You called us every name under the Sun when we talked about 40 years of Thatcherism, but now Keir Starmer positively revels in it. The Labour Party wants to cut the minimum wage to £10 per hour. Having taken oodles of cash from the American healthcare companies, Starmer and Wes Streeting want to privatise the NHS in England.
Labour opposed the temporary ceasefire in Gaza, and it therefore supports, for example, today's bombing of the Holy Family School in Gaza City, which could not have been mistaken for anything else, which had been sheltering hundreds of displaced persons, and which is maintained by the Dominican Sisters of the Most Holy Rosary of Jerusalem, who were founded by Saint Marie-Alphonsine Danil Ghattas, a modern Palestinian who died under the Mandate in 1927.
Labour is now the greater evil, worse than the Tories. We should no more want it to win the next General Election than most of its MPs wanted it to win the last two, or than any of its staff wanted it to win the last four. But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.
To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.
Sir Keir Starmer is to warn that the UK will face "huge constraints" on public spending if his party win the next General Election. On Monday, he will say anyone expecting an incoming Labour government "to quickly turn on the spending taps is going to be disappointed.”
ReplyDeleteHe’s trying to appear responsible with the public finances.
If that were true, then it would be an undeniable point of differentiation from the other side.
DeleteDeeply unhappy Mirror editorial in the morning, he's gone too far this time.
ReplyDeleteNot just the editorial. The front page as well.
DeleteThe Mirror front page is exactly what he was aiming for-there’s a reason he wrote this in the Telegraph. He wanted to upset all the right people in order to reach the voters he’s aiming for. The Left is being played.
ReplyDeleteAt which voters is this aimed? The Telegraph, like the Mail, is never going to endorse Labour, no matter what. They will say that Starmer has changed his tune, but he never believed one note of the old one, and he does not believe one note of the new one. Although he will of course keep playing it. But their readers still will not vote for him. There is absolutely no chance of that.
DeleteLosing the Mirror would be serious. It is not the Morning Star. It supports the right-wing Labour Leader whenever there is one, as there almost always is, and that's that. This is the first time that it has criticised a non-Corbyn Leader in 20 years, and Piers Morgan's opposition to the Iraq War was a one-off. Losing the Mirror would be like when a Tory Leader loses the Mail. It is never going to support the other side, but you are still finished. Starmer is on the cusp of that with this.
Since when was Thatcherism fiscally responsible? It certainly was not at the time.
A tiny circulation paper read exclusively by hard core Tory voters, but this way he alienates metropolitan liberals and the Red Wall at the same time. Other parties are available.
ReplyDeleteNotice that Thatcher's own party never mentions her. But then, it alone ever succeeded in getting rid of her. Plenty of other people tried. But only the Tories ever managed it.
DeleteTwo recessions. The second was over by the middle of 1991, but no one remembers that. My entire generation and the two above it think that Britain was still in recession on the day of the 1997 General Election, just as mine, the one above and one below think that the last Labour Government's only recession, and that caused by external factors whereas both of Thatcher's were caused by her own policies, was still in place on the day of the 2010 General Election. It had been over for a year by then. Politics is unforgiving.
Can't blame Starmer for harking back to the Thatcherite era of fiscal responsibility following the UK's 1970's period as the 'sick man of Europe' forced to run with a begging bowl to the IMF.
ReplyDeleteThatcher delivered low inflation, low taxes, consistent economic growth, higher long-term employment and by 1997 the Conservatives bequeathed Blair an economy with the third largest GDP in the world.
Laughable. Every word of that. The clever section of your own side does in fact laugh at people like you. I can tell you that for a fact.
DeleteTell me a single word of it that is not unquestionably true. The economic record speaks for itself-Thatcher cut inflation, controlled spending, grew the economy, trebled the tax intake (by cutting the top rate of tax) and Britain's economy was the third biggest in GDP in the world by 1997. Do they not teach you the facts up North in case it upsets the "evil Thatcher the milk-snatcher" myth?
ReplyDeleteThey laugh at you. Your own side. The Labour Right hates and fears people like me, but it does not laugh at us. Your lot laughs at you. I have heard them. And except when doing so, if then, they never, ever, ever talk about her.
DeleteJohn McTernan was very upset about this on the World at One so you have to wonder what Tony Blair thinks.
ReplyDeleteDoes it? I must say that that is not something that bothers me awfully much. McTernan, on the other hand.
DeleteStarmer obviously does not believe that he is 20 points ahead. He would not be bothering with any of this if he did.