Starmer Must Go

[BisiBodi]

I made a lengthy post yesterday (on this thread: www.mumsnet.com/talk/politics/5333405-changes-to-immigration-rules-announced-by-starmer?page=2 @ 17:43 if you want to read it) regarding the horrendous "island of strangers" speech by Starmer
Today, Kier Starmer has decided to say that immigration has done "incalculable damage" to the country. My despair and fury over this, and the general direction of labour, warrants its own thread.

Starmer claimed in writing that immigrants have put too much pressure on housing and public services (they don't, and he previously said they don't). He added that the immigration system is “almost designed to permit abuse” and that it risks “pulling the country apart”. He said that he wanted to close a “squalid chapter” in our country’s history (of too much immigration in the last few years), and then he seemed to quote the Rivers of Blood speech and said that without significantly reducing immigration the UK risks becoming “an island of strangers".

He's doing this because he's proposing new laws to make immigration harder and bring net migration down (except they definitely won't). Stuff like increasing it to 10 years before you can apply for indefinite leave to remain (10 years!!), introducing English language tests (in a post that suggests Welsh doesn't exist), reducing social care visas (the system would collapse in a day), being tougher on overseas students and reducing the time they can stay after graduation (if you reduce their numbers at all then Universities will be bankrupt immediately), new ID cards, reduce (oh sorry, "clarify") the amount ECHR article 8 can be used to justify people staying on human rights grounds, etc.

When someone pointed out that high migration helps economies and low hurts them, and that this is true in the EU right now and all over the world, Starmer didn't think so. He said that immigration has been high in the UK but the economy has been stagnant, so there can't be any link. Yes Keir, but the economy was stagnant during A PANDEMIC AND ENERGY CRISIS AND COST OF LIVING CRISIS AND EXPENSIVE NEW WARS AND GLOBAL MARKET TRUMP TURMOIL. If the immigrants hadn't kept us level, your "stagnant" economy would have plummeted like a rock. You cannot possibly be presenting that as X=Y in a total vacuum.

This kind of xenophobia doesn't need explaining, but it's worth saying why it won't work and will lose Labour a lot of votes:

• Conservative and Reform voters do NOT change their vote to Labour ever, so this pandering is worthless. But Labour can lose votes to the Greens and LDs at a high rate. Nearly ALL the Reform votes come from former Conservatives.
• Public concern about immigration is low and goes up and down exactly with how much the press is currently going on about it (see the graph) so is not worth alienating your voter base about
• And it is alienating voters, because you've heard this kind of rhetoric before but it was from the actual NF and BNP
• The Mail's headline today was still attacking Labour because it is impossible to ever go far enough for them, or for Reform voters. Nothing is ever enough.

So, Labour saying "Reform are right actually" won't bring a single voter over to Labour, but it sure will lose you a few. Or, er, a lot. People are resigning their Labour membership and sounding furious. I haven't seen a single event trigger this much outrage from the public (and Labour MPs) in quite a while. Starmer has hugely damaged himself. Germany's far-right AfD are praising him, that's the level it's at.

I already left for the Greens, but today has me going even further. I think it's now worth the potential chaos to get rid of Starmer's version of Labour. In a timely article today, Nesrine Malik called our current elections "hostage politics". You MUST vote Labour or the Tories will get in. Now you MUST vote Labour or Reform will get in.

I don't respond well to threats. Never have. I tend to escalate. And I'm bored of their crap: more cuts, keeping first-past-the-post even though Labour members want PR, refusing to talk about rejoining the EU even though Labour members (and the majority of the country) want full rejoin, this xenophobic shit which goes against everything Starmer said about immigration when he was running for leader (but then he's broken every pledge from that time), the anti-trans bollocks, coming for the disabled PIP and saying all benefits are too high and that people are taking advantage of handouts and all the rest.

Fuck these guys. There's pragmatic politics where you compromise, and then there's this literal far-right shit that means you personally HAVE to be comfortable with saying it in public. It's about the soul of the PM and the party. Today is way over the line of sensible cross-party anything.

And I'm done with hostage politics. What, so we keep Labour in for 8 more years of... this? Of the same or more cuts? I'm rapidly approaching the point where smashing this Labour party so that they never try to be centre- / far-right again would do more good than the short-term harm.

Voters didn't show unwavering support for Labour at the last election, they showed that they will be extremely flexible and vote for whoever can win in their area. If Labour become unpopular in the polls, that will be someone else and not them. Labour's lead is incredibly fragile and changeable and today's performance is EXACTLY how they lose it and deserve to lose it. Yes, some young men went to Reform before the election... and twice as many young women went to the Greens. Labour's share fell 21% in 18-24 year olds. You cannot gain a single Reform vote by going right. It will never be far-right enough.
Saying that Reform are correct and using their rhetoric in speeches and changing your policies to theirs is NOT how you defeat them, or run a country.

Replace Starmer, quickly. At the very least.

And so what is the purpose of this thread, other than to vent into an online echo-chamber? I think it's a request to a call to action. It's a call out to everyone who currently resides - whether you like it or not - in a Labour controlled constituency and has a labour MP.

You can easily find out the details, together with links to their speeches and/or voting records, from service such as They Work For You.
Check the details of your MP, and especially their stance on immigration and other matters important to you, then email them.

You're assuming that women do what they want to do... I know many who do not. Some women work because they have to - that was my experience with young children. I would have loved to stay at home but I had to work

And still I don’t know what good healthcare outcomes look like to @TizerorFizz. I don’t suppose I ever will now.

@BIossomtoesHow old do you think the elderly are? Often 90 with dc in their 60s. Often not working. Countless people like this. Plus care was limited because people were not kept alive with numerous interventions. Death was accepted as a consequence of life. Now it’s an awful lengthy horrible existence for too many. We aren’t allowed to say so, but the NHS cannot cope and how many truly want an extended old age as a vegetable? Not me.

You still haven’t answered my question, just elaborated by telling me that the 600k people in the UK over 90 should be nursed until they die by their unskilled pensioner offspring rather than occupying hospital beds. I think we’ve gone as far as we can here, don’t you?

But we must tackle immigration because it can't continue in it's current state. It's cheaper and easier to import nurses, radiologists, doctors, risk management, computer programmers, VETs than it is to train our own. Crazy as it sounds but ths last conservative government pretty much imported millions of workers to do skilled jobs when we have the means to train our own workforce.

We have towns in England where people are leaving school with next to nothing and those with an education disappear down south....the result has been catastrophic.

It's not racist to want a degree of control and a commitment to resolve our skill shortages through training

@BisiBodi you seem high on rhetoric (none of which I disagree with, by the way) but low on the how Starmer can be got rid of in the short (4years) term.

it would take about 80 Labour MPs to decide to get rid of him, and they would need to have a viable candidate who is prepared to stand against a serving Labour P M.

in short, it's not going to happen.

and if history tells us anything, it's that if Labour loose the next election, Starmer will stand down and party members will elect a left wing Leader who will not stand a chance of being elected.

to go all Dads Army, were are doomed, doomed I tell you.

@dubsie You cannot train people who don’t want to train for the jobs. It’s why we have shortages in construction etc. There is a cost to training and it’s higher than importing well trained staff.

A lot of the medications people take now extend life - statins and metformin being a couple of examples. They will have lots of other comorbidities and these drugs keep them alive for a long time and this causes an increase in pressure on healthcare.

@sparrowflewdown Indeed. It’s a money pit.

Statins and metformin keep people healthy thus saving the NHS money. I guess you two think we should just cull people on their 70th birthday. And believe that younger people don’t have chronic health conditions? The average age of a Type 2 diabetes diagnosis is 50 by the way.

@dubsie

We have towns in England where people are leaving school with next to nothing and those with an education disappear down south....the result has been catastrophic.

Nail on the head! London/SE can't keep sending their "problem" populations to the poorer regions, thus causing crime and other social problems in areas that are already suffering from the "brain drain" to London.

There needs to be massive investment into the run down regions, cities and towns to deal with the crime and other social problems caused by people who didn't live there and didn't want to go there! Places like Blackpool which have taken far more than their fair share of "irregular immigrants" and newly released prisoners and other "problem" people.

We need to spread the "better" employment more evenly over the country, reverse the trend of big firms closing down regional offices and centralising in London. Give graduates a reason for returning to their home towns to get jobs etc., rather than there only being minimum wage retail/hospitality work in their hometowns meaning they'll never return home to work and help regenerate their hometown areas.

Proved my point exactly

Not really. You did didn’t you? Post about any u turn the last gov did. But now you’d like SM to stop doing the same to Labour.

I mean you can want it to stop because it’s not great for Labour, but that’s not going to happen.

You’re missing the point @EasternStandard. U turns are fine if it’s politicians acknowledging they’ve made a mistake. I don’t remember anyone of any political persuasion criticising Hunt for changing direction when he reversed Kwarteng’s disastrous budget. If a policy you believe to be a bad one is reversed, surely you welcome the U turn? It would be illogical not to.

Obviously no decision has been made about WFA so any welcoming or condemnation would be premature.

Of course changes in direction come with their own issues for the gov doing it. Whether it’s this or the last gov.

One slight outlier - There should have been more allowance during the pandemic because a virus often brings unknowns, there was a good scientific / political analysis on that.

Anyway outside that both parties can change direction but it won’t all be plain sailing when they do. I expect there will be some SM backlash and had it been the tories doing it the same posters would contribute. As they did with other criticism.

@taxguru There are huge incentives not to be in the SE or London! House prices! Only the highest paid or those with well off parents can buy a property. Only dc who are really going to earn well go to London. Other grads are SE or London based anyway. It’s pointless going to London to be a teacher! No one teaching can afford a London house without help. So it’s very sensible for many grads to earn less, work for the government with generous pensions and live in cheaper housing areas. The savvy have done this for years now. Many choose universities in the north and never go south again. London is not a huge drain it was due to costs.

had it been the tories doing it the same posters would contribute.

But we didn’t. I even gave you an example.

‘We’ that’s all posters everywhere. Blimey

Of course the whole event damaged the tories. This will Labour whether posters request it doesn’t or not.

On the other hand, Claire Coutinho told Sky News that; Labour pledged to "protect the winter fuel payment in 2010, 2015, 2017 and 2019 but not this time."
She added: "This idea that they just came in and then decided to do it doesn't stack up."

How I see it is that another change in leadership now would be disastrous for the UK. This Labour government is making significant positive steps to rebuilding our trading relationships.

We can't keep going on changing leaders every 12 months. David Cameron, Boris, May, Truss, Rishi and now Starmer.

I understand people have no attention span these days but come on we must be patient and give this government 5 years without the constant bickering. Ideally we need ten years of solid government to even see the rewards.

Cameron was PM for 6 years, May and Johnson 3 years each.

Cameron aside, no one can reasonably argue that the UK has been politically stable following Camerons disasterous decision to call a referendum, 3 years for a PM is historically very short, as well you know.

Its not just the change in PM, its all the ministerial changes, these new PMs bring, new un tried ministers, such as you said Chris Philp was earlier, the govt focusing on themselves instead of the country.

How many Education secretaries? Home Secretaries? etc did the Tories give us? in just a few years.

This constant churn is one reason why the Tories ended up with just 121 MPs in 2024 and even that number is reducing 😂

Well this kind of sanity will not stand with certain elements who like drama, disruption and keeping people off balance. It is really really notable who gets elevated in times like these. Not only is political instability a recipe for mismanagement and incompetence, it allows a certain kind of politician to gain traction. The UK is a great country. Its leadership in recent times has been truly dire.

I don’t think he’ll go, although that’s more back benchers to decide, but equally his growing unpopularity may well mean Labour are out at the next GE.

Labour don’t bin their PMs. This a Tory habit that seemed to have ballooned out of control in the last ten years. Their lack of loyalty was terrible. All it did was destroy their reputation for competence, it damaged the UK too in terms of our international reputation.

All that internal fighting cost them and us hugely. The danger that threatens the Tory party now is that they might cease to exist at all. Starmer is right to look at Reform and Farage as the real risk to Labour. They are. The Tories are done; and by their own hand.