To wonder what could Starmer do, to turn things around?

[B0xes]

He was elected on fewer votes than Corbyn with very lukewarm support, the Tories lost that election, Labour did not sweep in on a tide of public approval, they just benefitted from peoples anger at the Conservatives. Since then, Starmers approval rating has tanked. He seems to have gone from one ill judged move to the next and seems totally tone deaf in speeches. Can he turn it around? What would he need to do?

Likely not much, it’s harder to get people back after you’ve lost support

It is unusual to lose it so soon after a GE which does give them ages to go. We’ll see what other parties do, particularly Reform in that time

Votes they may get as already in the polls, the electoral system is the main help away from that rather than connection with voters

Best hope he has is not making things worse, if he does then @TheNoonBell might have it

Nothing.

The country is broke and public services are broken beyond repair. Way back in 2008 the capitalist economic model failed. It was artificially supported through zero interest rates and money printing. That could only last for so long.

We have reached a point now where the true cost of all goods and services far exceeds what Government or individuals can pay.

Because the system is now broken and there are no viable alternatives, we continue to limp on, delusional and distracted and hoping something else will come along to fix it all.

I think it was very clear, right from the time the election was announced, that the only think Starmer’s Labour had got going for it is that it’s not the Tories

I’d been wondering what a successful Labour administration would look like at this point. And I think they should do less in most areas. And really work on the reform of social care (without which you will never be able to have real change in NHS)

I agree that the Conservatives lost as opposed to Labour winning. Not that it makes any difference. I look at it this way:

Starmer has found himself in a sinking boat. He can't see the size of the holes under the waterline accurately, and he has a bucket. He has changed the size and shape of the bucket and is bailing frantically. He does not yet know whether his reshaped and resized bucket is actually getting water out faster than it is coming in. He may need to reshape or resize the bucket again. Or both.

Using that analogy, the previous administration appeared to be using a thimble to bail without any recognition that water was still entering the boat, so the fact that Starmer has a) recognised this, and b) tried a different bucket is at least a step in the right direction.

It must be quite a challenge to be bailing frantically, while everyone on the Quay watching is just saying "you don't want to do it like that, you want to do it like this".

That said, I don't think that the increase in NI for employers is going to promote growth.

Hopefully the boat analogy doesn't start off any debate about small boat crossings.

Resign. 🤷‍♀️

Definitely invest and legislate for the infrastructure.

The next big crisis will be a water one. Unless we invest heavily now then we will be in trouble later.

And crime. Even an illusion of a lawless state is highly demoralising.

He's doing a good job. Of you actually loon what he's achieved already rather than the rhetoric in the press. He needs a good PR man and balanced journalism

Labour need better PR, and to get at least one right-leaning tabloid on-side. And the BBC. They are doing good things, but it's getting drowned out by the constant negative press from rich Tory business owners who want their mates back in power.

I'm still very happy they're in power. I haven't agreed with all their decisions but it's obvious they're trying to do the least popular things first (like Tony Blair did) and hopefully things will improve. I have personally had a hospital appointment come through that I'd been waiting for for over a year, and the roads around where we live have been fixed - both likely due to extra funding since Labour came in.

I remain convinced Starmer is a good, serious and thoughtful PM who is doing his best, but needs some social media training and for Alastair Campbell or equivalent to step in and guide the media story.

the pot holes have been fixed using money diverted from the cancelled HS2 so you've Rishi to thank for that!

The problem for Labour is that they have to fix problems which are essentially structural in nature and very difficult to fix- for example, aging population. It can't be fixed. People just don't want to have loads of kids anymore and it's not just financial or Sweden wouldn't have exactly the same issue. People live a lot longer but they're old for longer, not young for longer- they are dependent for far too much of their total lives. So there's now this period where we're all going to pretend that adult social care, pensions and the NHS for more and more old people can be funded from a dwindling pool of net contributors who will be getting more and more fucked off with their tax bills. At some point it will become untenable and something drastic and insanely unpopular will have to happen but until then the poisoned chalice will keep getting passed back and forth.

I'm perfectly happy with what he is doing OP.
Stop believing everything you read in the newspapers and on-line.

Be seen publicly to be coming down hard on the profiteers who hold our essential services by the short and curlies. Bring essential service back into at least UK, if not public ownership. Some of the highest train fares in Europe are paying French pensions.

Tax Amazon.

Vigorously pursue the Michelle Mones, and those who permit such apparent corruption.

Get serious with adult social care. Lean on the unearned wealth of the wealthier pensioners. Make the idea of selling the 'family home' to pay for elderly care normalised.

Double the apprenticeship levy for all companies that do not spend it on young apprentices. Make companies train their own trainees, not expect the kids to shell out £45k debts to be, say, a graphic designer. Cease funding stupid degrees, turn those failing 'unis' into training hubs for the academic provision, via block release, for young trainees, so they get quality teaching AND a 'living away from home' experience. Invest in our young, even at the expense of our old.

Overhaul 4-18 education so it is more fit for the C21. Accept that not everyone needs or wants Shakespeare and quadratic equations. At 13-14, we know who they are. Enforce discipline.

Invest heavily in healthcare training. Limit healthcare visas to 5 years and no dependents.

Move towards rejoining the EU in some form.

Force the abandoning parent to pay up and properly for their kids.

Make work pay. If you're only £100pw better off after a 40 hour week (I guess) than you would be on benefits, why would you bother?

Stop selling council houses and tighten the rules for those who have. A percentage of the profit as you sell on should be repaid to the council. People want to see fairness, not profiteering.

Strongly encourage integration, deport criminals, dismantle any alternative justice systems, demand English proficiency. Go 'Swedish'. Heavily punish county lines operators.

Legalise and control cannabis.

ID cards. I was strongly opposed to them- we KNOW our governments will misuse our data- but I can't see any other way of containing our dark economy and misuse of our public services.

Provide carrots and sticks.

I agree. The private landlords raking in benefits to fund their multiple properties are a disgrace.

BTW, quite a few benefits are taxable.

You forgot the bits where they declared war on the middle class by putting VAT on private schools and now concreting over village fields to build houses - take that you NIMBYS.

People who are perfectly happy with Starmer will likely always vote Labour and it doesn’t matter what he does they’ll vote for them anyway

The harder part is those who have been turned off already. He’s managed to alienate a lot of people.

i think they're doing some excellent things. it's been 6 months, you can't reverse the legacy they inherited overnight.

Fuck off and quit

"Tax Amazon"

Thing is everyone says this but Amazon are not evading tax (illegal), they are avoiding it. This is a gross simplification of how tax works across boundaries but basically Amazon isn't one company (legal entity), it's hundreds of connected legal entities in different countries across the world, which are owned by each other. Profits are taxed in the legal entity in which they fall, so companies will arrange transactions and intracompany pricing so that most profits get lodged in companies in countries with lower rates of corporation tax or no corporation tax. There are rules around Interco pricing to prevent this getting ridiculous but it's extremely difficult to stop them doing this at all unless all the countries get together and agree a global rate of CT (this will never ever happen). Even then countries will give companies tax breaks on CT if they think the benefit of an investment will be more than the tax loss.

Basically, I'd love Amazon to pay all their taxes in the UK but sadly, it's not even slightly within Keir's gift to make it happen.

Labour can't kickstart the economy without kickstarting trade and get investment flowing again. Where are all those amazing trade deals that were only possible with the hardest version of Brexit ?? Nowhere to be seen... Labour need to stop being such cowards and expose the lies for what they were. Rejoin the single market and customs union NOW! But I suspect Starmer is too beholden to the more leftist elements in the party who have always considered the EU to be an evil capitalist organisation - whilst the great irony will be that we'll get sold off for parts to the US, China etc.
They're all idiots, the lot of them and I despair of reason ever returning to these shores...

Totally agree with all of this.

This with bells on. I’m a farmer with a fairly big business and kids at private school. I don’t actually object to paying more tax, VAT or the IHT. But the way they’ve done it is so detrimental to business. Tax profit not employees. Tax rollover money at 40%. Bring in VAT in September not January.

I think there is far worse to come in the economy. A lot of farming contracts with the supermarkets are now driven by what’s an effective guaranteed margin. They know our (minimum wage) cost, feed and electric costs. When they go up it’s written into our contracts that our price goes up. With fertiliser tax added in I think you will be seeing way more food inflation from April onwards. I’m not worried about the increases as I’ll get paid more. I am worried about people putting shopping in their basket from April that will be going up and up.

Should the UK be looking at reindustrialising?

I mean, probably not because we don't currently have a source of cheap energy or any natural advantage in a manufacturing niche.

Don't say that 😑

Depends what you mean by "re-industrialising".

A lot of people bemoan the fact that "Britain doesn't make anything anymore".

What they don't realise is that there is really very little money to be made out of bashing stuff with hammers. We cannot compete with other countries for cheap labour.

What we can do is make more value added stuff. But that means more investment in high tech, robot laden facilities for mass produced goods. We already do quite well at specialist goods production as people would expect.

I also think the idea that we don't make anything anymore is a bit of a fallacy. We may not make many cars but we do have armies of IT people for example all creating stuff. Its not as if this stuff has zero value.

Britain does lag quite a bit in high tech production and manufacturing investment. Part of the reason for that is EU membership, where it has been easier to import cheap labour to do jobs rather than leverage technology to make production more efficient. We do seem to have a bit of a problem with anything that requires long term investment, or an attention span of more than about 5 minutes.

Good points here I think there’s a tendency on mn to talk about manufacturing but bashing out stuff isn’t high value add anyway

Tech is, or advancing

I recall a bit on China saying they were a bit fed up of being the world's factory and they too want wealth from ideas and concepts

We have ingenuity what we lack is scaling up. Here’s looking at onerous and non growth tax policies for that one.

Far more attractive elsewhere