Labour need a new leader

[Tellmetruth4]

www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/feb/02/labour-urged-to-focus-on-flag-and-patriotism-to-win-voters-trust-leak-reveals

I would describe myself as a Blairite Labour voter who couldn’t stand Corbyn and preferred the Tories under Cameron.

I backed Starmer for the Labour leadership but am incredibly disappointed. He seems to not have any backbone or ideas of his own and seems to just flounder about waiting to do what focus groups tell him to do. He has zero political instinct.

The Tories have left a goal so open it resembles a cave and what does Starmer do? On the suggestion of his focus group he decides what’s most important is to pander to what he believes are the concerns of the ‘red wall’ voters so the plan will be to pose in front of the flag and talk about veterans and limiting immigration.

The type of voters who in this current climate, believe patriotism is still our priority as a country right now will vote Tory or UKIP, not for a party pretending to be them. The ‘red wall’ have got Brexit, it’s time for the next phase which should be focused on rebuilding the country not politicians cynically crying in suits next to the Cenotaph trying to look like super patriots.

I’m certain that what the majority of voters will want to see is a strong post Covid/Brexit plan. How do we create jobs? What type of jobs will work for the future economy? How do we rebuild the high street? What businesses should we encourage or back? What is a successful model for the NHS going forward? How do we level economic inequalities across all areas across geographic and ethnic lines as inequality was shown to have left us very vulnerable as a county to Covid Healthwise and financially? How do we make our future trading relationships work for benefit of the majority of the country regionally (and no I don’t mean destroying the South to big up the North) we could have regional centres of excellence across industries for example.

We are at rock bottom as a country, there is an opportunity to remodel ourselves post Brexit and post Covid. Focusing on creating plans that push us out of the gate strongly where the majority have an opportunity in our new future will strengthen us as a country. It has the opportunity to unite us and that will automatically increase things like patriotism.

Employing focus groups to advise on moving from one set of identity politics to another is not what Labour should be focusing on.

I can’t believe I’m saying this but as remain voting blue Labourite, I’d be tempted to vote Tory at the next election if they got a new centerist leader over Starmer who is so fake and so willing to quickly change his principles depending on what focus groups say that he can’t be trusted.

Strong plans for growth are what are needed not pandering to what a focus group told them the ‘red wall’ cared about last year. A strong economy drives everything else not blue passports. He’s so transparently cynical.

I think Starmer is doing a decent job but it's really, really difficult circumstances to be an opposition leader. I think he's doing fairly well at treading the line between holding the government to account and not looking like he's being politically opportunist or obstructive in a crisis. We're just not at the point where any of the long-term planning for post-covid you want feels viable or realistic in anything but the broadest brush strokes - we don't know yet how much longer it will take and how much more damage will be done. Realistically, I fear, options will be quite constrained and miserable - I don't think most people have yet begun to grasp how deep the economic damage will be - and I don't think sketching out utopia now will do Labour any good, and I also really don't think it's what most people want to hear about at the moment.

I think I would take a longer view, the party is juggling trying to clean up the Corbyn mess whilst the country deals with a crisis situation.

Many democrats said Biden was the wrong choice.

I think party politics is a secondary issue for many people right now.

So what's your AIBU?

I don't think there is anyone else who would or could do better at the moment and changing leaders now will put the party into a death spiral like in Scotland leaving no opposition to whatever utter twattery the government come up with next. This would be a disaster.

It's a very tricky balance at the moment - there was an Andrew Rawnsley article in the Graun on Sunday which set out how limited his options are.

@NobodyPuttsBabyinCorner

So what's your AIBU?

As per the title presumably: Labour needs a new leader

I genuinely believe people want to see a plan forming. The shadow cabinet have the advantage of not being in government so they can come up with ideas. I’ve heard zero from Starmers cabinet nor from himself.

In his desperation to quite rightly distance himself from Corbyn he’s focused on the wrong things. He believes the core issue was Cobyns perceived lack of patriotism but the issue is economic. Wrapping himself in a flag is not the answer. He cannot outflank Farage on this nor should he think this should be the winning strategy.

Those of working age generally don’t care either way about identify issues. They want to be able to work and get a fair wage so they can comfortably pay their rent, mortgage and have some luxuries.

We are so far down the hole that we can almost start afresh with a blank slate. Create ways to make the economy work for the majority, this will solve issues around unity etc. There are ways you can gain support across nearly all ‘identities’. There’s more that unites us than divides us.

He should fire the focus groups, sit down in a quiet room for a couple of hours and list what he thinks the priorities should be as a working aged Britain and move on from there but he can’t because he has no backbone and is very weak.

If starmer had wanted to change the fate of the Labour Party he would have come out clearly in support of women and our sex based rights instead he says nothing and allows the statement that calls anyone who believes that women and girls should have the right not to shower and change infront of men are hate groups and don't belong in the Party.
He could of stood up against the bullying of a black woman Labour mp but stayed silent.
He is a coward who sits on the fence and never has an opinion on anything even mildly controversial.
The only hope for Labour is to ditch all identity politics and purge the party of all the racist homophobic misogynists and cut all ties with stonewall asap. But they won't so they will remain an unelectable joke

I'm disappointed too. Starmer is competent and definitely worthy of the front bench, but lacks charisma, passion and killer instinct. One of the functions of an opposition is to expose and embarrass the government when it fucks up; this government has royally fucked up and Starmer hasn't really shown them up for this, despite them leaving the most massive of open goals.

However, in terms of setting out an alternative vision, I think he's right not to do this yet. The less time the right-wing media have to tear apart any such vision, the better. There may well not be an election called until late 2024, why give them the best part of 4 years to have a go at Labour policy?

And Labour policy is determined, to quite a degree, by the part rank and file through conference, so changing it takes a while.

And I agree that now would be the wrong time to change, it would reek of desperation and there's no obvious alternative who could do any better. (Yvette Cooper is a name often mentioned, but she's superb chairing the Health and Social Care select committe, so achieves more where she is).

I hope that Starmer is keeping his powder dry for now and will let it go with both barrels at the appropriate time, but I fear he may just have a lack of powder to start with.

Mind you, I'm an old-school, Corbyn-supporting, Bennite lefty (albeit pro-EU membership), so I'm a dinosaur in policy terms. I feel increasingly irrelevant in the party I've supported for 50 years, and been a member of for most of those (I left when Kinnock et al abolished Clause 4, and only rejoined when Milliband stood down).

I genuinely believe people want to see a plan forming.

You may believe this but the party will be doing polling and if most people agreed with you, they'd be doing it.

I would like to see Starmer call Johnson a lying twat but I'm not sure it would help with the next election

I agree @Cabinfever10, he’s shown himself to be very willing to throw various groups under the bus in order to avoid anything a focus group believes may be controversial or stir the right wing press. It’s so transparent. Labour should be focusing on the core universal things that impact us all which will unite us e.g. wealth and health and avoid this identity bollocks.

this government has royally fucked up and Starmer hasn't really shown them up for this, despite them leaving the most massive of open goals.

But the 'fuck up' involves 100k deaths, it is not a normal political issue.

I kind of agree but worry about the party being in worse hands.

I'm disappointed too. Starmer is competent and definitely worthy of the front bench, but lacks charisma, passion and killer instinct. One of the functions of an opposition is to expose and embarrass the government when it fucks up; this government has royally fucked up and Starmer hasn't really shown them up for this, despite them leaving the most massive of open goals.

I think he's done well in the platforms he's had - I think he's impressive in PMQs, for instance, and well-suited to the format - but party politics is just getting much less airtime at the moment, for understandable reasons. The only way he could grab headlines is to go hugely on the attack and while I think there's a huge amount to attack the government over, I also think it would look self-serving and unhelpful to do so in the middle of a crisis. I'm hopeful that in the long-term Starmer's approach of acting like the grown-up in the room will pay off.

@inquietant. I have no doubt they are polling but where and how widely? They haven’t polled me or anyone I know. Maybe they only poll in Stoke. The BBC were camped out there doing vox pops with pensioners during Brexit so maybe that’s where Labour believe they should be doing all of their polling now too?

Labour lost my vote because they don't know what a woman is. I've gone over to the Communist Party - the only party on the left that refuses to be swayed by identity politics. They're putting up some candidates for election as MPs, and I really hope they gain traction. If covid has taught us anything, it's that capitalist governments don't give a shiny shite about the people - just profit. It's the socialist-leaning governments who have managed the pandemic most successfully.

Yeah, the real issue with our political system is the way it disproportionately favours Stoke

Labour has needed to tackle the growing belief that it was just for middle-class Londoners for a long time - the one thing that gave me hesitation over voting for Starmer in the leadership election was that I really, really didn't want another London MP for leader.

You lost me at preferring Cameron. The bastard who presided over ten years ideological austerity and the ill thought through referendum? I can’t take anything you say seriously after that.

[quote Tellmetruth4]@inquietant. I have no doubt they are polling but where and how widely? They haven’t polled me or anyone I know. Maybe they only poll in Stoke. The BBC were camped out there doing vox pops with pensioners during Brexit so maybe that’s where Labour believe they should be doing all of their polling now too?[/quote]
I think you need to read about polling!

Genuinely, do some research about polling and how it works.

Also try to get to grips with the complexity of building an electoral.coalition across the whole country. It is a very complicated task.

@Cabinfever10

If starmer had wanted to change the fate of the Labour Party he would have come out clearly in support of women and our sex based rights instead he says nothing and allows the statement that calls anyone who believes that women and girls should have the right not to shower and change infront of men are hate groups and don't belong in the Party. He could of stood up against the bullying of a black woman Labour mp but stayed silent. He is a coward who sits on the fence and never has an opinion on anything even mildly controversial. The only hope for Labour is to ditch all identity politics and purge the party of all the racist homophobic misogynists and cut all ties with stonewall asap. But they won't so they will remain an unelectable joke

I think there's a fear that promoting the sex-based rights of women in that respect would lose the party a lot of support among young people (and possibly gay men) who don't seem to see it as a problem.

And that's part of the problem, really. The Labour party has always been a broad church, and relies very much on the support of lots of groups who have who different, and conflicting, special interests. It struggles to reconcile those sometimes.

There used to be many in the party who thought that the Labour party made too much of anti-racism and risked losing the votes of those traditonal Labour voters who didn't like Commonwealth immigrants coming over here and taking "their" jobs and council houses. But Labour was ahead of the curve there and no-one questions anti-racism these days (well, apart from a few right-wing extremists).

Unless someone can come up with a way of protecting women's safe spaces from dangerous and predatory males without excluding those with penises who genuinely feel they are female but don't want to go through surgery, I don't feel that that circle can ever be squared.

I hope you're right, @Hardbackwriter. (post @ 8.15)

No-one would be happier than me if he turned out to be a really radical leader under that urbane exterior. And I agree, he has tremendous amounts of ability, and the forensic arena of PMQ's is right up his street.

The pandemic is giving KS the opportunity to sort out the festering mess that the Labour Party has become. It's also unbearably woke and I cringed when KS "took the knee"

He's excellent at PMQs and I've got faith he will rebuild and get Labour into power.

And Starmer is no Biden either because whether you agree with them or not Biden has principles and is willing to publicly stand by them. Starmer is someone who may be with you on Monday but you’re not sure and may be against you on Tuesday but you’re not sure.

In support of him in difficult times he is treading carefully and offering a balanced view. Careful leadership whilst he evaluates. Normal and good practice in any new leadership role.

He is fantastic at his very detailed questioning of BJ, really shows up Boris's lack of knowledge, attention to detail and wild meaningless statements.

Starmer for me!

Whether you like it or not it was traditional labour voters abandoning Labour that swelled the numbers of ukip and the conservatives, I believe that immigration probably did play quite a part in that abandonment

I’m disappointed in Starmer on the gender politics debate, but he’s doing alright otherwise. He’s not at the government’s throat, but that’s strategic. He’s not doing enough for the disadvantaged, but again, that is strategic if he’s going to sway the ‘middle’ voters who went Tory at the last election.