Adults in charge of Labour - Thatcherism 2024

Every Conservative that comes on TV, in the media, or in Parliament says they have a plan and keep repeating they have a plan and it is working, anyone who sucks up to this must have had their brains boiled.

 

Owen Jones pretty much sums up my view.

The Labour party is in my blood. Here’s why I’ve just cancelled my membership | Owen Jones https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/21/labour-party-cancelling-membership-policies

People who blindly follow the pro-Labour vote line do really need to do a reality check of what sort of Party they are voting for. Even before the election some of Starmer's positions have been appalling.

 

I can hear Billy Bragg striking up in the background!

 

On the contrary, Jones finally admitting he's binned his membership is a cause for celebration. If Labour advertised it on a campaign poster it would probably add a few more points to their poll lead.

He, alongside the Novara Media lot, are the personification of why a Corbyn-led Labour Party never stood a chance of winning an election and should never have been allowed to run it into the ground as they did. Their presence on the airwaves in support of Corbyn's Labour Party, and their tolerance and amplification of the antisemitism that was rife within it, probably contributed to as many lost Labour voters in those election campaigns as Magic Grandpa's presence as figurehead did.

This feeds perfectly into Starmer's narrative of having changed the Labour Party since he took over, and it's all the better for it. From an electoral perspective, the more he can point towards people like Jones no longer being part of it, the better.

It's no coincidence that one of the consistent remaining attack lines the Tories still use on Starmer is the repeated line of "he tried to put Corbyn into No 10." They're desperate for it still to resonate, to remind everyone what a liability Corbyn was, but it simply makes them look desperate and highlights the fact that they've pretty much given up on governing, beyond trying to manufacture culture wars in an attempt to stop them bleeding more of the gammon vote to Reform.

 

Is this a good idea though? Surely you can’t just keep making money to pay for things. If the government just printed £2b to fix the NHS, and that money goes out to companies providing the contracts for services and equipment, and on paying new staff, putting £2b into the system that wasn’t there before, and then doing similar for education, policing, local government, etc, it would sort everything out, but wouldn’t something like this start ******* with inflation? Is this where countries like Italy started, ending up with a pack of tic tacs costing 2000 lira?

 

Yes, that’s been my reading of it too. The papers all have their ‘magic money tree’ headlines ready, but they haven’t been given the chance to use them.

I’m wondering whether the Tories will dump Sunak about 2 months before the GE. Think back to when Johnson was being replaced and the Tory party had weeks of coverage, with all the screened TV debates, etc, and their propaganda being rammed down everybody’s throats, even though only a handful of blue rinses got to vote on the leader anyway. Having another of these shortly before a GE will give them and their message a lot of air time.

 

Not that I think another leadership contest will happen pre-election, but wall-to-wall coverage of Braverman, Bad Enoch, Jenrick, etc fighting for the title of 'who can hate immigrants the most' as leadership campaigns wouldn't be the electoral gold dust they seem to think it is. The race to outflank each other on the right just leaves a bigger chasm of voters in their natural core group who can no longer bring themselves to vote Tory. They'll migrate to other parties, or simply won't bother to vote at all, but the net effect will continue to be a net drain of Tory voters.

 

Why can't we simply recognise (and accept?) that most posters on this site will vote for Right Wing Parties at the next election - Tories, Labour & Reform (just different shades of Right Wing) and some will look for a more Centre left option; which unless they have been completely purged, will include some Labour Candidates.
For those wanting to vote for a more progressive center/centre left candidate - they are just going to have to work harder to find them - rather than blindly putting a cross in the 'Labour Party' box; as they have often been able to do in the past.

 

Its perfectly clear what Starmer is doing re: the connection with Corbyn's Labour. So, I can see your point regards the distancing per se if it gets votes. However there is a trade off between getting votes and upholding some basic principles which Starmer happy-clappers always like to avoid because it doesn't sit easily. For example as was pointed out in that very article Starmer has shown his colours on a few occasions since becoming leader. The stance on Gaza is one, the two-child benefit cap is another, not to mention the several lies and backtracking he has done to either look 'hard' or to cover his tracks. Presumably you will be happy with all of the above (and more I could mention) simply because he is not the Tories. If you do agree with the above then you are saying that you will indeed accept any nasty, cruel duplicitous act that he makes. So, in effect, he may as well BE a Tory....
Please tell me you agree with not supplying food to Gaza and not abandoning the two-child benefit cap.
We are in for more austerity with Labour, more pain for millions of poor and underprivileged, and ultimately, as I argued earlier on, Starmer is setting us up for more Tories c.2029. Its ok not being Corbyn if in power but its not going to be ok with this Labour lot after the next election as there is nothing of substance there. No principles, no genuine concern for people who need help. Nothing. House of Cards. Blue Tories back in in 5 years thanks to Starmer. Then things will get appallingly bad when things turn markedly right wing.

 

Why should they? The clue is in the name!
.

 

Itz aLL CoRBynz fAultZ!

(obsessed, much?)

 

So, given that it's either Starmer or more Sunak............?

 

Deary me! What a conundrum. I think I may spoil my ballot. Big Tories or little Tories. Great! The country is knackered.

 

Any potential Labour leader has a right wing media ready to discredit him at every opportunity, Corbyn had the added pleasure of his own party doing it as well. To say he was this & that is ******, he built up the largest membership the party has ever had & brought people who had no interest in politics whatsoever into the fold. Brexit killed Labour at the last election NOT Corbyn. We had the opportunity for REAL change with the most honest MP there is, my interest now is zero.

 

Its truly incredible in 2024 that anyone still believes or is pretending anti-semitism was rife in the Labour Party

 

it’s just the economics of a fiat currency producing economy. All capital projects that have ever been created in this country were produced by currency creation. If you rule out currency creation and impose ‘fiscal rules’ that any A Level economic student will tell you are financially illiterate you hard wire austerity into your political project. That’s the same whether the Tories do it or Labour do it. The limits on a fiat currency do exist and you have to be wary of spooking some markets but if you can demonstrate that you are producing money for a particular purpose then that’s just the usual workings of a fiat economy.

 

Hyper inflation that you mention is almost unknown in fiat currency producing economies that are producing currency for capital projects. The Italian example like Argentina was due to the countries producing money that there leaders stole. Very different.

let me give you an example not that I necessary think this is a good idea as you can just terminate franchises . The Govt decides to nationalise overnight and prints 20 billion to cover it. With that money it buys an asset equal or greater than that sum. This is not inflationary because it’s a cost neutral exercise.

in the uk the main cost of inflation is house prices / landlords exploiting people and a lack of social housing.

 

As someone who went out knocking on doors campaigning in 2019 I'm really sorry but my experience was that people couldn't vote for Corbyn, I'm not saying Brexit wasn't a factor but nearly every person I spoke to refused to vote for Corbyn.

Wether that was a hatchet job by the media or his relationships with various people and groups in the past people just couldn't vote for him and didn't believe he could achieve what he was saying which was all the more depressing when they flocked to vote for proven liar Johnson who did just that.

 

It seems to me that this ignores the likely effect on the value of your currency if you are too free with your printing press. Should your exchange rate suffer then in real terms you will receive less for your exports and pay more for your imports. That would have an inflationary effect, would it not?

It might also be worth mentioning here that Rachel Reeves takes a different view of borrowing for capital investment than for day to day spending. To that extent her 'fiscal rules' are more relaxed than the Sunak/Hunt version and more likely to lead to growth, which is the only way out of our present malaise.

As for the validity of fiscal rules per se, the most important view is surely that of the credit rating agencies, and the markets. They determine how much they will lend to governments and at what rate, to fund day to day operations. If they do not see some form of financial discipline, then their reaction is likely to be adverse, as Truss and Kwarteng found out.

 

I think this is a great point.

It’s one thing when right wing papers & Tories are smearing the party but when his own MP’s were at it it’s a lot more difficult to convince ordinary members of the public who don’t follow it closely that it’s a pack of lies.

Interesting times ahead, I was talking to someone who’s always paid the highest level of tax & has purely voted Tory for tax reasons & he said for the first time ever he doesn’t think he’ll vote.

Whoever I speak to about politics these days there seems to be a complete apathy towards it. 5 years ago people seemed to either love or hate Boris and the same for Corbyn.

To me logic says that it’ll be a really low turn out but that the Labour Party will win a majority. I still can’t believe the Tories went with Rishi Sunak as leader. There’s no way on earth a man of his skin colour is winning an election in this country. It was just never going to happen even if they hadn’t hit self-destruct. They should have gone with Penny Mordaunt. She would have appealed to traditional Tories & would’ve fared better in the ‘red wall’ seats