What do the Labour party need to do to stop their slow death?

[flashbac]

I'll start:

Starmer needs to stop acting like a rabbit in the headlights and actually stand for something. He has no charisma or gravitas. We want someone with a personality. Stand for something Starmer!

Stop pandering to the 'red wall'. Inspire people to vote for the party with some good policies instead of flip flopping about.

Have some inspiring and uplifting policies like:

• Free childcare for working parents
• making public transport normal and affordable
• subsidised green energy initiatives to help householders lower energy bills eg solar panels etc

And they NEED to distance themselves from that anti science TWAW stance. I'm all for being kind but a blanket dilution of what 'woman' means is regressive.

Recognise the need for safe spaces for women.

@AgeLikeWine

Next week, in Hartlepool, Labour are going to lose yet another ‘Red Wall’ seat to the Tories, and they are going to lose it badly. They will continue losing until they actually start listening to the people who live in such places.

The Labour Party emerged from the trade union movement to represent the economic interests of working people in Parliament. Now, it represents the cultural & ideological attitudes of an unrepresentative ‘woke’ middle-class metropolitan sect.

If Labour wants to win again it must start listening to the ordinary working people outside the M25 who it is supposed to represent. Lecturing and patronising white working class voters who feel ignored and abandoned about Trans rights or Palestine or the benefits of globalisation is not the route to success. Nor is sneering at their patriotism and desire for law & order, or telling them that the feral criminals who disrupt their communities are ‘marginalised victims’, or telling them that their concerns about unlimited immigration are racist.

Yes, yes and yes. Trouble is Labour are not listening to people speaking common sense like you are.

This from EsmaCannonball is also spot on:

They need to reconnect with real people's real concerns. Nobody on a crime-ridden sink estate wants to abolish prisons and the police. Nobody whose job is at risk cares about pronouns.

Problem is they won't, they are so blinkered and being deliberately deaf, I don't know what it will take to make them rethink, the worst election defeat didn't have an impact, so what will?

I can see that if the Labour Party don't sort themselves out they will go the way of the Liberals, once an absolute force in UK Politics, the party of Lloyd George and now where are they? I can see a time in the close future where there will be the Conservative Party in Government and the Opposition will be a number of parties on the 'left' with a few seats each and no coherent policies that bind them together.

They tried to give us Corbyn. That takes a lot of forgiveness. I thought kier would make that better but the Corbyn supporters within the party won't give up. My Jewish father was a union leader for years and voted labour all his life. The year they gave us Corbyn was the first time he couldn't. He was terribly upset about it. Not least because back in the 80s he had attended meetings where Corbyn didn't hide who he really was. The media have never printed his true vile past.

Kier needs to be way stronger. I don't get why being a barrister he is being so weak. When he was head of the CPS he was not like this. Also yes labour is coming across as the Woke party. People are fed up with woke. Especially outside of the cities.

I do get that kier thinks a pandemic is not the time to challenge the government on everything. Mostly agree with this. However now things are looking better he needs to get his arse in gear.

The whole TWAW stance needs to change
Plus Labour has repeatedly demonstrated zero understanding of rural areas. As a left-leaning rural voter, their utter cluelessness drives me nuts.

@AgeLikeWine - could you tell me the Lottery numbers too? Because right now there is no way you can predict that with such certainty.

"They need to reconnect with real people's real concerns. Nobody on a crime-ridden sink estate wants to abolish prisons and the police. Nobody whose job is at risk cares about pronouns."

Hear hear. I am sick of my middle class friends banging on about oppression whilst ignoring the needs and priorities of working class people. The idea that middle class students should get (ENORMOUSLY expensive) free uni places, whilst small local businesses were hammered with taxes and this was balanced by "better benefits" depressed me immensely last time. If all you can offer working class families is a better system of benefits rather than the chance to work, set up a business, thrive, etc then you have lost your sense of who you are there for somewhere along the line.

@AgeLikeWine agree

I can see that if the Labour Party don't sort themselves out they will go the way of the Liberals, once an absolute force in UK Politics, the party of Lloyd George and now where are they?

It’s a constant mystery to me why the Liberals aren’t making better use of Layla Moran’s psychic powers.

PR

@Bythemillpond

I think the problem with Labour is their war on anyone who wants to better themselves by starting a business or getting a better job that takes their salary over into “rich” section of society who need to be punished for earning more. I think Blair’s Labour did well in 1997 because it took account of people who might have been at the lower end of the income scale but wanted to work theirselves up. I get the impression that if you are a small business person under a Labour government now that you are the enemy and need to be brought down a few pegs so you are reliant on the state. How dare you want to become part of the rich elite.

Maybe someone can put it better than I have
but the amount of people they appeal to with this impression is getting smaller and smaller.
People don’t want to be thought of as incapable. Yes they might need help to get going but not the sort of help that keeps them stuck.

A lot of their politics is about bringing down the rich not helping those at the lower end to climb up.

This. I don't feel like I'm welcome as someone that has passed a certain point of financial success.

Both me and my DH come from a family of labour supporters, working class, state educated, had jobs from 16. We know what it's like to have very little and to need government help.

We have managed to work our way into the top 1%, and I am more than happy to pay high taxes and contribute more because of this.

But the the Labour Party demonise us for being successful. Their narrative seems to label us as selfish and to put it bluntly I'm sick of being labelled as part of the problem, rather than part of the solution. Therefore I can no longer vote labour.

That said I don't vote conservative either cos I feel they swing too far in the opposite direction.

What would make me vote; Maybe reworking the triple lock and means testing other pension benefits. Then using the money saved to help those that need it the most. And I say that as someone who probably wouldn't get the state pension if it was means tested, and that's ok with me.

@EmpressWitchDoesntBurn

I can see that if the Labour Party don't sort themselves out they will go the way of the Liberals, once an absolute force in UK Politics, the party of Lloyd George and now where are they?

It’s a constant mystery to me why the Liberals aren’t making better use of Layla Moran’s psychic powers.

Indeed, and I'm perplexed as to why the soul seeing Layla is not constantly in demand by the Police and Judiciary, how could they not harness that skill, shocking.

They need to stop pretending they're better than the very people they need to vote for them.

They're a spent force, all we're seeing is the embers flicker as they die out. Being a Labour supporter might give you a bit of online upmanship in a debate considering anyone even contemplating voting Tory is considered scum or a c**t, but in the real world nobody gives a flying fook about trans rights or Palestine etc. Rightly or wrongly it's not on their radar. Labour need to either die and be done with it or start to give up their school debate woke principles and become electable.

I say this as someone who's politically homeless, non of the big 3 attract me, and I don't have time for small parties with batshit crazy manifestos.

That is what I feel like politically homeless. Think there must be a lot of potential voters out there that are like us

Stop being the pseudo Tories.

@GrumpyMiddleAgedWoman

The whole TWAW stance needs to change Plus Labour has repeatedly demonstrated zero understanding of rural areas. As a left-leaning rural voter, their utter cluelessness drives me nuts.

This. Proper protection of women spaces. Proper protection of women.

Know what a woman is and offer us both protection and capacity for advancement.

I'll not vote Labour again while idiots like Lisa Nandy spout horrendous, misogynistic nonsense and Keir Starmer doesn't put a stop to it.

Equally I won't vote for the Lib Dems, the Greens, or the Conservatives (see: Mordaunt, Miller and Blunt).

So disappointed in Starmer.

Stop going all out on Boris and Dyson for pulling together to sought ventilators for the nation....

@Bearnecessity

Stop going all out on Boris and Dyson for pulling together to sought ventilators for the nation....

What ventilators?

@Bearnecessity

Stop going all out on Boris and Dyson for pulling together to sought ventilators for the nation....

To be fair, they didn't sort anything, except for a tax dodge.

They need to acknowledge that they are career politicians and are no longer about grass roots, the working and disadvantaged populace.

They are as fat cat, money oriented and divorced from socio economic deprivation as it is possible to be.

The few individuals that are not are fighting a losing battle and look, sound so archaic they don't get much attention.

They need a root and branch change. Starting with a clear Some Things Are Real policy if rejecting The Woke and The Woo!

Sadly many of their ardent supporters are fully Woke and Woo. Locally, including a good friend, their canvassers and support groups are almost insufferably middle class alike and apparently unaware that they no longer have the same issues and worries that the people they claim to act in support of. Basically they just sound patronising and piss people off.

Stop with the TWAW nonsense and commit to upholding sex based rights. I can't vote for the main parties at the moment because of this and I won't vote Tory.

Somehow try and stop labour supporters being so sneering about white working class people and anyone who doesn't vote labour. T-shirts with I hate Tories on them do nothing to endear Labour to me.

Just need to sort out their TWAW position to win me back afaiac.

They need to get the papers on their side. It's the only way they will get anywhere. Policies etc don't really matter, it's all about the media.