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fernandopartridge

fernandopartridge

Well-Known Member
David O'Day said:
what does that well known Starmerite Paul Mason say about the current Labour Budgetary offering?

"

Rachel Reeves, in a Budget response suddenly dumped on her by Keir Starmer’s positive Covid-19 test, gave a very effective answer. We can spell out a coherent alternative. And she did so with such clarity that it had the public schoolboys on the Tory backbenches rattled to their Asprey cufflinks.

Labour, unlike Sunak, would go on borrowing to invest. It would cut taxes on working people, starting with VAT on fuel tonight, and abolish business rates altogether, replacing them with taxes designed to force the tech monopolies to pay their fair share. It would, in addition, invest £224bn over eight years on decarbonising energy and transport.

While the Tories flaunt their insouciance over climate change, cutting the taxes paid by short-haul air passengers on the eve of the Cop26 summit, Labour has placed climate mitigation at the very centre of its investment plans. Reeves pointed out that, had the Tories not spent ten of the last 11 years squeezing life, growth and social justice out of the UK economy, Britain might not have suffered the worst recession and the worst scarring of any major country.

She told, in short, a convincing alternative story – something Labour has struggled to do since Starmer took office. By summoning the image of Johnson and Sunak as street pickpockets, buffooning around while they lift your purse, doling out favours to champagne-drinking bankers on pointless short-haul flights, Reeves also dramatised the social dynamics.
For all the fawning press Sunak gets from media types inside the network of favours, garden parties and wedding receptions that surround the Tory elite, the Chancellor wants – openly and philosophically – to radically shrink the welfare state, but who’s been forced by the unexpected arrival of Covid-19 to put it off for a bit.

The lives of real people, facing wages eroded by inflation, rising tax, fuel and energy bills, and crumbling public services, do not match the sunny optimism generated within Sunak’s Potemkin village. And that is Labour’s opportunity. In Red Wall seats where one Tory MP after another voted to flood local rivers with sewage, the penny has begun to drop: that people feel worse off because they are worse off; and that nothing in the actions of the Tory party suggest how they and their families might claw their way out of grinding, multigenerational, post-industrial distress.

So the warnings from some Labour-leaning commentators – that the Tories have put their tanks on Labour’s lawn and that the party’s electoral prospects are therefore doomed – are misguided. The differences could not be clearer.

And in Reeves the party has found – both at conference and by complete accident at the Budget – its most effective and gutsy communicator. Yes, she authored a book about Alice Bacon, “hammer of the Trotskyists”, and once disparaged benefit claimants, but Reeves also seems able to articulate the basic class antagonism Labour was formed to address.

In a party bereft of talented and articulate lawmakers, and of professionally competent people, this is all you can ask of a centrist social democrat. And Reeves’s achievement raises an interesting question. Last week, Dominic Cummings offered Labour a massive brain dump of advice on how to defeat Boris Johnson. The core of it is impossible to achieve: forget the socially liberal agenda of the labour movement and lure potential Tory switchers with promises to terrorise terrorists and jail criminals.

But in one respect, Reeves, and we should assume Starmer (who held the pen on the response speech until minutes before it was delivered), have followed Cummings’s advice – and were doing so as early as the Labour conference. They have begun to frame the party’s anti-austerity offer around tax cuts for working people – VAT, National Insurance and business rates – as well as borrowing. For it is a truism often forgotten by the Labour left that fiscal austerity can be embodied in a tax rise just as much as in a spending cut."
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Why's he talking about borrowing? Who does the issuer of the £ borrow £ from?
 
David O'Day

David O'Day

Well-Known Member
fernandopartridge said:
Why's he talking about borrowing? Who does the issuer of the £ borrow £ from?
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He's talking about borrowing because it is the way they want to fund things along with tax hikes for the wealthy etc. This differs from Suna who wants to pay for things by cutting funding to other things and increasing taxation on the lower percentiles.

Also while some money is borrowed from the BoE a large part if borrowed via the gilt and bonds market.

Frankly your efforts to equate the economic policies of Reeves to Sunak's are nonsense. You don't have to like her or agree with her but she is not calling for austerity again unlike Sunak.

End of
 
P

PVA

Well-Known Member
Johnson is, in an absolutely shocking turn of events, putting on an awful performance at PMQs, resulting in Starmer openly laughing at him after he said that it was ‘not true’ that last nights vote only passed because of Labour support.
 
D

Deleted member 9744

Guest
PVA said:
Johnson is, in an absolutely shocking turn of events, putting on an awful performance at PMQs, resulting in Starmer openly laughing at him after he said that it was ‘not true’ that last nights vote only passed because of Labour support.
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That was an incredible exchange. I don't know why Starmer didn't just take him slowly through the numbers like a teacher talking to a slow child.
 
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C

CCFCSteve

Well-Known Member
PVA said:
Johnson is, in an absolutely shocking turn of events, putting on an awful performance at PMQs, resulting in Starmer openly laughing at him after he said that it was ‘not true’ that last nights vote only passed because of Labour support.
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Really ?! It’s kind of what everyone’s been saying, it appears almost instinctive to lie, even when the evidence is stark. I’m honestly starting to worry about his mental state
 
P

PVA

Well-Known Member
CCFCSteve said:
Really ?! It’s kind of what everyone’s been saying, it appears almost instinctive to lie, even when the evidence is stark. I’m honestly starting to worry about his mental state
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He did look a shell of the man he used to be

We know he always lies but at least before he could stand up in the commons and lie with conviction and a bit of oomph, put something into it.

He has nothing now. Just looks broken.

I suppose maybe it's difficult to get up for it when you know you're a dead man walking
 
P

PVA

Well-Known Member
There are many people inside the Tories who have it in for him!

He doesn't have any use for them any more, he can't win an election, so he's completely disposable to the party now.
 
chiefdave

chiefdave

Well-Known Member
shmmeee

shmmeee

Well-Known Member
Oof.

He’s definitely gone now. All the fundamentals with the Tories there, old Brexity population. Throwing that away is criminal. Shame it means another Lib Dem but you can’t have it all.
 
skybluetony176

skybluetony176

Well-Known Member
shmmeee said:
Oof.

He’s definitely gone now. All the fundamentals with the Tories there, old Brexity population. Throwing that away is criminal. Shame it means another Lib Dem but you can’t have it all.
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First time the Tories have lost the seat in 200 years apparently.
 
P

PVA

Well-Known Member
Oh my. That is huge. Catastrophic for the Tories.

If Owen Paterson just accepted his 30 day suspension none of this would have happened.

Then Johnson tries to protect himself from future censure and tried to basically legalise corruption, in doing so admitting they're all bent as fuck and don't want any scrutiny.

Fucking delicious.
 
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Ian1779

Ian1779

Well-Known Member
David O'Day said:
The Labour vote doesn't really matter as it shows he official progressive alliance/vote for the party most likely to beat the tories is working.

the knives are going to get even sharper for the PM
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The interesting thing will be at the next GE, assuming Johnson is gone. Will the Tories be able to entice voters back with a promise of a new regime, will the alliance here hold with an increased turnout.
 
David O'Day

David O'Day

Well-Known Member
Ian1779 said:
The interesting thing will be at the next GE, assuming Johnson is gone. Will the Tories be able to entice voters back with a promise of a new regime, will the alliance here hold with an increased turnout.
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It will be interesting. I can't see Sunak or Truss having the same pull for the non traditional tories who voted Boris so in some of their northern seats the could be damned either way.

Long way to go but for once there are real green shoots.

Still what did Jack Straw do in 1997?
 
O

OffenhamSkyBlue

Well-Known Member
shmmeee said:
Oof.

He’s definitely gone now. All the fundamentals with the Tories there, old Brexity population. Throwing that away is criminal. Shame it means another Lib Dem but you can’t have it all.
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A lot of people will vote differently to their normal habits when nothing is at stake. It doesn't really affect Boris as he still has a huge majority in the Commons. Protest votes quite frequently occur at by-elections then revert at the next GE. I predict the remaining 53% of the electorate will turn out next time (especially when Covid will be under control/over) and claw back that 4K majority.

I'm simply commenting, by the way, not wishing for that to happen.
 
Ian1779

Ian1779

Well-Known Member
PVA said:
No wonder Grendel thinks Dan Hodges is 'excellent'


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It’s not terrible for Starmer really, but it should give him food for thought as to future strategy in seats like this.
The people making the ‘only Labour can win here’ posters need to do one though.
 
David O'Day

David O'Day

Well-Known Member
Ian1779 said:
It’s not terrible for Starmer really, but it should give him food for thought as to future strategy in seats like this.
The people making the ‘only Labour can win here’ posters need to do one though.
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People have to remember even Blair and Ashdown had an "understanding"
 
David O'Day

David O'Day

Well-Known Member
OffenhamSkyBlue said:
A lot of people will vote differently to their normal habits when nothing is at stake. It doesn't really affect Boris as he still has a huge majority in the Commons. Protest votes quite frequently occur at by-elections then revert at the next GE. I predict the remaining 53% of the electorate will turn out next time (especially when Covid will be under control/over) and claw back that 4K majority.

I'm simply commenting, by the way, not wishing for that to happen.
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My comments would be you are 100% wrong and predicting a 100% turnout?
 
P

PVA

Well-Known Member
David O'Day said:
It will be interesting. I can't see Sunak or Truss having the same pull for the non traditional tories who voted Boris so in some of their northern seats the could be damned either way.

Long way to go but for once there are real green shoots.

Still what did Jack Straw do in 1997?
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Yes the Tories will lose a huge chunk of voters at the next GE

The anyone but Corbyn crowd
The get Brexit done crowd
The Boris has funny hair and seems like a laugh crowd


None of Truss, Sunak, Patel, Gove, whoever can attract any of those votes

They're in big trouble
 
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