Keir Starmer - and his miserable government

(29-09-2024 10:21 )southsidestu Wrote:  Hmmm, I find this a bit dubious. Duffield has been at odds with Labour leadership for yrs particulalry over the issue of Trans rights, she said in an interview with Lewis Goodall this morning that she has been thinking about her place in the party for years and doesn't like what she called a shift to the right, what a coencidence that she came to that conclusion right after an election when she stood on Starmer's platform when everyone knew what direction that platform was going in.

If she calls a by-election the fair play to her, if not she's full of shit.

She's now an independent. I doubt she would get much of a chance at PMQ's to attack the Government.

Sue Gray resigns as Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister saying her position has become a distraction.

Warning classic Southsidestu long read up ahead


Every issue that has plagued this government so far is a sign of bad management.

A few months ago I highlighted that the scenarios of the defection of Natalie Elphicke & the status of Diane Abbot as a Labour MP & how both were going down with the PLP showed that Starmer is bad at politics when it comes to management & that this would hurt him more in government & boy has it ever.

First of all the winter fuel allowance, regardless of whether you agree with moving from a universal model to a means tested one or not, why would you announce something like this in isolation & not part of a budget where you can bury it under the positive things you want to do for the country ? Have Reeves say we are going to make tough decisions on the country's finaces like WFP but its so we can do XYZ.

Then there is the issue around the gifts. Many people have said that it makes them the same as the Tories, citing Johnson & his wallpaper, yet that is not entirely true, they are similar but not the same. Everything that has happened whether its the clothes, Taylor Swift tickets, Arsenal tickets, using Lord Alli's house has been legal & declared. Where as that was not the case with the Toires, everything wasn't declared, we still don't know who gave Johnson his £800k loan and it wasn't all legal because the Electoral Comission fined CCHQ. Right now in the middle of his leaderhship campaign it has been revealed that Jenerick has received a £75,000 donation from a company which had received money from a firm registered in the British Virgin Islands & it wasn't known until the donor revealed himself who it was that had given him the money.

The difference between Starmer/Labour & Johnson/Tories is like the deference between tax evasion & avoidance, Jimmy Carr or Wesley Snipes. The problem for Labour is that perception is reality, despite declared & legal being the literal opposite of undeclared & illegal if the story doesn't pass the sniff test with the public then you end up in the same boat as the crooks. This is then in turn magnified when you as leader of the opposition cast yourself as a holier than thou to Johnson & his shennanigans.

Furthermore part of the problem with Lord Alli's gifts was that they were personnel, had they had him donate to a central campaing fund, like The Tories generally do, it would of been better. Unlike other donations this does not appear to be a quid pro quo, he is already in the Lords, there is as of yet no link between his donations & a policy or legislative change in his favour, he is a Labour member so he is a part of the team who happens to be very wealthy doing his part to help his side win but again with the donations being personnel & some of them clearly not relevant to the campaign the perception fails the sniff test

Going back to the story of the day, the issue with Gray and her salary is relatively mundane, whilst she has had a pay rise compared to her immediate predecessor, she is earning less, adjusted for inflation, than Cameron's first Chief of staff.

These stories of Alli's gifts & Gray's salaries are pretty low level scandals, if you could even call them that and yet they have become big issues, why is that ? The blame again lands with Labour being bad at politics. Leighton Andrews, a professor at Cardif business school, published a table on twitter showing how long it has been since a new government, elected from opposition, has gone before producing its first budget.

79 - One month, Nine days
97 - Two months, One day
10 - One month, sixteen days
24 - Three months, twenty six days by the time it happens

The right wing tabloids have been leading the charge on these white bait stories, as they always would do but by waiting so long to produce their first budget, Labour have left a vacuum in the narrative, meaning that these stories are the only stories so the rest of the media are focusing on them too, turning white bait into white whales and ending up with a scenario where your chief of staff resigns in the first 100 days.

Fortunately for Starmer its still early days, New Labour had a scandal much worse than the Alli one in its early days when the party accepted a donation from Bernie Ecclestone in exchange for an exemtpion for F1 from a ban on cigarrette advertising & it didn't hurt them that much. Also a lot will depend on who the Tories choose as leader, if they choose a Hague or an IDS, Labour will be feeling pretty good. And Starmer has been in this territory before, after the Hartlepool by-election the talk around Starmer was that his days were numbered, he in turn sacked those around him who were his mates & promoted a more competant team & went from looking like it was all over to one of the largest landslides in modern times.

Brilliant analysis mate. Now it leads me to ask: Three momths on from the election the whole where do we think British poltics stands as a whole, natoonally & internationally? I feel we have some way to go before we can safely say that British politics is in pretty much a good place, I think it has yet to shake off 14 years of Tory rule/sleaze what have you, and having to go through successive Prime Ministers in post Covid times. It has yet to wean itself off the weight of austerity, which has feel been in place since 2008's financial crash, I feel that spectre has not yet been shaken off completely after all this time, and feel that has been the single core element of all our fiscal problems since and successsive Government have likely felt it's effects.

On to Starmer & Hiis Govrrment :I feel Sue Gray's & Duffield's resignations probably won't be the last to happen, but I do feel the media now are starting to make Starmer's Government look liike the Tories and suddenly think they can bring down the Government in rapid fashion, I don't think the press will let up on the stories of the donations and the Fuel payments, etc. They see the first 100 days of office as their initial iopportunity of sizing up what they think what the new Government is going to be like, and then decide to throw whatever shit they can find to throw in their direction and see what sticks. And I feel much of what they are reporting probably has a ring of the Johnson Government about it in some ways - probably some unused ammunition that they would have used against him but never did and now see this as a perfect opportunity to use up that ammmunition. Not only that you coild probably go through a great many newpapers in the US, Europe. Australia and pretty much find the same thing happening. In short, certain sections of the press in any country will align itself to defend the Government and the rest will stand against it. It's not like the infamous Yes minister paoers sketch, but somewhere pretty close. We all probably have a fair idea how the budget will pan out and the consequences from it, but I get the feeling the Government probaly will end up trying to postpone the budget by a few more weeks, by which time someone within Government is more than likely to leak the budget before it actually happens.
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I do think Starmer will weather the storm, I do think he still has choppy waters to negotiate for quite some time yet, but many will still be looking for signs of calmer water politically but I feel the right time to make any REAL firm assesment is in 18 months time. By then, we probably could have had a few by elections. Also one comment I saw in Saturday's Sun was that If a General Election was held tomorrrow based on what has come out they feel the majority of this Goverment would drop down to around 64 seats based on the situatoon currently. I'm not sure that dramatic a drop that would be possible, but I would think any losses would probably see their majority drop to around the 100 mark or so, it would take a pretty big scandal to even trigger that size of majority loss.

I think you under estimate the feelings towards the freebies and the winter payment.These wold lose them loads of votes and the budget is yet to come.Being in opposition is not the same to being the actual government of the day.Labour stood on change,voters thought for better not for worse.

I probably do but the harsh reality is I feel the change Starmer promised is very unlikely to hapen for maybe anotgher two yearsd, and I think there are many of us who feel right now, have the complete opposite of what we voted for. What probably HASN'T changed for many too just how out of touch Westminster is with the reality of ordinary people's loves.

They are going to invest £500m in 1,200 UK made green buses. It will be somewhere for all the pensioners to go to keep warm. Unless of course they remove free bus passes as well.

I have been thinking about the state of healthcare in this country recently (I have had a relative with health issues). Wes Streeting wants to open up the NHS to private business (https://inews.co.uk/news/health/labour-o...m1MErkfvyW), yet, in the mid 1980’s the late Frank Dobson (who was then Neil Kinnock’s shadow health minister and Tony Blair’s first Health Secretary (and coincidentally Keir Starmer’s predecessor as MP for Holborn and St Pancras)) was arguing that there should not even be private pay beds in NHS hospitals (https://youtu.be/SVQMfYS7jmA?si=dqD3KlmxKiU0Tukn). What changed?

(08-10-2024 14:58 )Charlemagne Wrote:  They are going to invest £500m in 1,200 UK made green buses. It will be somewhere for all the pensioners to go to keep warm. Unless of course they remove free bus passes as well.

I think free bus passes will eventually be means tested at some point. I am currently having to go through CAB assistance to get one. I think eventually the costs of those buses will have to be bunged on something in a future Budget. It's a small wonder how they can drag just £500m out of thin air for this when they are looking at ways to balance the books.