The Chairman Mao resembling, Monarchy hating, threat to Britain, Labour Party thread

[blandy]

1 hour ago, chrisp65 said:

On the presumption Labour win an election in 2024, what do you think will be the most obvious and clear changes of direction or points of difference between what we have now and what we might have in 2029?

I know they don’t get much coverage and you have to go looking for answers to that kind of question, but the answers are out there. Obviously people can choose to believe or disbelieve what they say they want to do, but…

Major changes to health provision, focusing a great deal more on stuff outside of hospitals, like social care provision which is dire at the moment. I wouldn’t expect Doctors and nurses to be engaged in major strikes.

I’d imagine they’ll do their green new deal thing. Investment and partnering on renewable energy, insulation, carbon neutral by 2030 I think is their plan.

Rip up planning regulations and get house building ramped up, to build 1.5 million homes is another plan, isn’t it.

Get science and engineering involved in modernising the antiquated way government services and provision work, including the NHS, Council services, all that stuff.

At the moment we’ve got tories giving contracts to their mates and donors, no regard for standards, law or ethics. Contempt and damage to institutions as a consequence of Johnson and Sunak’s behaviour…breaking the law in limited and specific ways if they don’t like it. Ridiculous Rwanda stuff…getting rid of that insanity and dishonesty would do me, frankly, but I reckon if Labour get a working majority, or are in a government with Green and/ or Lib Dem support then we’ll see genuine progress on revitalisation of green industries- solar, onshore, tidal.

I think we’ll have much better relations with the EU, we’ll probably be on the way to re-aligning ourselves with them and maybe part of the single market, or close to that.

People are so hacked off after 14 years of shit that they seem to think it can’t get better, that they’re all the same. They’re not…though they could do with getting the air time to explain how they’re not and what they’ll do, and finding a pair.

[chrisp65]

1 minute ago, ml1dch said:

And given parliament will overwhelmingly back the decision does it matter that much? 

Wow.

what a fascinating trajectory this place is on, we don’t need the EU, we don’t need human rights, we don’t need parliament

 

[Jon]

1 hour ago, sidcow said:

I'm hoping .....

I can see a problem here .... 

Sadly all we really have to go on with Starmer's Labour atm is a fairly blind hope he'll do better things than the tories, once in power. 

So it's blind hope vs the devil we know  

[ml1dch]

3 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Wow.

what a fascinating trajectory this place is on, we don’t need the EU, we don’t need human rights, we don’t need parliament

 

Not sure that anyone had said that, have they?

There are thousands of decisions that the government makes every day without consulting parliament and legally this is one that is within their right to make. 

Parliament's job is to then scrutinise the executive and hold them to account for the decisions that they make. As they will do on this issue. 

And the scrutiny will amount to "all good, we're fine with it". 

[Jon]

6 minutes ago, blandy said:

I know they don’t get much coverage and you have to go looking for answers to that kind of question, but the answers are out there. Obviously people can choose to believe or disbelieve what they say they want to do, but…

Major changes to health provision, focusing a great deal more on stuff outside of hospitals, like social care provision which is dire at the moment. I wouldn’t expect Doctors and nurses to be engaged in major strikes.

I’d imagine they’ll do their green new deal thing. Investment and partnering on renewable energy, insulation, carbon neutral by 2030 I think is their plan.

Rip up planning regulations and get house building ramped up, to build 1.5 million homes is another plan, isn’t it.

Get science and engineering involved in modernising the antiquated way government services and provision work, including the NHS, Council services, all that stuff.

At the moment we’ve got tories giving contracts to their mates and donors, no regard for standards, law or ethics. Contempt and damage to institutions as a consequence of Johnson and Sunak’s behaviour…breaking the law in limited and specific ways if they don’t like it. Ridiculous Rwanda stuff…getting rid of that insanity and dishonesty would do me, frankly, but I reckon if Labour get a working majority, or are in a government with Green and/ or Lib Dem support then we’ll see genuine progress on revitalisation of green industries- solar, onshore, tidal.

I think we’ll have much better relations with the EU, we’ll probably be on the way to re-aligning ourselves with them and maybe part of the single market, or close to that.

People are so hacked off after 14 years of shit that they seem to think it can’t get better, that they’re all the same. They’re not…though they could do with getting the air time to explain how they’re not and what they’ll do, and finding a pair.

They'll have to raise direct taxation to do much of this.  I know it's been out of the equation since The Wicked Witch, but to rebalance society and reinvest in public services, he'll need to tax the comparatively wealthy a bit more.  Direct, progressive taxation.  I'd vote for him on that basis, but that might scare off a lot of self interested 'middle England'.  But it needs doing.  

[Jon]

1 minute ago, ml1dch said:

Not sure that anyone had said that, have they?

There are thousands of decisions that the government makes every day without consulting parliament and legally this is one that is within their right to make. 

Parliament's job is to then scrutinise the executive and hold them to account for the decisions that they make. As they will do on this issue. 

And the scrutiny will amount to "all good, we're fine with it". 

Yep. AKA a comfortable parliamentary majority. 

[Jareth]

41 minutes ago, ml1dch said:

It would definitely have been a nice courtesy, but he doesn't legally have to.

And given parliament will overwhelmingly back the decision does it matter that much? 

Yep

[chrisp65]

31 minutes ago, blandy said:

I know they don’t get much coverage and you have to go looking for answers to that kind of question, but the answers are out there. Obviously people can choose to believe or disbelieve what they say they want to do, but…

Major changes to health provision, focusing a great deal more on stuff outside of hospitals, like social care provision which is dire at the moment. I wouldn’t expect Doctors and nurses to be engaged in major strikes.

I’d imagine they’ll do their green new deal thing. Investment and partnering on renewable energy, insulation, carbon neutral by 2030 I think is their plan.

Rip up planning regulations and get house building ramped up, to build 1.5 million homes is another plan, isn’t it.

Get science and engineering involved in modernising the antiquated way government services and provision work, including the NHS, Council services, all that stuff.

At the moment we’ve got tories giving contracts to their mates and donors, no regard for standards, law or ethics. Contempt and damage to institutions as a consequence of Johnson and Sunak’s behaviour…breaking the law in limited and specific ways if they don’t like it. Ridiculous Rwanda stuff…getting rid of that insanity and dishonesty would do me, frankly, but I reckon if Labour get a working majority, or are in a government with Green and/ or Lib Dem support then we’ll see genuine progress on revitalisation of green industries- solar, onshore, tidal.

I think we’ll have much better relations with the EU, we’ll probably be on the way to re-aligning ourselves with them and maybe part of the single market, or close to that.

People are so hacked off after 14 years of shit that they seem to think it can’t get better, that they’re all the same. They’re not…though they could do with getting the air time to explain how they’re not and what they’ll do, and finding a pair.

 

It doesn’t need ‘coverage’ unless they are trying to explain the intricacies of minor points of difference. There was a Labour website that spelled out Starmer’s pledges that could be used and kept up to date as those pledges have fallen away.

Let’s see how soon Planning law is ripped up and to what end. Let’s see what radical change to health provision Wes Streeting has up his sleeve to stop the rot and bring back NHS dentistry or GP appointments.

Let’s see the attitude towards graduate debt.

Let’s see the attitude towards energy provision and the desire to hand over billions for overseas nuclear provision. 

As said up thread, I think this opposition have been gifted a free pass and they’ve chosen to use it to vaguely promise nicer times whilst promising nothing needs to change very much.

 

[ml1dch]

6 minutes ago, Jareth said:

Yep

Why?

[sidcow]

37 minutes ago, Jon said:

I can see a problem here .... 

Sadly all we really have to go on with Starmer's Labour atm is a fairly blind hope he'll do better things than the tories, once in power. 

So it's blind hope vs the devil we know  

Yeah, I'm going to vote for the Tories now as they'll obviously be exactly the same. 

[ml1dch]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

People are so hacked off after 14 years of shit that they seem to think it can’t get better, that they’re all the same. They’re not…though they could do with getting the air time to explain how they’re not and what they’ll do, and finding a pair.

Yup. For all the talk of "if you take away all the incompetence, take away the criminality, take away the political vandalism, take away the factional psychodrama, then what will they really do differently...?", there's probably a massive chunk of the country that would take that option quite happily. 

 

[Chindie]

One could argue that the average person isn't actually directly affected by the Westminster drama, so the dodgy dealings and nest feathering don't really make the average person noticeably better or worse off. It's still word removed activity and should be punished, but realistically someone punting millions to their buddy doesn't make the postman's life that much better or worse. It's taken a generational pandemic overseen by a narcissist and then, to follow up, an historically stupid prat in charge to do anything that hurt the average person, and it's hard to see the Labour Party, which has spent the last 2 years going around telling everyone how they think the Tories are right but bad at their job, markedly changing anything to the point that people's lives are noticeably improved.

Does anyone really think Starmer's Labour Party is going to make major changes to their lives for the better? Really? He's not going to magic up more doctors, he's not going to save the NHS, he's not going to magically boost the economy to a degree that markedly improves anything, he's not going to move our foreign policy, he's not going to make the energy system markedly better, he's not going to change much on Europe... He's going to change the colour of the tie at the podium when the wheels fall off and we might get a brief new manager bounce while everyone fools themselves into thinking anything is actually going to change for a year. They're already rolling out the excuses that the Tories had for a decade, that the last lot were so bad we can't possibly improve anything. And they've spent the last 18 months throwing everything they claimed to stand for in the bin.

Life for the average Brit is going to be as bollocks in 5 years as it is now. The best you're hoping for is the international winds change enough that petrol and food drops back a bit for a while and maybe the economy can stagger ahead of where it's current death rattle leaves it for just long enough that your pension fund looks slightly better.

[blandy]

21 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

It doesn’t need ‘coverage’

Of course it **** does.

“There’s this thing, right. It’s called an election, and it’s where the people get to pick who they want to be government, to decide what happens. On the one hand there’s this lot who have been in charge of shit for 14 years.  They say “blah blah blah… foreigners…woke…enemy of the people, every little ting gonna be alright, or there’s these other ones..they say [redacted, not reporting that],” who you gonna vote for?

”dunno, how do I choose, I don’t know what the red ones will do?”

[Xann]

Mugs squabbling over the booby prize.

[chrisp65]

2 hours ago, blandy said:

Of course it **** does.

“There’s this thing, right. It’s called an election, and it’s where the people get to pick who they want to be government, to decide what happens. On the one hand there’s this lot who have been in charge of shit for 14 years.  They say “blah blah blah… foreigners…woke…enemy of the people, every little ting gonna be alrightor there’s these other ones..they say [redacted, not reporting that],” who you gonna vote for?

”dunno, how do I choose, I don’t know what the red ones will do?”

 

Are you genuinely suggesting they have significant points of difference that are being suppressed by the media and they have no way of letting us know?

There’s this thing, right, it’s called the internet, they could put this stuff on the internet. There’s this other thing, right, it’s called Parliament, they could put their different approach to issues on public record there.

I completely get that there’s a lot of pressure to get rid of the current thieves and sex pests. That should be an opportunity for them to offer something a bit more ambitious than a vague half hearted promise not to rob me with their cock out.

 

 

 

[ml1dch]

7 hours ago, Chindie said:

Does anyone really think Starmer's Labour Party is going to make major changes to their lives for the better?

Not at all. But crucially, I don't think anyone, leading any political party can promise or do things that will changes lives (significantly) for the better. I don't want Johnson or Corbyn saying that all the problems can fixed by being knobs towards Brussels or bankers. As you allude to, the country has deep, structural problems which aren't solved by a new guy with a vision of how to fix everything. Because there isn't a unifying, ideological solution at the moment, fixing one thing will break another.

So you have to manage all the bits into a boring, structural place where eg nationalising major industry doesn't screw pension funds. Or building entire new towns doesn't leave new schools and hospitals without qualified people to staff them. Or introducing massive new taxes on the bits of the country that currently make all the money without them going somewhere else and you getting no tax from them instead. Or how you promote an ethical foreign policy while your net zero commitments are reliant on Lithium and Cobalt mined by children in central Africa. It's a complicated world where taking one Jenga block out screws up something else, and any politician who is comfortable enough saying "if we just do this then we're fine" is probably a bad person to be in politics. 

I get people want to be inspired, but I'll be pretty comfortable with the novelty of thinking that those in charge are doing it because they at least think they're trying to make things better for the country rather than seeing it as an opportunity for themselves. While bleak and not going to get the crowds at Glastonbury, that's still better than we've seen for while. And I'm quite happy that the guys five years ago had that same motivation, which is why (while it would have been internationally shambolic) it would have been miles better than what we actually have had. In five years time things will almost certainly be as bad as they are now. But any politician who might have the nous to be able to do something about it is stuck with the Catch-22 situation of being aware enough to know that, while having to sell something to the country to get elected. And the best slogan I've got for Starmer is that I think he gets that there isn't a button to press (either labelled "tax more and nationalise stuff" or "tax less and kick the foreigners out") that magically fixes it all. And if he does get that, that's a good thing, not a bad thing. 

It's a bit like people demanding an Emery and for us to sign Moussa Diaby for £50m when we sacked Di Matteo. The country isn't at the Emery stage. Starmer isn't even Smith, he's Steve Bruce. He's the boring one that nobody likes, nobody wanted in the first place and nobody is sad to see the back of. But at least he's not setting fire to the dressing room, and (hopefully) when you look back the others bits don't happen without him signing Ahmed El-Mohamedy and Robert Snodgrass. There will absolutely be a Henri Lansbury style screw-up along the way (and probably even a Scott Hogan), but at least there might be a modicum of sense to the bad decisions for a change. 

While I'm stream-of-consciousnessing on the topic:

 

Gerrard - Johnson. Minor success with a similar but smaller role and massive public profile which meant loads of people thought it would be a triumph, but even a cursory glance below the surface, and his personality meant it was always going to be a disaster. It was always about him, not the thing he was responsible for. 

Sherwood - Truss: Speaks for itself.

Cameron - Lambert: The few bits that he got right and the shiny, initial popularity mask the fact that it was all a facade for gross institutional decline behind the scenes which led to far greater failings later.

O'Neill - Blair - the great hope after two decades of bleakness. Only to make really obvious mistakes which sour his legacy and make all the people who really liked him at the time, now hate him. Yet, they can't escape the fact that what he did was still better than the fifteen years either before or after. Around fifty percent of people will always hold his decisions around Europe against him.

Houllier - Brown - was always going to be a bit deflating after what went before, and it always felt like the end of an era. But there was a bit of logic in why it might have worked. Bit tin-earned to why people weren't on board with what he was trying to do, and it always felt a bit weird to see him there given he'd always been around doing something else for much of the previous decade. 

Sunak - Di Matteo - when the last "season" was a disaster, why not roll the dice on a guy in a suit who could at least point to a time when people thought (albeit wrongly, and in extreme circumstances when their minds were on other things) he was good a few years back?

There's probably an essay in that Prime Ministers vs Villa managers somewhere. Or at least a fanzine article.

 

Edited January 13 by ml1dch

[blandy]

6 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

Are you genuinely suggesting they have significant points of difference that are being suppressed by the media and they have no way of letting us know?

There’s this thing, right, it’s called the internet, they could put this stuff on the internet. There’s this other thing, right, it’s called Parliament, they could put their different approach to issues on public record there.

I completely get that there’s a lot of pressure to get rid of the current thieves and sex pests. That should be an opportunity for them to offer something a bit more ambitious than a vague half hearted promise not to rob me with their cock out.

Er, no.

You know those things I listed. They’re on the internet. You know parliament yeah, they put their approach out there, too.

But you had to ask me.

When there’s a run up to a general election the tv and radio is legally obliged to give coverage to opposition parties, so we get to hear and see more of their ideas.

Also, for about, I dunno, close on 4 years I’ve been posting on here about what Starmer and Labour need to do to have a chance of winning the next election and the final thing on the list has been give people hope of how things can be better, but not to do that too soon or else a mixture of the tories nicking policies and or the media distorting and scaremongering will neutralise much of that hope and ideas.

But as I said in my last post, Labour needs now to start being a little braver.

[Kuwabatake Sanjuro]

 

The UK will never have a normal government again.

[bickster]

18 minutes ago, Kuwabatake Sanjuro said:

 

The UK will never have a normal government again.

What isn't “normal” about this? 

[Kuwabatake Sanjuro]

9 minutes ago, bickster said:

What isn't “normal” about this?

Getting into bed with crypto crooks in 2024 is very embarrassing and not what you would hope for if you wanted a progressive improvement from Tory rule.