I’m struggling to see how you think they are anything alike?
The last government hid at least £12bn of spending from the OBR, this one has committed itself to a series of financial rules and asked the OBR to review it (even at the cost of being penalized by the OBR’s overly cautious calculations of growth and inflation).
The last government diverted money from the asylum system (and by extension the foreign aid budget) to pay for a performative policy that didn’t resolve any of the problems, this one has invested in more staff to reduce the backlog of asylum cases.
The last government deliberately antagonised the unions, this one funded an above inflation pay rise for public sector workers and is putting through legislation strengthening workers rights.
This government is engaging with the EU, while the last one deliberately ignored anything to do with it.
This government is also pushing through a bill to make it easier to build more houses and the infrastructure for green energy.
I appreciate some of these things that this government has done may not to everyone’s liking and some of it may not go far enough in making the sort of changes people are hoping for, but there is nothing here that is not trying to tackle any of the real issues they built their manifesto on - and as I keep saying 9 months is really not enough time for a new government to have made substantial changes given how much of it needs new legislation and funding.
I’d just add, to reiterate a point I made several months ago, this country is on its knees because its wealth has been absolutely fucking plundered by the ruling class. This is of course the primary driver of political and social upheaval the world over.
Until that changes, we’re all just pissing in the wind.
Firm believer in socialist democracy traditional Labour espouses. But this is as far from that as Labour has ever been. I appreciate their move towards Europe but that was strictly driven by the Trump lunacy. Not a peep about Brexit being the root cause of economic shrinkage, especially after coming to power. Whether by negligence or by design, they’ve learned nothing about firmly countering blowhards like Farage. I’m sorry but credit for just nudging the needle towards improvements when your predecessors were this unholy shower or a Tory party, possibly their worst incarnation (in terms of both ideas and execution) doesn’t deserve much credit.
There was pre-built unrest during 2016 that the Brexiteers gleefully and mendaciously exploited. And so in many ways a lot of Brexit voting was protest voting, even if it was the stupidest protest vote in our history. And this is no different. Reform is highly unlikely to make their constituents’ lives better. But people are t going to sit around and let Labour coast along because the alternatives are so much worse. Unfortunately more and more people have political memories of a goldfish. So if you haven’t done something for them or (equally crucially, maybe more) seen to be doing something for them, then you will feel it in the voting booths. Unless you are switching up the rules of the game, those are the rules and you need to play by them to win vote, elections, referendums etc.
I totally agree with this. But at the same time the messaging needs to be there to the electorate. Loud and clear. Otherwise they start listening to the snake oil salesmen again
One thing to come out of this is that Reform have got where they have got by flinging shit from the sidelines.
Now they are in control of local authorities they have to actually deliver. I believe they are fundamentally incapable of this and I think those councils will be in ruins within twelve months.
Labour have got four years to show a positive vision of what they want the country to be.
Hopefully Labour learns the obvious lesson..Offering more of the same,when last year people clearly voted for change is just plain stupid.
In doing so they ignored what people expected from Labour and served Tory lite.
Just stupid and keep on that trackand Farage will be the next PM,then dog help us all!
Part of that is the difficulty of getting a positive message across. They just don’t have the medium.
90% of the print media are controlled by billionaires. Social Media is controlled by billionaires with quasi-fascist agendas. The TV media is under the thumb of a billionaires controlled offcom, or actively hostile.
The are good things that Labour are doing (granted, not enough) but you don’t find them unless you really go out of your way to find them.
Starmer’s approach should be to go down swinging. They are not going to win an election by aping right wing politics.
I hope he was up all night pacing round the house, and the conclusion he should have reached this morning is that he probably has four years left as Prime Minister, so he might as well be the kind of Prime Minister he wanted be.
Perhaps they should stop tearing up environmental regulations, shitting on welfare recipients, etc.?
It’s not that difficult. Maintain a consistent message, and actually have a vision of how British society should be.
I’d be a lot more understanding if they were doing that. But they’re not. Every single thing they’ve said since they were elected is punching down rather than up.
John Curtice on the BBC summed it up perfectly just now. His polling suggests that no-one knows what this Labour Government actually stands for.
A random Labour MP who I did not recognise was asked about her thoughts on the Reform landslide and she immediately started waffling about how bad the Tories had done. She couldn’t even bring herself to mention Reform. It was laughable. Almost like let’s just ignore them and eventually they will go away. Well this time I really don’t think they will. Labour needs to turn their guns on Reform very quickly and forget the Tories. They don’t count any more and may never do again.
I don’t disagree with that, but this the kind of policy approach that Reform lap up and gets them pilloried in the media. Let’s not pretend this is easy.
Times have changed. Parties used to set out the policy proposals, the media would report on them, and people could vote for they prefer.
Everything now is so fragmented and hostile. It really isn’t easy for a more progressive party to navigate that.
That’s essentially what I’ve been saying. I think most of us participating in this thread are already well above the average political awareness. Yet how many of us can say what this government stands for?
Speaking for myself, I’ve been really active on here, and I’ve spent a not-insignificant amount of time paying close attention to current affairs and political news. And yet despite all this, I still can’t fathom exactly what they stand for, and the feeling I get is simply “status quo but more hardworking”.
What do people expect from the average person on the street? Labour are closely following the Tories to political extinction at this rate.
Where’s the vision? For all that I detest Reform, they’ve done singularly well at defining themselves as anti-establishment and anti-immigration. Whatever I want to disagree with them about, however much I think their party is really about crony capitalism and private profit from the public purse, like the previous Tory government on steroids, at least the public have a clear image.
What is Labour? It’s not about policy proposals. What does Labour stand for? What are Labour’s values? If they can’t even defend net zero, or environmental regulations, then they can’t claim to be for the environment. If they can’t bring themselves to meaningfully tax wealth, and instead cut spending on the less well-off, then they can’t claim to be for the majority of the people in the country.
Labour’s entire marketing strategy in the run up the election was focussed on Reform. Their leaflets, the social media - all they did was talk about Farage and his plans for welfare, taxation, the NHS etc.
And this is exactly my point about cut through. It isn’t easy.