To like Keir Starmer?

[Emmanuelll]

Unlike Tony Blair, he comes from a working class background - his siblings would still call themselves working class.

As a very bright lawyer, he could have sought a path which made him rich quickly but instead chose human rights which isn’t an easy route to take and he’s defended ‘the little guy’ against corporations. He’s also anti-death penalty.

Ok, he’s a Sir, and I’ve heard people (perhaps not unreasonably) question why the leader of the Labour Party would have a title like that. But he earned it through work for the criminal justice system.

On the face of it, it seems as though he deserves a chance.

I would much rather have him as PM than a former Bullingdon club member who used to burn money in front of homeless people for the fun of it.

Oh he is a proper grown up. He’s much more respectable than Bojo etc.

But rather unfortunately he will force his inflexible ideology on us.

Aye, ok.
There’s no way to prove it either way. I’m able to extrapolate a bit from events when necessary to make sense of things. If you don’t want to do that, it’s fine.

I agree Op. I like politicians who have had careers and earned their place.

I’m actually not embarrassed by British politics for once, when you look at Biden and trump and the mess in France, for once we look alright.

Something that is quite refreshing after the election is that when you disagree with one of Starmer’s policies now, nobody calls you a Tory bot. Before the election, anyone disagreeing with Starmer’s policies on her got called Tory bot.

That’s the only good thing I can say about this election.

“I asked you, on this thread, why you thought it was.
I’m pretty confident that if Starmer says the plans are ECHR compatible, then they are.“

@cardibach - Pannick will argue that singling out private schools only for VAT is discriminatory. Why only private schools and not other forms of education?
And within those private schools there are SEN kids or Jewish kids etc - so it is far from straight forward. And for some kids, private education was their only option because state has failed them.

If the challenge wins, I do not want to live in a country where Strasbourg is not respected. That much you agree with right?

You also get clarity around polling over voting intention motivation - get the Tories out outweighed just about everything else for both Labour and LD voters. And then there's polling from end of June around intention to vote tactically - around 20% overall but they are overwhelmingly Labour and Lib Dem voters. 29% of Labour voters said they were voting tactically; 39% of those voting Lib Dem.

And that's before you also look at the resources the parties themselves put into target seats, and the actual votes themselves compared to historical patterns.

There's far more evidence for the proposition that tactical voting played a more significant role in the election outcome than usual.

As with anything electoral you can never, ever know exactly what the motivation behind every vote was. So, like any other conclusion reached on voter behaviour, you look at the evidence and see what the most likely conclusion is.

Why would they when they won an election on the back of it? That's true of Tory and Labour governments. It's only the smaller parties, who don't get a say, that have a vested interest in changing the system. Which is why the Lib Dems made it a condition of their coalition that there was a public vote. That was hashed though, it wasn't about PR.

If the challenge wins, then Labour won’t do it. I’m confident of that.
I don’t think it’s discriminatory to charge VAT on independent schools as they are a choice - there is a free system. If that’s failing, it should be sorted, not allow people with money to opt out of it and make all the rest suffer. Don’t you think that’s discriminatory?
It’s very straightforward. Schools which charge for an education that is provided free at the point of use are different from those who don’t. Fundamentally different.

What inflexible ideology is that then?
Honestly, he’s criticised for changing his mind then criticised for sticking to stuff.

Starmer has said that children in independent specialist schools for SEN will be exempt (my dd1 would have been one of those- she’s grown up now). My dd4 wouldn’t be exempt but as I’ve already said, she’d probably have been able to go to the state school near me if the Tories hadn’t cut council budgets by 50%. The knock on impact of this in itself has been that children who need to go to specialist schools are being left to sink or swim in a MS classroom with not enough support.

I’ve seen parents saying that they intend to challenge the VAT increases but won’t that potentially cost even more than just paying it? I think if you really believe that something is legally wrong then challenging it is reasonable but some of these people also argue that their child would have to leave their private school due to VAT costs so it doesn’t make total sense.

I read a thread from last year where people using private schools were asked to say how much their household income is and for many of them, it was at least £100k, sometimes a lot more.

Many of us will be paying more "involuntary tax" when he gets his claws in. Just wait and see.
The only other 2 words I will say right now are Jimmy and Savile

You’re showing your ignorance then. And possibly coming close to committing libel. Don’t you people ever learn?
And for the 18366483738293th time, taxes NOW after a Tory government, are t(e highest since the Second World War.

What's libellous about their post?

What about Jimmy Savile?

I didn’t say libellous. I said close to it. It implies something very, very unpleasant and also untrue. And you know it.

I wasn’t sure about him but I think the last few days his intelligence and emotional maturity seem to have shone through.

someone once said to me it’s important not to “love” your politicians because it can border on idolatry and we all know where that’s led to historically. I think this is a great point.

What do you assume it implies?

This is more revealing of you than him, isn’t it? And if it were an assessment widely agreed with, then he would not have won the election. Even the Conservatives realised that this did not merit sn attack.

Do as I say, not as I do. But an extreme version of it.

Just one example:
www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65037136.amp

I think if you're going to make a Jimmy Savile analogy you need to be crystal clear about what you are saying.

I've just found an article which says that he was criticised for failing to prosecute jimmy savile.

You must be reading different bits of Mumsnet to me.

For anyone interested

amp.theguardian.com/politics/2023/dec/21/keir-starmer-not-told-about-dropping-of-jimmy-savile-case-say-sources-dpp-labour

And warm and fuzzies can easily turn to cold and spikies

Oh stop being obtuse. I genuinely can’t be bothered.
Have it your own way. It was a random mention of a dead paedophile with no intention to imply anything. Happy?