Congratualtions Keir Starmer

[idler]

It's the same as saying Bojo is a bumbling oaf then.

[drfchound]

It's thesame as saying Bojo is a bubbling oaf then.

No mate, that saying hasn’t been around for anywhere as near as long.

Thinking about that though, it may well be if Labour continue to drive people away.

[SydneyRover]

For me Starmer just doesn't stand out as an inspirational character......... people might decide to follow him - but I can only imagine it's out of curiosity...

Have you ever voted labour Hound?





TBH mate I think that some Labour supporters would vote the same way if a Chimp was the leader.

[ravenrover]

TBH mate I think that some Labour supporters would vote the same way if a Chimp was the leader.

That’s a very old, tired and lazy line.
Please do better.

Isn't that what the Tory supporters have done with the present incumbent?

[drfchound]

TBH mate I think that some Labour supporters would vote the same way if a Chimp was the leader.

That’s a very old, tired and lazy line.
Please do better.

Isn't that what the Tory supporters have done with the present incumbent?

It may well be the case mate.

[Metalmicky]

I know it's the Express....... but some rumblings?

https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1431954/ker-starmer-latest-hartlepool-byelection-results-poll-labour-party-leader-resign

[BillyStubbsTears]

Exclusive:

Career-long boat rockers rock the boat.

[drfchound]

Exclusive:

Career-long boat rockers rock the boat.

Hilarious BST (not).
Unlike you to poo poo something that doesn’t suit your narrative.

[BillyStubbsTears]

There's not really a great deal to poo-poo Hound. I'm just stating it as it is. The Corbynistas have always been boat-rockers. They hate the idea of any leader who is to the left of Corbyn. This dicking about is both meaningless (in that they won't unseat Starmer) and ridiculous (in that he has inherited a party that was electorally annihilated 18 months ago and they are complaining that he hasn't reversed a trend that has been building for 20 years).

The Corbynistas actively do not want Starmer to succeed. It was ever thus with the Left.

[DonnyOsmond]

Not like BST to only blame the left for Labours struggles.

[MachoMadness]

The Right of the Labour party would never rock the boat were a left-wing leader ever in place, of course.

[DonnyOsmond]

The Right of the Labour party would never rock the boat were a left-wing leader ever in place, of course.

Yeah, there definitely wasn't a report on boat rocking this time last year from the centrists.

[belton rover]

It’s like a Hues Corporation fan club in here.

[BillyStubbsTears]

The Right of the Labour party would never rock the boat were a left-wing leader ever in place, of course.

Yeah, there definitely wasn't a report on boat rocking this time last year from the centrists.

And your point is?

[DonnyOsmond]

The Right of the Labour party would never rock the boat were a left-wing leader ever in place, of course.

Yeah, there definitely wasn't a report on boat rocking this time last year from the centrists.

And your point is?

The moderates inside the party actively tried to sabotage Labours chances of succeeding under Corbyn. The worst I've seen the left do so far is say Kiers been uninspiring and Corbyn did better, which the latter is probably too early to tell. The only way Labour can win is if both sides are united which I'm sure you agree on. To do that isn't to constantly blame the left, but perhaps the party need to listen to their frustrations and act on them. If Kier can hold, quite frankly the shittest government ever, to account then he'll start to win back people on the left.

[BillyStubbsTears]

DO
You have that article quoting two Labour MPs saying Starmer should go. He's barely been in the job a year and he has lifted Labour's poll ratings by 10-15%.

You have the Left positively itching for Labour to lose Hartlepool badly, so they can say "See! 2019 wasn't Corbyn's fault! Starmer is the problem!" So they can airbrush from history the absolute calamity if a situation that Corbyn tipped the party into in early 2019 when hebled us to the worst polling position since the 1920s.

[DonnyOsmond]

Ahh blaming the left again, pointing out poor 2019 performances and not accepting Labour centrists sabotaging part in it.

[albie]

BST,

You are aware that the Labour vote rose under Corbyn, from the low point under Prudence Broon(2010) and then Miliband in 2015.

Yes, the outcome in terms of seats was very disappointing in 2019.
Clearly if Broon had introduced reform to the voting system when in power, a better overall position would now be in place.

With the loss of members, and income, resulting from the strategy followed by the extreme centre, there will be little left of the current Labour Party to fight the next GE.

[DonnyOsmond]

Yeah, in Hartlepool Corbyn gained in 2017 from their 2015 value. They went down in 2019 due to their Brexit plan which is to compromise with people like Starmer, and now they've actually gone and lost the place with Corbyn and the lefts finger prints nowhere to be seen.

[normal rules]

I’d like to re visit the OP from over a year ago. Yes well done Kier, you’ve done a great job. No one has a clue what your party stands for anymore.

[SydneyRover]

It's strange that plenty expect miracles but no one wants to help

[BillyStubbsTears]

Albie/Donny.

Yes of course I know the Labour vote rose in 2017. That, and the fact that the vote went down in 2019 needs some serious analysis. This is my two pennorth.

2017 was a very particular election, when the Culture War took a back seat and Corbyn brilliantly steered a path that told Leavers and Remainers he was on both their sides. He was able to focus on the economic issues, where his Labour were popular. And he did that extremely well, although he was aided by the most incompetent election campaign by a sitting PM in living memory, and the much lauded increase in the vote was greatly aided by the collapse of UKIP - May also greatly increased the Tory vote in that election and I don't think many people thought she did a stellar job.

I said at that time that that gave Labour temporary breathing space, but that it could not last. Sooner or later, Brexit was going to dominate the political debate again, and at some point, Corbyn was going to have to come down on one side or the other. And without a strategy to deal with it, that was going to serious piss off one or other faction in the Labour party. So Labour needed to accept the fragility of it's 2017 success and set about securing that. Instead, the Left trumpeted it as confimration that the public loved Corbyn and were utterly dismissive of any attempt to broaden the electoral appeal. Albie's still doing it now with the pointing to the 2017 result while ignoring the context.

That lasted until early 2019, when Corbyn finally came out as the Leave supporter we always knew he was. And it was a catastophe. Labour's poll ratings collapsed to below 20% from 40%. In the space of 4 months, 4-5million people who had identified as Labour voters were saying they would vote LD or Green instead. There was a real and present danger that Labour was going to be badly displaced into third place at the inevitable election. There was only one path out of that catastrophe and that was to reach out to those who Labour had so rapidly lost, with a policy that went for a second Brexit referendum. That pulled many of them back, but at the cost of what we have seen in the Red Wall.

The finger pointing at Starmer for being the cause of the pit that Labour is in comes from a mindset that has erased everything that happened between May 2017 and August 2019, when Corbyn and the left misunderstood their "success" in the 2017 election and lost the chance to build on it. 

[selby]

  How do you get Stabber has lifted the vote 16% when he lost a majority gained in 2019 and lost it in 2021 by over 6000 votes.
  I know you think I am thick Billy , but..............

[selby]

  Great title to the OP by the way Wilts, very novel, April 4th 2020, pity the veneer couldn't have lasted longer really.

[albie]

Sorry BST, but you are missing the point.

Your post says that Corbyn was a leaver, and that was a problem for the party..."catastrophe" you reckon.
Exactly the opposite has been shown to be true.

Labour, by playing both sides on the brexit issue, was seen as standing for nothing, and not reflecting the views of their voters in the red wall seats.

Starmer has doubled down on the no commitment approach, preferring to stand back and hoping Coco will soil himself.
Look at the approach to Covid.....support the government by default, with a light touch criticism from time to time.

If Labour wants to differentiate from the Tories, then he should have nailed Johnson on his appalling record in the pandemic. Voters saying that they voted for the Tories because of the vaccine rollout is the end game in the prevarication strategy.

Wherever you stand, Labour is at a pivotal moment.
Fail to recognise the problem and wilt into irrelevance, or set out your stall.

To hear the disgraced Peter Mandelson on as a media front trying to say it is the fault of Corbyn and the left is the height of delusion.

[BillyStubbsTears]

  How do you get Stabber has lifted the vote 16% when he lost a majority gained in 2019 and lost it in 2021 by over 6000 votes.
  I know you think I am thick Billy , but..............

Nationwide Selby, nationwide. D'oh.

[selby]

  There is only one thing Labour can do now Billy.
     We all know what they want to do because for five or six years they have been telling us the electorate what they think of us, what we should and how to think and if we don't we are racial and Nazi's  so whats left, only to change completely and do the things the electorate want them to do, which will require the majority of the Westminster MP's to lie.
  And Doh Billy you might not have noticed but nationwide Billy  they are taking a Hammering and becoming irrelevant like the Liberals did.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Sorry BST, but you are missing the point.

Your post says that Corbyn was a leaver, and that was a problem for the party..."catastrophe" you reckon.
Exactly the opposite has been shown to be true.

Labour, by playing both sides on the brexit issue, was seen as standing for nothing, and not reflecting the views of their voters in the red wall seats.

Starmer has doubled down on the no commitment approach, preferring to stand back and hoping Coco will soil himself.
Look at the approach to Covid.....support the government by default, with a light touch criticism from time to time.

If Labour wants to differentiate from the Tories, then he should have nailed Johnson on his appalling record in the pandemic. Voters saying that they voted for the Tories because of the vaccine rollout is the end game in the prevarication strategy.

Wherever you stand, Labour is at a pivotal moment.
Fail to recognise the problem and wilt into irrelevance, or set out your stall.

To hear the disgraced Peter Mandelson on as a media front trying to say it is the fault of Corbyn and the left is the height of delusion.

Albie.

You have really invented an alternative reality there.

Labour was at 40% in the polls at Xmas 2018. Corbyn then made a big announcement that he would lead Labour into the next election  supporting Brexit.

Labour's poll rating collapsed over the next 3-4 months, to a low of 18%, the vast majority of defectors switching to the LDs and Greens.

Those are established facts. Ignored consistently by the Left. Because here's the inconvenient truth. Had Labour stuck with a Red Wall, pro-Brexit strategy in 2019, which is where Corbyn and the 4Ms were taking Labour, they'd have been lucky to get 70 seats in 2019's election.

[Herbert Anchovy]

Labour lost heavily in 2019 with a left wing leader
Labour lost heavily in 2021 with a centre left leader

That leads me to suspect that nobody outside the Labour Party gives a shit about the internal squabbles within the party. What they want to understand is how the party is relevant to them! It’s not a difficult concept to grasp. Speak to the people who you’re wanting to attract, understand their concerns and priorities and build policies and manifestos around this. The party spends too much time naval gazing and trying to score points in internal battles rather then out on the streets discovering what the hell is going on!

[selby]

  Billy that is because the Labour heartlands is now centred around London and the South East of England, and the Tories will make inroads into that with the next round of constituency boundary changes before the next general election.