To intensely dislike Keir Starmer

[LemonyTicket]

I can't stand Tories.
The current Tories are the worst

But I still intensely dislike Keir Starmer and will probably vote Green.

I find him phony, with no vision, like a terrible 6th form prefect. And to be honest his whole front bench are dreadful. Wes Streeting nauseates me.

Is it just me?

@dressedforcomfort - Starmer's record as DPP was dreadful - whole Rotherham issue was ignored

His main advantage is he isn't Corbyn - a man who he campaigned for to put into no !0

An appalling shit

Where’s the ‘can’t recall’ quote from?

In 1982 the fees for Reigate Grammar were £1337. It is listed on the assisted places scheme at the time. Perfectly perceivable that the school’s charity funded places for existing academic pupils.

I agree with most of what you say.

He is between a rock and a hard place but I've never got why this is such an issue in the left, but not so much in the right. The Tory's largely come together, Labour don't seem to be able to. You only have to read all the angst about KS not being working class enough etc to see it. Why does the left appear to have such a problem with party unity?

I also agree that he is a man if integrity. I think he is and as I said up thread I think he is a decent man who probably does care about the NHS, adult social care, child poverty etc (although whether this is more than the Tory govt I wouldn't like to hazard a guess and I've not seen him act out any policy on any of those areas).

Unfortunately he actively doesn't appear to care about women's rights so it's a no from me.

@cardibach not all the roads have had the signs updated yet. Where I live there are 20 limits on roads that really don't need to be 20. Might have saved some money to allow individual councils to select the areas most in need of a 20 speed limit and not impose an expensive blanket policy.

I'm not aligned to any political party - bit of a floater (no principles, you see!).

But I do like Sir Kier. My sister worked with him when he was a lawyer and thought he had great integrity. I think he's an honest, well-meaning man - but that may not work for him in politics.

But his hair is an issue, for sure. None of us can help our hairlines (and mine's not great, with 2 'cow licks' disrupting my fringe) but I just don't know why he sort of sweeps it over to one side (and I think I detect a bit of Brylcreem...??). This is a distration for me. It's no good anyone being pompous and saying that a politician's hair is a trivial matter - it most certainly is NOT. Look at BoJo's platinum mop.

But I agree with you about the rest of the shadow cabinet, and the actual cabinet too. Being serious for a minute, I'm old and I can assure you that politicians today are low-grade material compared with the past - largely because they're 'career politicians' and have never achieved much in any other sphere (and have no experience of anything else, often). MPs used to come from successful careers in the trade unions, the law, finance etc but now they are often 25 year-olds who've done PPE at Oxford, got a job as a researcher in the HoC and then put themselves forward to selection. I wouldn't vote for anyone like that.

Bring back the likes of Alan Johnson and Frank Field - real people with real-life experience and lots of wisdom. They even had passable hair.

And please - make Angela Rayner disappear....

Sir kneeler sitting on the fence

Birmingham has a clean air zone charging motorist £8 a pop but their Labour council has recently gone bankrupt. I recall last time Labour were in a note being left saying no more money left it had all been spent. Look how badly Wales is run now they crawl along in slow motion at 20 mph. Then I worry if Keir got in he'd spend so much money on public services that the country would get downgraded by credit agencies like Standard and Poor. I think it's important to only spend what we have and not to add to the country's debt. I know our national debt spiralled through Covid but we must start to pay it down again. Too much money is being wasted in interest payments.

You are going to be bitterly disappointed if you think free dentistry will reappear or any public service for that matter with Labour. We can’t afford free dentistry because the population has exploded to over 70 million - you do the maths.

The tax bill is not only supporting millions more people, it is also paying for the war in an Ukraine and years of lockdowns. I am surprised you missed how much the latter two have cost us. A cool £317-411 billion for the pandemic.
Yes £400 billion.

The Ukraine war to date has cost: £4.6 billion in military aid, not factoring in the energy crisis.

So if you think that your circumstances will change with a new government, think again.

The thread is massive so I'm not going to pretend to have read it all, but...

I think Starmer is a fundamentally decent human being. I also think that he has to walk a tightrope in order to be elected, and without being elected he can't achieve anything - this means that he's not offering anything inspiring.

However, my hope is that he gets elected, and gets on with delivering what people would disparagingly call "Tory-lite" (and lets be clear, delivering Tory-ish policies but with some compassion, competence and without the bare-faced corruption would be preferable to actual Tories) for a while to build some confidence among the section of the electorate who're somewhat distrustful of Labour, and then after a relatively short first term, he can fight another election on a more ambitious platform.

I'm seriously considering voting for them despite never having done so before (to be fair, if I lived in England I would probably have always been a solid Labour voter).

But that’s exactly what did happen. Individual councils can decide themselves, but 20 is now an option. I’m not sure what you mean about signs not being updated. If the sign says 30, it’s a 30 limit - not all 30s have become 20. It’s been up t9 the councils. It’s not a ‘blanket policy’ except in that it allows any road to become 20 if the council wants it to.
I do agree some councils have been over cautious about which areas need to be 20 and that there could be some changes down the line.

You are comfortable with you and your dds being erased are you?

👏

Do give us three examples of how you and your daughters have benefited as women under the Conservatives.

Don’t know where to start with the ignorance here. The treasury note was part of a long running joke. How do you not know that? And we don’t ‘crawl along at 20’ in Wales except in some residential areas. As I said in an earlier post I went from the bridge to Swansea without encountering even one 20 zone. Most 20 zones had an average speed of around 20 anyway before the change.
plus then you have been taken 8n by Thatcherite ‘economics’. Countries aren’t like households. They don’t have to balance the budget in the same way. It’s fairly easy to research. A new government will have to spend a lot in order to repair the damage of the Tories - and you want more because you have believed a whole load of rubbish?

I thought they had brought in subsidised child care for all 3 year olds and new legislation means a lot of 2 year olds will qualify too. Also working parents get child care allowance in UC. Maybe I just dreamed it?

@CoffeeCantata what have you got against Angela Rayner?

Don't be ridiculous.

Neither me or my DD will be erased, either under the Tories or Labour.

The treasury note was most definitely NOT a joke!

I have family in England with kids in school and also have kids in welsh schooling system my RL life experience doesn't support this.

That not to say there aren't problems in both systems or benefit to some of the welsh system.

The attitude behind it does sum up some to me worrying local Labour attitudes though - lack of ambition as if wanting better is wrong. Also I think shows the labour supporters on here dismissive attitude towards Wales - my kids are going through Welsh schools their education is really important to me so dismissing my concerns doesn't endear me to the cause.

I think it an Orwell quote that he was sick of people making excuses for Stalin just because he wasn't Hitler - obviously not killing millions in this situation but the attitude behind does strike chords.

The pollsters and political commentators are saying everyone now hates the Tories ( though most did anyway I thought) but haven't fallen in love with Labour - so I'm not out of step politically with large section of population and I suspect labour will still form the next government though they may do without my vote depends on what happens and how I feel nearer the time.

Why isn’t that ordinary though? It’s possible for ordinary people to be musically talented and get lessons at those sort of places. Ordinary people might even scrimp a bit to finance it if free lessons weren’t provided. It was significantly easier to get free music tuition in the past. I did.

@Lastchancechica

I'm not that easy to erase. Not is any other woman I've met.

@cardibach "No - I'm quite clearly saying that attending the Guildhall School of Music as a 'young scholar' is not "a very ordinary upbringing."

I'll remember that next time somebody tries to say that private schools are full of "perfectly ordinary families"🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

The conservatives insisted on the preservation of single sexes for one! They have fought against self id and the relaxation of rules surrounding trans certification. And in Scotland.
Sunak has said women do not have penises. Weird that he had to until you see what Starm says on the issue.They are welcoming of female leaders and PMs. Unlike Labour. The list goes on.

How anybody who has at least the ability to find their own arse in the dark without using two hands, can look at the last 13 years of gov and want more, is beyond me.

Rubbish @Lastchancechica
He may be technically a multi millionaire if you add his house into the mix (I don’t know if he is even then tbh). He had an ordinary childhood (nobody has ever said deprived anyway) and has worked hard abandon been successful. It’s odd. Angela Rayner is criticised for ‘politics of envy’ because she comes across more stereotypically working class. Starmer is criticised because he doesn’t and therefore gets called a ‘hypocrite’ or ‘champagne socialist’.
Left wing people are allowed to be successful.