Labour Cabinet Reshuffle

10% of UK citizens hold 50% of the wealth in the UK.

Don't rock the boat.

 

You might live in an area where Plaid Cymru, SNP, or the Greens have a chance of winning.

Don't vote, or vote for someone who has no chance of winning & you get Sunak. You brought it on yourself, like buying the complete works of Adele, curated by the Marquis de Sade, but worse, Liz Truss does a voiceover.

 

Actually, that would still be better than 5 years of Tory rule.

 

You're right of course but what a terrible place we're in when we have to knowingly vote another **** party in to get rid of these crooks.

 

Irony alert!

 

It's good to see Hilary Benn back on the Front Bench. A man of principle, and a great orator. Hopefully it will lead to an end of the period of DUP politicians exercising a disproportionate influence in UK politics.

 

Not for me. Bit too fond of neoliberalism and blowing up brown women and kids for my liking.

Also sabotaging his own party in 2017 and 2019 has played a massive part in where we are now. The likes of him, Kinnock, Harman, were visibly gutted when they saw how well Corbyn did in 2017 (in relation to the absolute massacre that was predicted). The political class then closed ranks and ensured it wouldn’t happen again, and we ended up with Boris ******* Johnson. I wonder what Tony would have thought of it all?

It’s all rather depressing to be honest. I’ve pretty much switched off from politics as I’ve completely lost hope.

 

Fair enough opinion, and yours to hold. My take is that he saw the utter hopelessness of trying to get Labour elected with Corbyn at the helm. The record defeat in 2019 showed how right he was. Politics is the art of the possible. Oldest cliche in politics, but arguably the truest.

 

I would counter that by saying it wasn’t hopeless in 2017. He got very close and would have won easily in my opinion if his parliamentary arm of the party actually backed him rather than knocking him at every turn.

I agree by 2019 the writing was very much on the wall, once the Tories, RW Labour and the press managed to make it a ‘Brexit Election’ it was game over.

Corbyn had his shortcomings don’t get me wrong. But the way he was treated and slandered highlights what we are as a country. It’s left me disillusioned and politically homeless.

 

Principles? A man who voted for Iraq. When I asked him in person outside Leeds City Hall before the invasion about the deaths it would bring he said "It will be a price worth paying".

Not for him mind.

 

I think you have him confused with his father.

 

Labours in a very sorry place atm' the last straw for me was when Starmer sacked that Labour mp for picketing with the train drivers' the Labour party was born through trade unions and rather than sacking him he should have been by his side showing his solidarity ' put that together with the numerous broken promises following his leadership campaign and its looking bleak' Starmer wouldn't look out of place if he crossed the floor and sat on the front bench opposite but in a 2 horse race what choice do we have' the tories have to be outed by whatever means possible.

 

I could have written this post myself. Word for word. I left the party under Starmer as well.

I understand people not liking him and what he’s apparently standing for. I don’t rate him or the vanilla, non-committal policy. At all.

I don’t think he’s a liar. I think he’s had to rail back because of the obvious decline in the country in pretty much every regard.

I also think he’s game playing, not giving the media at large too much ammunition to crucify him. He’s not daft: he saw what happened to Corbyn.

Has he drifted too far from the left? Of course.

Is the Labour Party as far to the right as the sitting government? Are they no better a bet than the current lot? It is ridiculous to suggest that.

We aren’t getting out of a fptp system anytime soon. So there’s a choice, either vote Labour in or five more years of the tories. It’s that simple.

Even a Labour Party I’m disillusioned with, that I’ve given up membership of, that is more centrist than I’m comfortable with, is still an exponentially better bet than the current government.

Yes it’s a ‘least bad’ option. But that doesn’t matter. There are really only the two choices realistically. I want more. I want better. But not voting for them leaves us with much, much worse.

 

Great post. It’s a shame it’s been totally ignored by those who are shouting about starmer in this thread.

 

100% spot on well put over.

 

The ideal scenario is a Labour win at the next GE.... but not a landslide. They need to wake up and I say that as a Labour party member.

A vote isn't just about voting against a ruling government. That can't be democracy. We must use our votes to swing the political discourse. We've all seen how effective that's been for the UKIP voters of 2015. They effectively ended up with what they wanted and a nation led in their image, even if there was never any chance of a sizeable UKIP presence in Parliament.

Let's stop damning anyone who wants to vote for what they believe in, when what they believe in is something we can agree on.

 

I’m not damning them, so much as I’m desperate for them to see the possibility that conceding some of their idealisms should lead to a government that is actually a lot closer to those idealisms than the current one, and a lot fairer to all.

That it’s easier to push for more socialist and left wing policy - that will actually be applied - if the Labour Party are on the other side of the house.

I’ve nothing to say Starmer will revert back left in power. I suspect he might - but I’m not certain he will.

But even if he didn’t, I can’t make any cognitive argument that concludes he still isn’t a better bet than the only credible alternative.

 

Can I just say, there are some excellent posts in this thread, we’ll written and we’ll reasoned, I don’t agree with them all of course, but I’ve so enjoyed reading them and have been given food for thought. We just need to oust the Tories and then take stock,my hope is Labour will at some point slide back towards the left, but that’s sort of secondary at the moment.

 

I fully agree that the priority is the end of Tory rule and that has to be the priority.

But this current Labour administration listen to voters, not members. Any shift leftward has to be instigated by a massive Green vote in safe Labour seats.

Different story if you live in a marginal, granted. But in many of those in the south it'll mean a vote for the Lib Dems anyway.

 

I think that’s a really well written post. I don’t agree with all of it but I’m sure we can debate the nuances over the next 12 months (God help us!). Fundamentally, after more than 50 years (including more than 30 as a Member) I’ve finally given up on the party - or it’s given up on people like me! My politics have always been left of centre, not in any extreme way, but they now feel like that with this Labour Party. A party that for me provides no vision, no policy of note, indeed no hope for something better.

Incidentally, if I thought that were just down to Starmer, I’d still be battling away, but it goes much much deeper than that imo.

I think those who believe Starmer is playing a clever game and the party will move leftwards if in Govt, are fooling themselves. ‘Judge us by our actions’. That has never happened in the Party’s history - quite the opposite in fact.

One prediction I will make is that Ms Reeves will be the architect of ‘Austerity 2’ and, as with Osborne, that will be a political choice rather than something bourne out of necessity. You read it here first!

I look forward to the continuing discussion.