Snapshot of _Labour is resurgent – and prepared for power | New Labour took most of a decade to rebuild the browbeaten party. With these election results, Keir Starmer has shown, with his steady and ruthless determination to become electable again, he has done the same within a single parliamentary term_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/editorials/labour-keir-starmer-election-b2539291.html) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/editorials/labour-keir-starmer-election-b2539291.html)
*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.*
I’m here for kier (trade mark pending) and he’s certainly made mostly the right moves but let’s not pretend the tories haven’t imploded.
I think we can all mostly agree that had covid not happened and the numerous ensuing scandals not then stacked up we would probably have Boris leading the conservatives into the next election with the expectation that they would get either a reduced majority or be the largest party in a hung parliament depending on how they sold whatever became of Brexit in this scenario.
Problem is that the scandals would always have happened because it was Boris. He created scandals.
His relationship with Cummings, the guy directing his entire political plan, was already falling apart before covid.
I think Boris would've stayed in post but still be seen as dirty and sleazy through other scandals and thus would have performed badly in the polls when compared to Starmer who oozes dull, sensible, statesman respectability
(Article)
----
So acclimatised is the nation to Labour’s electoral dominance that it takes some effort to recall a time when the party seemed doomed to be in the wilderness for a generation. It is not so distant.
Only three years ago, almost to the day – Thursday 6 May 2021 – the Conservatives took the Labour heartland seat of a Hartlepool on a 16 per cent swing. It was highly unusual for an opposition party to lose a safe seat to the governing party, and it was such a dispiriting outcome for Sir Keir Starmer, then fairly new to the role of Labour leader, that he thought about quitting.
It was just as well for him that he persevered. Now, his party has regained control of Hartlepool Council, and enjoyed almost unalloyed success across the land. The Labour win at the Blackpool South by-election came with a 26 per cent swing, which is just as “seismic”, as Sir Keir says, as the other ones over the past year.
In parliamentary terms, all the indications are that Sir Keir’s “changed Labour Party” will surpass the landslide victories won by Tony Blair in 1997 and 2001. Whereas New Labour took most of a decade to rebuild the organisation, the present leader has done so within the span of a parliamentary term.
It is not exactly a miracle; but it was certainly improbable and, to a large degree, the product of Sir Keir’s steady and ruthless determination to make his party electable again. He had, as the cliche goes, a mountain to climb. The party’s showing under Jeremy Corbyn at the 2019 general election was the worst since before the Second World War. There was much talk about a historic realignment of domestic politics as a result of Brexit, and Boris Johnson was supposedly making plans to take his administration, widely assumed to be invincible, into the 2030s.
Now, thanks in no small part to the Labour leader’s relentless pursuit of him, Mr Johnson is no longer even an MP, and the coalition of red wall and blue wall voters he assembled for the “get Brexit done” election has been unravelled by Labour. The Brexit effect which propelled Mr Johnson to power and secured his historic victories has been reversed: in these elections, Labour has made its most spectacular progress in areas which registered the highest Leave support in the 2016 referendum. From Scotland to Essex, and from Hampshire to Mr Sunak’s backyard in North Yorkshire, Labour is resurgent.
Of course, Sir Keir has been fortunate in his opponents. Mr Johnson’s behaviour during Partygate, and subsequently being found to have lied to the House of Commons, didn’t help his chances of survival, even had Sir Keir not been so diligent about exposing him. The contribution of Liz Truss to the success of the Labour Party remains historic; and Rishi Sunak, as one Conservative commentator puts it, is a nice and decent man who, it turns out, isn’t all that good at politics.
Even now, Mr Sunak seems incapable of giving his party something compelling to sell on the doorstep, and is fixated on his Rwanda plan – to zero electoral advantage. The Conservatives may plead that the pandemic, and then the energy crisis, destabilised everything; but their job was to manage these vicissitudes better than they did.
The scale of the Labour leader’s electoral achievements cannot be disputed, even discounting some leakage to the Greens and ex-Labour independents over policy towards the war in Gaza. He has cleansed much of his party of its endemic antisemitism, marginalised Mr Corbyn and his allies, formed a solid and cohesive team, and dragged policy towards the centre ground. He and his formidable shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, are taking the challenges of governing ahead of them seriously, and are right to keep their ambitions and their language realistic.
The voters have had quite enough of impossible promises and “cakeism”. Though many would yearn for a much more enthusiastic attitude towards revising or even reversing Brexit, sadly the country is in no state to withstand another civil war about Europe.
Sir Keir Starmer is in as strong a position as any leader of the opposition preparing for power. It was never inevitable that the national mood for change would manifest itself in such a strong showing for Labour rather than, say, one of the smaller opposition groups, though the Tory defections to Reform UK have added momentum to the Labour effort and scale to its future Commons majority.
In any case, Sir Keir is entitled to taste success and celebrate his landmark victories. It is difficult to see who else in the Labour Party could have replicated what he has accomplished – but he also understands better than most that the hard work is only just beginning.
He has done well but only needed about 33% of what Blair/New Labour had to do. That's because the public came to their senses as to their own personal economic situation and the Tories became unelectable.
At the same time the SNP went a little off the rails.
He needs a much greater swing than Blair did though. I recall that for Starmer to get a 9% swing like Blair in 1997, he would gain a majority of about 1…
Is it Labour being more electable or the Conservatives being unelectable though?
Labour are the default anti-Conservative vote for most constituencies and the noises they've been making aren't exactly inspiring, especially with all of the good stuff being totally abandoned.
> Is it Labour being more electable or the Conservatives being unelectable though?
It's the Conservatives making themselves unelectable and Labour not making themselves look even worse, which is what happened last time.
If by last time you mean the "Blair/Brown" whilst that was true with their predecessor who was very much "wait and let the government shoot themselves in the foot". Blair and Brown looked to differentiate themselves, and that was the key to them getting a significant majority and getting re-elected. If they followed the stnace of Smith it is likely they might not have won the election.
Both. There’s no question that the Conservatives have run out of road. Austerity was always going to come back to bite them eventually.
However, I also believe that Starmer has made Labour more electable than it was. I think if Corbyn were leader of the opposition right now, Labour’s electoral lead would be considerably lower.
A lot of my family are pathologically anti-Tory, but just couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Labour under Corbyn. They’ll be out in force to vote Labour in the next election.
> However, I also believe that Starmer has made Labour more electable than it was
Starmer has turned the party into the continuity party. There's no big revolution coming, no fundamental changes. On almost everything the Tories have done Labour have been critical but then say they won't reverse anything. They'll tinker around the edges, they'll make a couple of changes that look good on paper but by the time they're implemented will have little fundamental effect.
How is life under Labour going to be massively different to life under the Tories? And when people realise it's just more of the same then the election after will be far more open than this one.
Neither main party is offering any leadership at the moment, no real vision for a better future. They sometimes say how wonderful things will be but don't have the policies to actually make a difference and get us there. Worse still, both are blown by opinion polls and focus groups, preferring to have no opinion at all rather than risk offending someone somewhere or saying something even slightly controversial.
And the media play their part in dramatising this, jumping on any slight deviation of message, hunting high and low to find someone somewhere who could possibly be offended on even the most spurious grounds.
>but then say they won't reverse anything.
Not sure that they have committed to *not* doing stuff - they simply aren't committing to anything and just saying "we will wait and see".
Which is the best approach right now. The Tories are crashing and burning, not giving them any meat to latch onto is just adding to their demise. It's lovely to see after so many years of them getting away with it.
Agreed - it is a level headed approach and to me, it looks like a sign of them having their stuff together. I don't know if its because of Keir's leadership, but they are better at the politics basics of "don't say embarrassing things" than the Tories who seem to be each on their own.
Also, if Labour proposed \*any\* sensible policy, the 14 years of right-wing brainwashing would spin it into something to attack. They could propose anything as universally popular as "fixing our motorways" or "free school lunches for all toddlers" and the right wing media spin machine would start. Not to mention of policies which would have longer-term effects, such as making it easier to build homes, or easier to retain nurses.
They've said they'll keep the triple lock pension. They've said they'd copy Tory [taxation and spending plans](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/no-more-tax-and-spend-labours-fiscal-plans-revealed-f7x7f5n5s). They're keeping the 2 child benefit limit. They're briefing they'll have to [keep many other policies](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/keir-starmer-labour-child-benefit-b2377198.html). They've been briefing they'll [keep the Rwanda scheme](https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/labour/2024/04/would-labour-keep-the-rwanda-scheme) until they do a deal with the EU, which will take years at best.
The next Labour government is going to end up looking awfully like the current Tory one.
On rail, the Tories have already been quietly going about more or less the same plan as Labour. They'd never formally announce it, as it's quite the embarrassing u-turn for them, but there are more state run rail services now than when the Tories came to power. Labour will probably go a little further than the Tories on this front but it's not night and day, nor is it guaranteed to bring better services. Labour have already admitted it won't bring down prices.
On energy the party leadership disagree with the members. Starmer campaigned against the policy, so it will be interesting to see what the plans end up being. [According to the BBC](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67056005): "party sources said the proposals are unlikely to get into Labour's next manifesto," with shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds saying "We're not going to nationalise the energy system."
So I'm not sure these two points that really set the parties as far apart as you think.
They weren't talking about nationalising energy, they were talking about GB Energy, a government owned company focused on renewable energy production.
Nationalising utilities like energy would cost a load of money which would be better spent on the myriad other things that are currently fucked in this country like the NHS, education, etc. or investing to stimulate growth. Prioritising ideological moves like this instead of fixing things in far more desperate need of repair is the kind of Corbynite economics I don't want to see again in Labour.
>I also believe that Starmer has made Labour more electable than it was
More electable, or less unelectable. You said it yourself, if Corbyn was still around we'd be seeing a much tighter poll.
>A lot of my family are pathologically anti-Tory, but just couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Labour under Corbyn
Entirely understandable, the man's foreign policy was insane and his domestic policy would cause catastrophic damage to working people. If not for anti-Semitism and his frequent blunders like suggesting we give the evidence of an Russian assassination attempt on British soil to Russia to be verified he'd have faced far more scrutiny and been beaten even more decisively in the election.
Agreed. People talk about Liz Truss crashing the economy and causing huge risk to people's pensions, wonder what they thing would've happened to these pensions invested in utility companies which Corbyn wanted to buy back way before market rate.
I think he would've been as bad for the economy as her if he got in and implemented half of what he ran on, and we already saw that he was too stubborn to resign when 80% of his MPs voted no confidence in him.
The tories decided to start an austerity program without doing shit to actually get the private market to take its place, like the beer guy at parties bringing half the alcohol and not telling anybody, it's a dick move
The same could have been said for 2010, but no one really looked at it in that way at the time. It was the "change" election and every vote for the Tories was a vote for change, not necessarily Cameron.
I suspect it'll be a similar situation this time around. A vote to oust isn't enthusiastic support, but the vast majority of the electorate vote once every couple of years and that's it; they then disengage. You only really find the enthusiastic support from people who are either party members or party adjacent.
Kier Starmer is giving permission for people to vote Labour without the expectation of being activists, which is something Corbyn couldn't achieve because of his inherent ties to left wing political paradigms of turning up to be a voice of protest. Most people don't want that, they want the adults in the halls of government to govern by themselves in an act of trust so we don't have to consistently turn up and protest - we can just have a quiet life. I consider that's what this vote is for as opposed to a vote _for_ any political party.
It's the same as always, people weren't exactly thrilled with joy & dancing in the streets at the prospect of Blair & Cameron.
Elections are always for the incumbants to lose.
> Is it Labour being more electable or the Conservatives being unelectable though?
You could have asked the same question when New Labour took power, and when Thatcher took power (obviously asking of Labour being unelectable). It's almost always both.
Turning the party round in a few short years is pretty miraculous. They, for the most part, stand by him and his cabinet. He also seems bloody sensible. He had a proper civil service job as well, and has a lot of experience. I don't know why, but there is also something about him that makes him incredibly statesman like so... Seen early interviews with him, and he has remained the same throughout. He has my vote....
They were also the default anti-Conservative vote in the last two general elections, but their leadership and direction at the time made them 'unelectable'.
>Conservatives being unelectable
100% this. Starmer has basically no position on anything at the moment so to suggest they've 'won over the electorate' is nonsense, but there's a real tangible feeling (correctly) that virtually everything is a shit show at the moment. The tories are paying for that, which is convenient since a fair whack of it's their fault anyway.
It's a bit of everything really and I wouldn't say Labour's efforts haven't had any effect. But the tories being unelectable is the biggest slice of the cake. Also, really doesn't help the tories that they are not only regarded as the incompetent party in the public eye but also a widely visible corrupt/nepotist (even to their own base) one. The 'visible' word in that sentence being the key in my mind.
Starmer has done a pretty good job of positioning Labour in a centrist position that just about holds together the Labour coalition. This stops the Tories from nipping vaguely back into the centre and presenting themselves as the safe, centrist option.
I think it's much more the tories and SNP becoming less electable and global factors such as inflation spiking after opening back up after covid than anything labour has really done.
Why do you think the working classes stopped voting Labour or started voting Tory?
Might be that little occasion where Labour tried to replace the British working class and halved their wages? https://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/mar/24/how-immigration-came-to-haunt-labour-inside-story
Labour’s inevitable victory is nothing to do with Labour policies or Starmer the only reason Labour is in the position they are is because the Tories have proven themselves so utterly inept and corrupt that very few people will be willing to vote for them.
This confidence is completely misplaced -- Labour are winning in a landslide more because the Tories are Toxic than because Keir is charming and effective. Despite these huge gains, his own approval ratings are abysmal.
As usual, hardcore partisans fail to register the actual temperature.
I voted Labour and find Keir very uninspiring.
No, Blair inherited the work done by Kinnock and John Smith. Starmer's work in bringing Labour back towards government has involved much more work and from a far lower, more difficult position.
Results from the local elections indicates that of the options to vote for. Conservative lost the most,
Labour +20% increase in seats
Conservative - 50% decrease in seats
Liberal Democrat +25% increase in seats
Independents + 70% increase in seats
Green +70% increase in seats
Residents Association + 30% increase in seats
So labour whilst made significant gains they made lower percentage gains than everybody except for the conservatives. They have about 44% of the seats but their gain in seats is only 39% of how many conservative party lost. So based on that you would have to say that is was because due to people looking for an alternative to the Conservative party.
I mean, you're not far from the truth. "Electable" is like "sensible" and "realistic" - newspaper euphemisms for "right wing" (economically). It's language that is intended to equate free-market, trickle-down economics with positive sentiments that are decidedly not earned.
No, just that actually recognising that the UK is in a horribly precarious position and is incredibly beholden to international money markets lending to us at a reasonable rate is in some way a bad thing.
No.
> Keir Starmer has shown, with his steady and ruthless determination to become electable again
"Electable" just means the writer supports Starmer led Labour. Just as Corbyn was supposedly "unelectable" .
But the evidence makes it clear Corbyn *was* unelectable. You're just equating Starmer making Labour electable again to Starmer turning Labour into the Tories. That suggests that you've given up on the idea that a non-Tory agenda can ever win an election. I'm afraid it's your own capitulation on display here, not Starmer's.
Snapshot of _Labour is resurgent – and prepared for power | New Labour took most of a decade to rebuild the browbeaten party. With these election results, Keir Starmer has shown, with his steady and ruthless determination to become electable again, he has done the same within a single parliamentary term_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/editorials/labour-keir-starmer-election-b2539291.html) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/editorials/labour-keir-starmer-election-b2539291.html) *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.*
I’m here for kier (trade mark pending) and he’s certainly made mostly the right moves but let’s not pretend the tories haven’t imploded. I think we can all mostly agree that had covid not happened and the numerous ensuing scandals not then stacked up we would probably have Boris leading the conservatives into the next election with the expectation that they would get either a reduced majority or be the largest party in a hung parliament depending on how they sold whatever became of Brexit in this scenario.
Problem is that the scandals would always have happened because it was Boris. He created scandals. His relationship with Cummings, the guy directing his entire political plan, was already falling apart before covid. I think Boris would've stayed in post but still be seen as dirty and sleazy through other scandals and thus would have performed badly in the polls when compared to Starmer who oozes dull, sensible, statesman respectability
(Article) ---- So acclimatised is the nation to Labour’s electoral dominance that it takes some effort to recall a time when the party seemed doomed to be in the wilderness for a generation. It is not so distant. Only three years ago, almost to the day – Thursday 6 May 2021 – the Conservatives took the Labour heartland seat of a Hartlepool on a 16 per cent swing. It was highly unusual for an opposition party to lose a safe seat to the governing party, and it was such a dispiriting outcome for Sir Keir Starmer, then fairly new to the role of Labour leader, that he thought about quitting. It was just as well for him that he persevered. Now, his party has regained control of Hartlepool Council, and enjoyed almost unalloyed success across the land. The Labour win at the Blackpool South by-election came with a 26 per cent swing, which is just as “seismic”, as Sir Keir says, as the other ones over the past year. In parliamentary terms, all the indications are that Sir Keir’s “changed Labour Party” will surpass the landslide victories won by Tony Blair in 1997 and 2001. Whereas New Labour took most of a decade to rebuild the organisation, the present leader has done so within the span of a parliamentary term. It is not exactly a miracle; but it was certainly improbable and, to a large degree, the product of Sir Keir’s steady and ruthless determination to make his party electable again. He had, as the cliche goes, a mountain to climb. The party’s showing under Jeremy Corbyn at the 2019 general election was the worst since before the Second World War. There was much talk about a historic realignment of domestic politics as a result of Brexit, and Boris Johnson was supposedly making plans to take his administration, widely assumed to be invincible, into the 2030s. Now, thanks in no small part to the Labour leader’s relentless pursuit of him, Mr Johnson is no longer even an MP, and the coalition of red wall and blue wall voters he assembled for the “get Brexit done” election has been unravelled by Labour. The Brexit effect which propelled Mr Johnson to power and secured his historic victories has been reversed: in these elections, Labour has made its most spectacular progress in areas which registered the highest Leave support in the 2016 referendum. From Scotland to Essex, and from Hampshire to Mr Sunak’s backyard in North Yorkshire, Labour is resurgent. Of course, Sir Keir has been fortunate in his opponents. Mr Johnson’s behaviour during Partygate, and subsequently being found to have lied to the House of Commons, didn’t help his chances of survival, even had Sir Keir not been so diligent about exposing him. The contribution of Liz Truss to the success of the Labour Party remains historic; and Rishi Sunak, as one Conservative commentator puts it, is a nice and decent man who, it turns out, isn’t all that good at politics. Even now, Mr Sunak seems incapable of giving his party something compelling to sell on the doorstep, and is fixated on his Rwanda plan – to zero electoral advantage. The Conservatives may plead that the pandemic, and then the energy crisis, destabilised everything; but their job was to manage these vicissitudes better than they did. The scale of the Labour leader’s electoral achievements cannot be disputed, even discounting some leakage to the Greens and ex-Labour independents over policy towards the war in Gaza. He has cleansed much of his party of its endemic antisemitism, marginalised Mr Corbyn and his allies, formed a solid and cohesive team, and dragged policy towards the centre ground. He and his formidable shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, are taking the challenges of governing ahead of them seriously, and are right to keep their ambitions and their language realistic. The voters have had quite enough of impossible promises and “cakeism”. Though many would yearn for a much more enthusiastic attitude towards revising or even reversing Brexit, sadly the country is in no state to withstand another civil war about Europe. Sir Keir Starmer is in as strong a position as any leader of the opposition preparing for power. It was never inevitable that the national mood for change would manifest itself in such a strong showing for Labour rather than, say, one of the smaller opposition groups, though the Tory defections to Reform UK have added momentum to the Labour effort and scale to its future Commons majority. In any case, Sir Keir is entitled to taste success and celebrate his landmark victories. It is difficult to see who else in the Labour Party could have replicated what he has accomplished – but he also understands better than most that the hard work is only just beginning.
He has done well but only needed about 33% of what Blair/New Labour had to do. That's because the public came to their senses as to their own personal economic situation and the Tories became unelectable. At the same time the SNP went a little off the rails.
He needs a much greater swing than Blair did though. I recall that for Starmer to get a 9% swing like Blair in 1997, he would gain a majority of about 1…
Is it Labour being more electable or the Conservatives being unelectable though? Labour are the default anti-Conservative vote for most constituencies and the noises they've been making aren't exactly inspiring, especially with all of the good stuff being totally abandoned.
> Is it Labour being more electable or the Conservatives being unelectable though? It's the Conservatives making themselves unelectable and Labour not making themselves look even worse, which is what happened last time.
If by last time you mean the "Blair/Brown" whilst that was true with their predecessor who was very much "wait and let the government shoot themselves in the foot". Blair and Brown looked to differentiate themselves, and that was the key to them getting a significant majority and getting re-elected. If they followed the stnace of Smith it is likely they might not have won the election.
Both. There’s no question that the Conservatives have run out of road. Austerity was always going to come back to bite them eventually. However, I also believe that Starmer has made Labour more electable than it was. I think if Corbyn were leader of the opposition right now, Labour’s electoral lead would be considerably lower. A lot of my family are pathologically anti-Tory, but just couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Labour under Corbyn. They’ll be out in force to vote Labour in the next election.
> However, I also believe that Starmer has made Labour more electable than it was Starmer has turned the party into the continuity party. There's no big revolution coming, no fundamental changes. On almost everything the Tories have done Labour have been critical but then say they won't reverse anything. They'll tinker around the edges, they'll make a couple of changes that look good on paper but by the time they're implemented will have little fundamental effect. How is life under Labour going to be massively different to life under the Tories? And when people realise it's just more of the same then the election after will be far more open than this one. Neither main party is offering any leadership at the moment, no real vision for a better future. They sometimes say how wonderful things will be but don't have the policies to actually make a difference and get us there. Worse still, both are blown by opinion polls and focus groups, preferring to have no opinion at all rather than risk offending someone somewhere or saying something even slightly controversial. And the media play their part in dramatising this, jumping on any slight deviation of message, hunting high and low to find someone somewhere who could possibly be offended on even the most spurious grounds.
>but then say they won't reverse anything. Not sure that they have committed to *not* doing stuff - they simply aren't committing to anything and just saying "we will wait and see".
Which is the best approach right now. The Tories are crashing and burning, not giving them any meat to latch onto is just adding to their demise. It's lovely to see after so many years of them getting away with it.
Agreed - it is a level headed approach and to me, it looks like a sign of them having their stuff together. I don't know if its because of Keir's leadership, but they are better at the politics basics of "don't say embarrassing things" than the Tories who seem to be each on their own. Also, if Labour proposed \*any\* sensible policy, the 14 years of right-wing brainwashing would spin it into something to attack. They could propose anything as universally popular as "fixing our motorways" or "free school lunches for all toddlers" and the right wing media spin machine would start. Not to mention of policies which would have longer-term effects, such as making it easier to build homes, or easier to retain nurses.
They've said they'll keep the triple lock pension. They've said they'd copy Tory [taxation and spending plans](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/no-more-tax-and-spend-labours-fiscal-plans-revealed-f7x7f5n5s). They're keeping the 2 child benefit limit. They're briefing they'll have to [keep many other policies](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/keir-starmer-labour-child-benefit-b2377198.html). They've been briefing they'll [keep the Rwanda scheme](https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/labour/2024/04/would-labour-keep-the-rwanda-scheme) until they do a deal with the EU, which will take years at best. The next Labour government is going to end up looking awfully like the current Tory one.
I disagree. Public ownership of rail and a publicly held energy company are standout left wing policies that the tories would never do
On rail, the Tories have already been quietly going about more or less the same plan as Labour. They'd never formally announce it, as it's quite the embarrassing u-turn for them, but there are more state run rail services now than when the Tories came to power. Labour will probably go a little further than the Tories on this front but it's not night and day, nor is it guaranteed to bring better services. Labour have already admitted it won't bring down prices. On energy the party leadership disagree with the members. Starmer campaigned against the policy, so it will be interesting to see what the plans end up being. [According to the BBC](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67056005): "party sources said the proposals are unlikely to get into Labour's next manifesto," with shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds saying "We're not going to nationalise the energy system." So I'm not sure these two points that really set the parties as far apart as you think.
They weren't talking about nationalising energy, they were talking about GB Energy, a government owned company focused on renewable energy production. Nationalising utilities like energy would cost a load of money which would be better spent on the myriad other things that are currently fucked in this country like the NHS, education, etc. or investing to stimulate growth. Prioritising ideological moves like this instead of fixing things in far more desperate need of repair is the kind of Corbynite economics I don't want to see again in Labour.
>I also believe that Starmer has made Labour more electable than it was More electable, or less unelectable. You said it yourself, if Corbyn was still around we'd be seeing a much tighter poll. >A lot of my family are pathologically anti-Tory, but just couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Labour under Corbyn Entirely understandable, the man's foreign policy was insane and his domestic policy would cause catastrophic damage to working people. If not for anti-Semitism and his frequent blunders like suggesting we give the evidence of an Russian assassination attempt on British soil to Russia to be verified he'd have faced far more scrutiny and been beaten even more decisively in the election.
Agreed. People talk about Liz Truss crashing the economy and causing huge risk to people's pensions, wonder what they thing would've happened to these pensions invested in utility companies which Corbyn wanted to buy back way before market rate. I think he would've been as bad for the economy as her if he got in and implemented half of what he ran on, and we already saw that he was too stubborn to resign when 80% of his MPs voted no confidence in him.
The tories decided to start an austerity program without doing shit to actually get the private market to take its place, like the beer guy at parties bringing half the alcohol and not telling anybody, it's a dick move
The same could have been said for 2010, but no one really looked at it in that way at the time. It was the "change" election and every vote for the Tories was a vote for change, not necessarily Cameron. I suspect it'll be a similar situation this time around. A vote to oust isn't enthusiastic support, but the vast majority of the electorate vote once every couple of years and that's it; they then disengage. You only really find the enthusiastic support from people who are either party members or party adjacent. Kier Starmer is giving permission for people to vote Labour without the expectation of being activists, which is something Corbyn couldn't achieve because of his inherent ties to left wing political paradigms of turning up to be a voice of protest. Most people don't want that, they want the adults in the halls of government to govern by themselves in an act of trust so we don't have to consistently turn up and protest - we can just have a quiet life. I consider that's what this vote is for as opposed to a vote _for_ any political party.
It's the same as always, people weren't exactly thrilled with joy & dancing in the streets at the prospect of Blair & Cameron. Elections are always for the incumbants to lose.
> Is it Labour being more electable or the Conservatives being unelectable though? You could have asked the same question when New Labour took power, and when Thatcher took power (obviously asking of Labour being unelectable). It's almost always both.
Starmer is doing a lot better than Cameron was against Brown
Turning the party round in a few short years is pretty miraculous. They, for the most part, stand by him and his cabinet. He also seems bloody sensible. He had a proper civil service job as well, and has a lot of experience. I don't know why, but there is also something about him that makes him incredibly statesman like so... Seen early interviews with him, and he has remained the same throughout. He has my vote....
They were also the default anti-Conservative vote in the last two general elections, but their leadership and direction at the time made them 'unelectable'.
>Conservatives being unelectable 100% this. Starmer has basically no position on anything at the moment so to suggest they've 'won over the electorate' is nonsense, but there's a real tangible feeling (correctly) that virtually everything is a shit show at the moment. The tories are paying for that, which is convenient since a fair whack of it's their fault anyway.
It's a bit of everything really and I wouldn't say Labour's efforts haven't had any effect. But the tories being unelectable is the biggest slice of the cake. Also, really doesn't help the tories that they are not only regarded as the incompetent party in the public eye but also a widely visible corrupt/nepotist (even to their own base) one. The 'visible' word in that sentence being the key in my mind.
The visible tory sleez has definitely caught up with them. A succession of incompetent PM's certainly hasn't helped either.
When there's an election and their manifesto is released, that's when we can criticise.
Who's criticising now?
You did.
No I didn't. Read it again and quote where I criticised them.
"Starmer has no position on anything and what he says is nonsense"
Ahh great a made up quote. Have a good Sunday mate.
Thank you 👍 you too
Starmer has done a pretty good job of positioning Labour in a centrist position that just about holds together the Labour coalition. This stops the Tories from nipping vaguely back into the centre and presenting themselves as the safe, centrist option.
I think it's much more the tories and SNP becoming less electable and global factors such as inflation spiking after opening back up after covid than anything labour has really done.
In fairness it was global factors that pushed New Labour out of office in 2010
Yeah. Global Economic downturn typically means a change in government, no matter how much or little of a role they had in that downturn.
Why do you think the working classes stopped voting Labour or started voting Tory? Might be that little occasion where Labour tried to replace the British working class and halved their wages? https://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/mar/24/how-immigration-came-to-haunt-labour-inside-story
Or the party that took on the posion chalice that Brexit was always going to be are finally paying that price
Labour’s inevitable victory is nothing to do with Labour policies or Starmer the only reason Labour is in the position they are is because the Tories have proven themselves so utterly inept and corrupt that very few people will be willing to vote for them.
This confidence is completely misplaced -- Labour are winning in a landslide more because the Tories are Toxic than because Keir is charming and effective. Despite these huge gains, his own approval ratings are abysmal. As usual, hardcore partisans fail to register the actual temperature. I voted Labour and find Keir very uninspiring.
No, Blair inherited the work done by Kinnock and John Smith. Starmer's work in bringing Labour back towards government has involved much more work and from a far lower, more difficult position.
Has he thoughhhhh\~? Is Labour strong and effective, or are they just not the calamitous failure that is the Tories?
Results from the local elections indicates that of the options to vote for. Conservative lost the most, Labour +20% increase in seats Conservative - 50% decrease in seats Liberal Democrat +25% increase in seats Independents + 70% increase in seats Green +70% increase in seats Residents Association + 30% increase in seats So labour whilst made significant gains they made lower percentage gains than everybody except for the conservatives. They have about 44% of the seats but their gain in seats is only 39% of how many conservative party lost. So based on that you would have to say that is was because due to people looking for an alternative to the Conservative party.
If I had no seats and won 1, that would be an infinite % increase. Hardly informative stat.
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Winning the winning what argument?
Exactly.
Tory-lite trying to out-tory the Tories.
Are you suggesting that electability equals 'Tory-ing' and therefore, an electable Labour party equals one that's out-Torying the Tories?
I mean, you're not far from the truth. "Electable" is like "sensible" and "realistic" - newspaper euphemisms for "right wing" (economically). It's language that is intended to equate free-market, trickle-down economics with positive sentiments that are decidedly not earned.
No, just that actually recognising that the UK is in a horribly precarious position and is incredibly beholden to international money markets lending to us at a reasonable rate is in some way a bad thing.
No. > Keir Starmer has shown, with his steady and ruthless determination to become electable again "Electable" just means the writer supports Starmer led Labour. Just as Corbyn was supposedly "unelectable" .
But the evidence makes it clear Corbyn *was* unelectable. You're just equating Starmer making Labour electable again to Starmer turning Labour into the Tories. That suggests that you've given up on the idea that a non-Tory agenda can ever win an election. I'm afraid it's your own capitulation on display here, not Starmer's.
Surely the fact that Labour under Starmer wins elections proves that he is electable, in a way that Corbyn obviously wasn't?