Keir Starmer

Len Rum said:
This is true.
It's a big aspect of social conservatism of the working class which the Tories can tap into.
Another is the scroungers on benefits ( Osborne's curtain twitchers watching while honest decent working people go to work). Used to justify huge swaithes of austerity cuts in all areas of expenditure.
Throw in the traditional Tory appeal on nationalism and anti immigration and now Brexit and you can see the difficulty Labour face in their former heartlands.
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Agreed.

Blair and his clone Cameron believed they'd hit on a winning formula, socially liberal, economically conservative, New Labour "Call me Dave" compassionate conservatism.

What could go wrong?

The crash of 2008 and the Tories austerity programme, that's what.

So now a gay couple could marry and at four in the afternoon could celebrate by walking (because there's never a bus) down to one of the few pubs still going, the one just past the closed childcare centre, down their deserted and shuttered high street, across from where the hospital used to be and round the corner from the boarded up library.
 
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Vic said:
I can't speak for elsewhere, but round here the Greens have attracted some Corbyn fans from Labour, and it's benefitted no-one but the Tories. Labour lost seats to the Tories they'd have won without the Green vote.

It's a circular argument or it's a threat - Labour will never govern again because we challenge them under a system that means we split the left and get more Tories. Is that really really what you want? To help the green agenda by electing Tories?
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I've never voted Green. Green issues are important but decarbonisation won't occur without structural reform of the economy which should take precedent. Unfortunately Labour under Starmer don't appear to be offering the necessary alternative but are instead harking back to the failed third way project.

Labour will never govern again because they don't have the numbers without doing deals with other parties. Which their own self-interest prevents them from doing. Offer full PR to the Libdems and Greens, ministerial positions and agree to implement specific policies and maybe they can convince enough people to vote tactically to get a labour led government.

Either Labour offers the alternatives or doesn't mean anything anymore. And so it needs to be brought down from within. As perilous a defection to the left would be, it has never been done before. What would the Labour rump decide to do in the aftermath?
 
Len Rum said:
You do realise that the Government is and has been printing money for a long time now.
I think about a quarter of the national debt is currently owed by the Government to itself ( the Bank of England).
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I do, and while UK is heavily in debt it is along way from bankruptcy. I was challenging the idea that any country with its own currency cannot go bankrupt. It is not specifically about the UK.
 
KS55 said:
The idea that a country with its own currency cannot become bankrupt is demonstrable nonsense.
It has been pushed by the left for some years now and was a response, in this country at least, to heavy tory cuts.
You cannot print money (or sell assets) indefinitely as the currency becomes debauched and worthless. Markets will not accept it and you cannot then pay for imports. You are bankrupt.
Zimbabwe provides a modern example. The Zim dollar fell to one millionth of its launch value and was abandoned. Zim internal transactions had to be in scarce foreign currency such as the euro. The value of the Zim dollar was less than the cost of printing it and the piles of notes became useful only as doorstops.
Eventually Zimbabwe launched a new Zim dollar. How that has fared, I'm not sure.
UPDATE
The latest version of the Zim dollar was subject to an inflation rate of 350% p.a. as at Jan this year. The government holds auctions of foreign currency each week, so transactions are more stable.
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You don't need to "print money" you only need to credit digital bank accounts.

Zimbabwe and hyperinflation is an absurd example to use because no organised central bank would ever expand the money supply to the same extent without increasing output.

 
Rascal said:
And the right always come out with Zimbabwe to discredit it without realising Zimbabwe's circumstances.

It is is utter nonsense

you cannot bankrupt a country with its own currency and own central bank.
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I realuze this is a shiboleth on the left but, apart from those economists who are highly political in that direction, there are no serious economists that support this idea. Thete are lots more examples of broken countries who defaulted on external debt being unable to pay them.
You can repeat this mantra ad infinitum, but that doesn't make it correct. Those who maintain that a country with its own currency cannot go bankrupt cannot explain why certain such countries do not use their own currency and issue bonds in other denominations. This would not happen if such a currency were a defence.
Here is an example of mainstream economic thinking. I write purely from an economic view, not a political one.
 
Fode N The Hole said:
You don't need to "print money" you only need to credit digital bank accounts.

Zimbabwe and hyperinflation is an absurd example to use because no organised central bank would ever expand the money supply to the same extent without increasing output.

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It is an example of the phenomenon that is being maintained cannot happen. I use it because everyone is familiar with it. Other examples of central banks expanding the money supply beyond its capacity include Mexico, Greece, Germany. etc etc.
" Printing money" is just a convenient expression, not necessarily literal. In Zims case, they actually did print it in Germany, wasting huge amounts.
 
As of June 2020 Japan's debt was around $12.2 trillion, around 240 percent of gross domestic product.

And it's been like this since the 1990s.

Debt is not the primary problem, the primary problem is whether you can service it.
 
Fode N The Hole said:
There isn't one, it's just cranking up neo-liberal economics even further. Expect to see Freeports, more outsourcing in public and private sector and pork barrel patronage.

Which is why Labour had to be the party to offer the alternative and reshape the political economy. But they won't, they are too out of touch and bereft of talent. Currently led by an MP of 6 years experience with no political background before that.
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I agree with you that the Tories have no transformative agenda - just the usual sleight of hand measures you mentioned.
As you suggest ( along with many other political commentators) Labour could go with a big agenda for economic regeneration particularly in the North and Midlands. But as pointed previously by a punter on here it would rubbished by the Tory media and voters wouldn't believe it.
For the moment I can't see a future for Labour in England with it's socially conservative working class and economic right wing middle class bases.
Maybe in future there will have to be some realignment in English politics of anti Tory parties but I'm not holding my breath.
I'm going with Johnny Nash at the moment - there are more questions than answers.
 
Vic said:
I can't speak for elsewhere, but round here the Greens have attracted some Corbyn fans from Labour, and it's benefitted no-one but the Tories. Labour lost seats to the Tories they'd have won without the Green vote.......
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I am not a Corbyn fan, but I've switched from Labour to Greens in this election, permanently I think. There is nothing left out there socioeconomically and culturally Labour can offer me any more. This is how one of their MP's from Birmingham. 'A London-based bourgeoisie, with the support of brigades of woke social media warriors, has effectively captured the party. They mean well (yea sure, so why the fuck are you slagging them off and count on their votes ?) of course, but their politics - obsessed with identity, divisions and and even tech utopianism - have more in common with those of Californian high society than the kind of people who voted in Hartpool yesterday.' This could easily be lifted from some Farage memo, or Rod Liddle's article and I am afraid that is the future path the Labour will follow, to capture that segment of the voting population. And I am supposed to vote for this lot in fear that my alternative is some Eaton educated, a dead cow-head dick-stuffing degenerate? And good luck to the good burghers of Hartlepool and the promised Freeport...in Brexit UK with Rotterdam and Antwerp across the sea!
 
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The perfect fumble said:
As of June 2020 Japan's debt was around $12.2 trillion, around 240 percent of gross domestic product.

And it's been like this since the 1990s.

Debt is not the primary problem, the primary problem is whether you can service it.
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Fazzakerley.
And therein lies a potential major problem for the world economy if there is a sustained recovery with inflation rising, interest rates following suit and debt servicing becoming a problem.
It also presents a massive political opportunity for the Tories to abandon their levelling up agenda ( insofar as they have one). Currently the pandemic borrowing gives them cover to restrict regeneration spending to gimmicks like a freeport in Hartlepool ( to quote one example). Once servicing the national debt becomes an issue they can quietly abandon it altogether.
Forgotten.Job done. Bit like austerity.
 
Len Rum said:
I agree with you that the Tories have no transformative agenda - just the usual sleight of hand measures you mentioned.
As you suggest ( along with many other political commentators) Labour could go with a big agenda for economic regeneration particularly in the North and Midlands. But as pointed previously by a punter on here it would rubbished by the Tory media and voters wouldn't believe it.
For the moment I can't see a future for Labour in England with it's socially conservative working class and economic right wing middle class bases.
Maybe in future there will have to be some realignment in English politics of anti Tory parties but I'm not holding my breath.
I'm going with Johnny Nash at the moment - there are more questions than answers.
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Labour has a double whammy problem, you're right it has lost a connection with it socially conservative working class base, not just because it has nothing to say to them, but because it does not have the working class infrastructure to get its message across and around the right wing media.

Labour's ground game is shot to bits, membership is plummeting. Labour party central had to do a lot of the heavy lifting in Hartlepool because the local party would not pound the streets for Starmer and his handpicked clone, they think Starmer is a soft Tory and they're angry at his treatment of Corbyn.

It should not be underestimated how furious the young and the energetic are about Corbyn's continued exclusion. The media would have you believe Starmer's decline is all down to the Covid bounce, but the beginning of his dip in to irrelevance started the moment he pissed on Corbyn and by extension the left in the party and the wider left in the country. He picked a fight when none had to be fought to show that "Labour was under new management".

What a weak silly man, the left was already licking its wounds, that move was pure bile and bravado, straight out of the Mandelson playbook, let's show em who's in charge!

Starmer has reduced himself to nothing, the conversation now from both right and left is how long has he got and who's next?
 
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I've been thinking about that utter bellend Sir Starmer of The Establishment and his reaction to his utter failings as leader. This song keeps playing in my head when I do.

 
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