It appears that the Labour Party are in trouble, well they have been for years if you ask me, however since (Sir) Keir Starmer took over as party leader they have went from bad to useless to be honest, they also appear to be a bit skint like the SNP now. They are so skint that they are looking to get rid of around 90 staff from Labour HQ. Similar to what Alex Salmond left Nicola Sturgeon in 2014 Jeremy Corbyn left Keir Starmer with a huge membership and pots of money in the accounts from members and the trade unions. Again like Nicola Sturgeon, in one year, Starmer has managed to destroy that legacy and for what, well Starmer wants to start “winning, voter-centric policies.”
Starmer intends to “focus on “crime, anti-social behaviour, the stability of jobs, British manufacturing, climate change and the damage done to children’s education during the pandemic.” This is just more drive to the centre of politics, a politics that does little to improve the lives of thoese most in need, the most vulnerable. The Morning Star is scathing of the recent developments in their editorial saying that –
Behind the bullshit is a clear strategy. The model of an activist party, rooted in trade-union and community organising and armed with a broad range of policies which tackle the principal features of exploitation and oppression in modern Britain and envisage a fundamental and irreversible change in the balance of power and wealth, is abandoned.
The priority now is a careful and constant repositioning to finesse an appeal to a shifting mid-point demographic and suppression of any hint of class politics or system change.
I was no fan of Jeremy Corbyn in any shape or form but he did at least have a vision that was about improving the circumstances of the least fortunate and to try and re-balance the injustices that have plagued the UK for hundreds of years, obviously he failed as he lost the election and then was brought down by the Tories, like Starmer, in his own party. Starmer currently has a poll rating of -59, wow, has any leader ever been so low. Even Boris Johnson, the most useless PM next to Gordon Brown in the history of the UK has -55%.
Labour currently sit at at 32% in the polls for the next general election, just before the Scottish elections in May Scottish Labour were on 19% in the polls. The simple fact is that Labour under the likes of Starmer and Sarwar offer no vision and have no future. While they pander to the centre, flirt with the right, and bow down to their betters the people they need to vote for them in the main will continue to suffer having bought into the anti-foreigner myth of the Tories and having seen, like in Scotland, Labour abandon the working class communities they profess to want to protect.
Latest voting intentions for the next GE put the SNP on 42%, Conservatives 24%, Labour 17%, and the Scottish Lib Dems 4%. Labour need to come up with a radical set of policies that will appeal to those communities that they have lost, that is where the SNP have been successful to a degree taking voters away from Labour while also being in danger of losing it all due to a similar central position as that of Labour by trying to appeal to the poor while kissing up to the middle classes, it is a policy that will fail in the medium term either way and totally lacks vision.
Our politics right now is broken as I have noted before but the lack of vision, of policy that is designed to improve things will result in a greater shift to populism and to the right. This rise of the right is a direct result of the withdrawal of the politics of the left from working class communities across the UK. Neoliberal economics, embraced by virtually all of the parties in the UK, has deepened that sense of betrayal that some people feel in relation to the political classes, Labour have failed to learn that lesson, in Scotland in relation to the next independence referendum we are failing to learn that lesson also.
Promises of land reform, council tax reform, business tax reform, democratic reform have all been lies to the extent that 33% of people did not vote in 2019 GE with only Scotland showing a slight increase due to the independence issue, how much lower will that be if an election is called in 2023 and no referendum has taken place. Labour have no vision as I have already noted but that lack of vision is maybe as great a danger as the climate emergency in the short term as we are left to the whims of the Tories and their right wing agenda. We need a strong Labour Party in England right now and what we have is a useless Labour leader determined to repeat the mistakes of the past, the Morning Star Editor is correct, it is all bullshit.
grumpyscottishman.wordpress.com 
I’d go further.
Jeremy Corbyn lost the working mans’ trust by allowing himself and the Labour Party to be manipulated by the politically correct Nazis.
Your average working man (black or white, green or orange ) isn’t stupid. He or she knows when something smells and will move in the opposite direction. Hence the Tory gains in the likes of Hartlepool etc.
OT. I remember Paddy Power the Irish betting mogul being interviewed on the subject of roulette machines in betting shops and the morality issue. He came away with this response which has stayed with me.
“One can either adapt and survive or stay stagnant and perish”.
The SNP under Sturgeon is doomed to fail sooner rather than later because just like Labour under Corbyn they too are failing their core voters in order to sook up to the loonies.
IM
You’re not wrong in your assessment to be fair. The SNP will fail because in the end they all do. Labour just have little to offer and my feeling is that working class people have been abandoned now, all over the world by the politically correct and neoliberal economics. Rich people run the world and the politicians don’t have the balls to take them on. Dad state of affairs but I do believe England needs Labour or an alternative before it ruins us all.
Thanks for commenting.
Bruce
Reblogged this on Ramblings of a now 60+ Female and commented:
Westminster needs the PR system asap.
In my opinion, there is one major flaw in your assessment. JC was destroyed as he was seen as a threat by the establishment. His lifelong opposition to sending working class people to die in foreign wars that were fought to line the pockets of the arms industry and the multi nationals, his support for the Palestinian people against the oppressive Israeli state and his desire to make fundamental changes to the structures that allowed the wealthy to screw the system for every penny they can get led to a vicious, unprecedented campaign of vilification and character assassination. The state run MSM propaganda machine, traitors in his own party and the Israeli state security system and their supporters worked together to destroy his credibility. By the time of the last election this campaign had done its job and the tories were able to combine this with the small minded, insular English nationalism created by Brexit (with the compliance of the Brexit Party who withdrew their candidates from tory constituencies whilst retaining them in Labour constituencies).
It’s the opposite with NS and the NSNPG. She is the establishment in Scotland. She has cosied up to the Scottish MSM by giving them a £3 million backhander, she has stated her support for NATO and a continued presence in Afghanistan, she has stitched up the Criminal Justice system by ensuring she works closely with the English colonisers appointees, she has ensured the Windsor parasites have a veto on Scottish legislation, she has exempted private schools where the wealthy educate the next class of crooked exploiters etc. NS will never be destroyed by the establishment because, in their eyes, she is doing exactly what they want. The only way this pseudo dictator will be removed is when enough people see through this facade, leave the SNP and join a real Independence Party, Alba.
Nac
I agree the media were against Corbyn and he was never going to be allowed to win the election but it was his own MPs that brought him down, they hated him as much as many in the SNP hate Salmond. Many Labour MPs didn’t even make a huge effort to promote their manifesto in the election, of course it was those who were in safe seats. I was no fan but would have taken Corbyn before Johnson any day. Totally agree with you about Sturgeon, she gets an easy ride because they know the union is safe in her hands. They might even agree to a referendum at some point but it would be with Sturgeon agreeing concessions that would guarantee a defeat in my opinion, I actually despise her as much as I did Thatcher, at least Thatcher had a smidgeon of honesty, Sturgeon doesn’t for sure.
Thanks for commenting.
Bruce
if you had a WIG then it would all be fine!