To ask what people have against Labour?

[TheSmallestOneWasMadeline]

I have come across lots of people who, even while admitting that the Conservatives are far from ideal, seem to scrunch their nose up and say 'but, ew, Labour' when talking about politics.

I have to admit I dont understand what it is that people think is so terrible about them and nobody ever cares to elaborate! I always vote for them as I think their principles align pretty closely with my own even if I don't agree with absolutely e everything they stand for.

Could someone please explain what people think is so terrible about them that they would do a worse job at running the country than the Conservatives have done?

Now that’s identity politics.

Duckbill
I’m weird? They are hellbent on destroying all workers’ rights.
But it’s fine to vote for them because they seem to know what a woman is.

Their 2019 manifesto committed the LP to reforming the Gender Recognition Act and replacing 'gender assignment' with 'gender identity'.

In summer 2021 KS told Pink News that, "we’re committed to updating the GRA to introduce self-declaration for trans people.”

Around the same time he was asked whether it is transphobic to say that only women have a cervix and replied, "Well, it is something that shouldn't be said. It is not right"

Various shadow front benchers have
insulted concerned gender critical women. Rights hoarding 'dinosaurs' (Lammy).

This, coincidentally from today, is good background:

www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/02/if-labour-is-truly-the-party-of-equality-it-wouldnt-shut-down-the-trans-debate

The Tories: avoidable harm to women and girls has occurred on their watch. They set wheels in motion towards self ID in around 2018 but since appear to have read the room and stepped back. This thread is about Labour so I'll leave it there.

Do you think what I described them as doing in the 70s (and the 80s for that matter) was a smear?

Tax credits. If you subsidize employers in this way, of course they will not pay whatever the market rate would be without this subsidy. It also means they have no incentive to automate if they can cheap labour below market rate. If a business cannot afford to pay market rate, they don’t have a viable business model. However in UK’s case, tax credits have caused the rot within this system.

Thanks.

My apologies if you've seen it, but another recommend is GBH, a drama series by Alan Bleasdale. I think it was released in 1989. Worth watching because it stars Michael Palin not in a silly role. But also because it shows why the left failed. Palin is a sort of everyman who gets caught between left-wing ideologues who want to smash things in the name of progress, and some sinister forces who are playing them. Very sad actually, but really well made.

Labour need to sort themselves out regarding a lot of issues. They need to knock on doors of working class people and ask them what they expect of the Labour party, and take heed of that advice. Instead of pandering to their base (members, who generally don't have a fucking clue about the world outside their echo chamber).

But if Labour ‘created’ a low wage economy, wouldn’t you have expected the proportion of workers on a low wage to have to increased (which it didn’t)?

The trouble I find with so many middle class Labour supporters is that they have no idea how private enterprise works, they think that people with their own business are only interested in making money for themselves to hell with anyone else, when all along we also have a social conscience too! I enjoy running a small business in a village for instance because I enjoy being part of a community! They think that anyone who votes conservative must be only out for themselves and that private enterprise and community good don't mix.

My apologies if you've seen it, but another recommend is GBH, a drama series by Alan Bleasdale. I think it was released in 1989. Worth watching because it stars Michael Palin not in a silly role. But also because it shows why the left failed. Palin is a sort of everyman who gets caught between left-wing ideologues who want to smash things in the name of progress, and some sinister forces who are playing them. Very sad actually, but really well made.

I think that was based on the Hatton madness in Liverpool, wasn't it?

If the Labour Grandees are reading this, they also need to read the feminism board and relationships.

I think the Rwanda policy was stupid, not racist. It didn't treat people differently based on their race at all. In fact it is not unlike the process that already exists for managing refugee claimants from the African continent.

As far as Boris's article. If you'd read it, what he was saying was that even if wearing the niqab seems not to fit into British culture, makes people uncomfortable, or seems to look silly, to some it should not be restricted and that people have freedom of religion and expression, whatever their religious views or ethnicity. So no, I don't think it's particularly racist. (And FWIW there are plenty of commentators on the left who have made very similar kinds of remarks about religious headcoverings, without being called out for it. And some who are much less tolerant of them.)

In my experience, people who look to his old articles for evidence of racism don't generally seem to actually read them with an eye to meaning, they just look for words they think are dodgy.

You also might consider that the claim made by the other poster was that the id politics that the LP bases so much of it's policy on are themselves a racist philosophy, which is a little different than saying individual party members are racists.

I believe so.

I think it shows the division between the ordinary Labour supporters of the time, ordinary people who didn't actually want all that much - decent jobs, incomes, homes, so they could support their families and communities on the one hand - and the ideologues and zealots - quite commonly from academia - who wanted to remake society on the other and destroy lots of good things in the process.

I know Corbyn was moderate in his utterances while Labour leader but I think he's one of the latter.

Unfortunately we have ideologues and zealots in power right now - on the right.

Look, you can think what you like about how people should vote now, but it has very little to do with what I said.

Which was that the LP has changed it's policy thinking because it no longer represents the same people. It is not a workers party.

This isn't some new thing. The modern left was totally unsympathetic to w/c people and communities who were not pro-EU, called them racists, gammon, etc, and have been doing that for years.

They mostly can't even wrap their heads around the fact that the LP used to be Euroskeptic, or that they favoured more protectionist policies, that they saw movement of labour as an important issue for the working classes.

That is a huge change and it corresponds to the change in the type of people who vote for the LP and drive their policy.

And it should not be a surprise if it gets on the tits of a lot of traditional LP voters when they get told by the middle class LP voters that they are a better kind of person because they care for workers.

I think I'm going to send the link to my MP (Labour) and tell them to make sure someone in the shadow cabinet takes a look.

The Conservatives might know what a woman is, but it doesn't mean they care what a woman is.

Just last week, a man was okayed to go into a female prison with a mother and baby unit ffs

@MangyInseam I understand what you are saying and agree with a lot of it. That doesn't mean we can't both be right ? You are right about eurosceptasim in the Labour party and I am right about Britannia unchained not being a good thing for most people who have to work for a living.

Ha ha! this from you, someone who has written some very awful n untrue things about Labour, the poor and in particular argued to send debtors children into care as and i quote "even if it did cost 10k per child (per week), it would save money in the long run.... as these feckless people would realise there are consequences to their actions"

An awful attitude and one reason why the Tories will lose the next election.

Euroscepticism hasn't been a Labour thing for about 30 years, Corbyn never represented most Labour MP's just as Truss doesn't represent most Tory MPs (just 50 voted for her in the fist round)

The modern left was totally unsympathetic to w/c people and communities who were not pro-EU, called them racists, gammon, etc, and have been doing that for years

It is Labour that has consistently voted against cuts to education, health and working benefits, all of which benefit w/c people - so why are you blaming the Labour party for the dire state of our public services and our low wage economy? its the right that have been in power for 12 years?

Research, after the referendum shows very clearly, immigration was always a top 3 concern among leave voters & insults came think n fast from Leavers too, all very wrong btw.

As one (ex) leaver voted told me recently "we told them to fuck off and we shouldn't be surprised that they have" on the numbers of EU workers who have left the UK, having no healthcare staff doesn't benefit the w/c does it but its Labours fault fgs.

I became absolutely repulsed by labour when Corbyn was in charge, I still feel nauseous when I think about him. I think I’m finding it hard to get past it.

Additionally, labour’s stance on women’s rights ensure I could never vote for them.

Thanks for all the replies, I'm interested to keep reading all these takes.

I want to vote for a centre party that respects my rights as a woman to single sex spaces , I want to see women only prisons, refuges, sports counselling services. I don’t want to see people like Eddie Izzard prancing round in women face, it’s insulting to women and softening safeguarding boundaries for women and children.

I think comparing people to letterboxes and bank robbers is racist, regardless the point ultimately being made (which was an argument that burqa bans furk extemism.)

Similarly I would say the Rwanda policy is racist since it doesn't apply to refugees from Ukraine.

Regardless, the original point was that if you are going to look for ways to call LP racist, arguments can very easily be made the other way.

Fuel....not furk

I honestly think a lot of people who refer to Johnson as a racist on the basis of his articles have not read the articles in question therefore don’t understand what he’s referring to. His former wife was mixed race, he had a very diverse cabinet and of his many MANY flaws, I don’t believe racism to be one of them.

But if you’re the sort of person to criticise articles you haven’t read, interviews you never saw, music you never listened to etc and thus plagiarise opinions rather than forming your own, then you’re going to take the easy option and yell “yeah! WhAt tHEy SAid!”