Will we ever know what Labour’s policies are?

[MaryMaryVeryContrary]

Just that really, that debate was a shocker.

Are we just up shit creek without a paddle and he doesn’t have the heart to break it to us?

A good synopsis www.facebook.com/share/bzkScsFG7bdQjqrD/

I agree with this.

I wonder what the economic and political picture would be like now without the pandemic too. What would it have been like if Labour had been in government at the time, instead of the newly elected BJ.

Would we have managed any better under Labour? Would we on a better footing? I doubt it.

"Set up a new Office for Value for Money" - we already have the Office for Budget Responsibility, so he wants to spend money on two public funded bodies now?
Every party gets a pet department, the Torys have had Minister for Common Sense/Anti-Woke. If an OVfM can prevent political interference for profit as we saw with Covid contracts it will be worthwhile.

"Appoint a Covid Corruption Commissioner, equipped with the powers they need to chase down those who have ripped off the taxpayer, take them to court" - Can you imagine the millions and millions of taxpayer money this is going to cost to reclaim probably less money than what it's cost to set up!
Starmer is on home ground with this. He has a strong legal background, remember? Saying this isn't worthwhile is like saying it's not worth HMRC spending money pursuing tax dodgers. Chasing down the worst of the Covid corruption should yield a return on the spend and see justice done on behalf of the public.

"Stick to tough fiscal rules" - The jury's out on this one? It's anyone's guess from putting taxes back up, to increasing VAT, to decreasing benefit payouts and pensions.
Every party says this. The Torys are saying the same. Every government has to stay within the bounds of the fiscal rules, even if a few have stretched those rules over the years. Governments that don't suddenly find the cost of debt suddenly increasing.

"Switching on Great British Energy, a new publicly owned, clean energy company" - Where's the billions and 10-years coming from to fund a complete new energy company with its own power generation?
Publicly owned companies can still access commercial finance. With the advantage of unlike equity debt they're only servicing interest not expectations of dividends.

"Improve cancer survival rates and reduce deaths from heart disease and suicide." - How? Does he have a magic medicine to cure cancer?
Investing in the NHS and social services will achieve these aims. Reducing waiting times for diagnosis and treatment will improve cancer survival rates. It doesn't need a cure.

"Make sure there’s a world class teacher in every classroom" - How?
Education is being grossly underfunded. Classes are routinely being taught by teaching assistants and agency staff. Again, investment in the basic starts to fix the problems. Blair's early policy of Education, Education, Education took years to turn things around but saw massive improvements across a broad range of societal problems. The rest of the world was visiting to take notes from Sure Start. Tory funding cuts have devastated everything from Early Years to Higher Education. It's going to take a decade to undo the damage. Investing in education is critical to national success.

"Put 13,000 more neighbourhood police and PCSOs on our streets." - Pretty useless without giving the Police more powers and tools to actually combat crime (and defend themselves whilst doing so).
No matter what powers you give the police, if they don't have enough bodies on the street they will be chasing their tail. Our county lost its PCSOs about six years ago. Now you very rarely see a police officer unless they're in a vehicle driving by.

"The British Army is now its smallest size since it fought Napoleon, one in five of the Royal Navy’s ships have been removed from service" - He doesn't understand that we don't need ships and tanks anymore. We have drones and missiles. The next world war will not be fought in person via military personnel, but from a desk controlling these unmanned defence solutions.
Drones and missiles don't win wars. You need boots on the ground to hold territory. All wars will be fought by people getting up close with their face in the mud. The notion that wars can be won remotely by missiles goes back to Duncan Sandys (Conservative Defence Minister) and the 1957 Defence White Paper. It was a flawed idea then and it's still a flawed idea now.

Would we have managed any better under Labour? Would we on a better footing? I doubt it.

Well, we wouldn't have had Brexit! But Labour were actually in favour of more restrictions and more generous government support during the pandemic, so the spending from that crazy time would have been, well even crazier.

As for the war in Ukraine, some people say that Johnson scuppered the tentative peace deal that Ukraine and Russia were discussing way back in April 2022: (https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/09/02/diplomacy-watch-why-did-the-west-stop-a-peace-deal-in-ukraine/)

But all of that is water under the bridge and it has no bearing on the future. And the bare facts of that are that the UK coffers are empty, so unless the next government raises taxes, things ain't gonna change.

@Theweepywillow
@cheezncrackers

"Absolutely, and this is it In a nutshell"

I fully agree but what's the answer as we can keep going on like this?

@DogInATent

" If an OVfM can prevent political interference for profit as we saw with Covid contracts it will be worthwhile." Absolutely - and are we closer to seeing any of the Mone-y yet?

"Chasing down the worst of the Covid corruption should yield a return on the spendandsee justice done on behalf of the public." Remember, Sunak introduced a number of Covid support packages that were an open invitation to fraudsters - and then decided that chasing them and getting the money back would be too much trouble, so he wrote off billions.

"Publicly owned companies can still access commercial finance. With the advantage of unlike equity debt they're only servicing interest not expectations of dividends." Just as they do across much of Europe, where vital utilities are owned by public bodies or by States and municipalities. (The irony being that UK utilities are actually owned by government bodies - just not British government bodies. Thames Water is largely owned by the Chinese and Middle Eastern governments. Anglian by a similar group, including the Canadian government (through it's state pension fund) - all of whom benefit from the dividends that ultimately come from the payments made by UK consumers).

"Reducing waiting times for diagnosis and treatment will improve cancer survival rates." Just as it was under the last Labour government. If this is what Sunak means by Labour taking the country back to Square One, then I'm up for this.

Yep.
Starmer consistently misses open goals and makes himself look weak with his wibbly waffling. I can only conclude that he really doesn’t have much of a plan despite being leader of the opposition for years. Or he’s still waiting to see which way the wind is blowing. I’ve been very disappointed in him because he just looks weak.

Literally the only thing I liked about Johnson was his support of Ukraine

Yep same. Will still vote for him but with a slightly heavy heart. It won’t get any easier when he is PM

@FictionalCharacter

"I can only conclude that he really doesn’t have much of a plan despite being leader of the opposition for years."

The plan simply consists of "vote for me because I'm not the Conservatives and they screwed up over the last 14 years (with some truth to it)".

But with zero plan on how he would do any better, the same or worse.

I am really quite sad that Labour isn't a credible alternative. I don't want to vote Tory but a whole new government of inexperienced ministers with a weak leader and no plan isn't very appealing.

How can you vote for someone who doesn’t have a plan. If he can’t get them to agree a plan now, he’s no chance when he’s elected. The utter disaster that would be.

But where has that 'support' actually got them? Nowhere. And since April 2022, when they could have ended the war, how many Ukrainians have lost their lives or been injured?

The UN estimates that 11,000 civilians have been killed since the war started and 20,000 have been injured. No one knows how many soldiers are dead, but it's tens of thousands (est. 70,000 dead by last Aug, with 100,000 wounded). I know it's not what this thread is about and I don't mean to hijack, but it's pretty easy to argue that Boris did a fuck of a lot more harm than good by encouraging Zelensky to keep fighting, rather than sign a peace deal.

God, I feel so jaded and cynical about all this stuff!

I was wondering too

"... what's the answer as we can keep going on like this?"

The UK is one of only two European countries that do not have some form of Proportional Representation. FPTP results in the current situation whereby voters in England are faced with a choice between "Plague and Cholera" (or "Dumb and Dumber") and where any and all alternatives are shut out of the debate.

So they compete on either promising the undeliverable, or on attempting to frighten the voters into believing that "the other lot" will be far worse.

Neither of the symbiotic twins want to give up FPTP, because thay have seen what has happened in other countries where other parties have succeeded in breaking the Red-Blue hegemony and the established parties have lost power and been forced to share with Greens, Populists, Right-wing and Left-wing parties and sometimes also regional parties. (Not that I believe that Reform is in any way the answer).

Perhaps things will get so bad over the next decade that at some point, a national emergency has to be declared. The right-wing would like to do this in order to impose a dictatorship (which they have already tried by banning strikes, protests and free assembly). The left-wing would possibly do something similar. Both would be wrong - perhaps a Government of National Unity is what is needed (just as there was during WW2) but I don't think I'll see this in my lifetime, unless by some miracle it was forced on Labour and the Conservatives by the other parties (Green, LibDen, SNP, Alba, Plaid Cymru etc) gaining enough seats to be able to insist on a coalition.

Definitely way more appealing than voting for five more years of these incompetent corrupt liars. Using your criteria, once we reached 14 years it would be too late to change and we'd be a one-party Tory state. Fuck that.

Well many but that’s the nature of war isn’t it.

How do you know a peace deal was remotely acceptable to them? Zelensky never seemed to want to make one; his stance was always clear and that was to defend

When Teresa May was PM, and announced her resignation, my other half said ‘thank fuck for that’

I had a sense of foreboding and warned him that whatever came next could be even worse. He said ‘whatever it is, it’ll be better than this shit show’

😳

Just be careful, things CAN always get worse

@Houseplanter"a whole new government of inexperienced ministers with a weak leader and no plan isn't very appealing."

Of course the ministers are likely to be "inexperienced" - they have not been in power for the last 14 years. At least the Labour front bench seems to have a broader experience of life outside of Parliament - compared with Sunak (private education and PPE at Oxford), Hunt (private education and PPE at Oxford), Mel Stride (private education and PPE at Oxford) and Truss (state educations, but still ... PPE at Oxford). Rayner probably even knows some poor people.

Whether or not Starmer is a weak leader is a matter of opinion - he has little opportunity to "lead" when he's spent the last 10 years in opposition, unable to do anything about a government with a huge majority.

As for plans - what has the Conservative plan been for the last 14 years? Other than the wildly successful transfer of public assets to the private sector and the shrinking of the State to the point that people are forced into the arms of private healthcare providers, private education, private landlords and even private policing, what have the Conservatives actually achieved for all of the country - not just for their chums and donors?

For me, it's because the current party need to go.

I trust Labour a hell of a lot more than this lot.

@Havanananana

"The UK is one of only two European countries that do not have some form of Proportional Representation. FPTP results in the current situation whereby voters in England are faced with a choice between "Plague and Cholera" (or "Dumb and Dumber") and where any and all alternatives are shut out of the debate. "

That's a good point and I fully agree.

Strangely for a thread with a contentious topic I actually seem to be agreeing with most posters here!

@CovertPiggery

"For me, it's because the current party need to go"

So you voting rational is entirely based on "I want to vote for Party B because I really want to get rid of Party A"

And not because Party B has any credible plans to improve things / keep them the same or potentially make them worse. It's just that they are not Party A.

A person who never works gets a basic state pension then pension credits which top that up ( based on savings I believe ) A person who works sufficient years and gets a full state pension ends up on £2/week more than someone who has never worked or paid ni.
If only those who receive pension credit are ‘protected’ we’ll end up in a situation where working pensioners will receive less than non working pensioners.

It isn't just VAT on public schools, they are going to close all the loopholes that were left open on Non Dom tax rules, a bigger windfall tax on utility companies & banks plus the NHS spending will be from efficiency savings, he said that last night.

Is that you Angela?