Is a more left Labour government what people want?

[punkhairbrush]

I keep hearing statement after statement from Labour MPs and Rayner saying they essentially want a more left version of the Labour Party. From my understanding the majority of the public are fed up with work not paying and whether we like it or not, nothing being done about the welfare state and also illegal immigrants. Surely a more left approach isn’t going to solve either of these issues and will just cause Labour to be even less popular than they are now. Or have I got it all wrong?

The old Lefties dont like paying tax, do they?

Zack Polanski is facing new questions about whether he underpaid council tax on a London houseboat where he stayed, as scrutiny of the Green Party leader’s background increases. Polanski, who has established the Greens as a serious leftwing threat to Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour, has already apologised for misrepresenting himself as a British Red Cross spokesperson. The tax issue relates to a houseboat in a marina in Hackney, the borough where the Greens took control of the council in last week’s elections. The Times newspaper found evidence that the houseboat was Polanski’s primary residence, citing an advert for the boat, in which his partner wrote: “We are moving to a house and so will sadly be leaving the gorgeous community behind.”
FT

TBF I think you could probably answer that yourself, looking at (a) improved diagnosis/life expectancies and (b) outcomes e.g. quality of life.

You're being gaslit into thinking that net migration of 240,000 is acceptable. Prior to the A8 Eastern European countries joining the EU and being given full access, net migration was running at around 50,000 a year. I think most people wish it had stayed at that level. We certainly wouldn't have a housing crisis if it had done.

How long do you want to go back? 200k is the level it was over 20 years ago. When nobody cared.

Oh, they did care. It was the start of the beginning of Brexit. You can't have numbers coming over which equate to the size of a small city every year and not have people notice or care. Resistance to high levels of immigration began within a year of the A8 countries being given open access to our labour market, courtesy of Blair, when all other major developed countries in the EU kept their doors firmly shut for 7 years.

Great riposte.

Sorry don’t understand the connections you have made or why you think your questions have anything to do with the point I was making.

There’s nothing wrong with that but that’s all costs money so where does that come from? Labour policies have resulted in working people being taxed to the hilt and preventing the growth required in the economy to pay for it. The benefits bill also needs to be cut and those that genuinely need it should be prioritised.

Immigration was becoming a problem in 2006 (i.e. 20 years ago!). There was a lot of criticism levelled at Blair for not implementing the same kind of restriction re Eastern Europeans as lots of other EU countries were implementing.

Then we had Brown's "Bigoted woman" statement in 2010.

I think it's a massive mistake to think "nobody cared" about immigration around that time!!

@ThisOneLife
thank you for picking it up!
Of course I meant immigration. Don’t know how it happened, it absolutely doesn’t make sense with “emigration”.

Nobody cared? Why did the masses vote for brexit then, in your opinion?

I think Labour should get rid of Starmer, put someone else in charge and go back to their traditional voter base. I don’t think that’s necessarily ‘more left wing’ as such, but traditional labour could be firmer on immigration and cut welfare under the guise of standing for the working classes maybe?

Because they were stirred up by Farage, Johnson et al. Nobody gave a shit when immigration was at around 200,000 in 2004/5. The irony is that Brexit created higher levels than ever before.

It wasn’t “the masses” by the way. It was 37% of those eligible to vote.

They didn't say it was acceptable, they said it was coming down, which it is - dramatically so.

Last year's net migration figure is a 78% drop from its peak in 2023. Now I don't care about immigration and have been happy while it's at all these levels, but obviously there are other things I want the government to do. And bloody hell, if it got 78% of the way to completely achieving them in two years (78% of the extra funding the NHS needs; 78% of the extra corporation and wealth taxes we need; 78% of the preparatory work needed to re-enter the EU etc. etc.) I'd be over the moon and think it was the best government for me ever.

And that's not even to say that you should necessarily be happy with that. But while MOST of the net migration has been stopped, it seems to have made ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE to the rhetoric coming from Reformites about it. Why aren't you saying "What I want Labour to do is continue on this correct path we're on of rapidly reducing immigration", rather than just pig-headly repeating the same soundbites as if the last two years hadn't happened?

Basically you just love being victims and complaining, don't you? Nothing would devastate you more than taking away your precious hobby horse and leaving nothing to moan about.

So anyway, OK: 240,000 is not low enough. Can you give a number that would be? And can you give a reason why, based on actual evidence and reasoning why that would be the sweet spot at which immigration benefits the economy, rather than just because that's the number it was at in some previous year chosen at random?

And here's another question: Net migration has fallen by 78% in the last two years. Have you noticed the cost of living and quality of public services get 78% better? (or get any better at all?). If not, has it ever occurred to you to wonder why?

Oh dear, you've fell into the propaganda trap then. It was bugger all to do with farage et al, people used their vote to object to what was happening in their neighbourhoods, to their jobs, in their diminishing access to affordable housing. The populists read the room and offered a solution. Of course it was a naff one, and delivered nothing but I can Absolutely understand why people chose that option. Point being, you're very out of touch to insist that immigration wasn't a concern twenty odd years ago.

It's my feeling that Brexit was more about Cameron's desire to be the PM who finally put the issue to bed and mended the decades long rift in the Tory party over Europe.

Yes he didn’t expect the vote to go the way it did.

@MadderthanMorris Of course net migration has fallen in the last two years. We had two exceptional scenarios prior to that - offering safe haven to Ukrainians and significant numbers of Hong Kongese who were also given visas, which pushed the numbers up over a million. We're now back to the levels we were at that weren't acceptable before that happened.

And can you give a reason why, based on actual evidence and reasoning why that would be the sweet spot at which immigration benefits the economy, rather than just because that's the number it was at in some previous year chosen at random?

Yes. Prior to 2004, when net migration ran at around 50k and was mostly highly skilled workers from the original EEC countries. That was the sweet spot. Blair completely ballsed it up.

We have enlarged the population by more than 10 million in the last 2 decades, that's 500,000 a year mainly from net migration (official numbers, and I dispute them) and there was no corresponding uplift in infrastructure. Numbers falling doesn't mean services get better if they were already beyond stretched to begin with.

I don't think there's a propaganda trap. People weren't happy, we were in the middle of ideological austerity and Farage, guided by Russian* influence offered a false vision of the future. It doesn't have to be either or. Farage and the far right exploited people for their own gain.

• Obviously, since there is nothing the empire building Putin wants to see more than a weakened and destabilised Europe.

He looked as sick as a parrot when the result was announced - as did Johnson!

I take on board your point about farage. Personally, don't like the man, don't like his politics and agree, he's out to feather his own nest. I was referring to the guardian type of propaganda, where the working classes are denigrated as just not very bright, taken in by bullshitters, and if only they could listen harder to their intellectually superior peers, then none of this could happen.

@hairbearbunches

Yes. Prior to 2004, when net migration ran at around 50k and was mostly highly skilled workers from the original EEC countries. That was the sweet spot. Blair completely ballsed it up.

So it's about the quality of migration and where it's from, as much as the numbers?

OK, another question: If this number is achieved by 2029, will you celebrate what a fantastic job this Labour government has done and encourage everybody to vote for them?

We have enlarged the population by more than 10 million in the last 2 decades, that's 500,000 a year mainly from net migration (official numbers, and I dispute them) and there was no corresponding uplift in infrastructure. Numbers falling doesn't mean services get better if they were already beyond stretched to begin with.

That makes no sense, because "better" and "stretched" are relative terms, not absolute binary ones. If services were stretched to begin with, and the reason was immigration, then exacerbating that reason by a factor of 78% should have stretched them so much more dramatically still, really far beyond breaking point - and removing that extra 78% should then bring them back from "catastrophic" to just "bad" again.

But like Brexit, it doesn't matter how much evidence gathers that the blame was put in the wrong place and the "solution" isn't solving anything. The people spouting this stuff will just stick their heads down and remain impervious to it.

I can see how there could be that viewpoint. I miss the old days of relative stability!

Bollocks. Just your circles, not mine

And objectively immigration didn’t come up as a major issue in opinion polls

Well, bollocks or not - Reform and its supporters have the wind behind them…