What is the point of labour ?

[DeeTillEhDeh]

5 hours ago, Donathan said:

 

Assuming Starmer gets into power he will absolutely pivot to the centre left once he actually gets in 

He won't.

[StellarHibee]

17 minutes ago, Donathan said:

We haven’t had austerity in the UK for nearly a decade.

[Salt n Vinegar]

1 hour ago, picklish said:

From their mission statement

Highest sustained growth in the G7. 

"Introducing clear fiscal rules with a new enhanced role for the Office of Budget Responsibility. "

Not spending frivolously on The Poor's. Effectively austerity?

"We will provide long-term, catalytic public investment to unlock private capital, and change regulations to remove barriers. We will make Britain the best place to start and grow a new business"

i.e. sell public services / PFI and lower taxes for Amazon et al?

"Making Brexit work by closing the holes in the government’s Brexit deal, cutting the red tape hampering some of our leading industries."

 Not clear what or how. Northern Ireland? Imports/Exports? 

other stuff seems reasonable, e.g. green prosperity, national wealth fund - but like many others, I think Starmer is almost as untrustworthy as Boris, and equally has no ideological beliefs, so I don't believe Labours positions aren't changeable, and that's before thinking about the execution of the plans

I've yet to hear any examples from either Labour or Tory about what this "cutting the red tape" actually means.

Decades of experience tells me that the Tories mean things like staff cuts, service reductions, reductions in working conditions and worsening employment protection and so on*.  Starmer talk about things like "reform" which to me is just the same as the Tories but using a different description. If Starmer would actually say what he was going to do, then Labour supporters might have grounds for optimism but as things stand it's just the sound of static.

(*The cynic in me translates this as intentionally running important services into the ground so that they can eventually say that the public provisions don't deliver for the country and then sell them off.)

[GAD]

3 hours ago, RuMoore said:

So you're drawing a willy on your ballot paper I take it?

Maybe. Is it worse than voting for a proven liar, who has broken every promise he's mad and believes in power at any cost?

Considering you fully accept that Starmer is a liar who cannot be trusted, why do you think voting for him is such a good thing?

[RuMoore]

12 minutes ago, GAD said:

Maybe. Is it worse than voting for a proven liar, who has broken every promise he's mad and believes in power at any cost?

Considering you fully accept that Starmer is a liar who cannot be trusted, why do you think voting for him is such a good thing?

 

[Granny Danger]

3 hours ago, Donathan said:

We haven’t had austerity in the UK for nearly a decade.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

3 hours ago, Donathan said:

We'vd had austerity in the UK for over a decade.

FTFY

[Donathan]

Austerity was the key policy of Cameron and Osbourne particularly in the coalition years but also during their ill-fated majority government.
 

Public spending (in real terms) gradually climbed under Theresa May and went the rough the roof under Johnson, albeit largely due to Covid. 
 

Then Truss and Kwarteng came along and did the very opposite of austerity and started dishing out tax cuts willy nilly that were funded through borrowing rather than spending cuts, which spooked the markets and sent the economy tits up.

 

Sunak and Hunt arguably are doing austerity now to reverse out the damage of the Truss-Kwarteng government but only in the sense that he wants to get the national debt back down to pre-Truss levels, he’s not trying to go back to Cameron levels of spending. 

[oneteaminglasgow]

Covid-19 spending is the only time since 2010 that we haven’t had some form of austerity, and that was largely because their hand was forced.

It’s simply insane to suggest otherwise. 

[Donathan]

33 minutes ago, oneteaminglasgow said:

Covid-19 spending is the only time since 2010 that we haven’t had some form of austerity, and that was largely because their hand was forced.

It’s simply insane to suggest otherwise. 

Do you understand what austerity actually means?

 

Real terms public spending has increased under Cameron’s three immediate successors. 

[sophia]

33 minutes ago, Donathan said:

Do you understand what austerity actually means?

I do but then again I recall the brutal nature of Thatcher and all that she spawned.

There is an evil about them and it has been normalised in Westminster.

[J_Stewart]

6 hours ago, Donathan said:

We haven’t had austerity in the UK for nearly a decade.

This is the tories “useful idiot” dream statement.

[Donathan]

9 minutes ago, J_Stewart said:

This is the tories “useful idiot” dream statement.

^^ Yet another poster who misunderstands what austerity is.

 

Don't get me wrong, I think each of May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak have been horrendous PMs, but out of those three, only Sunak has really pursued austerity.

 

Of course, one might opine that Cameron decimated public services to the point that "not doing austerity" only really implies that they haven't cut them any further than Cameron already did.

[scottsdad]

The national debt trebled under the Tories. 

The deficit was not eliminated by 2015 as promised. 

Taxes are at their highest level in decades. 

So, with all this money coming in, we can assume that public services are top notch, right? Hospitals like palaces. Schools all new and gleaming. A policeman on every corner. 

Nope. And this is why the Tories will lose. There's no simple "where has the money gone" explanation. 

[GTG_03]

7 minutes ago, scottsdad said:

The national debt trebled under the Tories. 

The deficit was not eliminated by 2015 as promised. 

Taxes are at their highest level in decades. 

So, with all this money coming in, we can assume that public services are top notch, right? Hospitals like palaces. Schools all new and gleaming. A policeman on every corner. 

Nope. And this is why the Tories will lose. There's no simple "where has the money gone" explanation. 

It seems like an open goal for labour, sadly they have Chris iwelumo up top.

[scottsdad]

5 minutes ago, GTG_03 said:

It seems like an open goal for labour, sadly they have Chris iwelumo up top.

To be clear in what I mean, the Tories will lose the next election. Not the same as Labour winning it. 

They will still end up governing. 

[Boo Khaki]

51 minutes ago, scottsdad said:

There's no simple "where has the money gone" explanation. 

Well we know where a fair chunk of it went.

[Guest]

12 hours ago, Donathan said:

If you look at the post WW2 history of the UK, it’s largely a centre-right country and the only way Labour tends to win is by waiting for the Tories to become unpopular and then provide a competent centrist alternative.

The post-WW2 history you mention can be viewed in terms of two distinct eras. Immediately post-war until the mid 1970s was dominated by Keynesian economics. Everything we value in our society, and I say "we" because poll after poll shows it is indeed most of us, was created during that era and using that Keynesian economic model - NHS, welfare state, council housing, the lot. Then in the 1980s that economic model was replaced by neoliberalism, which originated in Washington and was rolled out globally with Thatcher infamously forcing it through in our local context. This economic model has brought our society nothing to be proud of. Under neoliberalism, growth has stagnated and instead all we've seen is the wealth that we do have being transferred upwards, away from workers and into the hands of owners. 

A key difference between Keynesian thinking and neoliberal thinking is regarding borrowing to invest. The Keynesian era was all about fiscal expansion whereas the neoliberal era has been all about fiscal conservatism (or "fiscal responsibility" as Starmer is trying to rebrand it). Fiscal expansion is done via public debt whereas fiscal conservatism is done via private debt. Public debt isn't a problem if the nation is a sovereign currency issuer which the UK is. Private debt is a problem because its to be paid back to the shareholders of the private companies. Blair, like Starmer, was against fiscal expansion. Well if a government refuses to increase public spending to the necessary level, the only way to continue funding public services without cutting them (austerity) is to contract them out and privatise them. That's what Blair did with his Private Finance Initiatives and his Building Schools for the Future policy. That loaded the government with private debt which unlike public debt must be paid back in future and at a greater cost.

Labour or Tory makes far less difference than the economic consensus of the moment. That's the point which folk are making here in this thread and elsewhere. For example during the Keynesian era, Tory PMs Rab Butler and Harold MacMillan were fiscal expansionists then during the neoliberal era, Tony Blair was a fiscal conservative (with Keir Starmer now following in his slipstream). Consensuses can be broken as Thatcher did and that's what the UK left are looking for in their Labour party leader, their own Thatcher. Corbyn had the vision but the wrong image. The Labour membership recognised that and so went for Starmer, seemingly someone with the same vision but with a more marketable image. Unfortunately for them and the rest of the British working class, we now know the dirty little fucker lied to them. 

Why Starmer's agreement with the two child welfare cap lit the touchpaper so much was not just because of the immorality of the policy or because it'd come from the deepest crevice of Tory dark fantasy. It was because it was the biggest statement yet of his opposition to fiscal expansion. It was literally a question of investing in poor children. Give them the help they need in childhood so they can later manifest their potential as fully productive members of society.

[tamthebam]

9 hours ago, RuMoore said:

If you insist...

Now tell me who you trust as a politician in the UK currently? 

Count Binface

[Guest]

9 hours ago, RuMoore said:

I think describing everything you dont agree with as Tory is extremely lazy and if you follow this primary school level train of thought then you could describe the SNP, Labour and Tories as being very similar parties so it ends up being a pointless exercise. We need PR but as it stands that doesn't seem likely. 

For me, that'd largely be a fair thing to do. I'll comment on SNP here since Labour and Tories have already been well covered in this thread. I agree with what John McDonnell said recently: "I've always been frustrated that the SNP have not used the tax-raising powers they've got. One of my biggest criticisms of the SNP is their failure to redistribute because of that, and they've had some changes in their taxation regime but not sufficiently radical"(https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/john-mcdonnell-no-regrets-over-30460539). Something that does set the SNP apart, though, is that their agitation forced devolution and Scotland was then protected from the worst ravages of Osborne's austerity thanks to the Scottish parliament's devolved powers.