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Starmer’s flawed strategy? – politicalbetting.com
Starmer’s flawed strategy? – politicalbetting.com
A majority of Labour voters are repelled by the Conservatives rather than attracted by Sir Keir Starmer, polling findshttps://t.co/b642f89ZnN
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Secondly no great support for Labour’s policies means they risk becoming rapidly very unpopular if and when they take power.
Statements of the obvious. Labour's entire election strategy is being Not-Tory. As I've complained often enough before in recent months, they appear to offer nothing except to manage decline less incompetently than Rishi Sunak. It's a vision and inspiration free zone, in which most of the initiatives they did tentatively advance have been watered down or ditched under the cover of an ailing economy - which isn't going to stop ailing unless you actively try to fix it.
Nobody is going to vote Labour because they're wetting themselves with excitement at the thought of charging Eton VAT on its fees and using the money to fund school breakfast clubs, which appears presently to constitute the limits of Labour's ambitions for the country. They're leaving a lot of room for unenthusiastic Tory backers - well-off oldies who've done well out of soaring house prices, and 2019 converts vulnerable to cheap propaganda about fringe culture wars issues - to troop back into the Conservative camp for want of a better alternative.
Nobody should be surprised under these circumstances if the Conservatives do a lot better in the next election than anyone is expecting. The opinion polls are telling us something about the Government's present level of unpopularity, but aren't a reliable guide to future events. Looking at how much of the popular vote Major managed to salvage in 1997, and taking into account that the age of the median voter has risen since then, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Tories polled somewhere in the range 33-35% at the next GE and salvaged well over 200 seats.
Another trivial problem, however, is that any positive reason to vote Labour would almost certainly be them promising to tax the hard-working and enterprising to spend other people's money on one of their favourite interest groups, but unfortunately the Conservatives have already been doing that for years already. Just like in 2010, there's no money left.
A year since he was replaced with someone who was "tough on crime," here are SF's crime stats:
Vehicle Theft: ⬆️ 10.5%
Homicide: ⬆️ 23%
Robbery: ⬆️ 13%
https://twitter.com/robertgreenwald/status/1684708632150302720
I don't see any evidence this is solid or good for 10+ years.
F1: unhelpfully, the race may be dry, wet, or mixed. So it'll be fun picking a bet... Anyway, I'll get started on that presently.
Also, don't forget their other policies like nationalising utilities and banning new UK oil and gas exploration that will cost the exchequer money too.
Labour leader ‘happy to jump on any bandwagon’, PM tells workers in north Wales
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/07/29/interview-rishi-sunak-keir-starmer-no-principles/ (£££)
Do they have the self-awareness and humility to reflect on and learn from this?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66351867
Betting PostF1: https://enormo-haddock.blogspot.com/2023/07/belgium-pre-race-2023.html
Backed Perez to win each way at 7.5. Unless it's very wet he's got a great shot at 2nd.
'Secondly no great support for Labour’s policies means they risk becoming rapidly very unpopular if and when they take power.'
Correct
'Labour’s current polling lead could shrink if the government stops becoming quite so unpopular between now and election.'
Correct but unlikely to happen. History tells us that when a brand has been trashed (1979, 1997) it takes a generation to restore.
In fact, dislike is a far greater motivator for people to vote than like. No one in the country 'really' likes any politician, nor their policies.
So in theory @TSE is right but I'm afraid it misses the people's fury. There will be a day of reckoning for the tories. A venting for the all the inglorious clusterf*cks of the past 5 years. Vox populi.
It took eight years between losing power in 1997 and David Cameron being elected in 2005 for the Tories to start thinking properly about why they were toxic and how to detoxify themselves.
It took ten years between losing power in 2010 and Keir Starmer being elected in 2020 for Labour to make the same journey.
And even after a party stops being repulsive to the voters, you still have to wait for the next election which is probably a good few years afterwards.
So a decade in power for Labour looks like a rather small-c conservative estimate based on recent history.
There might be a few policies with a reddish hue that are designed to draw the tories fire but can't be turned into effective wedge issues. VAT on public schools is one such. The actually wealthy don't care so the only real opposition to it are middle class tossers who wear M&S blazers in the bedroom and would never vote Labour anyway.
And while it is true the state system is underfunded that is not just a Tory problem. Many of the reasons for its underfunding - the removal of non-mainstream provision which wastefully concentrates children who cannot cope in mainstream schools, centralisation, academy chains and a punitive inspection regime which suck resources away from where they might be useful - were begun under Labour.
They dont have any, and the few they did have Starmer ditched.
HS2 deemed ‘unachievable’. Disastrous, wasteful.
But yeah LTNs.
We need rid of this useless government ASAP.
Not that what went before was any better, being essentially an ego trip for Chris Woodhead.
Certainly they were cheaper than Academy chains, which are the ultimate admin gravy train.
That does not mean they were any good, incidentally.
(1) Past performance is no guide to future success; rules, such as they are, change all the time and last only until they are broken.
(2) It's in human nature to look for patterns in nature to allow us to better predict the future and just because we had 18 years of Conservative rule, followed by 13 years of Labour rule, followed by c.14 of Conservative-led rule it does not follow that we will now have 10-15 years of Labour rule.
You shouldn't base any prediction on the future based on recent history, particularly not in politics. Keir Starmer was losing by-elections to the Conservatives barely 2 years ago.
Indeed with the very weak electoral coalitions that now exist for either party, and the fickleness of the electorate, we could be in for an age of alternating governments every few years, a bit like the 1970s, or a splintering and the rise of new parties on top that could eventually break the FPTP mould.
It is not an organisation that can be taken seriously - it loudmouths for Labour policy.
EDSK analysis shows it to raise nothing at all on a 25% dropout of pupils into the state sector, which would include us since we wouldn't be able to afford it:
https://www.edsk.org/publications/vat-on-private-school-fees/
Right now, plenty will think they're safe because they don't have kids in private school and can safely ignore this.
Chortle. Wait until they take office.
1. Welcome to first-past-the-post. How do these numbers compare to previous change elections? I have no idea, but suspect they’re similar.
2. Going into government on the back of low expectations is a positive, not a negative.
3. Given the first two points, if the Tories do lose, much will depend on their reaction. As things stand, a swing to the right looks much more likely than a tack back to the centre.
All that said, I wish Labour would stop being so scared. The party’s fear of the Tory press and how it dictates the wider broadcast media narrative is a fair one - the Farage story is the latest example - but that fear can become paralysing. That seems to be where we are now.
I think too much caution could end up doing more harm than good from a Labour perspective. But I also think that if Labour does make it into office, it’s likely to be there for at least a couple of terms.
Over policy there are basically three directions for Sir K in each area:
shift the deckchairs
spend more for reason X
spend less for reason Y.
Context: Maximal ever state managed expenditure; absolute resistance to tax rises except for others; £2 trillion debt; £100billion + annual borrowing; zero areas where everyone says enough is being spent; pressure to spend zillions more on every side.
Everything Sir K says will be met by absolute resistance from one or other of the above constraints.
So say as little as possible; give no hostages; focus on competence.
Betting post: The polling supports the view (which I hold) that NOM is value; Labour majority is not.
It seems more likely than not that their response to defeat will be to go even further off the reservation.
From this week's Economist;
Mr Sunak’s perky and nerdy demeanour covers an overlooked fact: he is comfortably the most right-wing Conservative prime minister since Margaret Thatcher. Taking a hard position on asylum-seekers is just the beginning. On everything from social issues, devolution and the environment to Brexit and the economy, Mr Sunak is to the right of the recent Tory occupants of 10 Downing Street. Yet neither voters nor his colleagues seem to have noticed.
https://www.economist.com/britain/2023/07/27/no-really-rishi-sunak-is-a-right-winger
Labour has done what any opposition has to do in a FPTP system: make itself look like a credible alternative government. None of that was close to being guaranteed in December 2019. Would Labour be 20 points ahead if Rebecca Long Bailey was leader and Richard Burgon was shadow chancellor? I doubt it.
My contention is that what looks like a pattern is actually a mirage (a coincidence) and the function of both events and a series of considered and deliberate choices.
First, he became a research intern with Conservative MP Andrew Turner, then a researcher at the Social Market Foundation on reforming benefits. His first job in education policy was at the Policy Exchange think tank from 2008 to 2009, under schools policy expert Sam Freedman, who later also advised Gove.
https://schoolsweek.co.uk/setting-up-a-new-think-tank-is-a-steep-learning-curve/
That's fine, but it highlights how any predictions about the future depend on the assumptions you make.
In this case, it all depends how much private schools can squeeze their costs and how much fee payers can absorb increases
I haven't noticed Sunak being to the right of recent Tory occupants at 10 Downing Street on social issues or devolution (where on earth has that one come from? Because he called Sturgeon's bluff) and he's just launched a new net zero strategy this year. He's probably more economically right-wing that Boris Johnson, subject to fiscal conservativism, of course, but that's not saying an awful lot.
Piss and wind. The Economist talks a lot of shite.
We can put the IFS now in the same category as the IPPR, Fabian Society or the IMF.
Obviously, I could be totally wrong. It has been known!!
I would argue not, and that's the real issue.
So, for example, their two big education policies are VAT on private schools and get rid of the one word inspection reports from OFSTED. Neither is indefensible, but leaving aside the question of what either will achieve in practice, they both rather miss the point.
Poor administration and over-examination are killing the state sector just as much as underfunding, for example, but I see no plans to abolish useless SATs, league tables, and academy chains.
Similarly, the inspection regime is deeply flawed, to the extent many OFSTED inspectors say in private they don't understand what the 'curriculum framework' actually means. And I don't blame them, because it's a slogan not a policy. Having a report card instead of a frequently wrong or at least, misleading single word judgement may help, but until we can get beyond the banal clichés beloved by Spielman and before her Wilshaw and Gilbert and actually consider the strengths and weaknesses of a school in realistic way, and Labour have announced no plan for that.
Finally, eliminating the difficulty schools have in removing highly disruptive children because there is nowhere for them to go is a quick and easy win - open more PRUs and SEND schools. That would make a colossal difference on all levels. But I see no policy for that either.
As Sir Arnold said good governance is about finding the right questions to ask. The Tories have failed at this, truly catastrophically, but so far Labour are showing no signs of doing better.
Sending zero migrants to Rwanda, and popping a few on barges isn't Hitler. Note the Labour don't trumpet their delight at the thought of escorting the small boats UKwards in greater numbers, nor do they plan to put them up at Claridges. Indeed they have no intention (see Y Cooper passim) of saying anything much. Who can blame them?
That is, the Nation Curriculum etc isn’t too bad, but that the attempts to control schools centrally are just pissing up a rope.
Having watched a school being built up from the first class of primary kids and known the admins well, I can believe it. They spent a lot of time protecting teachers from horse manure from above - good admin staff are like good management. Damn near invisible until they are not there.
I rather suspect the competently run schools fight the system, and then badly run ones just soldier* along, failing forwards, while checking as many boxes as they can.
*for the Taylorists among us.
The beatings will be intensified again and again until morale improves.
The whole 64-79 period was politically turbulent and followed on a long, four prime minister period, of Conservative government.
1 How do we get more stuff built faster?
2 How do we improve trading relationships with our geographic neighbours?
Solve those, even partially, and a lot of other things become possible.
@CasinoRoyale is concerned that Starmer has a plan and will unleash Woke upon the country. I'm concerned that he has no plan at all, Woke or otherwise.
[1] https://nitter.net/ripplecabin/status/1684449139579396097#m https://nitter.net/pic/orig/media/F2BdkHJXsAAup-R.jpg
It really is astonishing how they fail to learn that it's their own atrocious behaviour (usually personally) that continually floors them.
Not from giving or receiving vast amounts of money for vague services.
It undermined my confidence in the whole journal.
- Save the motorist. Abandon HS2, ban LTNs and ULEZ.
- Stop the boats.
- A helipad in every neighbourhood.
They admitted that the UK population might quickly balloon to 150-200 million, and that there could be some cultural integration challenges, but this could be dealt with by funding English lessons and community outreach programmes, and the overall rise in GDP would more than compensate for any problema it caused anyway.
Extremism isn't just the preserve of the left and the right; it can happen in the centre too.
We have a shortage of teachers willing to work in the classroom for current pay and conditions. The latter being, in my experience, actually more important than the former.
Again, we should be asking the question 'why is that?' rather than saying VAT on private school fees to fund a pay rise will solve the problem.
That was one thing which got the Conservatives over the line in 1992.
And with roads comes housing developments, industrial estates, business parks, leisure outlets.
Inflation should fall to about zero but there’s a lot that can go wrong in the next 18 months. Sunak doesn’t strike me as a lucky general.
Of course, it had all paid off about a century later but breaking up integrated empires and trading blocs does come at a price - sometimes for many decades.
The single biggest benefit of “Capacity 2030” is to get thousands of long-distance lorries off the roads.
That's not a winning strategy, that is a party that expects to lose but hopes to stem the losses by getting the nutters from the right-wing back on board, rather than have them drift off to minor parties.
I should have guessed the Tories would draw the wrong lesson from Uxbridge, it's not ULEZ that is the problem it's the feeble mitigation of issues it causes and decades of under-investment in public transport. The Tories abandoning green targets, and going all ostrich on environmental issues, will only win the support of people who expect to kick the bucket shortly.
Remember - it's not enough for inflation to fall, as prices are still going up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_the_United_States
Poor immigrants moving to the Appalachian backwoods to be subsistence farmers or to the cities to be an urban proletariat wouldn't help per capita income.
I suspect that the USA's economic advance came with the twin forces of industrialisation and settlement of the mid-West and Mississippi valley.
It's only when Westminster tried to legislate for taxation there (the Stamp Duty Act) that it all started to kick off. That was only to help pay for some of the British troops garrisoned there for their own protection but it rapidly turned nasty.
What I still find astonishing is how quickly it all turned. As late as 1770 the city of New York funded a massive new gilded statue of King George III in the city centre, only to properly Colston it just 6 years later.
And I don't see much sign of improved productivity out there.
I got this wrong, thought it was a nonsense and going to be irrelevant in Uxbridge and elsewhere. Kid starver must be rattled
Yesterday I read @bigjohnowls list of Strarmers u turns and while I know BJO is the 'bete noire' of some on here it is hard to disagree with him
I was speaking to my son in Vancouver last night and he said there is not a politician or leader anywhere that instills confidence, and he was highly critical of Trudeau and said Biden age and dementia will see him not standing next year as the US heads into further political chaos
Truth is the global problems with climate change and war require global solutions when politicians only seek to fight each other
I think Starmer will be out of his depth the minute he walks into no 10, and at times like this we need to bury politics and have a National government drawn across all politics
In other words -
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” - Samuel Adams
vs
"There will be no non-tariff barriers to trade" — Boris Johnson (or “There will be no downside to Brexit, only a considerable upside.” - David Davis. Others are available on request).