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?

Following up on my earlier post, about L v R being the wrong framing, David Blunkett has published a piece in The Sun Times/ Times this evening saying much the same thing, but better.

"The rejection of the political process is as much about people’s experience in their daily lives as it is about any ideological differences with the party in power. They want commonsense change that improves their lives; they want to see bureaucracy rooted out and replaced with a can-do attitude."

When I think back to the 2012 Olympics or even when I was in my 20's in the 90's. I was really proud of being British ,( I'm a second generation British Asian so not White)I feel so sad. I have gone from never wanting to live anywhere else in the world to telling my children they should go elsewhere because I don't think they can have a good life here. It feels like we're in a death spiral.

@Desperatelyseekinglazysusanthat is so sad to read!! It is hard not get despondent but there is so much to be grateful for in this country. The majority of people of every race and religion are good and kind in this country. We have the NHS and it does work and it is incredible (it’s not perfect but no healthcare system is)! We have incredible history, beautiful countryside… people will stop and chat. There are jobs and there are opportunities - the government just need to be more positive, bring in aspirational policies that make people excited to work or build their own business. At the moment Labour has just made work not pay - we’re all pissed off and frustrated because they’re making it a country where it’s more attractive to do less than more!

Same. DH and I were both born here, but our girls can get an EU passport and study and live elsewhere. Much as I would miss them, I think they might do better abroad. Hopefully things will improve here, but if they don't I'm glad they have an alternative option. Things feel much harder than they were a few years ago, and I'm aware it could get worse if we go far left or far right. Hopefully good financial sense will prevail and the country will stabilise

The far left shouty types here will tell you yes. Something about billionaires, something or other. The usual same sixth form repetition.

But the country is saying no.

The country is asking for lower immigration, lower taxes and economic growth. But Labour will now lurch to the far left chasing the Green vote. You know, the same people who want to legalise class A drugs, abolish prisons, open the borders totally with no restrictions, bring in gender self ID, increase taxes to give other countries billions in climate reparations, tax your travel, give even more free money to people who contribute nothing.

So, good luck.

The country is asking for lower immigration, lower taxes and economic growth.
Which is just fantasy. Lower immigration will mean higher taxes and slower growth.

Reform voters and Green voters are just different flavors of fantasits, angrily demanding their unicorns.

It’s a myth and a lie that lower immigration is bad for the economy. A total con.

If high immigration was a good thing, out economy would be roaring now. The higher immigration gets, the worse the economy becomes. That’s the truth and the actual trend. Anything else is a lie.

The Labour party has forgotten who they were originally meant to represent. Those who earned a living through their labour and to support those who were temporarily unable to do so, by providing support until they were back on their feet and could look after themselves.

Yes there were also the profoundly physically and mentally disabled who would need assistance, but now the word "disabled" has in modern times been stretched and stretched to include people that 10 years ago would never have been described as such, to the extent that the country will bankrupt itself trying to provide extra finance to them if we continue like this.

The Labour Party is now a party supported by idealistic young people who think that we can have utopia where no one is poor, everyone living in an upcoming area with plenty of artisan shop and cafes to meet up in, or slumming it in an inner city area thinking how cool and with the masses they are. Or middle aged people living the dream of good meaningful career, own house in suburbia or a trendy London borough or similar trendy city, now paid for, supporting 2 bright children through university and expecting a decent private pension to live on comfortably when retired. Or an elder person who benefited from grammer school education, free higher education, great jobs market and easily affordable housing whether rental or home ownership and happily accepting a triple lock state pension

Now there are so many people earning just above minimum wage and don't qualify for any benefits, who can't afford more than one child, when they would ideally like 2 or maybe even three. They despair that everything is getting much harder, but especially for them. Not earning enough to be not worry about unexpected bills, childcare, rent increases mortgage increases etc. But earning too little to be able to get any of the assistance provided to those that earn a bit less than them, or to any of the funding given to those that don't want to work at all and can provide all the right answers in asessments. Especially when to be able to take home the same amount of money given to those that don't work or do the minimum hours possible, they would need a gross salary higher than they could ever achieve.

And to have shouted at them when they complain about the bitter unfairness of it all, that all of those that don't work deserve all this
largesse but the worker receiving nothing doesn't. They have 3 or more children and need extra help so the two child UC benefit cap must be lifted, but you who wanted two children let alone 3 must be grateful for your one child, if that, and carry on working and paying your taxes so that the government can give to those not working but wanting child 2, 3, 4 etc.

So when the Labour party tried, to start doing something about the above, tried to keep the 2 child UC benefit cap in place, tried not to give the winter fuel allowance to pensioners that didn't need it, tried to start a long overdue reform of entitlement to benefits, the left in the labour party screamed howls of outrage.

Now after their drubbing in the local elections, backbenchers think it's a good idea to tack even further left and alienate the fewer and fewer average and lower average earning working people not receiving any benefits.

And adding insult to injury who are they currently proposing as a new leader if they can get rid of Starmer? Ed Milliband! The person who became the party leader years ago after shafting his brother David, and when he lost an election then proposed Corbyn as the new leader . Where did that get us?

I think the Labour Party has a death wish and maybe we might as well let them have their way, or will they eventually take serious stock of their situation and more importantly the current unravelling of the country with the left behind, just getting by, middle?

Nope. The economy is in the doldrums due to more than a decade of shocks to it, starting with the 2008 financial crisis, followed by Brexit, Covid, Ukraine/Russia, Trump's trade wars and now Iran.

There's a reason why the Tories allowed immigration to increase despite always rallying against it, and it generally being unpopular - because it was economically necessary.

It is positively moronic to think that governments, on the left and right, have allowed high immigration - to their political detriment - just "because".

I've left the UK and, although I want what's best for it, I'm kind of looking forward to when Reform voters slowly realize that they've been played for fools, yet again. Your lives will get even more miserable, and you will deserve it.

Good, hopefully more far left extremists will follow you out.

If more people were educated and employed critical thinking they would want a far-left Labour Government. Unfortunately we have too many simple-minded people who did not go to university and they all read the Right Wing Press so we are where we are. It's sad IMO.

Far left extremist 😂

’too many simple minded people who did not go to university’.

Keep digging.

Only if they want the one after that to be actual Nazis.

What you are seeing with Reform is whiplash. The harder the pull left, the stronger the rebound to thr right will be.

We definitely need more people to study and understand history, so they realise that neither far left nor far right parties are a good idea…

Lots of people who identify as "left wingers" of late have demonstrated a woeful lack of basic critical thinking and skills/sense in understandig reality. Including way too many of those who went to university. They'd have flailed there in my day.

Academic standards, esp in the humanities, and esp in terms of understanding what things like "empirical evidence" mean and require, even if they're not always applicable in your discipline, have dropped massively and are woeful in comparison to even 30 years ago. We have graduates coming into public education/NGO/charity positions who seem to think their job is to indoctrinate others into their erroneous beliefs about righteousness, rather than deal with the material facts and issues in front of them. These people are also influencing public policy. Ignorantly and in an ideological rather than fat-tested way.

Sorry, but if you think it's only those you label "the right" who have a thinking problem, you are sorely mistaken and frankly, dangerously naive. There's no excuse at all for a lot of the ignorant, ideology-led, guff and attempts at imposition of it currently on display. It's certainly does not signify that you are "more intelligent" than the rest of us supposed plebs.

I know Labour purport to want economic growth, but they’re doing their best to prevent this in private business.

I run a small business in the midlands. We employ 8 people and turnover $2million. We would love to expand, we have ideas and a plan. But to do this would mean taking on new staff and we’re so wary of doing this with the new workers rights laws. We’ve taken a chance on staff before - ones with big gaps in work history because of disabilities, caring responsibilities, illness. Some of these have worked out and some haven’t. But we need the ability to move them on if they’re not right - we’re too small to keep on a person who can’t do the job.

And you might say “well just fairly dismiss them then” and that’s fine - we have done that before and been taken to tribunal, spent thousands of pounds to have the tribunal find in our favour. Great - but there are no costs orders so we’re out of pocket whether we win or lose.

The cost of hiring staff now also means we just take on more and more ourselves instead of hiring another staff member. We would also like to take on a new commercial unit but the costs of rates, bills etc are just too high so we’ll try to reconfigure the one we have.

Everything we do is about saving costs instead of spending money to expand.

There must be thousands of small businesses like ours who would take on new staff, expand and actually create economic growth but are making different decisions due to this government’s policies.

Which countries would you point to where an intellectual-led far left party has won power and been a success?

I can think of a lot of failures and some catastrophies, but nothing we should want to copy.

Which are you thinking of?

Last Thursday’s results were an emphatic no to ‘more socialism’.

More people voted for RW parties.

Would you like to compare the numbers?

This is where things go wrong - people are told they are ‘simple minded’, because they voted for anyone other than a ‘far-left Labour government’.

Staggering.

In times when living standards and opportunities are dropping like a lead balloon and taxes rising and rapid social change then it’s not unusual at all for the far left and right to take a foothold. Infuse the imported sectarian conflicts which the greens keen to use to their advantage then we’ve ended up where we are.

My own view, as a former Labour supporter and resident in a constituency which should be a slam-dunk Labour stronghold is that the party have lost their way and fragmented which all political parties seem to do. Like it or not, insult it or not, but this country is rejecting immigration. That is a fact. They are rejecting it and that rejection is also coming from previous tranches of immigrants who have settled in the UK.

There is a widespread belief that this period of migration (2000-2026) is unprecedented and different. Over the last 25 years we have shifted the Overton Window so much that numbers like 150,000 or 200,000 in regards to annual immigration now seem tame and manageable and they are far from it.

Any other political debate is moot when the spectre of immigration looms on the political battlefield because working class and middle and upper class will absolutely unite on that one issue - the UK is rejecting mass migration and no insults will stop it.

More liberal and, dare I say it, younger voices can accuse people of racism as much as they want and froth online but at present Our social infrastructure is collapsing (housing, medical services, dentistry, schooling)

We cannot build a surplus while paying billions in subsidies, temporary housing and other administrative functions

Social unrest is growing. Migrant labour is suppressing wages - especially in the medical services; it is not that our NHS runs on migrants; it is that our NHS runs on low paid workers and migrants will accept those positions

You don't need to vote reform or even be right wing to understand these things; I cannot stand the Reform party but I can absolutely predict their path to power and why the British populace will vote them in.
Until the UK political establishment is willing to enact the will of the majority, protest votes will continue to undermine the nation with terrible outcomes. The model for limiting migration exists legally - it is the same as Japan, South Korea, Australia, Singapore and other nations.

The answer is simply NO.

The Labour response seems to be raising taxes rather than reducing the level of benefits to be paid. That alone is a disqualifier for me but, even worse in the eyes of the layman, Labour are perceived to be raising taxes to hand to immigrants rather than citizens. That will not be forgiven but a voting populace. They would rather the status quo burn.

In Arbroath the council declared to it's constituents who enquired that a portion of their new build houses were reserved for migrant families. That is insanity. The same issue in other councils.

Source: This weekend’s FT.

Falling living standards, weak economic growth and opportunities are problems for most of the world at the same time as stock markets are at an all time high. It’s fantasy to think that any particular government can change this.

Your government should not worsen or exacerbate macro challenges.

This Labour government has done just that.