Keir Starmer has a deeply depressing article in The Telegraph this morning.
He began by talking about:
It is in this sense of public service that Labour has changed dramatically in the last three years. The course of shock therapy we gave our party had one purpose: to ensure that we were once again rooted in the priorities, the concerns and the dreams of ordinary British people.
To put those dreams in context he said:
Margaret Thatcher sought to drag Britain out of its stupor by setting loose our natural entrepreneurialism.
He mentioned Clem Atlee, but only to note:
A century ago, Clement Attlee wrote that Labour must be a party of duty and patriotism, not abstract theory.
Of his founding of the NHS or the creation of the welfare state there is not a mention. Instead we get:
The Tories have talked the talk on fiscal prudence while wasting untold billions…. They have squandered economic opportunities and failed to realise the possibilities of Brexit.
Amongst Labour supporters opinion polls show almost no one thinks there are any such benefits. At this juncture only a fool could be persuaded that there might be.
This, though, is where Starmer really reveals himself:
They will bequeath public finances more akin to a minefield than a solid foundation. Labour's iron-clad fiscal rules will set this straight – but it will not be quick or easy.
The crass stupidity that is Labour's fiscal rule - that will guarantee austerity and failing public services in the UK- is on display here. This is so much so that he notes :
There will be many on my own side who will feel frustrated by the difficult choices we will have to make. This is non-negotiable: every penny must be accounted for. The public finances must be fixed so we can get Britain growing and make people feel better off.
Starmer clearly thinks three things.
The first is that the government has no money of its own, which we all know is not true. QE proved it.
The second is that there can be no accounting for deficits, which is oxymoronic, because we can only know they exist if they are accounted for.
And third, that the illusionary goal of balancing the budget - which is thankfully very largely unknown in recent British history, because all economic progress depends on the existence of such deficits - is more important than the provision of public services. It is quite staggering to see him make that so clear, and deeply depressing.
A Labour government led by Keir Starmer will be a disaster for this country.
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So deeply depressing……a Labour leader praising Margaret Thatcher, the very person who kick started the destruction of the state as the guardian of its people, and the rise of selfish individualism. Starmer gets worse by the week…..I feel so disenfranchised.
Praising Thatcher will go down like a lead balloon in areas devatasted by her policies in the 1980s, so that means anywhere that heavy industries like coal, shipbuilding and steel-making were the backbone of local economies. A statement more likely to lose votes would be hard to find, so we can expect to see a greater swing towards independence in Scotland, Wales & N Ireland. In the North of England, Kettering and anywhere else in England which relied on coal and steel, both the 2 main parties are likely to lose votes, with an upswing in support for the Greens, Lib Dems as well as a greater incidence of no shows and spoiled papers.
What does that tell us about the UK’s democracy? The English have diminishing faith in it, N Ireland is moving steadily towards reunification with the Irish Republic and has an option to leave the UK guaranteed by an international treaty. In Scotland support for independence has remained steady at around 50% with a recent Ipsos-Mori poll showing 54% in favour and I would expect Starmer’s admiration for Thatcher to enhance that figure. Wales was probably the most dependent on heavy industries of the 3 British states, so expect a swing in support for independence there too. In the absence of a codified UK Constitution, there is no exit path for Scotland or Wales, but how long can that stance be maintained if the British public rejects both the Tories and Labour?
Good questions, Ken
Not sure this tells us what Starmer thinks. It does tell us what Starmer thinks Daily Telegraph readers want to hear.
However, is this wise? Are any Telegraph readers really going to read that article and step out saying “That Keir Starmer chap is alright, I will vote Labour”? Very, very few. On the other hand, many on the left are exasperated.
Harold Wilson observed it is all about “differential abstentionism”; are we at or beyond the limits where tacking rightwards is electorally rewarding?
Not in Starmer’s view
My thoughts exactly Clive. Starmer is writing this drivel to appeal to Telegraph readers. Apparently labour’s election strategy is to pander to the right because they think FPTP means they have to.
The very same FPTP they left in place when they could have replaced it.
And no attempt to form a progressive alliance to overcome it; just the usual blind tribalism from labour.
So they grovel for the votes of right wingers but
treat progressive voters and other non right wing parties with contempt.
So why vote for them?
I see this as pandering not so much to ‘the right’ i.e. Telegraph readers per se, but to the Establishment as a whole. As has been mentioned, very few Telegraph readers are going to switch their votes to Labour. But if the Establishment are assured that nothing significant is going to change on Starmer’s watch, then the election may go easier for the Labour Party.
There’s going to be a lot of swearing on nottheandrewmarrshow this morning.
Real labour party members know that Starmer is a right-wing stooge. The thing that amazes me is that he is now so ready to admit it. This could destroy what’s left of the party.
Hi Richard, what is your assessment of this opinion piece by Polly Toynbee? Do the ideas presented within really offer “a way forward” for Labour?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/30/britain-margaret-hodge-commons-tories-economy-labour
I have already commented.
The as uggrstions are flabby or are based on limited understanding when the Tacing Wealth Report provides the detail.
Thatcher’s legacy today:
❌ 3 million people using foodbank
❌ raw sewage pumped into our rivers
❌ a broken NHS
❌ record energy prices
❌ crumbling schools
❌ uncapped banker bonuses
❌ defunded public services
❌ Covid money given to mates
❌ high rent and food
❌ Insufficient housing
Shamelessly turned into a tweet by me.
I hope you will forgive me
Add to this list a massive rise in inequality…..possibly one of the biggest drivers of right wing populism and the disintegration of whatever social cohesion there was.
Homeless people living on the streets.
Beggars.
When I visited Spain in the late 70’s I was shocked to see people begging on the streets. I’d never seen it here. By the time I got back to the UK in the early 80’s it was everywhere.
Good lord – he’s gone insane!
‘Shock therapy’? His words are pregnant with the language of extreme finance driven by extreme capitalism. It’s more like Reagan than Thatcher to be honest. He’s openly admitting that he has purged any dissent in his party – yet politics should be about allowing dissent. He’s effectively done what Boris did to the Tories over BREXIT.
He seems to be suggesting that only the private sector can generate the cash to boost investment elsewhere. But how can that be achieved if business wants to pay less tax and provide less jobs through AI?
AI is today’s equivalent of the Mayfair Set of the 1970s who went around the country buying up companies and asset stripping them. Portrayed as a means to make companies more modern and efficient, it actually destroyed jobs and output after a brief uplift in output which was only because this contained income from those companies selling their assets forever!
The other worrying thing about this is that increasingly, without workers, it is only the rich that will pay tax and consolidate their hold over our politicians so we can expect more crappy self interested policy going forward.
It’s a comedy of errors – so typical of Britain’s elite these days – unprofessional, half-arsed, half-witted, bungling, amateurish and corrupt to boot yet there is nothing to laugh about at all. And what’s more, Labour/Starmer are basically still responding to a Tory conceived idea that the party is infiltrated by Reds!!!! The Tory agenda – still rampant even as they go down the toilet and join their other great work in our sewers.
Shameful Mr Starmer, shameful. Starmer – you are stymied! Tell me now Keir – what is the point in voting for you? I don’t see any, not one.
He knows exactly what he is doing, destroying the labour party.
QE had a massive contribution towards the inflationary mess we got in..so money creation is not without consequence. Most knew that at the time and now it has been proved. For there not to be there needs to be a complete inverse relationship between money creation and the velocity of money. And that is as believable as pigs might fly.
You clearly have no clue. You know V collapsed don’t you? You really need to think before inking, as teachers used to say.
“QE had a massive contribution towards the inflationary mess we got in.”
Nonsense. It was down to energy prices rises and corporations’ profiteerings. Energy price rises are no longer factored into the 12-month inflation calculations, so inflation is now coming down, as predicted by many on these forums.
Sources
“Quantitative Easing” @ GIMMS, https://gimms.org.uk/fact-sheets/quantitative-easing/
“Money Printing and Inflation: COVID, Cryptocurrencies and More” @ NASDAQ “Quantitative Easing did not bring inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI)” https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/money-printing-and-inflation%3A-covid-cryptocurrencies-and-more
The Bank of England has never said QE contributed.
Even they are not that ideologically stupid.
QE suppressed long dated rates, allowed for a boom in cheap credit on housing, holidays, new cars, new fridges…it massively stoked up AD. So of course it contributed towards inflation. It also caused a boom in asset prices across the board making many feel “wealthier” and thereby increased spending. And the same applies to Corporates.. only the dogmatic will dispute this!! The very fact is it was put in place to fight deflation but was kept in place way too long and way too aggressively. Clive Parry has said the same thing many times.
Stop talkinmg nonsense
If it did that it would hgave done it from 2009 to 2019 and it did not
So t claim it suddenyly didn and ignore the other factpors (Covid market disruption and war specualtion) is crassly stupid.
And, no Clive Parry has not said that.
You are partially correct, I did not approve of pushing gilt yields to absurdly low levels… but my complaint was not that this was inflationary. Rather that it was causing problems for natural/forced gilt investors without doing any good.
I know the theory was that low rates would stimulate spending (a theory that the BoE subscribed to)…. but the evidence is that it did not; Consumer Credit data do not support this view.
It is not easy to interpret the data because there are also sorts of distortions from COVID but if your theory was correct we would have seen a spike in credit…. and we did not. We have to look elsewhere for causes of inflation.
Thanks
The only thing to do at the next General Election is to spoil the paper. Only when the spoilt papers vote is high enough to be noticed will the people, who vote for gretins like Johnson & Starmer, lift their heads to wonder why. The next election will see the lowest turnout in history. Starmer may win, but Blair’s machine will have him out within two years.
Mind you I’m not 100% sure Starmer will win. He doesn’t have a “get it done” mantra to cover up all his lies to the voters, they may just see through him.
Theyreally will it care about spoilt papers.
The breakdown of the relationship with society is what will figure them.
Clearly Starmer isn’t leadership material with utterances like this. Sadly he’s a Neo-Liberal sheep pretending he can lead the the rest of the unthinking sheep voters! The Labour Party has very clearly lost it’s way and become a used car nobody in their right mind would even contemplate buying but then this is true of all the other UK political parties. Even the Green Party hasn’t yet got down to figuring out how it will do the necessary big government spend to tackle climate change! What’s the matter with the British that they do so much sleep-walking?
It’s the article of an economic halfwit. More precisely, it’s the article of a man who doesn’t have the first understanding of economics and is doing as he is told by his chosen Chancellor. Who is an economic halfwit.
Wasn’t it arch-Blairite Fawkner who gave Starmer a crash-course in (Thatcherite) economics? He’s just spouting the guff he was fed.
I used to think Starmer was clever in avoiding ‘ anti Labour’ headlines in the Tory media.
I’ve slowly realised that these are his true beliefs.Praising Thatcher indeed.The PM who squandered the wealth of North Sea oil and introduced the disastrous,selfish policies of neoliberalism.
The likes of Johnson,Truss and Sunak are her political offspring.In my area, voting for Labour helps to get rid of this criminal gang.
The UK has been in various degrees of austerity for decades. Labour had to introduce austerity measures as dictated by the IMF in the mid 70’s and by 1979 austerity became entrenched in the UK under the Tories plan to focus only on private wealth and severely weaken public wealth. After that, New Labour’s PFI smoke and mirrors ‘public’ investment boom simply passed on extortionate public costs onto the future while their light touch private financial regulation ensured that that would end with a financial crash and a public finance bailout. Once the Tories took over again, it was back to their form of austerity for all except the wealthy. The Covid PPE scams for their pals highlighted just how blatant that had become. It seems clear that Labour now want to get into power whatever it takes, which as the article in the Telegraph proves, means outdoing the Tories on the self evidently dead end economic dogma that is public austerity & private wealth. It’s a race to the bottom with Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
Much of what you say is based on tropes, not analysis and I have better things to do on Sunday afternoon than correct them.
But this analysis is far too simplistic to be useful.
As a voter right now British politics is a little bit like being on death row and given a choice of firing squad or electric chair. We all know what awaits.
A loud and clear ‘f#<k you' to millions of Labour voters. Serve him right if it backfires.
He probably figures that adding a dose of anti immigrant racism will keep enough Labour voters on side at the critical moment.
So Labour does not want to be the party of ‘abstract theory’? And yet its policies are copied straight from the bible of Neoclassical economics – about as abstract as you can get.
In contrast, Attlee put in place the ‘theories’ of Beveridge and Keynes and as a result built a much better Britain.
Agreed
Using the KISS principle it easy to prove the government prints money as it does so the Royal Mint, which it owns. I know cash is being superseded but something you remember holding in your hand is difficult to refute.
So Starmer will only spend the previous years tax take. Considering the tax take is always less than expenditure, in the following year the government spending will have to go down. If this continues then in the end there will be no taxes and no government expenditure.
With any degr3e of infaltion that has to be true
Thanks
What if the SNP grasped this own goal by Starmer, and run candidates all over the UK?
They won’t
If he wanted to talk to Tory voters he could have easily mentioned Thatcher’s determination to bring change – while saying that her era had run its course and ‘we’ now needed change in a different direction. He could have headlined Attlee’s NHS creation and housing achievements post war and Blair’s rebuilding NHS etc but to go on about Brexit opportunities and migration worries and iron clad fiscal rules – as tho Tories are not being far right enough.
He is quoted before as Harold Wilson being his model Labour PM???
Surely alienating even ‘moderate’ labour and liberal/green voters?
Is that sophisticated politics?
This was base politics from someone who takes anyone left of centre for granted.
It really is nonsense isn’t it? Pandering to Telegraph readers for god’s sake and telling anyone with any progressive beliefs to like it or lump it.
And literally as I write this I hear on the news about the “governments” latest mad attempt to make the Rwanda plan workable; that Starmer is going to make a speech saying that a labour government won’t increase government spending because the financial situation is now worse than after the GFC; and one of the water companies has been found to have been systematically covering up the level of it’s sewage discharges.
It just gets better every day doesn’t it?
Yes
I knew that Starmer was right wing, but I never thought he would stoop this low. This is truly appalling.
Electoral Calculus latest seat by seat prediction (if an election was held now) has my constituency – Bury StEdmunds – as a Labour gain (by a whisker), I am beggining to agree with my (former Labour) friends as to voting Green – despite my urging to vote Labour to get the chance of the first non Tory MP in Bury St Edmunds since the 1880s.
Starmer’s appalling Telegraph article may have swung me to vote Green – even if – it splits the progressive vote and keeps the Tories in.
Right-wing Labour is someone who can co-exist with the left of the Party.
Someone who actively seeks to oust the left, ditch their leadership pledges, and panders to the Tories, is a Tory.
Is Starmer a recruiting sergeant for the Reform party? Or is he just working for Tice and Farage for free?
https://labourhub.org.uk/2023/12/03/starmer-praises-thatcher-twitter-reacts/
I suppose he’s helped a lot of labour voters decide what their New Year’s resolution will be, either leave the party or never vote labour again until they get rid of him and his acolytes.
I see that Make Votes Matter are suggesting making sure they have lots of bodies at the labour party spring conferences in Wales and Scotland.
Starmer has already parroted what was always David Evan’s position (in his Blair era blueprint for democratic centralism): Conference is only sovereign while in session – i.e. it is an epiphenomenon that can be ignored. L’etat, c’est Starmer.
Labour canvassing and activism in my area is reduced from the days pre-Starmer when, despite the power in the region being wielded by right wingers, lots of lefties and centrists showed up. The bulk, including some leftish people who’ve ceased any national pronouncements, now focus on local affairs – as directed by Evans – or have quit. One or two are playing a long game for power, noting the current Blairites are 70+. Every one who ran a town-centre stall pro-NHS in 2018 has left, one to the Greens, the rest party-less.
What goes around?
Somebody said a nation gets the government it deserves, so how are we to choose between the Tories and Starmer as to which will turn out to be the worst?
Trust the jolly old BBC to come up with an answer about how to win – by cheating!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/ideas/videos/how-to-win-at-poohsticks/p06kjznx
JUST WHAT IS KEIR STARMER DOING WRITING IN THE TELEGRAPH FOR GOD’S SAKE????
Truly depressing but not surprising. Thatcher dismantled the post war social contract and was the persistent voice of individualism at the expense of collectivism. She also followed Regan in deregulation of the financial services sector. Her mindset was framed by corner shop economics and the minimal state. She also oversaw the introduction of policies that widened inequality. The consequences are plain to see. Labour show no signs that it will take steps to reverse the damage that Thatcherism and the ongoing preeminence of neoliberalism has inflicted on us.
“The crass stupidity that is Labour’s fiscal rule……. is out to the fire of Labour policy.”
Typo?
Edited
Thanks
To look at things a little differently, Labour (and LibDems) are deeply scarred by successive losses to the Tories, the last time badly so. Hence they are obsessed with not doing anything that might put off those voters who left them and voted for the Tories. Sunak is playing the same game in reverse in bringing back Cameron and playing games on immigration and climate change.
Call it cynical or just cold political calculation. Or in Richard’s term cowardly as they are not facing up to the real challenges. Which they would argue would frighten off the voters. What it does do is put off and alienate the activists and supporters whom the party’s rely on to canvass and get the vote out. Just relying on not being the Tories will not be enough. On a cold wet day these voters will stay at home.
There are already 9 former labour MPs who are independent. Their constituency party Members will not be canvassing for Labour at next year’s election. There are also numerous councillors who have been banned from standing. Some have gone to the green party. Lots more have resigned in disgust and I expect many more to resign this week.
Thousands of previously willing door-knockers will not be doing it next year.
It’s okay at by-elections, when head office can send their minions up to canvas for their preferred candidates, but not when it’s a general election. All the people who previously canvassed for labour in North Islington will be canvassing for Corbyn next year.
By the way, Richard, you are being quoted all over the place today; the Canary, and London Economic, as well as Labour Hub.
Thanks
I was unaware of the last point
I wonder if a well publicised campaign for tactical voting might help get more progressive candidates elected? At the last GE I swapped my vote https://www.swapmyvote.uk/
Here for the record is Wikipedia’s definition of Neoliberalism, or Neo-Liberalism, a term which a great many of sleep-walking voters in the UK can’t be bothered to understand let alone recognise as an ideology:-
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/05/brexit-disaster-rejoining-channel-europe-economy
Sorry wrong paste:-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism