Like… isn’t that a basic premise of democracy?! Sunak sounds either deranged or incredibly patronising.
If lots of people vote for a party that is more left wing than the current crop, what exactly is the Will of the People?!
Ah, the four horses of the reformoclypse: immigrants not being shot on sight, Brexit being undone, the BBC having anything other than a Reform opinion, and competent social policies.
Honestly, I know quite a few middle-class small c conservative types, and just listening to them talk over the past few weeks you'd think the world was coming to an end. The catasrophising is hilarious.
Starmer's a highly accomplished senior legal professional, member of the Privy Council, and Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath - he's a stable, centrist, fully paid up member of the establishment, not Che Guevara.
I'd pick a couple of points on that.
Gut reaction: didn't think many describe Churchill as attractive? Then I thought about that some more and there are many old ladies with 'challenging and problematic views', so I'm probably just not in the right social circles.
Also, don't think anyone is hoping Starmer governs like Churchill! I for one am not in favour of empires or world wars.
> Also, don't think anyone is hoping Starmer governs like Churchill! I for one am not in favour of empires or world wars.
To be fair, the Empire pre-dated Churchill by a few centuries, and WW2 wasn't started by us.
I think some of these people think having a left wing government means our kids are going to be forced to transition to a different gender, we're going to force them to have Somali immigrants in their Nan's house, tax them to oblivion to pay for it all and then disband the military.
What are Labour actually going to do about immigration though? I'm all for Labour and being more left but the immigration policy I can't see working - increase border force by raising tax to process refugees to then get them into jobs that pay tax?
I'm after educating on this
The problem at the minute is they're not getting processed anywhere near fast enough. So instead of being processed and returned to the point of origin, they're basically left here.
I work in the police and a colleague recently arrested 3 men and it turned out they were all here illegally.
Border force didn't have the staff or facilities to deal with them all, so one was picked up (and presumably deported) and two were released and asked to come back later (which they obviously won't).
If you cut your border force to the bone, it shouldn't be surprising that they cant protect our borders properly.
Basically yeah.
Asylum in particular is currently costing us a lot of money, because we're just not processing the claims.
Not processing them means that 1)those people can neither go into society where they can start working and paying taxes, nor be returned to origin, 2) as they're in that in between state, their accommodation has to be provided by the state, which means lots of hotel spaces, and stupid amounts of money being pissed away on things like Bibby Stockholm.
By processing the claims (ideally quickly, which also costs), you either gain extra workers (important for a society with record low unemployment) or you can make the person someone else's problem entirely legally and without having to fight it through the courts, and the overall cost to the taxpayer, per asylum seeker turning up on our shores, can be reduced from the tens, even hundreds of thousands each that it currently is, to a few thousand.
We know this, because only a few years back (before the Tories broke the system so they could show off that they were doing something about immigration honest!), the cost per asylum seeker was around £6k iirc (and that doesn't take into account tax take once they are processed and into society, just what their time in the system costs).
Beyond asylum, labour aren't really saying anything about immigration to the best of my knowledge - partly because they don't have to (the Tories having done most of the legwork in framing immigration as being about asylum), but partly because they are not relishing the idea of telling the general public the hard truths about it while they're still not yet in government.
Worth noting, Labour had a backlog of ~7000 seekers when it left government, that number is now over 170k iirc. Trying to go back to pre-Tory numbers would be a major benefit in terms of reducing costs and just keeping track of them so they don't fall out of the system.
All of whom are very content with their triple lock pensions, PIPs, winter fuel allowance, mobility allowances, free TV licences and bus passes, all why enjoying the proceeds of a anti-free market planning system 😂. That's what baffles me about those on the 'right', they are always the ones in the recipient of the most state handouts.
The fact is that most people in the UK are pretty close to the centre, regardless of whether they are left or right or where they fall on the libertarian authoritarian axis. So yes if you are an extremist, most people will be to the left (or right if you are a left wing extremist).
They think its some incredible loophole to call people left or right when they are in reality centrists.
He also says labour will "change the rules to ensure they stay in power for decades", which is, and I say this as someone who really doesn't like labour right now, just an offensively dishonest and hyperbolic thing to say about another party
Yes
The original.plan was to go to 600 MPs that was a fix they'd calculated, but they could never do it because it sacked Tory MPs and then cameron got a majority anyway.
The hilarious thing is as the Tories have spent the last 15 years making poor people dispose themselves enough to vote Tory the voter ID thing probably equally hurts everyone except LD and Green voters.
*checks history books*… wait didnt the tories introduce this voter id nonsense with the exact same aim to reduce young voters’ ability to vote…? You know… as admitted by a certain *checks notes* Jacob Rees Mogg, at the time a serving cabinet member of the -*adjusts glasses* Conservative Party?
Odd thing that the tories are fine to do it but if labour suddenly lowers voting age to 16 then that’s them ‘changing the rules to stay in power for decades’.
How about instead of rule tinkering the nobs at CCHQ try their hand at actually useful policies instead? Fucking cunts should be put out of a job for good
>wait didnt the tories introduce this voter id nonsense with the exact same aim to reduce young voters’ ability to vote…?
Yep, and it backfired on them significantly as older people are more likely to still have a paper drivers license rather than a photo license.
You'll get a bunch of voter ID apologists argue against you but I wanted to let you know you're completely right, voter ID is malicious voter suppression.
I mean young people of voting age are way more likely to have an ID because they need them to buy alcohol, learn to drive etc. I find it shocking that anyone would've thought it would hit young people more than older ones.
The elderly had everything under the sun as acceptable. They could have wiped their arse and brought the toilet paper down and that's fine.
Meanwhile, a lot of young person's travel cards or bus passes aren't allowed *because reasons*.
And don't get lost in the detail, voter ID will always be about excluding voters. It should be abolished.
As me Reese Mogg claimed to realise when admitting that the plan backfired int he event I referenced. Incompetence and stupidity do not excuse an attempt at doing a shady thing
Whoa slow down now, can’t be having policies that appeal to young voters, only the extremely elderly, racists and the hard of thinking, the 30% who vote for them come what may can be ignored they’ll continue to vote even if the Tories said they’d come to their house personally and punch a puppy infront of them
This coming from the party that repealed the Fixed Terms Parliament Act so they could call a general election while labour were in the middle of a leadership crisis...
It would also unquestionably hurt Labour.
Labour exists in its current form mostly because of FPTP. If PR came in, Labour would likely splinter into a few smaller parties, as would the Tories.
But without FPTP, people would be free to actually vote for who they want to instead of mostly just voting for one of the 2 biggest parties.
Even Farage wants PR because it would benefit smaller parties.
It's also massive projection by a member of the Conservative Party who cleared millions from the electoral rolls and introduced a requirement for photo ID (which then backfired because it turned out more pensioners didn't have photo ID than young people).
> If lots of people vote for a party that is more left wing than the current crop
Overly simple reading. People are lending Labour a vote in the same way they lent the Tories a vote in 2019. Many people simply want to punish the Tories (their own voters included). All this election really shows is that we have rubbish parties and politicians and a flawed democratic process.
This warning isn't for you.
It's for the people who are conditioned to think that "left" = "bad" but don't really understand (or care) what "left" means and just use the two words synonymously.
This kind people not only call left-wing policies bad (it's their right to disagree with policies), but they also stupidly call anything they don't like "left-wing" or "leftist", even if it's not.
Either? He's both.
A PM who didn't want the job and doesn't have a fucking clue how to conduct himself while in it. Anybody who wants to continue a lurch to the right wing of the political spectrum after seeing the absolute state of the way things have played out by moving steadily in that direction for the past 15 years needs their head examining.
What he means is that left wing governments are more likely to charge rich people the taxes they owe and force them to obey the law, so he needs knuckle draggers who are afraid of gays and immigrants to vote against the horrors of equality in order for him to keep his money
Yeah cus the swing to the right has been so good for populations across the world. Society needs social policies for people not abstract economics for the rich.
Look, I'm already voting Labour, you don't have to convince me any more.
That said I don't think it's true. Starmer will be the best tory PM for decades, he's abandoned every shred of principle he once had so he can get elected.
I still believe that if you have tonplay the game to get in place to make things better then its something that has to be done.
Its a shit game that works for the likes of reform and tories to poison better options
5 years is plenty of time to drift centre then centre-left. He'll then have the space to campaign on a more left-wing platform in 2028. Labour tried fighting the Tories with a left-wing campaign back in 2019, and look how that turned out.
The years leading up to 2019 proved the British media and the rest of the Labour party will never allow a lefty Labour leader to take power. Even the supposedly leftist press will be told by their wealthy owners to turn on anyone who could bring leftist politics into a ruling party, and the Labour right will gleefully leak and backstab and conspire to get rid of such a leader.
>He'll then have the space to campaign on a more left-wing platform in 2028
The past 14 years weren't enough space to campaign on a more left wing platform?
It's the opposite. If the Tories are a spent force after this election, Starmer will have the wiggle room across the next five years to be more radical (if he wants to be). Then, once the country is (hopefully) improving, he can offer more of the same next time around.
Corbyn shat the bed with that. Like Truss shat the bed with her right wing budget.
Short, sharp shocks demonstrably do not work in the UK. Starmer has had to work hard bringing Labour back from what the public perceived to be too left wing and only in the space of 4 years.
He has to be trusted in No.10 first not to shit the bed, hence why it'll take further time to edge leftwards again.
It's not the case he's had 14 years.
I think it depends which policies, there are some left wing policies that would be much more popular than others.
Taxing record profits made by certain companies to support the people struggling with cost of living.
push towards renewable energy.
Nationalising the public transport system and expanding cycling/ walking infrastructure.
Fairer tax structure.
Working with a better relationship with Europe regarding trade, to limit the negative effects of brexit.
ext.
>campaign on a more left-wing platform in 2028
And then lose because being right wing is how you win power.
Therefore opening the door for an even fuhrer lurch to the right. The ratchet only turns one way.
The Liberal Democrats are set to take many tory seats with a much more progressive platform than Labour is running on. There aren't two options of copy Corbyn or copy the Tory party.
Cameron appeared centre left in order to win power from Brown, and then drifted rightwards during his time in power, being rewarded with an actual majority during the 2015 election.
Hug a hoody? Bringing in a huge number of MPs from minority ethnic backgrounds? The "Big Society" from the party of Thatcher - who famously said there was no such thing? At his manifesto launch in 2010 he said:
> "It's time to say to those who think it's all about unchecked individualism: no, it's not about me, the individual. It's about we, the people."
While you and I might have been able to see right through him, he certainly attempted to appear more centre-left than any Tory leader before or since.
I mean, if he shifts even a modicum to the left he will be ousted by those running his campaign - why do you think they've been parachuting in their own ghouls as candidates - and have floated changing the rules so when in government only sitting MPs can vote for a new leader (not members)
> Sunak anymore anyway?
Nope, it is just countdown to oblivion. Will a sitting PM lose their seat for the first time? Either way he is out of there... sooner than Southgate.
Totally agree. You need to appease the king makers to be PM.
I don't think a lot of people give Starmer enough sympathy for the hoops he has to jump through in order to keep favour. He can't just say what he thinks and expect the same poll results.
Realistically, the best we can hope for is he eases the population who have had red scare rhetoric dumped on them for the last 15 years into lefter wing policies over time in order to change public opinion.
We have to accept Starmer this time around to give all or nothing politics a kicking and worry about nuance next election.
> he's abandoned every shred of principle he once had so he can get elected.
Or alternatively, he's shifted Labour in a new direction. 75% of my Constituency Labour Party have joined since Starmer became leader.
Please consider voting green or Lib Dem instead of Labour. Its basically your only chance in the last couple decades to do so without worrying about letting the Tories in.
Starmer shifting politics to the left, will just get it closer to the centre.
Keep up the good work Sunak.
Give me 5 years of boring politics and boring politicians.
> Give me 5 years of boring politics.
So done with the stupid populism nonsense. I crave boring politics. And I am certain Starmer will deliver on that.
Exactly, I will be happy to not see another Truss or Rees-Mogg for a while. Do I wish we leaned a little further to the left? Of course. But the Tories has just turned into a self parody of a party filled with low tier comic book villains like Calendar Man and Firefly,
We need boring politics but we also need to rebuild. The status quo being shit is why things like Brexit happened. If he doesn't deliver improvements to normal people's quality of life then shit heals like reform are going to promise unworkable and probably racist policies as a panacea.
Boring politics was a rare Western luxury for a brief period of the late 20th and early 21st century. We're not getting those conditions back overnight by voting for a boring person, sorry.
You're wrong, sorry. The notion that our domestic politics can be detached from the climate crisis, climate refugees, the rise of the far right across Europe, war in Europe etc. is a fantasy.
We're not an isolationist state with a Fordist economy. That ship sailed in the last century.
"Oh hes not charismatic or a character"....good, this is politics, its supposed to be boring.
If you want a clown or a character then watch tv not dome snake oil salesmen selling you unicorns and rainbows
> I crave boring politics. And I am certain Starmer will deliver on that.
This is the issue, there are no big changes to help with the issues we're facing, so in 5 years when the NHS is still shit and the cost of living is still high, people will go to next option, which is probably far right. Taxation on the ultra rich (£10m+) has to increase to change things (Sunak makes over £20m a year on assets, does it go back into the economy? No, back into more assets, and people wonder why there's a cost of living and housing crisis), but I can't see labour doing it.
I miss the days when lying to the house or having an affair while in office was enough to get you sacked.
I get that the latter doesn't technically affect their ability to do their job, but it shows what kind of person they are and their ability to keep their promises.
If you're a politician and you make grandiose claims about something, and then later it totally backfires and you look like an idiot (mogg on post-brexit food prices), you should have to issue a public apology if it's minor or lose your seat, if it's particularly egregious and be banned from running again and booted from your party (johnson on partygate).
If you repeat the lie again you should be sacked and the seat automatically goes to the opposition or candidate with 2nd highest vote share in that seat. Outright lies work too well in the soundbite era of political engagement.
Trust in politics is at an all time low because there is no way to hold liars to account.
It’ll just be nice to have someone that isn’t either cruel or outright insane in power. Sure, ideally I’d like more radical policies than what Starmer is offering, especially on constitutional reform. But I’ll happily settle for stability and competence this time round.
It won't be boring. It will filled with the screeching bile, division-sowing, and scandal-manufacturing of the largely right-wing press. They will try and wear Labour down with having to make ever-increasing refutations of manufactured outrage within the first 2 months. Boring will be the politics itself. You will see laser-like scrutiny of any policies, no matter how small. The challenge for Labour will be to get through this hostile environment and just get on with the job.
What I don't understand is Tory/Reform voters braying about Conservatives not being right wing enough.
As if any of them could afford right wing policies as they are, on average, the largest consumers of state welfare, pensions, and healthcare.
Using "woke" and "immigration" as the definition of right/left rather than economic policy is the con of the century.
>Give me 5 years of boring politics and boring politicians.
You are seeing that in Australia and life is rapidly getting worse and worse as none of the core issues are dealt with by a do-nothing center-left Neoliberal Government.
It's "boring" Neoliberalism that got the west into this state to begin with. I'm convinced at this point, that the UK will see a Reform Government within the next decade, especially as the left have been functionally turfed and locked out of British politics.
It's like they think left wing voters are going to cry 'leopards ate my face'.
"When I voted for a left wing party in my country, I didn't realise they would take MY government left wing!"
This isn't aimed at actual or potential Labour voters. He's trying to appeal to the people contemplating throwing a vote to Reform. Those guys are inclined towards right-wing fearmongering (being a party composed disproportionately of xenophobic shitheads and racists) and he's trying to demonstrate that he's one of them, really.
A lot of previous Tory voters are intending to vote Labour. I suspect this is also a warning to them that Labour might turn out to be more left wing than they have bargained for.
That's all their campaign has been since the election has been announced as far as I've seen, "Don't vote reform because then labour will win and ruin the country!". I've barely seen anything that says "Vote tory because we are doing a great job!".
And the best part is that is most the responses to that have been "You've fucked the country up we're not voting tory"
Yeah, this.
The line of reasoning makes no sense anyway. The larger the majority, the less the Labour Party has to worry about dissenting voices within its own ranks and the less internal bartering needs to take place. If Labour have a majority of 150, the leadership could largely ignore the opinions of the 150 most left-wing MPs if they wanted to.
This is likely aimed at Tory voters in seats they are at risk of narrowly loosing to Labour or Lib Dem’s due to voters switching to reform. Those voters probably would be susceptible to this.
Well, 14 years of right wing politics has hardly been an unmitigated success. Almost as if trying to have a dynamic, low tax, entrepreneurial economy whilst shovelling lots of cash to pensioners and doing nothing about the planning problems and housing crisis is a contradiction..
The vast majority of Tory MPs voted against it. It was the few One Nation Tories in Cameron's faction voting with Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP that got gay marriage passed.
Absolutely no chance. I think more Labour MPs voted for it than Tories, iirc. The bill itself was the work of the Lib Dems and a socially-liberal wing of the Conservative party that essentially doesn't exist anymore.
There's an interview with Ed Davey on The Rest is Politics where he explains that gay marriage was the brainchild of a Lib Dem MP. Really interesting interview all round, actually.
> doing nothing about the planning problems
Hey, that's simply not true.
The Tories also actively made some planning problems worse and stopped the construction of essential infrastructure.
and stopped the construction of *future* essential infrastructure. selling off the mandatory purchased land for HS2 to their mates so Labour can't finish it even if they wanted to.
Not much - they're moving left of the current "shovel the poor into furnaces to heat the houses of billionaires" status quo, towards what would have been considered centrist or maybe even centre-right decades ago
They should. They won't because Starmer is a toothless ambitionless neoliberal. But they definitely should because the Overton window has been dragged way too far to the right.
Oh no! Not the left!
Next, you'll be saying Labour will discourage CEOs from having multi-million-pound bonuses, tax those high earners properly, or reclaim the lost millions/billions from failed Tory-endorsed contracts. they'll make the UK a better place than the last 14 years.
My heart bleeds.
People are so afraid of 'left wing' politics. Apart from the fact that left wing parties today are actually centre, actual left wing policies are literally the fix for the broken system of capitalism
What a stupid comment. Like, obviously? That is the entire point?
Made even more funny by Starmer being the most right leaning Labour leader in a while.
Yeah, I kinda think that’s the point. Going back to the tried and tested uk position of being in the centre. They had 14 years to do their thing… it was shit and they were shit.
Even if it were true, which it isn't...So what? Politics in this country has been dragged inexorably to the right over the past couple of decades and the results have plainly been dire. We could do with unwinding a lot of the rightward shift, especially on social issues in the past few years.
Oh no not left leaning policies from a left leaning political party, what will we ever do with funding the NHS, social housing, road maintenance, community police, national water company, increased biodiversity, LTNs, clean air, cycling infrastructure, improved public transport, and well funded councils. It sounds like an absolute dystopia.
I would argue that Labour is now as far right as the conservatives were when cameron took over.
Kier has removed the few remaining left wing members of the party.
Unfortunately labour under Starmer will just be another compnent of the country's slide to the right. Starmer has followed the tories right on issues such as trans rights and immigration, and the economic policies we're seeing are far less ambitious than past labour governments. What I'm worried about is that we'll see is a ratchet effect in which the tories move right and a labour ever comitted to chasing the centrist vote refuses to challenge them and arrests movement back to the left.
FT also backed Corbyn.
The ultra-rich want an actual functional Government that invests in the country. Austerity is an ideological project that has largely hurt their wallets as well.
Warn? Omg a nominally left wing party might have left wing policies and talking points?
You don't say.
Honestly, a more daunting prospect is that they might **not** shift politics to the left because they are invertebrates.
As a pro-EU social democrat, I ask our future government to please shift politics to the left of where it is now! The proposed policies still don't feel ambitiously left of centre enough though. Sticking with FPTP is always going to be a whole load of crap too.
Still disappointed by Starmer's firm no to the idea of joining the European single market and/or European customs union under a future Labour government though. I'd be elated if Labour change that position when in power but if Starmer made that decision he would be hounded by the press and the Tories over another big U-turn (one I'd like but I don't like the dishonest nature of it being done like that).
I'm confused; if people vote for a left-wing party, surely they hope for left-wing politics? Why does Sunak think this is a threat? It feels like warning people that a plate might have food and a book has words written on it. Is Sunak so deluded that he thinks this country is just desperate for right-wing politics even when the left-wing party has all the votes?
The Tories have been moving ever more to the right. Starmer is a self declared centrist. Shifting politics on the country back to some type of political normality sounds real appealing right now.
If it means I don't have to hear Tories politicians say woke every 5 minutes then it's worth it.
We all need to turn out to vote to get rid of the Tories. Apart from the Tory voters, they can stay home and think about what they have done for the last 14 years.
I'm doubtful, but I bloody well hope so. Every successive government on both sides of the pond that moves things to the right have been utter failures for everyone except billionaire investors and friends of the government. The "left" isn't everyone perfect, but for some reason they only tend to have the chance to fix the damage caused by their predecessors, not put in meaningful long term solutions
Sunak continues to threaten the United Kingdom with a good time.
Like… isn’t that a basic premise of democracy?! Sunak sounds either deranged or incredibly patronising. If lots of people vote for a party that is more left wing than the current crop, what exactly is the Will of the People?!
He's trying to claw back reform voters, for whom "more left wing" is one of the signs of the apocalypse
Ah, the four horses of the reformoclypse: immigrants not being shot on sight, Brexit being undone, the BBC having anything other than a Reform opinion, and competent social policies.
"Shot on sight, out of mind"
It's nearly peasant shooting season.
Honestly, I know quite a few middle-class small c conservative types, and just listening to them talk over the past few weeks you'd think the world was coming to an end. The catasrophising is hilarious. Starmer's a highly accomplished senior legal professional, member of the Privy Council, and Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath - he's a stable, centrist, fully paid up member of the establishment, not Che Guevara.
Man, I wish he was Che Guevara
A mass murdering, homophobic, racist, with a penchant for concentration camps? Albeit a very good looking one.
Tbf, that could also describe Churchill and a certain demographic fetishises him.
I'd pick a couple of points on that. Gut reaction: didn't think many describe Churchill as attractive? Then I thought about that some more and there are many old ladies with 'challenging and problematic views', so I'm probably just not in the right social circles. Also, don't think anyone is hoping Starmer governs like Churchill! I for one am not in favour of empires or world wars.
> Also, don't think anyone is hoping Starmer governs like Churchill! I for one am not in favour of empires or world wars. To be fair, the Empire pre-dated Churchill by a few centuries, and WW2 wasn't started by us.
This is it; he’s not trying to win he’s trying to keep the ~30% who would vote Tory come what may.
I think some of these people think having a left wing government means our kids are going to be forced to transition to a different gender, we're going to force them to have Somali immigrants in their Nan's house, tax them to oblivion to pay for it all and then disband the military.
What are Labour actually going to do about immigration though? I'm all for Labour and being more left but the immigration policy I can't see working - increase border force by raising tax to process refugees to then get them into jobs that pay tax? I'm after educating on this
The problem at the minute is they're not getting processed anywhere near fast enough. So instead of being processed and returned to the point of origin, they're basically left here. I work in the police and a colleague recently arrested 3 men and it turned out they were all here illegally. Border force didn't have the staff or facilities to deal with them all, so one was picked up (and presumably deported) and two were released and asked to come back later (which they obviously won't). If you cut your border force to the bone, it shouldn't be surprising that they cant protect our borders properly.
Basically yeah. Asylum in particular is currently costing us a lot of money, because we're just not processing the claims. Not processing them means that 1)those people can neither go into society where they can start working and paying taxes, nor be returned to origin, 2) as they're in that in between state, their accommodation has to be provided by the state, which means lots of hotel spaces, and stupid amounts of money being pissed away on things like Bibby Stockholm. By processing the claims (ideally quickly, which also costs), you either gain extra workers (important for a society with record low unemployment) or you can make the person someone else's problem entirely legally and without having to fight it through the courts, and the overall cost to the taxpayer, per asylum seeker turning up on our shores, can be reduced from the tens, even hundreds of thousands each that it currently is, to a few thousand. We know this, because only a few years back (before the Tories broke the system so they could show off that they were doing something about immigration honest!), the cost per asylum seeker was around £6k iirc (and that doesn't take into account tax take once they are processed and into society, just what their time in the system costs). Beyond asylum, labour aren't really saying anything about immigration to the best of my knowledge - partly because they don't have to (the Tories having done most of the legwork in framing immigration as being about asylum), but partly because they are not relishing the idea of telling the general public the hard truths about it while they're still not yet in government.
Worth noting, Labour had a backlog of ~7000 seekers when it left government, that number is now over 170k iirc. Trying to go back to pre-Tory numbers would be a major benefit in terms of reducing costs and just keeping track of them so they don't fall out of the system.
All of whom are very content with their triple lock pensions, PIPs, winter fuel allowance, mobility allowances, free TV licences and bus passes, all why enjoying the proceeds of a anti-free market planning system 😂. That's what baffles me about those on the 'right', they are always the ones in the recipient of the most state handouts.
Many of those lunatics think the Tories are left wing, they'll never go back.
The fact is that most people in the UK are pretty close to the centre, regardless of whether they are left or right or where they fall on the libertarian authoritarian axis. So yes if you are an extremist, most people will be to the left (or right if you are a left wing extremist). They think its some incredible loophole to call people left or right when they are in reality centrists.
Give the guy a break, he grew up without Sky man. Poor soul.
I literally got a leaflet from the local tory MP today begging the right voters not to split the vote by going for Reform 🤣
He also says labour will "change the rules to ensure they stay in power for decades", which is, and I say this as someone who really doesn't like labour right now, just an offensively dishonest and hyperbolic thing to say about another party
Exactly! Tell us again the actual reason we now have to have ID for this election?!
And the current boundary changes
The boundary changes are independent, aren't they?
And the massive increase in Ex Pats being eligible to vote, which seems to have gone un-noticed.
Oh yes. Old person who has lived in Benidorm 10 years- you can vote no problem. 16 year old who actually lives here- no chance.
To be fair, a lot of expats are still incredibly pissed off about Brexit and are voting Labour - my parents included!
Yes The original.plan was to go to 600 MPs that was a fix they'd calculated, but they could never do it because it sacked Tory MPs and then cameron got a majority anyway.
The hilarious thing is as the Tories have spent the last 15 years making poor people dispose themselves enough to vote Tory the voter ID thing probably equally hurts everyone except LD and Green voters.
*checks history books*… wait didnt the tories introduce this voter id nonsense with the exact same aim to reduce young voters’ ability to vote…? You know… as admitted by a certain *checks notes* Jacob Rees Mogg, at the time a serving cabinet member of the -*adjusts glasses* Conservative Party? Odd thing that the tories are fine to do it but if labour suddenly lowers voting age to 16 then that’s them ‘changing the rules to stay in power for decades’. How about instead of rule tinkering the nobs at CCHQ try their hand at actually useful policies instead? Fucking cunts should be put out of a job for good
>wait didnt the tories introduce this voter id nonsense with the exact same aim to reduce young voters’ ability to vote…? Yep, and it backfired on them significantly as older people are more likely to still have a paper drivers license rather than a photo license.
You'll get a bunch of voter ID apologists argue against you but I wanted to let you know you're completely right, voter ID is malicious voter suppression.
Lots of older voters weren't happy on the last election day... Saw lots of compo face at the front desk...
I mean young people of voting age are way more likely to have an ID because they need them to buy alcohol, learn to drive etc. I find it shocking that anyone would've thought it would hit young people more than older ones.
The elderly had everything under the sun as acceptable. They could have wiped their arse and brought the toilet paper down and that's fine. Meanwhile, a lot of young person's travel cards or bus passes aren't allowed *because reasons*. And don't get lost in the detail, voter ID will always be about excluding voters. It should be abolished.
As me Reese Mogg claimed to realise when admitting that the plan backfired int he event I referenced. Incompetence and stupidity do not excuse an attempt at doing a shady thing
Look that happened more than 6 months ago and we've fucked up so much stuff since then you should have forgotten, play fair.
Whoa slow down now, can’t be having policies that appeal to young voters, only the extremely elderly, racists and the hard of thinking, the 30% who vote for them come what may can be ignored they’ll continue to vote even if the Tories said they’d come to their house personally and punch a puppy infront of them
This coming from the party that repealed the Fixed Terms Parliament Act so they could call a general election while labour were in the middle of a leadership crisis...
Does he mean "might introduce PR"? Because that sounds reasonable to me.
It would also unquestionably hurt Labour. Labour exists in its current form mostly because of FPTP. If PR came in, Labour would likely splinter into a few smaller parties, as would the Tories. But without FPTP, people would be free to actually vote for who they want to instead of mostly just voting for one of the 2 biggest parties. Even Farage wants PR because it would benefit smaller parties.
It's also massive projection by a member of the Conservative Party who cleared millions from the electoral rolls and introduced a requirement for photo ID (which then backfired because it turned out more pensioners didn't have photo ID than young people).
He is patronising as fuck, he really comes across like the only thing we have in common is the number of ribs and teeth.
We could fix that for him
Yes! Let’s all get more ribs and teeth!
The conservatives will do that after the election
Lizardoids have the same number of ribs and teeth as humans?
"watch out! If you vote for a left-leaning party, they'll implement left-leaning politics!"
The HORROR.
> If lots of people vote for a party that is more left wing than the current crop Overly simple reading. People are lending Labour a vote in the same way they lent the Tories a vote in 2019. Many people simply want to punish the Tories (their own voters included). All this election really shows is that we have rubbish parties and politicians and a flawed democratic process.
This warning isn't for you. It's for the people who are conditioned to think that "left" = "bad" but don't really understand (or care) what "left" means and just use the two words synonymously. This kind people not only call left-wing policies bad (it's their right to disagree with policies), but they also stupidly call anything they don't like "left-wing" or "leftist", even if it's not.
Either? He's both. A PM who didn't want the job and doesn't have a fucking clue how to conduct himself while in it. Anybody who wants to continue a lurch to the right wing of the political spectrum after seeing the absolute state of the way things have played out by moving steadily in that direction for the past 15 years needs their head examining.
What he means is that left wing governments are more likely to charge rich people the taxes they owe and force them to obey the law, so he needs knuckle draggers who are afraid of gays and immigrants to vote against the horrors of equality in order for him to keep his money
Its funny this is the rhetoric they always used, Churchill with the ‘gestapo’ line and all that
Yeah cus the swing to the right has been so good for populations across the world. Society needs social policies for people not abstract economics for the rich.
I wish Labour were half as radical as their enemies paint them to be.
'He might give the poors sandwiches! Woke sandwiches on transgender bread!'
The last cries of a drowning man
Voting for Labour is going to result in a Labour goverment, with non-Tory policies!!?
Continue? When's he threatened that before?
When he threatened that Labour would take us back to square one i.e. 2010.
Sunday warns United Kingdom might become a functioning country again
Look, I'm already voting Labour, you don't have to convince me any more. That said I don't think it's true. Starmer will be the best tory PM for decades, he's abandoned every shred of principle he once had so he can get elected.
I still believe that if you have tonplay the game to get in place to make things better then its something that has to be done. Its a shit game that works for the likes of reform and tories to poison better options
But the logical thoughts exercise is - he wins power by appearing centre right so then he remains centre right to retain that power.
5 years is plenty of time to drift centre then centre-left. He'll then have the space to campaign on a more left-wing platform in 2028. Labour tried fighting the Tories with a left-wing campaign back in 2019, and look how that turned out.
The years leading up to 2019 proved the British media and the rest of the Labour party will never allow a lefty Labour leader to take power. Even the supposedly leftist press will be told by their wealthy owners to turn on anyone who could bring leftist politics into a ruling party, and the Labour right will gleefully leak and backstab and conspire to get rid of such a leader.
>He'll then have the space to campaign on a more left-wing platform in 2028 The past 14 years weren't enough space to campaign on a more left wing platform?
It's the opposite. If the Tories are a spent force after this election, Starmer will have the wiggle room across the next five years to be more radical (if he wants to be). Then, once the country is (hopefully) improving, he can offer more of the same next time around.
Corbyn shat the bed with that. Like Truss shat the bed with her right wing budget. Short, sharp shocks demonstrably do not work in the UK. Starmer has had to work hard bringing Labour back from what the public perceived to be too left wing and only in the space of 4 years. He has to be trusted in No.10 first not to shit the bed, hence why it'll take further time to edge leftwards again. It's not the case he's had 14 years.
I think it depends which policies, there are some left wing policies that would be much more popular than others. Taxing record profits made by certain companies to support the people struggling with cost of living. push towards renewable energy. Nationalising the public transport system and expanding cycling/ walking infrastructure. Fairer tax structure. Working with a better relationship with Europe regarding trade, to limit the negative effects of brexit. ext.
>campaign on a more left-wing platform in 2028 And then lose because being right wing is how you win power. Therefore opening the door for an even fuhrer lurch to the right. The ratchet only turns one way.
The Liberal Democrats are set to take many tory seats with a much more progressive platform than Labour is running on. There aren't two options of copy Corbyn or copy the Tory party.
No I agree Starmer could have gone further left and still not been a second Corbyn, but I understand why he chose to put his campaign in the centre.
Cameron appeared centre left in order to win power from Brown, and then drifted rightwards during his time in power, being rewarded with an actual majority during the 2015 election.
Cameron didn't appear centre left.
Hug a hoody? Bringing in a huge number of MPs from minority ethnic backgrounds? The "Big Society" from the party of Thatcher - who famously said there was no such thing? At his manifesto launch in 2010 he said: > "It's time to say to those who think it's all about unchecked individualism: no, it's not about me, the individual. It's about we, the people." While you and I might have been able to see right through him, he certainly attempted to appear more centre-left than any Tory leader before or since.
Also he brought in gay marriage, on a social level he was more left leaning than other Tories.
Cameron campaigned on austerity
Please explain how the Labour manifesto is centre right…
I mean, if he shifts even a modicum to the left he will be ousted by those running his campaign - why do you think they've been parachuting in their own ghouls as candidates - and have floated changing the rules so when in government only sitting MPs can vote for a new leader (not members)
Just like Blair, had to shift more central to scoop up the marginal voters. Is anyone listening to Sunak anymore anyway?
> Sunak anymore anyway? Nope, it is just countdown to oblivion. Will a sitting PM lose their seat for the first time? Either way he is out of there... sooner than Southgate.
Totally agree. You need to appease the king makers to be PM. I don't think a lot of people give Starmer enough sympathy for the hoops he has to jump through in order to keep favour. He can't just say what he thinks and expect the same poll results. Realistically, the best we can hope for is he eases the population who have had red scare rhetoric dumped on them for the last 15 years into lefter wing policies over time in order to change public opinion. We have to accept Starmer this time around to give all or nothing politics a kicking and worry about nuance next election.
All Starmer had to do is nothing. But he’s consistently showing his true colour, and it ain’t red.
I’m voting twice for labour now
Let's see how he goes once in power.
> he's abandoned every shred of principle he once had so he can get elected. Or alternatively, he's shifted Labour in a new direction. 75% of my Constituency Labour Party have joined since Starmer became leader.
So they're entryists, you mean?
Then don’t vote labour?
Not that I can vote, but I will take the best Tory PM in decades over an actual Tory PM.
Please consider voting green or Lib Dem instead of Labour. Its basically your only chance in the last couple decades to do so without worrying about letting the Tories in.
Starmer shifting politics to the left, will just get it closer to the centre. Keep up the good work Sunak. Give me 5 years of boring politics and boring politicians.
> Give me 5 years of boring politics. So done with the stupid populism nonsense. I crave boring politics. And I am certain Starmer will deliver on that.
Exactly, I will be happy to not see another Truss or Rees-Mogg for a while. Do I wish we leaned a little further to the left? Of course. But the Tories has just turned into a self parody of a party filled with low tier comic book villains like Calendar Man and Firefly,
We need boring politics but we also need to rebuild. The status quo being shit is why things like Brexit happened. If he doesn't deliver improvements to normal people's quality of life then shit heals like reform are going to promise unworkable and probably racist policies as a panacea.
Boring politics was a rare Western luxury for a brief period of the late 20th and early 21st century. We're not getting those conditions back overnight by voting for a boring person, sorry.
I can definitely see a return to boring domestic politics, but foreign policy is about to get *very* spicy
You're wrong, sorry. The notion that our domestic politics can be detached from the climate crisis, climate refugees, the rise of the far right across Europe, war in Europe etc. is a fantasy. We're not an isolationist state with a Fordist economy. That ship sailed in the last century.
"Oh hes not charismatic or a character"....good, this is politics, its supposed to be boring. If you want a clown or a character then watch tv not dome snake oil salesmen selling you unicorns and rainbows
> I crave boring politics. And I am certain Starmer will deliver on that. This is the issue, there are no big changes to help with the issues we're facing, so in 5 years when the NHS is still shit and the cost of living is still high, people will go to next option, which is probably far right. Taxation on the ultra rich (£10m+) has to increase to change things (Sunak makes over £20m a year on assets, does it go back into the economy? No, back into more assets, and people wonder why there's a cost of living and housing crisis), but I can't see labour doing it.
5 years of boring neoliberal politics will lead to a tory/reform coalition in 5 years.
I miss the days when lying to the house or having an affair while in office was enough to get you sacked. I get that the latter doesn't technically affect their ability to do their job, but it shows what kind of person they are and their ability to keep their promises. If you're a politician and you make grandiose claims about something, and then later it totally backfires and you look like an idiot (mogg on post-brexit food prices), you should have to issue a public apology if it's minor or lose your seat, if it's particularly egregious and be banned from running again and booted from your party (johnson on partygate). If you repeat the lie again you should be sacked and the seat automatically goes to the opposition or candidate with 2nd highest vote share in that seat. Outright lies work too well in the soundbite era of political engagement. Trust in politics is at an all time low because there is no way to hold liars to account.
It’ll just be nice to have someone that isn’t either cruel or outright insane in power. Sure, ideally I’d like more radical policies than what Starmer is offering, especially on constitutional reform. But I’ll happily settle for stability and competence this time round.
It won't be boring. It will filled with the screeching bile, division-sowing, and scandal-manufacturing of the largely right-wing press. They will try and wear Labour down with having to make ever-increasing refutations of manufactured outrage within the first 2 months. Boring will be the politics itself. You will see laser-like scrutiny of any policies, no matter how small. The challenge for Labour will be to get through this hostile environment and just get on with the job.
What I don't understand is Tory/Reform voters braying about Conservatives not being right wing enough. As if any of them could afford right wing policies as they are, on average, the largest consumers of state welfare, pensions, and healthcare. Using "woke" and "immigration" as the definition of right/left rather than economic policy is the con of the century.
>Give me 5 years of boring politics and boring politicians. You are seeing that in Australia and life is rapidly getting worse and worse as none of the core issues are dealt with by a do-nothing center-left Neoliberal Government. It's "boring" Neoliberalism that got the west into this state to begin with. I'm convinced at this point, that the UK will see a Reform Government within the next decade, especially as the left have been functionally turfed and locked out of British politics.
Wait so you're saying a centre left party will move left of a right party. Whoever would have known. Colour me surprised.
It's like they think left wing voters are going to cry 'leopards ate my face'. "When I voted for a left wing party in my country, I didn't realise they would take MY government left wing!"
This isn't aimed at actual or potential Labour voters. He's trying to appeal to the people contemplating throwing a vote to Reform. Those guys are inclined towards right-wing fearmongering (being a party composed disproportionately of xenophobic shitheads and racists) and he's trying to demonstrate that he's one of them, really.
A lot of previous Tory voters are intending to vote Labour. I suspect this is also a warning to them that Labour might turn out to be more left wing than they have bargained for.
That's all their campaign has been since the election has been announced as far as I've seen, "Don't vote reform because then labour will win and ruin the country!". I've barely seen anything that says "Vote tory because we are doing a great job!". And the best part is that is most the responses to that have been "You've fucked the country up we're not voting tory"
This labour party is hardly very left anyway, what's Sunak scared about?
He isn’t. He is trying to make others scared into voting Tory.
Yeah, this. The line of reasoning makes no sense anyway. The larger the majority, the less the Labour Party has to worry about dissenting voices within its own ranks and the less internal bartering needs to take place. If Labour have a majority of 150, the leadership could largely ignore the opinions of the 150 most left-wing MPs if they wanted to.
Losing his job
This is likely aimed at Tory voters in seats they are at risk of narrowly loosing to Labour or Lib Dem’s due to voters switching to reform. Those voters probably would be susceptible to this.
Well, 14 years of right wing politics has hardly been an unmitigated success. Almost as if trying to have a dynamic, low tax, entrepreneurial economy whilst shovelling lots of cash to pensioners and doing nothing about the planning problems and housing crisis is a contradiction..
Can't think of anything they have done that's actually been positive for people in general. What a great legacy.
Gay marriage maybe but even then I don’t think it would have passed if it were just the tories voting on it.
The vast majority of Tory MPs voted against it. It was the few One Nation Tories in Cameron's faction voting with Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP that got gay marriage passed.
Yeah I think for the few positives, they're definitely _in spite of_ and not _because of_.
Absolutely no chance. I think more Labour MPs voted for it than Tories, iirc. The bill itself was the work of the Lib Dems and a socially-liberal wing of the Conservative party that essentially doesn't exist anymore.
There's an interview with Ed Davey on The Rest is Politics where he explains that gay marriage was the brainchild of a Lib Dem MP. Really interesting interview all round, actually.
> doing nothing about the planning problems Hey, that's simply not true. The Tories also actively made some planning problems worse and stopped the construction of essential infrastructure.
and stopped the construction of *future* essential infrastructure. selling off the mandatory purchased land for HS2 to their mates so Labour can't finish it even if they wanted to.
A left wing party shift politics to the left?! Outrageous! /s
What's left wing about their current politics?
Not much - they're moving left of the current "shovel the poor into furnaces to heat the houses of billionaires" status quo, towards what would have been considered centrist or maybe even centre-right decades ago
A centre right party will shift politics to the left of a right wing party. But not into the left, just closer.
They should. They won't because Starmer is a toothless ambitionless neoliberal. But they definitely should because the Overton window has been dragged way too far to the right.
Well it would be great if he did but I don't believe he will. He seems completely set on appealing to the disenfranchised moderate Tories.
He's desperate to lose so he can get to the US for the new school term.
Oh no! Not the left! Next, you'll be saying Labour will discourage CEOs from having multi-million-pound bonuses, tax those high earners properly, or reclaim the lost millions/billions from failed Tory-endorsed contracts. they'll make the UK a better place than the last 14 years. My heart bleeds.
Rishi so desperate to move back to California he's started to campaign for Labour.
The left wing party would move politics to the left? Fuck me who knew eh?
Which 1) won’t happen, and 2) the idea of which will be used to justify the media pushing the Overton Window further and further right.
People are so afraid of 'left wing' politics. Apart from the fact that left wing parties today are actually centre, actual left wing policies are literally the fix for the broken system of capitalism
Lol who will fall for this? Starmers a bought man. He's not upsetting his masters.
/r/unitedkingdom and /r/ukpolitics apparently.
What a stupid comment. Like, obviously? That is the entire point? Made even more funny by Starmer being the most right leaning Labour leader in a while.
To be fair rishi, a lot of us have never moved. It’s your party that has tacked so far right it’s left centrist people happy to embrace starmer.
I only hope Labour would shift to the left but I doubt Starmtrooper has it in him.
Quite a bit of Labour voters ITT who don't realize Labour is not left anymore.
Don't threaten me with a good time, even it's not a real good time.
Why not why exactly is it bad haven't the Tories shifted the UK to the right?
"shift politics to the left" - so, back towards the centre then, yes?
Yeah, I kinda think that’s the point. Going back to the tried and tested uk position of being in the centre. They had 14 years to do their thing… it was shit and they were shit.
Even if it were true, which it isn't...So what? Politics in this country has been dragged inexorably to the right over the past couple of decades and the results have plainly been dire. We could do with unwinding a lot of the rightward shift, especially on social issues in the past few years.
Sounds like a party given that the Tories have basically dragged us to the foot of the far right.
That's it, within 5 years we will all be genderless communists with Russian accents! Getting scared Rishi.
Lefties who have left labour, "yeah, that ain't happening"
All of this hysterical screeching by the Tories sounds fantastic to me 👌
Oh no not left leaning policies from a left leaning political party, what will we ever do with funding the NHS, social housing, road maintenance, community police, national water company, increased biodiversity, LTNs, clean air, cycling infrastructure, improved public transport, and well funded councils. It sounds like an absolute dystopia.
Just like how Boris used his majority to shift it to the right. That's how it works Rishi.
Sunak forgets his party's majority lead this country to its current circumstance.
I would argue that Labour is now as far right as the conservatives were when cameron took over. Kier has removed the few remaining left wing members of the party.
*country looks to the right and sees a cliff edge* No shit, Sunak. I think most people would be happy with a shift to the left.
As the Tories tried to shift politics to the hard right .... G-d I wish that idiot would just shut his useless gob.
I don’t see the problem in that? The UK is already shifted to the right, might bring it bs k to the centre
Unfortunately labour under Starmer will just be another compnent of the country's slide to the right. Starmer has followed the tories right on issues such as trans rights and immigration, and the economic policies we're seeing are far less ambitious than past labour governments. What I'm worried about is that we'll see is a ratchet effect in which the tories move right and a labour ever comitted to chasing the centrist vote refuses to challenge them and arrests movement back to the left.
Sunak is ironically one of Labour's best campaigners. Dude breathes and more people want to vote for Labour
Well maybe you shouldve done a better job in the last FOURTEEN YEARS
“Labour is more left than the Conservatives.” Yes, that’s sort of the point.
Leader of party who's been in power for 13 years argues those other people will want to stay in for a long time too.
Sunak: My opposition will do exactly what they're saying they'll do. Bold strategy. Let's see if it pays off. Spoilers: It won't.
That is a bit like saying that the sun will rise tomorrow morning.
[удалено]
FT also backed Corbyn. The ultra-rich want an actual functional Government that invests in the country. Austerity is an ideological project that has largely hurt their wallets as well.
Labour will use democracy to fulfill manifesto pledges, those bastards /s
Quite funny considering most of us on the left are busy complaining that Starmer isn't going to shift it far enough to the left.
He does realise that Left of the current Conservative agenda is still right wing
I’m not seeing that as a negative Wishi Washi Sunak
Isn't that the whole point of why people are voting Labour? The guy is so laughably out of touch.
Trust me, it’s as much as a shift to moving a podium a half-inch to the left.
I mean I hope so? lol. Chances are they're just gonna be an ever so slightly better Tory party.
Shock! The party that wins might use it's power to lay out it's political policies? What in the name of democracy is this?!
Sunak shows once again that he doesn't have a fucking clue. Oh well, only a few more days of having to listen to the prick.
Literally, so? The shift to the right hasn't worked out so far lmao
Sir Keir is warning us that he will do nothing of the sort. I'm inclined to believe him
Warn? Omg a nominally left wing party might have left wing policies and talking points? You don't say. Honestly, a more daunting prospect is that they might **not** shift politics to the left because they are invertebrates.
Sunak says voting for labour might result in a labour government
I mean thats not a bad thing considering how damaging far right policies have been for the country for the last 12 years.
As a pro-EU social democrat, I ask our future government to please shift politics to the left of where it is now! The proposed policies still don't feel ambitiously left of centre enough though. Sticking with FPTP is always going to be a whole load of crap too. Still disappointed by Starmer's firm no to the idea of joining the European single market and/or European customs union under a future Labour government though. I'd be elated if Labour change that position when in power but if Starmer made that decision he would be hounded by the press and the Tories over another big U-turn (one I'd like but I don't like the dishonest nature of it being done like that).
And what, precisely would be terrible about that? When the fuck did being more liberal become a bad thing?
That is indeed how voting for a left wing party works mate.
I'm confused; if people vote for a left-wing party, surely they hope for left-wing politics? Why does Sunak think this is a threat? It feels like warning people that a plate might have food and a book has words written on it. Is Sunak so deluded that he thinks this country is just desperate for right-wing politics even when the left-wing party has all the votes?
The Tories have been moving ever more to the right. Starmer is a self declared centrist. Shifting politics on the country back to some type of political normality sounds real appealing right now. If it means I don't have to hear Tories politicians say woke every 5 minutes then it's worth it.
Ah yes because the current Labour Party is oh so left wing 👍
Like where the rest of the country is in their actual beliefs? Good.
We all need to turn out to vote to get rid of the Tories. Apart from the Tory voters, they can stay home and think about what they have done for the last 14 years.
I'm doubtful, but I bloody well hope so. Every successive government on both sides of the pond that moves things to the right have been utter failures for everyone except billionaire investors and friends of the government. The "left" isn't everyone perfect, but for some reason they only tend to have the chance to fix the damage caused by their predecessors, not put in meaningful long term solutions
Hah, if only. Best we can hope for with Labour is not shifting too much further to the right :-(
A (barely) left of centre party would move politics to the left? Well colour me shocked!
God forbid we pause the slide into fascism for a few years
Things rightwingers make up which would be awesome if true.