What is the point of labour ?

[Miguel Sanchez]

Keir Starmer defends praising Thatcher in pitch for Tories - BBC News

Quote

Later on Sunday, Sir Keir told Broadcasting House that the point of his article was to compare what he described as the "drift" of recent years with the "sense of mission" of previous leaders.

"It doesn't mean I agree with what she (Thatcher) did, but I don't think anybody could suggest she didn't have a driving sense of purpose.

"We've declined as a country in the past 13 years," he said, but added Labour would bring through "a driving sense of purpose".

"The point I am making in that article is that you can distinguish political leaders, certainly in the post war period, into those that had a plan and a sense of mission, and those that drifted essentially."

Now I'm not very experienced with the media but if I hadn't praised someone and the media said I had praised them then when I was clarifying what had happened I would have used the phrase "I did not praise her."

But I'm not the keef savant the kind of which we have on here. 

[Miguel Sanchez]

Of course if I was the leader of the Labour party I wouldn't be citing Margaret fucking Thatcher as any kind of example to follow in anything but I'm not sir keef.

[MazzyStar]

[Thane of Cawdor]

I'm all for politicians having a "vision", in fact that is the very least we should expect of them. However, it seems that Starmer wants to project himself as a conviction politician despite, seemingly, having no convictions or principles whatsoever.

In relation to his comments on Thatcher, he might have qualified his praise/non-praise by pointing out the malign and cruel effects of her policies, totally disassociating himself from them, and emphasising how he would galvanise the economy without inflicting further profound damage to the fabric of society. 

[BFTD]

Whether you think he's a big Tory or not, a focus group's told him that a bit of praise for Mrs T would go down well with the part of the electorate that Labour's most worried about switching back to Sue-Ellen Braverman's Conservative Party™ next year. That's all that's happening here. No need to do backflips trying to justify or rationalise what ought to be career suicide for a Labour leader.

Besides, the last Labour Prime Minister to win an election admitted he liked a bit of Fatch, so it's becoming a tradition, and we all like a nice tradition in Britain.

[Jedi2]

With a party like the SNP, which generally endorses and implements a right wing economic model, it was no surprise at the time to hear Salmond say that he 'didn't mind' Thatcher's economic policies.

Nor was his consistent cosying up to Annabel Goldie in Holyrood to get his policies through with Tory support.

[oneteaminglasgow]

33 minutes ago, Jedi2 said:

With a party like the SNP, which generally endorses and implements a right wing economic model

Look mate, you can either hit out with this sort of patter or you can be a Labour fan boy but we can’t be having both I’m afraid. 

[Wee-Bey]

[Wee-Bey]

Genuinely no idea why Starmer continues to give himself problems like this.

A very strange man.

[O'Kelly Isley III]

3 hours ago, EvilScotsman said:

No, no he isn't. London.

Reigate in Surrey I'm pretty sure.

[KirkieRR]

Yeah, mea culpa. No idea where I got the Sheffield thing from. Study in Leeds seems to have been his one lengthy trip north.

[Jedi2]

2 hours ago, oneteaminglasgow said:

Look mate, you can either hit out with this sort of patter or you can be a Labour fan boy but we can’t be having both I’m afraid. 

Fair play

[Sherrif John Bunnell]

I wonder if "“Whatever I say will be what Anas says" still applies?

I'm sure SLAB will pick up loads of votes from the SNP if they keep praising Thatcher.

[Fullerene]

14 hours ago, Bully Wee Villa said:

There's no way that "Margaret Thatcher sought to drag Britain out of its stupor by setting loose our natural entrepreneurialism." isn't praising Margaret Thatcher.

Quick question.

Is there such a thing as unnatural entrepreneurialism?

[BFTD]

10 hours ago, Chris Partlow said:

Genuinely no idea why Starmer continues to give himself problems like this.

A very strange man.

He wants votes from dissatisfied Thatcherites, that's all. Everyone to the left of the divine Margaret has nowhere else to go.

He could take a shit on Keir Hardie's grave and the Labour loyal would literally say it was just a publicity stunt and not indicative of his real feelings, because they've no choice.

33 minutes ago, Fullerene said:

Quick question.

Is there such a thing as unnatural entrepreneurialism?

As ever, I was more interested in the idea that the British are somehow more naturally entrepreneurial than people from elsewhere.

The fantasy stories we tell ourselves can be quite amusing.

[Crùbag]

Starmer is a Tory barsteward and he's either an arsepiece or he genuinely doesn't care that he's selling the Branch Office in Scotland down the river.

That said, the Labour Red Tories up here aren't much better.

[Jedi2]

More clear water between Tory and Labour proposals on immigration.

With Cleverly targeting vulnerable people yet again by trying to penalise essential workers by raising the salary threshold for 'entry' from £26200 to £38700 and restricted access to NHS services by £624 to £1035, as well as banning health and care workers bringing family dependents to the UK, Labour, by contrast would have no such 'salary' requirement, but rather ensure that people doing the jobs are paid a fair and proper wage,  would work to ensure that workers can be reunited with family members, focus on the criminal gangs exploiting people rather than the vulnerable themselves and strike a deal with the EU to take a fair quota of asylum seekers.

Couldn't be more different in approach  and that's without even taking the Rwanda madness into account.

[BFTD]

Using words like "would" to describe the future actions of a party who change their policies dependent on the latest op-eds from the Heil and Terrorgraph, and whose leader has already broken every promise he was elected on three years ago and performed a Stalinesque purge of the evidence.

The phrase is, "I hope", or possibly even "trololo".

[Leith Green]

On 03/12/2023 at 20:25, Chris Partlow said:

Genuinely no idea why Starmer continues to give himself problems like this.

A very strange man.

Labour already has a healthy lead in the polls, its entirely plausible that all those red wall tory seats in England will flip back to Labour and they cruise to a comfortable GE win.

The lunatic fringe of Brexit voting bams will desert the Tories for whatever shitstain racist party Farage is heading up at the next GE anyway - Reform or something, is it?

Starmer is attempting - in a clumsy way - to appeal to those Southern tory voters who see themselves as "moderate" but who still hark back to Thatchers time as if it was a land of milk and honey - which it may have been if you live in the Home Counties.

It seems to me that they have done the maths and dont really need Scottish seats - in truth, they will almost certainly improve on their current 2 MPs whatever he says. There are some people who will ignore what he has said, but many people up here wont forgive his praise for that auld boot........................but then again, many will struggle to put the X in the SNP box due to their shambolic circumstances.

Starmer is just another opportunist politician who could easily be in Tory blue if the circumstances had been different - I struggle to believe a word he says and have done for a long time.

[BFTD]

20 minutes ago, Leith Green said:

The lunatic fringe of Brexit voting bams will desert the Tories for whatever shitstain racist party Farage is heading up at the next GE anyway - Reform or something, is it?

As they've already demonstrated under their last guise, they'd withdraw in Tory areas if it looked like Labour might win. Likely not going to be an issue this time around as their support is back to the usual National Front levels, and they're highly unlikely to affect the Conservative vote in a single seat, never mind affect the election result.

No matter how bitter the infighting, the right always come together to protect their interests when it matters. If Keef wins, it'll be because he's established he's one of them and isn't going to rock the boat.