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The problem is the country is in such a fucking mess, it will take Labour years to try and sort it out. The fact Starmer won’t even think about joining the single market is stupid too. Probably appeasing the Brexit Labour voters.
It’s such a predictable cycle. Labour get in, spend a shit load of money sorting everything out, then in 5 years time the Conservatives will say “look how much money they’ve wasted”, and everyone will forget about what the Cons have done with money in the last few years…and that’s a best case scenario.
Also don’t forget both the Tories and Labour variously doing major projects only for the next government to take the credit, while simultaneously criticising the previous govenment for both not investing and spending more than them, as the next government only finished the project and aren’t starting anything new.
“Luckily” the Tories know they have no chance of winning, so they’re cancelling all the major projects and salting the earth so that Labour don’t get to take the credit in a few years.
(representative democracy is a scam give me an absolute monarch or direct democracy only please & thank you)
(or frankly the realistic option of elected people who set the agenda and weekly referendums where people vote on the things they care about and abstain/don’t show up for other things)
I like the idea of weekly referendums, but I need some convincing because of how Brexit went.
I think that because referendums are so rare and it was such a major issue that people came out in droves to vote even if they didn’t have a strong opinion, and that’d probably still happen for “big things” but one would hope for normal things that you’d only get serial voters, who are likely to be informed given they’re voting all the time, and people who are interested in the subject matter
The fact Starmer won’t even think about joining the single market is stupid too.
Joining the single market would simplify border issues but it wouldn’t solve them… We’d have to join the Customs Union and the common VAT area as well to do that. SM-only is not completely pointless but there is a massive political risk attached because it doesn’t solve all the problems its advocates pretend it does.
There are only two ways to make Brexit work. One is to be an EU member in all but name (following all the rules but having a very limited role in making the rules). The other is a united Ireland (with a lot more expenditure on customs and warehousing in Britain).
The first is politically impossible, and also pointless. The second is up to the people of the island of Ireland and requires a British govt which is willing to invest in the real economy, rather than keeping most of us around to create the illusion of a real country instead of a tax haven based on a massive casino.
Labour aren’t going to win without Brexit supporting Labour voters in the North. Keir knows this. He wants to win. Thus he’s staying quiet on the Brexit issue.
The world has moved on from the divisions of 2016. The idea that Brexit was a bad idea is now pretty common outside the political bubble. Even among Leave voters, few think Brexit has been a success.
The economic reality of what Britain outside the EU looks like and the global geopolitical realignment that has happened since that day in 2016 - Russia’s warmongering in our European neighbourhood and the very real prospect of a future Republican president (if not Trump this November, then someone else 4 or 8 years later) abandoning NATO - obviously should lead (and is leading) to people who voted for Brexit rethinking Britain’s relationship with the EU.
And anyway - rejoining the Single Market wouldn’t be undoing Brexit, it would just be doing literally what the Brexiters promised their voters they would do in the first place.
Starmer is being dramatically too cautious about the most impactful thing he could do to improve things in Britain.
Err sorry were you replying to me or OP?
I was replying to you (you were saying Starmer is staying quiet because he needs Brexit voters in the North).
I’m saying that if that’s the case, he’s thinking of the Brexit voters of 2016, not what these people think about things in 2024.
Oh all right, thanks.
Yeah I do think he’s got an eye on that 2016 Labour Brexit vote. I also think that while the situation has changed with respect to Brexit, it clearly hasn’t changed enough in the vote Labour camp to make the Labour leader change his position for this election. He’s not stupid and would have done some serious polling and canvassing in the the Brexit Labour heartlands. Probably also wants to mop up some Tory votes as well.
Starmer needs to court the Brexit vote to get into power. Right now he’s happy to do that of that means a win in the election. Wed Love him to be idealistic and say: enough with this nonsense let’s rejoin. But he’s being realistic. It needs a change in the Tory Brexit voting minds… but first it needs a change in the Labour Brexit minds.
I don’t think Starmer is stupid but I think Labour’s large polling lead has - paradoxically - encouraged him to be very politically timid, to the detriment of his party and the country.
Broadly speaking the Labour leadership seems to be acting as if, if literally nothing changes between now and election day, then Labour will win a landslide. That means no genuine big new policy announcements, because any policy change is seen as a roll of the dice that could change the polling status quo. Rejoining the single market whilst staying outside the EU could be a popular policy - polling shows that even Labour Leave voters support it by a 53% to 31% margin - and would give an incoming Labour government an actual policy option to help turn around the economy, but Starmer’s caution means forgoing this in favour of saying literally nothing novel. The Labour leadership think any change is a risk, and why take a risk when you’re already sitting on a polling lead.
In general I’m favourable towards Starmer, and certainly in comparison to what came immediately before him. But on several issues - Europe, electoral reform, Gaza/Israel - he’s adopting bad cautious positions to protect the enormous polling lead over the Tories he’s stumbled into. These are going to end up doing him more harm than good in the long run.
And you know the second Tories are out, the articles start about how Labour hasn’t solved whatever problem the Tories caused yet. It’s the conservative way. Cause as much damage as you can while in power, whine about said damage when not. Repeat until you can establish a dictatorship.
ruling out transformative change just all but guarantees that any labour government lasts a short period of time before the tories come back while courting the fringe right of their party through populism.
I hope to god they don’t. I know it’s unlikely but I will not relax until those bastards are out of my government, Brexit was unforgivable to me, to say nothing of the budget fiasco.
I really wish we could get a better Labour leader than Starmer though… But even a bad labour leader has to be better than these past few years.
Truth. That’s why we need to stop faffing around with voting for ‘nice to have’ candidates. Get the tories out so thoroughly that they are finished for a generation at least. Get Labour in and then we can look at other options. But we must get the tories into the bin first.
Water may be wet. But let’s wait until January to be sure.
Or indeed any day at all ;-)
The Tories need to go the way of the Whigs.
It pisses me off that this getting coverage when it contains no actual new information and is so obviously a conservative communications strategy.
Rishi is not accepting the rejection of his ideas at all. He’s conjuring the spectre of hung parliament as a rallying cry to disaffected tory voters. Maria Caulfield quote about the differences between local and govt elections really hammers this home and every media outfit is blithely repeating it all like they’re tory sock puppets.
Best I’ve seen so far is the independent and, while they add some sensible context, even they are quoting sunak as if he’s speaking in good faith.
Just fucking call it already
the blue tories might not… the red tories probably, though.
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