To conclude Starmer's Labour is no longer in any way "left"?

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Labour shadow ministers now use "lefty" as a term of abuse.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/apr/08/middle-class-lefties-wont-stop-labour-using-private-sector-to-cut-nhs-backlog-wes-streeting-says

How can they make it any more clear what they do and don't stand for? Can you imagine the Tories fulminating about how they won't be lectured to be "middle class Conservatives", or Farage slagging off "working class Brexiteers"?

This post is not about "Labour good / Tories bad" OR the opposite. Just clarity about what "Labour" actually is.

Whatever it is . . . . . .

He could have said what he said without mentioning ‘middle class lefties’. It’s the culture war element that I take issue with. I’m desperate for grown up politics, not this American culture war bullshit which turns politics into football teams. It’s infantile and disgusting. I was desperately hoping that after the Tories, we’d see the end of this. It’s so depressing to believe a Labour government will just continue with it.

I was being sarcastic. Starmer pledged exactly the program of nationalisation described when he ran for the Labour leadership, in order to get the membership to vote for him. Then he completely rejected it.

It's not going in any manifesto.

This. He equivocates on pretty much every issue. I've no idea what he stands for.

Mercifully the events north of the border and the Cass report appear to have scared Labour off of their self-ID plans.

Scotrail, Transport for Wales, Transport for London and Merseyrail are all controlled by devolved administrations. The Scottish Government does have some extra control over infrastructure, beyond that afforded to the Welsh Government.

In terms of the operators controlled by Whitehall; Northern, TPE, LNER and Southeastern are run by an Operator of Last Resort. In practice those four actually have more freedom from Whitehall micromanagement than the others which still have private companies running them. These days the Managing Directors can't so much as fart without permission from London. This is why the railway is so chaotic now, BR was just given an annual budget and told to get on with the job - by the end it was doing very well considering the meagre budget.

Of course the cost of living is important but so is how women live. And it really is tiresome that politicians never give it due consideration when deciding what their priorities are.

Yes. The fact some female voters are so willing to X away their rights, is shocking. As you said - they don’t know what they’ve got ‘til it’s gone.

Agreed.

As to COL crises, high interest rates, low economic activity. In reality most of the recent issues are completely beyond our/any government to control. If you have shares or pensions watch them descend in value as US figures are released, and as we are all aware, wars and weather will continue to have a catastrosphic influence on commodity availability and prices.

Look to all other countries, G7 or otherwise, all have high debt, all have social care issues, demographic issues, COL, high interest rates. Many of their governments have gone left leaning to right leaning. In reality everyone just wants a change...... but actually there is little to be done other than tinkering at the edges of domestic issues.

Quite.

So true. People bash ‘this government’ for having not made necessary changes, but given a financial crisis, Brexit, Covid, Ukraine and so on, the last 15 years have been a bit tricky.

As to COL crises, high interest rates, low economic activity. In reality most of the recent issues are completely beyond our/any government to control.

If that were true there’d be no point in having a government at all. The whole point is that governments work to ameliorate the effects of external circumstances. From Andrew Rawnsley this morning:

The Labour government of the 1960s implemented significant domestic change amid near-constant economic turmoil. Capital punishment was ended, homosexuality was decriminalised in England and Wales, theatre censorship was abolished, the laws on abortion and divorce were modernised. Being cash-strapped didn’t prevent the Labour government of the 1970s from legislating against sex discrimination and introducing statutory maternity leave.

And I keep banging on about the Attlee government but that’s a prime example of a government triumphing over circumstance.

Oh and ridiculous weather and it’s associated protests!

Which party was responsible for the Brexit referendum in the first place?

So true. People bash ‘this government’ for having not made necessary changes, but given a financial crisis, Brexit, Covid, Ukraine and so on, the last 15 years have been a bit tricky.
It's not bashing to hold governments to account, especially when instead of looking after a country's citizens, they're focused on making their friends richer and many people pushing Brexit and other strategies have financial and professional interests in running the UK against the interests of average people.

Annual profits at Tesco are up 160%.
More and more people are in food poverty.

Energy giants are raking in profits of £420 billion.
How many average people are struggling to pay their bills?

At some point people need to realise that these aren't little bumps in the road. They're a deliberate set of choices.

Has it though? Where do they say they don't believe in self id and TWAW?

It's not about what they believe, politicians care about what's popular. They'll have seen that the Government's decision to withold Royal Assent from the Scottish self-ID bill turned out to be a popular move, even though in normal circumstances any meddling by Westminster would be met with nationalist outrage.

I'm afraid Keir is going to have to stand next to Rosie Duffield Apologise for his anti women's rights and safeguarding behaviour and wear a billboard saying I'm not going to bring in self ID. Until then it's wishful thinking on your part

Does Ms Duffield want him to do that? It amuses me that she’s perfectly happy to stand as a Labour MP and remain a member of the party while people with a lot less skin in the game use her as an excuse for not voting Labour.

@DdraigGoch do you have inside information that Labour will row back from self ID

Labour has never proposed self ID. That was a Tory bill than they sank in 2017. The Labour proposal is to simplify the process.

The Tories are done anyway.

Labour could only lose by setting a trap for themselves over Brexit or something like they did in the last election..

The truth of it is that most people have a choice of Tory or Labour.

These Tories have proven themselves time and time again to be no friends of women, children, disabled people etc.

They are not fighting our corner. They are just pretending to try and get our vote.

This government have heaped piles of shit on women and children. I believe in actions not sound bites.

A vote for them is not a vote for women and children.

Blair only won because he understood that elections are won and lost in the middle, hence his term "Mondeo Man".

Starmer is adopting the same approach of appealing to the middle ground.

At the end of the day, being too extreme (whether left or right) is a minority and will turn more people away than they attract.

No - labour/kier don’t even know what a woman is….

Starmer will say anything to get votes. He's supposedly gone from being very pro-Corbyn to now pretending he supports many Tory policies (this week notably on nuclear deterrent and defence spending).

He's gone back on all the policies he claimed to support when he got elected as party leader. So either he was lying to them or he's lying to us now - take your pick!