UK Politics Omnishambles: Page 117 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One more in the Tolly

UK Politics Omnishambles

Burnwinter

Starmer will struggle to implement worthwhile policy without a mandate because he'll be relentlessly attacked by the press for anything that shifts towards collective benefit.

As for Corbyn he was "genuinely" disliked because he was made the subject of a cynical, broad spectrum press onslaught.

Labour's 2019 platform was largely banal social investment: increase NHS funding, increase the minimum wage, stop raising the pension age, publicly funded allied health care, more effort to reach nett zero emissions, scrap universal credit, tax private schools, free or nearly free buses. Incremental, practical stuff.

The controversial elements were the re-nationalisation of energy and water, the post, telecoms and the railways, and a second Brexit referendum. None of which sounds too bad to me.

Coombs

Burnwinter Starmer will struggle to implement worthwhile policy

I'm not convinced he wants to, so I'm not sure it'll be much of a struggle.

Burnwinter

Burnwinter Labour's 2019 platform was largely banal social investment: increase NHS funding, increase the minimum wage, stop raising the pension age, publicly funded allied health care, more effort to reach nett zero emissions, scrap universal credit, tax private schools, free or nearly free buses. Incremental, practical stuff.

Maybe one of the Starmer scholars on here can tell us how much of this is still Labour policy ...

Mirth

Burnwinter Bit wild to say that someone with a 150+ majority doesn't have a mandate. The manifesto matters, of course, but the number of seats won in the Commons matters too in the raw calculus of political power and also with the general public. And as @goon said, once in power most parties get about 10 years to shoot their shot based on recent history.

For instance, Blair deliberately never mentioned making the Bank of England independent in his '97 manifesto but it was one of the first things he did once elected and arguably one of the most consequential policies that still impacts us to this day.

JazzG

Daz Isn't this basically just how politics and 'democracy' works now in Western liberal democracies ?

Sad state of affairs. I don't know too much about Europe but last time I think people here were genuinely enthusiastic about someone was when Blair came in 1997 and in America when Obama first stood.

Burnwinter As for Corbyn he was "genuinely" disliked because he was made the subject of a cynical, broad spectrum press onslaught.

He was disliked because people didn't like him, not because the media told them so. If that was the case Reform are getting a rough ride compared to others yet they are surging in polls. This whole argument that voters are dumb sheep who follow what the press says doesn't wash with me. It will be interesting to see if he can win as an independent.

Burnwinter

Coombs With no mandate he's likely to end up damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. The "antipolitics thesis" becomes pretty much self-fulfilling when there's a press corps that can't get clicks unless they're engaging people negatively in whatever the government's up to.

Daz

JazzG The problem Starmer has imo is people aren't voting him into power, they are voting the conservatives out of power if that makes sense. People are more enthusiastic about getting rid of the Conservatives than excited by Labour

Isn't this basically just how politics and 'democracy' works now in Western liberal democracies ?

RocktheCasbah

I don't feel super optimistic or enthused by the prospect of a Kier Starmer administration, but I do know this: we can't continue as are and, further, if Starmer really can put country before party, he has a chance. Too much has been sacrificed by leaders too scared to stand up to their MPs.

FEBravo

I'm not a big fan of Starmer. What he did to Corbyn with the help of the "left wing" press like the guardian etc was not cool. But it will make a massive difference not to have a total moron at the helm, and while I don't anticipate any earth shattering policies, the competence and appearing of it will go a long way in and of itself. Then who knows, maybe once he's elected he'll discover things he actually believes in other than getting in power.

Burnwinter

Mirth Bit wild to say that someone with a 150+ majority doesn't have a mandate.

Tell the press that when Starmer announces some boring, rational, costed policy I guess. He'll without doubt be accused of not having a mandate for anything that isn't on the table now—and where there's a capacity to stoke fear about the costs or impacts, he'll suffer. Take a look at what's happened to Albanese down here: I don't make the rules.

Mirth And as @goon said, once in power most parties get about 10 years to shoot their shot based on recent history.

Times have changed and these cycles have tightened dramatically as a consequence of the "antipolitics" or "managed decline" under discussion, but if Starmer doesn't get a decade with a good majority from here it'd be an abject failure.

Burnwinter

JazzG He was disliked because people didn't like him, not because the media told them so. If that was the case Reform are getting a rough ride compared to others yet they are surging in polls. This whole argument that voters are dumb sheep who follow what the press says doesn't wash with me.

Sure, ideology isn't real and the fact that all the news sources available to people are spinning like crazy has no effect. Good one.

There are long documentaries about the treatment Corbyn got from the press and from his own party—unlike that of any other UK political leader in memory. You don't have to take my word for it.

A front group was created to white-ant him called the "Campaign Against Antisemitism" and it spent literal years putting together a "dossier" that didn't include a single antisemitic incident. This kind of fluff was used as the ammunition to destroy his reputation by people working within UK Labour, including Keir Starmer.

As for "thinking the people are idiots" that's precisely what Brexit was, and Reform now is. Utterly cynical exercises in ideological manipulation. Brexit was going to "solve human movement" wasn't it, how'd that work out?

goon

I think the only things Labour don't have a mandate for is re-joining the EU/single market/customs union and putting up the obvious taxes since they've explicitly said they won't do those things. I think everything else is pretty much fair game.

With those tax and borrowing promises I think the lack of fiscal headroom will be a much bigger issue for them than the lack of a mandate.

JazzG

goon With those tax and borrowing promises I think the lack of fiscal headroom will be a much bigger issue for them than the lack of a mandate.

They'll come out and say things are much worse than expected and the Tories have fucked us all over more than even we had thought and they have no choice.

Mirth

goon With those tax and borrowing promises I think the lack of fiscal headroom will be a much bigger issue for them than the lack of a mandate.

those fiscal and borrowing promises are arbitrary anyway.

FEBravo

Burnwinter There are long documentaries about the treatment Corbyn got from the press and from his own party—unlike that of any other UK political leader in memory. You don't have to take my word for it.

That was my sense too but I didn't read extensively on the topic. Is there any of these documentaries you could quickly point to? I'd be very interested!

Burnwinter

FEBravo "The Labour Files" on Al-Jazeera

Coombs

Edited out weirdly flippant question. Serious inquest now on Kevin Campbell's care according to BBC. His family must be so, so frustrated.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4ng9zvd9rno

RocktheCasbah

Sure I've said this before, but Jeremy Corbyn wasn't taken seriously because he wasn't serious. And if he was, he had a funny way of showing it. My mate Rachid is as leftie as they come, lives in his constituency and was horrified when Corbyn was elected as leader. We had the worst possible LOTO at the worst possible time.

Gurgen

RocktheCasbah put Islington to shame that man

Don Pacifico

RocktheCasbah similarly, I seem to remember a Corbyn supporter doing a short doc for Vice following Corbyn and his inner circle after becoming leader. End result was he ended up no longer supporting Corbyn.

Burnwinter

RocktheCasbah Sure I've said this before, but Jeremy Corbyn wasn't taken seriously because he wasn't serious.

Depends on your definition of serious. He's pretty much the only elected politician in the UK to have held a decent line on the ANC, apartheid and Mandela throughout his career, or Palestine—history proving him correct in both cases.

Corbyn's a soft fuddy-duddy whose bedside manner wasn't well suited to Question Time, but the likes of McDonnell around him were sound operators. And with no disrespect to your leftie mate, Corbyn was elected leader in 2015 because he was the candidate with actual socialist values following a huge upsurge in Labour party membership (100,000s of new members) under the £3 system that briefly existed.

Those members were decried as "entryists" by the remnant Blairites in the party, and depicted as "outside agitators" relentlessly by the press with all the usual rhetoric about "champagne socialism" and so on, but both actual election manifestos that Corbyn and his supporters put forward amounted to almost boring, social democratic orthodoxy. It was sensible stuff that would've been great for the UK for the last five years compared to what there has been.

RocktheCasbah

Don Pacifico I'm not surprised, my sister was seconded by the NAO to the Houses of Parliament a while back and came into contact with Corbyn on the regular - she was shocked by how stupid he was.

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