I left the Labour Party in the mid 2000s after becoming disillusioned with Blair due to the Iraq war and PFI which left the NHS in a vulnerable state allowing the Tories free reign to drag it down even further. Starmer has done nothing to lure me back but I WILL vote tactically for Labour at the next General Election even though I'm a Green Party member. To be honest I'd vote for a 2-week old lettuce if I thought it could beat my Tory MP Heather Wheeler.
Exactly this. There's a fair bit to dislike about Labour / Starmer at the moment, but nowhere near enough to vote against them in a way that makes a Tory seat win more likely
It's simply delusional to call Labour right wing. Specifically who on the Labour front bench do you consider to be on the right?
https://www.nationalworld.com/news/...py-keir-starmer-is-no-longer-a-patron-3948641 Too racist to represent a refugee charity.
Your crusade here doesn’t make sense, well not to me anyway. Why is that tweet vile? They are using attack ads like the Tories use every single day, although theirs are based on lies. I keep saying it, politics is now a media war. Sitting back and dreaming of utopia means we all lose. Check Twitter and see what unadulterated drivel is posted by all the Tory MPs. Utter lies, then the Tory shills jump in. Then masses of the public slaughtering them. Social media posts are now important. As much as you and I might sigh, it’s life.
Agreed, they are important. So we should all look properly at the content of them and consider whether it's something we can get behind.
I agree. I could write an alternative view to why we agree. I’m not meaning to be divisive and deep down, we all (on the left at least) want the same result.
Yeah, there's no point arguing about it really. All I'll say is that when in 50 years the kids that I know look back at some of what's coming out of the Labour Party at the moment, I want to be able to say with a clear conscience that it wasn't in my name. "Least worst option" won't cut it for me.
My analogy is though, we can all see a better life on the other side of the river, we can trudge though the rapids (Tory) and get blamed for getting in the river. We can begrudgingly walk over the bridge, not knowing what’s on the other side but at least we have hope. Or we attempt to levitate. I wish we could exert the power of levitation, but alas we can’t.
I'll vote Labour as it's the best alternative to voting Tory round here but fvck me, they aren't half making it difficult to justify by co-opting Tory "hang the paedos" style rhetoric. I couldn't tell you what Kier Starmer actually stands for - not being a Tory is enough for me for now, but that's more of a reflection on the shambles that pretends to be a Government than it is on Starmer as an alternative. I'm not hugely happy voting for this incarnation of Labour just on the basis that it's the lesser of the evils that have a realistic chance of winning. I'd prefer a Labour party that tries to actively win votes rather than one that is too **** scared of losing votes to actually commit to anything.
I think that if you read Rachel Reeves' conference speech from last September there is little that is Thatcherite about what she proposes. The denunciation of trickle-down economics and the promotion of a Green Prosperity Plan and a National Wealth Fund are very different ideas to Sunak's superficial ideas. Labour are committed to working in partnership with business, which smacks of common sense to me, even if it may not please those with unrealistic dreams of wide-scale public ownership
There's realism and practicality where you can actually get something done and there's utopian dreamland which is never going to happen. I'd prefer a few steps in the right direction than arguing about how many angels you can get on the head of a pin. Get shut of the Tories.
She’s my MP and whilst I wish she was much further left than she is, I have to admit that she’s really active in our constituency. She’s helped with a lot of things that I value such as prioritising keeping our local libraries open (and improving them), keeping a local public swimming baths open, improving flooding defences after the horrendous Boxing Day floods years ago. Seeing libraries and swimming baths shut left, right and centre everywhere else, I’m very grateful we still have ours. Leeds also hasn’t closed a single Children’s Centre. I know that’s not all Rachel alone, I’m not daft, but it’s also nice to have a vocal MP on the side of these things, visiting and advocating for them, especially as her constituency covers some really poor areas. Now that she’s in the Shadow Cabinet she comes across well. Again, she’s definitely not as left-leaning as I’d like, and obviously you’ll be able to find daft stuff she’s said, as you can with anyone, but on the whole she doesn’t seem like an idiotic gobshite, which is more than you can say about most MPs these days.