A Government with a huge majority, but only because of parties like Reform UK, domain of Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, eating into the Tory vote. Labour’s share of the popular vote, after posting opinion poll ratings well into the 40s during the campaign, was a miserable 33.7%. 1.6% better than 2019. 6.3% down on 2017. Less than convincing.
And, coming hard on the heels of the refusal to lift the benefit cap, has come another measure guaranteed to generate No Additional Economic Activity At All. As this blog has pointed out more than once, giving the less well off more money is a sure-fire way to generate more economic activity. These are the people with the highest propensity to spend. They will spend that money.
It is no use at all to anyone interested in generating more economic activity to allow that money to be retained by the very well off, those with the highest propensity to save. It is also no use at all to stretch peoples’ credibility beyond its structural limit by claiming that leaving the winter fuel allowance in place will somehow precipitate a run on Sterling, which it will not.
Add to this the pointless misquoting of Keynes, seemingly to suggest that he would have approved of Rachel Reeves’ policies (which he certainly would not), and the authoritarian response of the Labour leadership to anyone demonstrating the slightest empathy towards the least well-off (vote for this cruelty or you lose the whip), and you have a party in imminent disarray.
And Richard Murphy telling “I am so bored of hearing Labour ministers talking about ‘difficult decisions’ they didn’t want to take when there is no reason whatsoever for them to have taken them”. With Mick Lynch of the RMT adding “We cannot balance the books by cutting off the heating for our pensioners. Labour has to find a better, fairer way”.
On top of that is the inevitable charge of hypocrisy, Paul Lewis bringing the inconvenient reminder “Chancellor tells her MPs to blame Conservatives for her decision to raid Winter Fuel Payment … so she is blaming the party that in 2017 said it would do that but backed down when Labour said it would kill 4000 pensioners. Oh dear”. This whole charade is pointless.
Worse for Labour, the steady alienation of members will only accelerate. It was clear during the General Election campaign that some constituencies would have gone to The Red Team, if only more canvassers and other activists could have been mustered. Next time, there will most likely be even fewer of them. Added to a disheartened and disillusioned electorate.
Who suggested this path? Did anyone in Downing Street, or any of those advising the Labour leadership, bother to think through what consequences might flow from imposing more misery on the least well off? One has to credit the brains behind New New Labour with the notion that, if they did all this to a deliberate plan, they must have also figured a way out of it.
Because if they haven’t - no. Just no. You don’t want to go there.
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14 comments:
But Bliar/Brown and co DID "go there", Tim. As have the Starmer/Reeves gang.
Far right corruption made manifest. As forecast, it intensifies by the day.
Britain is owned and governed as a de facto far right one party state.
'They' don't care, that's the problem. Starmer, Evans, Mandelson and Gollum are behind Labours policy direction, and have been since 2019, even before Corbyn resigned.
New Labour simply see, as the Tories do, holding office as an opportunity to feather their own nest. A gigantic shop window for what passes as 'talents' for City, Consultancy's, and Corporations looking to hoover up public sector contracts.
The more useless the company, Crapita being a prime example, the more contracts they get, and the more appalling service they offer, the better. As Private Eye says, nothing rewards like failure.
So, 'disappointing', though losing office might be, the rewards of keeping big business and the wealthy sweet far outweigh actually doing the job if governing properly.
You will never be as bad as Windbag Kinnock, Tim. Because you will never flee to the sinecure of an unelected EU commissioner while bleating, "I've been a good boy."
Meanwhile, keep your eye on Windbag2. He hasn't yet got into full Quisling stride. But he will.
Brutal lying thieving far right scoundrels attack the most vulnerable citizens.
So what's new?
And now, once again as long forecast:
The Starmer Quisling announces "reforms" to the NHS - but "no extra funding". Which means more profiteering privatisation in the pockets of Quisling "Labour" scumbags. All of it in the usual lying guise of assorted home grown and international (usually Yank spivs) "entrepreneurs" "saving" the NHS.
What price frontman Essex barrow boy Streeting opening a "health consultants" office later on. You know, like seedy conman Milburn.
Rotten-to-the-core corrupt.
It’s such dreadful politics. It is absolutely economically illiterate, but one can only cry at the sheer political waste of Labour having the space to announce new investments without any of this dreadful fallout.
Yeah the rightwing would have shouted for a few weeks post Budget about uncosted this or that, but all that bluster would have died out and been forgotten about.
This blowback though is far far worse. The Right are shouting anyway and it certainly won’t be forgotten by important groups of voters. What were they thinking?
Starmers says "reform or die" and "no more money without reform". But he's not talking to the NHS. He's the PM, his govt are the only ones with the power to reform, and they control the control the cash flow. No, he's talking to us, and what he's saying is this - "we are going to force privatisation on the NHS under the guise of reform, and if you don't like it, tough". The mans an utter wanker.
Sometimes, even sacred cows have to be slaughtered. The NHS is one such beast. Ask yourself why France has a far better health service, with better outcomes. I mean, Javid could have made a considerable saving on the wage bill if he'd not chickened out on the "jab or job" business during Covid.
Frances health care is the same as ours. Instead of ni they pay shi. Its universal, and additional funding comes from taxation. So what exactly is your point? Getting rid of a universal, free at point of access, health service makes no sense. In particular as our political leaders want to replace it with a US style system, run and charged for by big health corporations. From the USA. A nation which has the single most expensive health service in the World, yet one of the poorest in the developed world in terms of outcomes and quality of service. As for Franxes health service being miles better than ours, is that surprising given ours has been underfunded to the tune of 25% on average since 2010? Talking of sacred cows needing to be sacrificed, here's a better one - stopping under taxing wealth, hitting the poorest off, and preventing billions leaching off into offshore accounts? Just a thought..
Dumb as fuck. Just like in 97. No attempt to educate the electorate over the heads of the small state idiots and the rags supporting them.
Cave in at the first challenge and then run scared for the next 5 years, intentionally obfuscating any progressive
measures for fear of accusations of left wingery.
Gutless short termism. Pathetic
Thick C2DE pensioners gave us Brexit, Johnson, and Truss. They make up the bulk of Conservative and Reform voters.
Kill them off. Fuck 'em.
Guess what..... the Starmer Quisling and the Essex barrow boy Streeting both LIED when they claimed there was no Impact Assessment on elimination of the Winter Fuels Payment:
https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2024/09/14/winter-fuel-payments-dwp-impact-assessment/
Which also coincided with a far right tory proposal for the same scumbag action.
Maybe they were distracted by preparation for the Quisling trip to take instructions from Washington. Where the only question was how far the Starmer/Lammy Quislings would bend over for their Yank paymasters.
It's impossible to feel anything but absolute contempt for what the Labour Party has become post-Corbyn. It was never better demonstrated than when Starmer crossed the floor of the HoC to console Sunak after the election. Just when you think far right warmongering Labour can't get any more craven they manage it. An utterly disgusting gang of time serving cowards and gobshites.
Tbh it doesn't matter which view you take, 'quisling' Labour, cynical politicians simply in it for post politics jobs, or, as you say, the same incompetence and cowardice as Blair and co. It beggars belief that a govt can have a massive majority and yet put forward the same tired, failed, strategies as their predecessors, and even when they had good ideas, water them down or simply wave them out of existence.
The bigger concern though, is what's next? All over Europe the far right is on the march, with one of the primary causes being foety years of economic and social conservatism failing to deliver meaningful change to peoples lives.
Neo-liberalism has created massive wage gaps, seen real poverty return to country's that had all but eradicated it, poorly paying dead end jobs, expensive privately run services, harder to access than ever. Transport policies that just create ever bigger traffic jams, rubbish public services, - and if any should speak out against the above, the right wing press and talking heads go into meltdown.
Then of course we have the great scapegoats - immigrants. Just this week the newspapers that 'never run scare stories about migrants' telling us that low skill migrants cost us a bomb. The sheer brass neck of the Tory press has to seen to be believed.
Someone said we are doomed not to learn from history. It seems not only were they right, but that history can be as little as two months ago.
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