Starmer

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Re: Starmer

Post by Woodchopper » Sun Mar 07, 2021 10:27 am

Iron Magpie wrote:
Sat Mar 06, 2021 6:15 pm
tom p wrote:
Tue Mar 02, 2021 5:55 pm
El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Tue Mar 02, 2021 10:07 am
Also this.



Note that the government had a 20 point lead in the polls in May last year (after lots of mistakes), and Starmer managed to get that down to parity, and then a small lead. These are far from normal times, and so that's not bad going. Lots more to do, though.



Whatever your own opinions of the shitness of the government, many people in the country think they're just plucky frontmen just trying to do their best, and by god we're in a crisis, dammit, so let's just get behind them and we'll get through this together.
A position that is significantly helped by the leader of the opposition doing the square root of f.ck all to change that narrative.
Worst death rate in the world because of endless dithering from Johnson.
The difference between the number of dead in the UK & the number of dead if you'd had the same death rate as Germany is greater than the number of people who died in the blitz. Blundering Boris has butchered more Britons than the blitz. The headlines f.cking write themsleves.

Starmer being too afraid to go all guns blazing on 'you should be doing more' has led to Johnson only worrying about the nutters in the 'open it all up and let god sort 'em out' wing of his party and thus always acting too late. Starmer's timidity in the face of Johsnon's idiocy is literally killing people.
Seriously, Starmer has had an open goal for months & could have looked a lot more like a PM in waiting if he'd been on the news every night demanding action to sort things out during the dithering.
He doesn't look like the next PM, he looks like Peter Davenport after he signed for Man Utd - missing open goals left, right & centre.
For a moment I thought I was on Facebook.....I kept looking for the like button.
Starmer seems to be going after the tory vote which is silly. Tories will always vote for blue tories ahead of red ones and all the while he is losing more of labours core support and probably more importantly, the activists. The boots on the ground people are generally more left wing than the PLP which means Starmer will probably try and expel them all at some point if they haven't left already.
It’s difficult to see how Labour can get a majority without the votes of millions of people who voted Tory in 2019. At that election Labour got about 3.7 million fewer votes than the Tories. To actually get a majority it’s going to have to get a lot more as the Tory vote is more efficiently distributed.

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Re: Starmer

Post by Trinucleus » Sun Mar 07, 2021 10:50 am

Corbyn's supporter worked on the assumption they didn't need Tories because they could get the people who didn't normally vote to turn out for Labour. They didn't.

Trump managed to engage the non voters though, so it can be done

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Re: Starmer

Post by shpalman » Mon Aug 09, 2021 6:06 pm

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... to-starmer

I'm sure Johnson is terrified by the possibility.
having that swing is a necessary but not sufficient condition for it meaning a thing
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Re: Starmer

Post by JQH » Wed Aug 11, 2021 5:56 pm

Trinucleus wrote:
Sun Mar 07, 2021 10:50 am
Corbyn's supporter worked on the assumption they didn't need Tories because they could get the people who didn't normally vote to turn out for Labour. They didn't.

Trump managed to engage the non voters though, so it can be done
So did the Leave campaign.

Two data points don't constitute proof but the obvious conclusion is worrying.
And remember that if you botch the exit, the carnival of reaction may be coming to a town near you.

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Re: Starmer

Post by sheldrake » Thu Sep 23, 2021 8:00 am

Corbyn's campaign was hobbled by the Starmerites. He lost the working class North and Midlands because middle class London progressives insisted he campaign on a remain-ish platform. Labour's problem is not really* Corbyn, it is managerial/administrative suits like Starmer. There is no winning coalition to be built from people who work in media and public administration in the capital and middle aged provincial progressives who teach Open University part time.

The sooner Labour realises this and starts putting brexit-voting types back on the front bench, and letting them say what they think, the sooner it will have a chance of winning again. Because that is what the working class really want.

Starmer is an empty suit whose core beliefs seem to have come from a management seminar rather than an impassioned belief in sticking it to the oligarchy.

*it is a bit, but not nearly as much as the remaining frizzled grey rump of Blairites. Obv he needed to ditch all the terrorist mates etc..

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Re: Starmer

Post by WFJ » Thu Sep 23, 2021 8:09 am

sheldrake wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 8:00 am
Corbyn's campaign was hobbled by the Starmerites. He lost the working class North and Midlands because middle class London progressives insisted he campaign on a remain-ish platform. Labour's problem is not really* Corbyn, it is managerial/administrative suits like Starmer. There is no winning coalition to be built from people who work in media and public administration in the capital and middle aged provincial progressives who teach Open University part time. The sooner Labour realises this and starts putting brexit-voting types back on the front bench, and letting them say what they think, the sooner it will have a chance of winning again. Because that is what the working class really want.

*it is a bit, but not nearly as much as the remaining frizzled grey rump of Blairites
Is there any evidence for this? I thought Corbyn's support was greatest among younger middle-class voters in larger cities, with far less support among older voters in northern English industrial towns/Scotland/Wales, who largely saw him as an unelectable clown.

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Re: Starmer

Post by sheldrake » Thu Sep 23, 2021 8:14 am

WFJ wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 8:09 am

Is there any evidence for this? I thought Corbyn's support was greatest among younger middle-class voters in larger cities, with far less support among older voters in northern English industrial towns/Scotland/Wales, who largely saw him as an unelectable clown.
I would cite how close he got in 2017, when he was still allowed to equivocate on Brexit and he was running against May. In that election Labour gained seats and the tories lost them. A firm pro-Brexit stance by Johnson and an insistence on remain support by the parliamentary labour party collapsed the labour vote in the North and the Midlands in 2019, seeing Labour lose 60 seats.

I think the situation you describe is the reality after people like Starmer and Yvette Cooper forced him to betray his real beliefs (which were much more in tune with the Labour heartland), and that's my point; middle class urban progressives can't win an election alone, but they often believe they can because their views are dominant in the media and public administration environments they work in.

Maurice Glasman's 'blue labour' project/blog/movment skewers this all beautifully in my view (he is also a middle class urban progressive, just a very intelligent one who hasn't forgotten that representing broke people in the north and the midlands is what Labour is supposed to be all about)

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Re: Starmer

Post by WFJ » Thu Sep 23, 2021 8:20 am

sheldrake wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 8:14 am
WFJ wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 8:09 am

Is there any evidence for this? I thought Corbyn's support was greatest among younger middle-class voters in larger cities, with far less support among older voters in northern English industrial towns/Scotland/Wales, who largely saw him as an unelectable clown.
I would cite how close he got in 2017, when he was still allowed to equivocate on Brexit and he was running against May. In that election Labour gained seats and the tories lost them. A firm pro-Brexit stance by Johnson and an insistence on remain support by the parliamentary labour party collapsed the labour vote in the North and the Midlands in 2019, seeing Labour lose 60 seats.
Labour as a party certainly lost ground in the North over their Brexit stance, but I do not think in a major factor in Corbyn's personal unpopularity. In these areas he was personally viewed as unelectable.

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Re: Starmer

Post by lpm » Thu Sep 23, 2021 8:24 am

Yep. Corbyn was a failure in traditional heartlands, weakening Labour in 2017 in seats that "Boris" then picked off second time out.

We're in the middle of a switch around. Started in the 80s when Thatcher captured the prospering working classes, accelerated with Blair capturing the chattering middle classes, now on steroids with Boris chasing northern working classes and Labour winning educated middle aged. The Conservative vote is fundamentally weakened in the south but they are protected by the opposition votes being divided among 2 or even 3 parties.

The Labour = Working Class assumption is now 40 years out of date.
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Re: Starmer

Post by sheldrake » Thu Sep 23, 2021 8:26 am

WFJ wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 8:20 am
sheldrake wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 8:14 am
WFJ wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 8:09 am

Is there any evidence for this? I thought Corbyn's support was greatest among younger middle-class voters in larger cities, with far less support among older voters in northern English industrial towns/Scotland/Wales, who largely saw him as an unelectable clown.
I would cite how close he got in 2017, when he was still allowed to equivocate on Brexit and he was running against May. In that election Labour gained seats and the tories lost them. A firm pro-Brexit stance by Johnson and an insistence on remain support by the parliamentary labour party collapsed the labour vote in the North and the Midlands in 2019, seeing Labour lose 60 seats.
Labour as a party certainly lost ground in the North over their Brexit stance, but I do not think in a major factor in Corbyn's personal unpopularity. In these areas he was personally viewed as unelectable.
Yes, he does have other baggage; terrorist friends. part of the 'ageless student rebel' persona makes him appear to hate the culture he grew up in, and 'normal' members of that culture do not warm to it when they discover it. Still, I think the significant difference in result for the same candidate just 2 years apart is telling. Brexit views were the main things which changed between the Tories and Labour over that period; the other things were largely constant.

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Re: Starmer

Post by sheldrake » Thu Sep 23, 2021 8:27 am

lpm wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 8:24 am
Yep. Corbyn was a failure in traditional heartlands, weakening Labour in 2017 in seats that "Boris" then picked off second time out.
He gained seats and the tories lost seats in 2017.
The Labour = Working Class assumption is now 40 years out of date.
It still needs to be true for them to win. They're not going to win over all those traditional tory voters with identity politics and high taxes, so they need to convince a lot of working class older people who voted Labour until very recently that they still care what they think.

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Re: Starmer

Post by plodder » Thu Sep 23, 2021 8:35 am

lpm wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 8:24 am
Yep. Corbyn was a failure in traditional heartlands, weakening Labour in 2017 in seats that "Boris" then picked off second time out.

We're in the middle of a switch around. Started in the 80s when Thatcher captured the prospering working classes, accelerated with Blair capturing the chattering middle classes, now on steroids with Boris chasing northern working classes and Labour winning educated middle aged. The Conservative vote is fundamentally weakened in the south but they are protected by the opposition votes being divided among 2 or even 3 parties.

The Labour = Working Class assumption is now 40 years out of date.
kind of. I think it’s a daft move for the Tories to pin their hopes on keeping working people happy especially if they’re looking to raise NI, but this is product of the referendum and they’d never have switched otherwise. I’m a believer in the 80/20 rule and reckon any broadly centrist media-savvy leader who can keep their nose clean stands a chance of winning an election.

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Re: Starmer

Post by lpm » Thu Sep 23, 2021 9:09 am

sheldrake wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 8:27 am
lpm wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 8:24 am
Yep. Corbyn was a failure in traditional heartlands, weakening Labour in 2017 in seats that "Boris" then picked off second time out.
He gained seats and the tories lost seats in 2017.
Far too simplistic. In 2017 there was UKIP. In 2019 there wasn't.

The transition in the red heartlands was via UKIP. Labour and Corbyn had a very bad 2017 but the opposition vote was split between Con and UKIP, concealing the Labour weakness.
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Re: Starmer

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Thu Sep 23, 2021 9:18 am

Also, don't forget that during the campaign Theresa May f.cked up the Tories' social care policy and did as the Maybot does in response to Grenfell, for which the government carried a large amount of responsibility. Corbyn went there and hugged people. Also, there was the Manchester bombing, and the former home secretary responsible for the state of security in the country came in for some criticism.

In 2019, the biggest factor mentioned by ousted Labour MPs was Corbyn. Labour's problem with Brexit wasn't that it was too remain-y, it was that it wasn't either remain or leave - they tried to serve two masters and got dumped by both camps in large numbers as a result. A clearer policy for Labour in any direction (say, "we will commit to staying in the Customs Union" or "we will commit to staying in the Single Market") which didn't require significant explanation would have been much better than just "we will renegotiate the Tories' deal, which is rubbish, padding this b.llsh.t out that everyone is sick of for years extra, then hold another referendum on which we will campaign against the deal we just negotiated" which, in clarity terms, was even stupider than the position Milllllliband came up with on train renationalisation.
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Re: Starmer

Post by sheldrake » Thu Sep 23, 2021 9:18 am

lpm wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 9:09 am
sheldrake wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 8:27 am
lpm wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 8:24 am
Yep. Corbyn was a failure in traditional heartlands, weakening Labour in 2017 in seats that "Boris" then picked off second time out.
He gained seats and the tories lost seats in 2017.
Far too simplistic. In 2017 there was UKIP. In 2019 there wasn't.
Most UKIP voters were former Labour voters in those regions. I honestly think you're a bit in denial about the massive role brexit support has played in the defection of the working class to the Tories. It's sad to say, but I don't think the Grenfell tower response was a big issue in the North.

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Re: Starmer

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Thu Sep 23, 2021 9:26 am

Just checked and the Grenfell tower fire can't have been an issue at all in the election, because the fire happened six days after the election was held. My memory was that it happened during the campaign, which was obviously wrong. Sorry!

Edit: I think the big day was 22 May 2017, when the Manchester Arena bombing occurred and May U-turned on her "dementia tax" idea, after the manifesto launch went so badly wrong. A week before that, the Tories had an average lead over Labour of about 12-13 points. A week after it, it had dropped to more like 6-7 points.

Interestingly, a paper has been published which hypothesises that the response to May after the Manchester Arena bombing was partly gendered. I'm not sure I agree with that, at least fully (though perhaps there was a factor), as I think the response had a lot to do with May only being a year out from being home secretary at the time of the election. What they do say, though, is that the Tories lost more votes in constituencies closer to Manchester than in those further away.
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Re: Starmer

Post by lpm » Thu Sep 23, 2021 9:39 am

sheldrake wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 9:18 am
lpm wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 9:09 am
sheldrake wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 8:27 am
He gained seats and the tories lost seats in 2017.
Far too simplistic. In 2017 there was UKIP. In 2019 there wasn't.
Most UKIP voters were former Labour voters in those regions. I honestly think you're a bit in denial about the massive role brexit support has played in the defection of the working class to the Tories. It's sad to say, but I don't think the Grenfell tower response was a big issue in the North.
Exactly. It was UKIP and then Brexit that shook them loose from Labour's grasp.

Started in 2010, then UKIP was a major vote winner in 2015 taking votes from Labour but not particularly costing them seats - they also took CON votes and split the opposition.

Then 2016 removed the needed for UKIP and those votes were wandering about looking for a home. Corbyn failed to win them back properly because he was a sh.t moron obsessed with the crap only student politics are interested in. He was an utter turn off in Labour heartlands. But he still picked up old Labour votes - all those UKIP voters didn't have an obvious home in 2017 and meandered about. Some stayed with UKIP, some went back to Labour, some went to Conservative.

Then in 2019 they fell to the fictional character of Boris because he was the merger of UKIP and Conservative, giving these voters a secure home again. Corbyn was as sh.t as ever.
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Re: Starmer

Post by sheldrake » Thu Sep 23, 2021 9:43 am

lpm wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 9:39 am
Then 2016 removed the needed for UKIP and those votes were wandering about looking for a home. Corbyn failed to win them back properly because he was a sh.t moron obsessed with the crap only student politics are interested in. He was an utter turn off in Labour heartlands. But he still picked up old Labour votes - all those UKIP voters didn't have an obvious home in 2017 and meandered about. Some stayed with UKIP, some went back to Labour, some went to Conservative.

Then in 2019 they fell to the fictional character of Boris because he was the merger of UKIP and Conservative, giving these voters a secure home again. Corbyn was as sh.t as ever.
The bit where I differ is that I think had Corbyn been allowed to run a pro-brexit campaign in 2019 he would have brought a lot of those former Labour UKIP voters back to Labour. Obv the 'being friends with middle eastern terrorists' thing was still a big problem, because working class northerners are patriotic and are repelled by the type of protest politics that is easily spun as hatred of ones own country.

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Re: Starmer

Post by lpm » Thu Sep 23, 2021 9:51 am

Not convinced. In 2019 UKIP voters chose the UKIP party leader - Boris - and wouldn't have significantly shifted to a muddled pro-Brexit Labour party.

In the May 2024 General Election the Brexit referendum will be 8 years into history. A global pandemic in between will have shuffled memories. The usual issues of the economy, NHS, education will return. There's little chance of doing more than cutting into the Conservative majority thanks to UKIP voters staying loyal to Boris but at least it'll be more normalised with a boring manager leading the Labour Party.
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Re: Starmer

Post by WFJ » Thu Sep 23, 2021 10:34 am

sheldrake wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 9:43 am
The bit where I differ is that I think had Corbyn been allowed to run a pro-brexit campaign in 2019 he would have brought a lot of those former Labour UKIP voters back to Labour...
And been hammered by the Lib Dems in cities.

Labour was screwed either way in 2019 by Brexit. As EPD suggested, a clear soft Brexit with customs union message might have worked better, but could also have lost votes from both sides.

In any case, your characterisation of the anti-Corbyn side of labour as "middle class urban progressives" or
... people who work in media and public administration in the capital and middle aged provincial progressives who teach Open University part time ...
and the Corbyn side as being people from Northern industrial towns is completely false. Corbyn's support was always in the young city-dwelling middle classes. In traditionally Labour Northern areas he was electorally toxic.

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Re: Starmer

Post by sheldrake » Thu Sep 23, 2021 10:46 am

WFJ wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 10:34 am

And been hammered by the Lib Dems in cities.
I'm not convinced about that. Their leader at the time wasn't a superb media performer.
and the Corbyn side as being people from Northern industrial towns is completely false. Corbyn's support was always in the young city-dwelling middle classes. In traditionally Labour Northern areas he was electorally toxic.
This is the bit I disagree with, I don't think that was true in 2017, I think this switched as a result of him being forced into a pro-Remain stance.

In 2017 Labour gained 16.9% in Hartlepool, then lost -14.8% in 2019, for example. If Corbyn was generally toxic, wouldn't you have expected a much worse result in 2017 ? To me this seems like Labour had a significant proportion of traditional northerners, and then blew it in 2019.

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Re: Starmer

Post by Bird on a Fire » Thu Sep 23, 2021 10:58 am

I'm pleased to hear Starmer is going to set out his vision for Britain at last. Though I'm not going to pay £6 for it, or read 11k words.
https://news.sky.com/story/labour-leade ... y-12414746

Sounds like "Big Society but different" driven by public-private partnerships, but maybe that's just the language being used to try to persuade Tories to vote Labour. Or something.

Looking forward to hearing what his green policy ideas are.
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Re: Starmer

Post by lpm » Thu Sep 23, 2021 12:08 pm

sheldrake wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 10:46 am
WFJ wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 10:34 am

And been hammered by the Lib Dems in cities.
I'm not convinced about that. Their leader at the time wasn't a superb media performer.
You know, I can't even remember who their leader was.

And I don't know who it is now. There's been so many.

But despite that I will be voting LibDem in the next election. I live in 55% CON, 35% LD, 5% LAB territory.
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Re: Starmer

Post by lpm » Thu Sep 23, 2021 12:22 pm

sheldrake wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 10:46 am
In 2017 Labour gained 16.9% in Hartlepool, then lost -14.8% in 2019, for example. If Corbyn was generally toxic, wouldn't you have expected a much worse result in 2017 ?
That's really really really misleading.

UKIP came a close-ish second in 2015. The gain in 2017 was 2015's UKIP voters wandering around, approx a quarter going back to Labour, a quarter going to Conservative and a half staying with UKIP.

- LAB went up from 36% to 53%, so as you say +17%
- CON went up from 21% to 34%, gaining +13%
- UKIP retained 12% of the vote share

Then in 2019 Brexit Party came to play in Hartlepool instead of UKIP. LAB lost 14.8% but CON also lost 5%. Labour won the seat because of the old CON-UKIP split that for some reason Hartlepool continued in 2019 instead of going for Boris like most of the rest of the red wall.

- In 2019 CON and Brexit Party won a combined 55%
- In the 2021 by-election, CON and Brexit Party won a combined 52%
- CON captured the seat in 2021, because the split moved from 29% CON/26% Brexit Party to 52% CON/0% Brexit Party
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Re: Starmer

Post by sheldrake » Thu Sep 23, 2021 2:00 pm

lpm wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 12:08 pm
sheldrake wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 10:46 am
WFJ wrote:
Thu Sep 23, 2021 10:34 am

And been hammered by the Lib Dems in cities.
I'm not convinced about that. Their leader at the time wasn't a superb media performer.
You know, I can't even remember who their leader was.

And I don't know who it is now. There's been so many.

But despite that I will be voting LibDem in the next election. I live in 55% CON, 35% LD, 5% LAB territory.
I might too, now Brexit is over. It will depend on candidates being willing to stand up on various civil liberties and corruption issues.

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