Would you vote for Angela Rayner?

[WildEnergySupplier]

Sounds like she's throwing her hat in the ring.

She says she's paid off the tax she owes and is no longer under investigation.

This apparently means she's free to run - and is going to.

Absolutely. Give me old fashioned common sense any time.

Not many in recent decades unfortunately, not in UK.

Merz is really good.

I quite liked Rishi, he made mistakes for sure, but none were so damaging as the current lot (not just Rayner, RR as well).

@TopPocketFind I understand where you're leading to with your questions, we won't agree on this topic. Some politicians are incompetent, some don't have enough leadership skills to implement what they want, some corrupt. But what I absolutely despise is ideological drive above everything else. So no, I won't ever vote for AR. I just hope that I won't have to face a choice between her and Farage in 2029. But at this stage it seems highly unlikely.

Never

I find it funny you name Sunak who famously said he didn't have working class friends

No, we won't agree on this topic. I don't agree with her on quite a few things and don't know if I would vote for her but I do think she qualifies as a politician.

I would never vote for Farage.

yes I know we won't agree.

I'm not sure what's the issue with Rishi not having working class friends. This didn't stop him cutting NI. Whilst "eating out" was highly controversial, it did support hospitality and working class.

And I suspect AR doesn't have business owners or SME friends - not talking about lobbyist, but friends.

Your point about working class friends actually proves my point - you don't need to live through certain experiences to be able to understand them, intelligence and education often, not always, help with this.

She means she don't speak proper like

Omg. Can you see where people live on here??

No you can't. The poster they are referring to has already referenced a couple of local towns, so it is fairly easy to surmise that they live in the South West.

You raise an interesting point.

You would never vote for Farage, yet you would potentially consider voting for a more left-leaning Labour politician who is reported to have benefited from a substantial taxpayer-backed discount when buying their first home under Right to Buy. Someone who, according to critics, appeared to benefit, at least temporarily, before the relevant tax was reportedly paid, from property arrangements that reduced or avoided significant transaction taxes and second-home related costs when purchasing a property far from where her dependent children were primarily living. Taxes which, ironically, are supposed to help fund the welfare state and public services.

I also find it ironic when politicians talk about other people “owing more”, while their own behaviour creates the impression that different standards apply to them, in spite of them having themselves benefited from subsidised housing and other tax payer funded support, and with the prospect of a generous, secure defined-benefit pension scheme that most private sector workers could only wish for. It is always easier to moralise about fairness and redistribution when it is other people’s money being spent whilst your own state funded financial security remains generous and protected by comparison.

The private sector apparently is "terrible" but with all our instability and the need to self finance for retirement, we are supposedly the lucky ones...

Rayner isn't spouting hate and racism or received a £5m donation.

Farage and Brexit ring a bell?

Phew....thanks....(I didn't read the full thread)
Thank you :)

I disagree with almost everything that Tony Blair said yesterday, but I agree that this constant obsession with changing Prime Ministers every five minutes is a terrible habit that we seem to expect. Labour are really shooting themselves in the foot with this lunacy IMO.

@EvieBB if you waste as much time on MN political threads as I do, you get a reasonable idea of the people behind familiar usernames. That poster and I, and several other names on this thread, should probably organise group outings to lobby our MPs.

I have one question - why do some of you who are Labour supporters openly call some people closely associated with Labour right wing or far right? Don’t you realise how extreme left this could make Labour sound which is especially risky in this climate? I just don’t understand how this could possibly ever favour your own party. Please explain it.

Are you talking about the reception Blair’s essay has received?

@blossomtoes - no not just that. Same comments made about Mahmood, even Streeting. Even the whole factional disputes around “blue” Labour. Do you not understand that most swing voters lent their vote to that faction?
Where is the evidence that the electorate is craving a soft left Labour Party? I really don’t see it at all. Please explain it.

"Don’t you realise how extreme left this could make Labour sound"

@Araminta1003 what do you mean with this?

Because if you start calling fairly centrist policies 'far Right' then it minimises what the far Right actually is. People then fairly reasonably start to think that if things like having a controlled immigration policy-something which in the not too distant past was a Leftist policy, due to issues relating to competition for jobs, wage suppression, globalisation etc and has only become a Left issue since the Left has been taken over by the wealthy University educated middle classes, and identity politics- that 'far Right: just means ensuring that the existing population can have decent housing and jobs, and pride in where you live, when the real Far Right are many, many times worse than that.

@TopPocketFind - people within Labour and open Labour supporters calling some of their own within their own party or ex PMs, right wing or hard right.

For those of us in the centre - you sound hardcore left wing full on Corbynista era. As you know, Corbyn was unelectable. As you further know, Britain tends to be a small c country. And further, the whole rise of Reform proves that Britain has gone more right not less so (as proven by Brexit).
So against that backdrop, why would anyone within Labour openly be calling some of Labour right wing? Do you really not realise how this comes across?

Why are you asking me to explain it? I’m to the left of you which doesn’t automatically mean I’m a Labour supporter. Specific to the Blair essay, people like me who were ecstatic in 1997 would never have voted for him then if he’d written something like that at the time. It’s very illuminating that so many Tory voters think it’s wonderful. Either I’ve moved even further left or Blair’s moved substantially right. I think it’s the latter.

I think those of us on the left have to suck up Mahmoud’s policies. I don’t like them but it’s short term pain for long term gain. Immigration is absorbing virtually all the bandwidth at the moment so it has to be tackled. Ironically I think it won’t be long before those policies have to be softened because there’s going to be an acute skilled labour shortage in some sectors soon.

I also think the days of two party politics are over for a bit. The electorate is so fragmented now that it makes sense for the two main parties to focus on keeping their vote share rather than try to persuade the “don’t knows”. There will be a huge amount of tactical voting at the next GE with many people holding their nose to keep out the party they fear most.

I am still confused how calling Blair comments right leaning makes Labour hard left

He is not far right, expect for one thread on MN, I have not seen people calling him that.

@blossomtoes - I suspect I read Tony Blair’s essay completely differently to you. What I read primarily is policy comes before politics, and you have to compromise your ideology in the face of geopolitics. That is the gist of it, as well as you have to listen to what the electorate actually wants.
Secondary to that is the really important point of joining the AI race early on at a governmental level too harnessing what we do have with unis and talent and not being afraid to do that.
I guess I always shared his view though that the dichotomy in this country of playing private and public sector off against each other is fundamentally toxic and helps nobody.

Of course you did because we are viewing it through different lenses. I did point out that those who lean right love it!

But @blossomtoes I really do not actually lean right. That is the whole point!

Blair supports Trump, joined his Board of Peace', his institute received donations from an AI billionaire, he lobbies for oil companies.

He is in it for himself more than anything.