Topic: Keir 'Brexit' Labour

[Andy @ Allerton!]

So..

(Feel free to close this thread Mods)


Under Jeremy fucking Corbyn as a Remainer I felt abandoned and shat on.

Brexit was a far-right power-grab until that clueless twat appeared. But that's water under the bridge.

With Starmer now taking for granted the left and once again abandoning Remainers - how do you feel?

I feel pretty fucking angry to the extent that until they change their stance, Labour can get to fuck.

Appeasing all the 'Working class' dickheads voting against their own fucking rights and their kids and their own fucking standards of living.

Fuck off Labour. Get a fucking grip.

[Jiminy Cricket]

Under Jeremy fucking Corbyn as a Remainer I felt abandoned and shat on.

Brexit was a far-right power-grab until that clueless twat appeared. But that's water under the bridge.

With Starmer now taking for granted the left and once again abandoning Remainers - how do you feel?

I feel pretty fucking angry to the extent that until they change their stance, Labour can get to fuck.

Appeasing all the 'Working class' dickheads voting against their own fucking rights and their kids and their own fucking standards of living.

Fuck off Labour. Get a fucking grip.

Under the FPTP system, this is pretty-much inevitable. Where some voters feel very strongly about a particular issue, and the political parties are forced to appeal more widely, there is always the danger that significant issues end up being underrepresented or not even represented at all. PR would better represent minority and/or divisive issues.

[Elmo!]

Under the FPTP system, this is pretty-much inevitable. Where some voters feel very strongly about a particular issue, and the political parties are forced to appeal more widely, there is always the danger that significant issues end up being underrepresented or not even represented at all. PR would better represent minority and/or divisive issues.

Yep, it's basically a built in feature of FPTP that you have to target a small part of the electorate and take the rest of your vote for granted.

[rob1966]

So..

(Feel free to close this thread Mods)


Under Jeremy fucking Corbyn as a Remainer I felt abandoned and shat on.

Brexit was a far-right power-grab until that clueless twat appeared. But that's water under the bridge.

With Starmer now taking for granted the left and once again abandoning Remainers - how do you feel?

I feel pretty fucking angry to the extent that until they change their stance, Labour can get to fuck.

Appeasing all the 'Working class' dickheads voting against their own fucking rights and their kids and their own fucking standards of living.

Fuck off Labour. Get a fucking grip.

Its a rock and a hard place though. When you have staunch Labour areas voting in a Tory to Get Brexit Done, giving these c*nts an 80 seat majority, then that is scary, so you can either go full on remain and let the Tories back in, which will happen, or you make the party line appeal to them to get a Labour government and then you put out absolute FACTS that Brexit isn't working and that we need to change the way the relationship works with the EU to get the economy sorted. It's sort of like something I heard when learning to ride a motorbike and rights of way with cars "there's no point being in the right if you are lying in the gutter with a broken leg"

I'm still hearing dickheads like my Dad defending Boris, defending Brexit. There are too many ready made excuses, Covid/Ukraine and peoples absolute stubbornness to admit they were wrong, to risk it. If he gets it wrong and it backfires, we've another 5 years of Tory rule and I dread to think what state the country will be in after that.

[Drinks Sangria]

Unfortunately Starmer and Labour need to take the stance that will give them the best chance of getting back into power. The bigger battles can be waged once he's actually PM.

[Circa1892]

This thread is going to go well.

[stewil007]

This thread is going to go well.

I stopped reading after the Corbyn as a remainer bit.

[Dull Tools]

Under the FPTP system, this is pretty-much inevitable. Where some voters feel very strongly about a particular issue, and the political parties are forced to appeal more widely, there is always the danger that significant issues end up being underrepresented or not even represented at all. PR would better represent minority and/or divisive issues.

Funnily enough though there are more remainers now then brexit fans. Mainly because of the age swing since the vote. 3 years of mainly pro EU youngsters coming through.

Worse thing is it is going to split a lot of voters between Labour and Lib Dems. Probably more of a Green support too.

[Nobby Reserve]

I stopped reading after the Corbyn as a remainer bit.

I'm assuming there should be a comma after Corbyn. Reads OK then.

[Stockholm Syndrome]

I stopped reading after the Corbyn as a remainer bit.

To be fair it wasn't saying Corbyn was a remainer, the exact opposite in fact

[stewil007]

I'm assuming there should be a comma after Corbyn. Reads OK then.

eats shoots and leaves

[Drinks Sangria]

I'm assuming there should be a comma after Corbyn. Reads OK then.

Corbyn reads OK Magazine?

Thought he was more of a Hello man.

[Linudden]

1) Why do you guys love the EU so much to the point it's become a bit of a fetish? It's no less corrupt than the UK system. Just because the Tories dislike it doesn't mean it's good. Have a little sense of perspective here. Closer ties is the only feasible thing but membership really is pointless. The EU is essentially a German governmental blackmail operation to have access to their internal market at this rate.

Then the organization pays off foreign politicians to get a piece of the pie as 'Parliamentarians' so that no-one will campaign to dislodge the sinking ship. Unless you guys haven't noticed we're having the same issues with living costs here in the EU as you have in Britain. It's just the same. Except that the German government grab our hydroelectricity from us under EU treaties and bankrupt Swedish companies and customers. Nothing good comes out of it apart from the German market access which is a catch 22 once we've lost our energy independence. I guess it's all wonderful for people who like to move to different countries but I'm not one of them so I couldn't care less about that aspect. Yeah the Tory Brexit twats are self-serving and also an elite cabal but it doesn't mean their opposition elsewhere is puppies and rainbows.

2) The Libdems will have a field day with Labour on the EU question in the next election, which will make getting a Labour majority nearly impossible.

3) Starmer does what he has to do. Brexit won in more than 400 of the seats so appealing to Cambridge, Islington and Lewisham will only serve to increase already landslide majorities.

4) Labour have bigger problems. People only know what they're against, not what they're for. Centrist Labour MP's don't really know how to rile up the masses. By-election turnouts have been abysmal.

[Nobby Reserve]

I get that any Labour leader needs to build a coalition amongst the left-of-centre, but Starmer seems to be targeting voters that are simply not going to vote Labour.

In doing so, he's alienating more voters (the left and remainers)

His gamble is that, like with New Labour in 1997, those to the left of centre will see ejecting the Tories as more important than anything. Additionally, many from the left (and I'm not talking far-left here, but even the mid-left) in 1997 assumed much of the 'Tory-lite' rhetoric coming from Blair et al before the election was just froth to appease the centrists and 'soft Tories'. Those people now have a precedent when they look at Starmer. And, of course, politics has become more fragmented and 'special interest', 'thanks' in no small part to the Internet and social media.

By jettisoning some of his pledges (on policies that are actually popular with the wider public) and backing himself into a corner, not with ruling out seeking to rejoin the EU in the next Parliament (which is actually a correct call), but by ruling out the SM (it was totally unnecessary to do so), he's going to lose support.


All this may be moot anyway, though. A few journos are confident that Durham Police are going to issue a FPN.

Wonder if Burnham could find a safe seat suddenly open up...

[ljycb]

Starmer has to show the electorate what the country under his premiership will look like, and the country is not part of the European Union, so I think what he is doing is sensible and to be expected.

[wige]

I'm a remainer and he hasn't alienated me by saying what he has.

Brexit is done. The leave campaign cheated - yes, but ultimately the remain side lost. The time to reverse any of this has passed, there's no way we'd get back in with the powers/rights/influence we had.

I think we just have to get on with the situation as it is and make the best of it. To make the next general election or labour policy about wanting back into the EU would kill any chances of victory imo.

[gregor]

As a remainer, I think it's probably a smart move. Yes, I'd love Labour to come out with a huge rejoin campaign, and it might make me feel great going in and ticking the box, but I'm really not their target audience. I live in one of the safest Labour seats in the country and have the "luxury" if I want of voting for a rejoin party knowing that Labour will win the seat easily anyway.

Starmer isn't stupid, and he knows that a Labour majority is fairly unlikely, but that being the biggest party isn't. I think he also knows that in any coalition, the Lib Dems price will be voting reform and closer ties with the EU. If Labour don't win a majority, they're not tied to their manifesto in the way they would be if they'd won outright, and hopefully we can get to a point where there is a coalition government who end up with some sort of Norway style relationship with the EU. I'd be amazed if any future Conservative government changed that, as all but the biggest lunatics in the party know that Brexit is a fucking disaster and that we'd be far better off as a country and an economy with that sort of relationship, while also appeasing Little England as we won't have actually rejoined officially.

[No666]

I'd hope that Starmer would be more open to  Macron's idea of a looser tier of cooperation between the EU and non-EU European countries (presuming he's still around to steer it) than Johnson, in thrall to his swivel-eyed backbench, could be. I really think Starmer has to be pretty pragmatic in his approach and even more so in his utterances before an election. Afterwards, you'd hope he'd establish a better relationship with the EU and start to steer the country towards the kind of compromise Macron was floating.

[filopastry]

Sadly Brexit was done for the forseeable when the Tories got a majority in 2019.

The reason I was so vehemently pro second ref at that stage is that I knew full well it would be massively difficult to undo the damage of Brexit, a majority of people may currently think that Brexit isn't going well but no sign that there is anything close to a majority of people who want to go through a second referendum on Rejoin or anything close to it.

If we ever Rejoin it will likely be due to a people led movement rather than being driven by anything political parties do, and we aren't remotely there yet.

Even then you still have to deal with the prospect of telling everyone they should be happier with a worse deal with the EU than the one we just gave up, and the EU is likely to be cautious as they know full well the Tories would likely go full Brexit mode again the next time they were in power and they don't want that disruption either.

Labour obviously doesn't want to fight a Brexit based election and the Tories do, which pretty much tells you there isn't much choice on this one.

Just to add if Labour can't keep the Tories out of power in '24, I wouldn't have much hope by the following election if the Tories keep going down the populist authoritarian path under their new leader, with control of the electoral commission etc.

[Red-Soldier]

So..

(Feel free to close this thread Mods)


Under Jeremy fucking Corbyn as a Remainer I felt abandoned and shat on.

Brexit was a far-right power-grab until that clueless twat appeared. But that's water under the bridge.

With Starmer now taking for granted the left and once again abandoning Remainers - how do you feel?

I feel pretty fucking angry to the extent that until they change their stance, Labour can get to fuck.

Appeasing all the 'Working class' dickheads voting against their own fucking rights and their kids and their own fucking standards of living.

Fuck off Labour. Get a fucking grip.

Great first post there.

[Iska]

once again abandoning Remainers

I don’t understand this at all.  There’s no ‘Remain’ anymore.  It’s done, settled, finished.  It’s a dead issue - not only can we literally not-remain, because we’ve left, but we can’t rejoin either.  It’s just completely impossible.  There’s no way the country moves from years of arguing about brexit, and Brexit winning, straight into years of arguing about rejoining.  Starmer is taking the only position he can possibly take.  Move on, you’re shouting at clouds.

[WhereAngelsPlay]

Not sure what you expect him to say.

[Red Viper]

Don't really care about the Remain issue. My biggest problem with him is he's essentially a Tory in all but name. Is he a more left leaning Tory? Sure, but he's still right of centre. He's also yet to communicate effectively what, if any, plan he has for the country if Labour were to come into power. So yeah, there's just absolutely nothing there to motivate anyone to vote for his Labour Party apart from the obvious "let's get the Tories out".

[Elmo!]

My issue with Starmer is his absolute disdain for democracy.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sir-keir-starmer-will-block-independence-vote-if-labour-win-election-9xjq5vpn6

This idea that Labour can force the SNPs hand by refusing a referendum and daring the SNP into not supporting them with Confidence and Supply and letting the Tories in.

This isn't something that should be used as a tool to force anothers parties hand. There is a democractic mandate, and they should be supporting it regardless of the result of any GE.

[Red-Soldier]

Not sure what you expect him to say.

Who?  Andy?  Yes, I agree.

[Father Ted]

Don't really care about the Remain issue. My biggest problem with him is he's essentially a Tory in all but name. Is he a more left leaning Tory? Sure, but he's still right of centre. He's also yet to communicate effectively what, if any, plan he has for the country if Labour were to come into power. So yeah, there's just absolutely nothing there to motivate anyone to vote for his Labour Party apart from the obvious "let's get the Tories out".

And that’s sabotaged by the years of wrecking, resignations, breakaway parties and former MP’s ennobled by the Conservative Party for services rendered in helping keep Corbyn out. Lots of people will hear ‘let’s get the Tories’ out and immediately remember how certain elements of the PLP resolutely refused to do anything of the sort when it was them asked to get behind something they weren't totally sold on. That rhetoric can’t help but seem deeply ironic given five years of Labour MP’s agreeing that their own Party was tantamount to Nazi Germany, their own members were terrorists and the party was basically a haven of scum & villainy that should be completely wiped off the political map. Luckily the healing power of the haircut & the flag solved those problems almost overnight.

Admittedly, large segments of the party would brief against their own reflections and have behaved in the same way for years, regardless of who is leader.

[gregor]

Don't really care about the Remain issue. My biggest problem with him is he's essentially a Tory in all but name. Is he a more left leaning Tory? Sure, but he's still right of centre.

Can you give some examples of why you think that? I don't think Starmer is great or anything, I think he's a competent if a bit dull safe pair of hands. I'm no expert on him by any stretch, but I'm struggling to see what in his personal background, legal or political career makes him right of centre. He seems fairly clearly centre-left, but I'd honestly be interested in what makes you think that as I see it a lot - and by the way I don't really want to see "banned Corbyn" in the answer.

[TheShanklyGates]

I don’t understand this at all.  There’s no ‘Remain’ anymore.  It’s done, settled, finished.  It’s a dead issue - not only can we literally not-remain, because we’ve left, but we can’t rejoin either.  It’s just completely impossible.  There’s no way the country moves from years of arguing about brexit, and Brexit winning, straight into years of arguing about rejoining.  Starmer is taking the only position he can possibly take.  Move on, you’re shouting at clouds.

I hate it with every fibre of my being but this is correct unfortunately. Brexit is a fait accompli, it was as close to a total victory as you can get in a political system where, in theory at least, no parliament should be able to bind its successor. The country simply cannot afford another term of Tory government and, sadly, if Labour campaigned on taking us back into the EU or into the single market/customs union (which would be seen as rejoining by stealth) they would lose.

[TSC]

Durham police just announced no case to answer re Starmer (sky news)

[TheShanklyGates]

Durham police just announced no case to answer re Starmer (sky news)

And quite right too. Was always an invention of the right wing press, who whipped up a storm in a tea cup so they could try to play the 'they're all the same' card to defend Big Dog.

[JerseyKloppite]

The Labour party thread(s) have had to be repeatedly locked in recent years because posters are unable to be civil. This is a huge shame and has become part of a wider discussion about whether the nature of modern politics is so deeply unpleasant and poisonous that any political thread is doomed from the beginning and the whole lot should be sacked off. Given that they provide useful information and, on occasion, some thoughtful debate, this would be a huge shame.

Giving this thread a title and an OP which is plainly inflammatory does not help matters. The decision taken by Starmer / Labour not to seek to re-enter the EU may be regrettable to many but it's plainly based on pragmatism. We can't join and leave the EU every few years when a new government is elected, an enormous amount of time and resource has already been devoted to arrangements for leaving (and will continue to be in the next couple of years), and there would be a horrible backlash from those who see this as a betrayal.

As someone who voted Remain, and who wishes that the clock could be turned back on the whole thing, this is obviously not the outcome I wanted. But if Labour seriously want to be elected in two years, especially if they genuinely have hopes of forming a Government without coalition, they will need to ensure a broad appeal, much in the same way that the Tories have over the last decade or more straddled the views of moderates and the raving ERG-types. It's not a basis for calm stability once in power but it is the only way to actually get into government in the first place.

The nature of this broad support base is reflected on this forum, which is mostly left-leaning and Labour supporting. But not everyone here is to the left of the party, and it is important that those with different political views can express them courteously and without antagonising others.

If posters actually want a Labour party thread, they need to come at the whole thing with a different approach.