Labour/ Tory Party Comparison

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Are / Were The Labour Party The Same As The Tories?

Starmer Labour is the same as the Conservative alternative
1
1%
Starmer Labour isn’t the same as the Conservative alternative
44
44%
Blair Labour was the same as the Conservative alternative
2
2%
Blair Labour wasn’t the same as the Conservative alternative
40
40%
Cockend
12
12%
 
Total votes: 99

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Ben B
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Re: Labour/ Tory Party Comparison

Post by Ben B » Sun Feb 20, 2022 10:51 am

It's quite depressing that plenty on the left would rather live in ideologically pure opposition in perpetuity than make the tiniest compromise, thus guaranteeing they will never, ever change society for the better.
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Re: Labour/ Tory Party Comparison

Post by Stranger Mouse » Sun Feb 20, 2022 12:08 pm

Iron Magpie wrote:
Fri Feb 18, 2022 11:22 pm
I voted cockend. The choices were not really the ones I'd like to have seen. I would describe it as tory and tory lite. However I don't think the comparisons with Blairs Labour are founded. The difference is that Blair understood that he needed the left of the party to be on board as they provide the activists on the ground without which you stand no chance. Yes he upset some them with policy changes but he did not have a mass purge or order CLPs to NOT discuss certain topics and he didn't whip his MPs to abstain all the bl..dy time on some frankly appalling legislation that would have made Nick Griffin blush. He did not alienate the Unions either and he certainly didn't need to attempt to take on the style of the most awful side of the right wing....that is the dog whistle type comments about shooting people or ramping up the war on drugs*
Starmer lied through his teeth to win the leadership election and has reneged on, I think, every pledge he made. That makes him the same as Johnson and the British public are not so stupid they will vote for a labour liar. Stupid enough to vote for a tory liar because he's a bit funny and a cheeky chappie that's doing his best**. On top of his lies the Brexit voting public will not vote for him as they remember very well his policy in 2019 about the 2nd Ref and simply will not believe his claims that he is now fully behind it.
Bozo has charm. Blair had charm. Starmer is as charming as syphilis.
His treatment of a former leader is also appalling regardless where you sit on the political spectrum. Something that he will not be forgiven for. At least not by the people he has driven out just for being Socialists.

*Maybe not him personally but his cabinet members.
**yes I know it's bollox.
I left the poll so you could vote as many times as you like.

On the Angela Rayner thread you said something to the effect of “What Labour Party? We have two Tory Parties.” As I mentioned in the OP this is something I keep hearing - predominately from supporters of Jeremy Corbyn. On this thread you refer to Tory and Tory Lite. I know the question in the poll refers to a question about them being “the same” but I presumed the obvious inference would be that I was asking whether voters had the ability to vote for an a more progressive party by voting Labour* than the current Tory party or if they are functionally the same. How would you have phrased the question?

*By all means you may think that there are other parties which are a more preferable option but that wasn’t what was being asked.
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Re: Labour/ Tory Party Comparison

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sun Feb 20, 2022 12:26 pm

Ben B wrote:
Sun Feb 20, 2022 10:51 am
It's quite depressing that plenty on the left would rather live in ideologically pure opposition in perpetuity than make the tiniest compromise, thus guaranteeing they will never, ever change society for the better.
I don't think that's remotely true at all. More like an intellectually lazy excuse to avoid understanding what the left of Labour (generally including its traditional core of voters and the country's most vulnerable people) actually want the party to deliver.

There's two options when trying to sell a product: imitate the competition, or offer something new that enough people want. There seems to be an unspoken assumption that the clever and rational thing to do in politics is always to adopt a position as close as possible to your opponent, with some minor tweaks aimed at appeasing people who want more from you (or, cynically, so you can dismiss them as unreasonable when they aren't excited by your milquetoast agenda).

At least, that's the general attitude from comfortably well off, middle-class supporters of centre-left parties. The right wing - who actually get things done - successfully pursue a far more radical agenda. If they can get brexit done, even though it's totally sh.t and stupid, nice sensible people could deliver something equally transformative to improve voters' lives, if only ambition weren't so tragically unfashionable.
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Re: Labour/ Tory Party Comparison

Post by secret squirrel » Sun Feb 20, 2022 1:22 pm

I often see people on the Labour Right asking the Labour Left to support essentially right wing policies with the goal of 'beating the Tories', but I did not see many on the Labour Right supporting policies they thought were too left wing when that was the only game in town for the same goal. Quite the opposite in fact.

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Re: Labour/ Tory Party Comparison

Post by Gfamily » Sun Feb 20, 2022 2:11 pm

secret squirrel wrote:
Sun Feb 20, 2022 1:22 pm
I often see people on the Labour Right asking the Labour Left to support essentially right wing policies with the goal of 'beating the Tories', but I did not see many on the Labour Right supporting policies they thought were too left wing when that was the only game in town for the same goal. Quite the opposite in fact.
You seem to imply it's only the Labour Right that are the ones at fault - "they keep asking us to support their policies, but they didn't support our policies"

But the Labour Right would say the same thing about Labour Left, how you're not supporting certain of their policies.

The issue though is that it's not a case of which policies does Labour Left or Labour Right want, but which policies do the people of UK want?
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Re: Labour/ Tory Party Comparison

Post by Iron Magpie » Sun Feb 20, 2022 2:20 pm

Stranger Mouse wrote:
Sun Feb 20, 2022 12:08 pm
Iron Magpie wrote:
Fri Feb 18, 2022 11:22 pm
I voted cockend. The choices were not really the ones I'd like to have seen. I would describe it as tory and tory lite. However I don't think the comparisons with Blairs Labour are founded. The difference is that Blair understood that he needed the left of the party to be on board as they provide the activists on the ground without which you stand no chance. Yes he upset some them with policy changes but he did not have a mass purge or order CLPs to NOT discuss certain topics and he didn't whip his MPs to abstain all the bl..dy time on some frankly appalling legislation that would have made Nick Griffin blush. He did not alienate the Unions either and he certainly didn't need to attempt to take on the style of the most awful side of the right wing....that is the dog whistle type comments about shooting people or ramping up the war on drugs*
Starmer lied through his teeth to win the leadership election and has reneged on, I think, every pledge he made. That makes him the same as Johnson and the British public are not so stupid they will vote for a labour liar. Stupid enough to vote for a tory liar because he's a bit funny and a cheeky chappie that's doing his best**. On top of his lies the Brexit voting public will not vote for him as they remember very well his policy in 2019 about the 2nd Ref and simply will not believe his claims that he is now fully behind it.
Bozo has charm. Blair had charm. Starmer is as charming as syphilis.
His treatment of a former leader is also appalling regardless where you sit on the political spectrum. Something that he will not be forgiven for. At least not by the people he has driven out just for being Socialists.

*Maybe not him personally but his cabinet members.
**yes I know it's bollox.
I left the poll so you could vote as many times as you like.

On the Angela Rayner thread you said something to the effect of “What Labour Party? We have two Tory Parties.” As I mentioned in the OP this is something I keep hearing - predominately from supporters of Jeremy Corbyn. On this thread you refer to Tory and Tory Lite. I know the question in the poll refers to a question about them being “the same” but I presumed the obvious inference would be that I was asking whether voters had the ability to vote for an a more progressive party by voting Labour* than the current Tory party or if they are functionally the same. How would you have phrased the question?

*By all means you may think that there are other parties which are a more preferable option but that wasn’t what was being asked.
The question was ok as were the answers really. I know I wrote "two tory parties" but what I really meant was what I then wrote in this thread...tory and tory lite. Still two tory parties with only minimal differences. The long and short of it is I expect to see two wholly different ideologies from tory and labour. Tory's are wedded to neo liberalism and labour should be pushing for democratic socialism or at the very least social democracy. The way I see Starmers approach, much the same as Milliband's approach, is that they have no wish to challenge the neo lib ideology. That means no real change except for a few tweaks around the edges, but with some of the comments coming from labours shadow cabinet I'm not so sure they will do even that. Milliband tried to offer austerity lite and failed miserably. Then Corbyn offered what in European terms would be considered mainstream social democracy and was vastly more successful than Ed's approach. Then along comes Starmer who JC kept in the shadow cabinet (because he really did believe in the broad church idea) and that wasn't good enough for the labour right. They even had the new labour dinosaurs wheeled out to say they'd rather have a perpetual tory government than what Corbyn was offering which kind of proves that the labour right are closer to the tories than they are to the labour left. Essentially they are in the wrong party but they do not have the courage of their convictions and join the lib dems.
Also the fact that a die hard tory who crossed the floor was welcomed with open arms, even though his voting record shows that he has nothing in common with labour ideals, all the while still purging those on the left including Jeremy Corbyn....a man that has been a member of labour since Keir Starmer was 3 years old. That is disgraceful and I and many others will not vote for his party all the time he continues with this purge.
One of the most aggravating aspects in all this is being told by labour right wingers is that if the left don't stop moaning we will be gifting the tories another election win. This didn't seem to worry them in 2017/19 when the right actively helped the tories win when there was a real chance of getting them out.

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Re: Labour/ Tory Party Comparison

Post by Iron Magpie » Sun Feb 20, 2022 2:22 pm

secret squirrel wrote:
Sun Feb 20, 2022 1:22 pm
I often see people on the Labour Right asking the Labour Left to support essentially right wing policies with the goal of 'beating the Tories', but I did not see many on the Labour Right supporting policies they thought were too left wing when that was the only game in town for the same goal. Quite the opposite in fact.
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Re: Labour/ Tory Party Comparison

Post by Iron Magpie » Sun Feb 20, 2022 2:27 pm

Gfamily wrote:
Sun Feb 20, 2022 2:11 pm
secret squirrel wrote:
Sun Feb 20, 2022 1:22 pm
I often see people on the Labour Right asking the Labour Left to support essentially right wing policies with the goal of 'beating the Tories', but I did not see many on the Labour Right supporting policies they thought were too left wing when that was the only game in town for the same goal. Quite the opposite in fact.
You seem to imply it's only the Labour Right that are the ones at fault - "they keep asking us to support their policies, but they didn't support our policies"

But the Labour Right would say the same thing about Labour Left, how you're not supporting certain of their policies.

The issue though is that it's not a case of which policies does Labour Left or Labour Right want, but which policies do the people of UK want?
I would like to see some evidence that the left haven't supported the right even sometimes just by being quiet. There were no ejections of right wingers in the party under Corbyn yet the moment the right gain the upper hand they start slinging people out for having the temerity to be socialists. Corbyn has lost the whip for saying something that was expressly protected in the ECHR report and by interfering in the process Starmer has gone directly against it. Yet it's all the lefts fault according to those on the right.

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Re: Labour/ Tory Party Comparison

Post by secret squirrel » Sun Feb 20, 2022 2:29 pm

Gfamily wrote:
Sun Feb 20, 2022 2:11 pm
secret squirrel wrote:
Sun Feb 20, 2022 1:22 pm
I often see people on the Labour Right asking the Labour Left to support essentially right wing policies with the goal of 'beating the Tories', but I did not see many on the Labour Right supporting policies they thought were too left wing when that was the only game in town for the same goal. Quite the opposite in fact.
You seem to imply it's only the Labour Right that are the ones at fault - "they keep asking us to support their policies, but they didn't support our policies"

But the Labour Right would say the same thing about Labour Left, how you're not supporting certain of their policies.
I expect most people on the Labour Left vote Labour even when the Right are in charge (which is most of the time). I know from reading (parts of) the report that was leaked a while back that many on the Labour Right literally prefer the Tories to win than Left Labour. So yes, I do imply that, and I am correct.
Gfamily wrote:
Sun Feb 20, 2022 2:11 pm
The issue though is that it's not a case of which policies does Labour Left or Labour Right want, but which policies do the people of UK want?
Short term yes, but long term you have to persuade the public that your position is correct. One of the main faults to be found with Labour in the UK and the Democrats in the US is that they've failed to provide an alternative vision to the (nominal) Conservatives in their countries, and so have largely sat and watched as the center of political gravity has drifted further and further to the right.

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Re: Labour/ Tory Party Comparison

Post by discovolante » Sun Feb 20, 2022 2:44 pm

Gfamily wrote:
Sun Feb 20, 2022 2:11 pm
secret squirrel wrote:
Sun Feb 20, 2022 1:22 pm
I often see people on the Labour Right asking the Labour Left to support essentially right wing policies with the goal of 'beating the Tories', but I did not see many on the Labour Right supporting policies they thought were too left wing when that was the only game in town for the same goal. Quite the opposite in fact.
You seem to imply it's only the Labour Right that are the ones at fault - "they keep asking us to support their policies, but they didn't support our policies"

But the Labour Right would say the same thing about Labour Left, how you're not supporting certain of their policies.

The issue though is that it's not a case of which policies does Labour Left or Labour Right want, but which policies do the people of UK want?
I think the problem with that is that right now - well time is an arrow, and you could say that in that case the Labour Left just need to suck it up and support the current Labour party because that's where we are now, which may be true, but as I was trying to say in my previous post if you really want people to vote for them then just having a go and telling them not to be so stupid isn't really the best way to go about it. There is a need for the current lot to grit their teeth and try and win people over just as much as there is for the left to grit their teeth and support policies they aren't in favour of. I'm not deeply involved in Labour so maybe that is what's happening, and if it is then fair enough, but from where I am I really don't see very much of that at all.
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Re: Labour/ Tory Party Comparison

Post by Stranger Mouse » Sun Feb 20, 2022 4:40 pm

secret squirrel wrote:
Sun Feb 20, 2022 2:29 pm
Gfamily wrote:
Sun Feb 20, 2022 2:11 pm
secret squirrel wrote:
Sun Feb 20, 2022 1:22 pm
I often see people on the Labour Right asking the Labour Left to support essentially right wing policies with the goal of 'beating the Tories', but I did not see many on the Labour Right supporting policies they thought were too left wing when that was the only game in town for the same goal. Quite the opposite in fact.
You seem to imply it's only the Labour Right that are the ones at fault - "they keep asking us to support their policies, but they didn't support our policies"

But the Labour Right would say the same thing about Labour Left, how you're not supporting certain of their policies.
I expect most people on the Labour Left vote Labour even when the Right are in charge (which is most of the time). I know from reading (parts of) the report that was leaked a while back that many on the Labour Right literally prefer the Tories to win than Left Labour. So yes, I do imply that, and I am correct.
Gfamily wrote:
Sun Feb 20, 2022 2:11 pm
The issue though is that it's not a case of which policies does Labour Left or Labour Right want, but which policies do the people of UK want?
Short term yes, but long term you have to persuade the public that your position is correct. One of the main faults to be found with Labour in the UK and the Democrats in the US is that they've failed to provide an alternative vision to the (nominal) Conservatives in their countries, and so have largely sat and watched as the center of political gravity has drifted further and further to the right.
In my experience of most of the Labour Left social media posting by high profile posters and people I know personally they spend most of their time posting venom aimed at Starmer (much more in volume the posts aimed at the Tories) and saying that they couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Labour while Starmer is at the head of the party. I realise that the stuff I’m seeing may not be representive.

From what I’ve seen there is a lot of Labour Right not voting with Labour Left though
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Re: Labour/ Tory Party Comparison

Post by Ben B » Sun Feb 20, 2022 4:48 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sun Feb 20, 2022 12:26 pm
Ben B wrote:
Sun Feb 20, 2022 10:51 am
It's quite depressing that plenty on the left would rather live in ideologically pure opposition in perpetuity than make the tiniest compromise, thus guaranteeing they will never, ever change society for the better.
I don't think that's remotely true at all. More like an intellectually lazy excuse to avoid understanding what the left of Labour (generally including its traditional core of voters and the country's most vulnerable people) actually want the party to deliver.

There's two options when trying to sell a product: imitate the competition, or offer something new that enough people want. There seems to be an unspoken assumption that the clever and rational thing to do in politics is always to adopt a position as close as possible to your opponent, with some minor tweaks aimed at appeasing people who want more from you (or, cynically, so you can dismiss them as unreasonable when they aren't excited by your milquetoast agenda).

At least, that's the general attitude from comfortably well off, middle-class supporters of centre-left parties. The right wing - who actually get things done - successfully pursue a far more radical agenda. If they can get brexit done, even though it's totally sh.t and stupid, nice sensible people could deliver something equally transformative to improve voters' lives, if only ambition weren't so tragically unfashionable.
Righto, it must have been a completely different group of people branding any Labour member to the right of Corbyn "Blairite scum" when the Blair government enacted more socially progressive policies of any government for decades.

This idea that anything but Marxism is "centrist" and thus wrong, utterly fails to take into account what the electorate of the UK actually want to vote for.
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Re: Labour/ Tory Party Comparison

Post by JQH » Sun Feb 20, 2022 4:49 pm

The Left are expected to hold their noses and support Starmer which would be fair enough as he won the leadership election - if they had been prepared to hold their noses and support Corbyn when he was the elected leader.
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Re: Labour/ Tory Party Comparison

Post by monkey » Sun Feb 20, 2022 4:54 pm

Factionalism in the Labour Party is as bad on the left as the right. Both ends can be proper idiotic and Labour won't win an election unless the leadership can unite them.

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Re: Labour/ Tory Party Comparison

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sun Feb 20, 2022 5:35 pm

Ben B wrote:
Sun Feb 20, 2022 4:48 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sun Feb 20, 2022 12:26 pm
Ben B wrote:
Sun Feb 20, 2022 10:51 am
It's quite depressing that plenty on the left would rather live in ideologically pure opposition in perpetuity than make the tiniest compromise, thus guaranteeing they will never, ever change society for the better.
I don't think that's remotely true at all. More like an intellectually lazy excuse to avoid understanding what the left of Labour (generally including its traditional core of voters and the country's most vulnerable people) actually want the party to deliver.

There's two options when trying to sell a product: imitate the competition, or offer something new that enough people want. There seems to be an unspoken assumption that the clever and rational thing to do in politics is always to adopt a position as close as possible to your opponent, with some minor tweaks aimed at appeasing people who want more from you (or, cynically, so you can dismiss them as unreasonable when they aren't excited by your milquetoast agenda).

At least, that's the general attitude from comfortably well off, middle-class supporters of centre-left parties. The right wing - who actually get things done - successfully pursue a far more radical agenda. If they can get brexit done, even though it's totally sh.t and stupid, nice sensible people could deliver something equally transformative to improve voters' lives, if only ambition weren't so tragically unfashionable.
Righto, it must have been a completely different group of people branding any Labour member to the right of Corbyn "Blairite scum" when the Blair government enacted more socially progressive policies of any government for decades.

This idea that anything but Marxism is "centrist" and thus wrong, utterly fails to take into account what the electorate of the UK actually want to vote for.
Not sure where you got Marxism from. Labour hasn't proposed anything close to Marxism during my lifetime. Folk shrieking about Marx when talking about the policies of people like Corbyn or Sanders reveal merely their own political illiteracy and myopia.

Some people on the left of Labour really hate the right and call them Blairite scum. Some people on the right of Labour really hate the left and call them Venezuelans/Russians etc. It's all very silly and stupid. I'd prefer to have a sensible conversation about reality if that's ok?

Social media hyperbole is both bad and fairly unimportant compared with other sources of political persuasion.
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Re: Labour/ Tory Party Comparison

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sun Feb 20, 2022 5:41 pm

monkey wrote:
Sun Feb 20, 2022 4:54 pm
Factionalism in the Labour Party is as bad on the left as the right. Both ends can be proper idiotic and Labour won't win an election unless the leadership can unite them.
I think the issue is that Labour are trying to occupy the position previously held by both Labour and the Tories, with the Tories somewhere far off to the right in "You must never go there, Simba" territory.

Much like with the Democrats and Republicans.

There are some on the "broad left" who'd like to do what the left always did (support workers, the poorer and the vulnerable), some who are actually quite happy with a low-tax-low-benefits regime as long as the racists are subtler about it, some who don't really mind too much really as long as they can sound clever and personally are doing ok, and so on. But it's impossible to split the party with FPTP, and difficult to shift the terms of discussion without (a) owning the media and (b) trying.
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Re: Labour/ Tory Party Comparison

Post by IvanV » Sun Feb 20, 2022 7:42 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Fri Feb 18, 2022 11:56 am
Labour have to stop being a left-wing party.

The British public want right-wing governments, which is why they keep voting for the Tories.

Labour's clever strategy is to occupy the centre-right of the political spectrum, forcing the Tories ever further towards the fringes of acceptability, and ultimately beyond.

Hopefully after the next election the British public can enjoy a small-c conservative Labour government, with lots of business-friendly, property-fetishising, police-n-prisons, geopolitical hawk type policies, only with a mildly improved social safety net as long as it doesn't remotely infringe on the wishes of the wealthy or the sensibilities of those who have never been vulnerable.
Where's the centre? It's a matter of opinion. There are also many different areas of policy where a left/right division could be said to exist, and people and parties can be differently L or R on each of them. But I think a lot of it is summarised, within the economic sphere, by attitudes to inequality. Polls mostly find that the British public things inequality is too much. But as Anthony Atkinson's swansong book, "Inequality: What Can Be Done?" shows, you pretty much have to tax and redistribute on a larger scale than currently to be able to do very much about it. Seemingly the British public don't like that, even though it is pretty much the only way to get what they want. Quite a few countries in Europe do more to redistribute than we do. Several countries, for example, have pre-tax inequality similar to Britain, but do more to reduce it post tax and transfers.

So, bearing this in mind, let's consider the recent history of inequality in this country, and trends. There are various measures of inquality, and then decisions on adjusting for taxes, transfers and housing costs. This LSE paper sets out the history of inequality of this country from 1960 to about 2016.

You get some slightly different stories depending which measure you look at. But whichever measure you look at, inequality shot up during the Thatcher administration. There are slower trends elsewhere, but it varies by measure, so it is hard to separate the signal from the noise.

So, Thatcher was clearly rightwing on inequality then. She took action to increase it. What about everyone else? They seem centrist in comparison, until post-2015 which is not in the record above.

Brown (as chancellor) took some active measures to try and reduce inequality, in the later part of his period as chancellor. Pretty much the only one to have done so of late, despite his later reluctance. But actually he succeeded only in preventing from increasing. Because without active measures to combat it, inequality would have increased in that time period. The same situation exists today - you have to work to reduce inequality or it will grow. Major was more centrist than Thatcher. Depending on which measure you use, inequality was either growing or static during his time. But he certainly took no active measures to prevent it growing. Brown tied his hands initially, so it was only a while after New Labour got going that he held things back. Then the Great Recession hurt the middle classes more than the lower classes, so that held things back for a while. So during the coalition period, inequality didn't grow, but not because of any deliberate policy to stop it. We haven't got data, but I think things are getting worse again now.

So the only active redistributor of recent times was Blair/Brown, but they didn't do enough to row inequality back. Thatcher actively encouraged inequality. Everyone else did very little, and what happened was more due to accident of history than their deliberate aims.

What would Starmer do? I don't know. They haven't said at all explicitly.

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Re: Labour/ Tory Party Comparison

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Mon Feb 21, 2022 12:30 pm

Well quite. It's very common for opposition parties to hold their cards close to their chest until later into a government's term, as they don't want the government having lots of time to form policy or publicity responses to them, whether stealing them, neutralising them or otherwise.

I think that's generally a mistake, fwiw, at least in this parliament, because Starmer should be trying to win over now-apathetic 2019 Tory voters. In all honesty he's not going to do that by being more Corbyn, but he does need to do it somehow, because otherwise a good chunk of them will go back blue at the next GE.

Whatever happens there, though, the policy void that Labour have right now is making people in the left of the party somewhat hysterical, because clearly Starmer is going to awful bad Tory things like reinforce the aristocracy and kill all the puppies and fail to renationalise the already-nationalised railways and be nice to Jews and have wars and punch immigrants in the face and bomb the welfare state and make nurses wear bikinis and keep the police and fellate FPTP and and and.

I mean, clearly Starmer is worse than Hitler, but perhaps it's best to wait for him to actually have some policies before saying his policies are definitely the same as the Tories' ones.
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Re: Labour/ Tory Party Comparison

Post by Bird on a Fire » Mon Feb 21, 2022 12:49 pm

There's some clues as to his intentions based on what he let through at conference, and the stuff he wrote in his book, and various interviews he's given.

They do give the impression he's backtracking from some of the more progressive stuff he said in his leadership bid. But it could all be a cunning ruse of course.
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Re: Labour/ Tory Party Comparison

Post by noggins » Thu Feb 24, 2022 1:21 am

Starmer is a middle of the road Labour politician

Corbyn was Urban VI, a placeholder that got cocky.

The real danger isn't that the the rightwing of the labour party are neolibs. Its that the rightwing of the tory party aren’t.

Allo V Psycho
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Re: Labour/ Tory Party Comparison

Post by Allo V Psycho » Thu Feb 24, 2022 9:27 am

JQH wrote:
Sun Feb 20, 2022 4:49 pm
The Left are expected to hold their noses and support Starmer which would be fair enough as he won the leadership election - if they had been prepared to hold their noses and support Corbyn when he was the elected leader.
I don't think I follow the argument here. I'm a historical 'anti-tory, pro-Labour' voter. I would prefer to vote Labour, but when living in a Lib Dem/Tory marginal I voted Lib Dem. I'm OK with Keir Starmer, partly because he seems intelligent and rational. I wasn't OK with Jeremy Corbyn, because, based on my analysis of his own words, he didn't strike me as particularly intelligent or rational. It wasn't the 'policy of the front bench' that put me off. I would be happy with quite radical policies. It was Jeremy Corbyn in particular, who, as I say, seemed to me to have very limited vision.

It follows that I don't accord with Keir Starmer just because he won a leadership election, and I didn't have to support Jeremy Corbyn just because he won a leadership election. Their personal qualities make a difference. When the election came, and I was now in a Labour/Tory contested seat, I did vote for Labour when it was under Jeremy Corbyn, because that was better than the alternative. For a Labour member to say that they won't vote for Labour under Keir Starmer seems to me to be absurd.

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JQH
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Re: Labour/ Tory Party Comparison

Post by JQH » Thu Feb 24, 2022 9:41 am

I am pointing out that the Labour Right is being somewhat hypocritical.

FTR I still vote Labour because TINA
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Re: Labour/ Tory Party Comparison

Post by Bird on a Fire » Tue Mar 01, 2022 3:13 pm

The state of them:

Labour refuses to back open door policy for Ukrainian refugees
Labour has refused to back calls for an open door policy for Ukrainian refugees, after nearly 40 Tory MPs said the UK should adopt one.

Speaking on Monday evening the opposition party's international development spokesperson was asked about demand but would only say the process for applying to come to the UK should be "simplified".

Preet Kaur Gill said the UK's visa website needed to be improved and that "only those people that have family members in the United Kingdom" wanted to come to Britain.
Imagine making Jeremy Hunt look like the nice guy in a discussion of refugees.
We have the right to a clean, healthy, sustainable environment.

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Re: Labour/ Tory Party Comparison

Post by Stephanie » Tue Mar 01, 2022 3:56 pm

Ben B wrote:
Sun Feb 20, 2022 10:51 am
It's quite depressing that plenty on the left would rather live in ideologically pure opposition in perpetuity than make the tiniest compromise, thus guaranteeing they will never, ever change society for the better.
From my experience, most of them still vote labour and still campaign for Labour. I know that, because I'm one of them.
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Re: Labour/ Tory Party Comparison

Post by tom p » Wed Mar 02, 2022 2:07 pm

Stephanie wrote:
Tue Mar 01, 2022 3:56 pm
Ben B wrote:
Sun Feb 20, 2022 10:51 am
It's quite depressing that plenty on the left would rather live in ideologically pure opposition in perpetuity than make the tiniest compromise, thus guaranteeing they will never, ever change society for the better.
From my experience, most of them still vote labour and still campaign for Labour. I know that, because I'm one of them.
This is true. I used to live in Enfield North, Joan Ryan's constituency. Remember her? The one who left labour and founded a centrist party with Anna Soubry and a couple of others and did that cringey 'look at your hands, that's where the power to effect change is' thing at the launch.
She was firmly on the right of the labour party & thus on many policy areas disagreed with Corbyn & the leadership at the time (although she was an excellent constituency MP).
Loads of momentum folks and other dyed-in-the-wool lefties came up the A10 from safe seats in places like Hackney & Tottenham to campaign with those of us in the constituency at the GEs vs May & Johnson. In one small corner of north London, I personally met scores of such lefties who were very happy to compromise our views and take days off work to get a Labour MP elected, even though she was someone a bit to the right of us. And there will have been loads more who I didn't meet.
Sure, there are plenty of ridiculous purists on the left, but I bet that many of them were never in the labour party in the first place and certainly wouldn't have stayed after Starmer became leader. But those people are necessary to ensure the Overton window doesn't permanently shift to the right.

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