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.