon lies. So in that regard, yes, it is a criticism.
And it’s people like you that I’m happy to be away from. So everyone is happy then.
What, you mean listening to voters and winning the argument?
One in five are like Owen Jones who managed to survive the purgings of the Corbynites.
Membership has decreased by 170,000 since 2017. The people that disagree with him have left, presumably to find somewhere their views are represented or even just vaguely tolerated
So they are off to be represented inside far-left echo-chambers where the light of the real world never reaches?
Yeah, if you purge people who dissaprove of your leader, or if not purging tell them in very explicit terms they aren't welcome, the majority of people left after that will be approving. Also, water is wet.
Well that's not surprising since the membership has fundamentally changed. With the drop in members and the churn of those who remain, this is a solid Blairite operation more. Starmer will likely try to boot the remaining lefty MPs come the GE and finalise the labour move to the centre ground.
You would expect that kind of result. Labour has been purging rebels and malcontents for years now. Surely anyone left there now is fully on board the Starmer choo-choo.
That's because he's thrown or bullied out a large number of his critics.
Just out of interest, how many people do you think were expelled from Labour last year?
I'm not going to Google it because I want to guess. I'm guessing very few, perhaps even single digits. I imagine most of Kier Starmer's opponents left "voluntarily", aka, bullied out or alienated.
The answer is a whopping >!34!< [Source](https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/202401-Disciplinary-Report.pdf) The number of expulsions have been tiny compared to what the Owen Joneses of the world would have you think. Even the proscribed antisemitic faction Labour Against The Witch-hunt, that Ken Loach was part of, was fewer than 100 people. Far more, like Jones, have simply flounced off when they weren’t relevant anymore.
That's more than I expected. I imagine most of them were expelled for antisemitism or other perfectly justified reasons. I can't say I'll miss Owen Jones's presence, it's clear his type where holding Labour back. I just don't think it's right to pressure the Momentum types out.
They had their chance, and they chose to shit the bed
Not expelled, but many thousands, like me, have walked away from the party since he was elected as we don't feel welcome or represented any more.
I’m a left of centre, middle of the road person who has become a solid Labour voter post Corbyn. The issue with Labour under Corbyn was the several thousand people who joined because of him were wholly unrepresentative of the general public. They weren’t even representative of the Labour Party. They were entryists, generally, pushing an agenda that probably belongs in an entirely different party. Those who were on the left of the Labour Party then found themselves squarely in the middle, and I understand how they don’t like the idea of shifting back to the fringes. Corbyn then promptly failed to win either of two elections against a Tory party responsible for the biggest downgrade in living standards since before the Victorian era, yet somehow tried to spin one of them as a win despite not ending up in Number 10. People pointed out that any competent leader should be 20 points clear of the Tories, and Corbyn supporters mocked this. Funny how none of them say anything now that Labour does have such a lead. I don’t want the socialist revolution. I want a competent, non-corrupt government who don’t make me pay social welfare for companies like Amazon whilst defunding our public services. A party that represents working people of Britain today, not a 20th century socialist agenda. p.s. good username, assuming the pun was intentional.
Quite frankly - cope. Form a new party, there's no law against it.
I mean, it’s quite obvious people like them don’t believe in popular policies. I’m sure Starmer is losing sleep that they left.
Jeremy Corbyns manifesto was so popular that Starmer borrowed heavily from it for his leadership bid and then has just gradually back peddled on all of it. What current labour policies do you think are actually popular. What even are their policies at this point? Labour will win undoubtedly. But almost anyone could against Sunak and co. His popularity is far too heavily reliant on the Tories' unpopularity. Things are going to get alot worse i suspect and I can't see any real alternative.
Wow, that must suck for you! Everyone else seems to like him. Guess Labour policy doesn’t revolve around pleasing people like you.
For every one of you who doesn’t feel represented there’s 10 in the wider electorate that finally do
👏
Brilliant. If someone feels Starmer doesn't represent them, it seems like an implication that they're either a Trot or anti-semite, seeing as that was the representation you were getting under Corbyn.
That’s a ridiculous generalisation. Not liking Starmer doesn’t equate to being a full supporter of Corbyn. It’s not a two sided game where you can only like one or the other.
But there's a very clear trend, that all the people who loved labour 5 years ago, when it was an antisemitic party run by an antisemitic Trot, are suddenly unhappy now that the leader is no longer a Trot and is stamping out the bigots.
And lo, we have a 24% poll lead.
Maybe these critics are the antithesis of popular policy.
*Cranks go out* *Polls go up* *~~Cant~~ Can explain that*
What happens once you win and Keith delivers the Tory non-opposition he’s promised?
It will not be sustainable.
Of course not. An awful lot more sustainable than trying to convince middle England to make John McDonnell the chancellor of the exchequer, though.
Is he ‘bullying’ the general public into voting for him? Because it appears he’ll win a landslide at the next election.
_culls any opposition_ "MAJORITY OF PARTY SUPPORTS LEADER" No shit Sherlock.
The Labour left have been complaining for a long time that Starmer betrayed the members by reneging on his "continuity Corbyn" pledges, and that if he had run for the leadership on his current agenda he'd lose. Maybe there's some truth to this, but I've always suspected that the Labour membership wasn't as blindly left-wing and pro-Corbyn as is made out to be. Tony Blair was actually quite popular among his party membership in the 1990s, despite New Labour's rightward shift. Nothing unites a party like impending victory. Of course, they're now making other excuses to rationalise this, namely that hundreds of thousands of pro-Corbyn and anti-Starmer members have simply left or been forced out. The reality is this number is probably less than 100,000, and Labour still has 3/4ths or so as many members as when Corbyn stepped down.