So frustrated and desperate for Labour to be bold and give the country something to believe in.

[youlookradishing]

This is my take on what is happening today.

I really do believe that the last decade and a half has left the country (Western world, actually) in a terrible situation and that any government with any moral values are in a totally impossible situation.

The economy needs fixing before the lasting change can happen and the public can reap any rewards, but the people are too desperate and cynical to wait. The vultures are circling and we are turning to populist voices who are looking to take advantage of our desperation by promising the impossible and delivering only for themselves to the detriment of us all.

Labour have actually tried to put the very limited public money in the right places (eg tightening up winter fuel allowance) but caved in and U-turned any time they face opposition. Policies like scrapping the two child benefit cap brought them negative press rather than positive, because of the fannying around.

Likewise they are actually bringing NHS waiting lists down and getting more houses built, but their messaging around this is utterly woeful and nobody seems to notice it’s happening.

Kier is FAR too bothered about being popular and trying to please everybody. He won the mandate in 2024 and he should have built a narrative of ‘this is gonna be shit for a while, but this is WHY, and this is why it will be WORTH it. He is trying to deliver but any positives are being utterly drowned out because there is no vision for us to believe in! At the end of the day, nothing he can deliver will ever be enough in the short term, when we’re starting from such a low baseline. This is about vision and messaging. Look at Trump, the guy is a complete lunatic, but he has charisma and tells a good story and THAT is what gets people on board long enough to actually have an impact.

I honestly believe that this Labour government are the best hope this country have got - come on Kier, time to turn it around and give us something to believe in, because we have everything to lose if you don’t!

Who is it that is arguing for no welfare state?

Here is something bold. Look at a co payment NHS. Works well in other EU countries. Taxing primary house is fraught with issues. What about someone who buys a doer upper?

If you tax primary residence no one will downsize.

Are we still doing ‘but 14 years of the Tories’. Labour have had 14 years to think how to put shit right and fucked it the minute they got in, and continue to do so.

What we have is a single transferrable party that acts for the rich

Why else are there so many threads on MN slagging off the Greens?

Starmer is in office but not in power he has no idea what to do when elected.

Oh and abolish all these 'fiscal rules' Governments create money by spending then cancel it through taxation - look up Modern Monetary Theory. The only limit on spending is the resources that the economy can provide.

Scrapping the two child benefit didn’t receive negative press because of ‘fannying around’. It’s because they’ve done it while simultaneously increasing the tax burden on a working population, who are already paying historically high taxes, and who are struggling with the cost of living at a time where work no longer pays. Hardly a surprise that it went down like a bucket of cold sick!

The tax thresholds are ridiculously low. £12,500 is barely enough to pay rent or mortgage for year, let alone afford even the most basic standard of living.

Yep. If they don't then a radical party will get in, and then we are all stuffed.

I'm not the biggest fan of labour (although I did vote them at last election) but I am hoping hard that they pull something amazing out of the bag to stop Reforms advance. Now is not the time to be cautious, it's the time to be bold and re capture the hearts of the 'squeezed middle', those who are propping up the economy and feel like they are getting very little in return.

So, businesses sell products or services that consumers buy.

their employment costs go up, tax, NI, wages,
their business rates have gone up (tax)
probably their rent as the landlords borrowing has gone up, rent reviews or index linked uplifts ( good heavens)
their utility costs have gone up , not to mention tax on fuel duty wether you need to use fuel to deliver your products, collect stock. Drive from clients to clients.
raw materials / stock costs go up along with delivery costs

so all of this gets passed onto the consumer. Whether you sell clothes, food, make food, farm food, sell imported goods or provide a service like beauty, hair, fitness, everyone’s costs have gone up and are now passed onto consumers.

and yet, this government has made it more enticing to live on UC than go out and work for a living. So the people who contribute to society are stretched further to pay for an overly bloated welfare system. Which we cannot afford with an aging population let alone allowing in every migrant who wants to come here.

They tax too much.

They spend too much.

They ruined the economy.

They deserve to be despised.

Taxing primary residence is a terrible idea. You only make money when you downsize or exit the housing market. Most people sell for a profit, but the house they’re buying has also gone up proportionally so if the gain was taxed, if you sold your house you’d be unable to buy an equivalent house. People would stop selling and that wouldn’t help anyone.

A rollover relief would be a much better idea, ie you pay tax on any proceeds you don’t put back into a primary residence within a certain amount of time.

Yeah, same here. Unfortunately the split between Labour/Liberal Democrats and Greens in my area led the lead to Reform.

I fear.

I doubt the back benches, who would not support welfare reforms and are far left would never support anything like this, it’s not Starmer who is in power it’s the back benches and the civil servants.

I agree op. He needed to be decisive and tough. Whatever he did was going to anger some people so he needed to go in hard.

Agree either way the list above. Plus end triple lock and winter fuel. That generation have had enough support we need to focus on the economy and the youngsters now.

I want to pull my hair out listening to some of the commentary coming from Labour today! They seem SO out of touch! What we need to them to do is help small and medium businesses thrive to kick start the economy slightly and also help out the housing market, which is just stagnating. No help for first time buyers, loads of stock etc etc! They need to scrap their net zero policy and start giving the public some little nuggets to hold onto! Scrapping the two child benefit cap just pissed so many people off (rightly or wrongly) and the pitiful sayings on energy bills have done fuck all for any of us. Labour need to realise that the squeezed middle and actual working people are pissed off! They don’t seem to acknowledge that!

@Bushmillsbabei mean fuck - how can they be so dense to not see that if they appeased the squeezed middle a little they might save their skin!!!! They might have won a majority but the whole party is so disjointed.

We all seem on a similar page here haha - anyone up for starting a common sense party!

Aye, that will be why the ostensibly socialist Scandi counties have both the highest standard of living and highest rates of satisfaction anywhere in the developed world, because socialism "doesn't work".

🤔

Except we were richer with the Tories and we had less debt and paid less tax.

The Scandi countries are NOT "socialist". They are "social democratic" (Google the difference).

As for "satisfaction", having lived there, never start a conversation about taxation with a Swede is my advice.

They're much more Socialist than anything seen in the UK since the 50s, and aye, undoubtedly there will be people complaining about the tax burden who fundamentally disagree with the ideology, but that changes nothing about the fact that the countries as a whole still return greater overall satisfaction scores than anywhere else, all while operating on a high taxation, high government provision model that continually gets derided in the UK as "unworkable". The same UK that is a total economic basket-case thanks to liberal right-wing capitalism that the same people who rant about "socialism" apparently want even more of.

Labour have actually tried to put the very limited public money in the right places (eg tightening up winter fuel allowance)

I struggle to see how anyone could believe that removing the WFA from those living on a basic state pension of just £12,000 per year was the best option to support our country’s finances. It’s absurd.

If they had tightened it with a threshold of, say, £25k, it would barely have caused a ripple. As it is, they ended up u-turning and ending up with a £35k.

This isn’t about Labour not being able to make tough decisions, it’s about them making idiotic decisions. I’d be all for them doing things such as removing the triple lock etc.

Only marginally…

These all sound reasonable.
the fact that they are all things this government could have already done and hasn’t done- that’s the heart of the problem.

You did make me chuckle op. Fixing the economy is not taking winter fuel off of pensioners and taxing the working person. And as for your desire for Labour to read mumsnet so they can decide their policies…😂

None of this is true.i will fix for you:
They tax the wrong people the wrong amounts
They spend money on the wrong things
They are not intervening enough with the economy
They do deserve to be despised, I’ll give you that.