No, your losing focus here. I think you should be targetting the underlying problems like private companies appointing new dentists relatively cheaply, pushing up prices, with the profit going to companies not dentists. I understand something similar has happened to many vet practices too. I know you have a dog!
No, push for Lords reform, decent Electoral reform such as PR, stop foreign funding, and quicken the reversal of Brexit.
I’m not going to speculate on the next leader. On big ideas though how about emulating the US in providing educational credits for people who serve in the Armed Forces, do four years and get your tuition fees paid or credit for FE courses? What about people doing public service in exchange for reductions in student debt? And on that note, time to reduce the onerous interest rate on student debt to match the BoE base rate. A move that would be very popular with a section of voters they are losing to the Greens. So many ideas, so little time!!!
My last call would be for a NHS. We have a National Sickness Service at present. If you fall sick or ill the NHS will help you recover. A NHS would have the say on taxation of alcohol, fast food, costs for gyms, keeping playing fields going, a systemic approach to health. Surely with data analytics we can model this to create effective solutions.
What a mess Labour finds itself in (with us swept along with it).
I’m not quite ready to give up on Starmer, though. But he puzzles me. There is a marked difference between Starmer’s performance in foreign affairs and in domestic matters. Maybe the difference is in the advisers he’s had: Jonathan Powell in foreign affairs and the inexperienced McSweeney in domestic affairs?
Also, Starmer’s a poor judge of people: there’s McSweeney himself and Reeves is a dud with poor political judgement and a questionable back story. And then there’s his choice of Cabinet Secretary (Wormald) who is really poor as his performance at the COVID inquiry showed.
But as you’ll have noticed from the above, like others, I’m viewing Starmer as a shallow inexperienced politician with no guiding theory of the state, society, politics and economics. No wonder he appears rudderless when he lacks a sound adviser, as in domestic matters.
My take is that the last LP leader to have a vision rooted in a politics that wasn’t neoliberal (aka Thatcherite) was Kinnock.
New Labour had/has shallow ideological roots. No theory of relations between the state, the economy and society.
Balls, Brown and Ed Miliband had potential as political thinkers. They flirted with endogenous growth theory but were out-politicked by Heseltine and Ken Clarke, and the right wing media. They never had the space (or courage) to fight back. And they were compromised by the pacts Mandelson, Blair and Brown made with Murdoch, and the Republican neocons in the early 1990s. These pacts more-or-less bound New Labour to be a neoliberal party, cosseting the City of London and large donors as a counterweight to the trades unions.
The Milibands’ fratricidal entry into the post-Brown leadership contest, followed by Corbynism, and the dominance of an increasingly right-wing media, has made thinking other than in neoliberal terms (promoted by the right and its media enablers as “common sense”) a dangerous pursuit. And the thinking behind McSweeney’s project to capture Labour was confined to the politics of factionalism. Starmer was McSweeney’s puppet.
Starmer’s own political shallowness and McSweeney’s status as a political outsider in UK Labour (given his origins in Cork -itself a singular environment in Ireland) underlie, in my opinion, their inability to devise a “wrapping” for the various elements of their project to bring it together and provide a sense of purpose and direction.
Where does that leave us? Not in a good place.
Burnham has potential and is a good communicator, but is not in the Commons. His brief encapsulation of “what is to be done” does however suggest he is a political thinker.
Streeting is, in my view, a good communicator but is too compromised by his links to US healthcare providers and insurers and the broligarchy (h/t Carol Cadwalladr) to be a viable candidate.
Rayner has authenticity and political skills, but her difficulties with HMRC suggest to me thot at this point she lacks the admin support and/or personal bandwidth to take on the top job.
Which leaves us in a hole. My personal choice would be Hilary Benn; however, at 72 he may not be willing.
Agree with much but not all of that. I hope Starmer can break free now he is shot of McS. No alternative for the leadership at the moment. Eventually Rayner or Phillipson of the current crop may step up. Equally one of the dark horses may establish themselves but I remember there have been ex military types who many thought looked the part but didnt make it. Not sure if Carns will prove an exception to that rule.
No, your losing focus here. I think you should be targetting the underlying problems like private companies appointing new dentists relatively cheaply, pushing up prices, with the profit going to companies not dentists. I understand something similar has happened to many vet practices too. I know you have a dog!
No, push for Lords reform, decent Electoral reform such as PR, stop foreign funding, and quicken the reversal of Brexit.
I’m not going to speculate on the next leader. On big ideas though how about emulating the US in providing educational credits for people who serve in the Armed Forces, do four years and get your tuition fees paid or credit for FE courses? What about people doing public service in exchange for reductions in student debt? And on that note, time to reduce the onerous interest rate on student debt to match the BoE base rate. A move that would be very popular with a section of voters they are losing to the Greens. So many ideas, so little time!!!
My last call would be for a NHS. We have a National Sickness Service at present. If you fall sick or ill the NHS will help you recover. A NHS would have the say on taxation of alcohol, fast food, costs for gyms, keeping playing fields going, a systemic approach to health. Surely with data analytics we can model this to create effective solutions.
What a mess Labour finds itself in (with us swept along with it).
I’m not quite ready to give up on Starmer, though. But he puzzles me. There is a marked difference between Starmer’s performance in foreign affairs and in domestic matters. Maybe the difference is in the advisers he’s had: Jonathan Powell in foreign affairs and the inexperienced McSweeney in domestic affairs?
Also, Starmer’s a poor judge of people: there’s McSweeney himself and Reeves is a dud with poor political judgement and a questionable back story. And then there’s his choice of Cabinet Secretary (Wormald) who is really poor as his performance at the COVID inquiry showed.
But as you’ll have noticed from the above, like others, I’m viewing Starmer as a shallow inexperienced politician with no guiding theory of the state, society, politics and economics. No wonder he appears rudderless when he lacks a sound adviser, as in domestic matters.
My take is that the last LP leader to have a vision rooted in a politics that wasn’t neoliberal (aka Thatcherite) was Kinnock.
New Labour had/has shallow ideological roots. No theory of relations between the state, the economy and society.
Balls, Brown and Ed Miliband had potential as political thinkers. They flirted with endogenous growth theory but were out-politicked by Heseltine and Ken Clarke, and the right wing media. They never had the space (or courage) to fight back. And they were compromised by the pacts Mandelson, Blair and Brown made with Murdoch, and the Republican neocons in the early 1990s. These pacts more-or-less bound New Labour to be a neoliberal party, cosseting the City of London and large donors as a counterweight to the trades unions.
The Milibands’ fratricidal entry into the post-Brown leadership contest, followed by Corbynism, and the dominance of an increasingly right-wing media, has made thinking other than in neoliberal terms (promoted by the right and its media enablers as “common sense”) a dangerous pursuit. And the thinking behind McSweeney’s project to capture Labour was confined to the politics of factionalism. Starmer was McSweeney’s puppet.
Starmer’s own political shallowness and McSweeney’s status as a political outsider in UK Labour (given his origins in Cork -itself a singular environment in Ireland) underlie, in my opinion, their inability to devise a “wrapping” for the various elements of their project to bring it together and provide a sense of purpose and direction.
Where does that leave us? Not in a good place.
Burnham has potential and is a good communicator, but is not in the Commons. His brief encapsulation of “what is to be done” does however suggest he is a political thinker.
Streeting is, in my view, a good communicator but is too compromised by his links to US healthcare providers and insurers and the broligarchy (h/t Carol Cadwalladr) to be a viable candidate.
Rayner has authenticity and political skills, but her difficulties with HMRC suggest to me thot at this point she lacks the admin support and/or personal bandwidth to take on the top job.
Which leaves us in a hole. My personal choice would be Hilary Benn; however, at 72 he may not be willing.
Agree with much but not all of that. I hope Starmer can break free now he is shot of McS. No alternative for the leadership at the moment. Eventually Rayner or Phillipson of the current crop may step up. Equally one of the dark horses may establish themselves but I remember there have been ex military types who many thought looked the part but didnt make it. Not sure if Carns will prove an exception to that rule.