To think Starmer has shot himself in the foot.

Your choices are indeed unscientific

Is Keir Starmer a cunt?

Yes or no.

My answer is yes. This is not down to my demographic location or socioeconomic position in society. It's because he's the biggest disappointment the world has ever seen.

People voted for Starmer because they didn't like the existing government...

The problem was cast on day one. Starmer has a massive majority on a very small vote share. In other words his support is very broad but also very shallow. Very few people voted for this government, they were voting against the Tories and Labour were the best option at the time in most constituencies. Policy considerations came a distant second in most voters' minds. So he still has a lot of work to do in order to win over voters.

Controlling immigration (difficult) and keeping the economy on track (not Labour's strong suit) will be key factors. It's possible that he could still become Mr. Popular, but he's never going to be Mr. Populist. Make of that what you will...

I'm one of those people

I get daily living and mobility, both standard.

I have 11 points on my daily living award but made up from 2 and 3 points, so no 4 points to make me 'safe'

So under the new rules my next review i will lose my PIP (£450) my LWRCA if connected (£400) my son will lose his carers element as he looks after me (200) and i will lose £80 of my housing benefit for having a non dependant living with me (my carer son) as if you get PIP that doesn't get deducted.

So my household will be £1130 worse off.
My son will have to work but I don't know how I will cope being alone.
I don't understand how it will work at all.

And its causing so much stress it all being so unknown

I feel like if they announced this they should have told us the whole plan because ive spent weeks in a state not knowing what my future holds.

The bottom line is that Starmer has to get immigration figures down, otherwise Reform will win the next general election. It’s as simple as that.

Is he left, is he right, is he far right?

No one knows. That's his problem.

Why can’t we just get the good Miliband this time please

I think that they are trying to acknowledge the fact that polling shows that over 70% of the population want less immigration and think that the issue has been handled badly when polled.
If they don't tackle this issue then they are handing Farage an open goal, and they know they'll be wiped out because of it.

Better to reduce migration, why not? If they reduce from 1.2million a year to 350 thousand that's still enough for the NHS and care work, it's the population of Coventry!. Immigration has been running at a very high rate since lockdown, so why not knock it down a bit?

This. Hes hated

He seems to be more right wing than the last government, which I wasn't expecting.

The only way labour stand a chance in the GE is if starmer steps down, the new labour leader is a working class, honest and charismatic person, someone who doesn’t go back on what they say (he got the trans vote, lost it, got the GC vote, then lost it).
Please make it happen, Reform will be horrendous.

If rents were cheaper people would be having more babies. But when rent is so high and 100% mortgage disappeared and you are fighting agasint migrants for the few
rentals ever increasing in price you have less babies and anger toward those “coming in”. Add in all the HMO taking away family
homes.

Also the more and more babies every year would never be truly sustainable we would always hit a point where elderly out number younger. We insist in keeping people alive living in worse conditions than dogs because it’s life at all costs rather than quality. Neglect and abuse for a dog, daily life for an elderly person with dementia and possibly other health issues in a home.

He’s an idiot and he’s thrown it all away. This country was desperate for change and voted for Labour values and policies. Unfortunately it seems Labour is no longer the party we thought it was. No idea what’s going on with Starmer he seemed to swiftly take a Tory turn and now thinks that he can swerve into a bit of reactive Reform type behaviour? It’s definitely not the Labour we thought we knew.

Such a shame when he had so much support and the opportunity to really bring about positive change .

I agree- he won’t win over reform or Tory voters and as someone who’s always voted labour I am so disappointed and unless there’s a massive U-turn before the next GE I doubt I’ll vote for Labour again. Not sure I’m the type of person they want voting for them mind you. I was already wavering after the crackdown on the sick and disabled benefits and PIP. This is the last straw.

I don’t disagree that immigration should be controlled in some way but the “island of strangers” message feels sinister. Only this week the UK marked 80 years since VE Day. We wouldn’t have any kind of victory if it wasn’t for people who were not born here in Britain helping us during and after the war to rebuild. Whether we like it or not, this country has massively benefited from immigration for generations. We need people to come here and to work.

Yanbu, and I've written to my local Labour MP to say the same. They won't win over the right and they will totally alienate the left.

I don't know who's advising him but they have totally fucked up.

He's also aware of just what an existential threat Reform are to British society

That's just a weasel way of saying he is just listening to the electorate and seeing the pattern across Europe.

If he is just doing it to head off Reform then he will end up being Reform lite, so in effect Reform has essentially still won the argument.

It's a cop out to pretend he is being shrewd to see off Reform when his pre election white paper addressed this and even had front page headlines in the Sun saying they would be tough, and not just realising the reality of the situation and they are addressing it.

And if it is all smoke and mirrors then the next iteration of reform will make some current reform voters blush

I really do think Starmer is in a shit spot on most issues but I also this he's hampered by relatively short-term thinking (albeit, Ukraine and Trump have rather demanded a lot of attention and resources).

Population decline is one of the big issues on the UK's horizon. Without net positive migration, and unless we can reverse our ailing birth rate, we have a huge economic and demographic crisis looming (as South Korea and Japan are facing now). Exponentially increasing net migration is not a long term solution (though it has assisted as a temporary sticking plaster).

We need to ween ourselves off high net migration, but can only do that if having larger families become more common.

I would like to politicians talk more openly and seriously about the issue and, in Labour's case, they should be advocating for economic and social policies that promote (or at least enable) people having larger families (scrapping the 2 child benefit cap would be a start). No developed country has solved the issue and it seems likely to be more complex than simply throwing at people to have kids, but I dare say that addressing the cost of living through a meaningful redistribution of wealth must be a part of the solution (well, unless we want to go down the forced breeding route, which I doubt).

I agree with her on very little, but do afford some kudos to Suella Braverman who is one of the few politicians I've seen speak about the issue, including specifically advocating for the scrapping of the benefit cap.

I'd like to see Starmer/Labour draw a link between the issues (cost of living, birth rate and immigration), and I'd prefer that the rhetorical focus was on maintaining a society/economy that is viable in the long term, rather than othering immigrants (and, though he was somewhat balanced, I don't like the use of "Strangers" in his speech).

Pure evil

Yeah thatcher stole the milk. Starmer is taking disabled people’s life line.

Fair enough, apologies all 🙌, I misunderstood

Even more evil than I thought.

You are wrong. the plan ( if it goes through) is to make PIP harder to claim by changing the criteria needed for an award of daily living. The worst case estimates are that it could affect 90% of claimants currently receiving the daily living element. LCWRA element of Universal credit will be linked to the daily living element of PIP so some unfortunate people could be set to lose up to £1000 a month overnight.

I'm with you on this @Panterusblackish. I just hope we're right!

Yes probably. If ‘smash the gangs’ keeps seeing higher numbers island of strangers won’t help them.

I’m not a labour voter I’ll admit. But it just seems he personally has nothing he stands for his just flip flopping all over the place.

If my only issue was immigration I’d vote reform over him. He views and policies change as the wind does how can anyone back that.

I think he's playing as shrewd a hand as he can.

He's also aware of just what an existential threat Reform are to British society. They embody evil in the same way that Trump does, sowing hate and division for their own bebenefitlook at the sheer fucking state the US is in with an entirety corrupt dictator in waiting at the helm. It could definitely happen here too.

I wss a huge Starmer detractor pre election but actually I think he's got stuff done, including difficult issues that a further left leaning leader wouldn't have touched.