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.

I thought that was satire myself

I agree with Starmer, it’s interesting he has finally seen the light at last. I can see why some people might not feel they got what they voted for though…and no one can out farage Farage in my humble opinion, but he gave it a good shot ( I spat out my tea and thought I was hallucinating when I read about his speech) Interesting times!

Yes it does look like there is some sort of scam going on, where people apply for 'skilled worker visas' for something then bring in a load of people to do work that we absolutely don't need. The current levels of immigration are very recent, and the increase is huge. We haven't suddenly got thousands more old people over the last 5 years in care homes. People saw that the previous government didn't know what they were doing and just put in 'skilled visa' applications for their newly set up' care homes' that they then shut down, applied for hundred of visas for 'halal butchers' and 'chefs' for their kebab shops, and are probably running money laundering enterprises, turning the High Street into identikit ghost towns and probably ending up running benefit scams once they have indefinite leave to Remain. But who cares as long as you can get Deliveroo from the Artisan Pizzeria eh?

Oh right so you live in Dubai? How about you get out of your gated community of Western 'influencers' and see how wonderful immigration is in the rest of the UAE for foreigners? As long as you have slaves servants to wash your floor eh?

There’s a critical shortage of teachers in England. Lots of unfilled vacancies. I might have posted about it… Anyway, there are actually loads of teachers in England but they keep training up then quitting because the pay and conditions are poor. In the last few years there have been schemes to try to recruit teachers and trainee teachers from abroad.

Except we don’t need teachers from abroad, we need to fix pay and conditions so that we keep the teachers in the job. Recruiting from abroad is avoiding addressing the real issues.

Wasn’t the big spike in 2022 the Ukrainians who came when the war started? That was a one off event which I support. I’m generally pro immigration and a labour voter so maybe I should be riled up by this. But even I can see theres a strong argument for having better control over immigration so we get the right number of immigrants with the right mix of skills and stop abuses of the system such as visa overstayers. At the moment it’s an issue that divides us as a nation - the reform voters vs the lefties that call them racists. If immigration was better regulated it wouldn’t be the massive issue it is today.

Oh God, I got out thankfully. It became unbearable. I know exactly how bad it's got.

I don’t think it’s true most Reform voters are former Conservative voters. The South Wales valleys have always been a Labour stronghold but they are switching towards Reform.

There was a call in on LBC, the Tom Swarbrick phone in, I came across in on YouTube.

A man from Zimbabwe explained how his aunt set up a company to bring him
and others over as care workers and how he lasted 3 months working in a care home before moving on to other things It was shocking.

Can’t link, but I suppose it’s easy enough to find.

@noblegiraffe This is almost exactly the same situation as in nursing, but it has been going on far longer.

I think you also have the same issue with qualified teachers being substituted for 'teaching assistants/associates'

The massive responsibility these professions have (both female dominated) have never been reflected in the pay - but the pay has been driven down and the stress level has been driven up.

I believe social work and many other professional public sector jobs are the same.

This cannot statistically be true. Boris won a huge majority, Starmer won an even bigger one. If every conservative voter had switched to reform, they would have won more seats in the election. Instead, more people voted reform across the country which is why they didn’t get a majority to win enough seats in more constituencies. This is why despite winning a massive proportion of the vote overall, they only got a handful of seats.

In my area, conservatives lost 17.5%, the Labour gain in the area was 30.9%, most of which would have come from the SNP who lost 21%. Reform took 7.5%, and the turnout was down on the previous election. Some of of the Labour vote must have come from previous conservative voters.

@AmIAloneInThinking”the only solution is for people to live….as long as possible “

This reminds me of Jane Eyre when her aunt asks her whether she fears Hell and what she needs to do to avoid being sent to the “pit of fire” and Jane replies that she must “stay in good health “ and “not die”.

Sorry to derail

BisiBodi
refusing to talk about rejoining the EU even though Labour members (and the majority of the country) want full rejoin

Rejoin EU polling is consistently under 50% if you include the people who answered neither/don't know. A closer relationship with the European Union without rejoining the EU, Single Market or Customs Union is the more popular option.

I’m not unhappy with the changes or the speech. I’ve never voted reform always voted very centre/centre left, but I just think that low wage migration needs to stop now. It’s getting really beyond a joke.

People always talk about the NHS being staffed by migrants, which is true, but we are not providing jobs for home grown junior doctors (who trained at great expense for the taxpayer) because we are importing other doctors who look more senior but might not be as qualified from countries who need doctors. My own nurse friend has quit - she raised a concern that the Vietnamese nurses in her hospital were signing each other in and out for shifts that they were not there for and did not have good enough English for certain tasks and got signed up for diversity training because she was “hostile”.

The whole system has become addicted to the idea that we cannot train our own people.

Germany's net migration was nearly 1.5 million in 2022, over 660,000 in 2023, over 300,000 in 2021 so must be similar to the UK in absolute numbers since 2020.

I went to Birmingham not long ago had never been holy moly!

It was shocking ....a real eye opener.

Bradford is the same.

Lots of big cities are being over run with areas that are no longer British and look terrible....

Read consultant Peter Duffy's book "Whistle in the wind" where he raised concerns about the abilities of a couple of doctors in his department and who was bullied out of his job amid claims of racial discrimination etc., as the hospital management lazily regarded it as a racial complaint rather than a clinical/professional complaint. Both the doctors reported were later subject to disciplinary proceedings so there was merit in his complaints.

Really? Or are these 'views' a fantasy, frenzies whipped up by micro targeting, algorithms and the right wing press or actually just flooding airtime on mainstream media!

As a life long Labour voter, I will never vote for Labour again because of:

• Cuts to PIP and winter fuel allowance
• Their failure to put in place a wealth tax
• Their failure to curb utility companies' profiteering
• The language on immigration this week. Nothing about addressing illegal immigration/small boats, which is what most people are concerned about, and instead choosing to target much-needed foreign care workers and to create an hostile environment for immigrants who are here perfectly legally
• The fact that they lied through their teeth during the election campaign and their manifesto.

I am ashamed of what Labour as become under Starmer.

The danger is also that with their incompetence Labour are pushing people into the arms of Reform.

Starmer's new laws are not going to get out your non- integrating low skilled immigrants. They are going to make legal high earning tax payers leave

Yes, I agree, we are going to be even poorer with the corresponding problems that brings with it, insular and a cynical country- how depressing.

The economy is improving. The FTSE 250 is up. Tends to show were UK companies are. Interest rates are coming down.

He should go because he can't/won't protect our borders.

The speech the other day is the one sensible thing he's said in 5 years.

Yeh depressing. I agree.

Goodness good news. I thought the thing to do was to get our sackcloth and ashes… I too am positive about the UK