Isn’t it simply migration numbers and an inability to tackle small boats?
Similar to Brexit, its very easy for the Tory party to shift right and outright copy some of Reform’s key polices on migration ie leaving the ECHR or “net zero” migration whilst overtly reverting back traditionally conservative economic values when the inevitable tax raises come from Reeves.
Its not too late for Starmer at all. A drastic shift to the right re immigration is needed but will never get the backing of the PLP.
Keep your labour policies, and just shift immigration strongly to the right.
The rhetoric needs to change slightly, they need to be a bit more on the nose with the language even if it’s uncomfortable, maybe a temporary but complete stop to asylum from Muslim countries, processing centres and housing on an island in the North Sea, a significant increase in Navy/Border Force/Coastguard patrols, don’t take them to the mainland take them straight to the processing centre island etc.
It needs to be a severe and significant shift which almost sort of shocks people into realising that the Labour Party are taking this seriously now.
“ Being a traditional Social Democratic thinker means you cannot allow everyone who wants to join your society to come,” Frederiksen says. Otherwise, “it’s impossible to have a sustainable society, especially if you are a welfare society, as we are.”
High levels of immigration can undermine this cohesion, she says, while imposing burdens on the working class that more affluent voters largely escape, such as strained benefit programs, crowded schools and increased competition for housing and blue-collar jobs. Working-class families know this from experience. Affluent leftists pretend otherwise and then lecture less privileged voters about their supposed intolerance.
“There is a price to pay when too many people enter your society,” Frederiksen told me. “Those who pay the highest price of this, it’s the working class or lower class in the society. It is not — let me be totally direct — it’s not the rich people. It is not those of us with good salaries, good jobs.” She kept coming back to the idea that the Social Democrats did not change their position for tactical reasons; they did so on principle. They believe that high immigration helps cause economic inequality and that progressives should care above all about improving life for the most vulnerable members of their own society. The party’s position on migration “is not an outlier,” she told me. “It is something we do because we actually believe in it.”
This informative but I have to say, I hate that ghetto policy. The Caribbean community would be impacted very negatively by that despite being socially and culturally integrated.
The UK increasing punishments on low-income areas would be so disastrous. It’d honestly lead to riots.
Starmer’s response to this is illustrative of why he won’t win another election. His response wasnt that Labour needs to do anything differently, but instead continue what they’re doing but do it “faster”
People hate what you’re doing, they don’t just want you to do more of it but faster and better.
The problem with left parties is they are terrible at marketing, messaging and positioning.
Once the public has made up their mind about you, it’s hard to sway it. Since before he got into office people always viewed him and ‘New Labour’ has basically ‘Conservatives Lite’.
It’s very easy to see why Reform are performing well and will become a popular choice in the next election. They don’t hide away from the biggest issues many people care about.
Immigration. Living costs. Cancel culture.
Labour are not even good at telling people what they want to hear anymore, they sound like a party that’s gaslighting the country into submission, hence the swing votes…
FWIW, I don’t even think they’re doing a bad job - but them coming into office after 14 years of Tory rule was almost going to be a bitter, poisoned chalice unless they sought to undo/rewrite a lot of legislation to end the wealth transfer from the poor to the rich.
Guys like Gary Stevenson jumping on their backs when the country is at its weakest also isn’t the most helpful imo, as it’ll just cause more people to vote Reform…
I know this isn’t aimed at me but his handling of Trump is the one area I’m prepared to give him credit on. Sized him up perfectly with that invitation for the state visit, and by holding his nose and flattering him a bit protected our economy from a much bigger hit.
The problem with Labour is that Starmer is the acceptable face of the party and there’s no one else who can lead them.
His cabinet are like a bunch of students pretending to run the country for a project, who are obsessed with things like DEI rather than the crumbling welfare state and the economy.
The ruling elite and media, have continued to ignore and insult ordinary working voters, calling them racist, homophobic, transphobic, etc, just because they don’t agree with their woke views.
If you persistently kick people when they’re down, they’ll come back and bite you and that’s why Trump got elected and why there’s been a significant rise of the right in Europe.
There’s many wackos in the left but they have a legitimate grievance with Starmer, he faked being left-wing to win an leadership election, then slowly chipped away whenever convenient at those ideas to morph the party into whatever the hell stands for now. Then we started getting strange narratives about ‘needing to go right to win elections’ and the most funniest one is ‘push them to the left once in power’.
Besides that, in fact what the public thought of Starmer was that they didn’t understand what he stood for, which is aging extremely well.
I’d say Foreign policy yeah. It seems like we’re one of very few countries that will actually come out quite favourably with a UK-US trade deal. I wonder whether being outside of the EU helped here too.
Immigration can be more complex than it is made out to be.
They are not able to assimilate their new migrants.
Labour would do well to reverse whatever policies caused the Boris wave.
For one, letting every doctor nurse or carer in the world apply to work here with very little questions asked and compete with those already here is a disaster that needs sorting ASAP.
I’d rejoin the EU. There will be economic benefits and you won’t get strongarmed by e.g. India.
And the immigration will be more French Spanish Dutch German rather than outside EU.
This is all just common sense but very little will be done.
Because people are sick of the tinkering round the edges only of society instead of big change they want to see.
The Tory majority of 2019 would have been far smaller if the party had stuck to Corbyn’s Brexit stance and not gone with Starmer, the PLP and membership’s second vote position.
The fact that they said second vote, then now that they are in power it is nowhere near the agenda while we’ve had a vote on people killing themselves is typical.
And characteristics like this is why everyone hates the mainstream politicians
The worse thing is that they know they don’t have to do anything. Reform will get in, do such a terrible job that people will be pining for boring neoliberalism again
this guy couldn’t read a room with signs plastered everywhere.