Labour is betraying women

"Working people" aye.

Quadrature money now picked up by the Telegraph but originally on Open Democracy:

www.opendemocracy.net/en/labour-given-4m-from-tax-haven-based-hedge-fund-with-shares-in-oil-and-arms/

www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/09/23/cayman-islands-hedge-fund-labour-rceord-donation-quadrature/

"An investigation last year by The Guardiann_ found that the company owned $170 million (£125 million) of shares in fossil fuels firms, including major polluters. It also reportedly holds millions of pounds worth of shares in US-based private healthcare companies and arms manufacturers.
...
The firm’s gift to Labour has only now come to light because it was accepted just before tighter transparency rules kicked in for the election periodd_.
Normally donations are published every three months, but during campaigns parties must declare what they have received every week.
Rishi Sunak called the snap poll on May 222_, with the Electoral Commission’s “pre-poll reporting” obligations kicking in a week later on May 30.
Electoral Commission records show that Labour accepted the £4 million from Quadrature on May 28, before the new rules had come into force. As a result, the donation was not made public until long after the election took place.
The timing of the declaration will raise questions over whether the party was seeking to avoid the controversy of it being published during the campaign."

They don't represent "working people"

Well, they could try starting...

When we heard Rachel Reeves' speech in the radio DH and I both commented how inappropriate the self congratulations were because of how few people actually voted Labour. They don't represent "working people" (which is what she kept saying). They actually represent a relatively small percentage of the population.

Let's face it, we are being governed by Sussex University Student Union.

I don't see why they couldn't have just made the WFA taxable. But as noted, the govt have been remarkably politically inept.

There was then a load of crowing at how badly the Tories had done in the election

So badly that Prof Curtice was inspired to write this

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/23/the-writing-is-on-already-the-wall-for-labours-government/

The writing is on already the wall for Labour’s floundering government
Keir Starmer’s ‘loveless landslide’ was always volatile, and his weak political antennae has seen his party sink in the polls

...

"Although Labour won a landslide victory in terms of seats, its success was built on fragile electoral foundations. Faced with having to deal with a difficult if hardly unexpected fiscal crisis, that fragility has rapidly been exposed.
The electorate did not embrace Labour in July. Voters’ principal objective was to see the back of a Conservative government in which they had lost confidence thanks, above all, to “Partygate” and the Liz Truss “fiscal event”. Where Labour were best placed locally to defeat the Conservatives they enjoyed a significant advance. Elsewhere, other than in Scotland where Labour benefitted from the similar travails of the SNPP_, the party’s vote typically fell back.
It was Reform, not Labour, who gained most from Tory disenchantment. Nearly one in four 2019 Conservative voters switched to Reform compared with just one in eight who backed Labour.
As a result, Labour won just 35 per cent of the vote – in an election where only three in five voted. Never before has a party won an overall majority with so low a share of the vote. Consequently, the pool of voters willing to give it the benefit of the doubt is unusually small.
That said, Labour’s victory did occasion a boost in Sir Keir Starmer’s personal popularity. According to Ipsos, net satisfaction with the new Prime Minister increased from -21 before the election to +7 immediately afterwards. Similar improvements were registered by both YouGov and Opinium.
But this boost has rapidly disappeared. According to Ipsos, Sir Keir’s net satisfaction rating is down back to -21. Opinium reported at the weekend that his net approval score has plummeted from +18 in July to -26 now, lower than at any time while he was Leader of the Opposition.
...

Sir Keir is not helped either by his apparently weak political antennae. He took a long time to recognise that his decision before the election to admit the Tory MP, Natalie Elphicke, into Labour’s ranks was bound to lead to questions about the continued suspension of Diane Abbott. Now it has taken Labour too long to appreciate that the receipt of highly personal gifts and hospitality would look bad for a party that had mercilessly attacked the ethics of the last Conservative government.

In truth, Labour badly need Sir Keir to be quicker off the political mark."

When the Grenfell report came out a few weeks ago Starmer gave a speech in the HOC about how working class people are ignored and should be listened to.

Well post Grenfell and post lockdowns (when it was key workers who gave it their all) we are still waiting.

Yep Then there is this......
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13844765/Fury-Sadiq-Khan-suggests-prisoners-given-choice-housing-cut-reoffending.html

And, although now not recognised, far more people from working class backgrounds being able to break through into traditional MC work such as the media.

Nobody would believe you now if you said that, not too long ago, journalism was a working class profession. Bright kids got jobs at local papers, built a track record, then graduated to Fleet Street. Some even made it into the BBC, though that was always a more exclusive club.

Now the local papers are mostly gone, national newspapers are in remorseless decline, and journalism is more and more a public school and Oxbridge scene.

It's very like the gentrification of Labour politics. It used to be that you couldn't become an AEU sponsored MP unless you were a time served engineer. That kept Parliament more male and white than it should have been, but at least it meant there was working class representation. I'd be surprised if, out of the 400 odd current Labour MPs, there are more than a handful who have worked a manual job. And if you did a survey, you'd find that lots of them are nepo babies.

Except that now the universities are increasingly full of Chinese students. They are a money-making business, but it doesn't do much for the UK economy.

But to take this back to an earlier point - it is in some way a good example of the thinking of the PMC - the solution to poor wages or other problems in the working classes is apparently to get everyone to go to university and work in an office.

There is a deep, but well hidden, lack of respect and appreciation for work that is practical or hands on within that thinking.

To be fair, this idea that everyone should go to university seems to have been taken up across at least the English speaking western countries. Where it seems to be a universal disaster.

Just a ton of debt for kids, people not trained in the right kinds of skills, wasting their time for four years or so out of the job market, and also the destruction in many ways of university education, and increasingly the reputation of universities too.

Yes I've pretty much lost faith in Labour completely until they demonstrate good faith towards women.

There are some interesting points on this thread which I'm just catching up on. I heard part of Rachel Reeves' conference speech when I was on my lunch break. I don't often bother listening to political speeches but even I was surprised how cringeworthy and uninspiring it was.

There was a section about how proud she was to be a female Chancellor and the strong women who had gone before her whilst conveniently ignoring the fact that Labour struggle to define what a woman is and the Tories managed to elect their first female leader almost fifty years ago - something Labour still haven't achieved.

There was then a load of crowing at how badly the Tories had done in the election which made her seem ridiculously petty rather than a grown-up with an important job. At what point are Labour going to stop going on about the Tories and own their decisions?

There was some light relief provided by a heckler so clearly not everyone in the conference hall was on board with the nonsense.

Of course Carrie Johnson famously rented her dresses!

I don't understand what you mean. I said I did not think she would be criticized for wearing the same dress to a very fancy event more than once.

I mean, maybe some of the guests who are former mean girls might notice, but who cares what they think? I hope not Mrs Starmer.

In any case, renting or borrowing is totally appropriate and common at events like that if she wants to wear something totally new.

I don't really think that Mrs Starmer would get any serious blowback or criticism if she wore things from high street shops most of the time, even members of the royal family do and no one that matters has a problem with it. Especially British brands.

They do, unlike most of us, go to some functions that require special clothes, but I also do not think that wearing the same thing more than once would get any real criticism. And it's very common for people to rent for these kinds of occasions anyway, again, even at very high levels in politics.

I do think you could make the argument that an off the rack suit isn't going to look great on the PM, but by the same token even a very well dressed man needs a very limited number of good suits. And if they are really good quality bespoken stuff they will last a long time and not need to be replaced often, and will represent pretty good value for money.

Literally no one expects them to be constantly wearing designer stuff (glasses!) and they wouldn't be criticized for not doing so, it's just a bs excuse.

See I don't expect them to pretend they can only afford to shop at M&S and holiday at Butlins. I know they earn considerably more than I ever did and I don't begrudge them buying nice clothes, I just expect them to fund the cost of their clothes and city breaks from their own salaries, especially when they keep warning us about more pain ahead. And I think it beggars belief that not one of them had the wit and imagination to ask their wealthy donors to divert their contributions to a food bank.

If that's what it takes we could crowdfund it. Maybe that and an informal dinner at No. 10 so a sensible person could talk to him.