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.

So, you know, not totally a bland potato.

Not totally - Starmer is also spineless, weak, utterly uninspiring and hideously vain.

The problem is ALL THEY DO is slag everything off and when asked what they would do say it's not up to them as there not in power.

They tell people what they want to hear yet no feasible way of implementing it .

Absolutely rwalker....it is dangerous....

I thought KS did well at PMQs today.

Me too @Bloodyhellimahippo
@rwalker Sounds pretty much like the tories, y'know, like the lies they told NI about brexit, the lies they told fishermen in cornwall and scotland, many of whom are close to losing their businesses.

@Onetoomuch
Brexit was always going to be a disaster irrespective who was in power . The EU didn't want us to leave ( think a few other countries watching to see how it pans out and will follow possibly leads to the demise of the EU).
Realistically why would the EU let us cheery pick and let us leave with all the benefit and no commitments

@rwalker

The problem is ALL THEY DO is slag everything off and when asked what they would do say it's not up to them as there not in power.

They tell people what they want to hear yet no feasible way of implementing it .

It's always been this way for as long as I can remember. They all play it like a point scoring game rather than a duty to run the country as well as they can.

@rwalker

The problem is ALL THEY DO is slag everything off and when asked what they would do say it's not up to them as there not in power.

They tell people what they want to hear yet no feasible way of implementing it .

How can a party in opposition do anything but broad brush stokes on what they would do? Lab don't have the exact figures and have no idea what the financial situation will be in 2024.

Making commitments now, would just bring out a stream of "you said this in 2021....."
bloody hell, Bojo keeps saying Starmer voted to stay in the EMA when there wasn't even a vote on it.... BJ's lips move? he is lying!

Also, why is it wrong to point out the tories cuts in funding, foreign aid (95% cut in the polio program) the disaster which is the border between NI and GB, cuts to womens refuge's? numerous promises made and not kept?
Labour have praised the vaccine roll out and supported the brexit eu deal.
the clue is in the name "opposition" in my mind, Lab have been too supportive.

They tell people what they want to hear yet no feasible way of implementing it

Clearly Labour don't play this game, judging by the majority view on here.

@rwalker you said 'they tell people what they want to hear yet have no feasible way of implementing it'. To me that's exactly what the conservatives have done with brexit - promise the world yet knowing some of the poorest areas will suffer badly from the ramifications of Brexit. Promising 40 new hospitals yet knowing many of those hospitals already existed. The list goes on and on. Lie after lie...
Thing is labour isn't a populist party like the newly reincarnated tory party which will brazenly lie about anything. Yet irrationally labour aren't allowed to point these lies out because they are whingeing or sneering or whatever.

Labour isn't a populist party. However it wants to do thinks which go completely counter to material reality and they want us all to play along with the fantasy otherwise they will arrest us for wrongthink. Because the Labour Party says so.

Thats not going to work either.

Nobody said labour was a populist party. But the tory party is now. And speaking of 'wrong think', all the patriotic guff relating to brexit is pretty much the tory version of it. Enemies of the people, citizen of nowhere - remember that splayed across the papers ?

Why has the Labour Party not attacked the Royal Mail Management over the persecution of the Sub-postmasters?
They could have done some real good. It was found by a local journalist.
All the lawyers they have and no one realised it was being done by a string of Private Prosecutions?
Why were the police not involved?

Even now they are not fighting for true compensation for people.

There's a very good cartoon in the latest edition of Private Eye. A Labour canvesser is on a doorstep. The man is wearing a Union Jack tee-shirt, the women an "I Love Brexit" one.

The cavasser says "Why won't you racist fascists vote Labour?"

That sums up a lot of the problem.

VeniVediWeeWee

That made me laugh

Funny...perhaps Labour would have more success by not defining people as something negative and other...

It is ok to love your country and to not want to be part of or held back by a dysfunctional EU family.

And I voted Remain ....but having seen them at work...I am glad we Brexited....

Disband. It doesn't do anything material.

@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.

Just been pointed in the direction of this thread. I'm not a Labour member but left-of-centre and I don't think those you term rich need to be punished for doing well.

I do think they need to pay as much for their earnings from capital and investments - and any other source of income you can think of - as people pay in tax for earnings from work and I do think the system should be progressive.

I also think we should do away with all tax reliefs that can mean a wealthy person pays a lower percentage of tax on their earnings than the lowest paid person.

It's just about equality, not punishment. So do tell me why you don't want equality of taxation.

I'm in favour of equality of taxation. However, over the course of a fairly long life I've moved from being relaxed about very high taxation rates when I was young and skint to seeing that they're actually counter-productive. For a brief period in the 80s I was a tax accountant. I was amazed to see how much time and effort and expense people would go to to avoid paying tax. In the 70s when marginal tax rates were high people would actually leave the country to avoid paying tax. As tax rates fell under Thatcher some of them came back, and others stopped bothering to make arrangements to domicile themselves outside the UK so their estates wouldn't be subject to inheritance tax.

If tax rates are low enough, the revenue generated goes up and the cost of collecting the tax goes down. While it sticks in the craw to see the richest in society squandering their wealth on fripperies, if they do pay their tax, it's win win for the rest of us.

I do think multinationals who don't pay tax in a country that generates a significant amount of revenue for them should be called out on that. Amazon and Starbucks come to mind. However, presumably they and their employees are paying a fair whack of VAT, income tax, NIC, even if they're avoiding corporation tax.

The older I get, the more pragmatism appeals.

Gaspode
Trickle down does not work. It does not happen.
Yes the rates in the 70's were unsustainable
but we now have a permanent deficit situation casused by services causing more than taxes raise

I used to email regularly with John Whiting
and he agreed that the massive increase in the personal allowance has narrowed the tax base
and thus allowed the "scroungers" narrative to settle in.

A basic rate of 10% with a PA of £8,500 that magic number
and then 25% kicking in at £17000
and 50% at £85000
with the same rates on ALL sources of income would help

as would taxing companies by location of turnover rather than profits

oh, and a land tax

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g. I don't think tax rates would have to be high if everyone paid them on all income and they got rid of the huge number of tax reliefs. If I had to have a three word slogan it would be Simplify, Simplify, Simplify.

I was amazed to see how much time and effort and expense people would go to to avoid paying tax. In the 70s when marginal tax rates were high people would actually leave the country to avoid paying tax

Sure a very few did, just as they do now i.e. sports stars who move to Monaco or actors who live in the Caribbean, even business folk who move to Singapore.
family ties, schools, culture, language all help to keep people where they are most familiar.

Its a myth there was some sort of exodus from the UK in the 70s, rates were higher in the 50s and 60s.

If your argument was correct, the Govt wouldn't be putting corp tax back up to 25%.

Simplify, simplify, simplify is a good maxim. Our tax system is far too complicated. Benefits nobody except tax accountants and lawyers.

Universal benefits are cost effective as they are cheap to administer, but they also leave citizens feeling they are getting something back for their tax payments. This is why the NHS has such strong support. We all know what it would cost if we had to pay for our treatment, or if our parents or grandparents did.

There might not be many people who leave the country to avoid paying tax, but there are plenty of people who look for ways to escape taxation. Big change in social attitudes needed here. People need to learn to join the dots. If we want good hospitals, schools, policing etc the money has to come from somewhere.

While it sticks in the craw to see the richest in society squandering their wealth on fripperies, if they do pay their tax

Gaspard what do you consider to be fripperies?

oh, and a land tax

Listeningquietly - How much land would someone have to own before it was taxed?
Presumably it would include farms so the cost of food grown in UK would go up.

@Andante57

oh, and a land tax

Listeningquietly - How much land would someone have to own before it was taxed?
Presumably it would include farms so the cost of food grown in UK would go up.

The Economist has linked multiple articles about how it works in most other OECD countries the UK is the outlier