Tag: labour-party

This isn’t about Rayner’s taxes- it’s about the British people, and what we’re willing to accept.

By Daviemoo

Governmental corruption should be rooted out wherever it lies, however big or small it is- but British voters don’t seem to grasp that simple point, electing instead to overlook an acceptable level of dodgy behaviour if their team do it- and that’s why we’re in such a mess!

First of all, it wouldn’t shock me if the press ends up reporting that the Rayner scandal is nothing, a dead duck, a ridiculous diversion from more tory idiocy- it wouldn’t be the first time.
Lets not forget Harry Cole publicly moistening himself over the idea that Starmer would go if he was found to have broken the law during lockdown despite practically nuzzling up to Johnson, a man who broke the law repeatedly and flagrantly. So it wouldn’t even mildly surprise me if the Rayner stuff turns out to be arrant nonsense. But it’s bigger than that. The story you think it’s about? it’s not about that.

The tories are bad. I could sit here and rattle off a dozen reasons in less than a minute to explain why they don’t deserve to be in power- in fact, I often do. And I could make the same arguments that people I genuinely admire are making right now, about how if Angela Rayner did wriggle out of a bit of tax it’s not really comparable to the millions we’re accustomed to the tories dodging, between shooting PPE contracts down the throats of their donors- but it isn’t about the scale of tax ducking, it’s purely about the purity of governance we should- must, in fact, expect our leaders to abide by.

I was told yesterday that we ‘should expect this from politicians, they’re all corrupt’.
What a sad indictment of our politics that people in the UK believe this: that all our politicians are bad and we just have to hope they’re less bad when they’re in power. What’s the point in voting, in protesting, in fighting for better if all of our politicians truly are of a piece?
I happen to think it’s normal to aim for better politics, better politicians. better behaviour: is that wrong? Should we give up on fighting for better because the same is inevitable and worse is the only alternative? I fear that’s the way many brits think, happy to overlook lesser scandals because at least it’s not the greater kind. And there’s also the convenient overlooking of the element of self fulfilling prophecy this fits into… There reason we don’t get better is that we don’t ask and fight for better and we accept mediocre, so what incentive is there to offer better? I feel like collectively we just expect better politicians to manifest from nothing, not realising that we have to hold them to high standards before they’ll rise to them.

People are so keen to see the back of the conservatives they’re willing to accept these lesser scandals as a price… but how do we get to greater scandal? Did the tories lurch into power immediately committing horrendous page 1 scandal after page 1 scandal, or did it ratchet up over time, starting with smaller stories that people sighed and tutted over but then normalised? Did it grow, over and over, getting bigger, deeper every time, as the tories realised they wouldn’t- couldn’t be- held to account by the public because of their majority and their perceived patriotism as they drove the country into worse standards with every decision.

Corruption begins as rot- a small, practically unnoticeable dot.
When it is noticed, sometimes it’s just a patch and you need to address it aggressively and quickly to stop the spread and propagation of more- that makes sense, no? You wouldn’t just ignore rot in your house, right? But sometimes, that dot is the tip of the iceberg as it were- the rot you see is the waving arm of the torso stuck deep beneath, and it has seeped so deeply into the woodwork that the whole thing needs to go.
If we allow smaller transgression from an incumbent government and don’t mete out justice now, who is to say the problem won’t grow- or hasn’t already, little to our knowledge?
This isn’t about Labour, or red team or even individual politicians so much as the level of corruption we’re willing to accept.
If we are to accept that our politicians are corrupt and there’s a certain level that comes with the job, are we going to do anything to discourage its propagation? Will we fight for a permanent oversight committee who constantly scrutinises government members’ behaviour?
The answer is no. Brits are seemingly so desperate to get rid of the conservatives that not only are they willing to overlook or forgive the sort of corruption we’re sick of seeing from the tories, but actively won’t safeguard against it out of fear that the tories will somehow win.

I often speak of the legacy of fear the tories have left us with- our spirits so broken that many of us are willing to accept watery governance as a solution to 14 years of tory stupidity. I feel sorry for people that broken down, but it’s also irritating to watch white liberal people constantly whine about how they won’t survive another term of tories as if white liberal people are those who suffer most. You will survive. You’ll be miserable, it won’t be easy- but, survive? Stop being so polemic, of course you’ll survive. Others won’t, but they don’t get heard over you.
I have sympathy- we’re all more miserable under the conservatives. But now is the time for us to harden our skins and fight for more, not accept less. We don’t need a government who comes in and “steadies the ship”- we need to sail out of the choppy water! We don’t need a government who is going to do a bit of dodgy tax stuff: we need a government who would never even contemplate it. But who is asking for that? Not the people on the internet enthusiastically talking about how we don’t need to focus on one instance of a labour MP possibly doing something bad- they’re saying they’re ok with that because the other side is worse, when the message our politicians should hear is none of you should do this shit. Are they? It doesn’t matter whether Rayner has or hasn’t done it – it matters that people are willing to accept that sort of behaviour as priced in to removing the tories, setting out an intangible level of government misbehaviour we’ll accept without laying out the terms to each other. Are we going to have a collective countrywide sit-down to discuss the cutoff levels for what corruption we’re ok with and what we aren’t ok with? No, because admitting you’re ok with some corruption is something the liberal voter base of the current Labour Party won’t do- they won’t admit it but they sure will do it, wink wink nudge nudge don’t mention the war, Basil.

The thing is, there’s unassailable logic in the argument: the tories are dreadful, evil, corrupt, bad at governance: There is no argument there. But again, the tories didn’t start out with the level of corruption they’re at now- it’s a cumulative effect, where more and more dodgy stuff is done and written off as the limits of what’s acceptable are tested. What is our limit? What’s the cutoff point where we say “actually no, that’s too far”- look at all the Tory scandal and corruption and incompetence we’ve rolled over for- are we really starting this merry go round over again, to see what limits of labour malfeasance the public will eagerly devour? If the tories got us this far labour has miles of road to walk where people might be disgruntled but they’ll overlook it, because at least it’s not those nasty tories– but it’s still bad.

People will accuse me of having double standards for focusing on Rayner in this article when I’m one of the few who doesn’t have double standards here- I don’t think anyone should be doing this- hell, id don’t even believe Rayner did and until there’s proof the jury is out- the key difference, though, is that I’m not going to overlook corruption because my team is doing it. (I’m also not on either of the teams in play here so…) What’s so frustrating is that this is absolutely not about being on labour or tory teams- this is about us, and what we deserve. You know the cheesy phrase “you accept the love you think you deserve”? It might not be as sexy sounding but “you accept the governance you think you deserve” should be daubed on every wall in the UK to remind us that we’re tacitly condoning painting over the rot in our walls instead of fishing it out.

The UK is in a dire state after fourteen years of the tories fattening their pockets at our expense. Houses are harder to buy, the NHS is practically nonfunctional, we’re all struggling massively to get by to varying degrees be it running our businesses, dealing with our new post covid realities.
We don’t need de-escalation and to start being thankful for smaller episodes of government dodginess- we need no government dodginess- a single minded drive to drag us out of where we are. And we aren’t fighting for it, clinging instead to the proverbial buoy in the water, glad to have found that to cling to but mysteriously not looking for the nearest bit of land to flee to.

In some ways I feel sorry for us, collectively. We’ve been so beaten down by 14 years of tory basement dwelling that we’re thanking the people who are loosening our chains and giving us a fresh bedpan- not realising we’re still being kept in the same conditions. We need, we must aim for, real change and a move forward away from the chaos we’ve been steeped in for years. That starts with holding everyone to account equally. Chuck the tories who dodge taxes worth millions out of their jobs, punish them legally- Sunak, Zahawi, hell even Lord Sugar and his meek whingeing about a billion pound tax bill he feels he shouldn’t have to settle because he had a title thrust upon him. But don’t overlook the lesser transgressions of your incumbents either: that’s that inconvenient rot starting again, beginning way down at the foundation and working its way up to the heart of our politics all over again from another direction.
We must demand better or all we’ll ever get is the shoddy workmanship of politicians who know they can get away with whatever they want, all added to the tab of “at least they’re not the tories”. We let the tories turn the country rotten: are we willing to begin all over again with the next government, or will we accept that same sweet scent of rot because at least this time we chose to overlook it’s beginnings? Because this time the bad guys lost, replaced with people doing the exact type of things they were doing before they turned into moustache twirling cartoon villains? It’s like watching history repeat as people queue up to cheer for change, and it’s driving me insane.

No, the left is not ‘enabling’ the Tories

By Curtis Daly

With Owen Jones and many other figures on the left abandoning Labour, the attack on the left has intensified.

So many times I have heard the phrase “Tory enabler” for simply stating opinions and criticisms of the current Labour leadership. But does publicly denouncing Keir Starmer, and even supporting smaller parties mean that many of us on the left are dooming Britain to another five years of a Tory government? The answer is no.

On the 11th of January 2020, the then Labour leadership hopeful, Keir Starmer, uttered the words: “We should treat the 2017 manifesto as our foundational document, the radicalism and the hope that that inspired across the country was real”. This was a bid to convince the membership that he was firmly on the left.

Fast forward four years, and Keir Starmer as Labour leader is a completely different person. The Ten Pledges he made to the membership have all been dropped, and instead of retaining the left-wing domestic policies of the Corbyn era, the front bench has been talking up austerity and tax cuts for the rich.

Rachel Reeves, who is the current shadow chancellor, has copied the Tories’ policies and rhetoric on the economy; dropping Labour’s core ideology of redistribution in favour of improving people’s lives by ‘growing the economy’.

Under the umbrella of ‘growing the economy’, Labour has shifted toward tax cuts (including for the very rich), ‘opening the floodgates to NHS privatisation’ and continuing to rely on the private sector, which includes our public services. The only big policy that planned to kickstart much-needed investment via the state was Labour’s Green Prosperity Plan – yet it was dropped, as with every other pledge.

“FPTP means there’s only one choice: Labour or the Tories”

It is certainly true that our voting system is undemocratic, and yes, there can only be either a Labour or a Conservative government.

But many on the ‘progressive’ side of our politics have been open about ‘tactical voting’ for years. Dubbed the ‘progressive alliance’, a high-profile campaign that urged people to vote for Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, where they stood the best chance of defeating the Tories.

However, many proponents of the ‘progressive alliance’ were so infuriated with Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership (especially on Brexit), that they opted to support smaller parties regardless of whether they stood a chance – it was a rebellion against Corbyn’s leadership. Today, it seems many are far more outraged that we deploy the same tactic under Keir Starmer, with even those who refused to vote Labour last time screaming “secret Tory!”. You have to ask whether these people possess any capacity for introspection.

As of today, the Labour Party is enjoying an astronomical lead over the Conservatives. Polling has shown that Labour is ahead by twenty or even thirty percentage points which puts them on course for a historic landslide victory. The truth is, Labour is going to win and the Tories can’t do anything about it.

This is a very unique opportunity where we can vote with our conscience without the risk of allowing the Conservatives to win another term. We haven’t been in this scenario for decades, so we should seize the moment. The goal for us on the left isn’t for the Tories to win as some claim, but neither is it the goal to give carte blanche to a very right-wing Labour Party either.

Voting Green or Independent is the tactical vote

If you like green policies, if you like public ownership, and if you support PR, I can guarantee you, this won’t happen under a Labour majority government. But leverage is the key, voting elsewhere signals to the Party that abandoning any semblance of progressive politics has its downsides.

For me personally, I would like to see a hung parliament where Labour is propped up by smaller progressive parties. I too would like to see PR, but we won’t be getting that with a party that can win a landslide with FPTP. What incentive would Labour have to implement PR, which would give power away to smaller parties? The answer: there is no incentive. But if Starmer is deprived of a majority, the Lib Dems and the Greens (as well as left-wing independents) can demand PR if he seeks to govern, and this can also be the case for many other progressive policies.

Keir Starmer is uniquely right-wing

Often we are charged with the ‘purity’ label, if we don’t back Labour in its current form, we are accused of throwing our toys out of the pram. This isn’t about purity; rather, this is about rejecting a very right-wing Labour Party. It’s not too much to ask for a so-called center-left Party to invest in the economy, stick to strong climate policies, pledge to improve public services and not support the genocide of the Palestinian people.

Instead, we have a party that talks about kicking sick people off benefits – thanks to Liz Kendal’s recent intervention – shadow cabinet members such as David Lammy praising Margaret Thatcher, and the leader himself openly saying on LBC that Israel “has a right” to cut off power and water to the Palestinian people – which is a war crime. I would have thought these reasonable objections would be met with good-faith discussions, but instead the response has been to label anyone vaguely critical of Starmer as ‘hard-left’.

Jeremy Corbyn – whatever you think about him – is not hard-left; his leadership was not hard-left and his policies were not hard-left. Yet, Starmer supporters have always maintained this idea that Corbyn and his supporters were ‘entryists’ into the Labour Party, and it is in fact Keir Starmer who represents ‘traditional Labour values’.

In 1945, Clement Atlee’s government created the NHS, the welfare state and engaged in a large state program of building houses. The Labour Prime Minister even nationalised a fifth of the economy! The idea that Keir Starmer’s politics is closer to Clement Atlee than Jeremy Corbyn’s, does not come close to the realms of reality. Corbyn’s economic policy was to build one million new houses a year with 500,000 of them being council houses, an end to privatisation, increase taxes on the wealthy and a clean break from neoliberalism.

This isn’t about rejecting a Labour Party that isn’t ‘pure’ enough; this is about rejecting a Labour Party that has become identical to the Tories. I hate Tory ideology and I hate Tory policies, so if I see Labour moving closer to that, then I’m going to hate that too.

Voters should be able to sway Labour from the outside, forcing them to be a better Party in government. Given where the Tories are at, I can confidently say we can support the Greens or independent candidates (including some Labour MPs) without fear of a Tory election victory.

So far from being a ‘Tory enabler’, this is about using the little power we have to try and change the country for the better.

Be worried, Sir Keir- it isn’t just lefties who are concerned about your leadership any more

By Daviemoo

Yesterday, I went to return some books to the library as the Saturday of easter weekend is the only time the library is open. As it was a British “nice day” for March I decided to wear my customary “Anti Tory” top (which I got from SadGirlStudios on Instagram, for those who wonder).
Normally I get the odd glance, smirk or frown when I wear this top but nobody has ever actually spoken to me about it- until yesterday, when I had a conversation I think should alarm Starmer and his loyalists.

There I was, holographic anti tory slogan on display, wondering if I should have fizzy water or a coffee. Whilst I was queuing a very nice man and his wife stopped me to ask “do many people argue with you about that”? He pointed at my top and I smiled and said “you’d be surprised to be honest”. He said “surely at this point nobody sane can be backing them”. I laughed and said “again, it’d shock you, some people will defend anything”. We smiled at each other, then he paused and said conspiratorially, “mind you… Labour don’t seem to be much better these days, do they”. I shook my head, quietly surprised that this conversation I was told never happened in real life and was just a figment of my chronically social media addled brain was playing out in real terms.

“Seems so” I said, stating that I was disappointed with Labour myself. He and his wife agreed readily and then we all went our separate ways.

It should probably bring concern to labour loyalists that this discourse about labour not really making themselves distinct from conservatives is spreading to daily discourse. I have tons of political discussion and when it comes to the ant farm tunnelling that is internet discourse I of course hold prudence, sure that just because a few people agree with me about my revulsion for labour’s direction doesn’t mean that’s a wide sentiment. But it seems that as that fateful election looms closer, public opinion is souring on Labour.
Of course the usual white knights of Starmer will ride to their defence and give me the usual storied repeats of why it just HAS to be this way. It doesn’t, and I’m tired of people who call themselves politically savvy and literate trying to repeat defunct talking points.

For many, Labour’s pathetic stance on Palestine has been a bone of contention for months. The usual response to this was originally to repeat the Israeli state spin that’s been so roundly debunked that the famed purveyor of it, Elon Levy is currently scrolling LinkedIn to find a role where he won’t profoundly embarrass Netanyahu by lying on the internet and being easily called out for it by politicians like Alicia Kearns. My personal favourite response to mass dissatisfaction with Labour’s take on Israel is to metaphorically ball up and start snivelling “but Labour aren’t even in power yet”.
If nothing labour says matters until they’re in power, it’s no wonder we have a party offering poor take, position and promise on so many of the key areas of the UK state who still seem to embody the largest pool of support.
Labour’s stances on Palestine, NHS funding & resolving the wait list, their stances on tax, green energy, infrastructure & economic reform and more have been woeful- supply side reform and private investment or enmeshing public entities with private capital, again. Where have we seen this before?
Waiting until it’s too late to encourage a change in stance to something better that will also be effective is ridiculous! It’s the same trite nonsense as “you haven’t seen a manifesto yet”. By that logic I haven’t seen the tory one so maybe I should just let them say any old guff because ItS NoT In A MaNiFeStO. I’m judging them by their actions and telling you I find them wanting.
I have by the way read what apparently is Reform UK’s prospectus- it reads like Elmo’s “how to really finish the job of gutting the UK”, where the sweet red puppet has decided to offer tax cuts but promise economic growth, with one stitched paw knowing nothing about what the other is doing.

People too readily assume I am pulling for one of the parties opposed to labour- I’m actually pretty set on joining the greens, and as much as people will decry that as perpetuating FPTP I have nothing but scorn for people who seem to think being part of the winning team is good even when they bankrupt most of the reasons why they should win in order to get there- not to mention, engaging in the fantasism of brexiters, thinking they’ll be able to change labour for the better by enabling Starmer’s cabal by supporting him unabated and pretending you’ll turn into an activist post election.
Ultimately, even today I found a video of an ex member of the party who worked internally talking about her experiences of corruption under Starmer- from dropshipping favoured candidates and suspending those with credulity to the local electorate and even questions of the closed door vote counting done to choose candidates, it’s all well for people to look to the Forde report (which I reread two weeks ago) to point at the obvious ineffectual nature of a party torn apart by two warring factions, but to posit that an improvement is ruthless silencing of leftists in the party by the right of labour is absolutely comical.

The question people need to ask is as simple as this: if Labour have moved to the right – which if you don’t agree they have there’s very little point in us discussing this- exactly how beneficial is their win for us?

We’re told to be pragmatic, so let’s do that. If labour’s intent to allow private entities greater use of NHS facilities and increase what I would call unseemly practices like insourcing to upscale staffing shortages, rather than make the NHS better through funding and targeted campaigns to attract talent, it’s just allowing the NHS to lean on a private service that then is all which stabilises it- no moves to bring the NHS up to demand whilst, or without, this private entity investment, means the NHS becomes unable to stand on its own and will fail.
In terms of labour playing into the rhetoric of tories on queer people and small boats crossings, it’s doing exactly what Phil Moorhouse of Labour social implied in his recent video about Rachel Reeves perpetuating the nonsense of country budgets being similar to household budgets. The line seemed to be “Reeves has to say this stuff because other people said it first, so she’s not responsible for the lies she’s saying- she’s just continuing it”- which has all the exculpatory flavour of “I didn’t murder him, I just held up an axe and let him run into it til he was fricasseed”.
When it comes to green investment- which an enormous number of polls indicate people want, Labour have more than halved their intent to upscale green investment, which ties us further to the fossil fuels which we can easily link back to some of the unseemly actions of politics we see now- including their maddening stance on Palestine. It’s clear that western powers hope that having a stronghold of sorts in Israel ensures energy security. Trying to move us away from dependency on fossil fuels would mean an overdue ceasing of deference to regimes like Saudi Arabia whose human rights records are appalling, all so we can purchase the oil that’s burning the world. Refusing to invest in these vital initiatives is a flat refusal to create jobs, stimulate the economy and start to move us away from the fossil fuel reliance that ensures future generations will pay for our lassitude in innovation. Support for Israel seems less bent on the belief in Zionism and more on strategic need to ensure safety in the Suez and in our steady exchange of unfathomable capital for fossil fuels.

The point here, is that many who have fiercely clung to Labour as the salve to cool the wounds of tories are starting to zoom out and question what we’ve been cautioning all along- perhaps the time is ripe to think about what comes after the election, because the idea that we’re in a state of emergency that will end on day one of a new primacy is simply not useful thinking- whilst it’s vital we purge the poison of tories, replacing it with more poison does little. And the fact that more are becoming truly aware of how much danger uncritical backing of Labour is putting us in should terrify the avatars of Starmer’s leadership.

It is natural for the Labour Party to veer slightly left or right in ideology. The never ending irony is that many will state that the Starmer cabal’s actions are necessitated by Corbyn’s dragging the party to the unelectable left. Odd then, how the same people asking for pragmatism and gentle, small shifts in national politics also seem to cheer an extreme turnabout of party rhetoric?
Is it moderation we need or an extreme change? Seems odd to push for both and not one specifically.
The problem isn’t a general realignment of labour with center right voters- it’s the determined and ongoing refusal to adhere to the broad church rhetoric we’ve heard for so long.

Here’s the rub- perhaps I’m talking nonsense and the UK is actually just a conservative country that likes the Starmer rhetoric. It doesn’t seem to based on polling of what matters to the electorate, nor the party members considering their utter flippancy over PR or voter reform, or commitment to repealing the tories ridiculous voter ID law that reports stated were tantamount to totalitarian silencing of the electorate.
I don’t believe the UK is conservative- I believe the UK’s populace is forced into indenture under the guise of democracy. We don’t want supply side reform if it means suffering more austerity, whether in or out of the EU we want better ties to smoothen trade and give the economy a much needed boost, people want green investment, people want a move away from culture war guff and an unequivocal calling out of Israel’s disgusting war crimes, people want PR- are we being offered this, or are we being proselytised to by a Labour Party convinced by old Blairites that they know better in the face of the taciturn base currently poised to lubricate the doorway for labour to squeeze into power. that doorway narrows every time Labour refuse to offer these reforms and refuse to fall back into the very important order we need to restore- that politicians are public servants, that parties are consolidations of public will. We are not here to have our politics cut out and pasted to us by a party- we are here to form or coalesce around a party which offers us a vision of better- be it ways to bring long neglected private utilities back to public control, either through stealth, competition or legislation. We are not here to let labour offer us static instead of policy that will remediate our suffering under the conservatives. And it’s not just the tofu cultivating lefties amongst us who think so now- for even labour supporters are voicing their displeasure, however late that may be coming.

So many times now I’ve written articles just like this that I feel like I’m going insane, chiding and appealing to and reaching out to labour’s supporters either enthusiastic or coquettish, begging for reason to be seen. Labour is not part of your identity- it is a party, which should be in thrall to its members: Starmer is rumoured to have tilted the scales, removed the oversight and taken away the democracy from within, and whilst you may want to look at Corbyn and blame him, the end result is backing a party which refuses to play by the rules of plurality it has loudly claimed to abide by publicly for years. The time is beyond perfect to muddy the waters, demand more and better- every poll indicates a towering lead for a Labour government. Threatening to dent that unless they offer you something isn’t political realism- it’s weakness. Time to get strong.

Are you sure this is what you want to vote for

By Daviemoo

Many people are set to vote labour in as a landslide in the no doubt shortly coming election- and my concern isn’t that Labour are going to win, which is a foregone conclusion- it’s for the wave of disappointment that will consume many who think they’re voting for the chain- breaking changes we need, when they’re voting for a party who just can’t stop praising Margaret Thatcher. All I ask, and all people like me ask, is the briefest consideration that perhaps this version of labour led by Starmer isn’t the golden goose to lift us out of where we are, but a party who sold itself off like a public entity going private, in order to assure a victory that will mean scant change in a country that desperately needs it- and if you find yourself thinking that yes, that is the answer, you don’t have to abandon your party- you just have to gird your loins for a fight.

Fighting off the inherited legacy of a man who seemingly enjoys oppositional moaning has been quite frustrating, to say the very least. People really do seem to believe people like myself enjoy the bitter taste of loss, but it’s not that we’re masochists, we just have higher standards than what appears to be most in the country.
I’m desperate to see a vivacious government take over in the UK, a government who isn’t afraid to tax assets and use that money to fund infrastructure projects to help the UK modernise, a government who isn’t afraid to nurture the NHS by strictly sanctioning private initiatives and attracting NHS staff back to their roles, and by changing education to enable more young people to aim for those vital jobs.

Most of all, I’m absolutely desperate to see a chancellor appear who doesn’t seem wedded to the ideology of forty years ago- supply side reform keeps being brought into the conversation and every time it does my stomach lurches with dismay. Why must we keep going back to the same old ideas of economics that have led us down this dark path? Reeves seems to be setting out her vision for HashTag Thatcherism, low tax- free market deregulation for the economy which she hopes will boost the country out of the financial cul de sac we-re in.
But how did that go in the 80s? Were there two financial crashes? Did even healthy businesses shutter because they couldn’t survive in a market the prime minister refused to intervene in because she believed small government, even as it decimated livelihoods? If Reeves truly believes in the policies she’s saying, she’s gone Thatcherite- something she’s hovering on the verge of admitting herself considering she stated she joined labour to fight back against Thatcherite fiscal policy… and yet she praised Thatcher in her recent speech to a room full of fiscal experts, followed swiftly by her colleague David Lammy who called Thatcher a visionary– this is mere months after Starmer also praised her. For some reason, instead of looking forward to new ideas, new pathways, our incumbent government is staring back lovingly over their shoulder at the political legacy of the woman who made it impossible to buy a house, sold our public services and caused two fiscal- what did the tories call the recent recession? “Fiscal events”? What exactly are you opposing when you embrace the ideology of the enemy?

Ultimately it’s been plain to see for a long time that Labour are wedded to appealing across the aisles to dissatisfied tory voters who would otherwise seep to reform or off into apathy.
I think, after fourteen years of their elected choices making a complete hash of the country in terms of economy, infrastructure, justice, equality, health, education… we might be quite happy to watch them go. We’re also told that progressives are too quick to cut the yoke that binds, but many progressives still grimly hang on to labour even as the ranks swell with those who believe the tories were great until Johnson, overlooking the fiscal decimation of Cameron, the paralysis of May, and the party’s willingness to sell itself to a man who used an MP’s brutal murder to shore up support for his horrendous policy.
But no, labour seem to believe these poor voters need a new vision in an old party to offer them what the tories promised and failed to deliver on. I could go through the old promises of Starmer as incumbent leader, calling Corbyn a friend and stating that his manifesto was a foundational document of the party and how quickly that fell apart, or the promise the party are putting out now, but this is always met with the same tired refrain, wait for a manifesto– and yet when a manifesto comes and we’re dissatisfied, what then? The people who repeat this line seem to understand little of politics, or understand their own duplicity- or perhaps understand it too well.

In terms of fiscal policy, Reeves seems geared to repeat the anti interventionist policy that underscored 80s fiscal writings, seems interested in upselling investment into people even as she rolls back on the most vital personal investment we have at our fingertips. Green spend would vitalise the economy, opening up many new sector based jobs which would boost the economy and finally make the UK begin to take climate change seriously, instead of frowning at events we flew to on private planes. But Reeves struck down that policy, shortly before confirming that labour’s plans on taxation of the rich would be watered down hopelessly. And their flagship non-dom abolishment was half-inched by Hunt, no doubt because it was actually a sensible policy and that the tories, visionless and culture war ridden as they are (not to mention led by Hunt who was a stupendously bad health sec), had no plans of their own.
If Reeves is using supply side reform as a moniker for repetition, instead of genuine person based investment via education and a reaffirming of commitment to the UK’s obligations, we should be concerned- concerned, too, By Starmer and Reeves’ recent meeting with big business heads at an event where it was said that Starmer was “reassuring big business that his plans to shore up on workers’ rights won’t interfere in their bottom line”. Because after fourteen years of being abused by the government and by proxy dodgy employers, what we, the people, really care about is big business’ income. Is this the same big business like British Gas, BP and half the energy suppliers in the UK who have torn money away from us in droves over the last two years, talking about difficult times yet posting record profits– we’re all in it together of course, unless you’re a CEO who makes £615,000 a year and earned a hefty bonus to boot.
Is it the companies who hire their workers on exploitative contracts like zero hours or fire and rehire? Are we really coddling businesses who make huge sums of money by exploiting a beleaguered public, or who make profit by paying workers horrendously low salaries, whilst giving upper management bonuses in six and seven figures? But lets’ not forget that this is the party who big business claims is now their party – is it for us to intuit that they are then no longer the party of workers? Or are they somehow the party of both- of the businesses who exploit us, and the party of the exploited workers? What an unlikely marriage in this broad church labour self describes.
It is also the party who welcomes Conservative voters even if this means they bleed their own former support, and by doing so ties itself to the wont of the base they are meant to oppose.
A broad church indeed- but the socialists can wait outside apparently, unless they want to rub shoulders with those who have wrecked the country.

The usual refrain from labour loyalists galore is to wait for a manifesto. But with enough people willing to cheer on whatever that manifesto comprises and tell us it’s good and to vote for it, it’s a useless chorus with a predictable refrain- because when a manifesto comes, that’s it. If you don’t like it, what then? The entire point of politics is to steer parties before an election, before a manifesto. But the UK has a legacy of fear of the people we keep letting take power. The tories had a huge vote share in 2019 but more people voted for parties that leaned more to the left of them than for them- our division over which style of leftism, be it more radical or more pragmatic, meant the tories were shoved over the line. In a country with PR, the tories would have had a large share of parliament but would have been in opposition. As it happens we ended up with an eighty seat majority swollen fat by the ranks of opportunists who joined the tories to steer us on course for the disastrous brexit we’ve suffered through.
I don’t know if its fear of the tories winning again- every time I’ve talked to the labour adherents I’m met with iterations of the phrase “I won’t live through another tory term” as though the relatively affluent and successful white cisgender and heterosexual are truly the tories most maligned victims. And those same people will turn around to those who actually meaningfully suffer under tory policy and lambaste them for not supporting a Labour Party who has left them in the cold. Starmer only deals with transphobia when he can pull an outraged face at PMQs whilst airily waving through plans to remove rights from trans patients in the NHS. He only deals with racism when he can make a buck off it, silencing the actual victim. He refuses to call out our complicity in mass murder abroad, and his MPs like Emily Thornberry can sit on TV and give Israel the airy right to self defence even when their self defence comes with the lofty price tag of over 30,000 dead people and famine, only to turn around and say she thinks Labour are more abused than the tories over their stance- yes, Ms. Thornberry, because some still think you’re a party worth pursuing to push for decency: when that stops, understand you’ve finally reached the barrel scraped level of the Conservatives who we know don’t care about decency so we don’t try. You’re closer than you think…

Cooper’s plans for immigration seem to be a tamer, more law compliant version of Rwanda- labour were rumoured recently to be discussing sending detainees to a country that is compliant with protective laws around refugees rather than Rwanda, because labour seem to think that it’s the Rwanda part of the Rwanda scheme people take issue with. I don’t like the Rwanda scheme because it’s inhumane to send people abroad when they seek refuge here, yes- but it is also a dead duck policy, one that simply will not fly. The cry from the tories- and no doubt labour- is that it will “break the funding model of people smugglers”. Yes, I’m sure the exhausted refugees whose only experience with iPhones is mining the cobalt that makes them work, will definitely be ken to the policy where a small group of them will be shipped away to another country as a putoff to people smugglers who will simply… take their money and let them be shipped off. It is embarrassing that we’re so ideologically welded to cruelty that our government and our opposition don’t see the painful logical fallacy, and to boot are aiming cruel policy at people who are so desperate for refuge they’ll chance drowning in the storm tossed seas to get here- no doubt the roulette spin chance of a flight to another country will stop ’em… I despair.

The thing is, there are upsides to electing labour. I’m no fool. The EU is already promising to work constructively with a labour government on lessening the issues of the tory brexit deal, they will still the endless ranting of ECHR removal and we’ll have a government less mired in corruption and cronyism- we hope. Of course there are positives. But crumbs look delectable to the starving, so let’s not pretend it’s a four course meal on offer from Starmer et al.
I’ve no doubt that labour policy will slow down problems we’re currently facing. I’ve said this so many times I feel like I’m on repeat. But it’s not slowdowns and delays we need- the UK is, and will continue to be, in a poor state. We have to deal with the issues at hand, because if we don’t, they will either continue to be a lesion which hurts us, or will worsen and take more down- be it poverty conditions the UK have watched explode in the last 10 years or radicalisation towards the misogynistic manosphere where men can blame women for everything from not being attractive to their financial disadvantagement. Ignoring these glaring issues is allowing its propogation- have any government ministers promised to tackle the very real threat of misogyny in our society or are we all too focused on talking about specific people’s gender? The tories failed to illegalise misogyny- will Labour? Or are they too afraid to do so, whilst confirming beyond doubt that misogyny isn’t “when a transgender person exists”?

As I said at the beginning, it’s tiring to fight off the relentless attack that people like myself enjoy being in opposition. I hunger for a government able to tackle the problems we have- our inability to buy property, to save, to travel the country without taking out a small loan or selling grandma’s china first. I’m desperate for a chancellor whose plans include real terms reinvestment into the country’s dusty, rusty infrastructure, new plans to make public transport cheaper and who will invest into a sector that will only grow if the government waters it- green energy & security. I want a health secretary who is going to work constructively to build a compliance framework around insourcing companies who are currently working, poorly regulated and highly compensated, to deal with the NHS’ waiting lists- a home secretary who understands that many of us aren’t perturbed or loyal to imaginary borders around our isles, only concerned that we give due care to those we’re charged to look after whilst also being strictly practical on issues of safety for everyone- we the people, and those who seek refuge here. Most of all I want a man who stands to be prime minister who is more than just “not Rishi/Liz/Boris/Truss/Cameron” or whichever other ghoul comes rising from the dark to snatch at the country’s purse. I want a prime minister who stands for and with the vast swathes of the disadvantaged, and who fights to ensure our lives are better, safer, easier, healthier. Not a man who hides in the basement of a London complex, giving speeches to big business about how he’s got their backs.

Is that too much to ask?

I understand why people are so desperate to adhere to their vision of labour as saviour from the tory mess. That’s not the battle I’m fighting. The battle I’m concerned about is longer and more insidious in nature. If we don’t have a government in who fully disbelieves in the project that is conservatism then the problems of conservatism will not be dismantled, only tinkered with and tickled by a party whose current voter base is driven by those people and who seems to believe that it is necessary to continue the decades long conservative project which has arguably only blighted the UK.

So this isn’t the same tired battle of telling people “Labour bad!”, but a genuine appeal to labour voters to ask whether they can and will fight for better, rather than primly settling into the acceptance that perhaps, perhaps, labour can and should offer better and if so, what they will do to fight for it. Watching labour defenders fight to pretend that labour is offering distinction in its vision is frankly embarrassing when it comes to smart people- enterprising political pundits defending Reeves propagating the lie of “household economics is the same as country economics” because ‘everyone’s told that lie’ is insane. Labour is currently one of the largest political parties in Europe, and has the resources and nous to build a platform of education on how economy, health, wealth, law works. Younger people being given access to common sense political knowledge in bite size chunks would revolutionise political discourse & offer engagement to those overlooked for too long. But clearly it’s better to defend a party who is repeating the same old mistakes again than chide them on their sleight of hand, staunchly refuse their distasteful stances and overlook the uncomfortable negatives they are endorsing.

Labour can, and should be, better for us all. But they fail to meet that basic threshold in my eyes. Too many are clinging to them as they let us down, out of terror of more three word sloganeering from tories, and by allowing the standards of politics to decline whilst loudly denying it’s happening at every juncture, we’re creating a new landscape of poor politics where parties proselytise to we the people what we want, how we feel, what we believe, and if we refuse to take this medicine, we’re labelled “tory enablers” and disregarded.

I, and those like me, don’t want labour to lose- we want them to win and be good. This is not a radical cause, not a shocking way of thinking nor is it indoctrination or champagne socialism. It is not student politics to expect better from our representatives, not lofty idealism to want more from our chance to remove the corrupt tories, nor is it pragmatism to allow a party formed by workers and wrapped intrinsically around the labour movement to abandon those core tenets in order to win. We can win with a better platform than the one labour have rolled out, and fighting for that is not a lost cause.

The Inevitable Letdown of Bad Governance

By Daviemoo

This weekend I read, with a now familiar drop in my stomach, more Labour pledges being bonfired, apparently to ensure a “bomb proof” manifesto on the run up to the UK election. Rumours aswirl that we’ll have the tories well into the end of the year, giving us plenty more time to eye roll as we’re swamped by yet more unfavourable policy on one side, and more unfavourable promise on the other.
But- what’s the reason? Why are we like this, continuing to slide right in order to ensure power is taken from the bad guys- but whilst moderating away any benefits of removing them? Here, I pose thoughts because I don’t have the answer: but I can guess.

I have to ask myself sometimes whether the reason the left are never appealed to as a broad group is because we haven’t cohered around certain tenets in a way the right have, or even if the changes we want are so broad, big and far reaching that politicians balk at such a huge task and find comfort in appealing to the pre-set right wing demands.
To appeal to the right, you need to offer tough crackdowns on immigration, you need to talk big talk about low taxation whilst making sure that you do the very barest minimum in ensuring you don’t mess with big business profit, and of course you have to roll up your sleeves and sink to the elbow in the morass of culture wars. It’s a cert. Often people tell me, Labour never wins from the left and I think I finally understand the wider thoughts on why- it’s because whilst leftists have concrete ideas around policy and position, there is too much infighting to really crystallise around one agreed on platform like the right have, and because of the very nature of leftism we hate to see compromise on any core issues we care for. We’re too busy talking to each other about timelines and concessions and what’s right and wrong for politicians to do that work with us, and so they appeal to a group already very militant on their small list of demands.

The right are a mass of voters primed to cross that box for anyone who offers low tax, low immigration and a shibboleth for the reason things are bad- and whilst this is oversimplification, I believe it’s fairly clear that’s the case- current events certainly don’t disprove me at worst and aid me in this belief at best. Biden is currently offering right wing immigration policy in the hopes of scooping up right wing voters, being as his actions in the mistreatment of Palestinian civilians has utterly decimated the already thready support of the American left. In the UK as mentioned, Labour have spent a solid week quietly shedding policies they feel tories could use as cudgels against them, all whilst their continual adherents admonish any criticism, exhorting us to stay silent until a manifesto comes- seemingly unaware that silence will cohere a manifesto that could be widely displeasing to a vast throng of labour voters, but that is for another story. Damage control outside of policy is abounds here in a way the US is only just beginning- let’s pause to mention “that” video of West Streeting crooning about how much he loves the NHS, and just happening to be sat next to a Muslim woman with a keffiyeh- how coincidental!
The hope, as always, is that by appealing to a group of voters who knows what it wants and walks with their vote for it, Biden can stop the gap of haemorrhaged voters by filling it with Republicans not radical enough to think the answer to their woes is another term of Trump: the Lincoln project is exhorting these republicans to vote for Biden- always a good sign, of course, when your enemy touts you as the right guy for the job.
This presents another issue, as those voters tenuous enough to hold on even in the face of Biden’s choice to aid and abet the Israeli state’s continued atrocities may simply let go when they see a wave of right wing appeasing policy further move them away. Clinging on as the non MAGA masses weigh up voting for your guy is pretty disconcerting. Much as in the UK, the choice for America will go from Republican and Democrat to “which flavour of Republican do you want- GOP or classic republican lite”.

Politicians make these moves because they know that they can scoop up right facing voters by offering these policies, and it neuters the opposition’s plans to offer the same- why change when you’ll get the same right wing policy? But as always it seems that politicians flatly fail to grasp the mood of the nations within.
Streeting’s video was calculated- last week, stories broke of Labour panicking about the loss of the British Muslim vote. Echoes of Biden resting on the black vote, as though parties are owed voter allegiance simply because “I’m not the other guy”. Still, at least Starmer has refrained from telling Muslim voters they ain’t Muslims if they don’t vote for him: same for trans people. At least Biden hasn’t assuredly proclaimed that women must hate themselves if they don’t vote for him- though naturally there’s time enough for that faux pas to become reality.
Many in America are up in arms about the reversal of women’s choice. All too often though we point out how insane it is that the supposed good guys were in when that happened, to be told that republicans did it. Begs the question what the difference is if the lead guy is one or the other, when the decisions to ruin peoples’ lives (is it 64,000 pregnancies from sexual assault in states that don’t allow abortion) is made elsewhere?
But we’ve all spent years as minoritised people building each other up- even through the pandemic, assuring ourselves and each other that we’re worth it, worthy, we’re people who don’t have to vote for air and finger waving and “at least I’m not those bad guys” nonsense: we deserve policy, promise, action, remediation.
Don’t we?
Someone might need to tell the guys expecting our votes that.
The often loquacious loyalists for UK labour and US democrats have spent more time telling us to enjoy how badly we’ll be treated by the bad guys if we don’t vote for their parties, rather than explaining their parties’ wonderful platforms to elevate us to their lofty status, or at least lambasting their parties for failing to appeal to us. Apparently our votes are owed, and withholding that is endorsing the bad guys instead of refusing in any circumstance to vote for people who need our existence to win but refuse to seal that silent pact with action on our behalf.

I can’t blame politicians wholly for this never ending capitulation to right wing voters- look at the coherency in the right. Your regular, pre Trump republicans quietly link arms with swathes of MAGA-covered extremists because they have no problem making a deal with the devil to chase, grab and keep power, and if people outside their group suffer for that- well, maybe they should believe a little harder in God and Guns and the Good old US of A. In the UK, tory voters are being offered endless places to creep to without shame- Reform UK for the people who loudly claim they know politics is broken and need change, yet seem desperate to vote for yet another consummate establishment rich man who, despite his vast successes in business blames queers and boats for the nation being a mess.
They can choose to stick, refusing to let go of the tories, somehow still convincing themselves that Sunak is a wonderful leader despite the daily cascade of contrarian evidence, or perhaps they just need one more leadership election to get back on track. Fourteen years of country asunder, but perhaps your sixth leader is just the tonic the party needs and be damned the consequences of waiting in the mean time- no doubt Sunak will be swallowed up post election, replaced by Richard Tice in another font as the conservatives decide their new post electoral strategy will be to offer “a return, at last, to sensible, moderate conservatism”… Mind you, they’ll have a job- if that’s what people want there is, of course, their third hiding place: UK Labour.

Labour have (this is not supposition, it is fact) absorbed large parts of the moderate tory voter base in the last couple of years, and that’s why they’re on track to win. I would posit that it’s half Starmer spinning the wheel to the right and half the nation’s utter exasperation with a party who is transparently attacking each other publicly through 5 different factions at our expense.
If winning is your end goal and your plans stop there, Starmer has played a blinder, about to essentially moonwalk into power even with his frankly embarrassing stances on Palestine (hello, yes, I am a former human rights lawyer, son of a toolmaker and leader of a party who will shortly be making policy decisions about foreign intervention- who just hasn’t had a moment spare to watch any of the HD online streamable war crime footage, so sorry, I was visiting my old 2 up 2 down to remind myself how very, very working class I am).
And can we really, can we honestly blame Starmer’s actions? Often I see articles sending up people like me. “People furious that labour on track to win next election”. I can see the validity in it. What more can we want right- Labour have put in a stupendous effort to go from reviled by large parts of the voting public and an antisemitism scandal that rocked the party to this, utterly electable, cool calm unflappable… Don’t we want a change?
That would be the entirety of the problem. As I’ve repeated exhaustively, I don’t just want a change of rosette colour, I want a change of policy, and the underlying driving force of our politics and this, in my view, is not what’s on offer.

I would posit that labour are offering moderate conservatism in a lot of aspects again. On fiscal policy Reeves seems poised to offer whispers of Austerity 2: Revenge of the Public Servants.
On the NHS, Wes Streeting recently announced he’d “lie dead in a ditch” before he abandoned the NHS, using careful phrasing like “free at the point of use” to obfuscate the further intrusion of private entities into the NHS’ framework under his plans. Labour are weighing dropping a package of green investment, wanting to spend the 28 billion “more wisely”, they’ve refused to offer reformative taxation, have doubled down on their intent to push brexit forward and make it a success, refusing even to go with the liminal line of “closer alignment with the EU” out of fear that the UK’s right wing press will haul them over the coals for it (they do anyway- the Telegraph has essentially become the Mystic Meg of broadsheets, declaring Starmer policy at a faster rate than he can, all of it disastrously lefty and coming directly from the screwed up sheets of paper under Ursula Von Der Leyen’s desk). And I could, as I often do, talk about their immigration prospects (not Rwanda, but somewhere more friendly like the point is the country we’re shipping humans off to) and their own stances internally on LGBT+ people, but I sense we understand my points here.

Still, I get people jumping down my throat for pointing out basic fact- yes, Starmer and Labour are offering more right wing policies than those of my political position enjoy and yet we’re castigated for not letting ourselves get washed away at the ankles with Starmer’s change of labour’s pitch. As above and below in this article, half of being a leftist is clinging on tenaciously to policy you deeply believe will work even in the face of its unpopularity with the types of Mail reading, God Save Our King, destroy the woke folks that labour have been crooning to for some time now. “Please vote for this moderated party that doesn’t offer what you sincerely believe is the best way to fix the country and make people’s lives better” is one hell of an audacious pitch, especially when signed off with “or else you’re a tory and I hate you”. Still waiting for someone to explain to me how “no conservative influenced policy please” is the same as getting misty eyed every time Rees-Mogg wafts into a room.

As I said, I can’t blame politicians for doing this. As the right stand, ears open and primed to hear about exactly how brutal immigration reform will be, as they eyeroll and stay po faced whilst being offered the fiscal policy they want, the left are fighting ourselves. Why would a politician offer things to people who sometimes cannot even agree amongst ourselves about what we want and how to get it?
But this has been an unfair assessment of the left- whilst we are militant in our beliefs, there is rationale- the continual, decades long public farce of right wing politics failing to please it’s own base, pushing them into radical, farcical positions but actively worsening everyones’ outcomes besides the small subset of people who find themselves benefiting from these positions. Leftists are angry about politics because we’re sick and tired of watching people dart from ‘sensible center right’ to deranged hard right and back again, all the while growing more confused about why nothing improves. And abandoning belief in positions you know are necessary is difficult, and something we see the right do often. Capitulating to that is, itself, moderation.

The hard left are loud and disparate- but this is because of the nature of politics as it stands and the maddening appeal to the opposite sides, decades long at this point is itself the reason for a certain amount of what too many term radicalism when it’s honest frustration at watching the cycle repeat, knowing it will again fail people.

I do not know how politicians can appeal to the vast majority of people in a society so utterly, utterly trapped in binaries in every single discussion on economics, trade, civil rights, taxation, immigration… every discussion is fraught, on one side because things aren’t harsh enough one way and on the other because things aren’t harsh enough the other. But centrism is also not the answer, because we watch live and in HD as centrism seeks to appease the populist, losing it’s centrism immediately as it does.

Centrism is an appalling position anyway because it is a flickering flame waiting for the gust of populism to sweep in and point it solidly in one direction

When centrist politics sees an opposition gain popularity they… offer the milky ghost of policy in that direction, to try and claw back voters, and so the platform moves much more in that direction. See Macron’s immigration reform which Le Pen called an “ideological victory” in December. See Biden offering right wing reform to immigration in the US in the hope that he can narrowly scoop victory from defeat by appealing to those he, by dint of the binary choice, should be aggressively pushing back against.

There is no air for leftist thought to breathe and grow in politics, because it is levelled and nuanced in a way the right is frankly not. Radicalism has seeped into so many right wing spaces, and worst, right wing loyalists seem okay with working with the more extreme amongst them in a way that the center left refuse to do with the hard left. And if the hard left moderates- they aren’t the hard left any more. What’s more, the hard left’s existence is a natural byproduct of politics as it stands- an aggressive, militant response to the aggressive militancy of the hard right. Perhaps both sides are bad but when one wants to retain universal healthcare and one wants to drown, illegally detain or perform refoulment on migrants… perhaps you can employ your “lesser of two evil” arguments there.

I don’t want this article to come across as me chiding myself or other left wingers because I think we are inevitable in our frustrations. But I do wonder if a sub movement which coheres far left people around some key, non negotiable tenets would help us to offer a line to politicians with which to appeal to us. I wouldn’t even know where to start and frankly my trust in politicians is so low that I’m in doubt that it would help, but anything to move us into some form of political mainstream discourse instead of having to sniff for scraps or be the comic relief on disinformation shows like Talk TV or GB news, to lend us real legitimacy… anything to move things forward.

People often talk about the horrors and the atrocities that far left governments have committed in the past, and one wonders how often we’ll see that used as a shield against appealing to far leftists even as hard right populism approaches a new zenith, propped up all the while by those who believe that the nascent spark of centrism does not pave the way for more right wing appeasement, to the detriment of the many and the pleasing of the few.

I was told early last week that I – a working class person- doesn’t know what the working class want. I asked “so what do you want” and was told “an end to ‘wokedom'”. I asked for the person to drop the buzzwords because I don’t know what “wokedom” is, to be told essentially any and all collectivism and gesture politics.
On “Collectivism” exactly what do you think the title “working class” is. On gesture politics, I suppose there’ll be no more national anthem, no more Union Jack, no more bulldogs, no more spitfires and no more epitaphs..? No?
I’d assume that what the working class wants more than a bunch of gibbering buzzword nonsense is sensible taxation, a country that works properly, hospitals that aren’t falling down due to bad concrete and no staff with too many patients, more affordable housing, a more robust pension, the ability to buy decent food at reasonable prices and, when it comes to endlessly hearing about minorities, maybe if the stories weren’t relentlessly cruel and made everyone who isn’t a 46 year old white man with brown hair, high cholesterol and a love of gingham shirts named Richard from Staines out to be some sort of ravening paedophile, it wouldn’t be so bad…? But what do I know.

My ultimate frustration is, I want the tories gone– I want to see the back of them after this long of them running the country into the ground. We’re sicker, poorer, less upwardly mobile, we can’t afford housing, retirement, our public services aren’t even creaking as much as agonal groaning.
So every day I wrestle with and understand the argument of “we just need them gone and we can sort it all out after”. But my concern isn’t about a post election Tiktok celebration dance or being able to tell tories they lost when they’ve been losing even as they took power. It’s about the direction of the country and where we’ll go down the line. I don’t believe that veering between a rudderless hard right party in power and a populist government without a strong pull away from that brand of policy will help us in the long term, and I’m so tired of not being heard on this. I don’t want to be critical of and endlessly frustrated with Labour- but ignoring those burgeoning concerns about the long term direction of politics implicates me in guilt when it starts to happen if I don’t say honestly how I feel.

Much like Brexit, I really hope I’m wrong. I hope I spend five years looking like a fool with Starmer’s labour at the helm, revolutionising the country and bringing about change that gets the country off its calloused knees. But all I ask is- if I’m not wrong, and Starmer’s measured conservative appealing policy and position threatens to prolong this horrific period of political downturn, can we please not have endless apologism? Can we not have the same type of discussions I am still to this DAY having with the “brexit hasn’t happened yet” types.

I can sense now the “he’s new, they have to deal with the tories’ mess, the right wing press will crucify them, that thing he’s doing that’s bad is actually sensible because” nonsense, because if we can’t start owning up to mistakes we’ll never learn from them, and many of us have already had a lifetime of that. I’m happy to give Starmer’s Labour the chance the throngs of voters want to, and I hope we see positive change for all of us. But please, I beg you, don’t let this be another five years of sunk cost fallacy, with wooden cheering from people who feel miserable under their leader of choice but who won’t simply admit that, yes, he won against the odds- but he sucked the saturation out of the reasons why he should.

People are desperate to cling to the idea that any change is good, and I’m happy for them to believe that- but it’s time the UK’s populace moved on from politicians offering us bare minimum policy and promise. We’re a tired, battered, fractured populace and we deserve real, robust leadership with a positive direction and visions of better, not “we’re not the tories” as their logo. If Starmer fails to offer us the type of grand change we need to become a nation at peace with itself, if he fails to listen to the decent, non propagandised demands of a thoroughly bruised working class, may we send him off and replace him with a leader who has some spine to lead us from the mire into something better- it’s what we deserve.