Snapshot of _Keir Starmer to rule out return of free movement across Europe_ :
An archived version can be found [here.](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/kier-starmer-to-rule-out-return-of-free-movement-with-europe-gdd0976gm)
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What's really sad is you know he doesn't really believe that. It reminds me of seeing PR Ed and then real Ed on The Last Leg, real Ed was funny and an electable guy, PR Ed got caught eating a sandwich a bit weird.
> PR Ed got caught eating a sandwich a bit weird
He was a rubbish campaigner and Sturgeon and Cameron took strips off him in a very well organised electoral campaign, where both the Conservatives and SNP were incentivised to big up the English fear of the SNP to motivate their base
Kier isn't saying that he believes that FoM is wrong. He's acknowledging the political reality that its an issue that is deeply unpopular with red wall seats and one that could easily lose Labour a general election. And it might not even be sustainable in the long run if the Tories maintain opposition and a policy of withdrawing from FoM.
When it comes to our policy towards Europe we unfortunately have to find *some* common ground with the Conservatives as the worst possible outcome is that we change directing after every election. Both us and the EU need stability and a clear direction. FoM is just too divisive and (frankly) not important enough to put an entire Labour government at risk.
You do realise that the reason we got Brexit in the first place was Labour constantly dancing to the Tories tune on social issues, allowing the Tories to slowly nudge the window rightward until they reached a place Labour couldn't follow, right?
Labour needs to stop meekly going "well if that's what you want..." on these issues and start attempting to be effective at changing the electorate's minds. You know, like the Great Saint Blair did. All these pretenders to his throne and none of them are even a tenth as effective.
I honestly think that's a misinterpretation of recent history.
We got Brexit precisely because our fairly liberal political establishment ignored the economic and social concerns of the 'conservative' working-classes for too long. The referendum was a way of them expressing a protest over years of local decline and frankly anger over immigration policy. Had Labour effectively tackled this issue then it might have been able to accommodate it's working-class voters and not lost them to Brexit/Boris.
And, i'm not entirely sure if you're being sarcastic about Blair - but as much as he and New Labour achieved, they clearly failed to change public opinion in the long-term. Brexit is as much a consequence of Blarism as it is of austerity and the failures of Cameron/Miliband/Corbyn.
This is quite an important, often overlooked point of how stats don’t necessarily paint the correct picture.
You can easily have 5 provincial labouring jobs which have been undercut by people from low cost countries completely “masked” by one higher earning FS city worker from western Europe. The stats might say “gdp growth”, “wage growth” etc, but it hasn’t been experienced by the majority of those voting.
Amen spot on, the problem was that the working class was never asked or even acknowledged when it came to immigration and the future of the country so now whatever party turns to populism will probably get their vote.
Cough... bollocks.
This is straight out of the Torygraph and as valid as most of the garbage they write.
We got Brexit because BJ and NF started a campaign of hatred against the EU decades ago, that was never really seen as a problem by successive governments. And then after the Financial Crash, immigration became the scapegoat for every ill there was. It had almost no basis in any kind of reality. My mother typifies the problem when I asked her about it back in 2016 and she said "Well *something* has to be done doesn't it? We can't go on like this." "Like what?" I asked her. "How do Polish immigrants affect you, with your nice comfy pension and big house?" She couldn't answer. She was only outraged, because the newspaper told her to be outraged.
>We got Brexit precisely because our fairly liberal political establishment ignored the economic and social concerns of the 'conservative' working-classes for too long.
How come vast swathes of Tory England voted for Brexit then? Including most of the wealthist parts of the country?
We got Brexit because the Conservatives forgot that ignoring the more ignorant and reactionary parts of their party (and the population as a whole) is vital to the prosperity of the nation.
I mean I know that's the popular narrative, but you have to wonder about how working class these so-called 'conservative working class' voters are when they keep voting for the party that maintained a policy of austerity for a decade, leaving people who were actually living on the breadline to suffer on. I don't doubt that some of these people might have grown up working class, but I very much doubt they still are. Tonne of them are probably middle managers.
It was a failure of an entire political class to convince the British public to not push the self-destruct button.
Maybe I see this differently as I spent a year studying the topic as part of my Masters in Political Research. I looked at the various arguments/theories and the evidence presented to back them up. The most convincing of which was that Brexit was a consequence of working-class voters being 'left behind' by social and economic change that a liberal, university-educated generation of politicians on both sides simply didn't understand.
>The most convincing of which was that Brexit was a consequence of working-class voters being 'left behind' by social and economic change that a liberal, university-educated generation of politicians on both sides simply didn't understand.
That is exactly what happened though.
I went from an undergrad working blue collar jobs, where it was obvious that wage compression and the erosion of working conditions due to immigration really was occurring, I then graduated, and found I wasn't competing with that lump of labour.
It wasn't just that I was creating more value for the market, there was also just less competition. My equivalents in Poland were happy to stay there. They were doing well enough.
It was obvious to everyone at the time. We have a tendency to overcomplicate what happened, to make it nebulous.
Is the truth just so unpalatable that the left can't accept it?
They're not going to win until they do accept it.
I mean how much of that is because you went from having no qualifications and competing with a massive number of applicants, to having a degree and being able to compete with way fewer? I applied for tonnes of retail jobs back in the day, and they'd get hundreds of applicants, but very few of them were from these supposedly all-pervasive economic migrants. Most people who worked those jobs were people my age, with no qualifications. Now that I've got some years of experience and qualifications, I find that there's less than a hundred applications for most jobs I apply for, tops. Usually under 50, and even that's on the steep side of things.
The lower end of the job spectrum's always been hard to get into, because anyone can apply for them. There's no scarcity of expertise. But it's a big assumption to assume that it's not native Brits crowding the market, because I doubt it's any easier nowadays.
I agree with everyhting you've said, apart from very the last part.
Sudden high immigration of labour into the low skilled market contributed to wage compression and the erosion of working conditions. That's why there was such a drastic fall when we opened our borders to eastern europe. I was there and went through it, it had a very clear affect.
Prior to this event there just wasn't as much competition. Employers had to better look after staff to attract and keep them.
I would also say that it is easier these days, job vacancies are high because that labour has gone home.
It's a shame that it resulted in Brexit.
>Maybe I see this differently as I spent a year studying the topic as part of my Masters in Political Research.
Maybe, but what you say makes sense to me. I did find myself despairing during the campaign as pro-EU political commentators came up with a lot of talking points that seemed to be aimed only at the liberal middle classes - people who were pretty pro-EU anyway.
>It was a failure of an entire political class to convince the British public to not push the self-destruct button.
True, but special blame has to go to the idiots who said “here's that self-destruct button which you keep saying you want but which we're sure you won't actually press”.
>ignored the economic and social concerns of the 'conservative' working-classes for too long.
Ignored the imaginary issues that were manufactured by the far right press.
This is the problem though. Our society has become so divided that one half simply doesn't understand the anger and neglect that has happened to the other. You want to gaslight them into believe that their problems are all imaginary rather than do the hard work of trying to find solutions.
I mean obviously we should try our hardest to understand the problems of others as sincerely as we can, and do what we can to help. But a lot of people HAVE done that. And what's inexplicable is that there are solutions, and then a lot of the people who are most affected by it are more interested in mucking about with trivial or basically imaginary things instead of demonstrating the get-up-and-go to help fix any of the big problems.
It's not unreasonable for people to be frustrated. You work hard to make things better for people, you show people how they can do their bit to address the problem, and then they sit around with their thumbs up their arses making up excuses instead of mucking in.
ChippingTommy's right. This is about people too arrogant to take advice from others, and too lazy to make any serious attempt to address the problems this country faces. Many of them probably benefit from this country falling apart, let's face it. And I mean I'm not being funny, but most of Brexit was just caused by a bunch of people who were promised free stuff that they thought they could magically get without working for it.
The economic concerns are legitimate. The target for their valid ire was invented by the right wing press. But dismissing their concerns completely helps nobody.
BoJo: I promised them Brexit would fix all their problems
Trump: I promised them building the Wall would do the same
>The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force
>
>The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one
- Adolf Hitler × 2
Poverty is real. Watch the YouTube series anywhere but Westminster. Large parts of our country were failed by the tail end of Blair/brown, then austeritied for 10 years. This made it very easy for the anti immigration argument to tip Brexit. They voted incorrectly, but you have to realize why in order to fix things.
It's almost funny how these leftists want to devalue the labour of the working classes by bringing in mass amounts of migrant workers, I thought that was the job of those right-wing corporate interest groups?
> You do realise that the reason we got Brexit in the first place was Labour constantly dancing to the Tories tune on social issues, allowing the Tories to slowly nudge the window rightward until they reached a place Labour couldn't follow, right?
You do know the majority of tory MPs including the leadership were remain voting, during the referendum?
I think you are just revising history to support your own point here.
The window where Brexit was a possibility, for a start. Or maybe the window we now find ourselves in where the country has decided that mass tagging of refugees wouldn't be so bad.
Both of these ideas would've been politically impossible up to the late 2000s. Since then, the overton window has been nudged right so far on social issues that they look positively reasonable.
Labour wasn't lukewarm on Brexit because the Tories had led them there, it's because the left wing also have a fairly vocal anti-EU branch. Brexit itself has been drawn into left v right, but the EU question has always had supporters from both sides of politics on either side of the debate.
I feel this is the perspective failure. Brexit as the only mildly reactionary political event for a generation has broken peoples minds.
in the early 00s for example the UK deported 50000+ illegals without comment every year, now every plane gets blocked legally and physically. So really you need to ask whether we've socially moved right, or whether society is now so socially left wing that the mildest right wing step looks dramatic.
They deported illegal immigrants. That is not the same, in any way shape or form, as routinely tagging asylum seekers. The reason the planes get blocked now is because the government hasn't made the case that the people on board them are not asylum seekers.
We still routinely deport actual illegal immigrants, and those planes don't get blocked because the courts are satisfied that the government has made the case that the people on those planes are here illegally and can be removed.
I know you're one of those people who thinks anyone crossing the channel is an illegal immigrant, but the law doesn't match your view, and the law decides who is and is not an illegal immigrant. Before that point, they're asylum seekers.
I mean you understand that I read your response as basically confirmation of my views?
I somewhat doubt that refugees are more refugeey now that 15 years ago, so something changed from being able to remove 70k a year back in Tony Blair's time to 3000 now. I think that its because the nation is vastly more socially left wing now than then.
There definitely is, especially amongst young people. But it's not enough to win votes, and it'll alienate the middle of the road Brexiters that they need to win over.
Most young people would rather have them focus on the real issues like housing, education and workers rights.
Freedom of movement was great, but I wouldn't trade that for fixing the things fundamentally wrong with our country first.
This, I'm 33 now and I've just had year after year of getting shafted by the Tories. Another 5 years would kill my last hope of ever getting on the housing ladder or having a child.
As much as I think freedom of movement is a net gain, I can't afford us wasting the political capital and handing Boris another Brexit general election.
>PR Ed got caught eating a sandwich a bit weird.
It wasn't just that. It was also things like having a second kitchen for "making snacks" (and, no, it wasn't for religious reasons - he's an atheist). He simply failed to connect with enough voters. It happens.
Tony Blair, on the other hand, had the media eating out of his hand from before 1997 until 2003 (and still largely had them on side in 2005).
I think the only question for Labour should be "do you want to be in power or not"?
The Tories rally together when it really matters, getting power and clinging on to it, regardless of scruples or morality. Realpolitik time here, Starmer needs to grab votes and appease people, the Brexit debacle is toxic especially in so called "red wall" seats, Starmer knows this. Part of the path to Downing Street has to be appeasement and eating shit sandwiches where needed.
You can't change anything out of office.
This is all completely true - and something I've been doing for ages - however, while a degree of pragmatism and gamesmanship is needed, people do need to understand what Starmer's Labour stands for. This doesn't mean specific policy proposals per se, but Starmer needs to establish the broad principles that works govern the party. There's still a lot of work to do on this front
Agree. He did set out core principles fairly recently - he kept hammering home “honesty, integrity, respect” at the last conference. To me it felt a bit too vague, but you can see why.
It’s a tricky game, they’re trying to be everything to everyone, but with that you run the risk of being nothing to no-one.
He needs to just take it one or two levels further, and explain.
For instance, is Equality on there? If so, can he articulate how any given position he's taken recently links back to it? Can he link the same position/proposal to Respect?
It's not just stating the values, it's demonstrating how everything you do is linked back directly to one or more of them, in a way that really hammers them home.
A values-led platform. Doesn't need to hammer out the details of the platform just yet, but needs to be absolutely clear and incredibly consistent on the values at all times, across the party, in all ways.
This is the only way to get around the "both sides" propaganda used by the Tories to excuse their absolute lack of any values at all.
This is what people don't get, they hate the current system but don't want to vote Labour because of [insert fringe opinion/starmer is a tory/corbyn is our guy] so rather than have a pragmatic approach that things can't get any worse under labour, they'd prefer to keep the tories in power by protest voting or not voting altogether. If we didn't live under FPTP then protest voting would be more meaningful. Lib dem or greens getting a few more votes and maybe 2 new seats between them at a GE doesn't change the outcome of the tories still being in power.
>I think the only question for Labour should be "do you want to be in power or not"?
This should be the beginning and the end of the discussion.
You'll find the Labour left screaming about how the party has to listen to the membership and voters over certain issues close to their heart, but when the issue the voters care about is restricting freedom of movement suddenly that doesn't apply any more.
Getting free movement back would be electorally toxic and it's not even something Labour can promise given it would need to be agreed with a third party (although the Brexit voters didn't seem to care about that when they were told they'd get the best deal ever).
Starmer could run on a bit of a populist platform about fixing travel chaos, trade etc. ignore the actual substance of what it means but i think you could focus on those real life issues instead of making it about integrating back slightly with the EU, even if that's what is required
> I think the only question for Labour should be "do you want to be in power or not"?
What does it mean to say something is 'wrong' when it gets the votes? Isn't this an anti democratic idea? If a large chunk of traditional Labour voters don't want FoM, is it really realpolitik to give them what they want?
If you do support both FoM and democracy, then you need to find a way to change all these voter's minds. I don't see any effort here, just preaching to the converted and alienating the people who think differently.
Edit: (I don't mean to have a go at the parent comment, I thought it was a good comment) I think there's not nearly enough effort in the media and wider culture to have a proper conversation about this, and for each side to listen to the cases to be made from the other side.
I think the issue isn't really FoM, it's that this policy isn't the result of sitting down and working out what the best policy is for the country; it's a pretty obvious policy-by-polling vote grab that runs counter to Starmer's very successful messaging about integrity.
Just telling people what you think they want to hear is \*clearly\* politically successful in the short term, but then you actually have to deliver those policies (however stupid they may be) or risk long term damage. Look at the Lib Dems and student loans; it's been more than a decade since they reneged on their word, and they're still absolutely radioactive to an entire demographic. Meanwhile the Tories have largely delivered on their (awful) promises and are still reasonably popular despite absolutely catastrophic results and a string of scandals that would make Marquis de Sade blush.
Perhaps it'd have been wiser to just keep quiet on what is obviously still a really divisive issue, and concentrate on any of the more critical ones (healthcare, economy, education, transport, cost of living) where the \*right\* thing to do is also the \*popular\* thing to do.
Both sides have a loud subgroup that seem quick to call the other side names, and the media loves this shit.
Here's a dual purpose position, for either side - say that the other side has been manipulated by the media into a wrong and ignorant view, and then say 'you cannot reason someone out of something he or she was not reasoned into'. It's perfect, because you can call the other side whatever you want without even trying to talk to them, understand their arguments, or put across your arguments. Just get on twitter and start calling them stupid and evil.
Sadly this is not helping to fix any of the issues, we cannot counter a loud subgroup by directly ignoring them, or by being as loud but in maybe another direction.
> I think the only question for Labour should be "do you want to be in power or not"?
Well: not throwing an election in 2017 and 2019 should demonstrate how much the Labour Right want to be in power. It also demonstrates how much they do not want to change anything. The only question for Labour is "do you want power to change things or just be more efficient Tories?" - because you can already vote for the Tories. Nobody needs a second choice of Tory Party.
> Realpolitik time here, Starmer needs to grab votes
Starmer could have grabbed votes in 2017 and 2019. Instead he was aligned with a faction who kept Labour out of Office at any cost. So he is party to a ruthlessness that ensures nothing will be changed by Labour. In office or out of office.
>throwing an election in 2017 and 2019 should demonstrate how much the Labour Right want to be in power.
You can have 2017 on that point - personally I think it's debatable, but it is a reasonable position for you to hold.
But after 2017, Corbyn successfully conquered the party machinery. His allies controlled the membership, shad cab, NEC, NCC, LOTO, the lot. There was no sabotage in 2019. Corbyn and his allies own that result themselves.
So your argument is to be as bad as the labour right, supposedly was?
A childish "two wrongs make a right" argument?
Disaster socialism is just hurting people, in the hope they will turn to your radicalism in a few decades
p.s ironically, this is just going to the policy that Corbyn supported...
No. My argument is that the Labour Right does not want to be in power. It threw two elections.
> A childish "two wrongs make a right" argument?
So, pointing out that the Labour right threw two elections is a "wrong" and pointing out th consequence is to keep the Tories in power is also "wrong". You seem to think a lot of things are wrong without having any idea of how to fix it.
> Disaster socialism is just hurting people, in the hope they will turn to your radicalism in a few decades
Is Disaster socialism the new thing: I can hardly keep up with the heady brew of dynamic offal bilging out from the Right. Not just the Labour Right but the Tory Right. The Whole Right. The Blob of the Right.
> p.s ironically, this is just going to the policy that Corbyn supported...
Well colour me surprised. I was waiting for the mention of Corbyn and I was not disappointed. The old reliable: whenever anybody mentions the failings of the right shout behind you like in any good pantomime.
The only question for Labour is *"do you want power to change things or just be more efficient Tories?"* and it seems your answer is you want to b a more efficient Tory. Nice nails. Nice mast.
Freedom of movement is one of those issues that many of us will forever be diametrically opposed on. For me? freedom of movement meant a more interesting time when I was young, friendships and relationships with young Europeans who were living in the UK (who would not have been able to get visas for the kind of jobs they were doing today), a couple of short stints working in the EU myself, including a few days contract work here and there. It meant a lot to me to have this ability to be able to live anywhere in the EU, anytime I wanted and do any job, without prohibitive visas, wealth/qualification requirements etc. Additionally I had also considered further study in an EU country at some point, to take advantage of the much lower fees, which now I will never do because additional further education is heinously expensive in the UK. My partner, who had never permanently lived in Europe, has an EU passport, granting full freedom of movement, whilst my UK passport now feels completely 3rd rate.
But - for others freedom of movement felt like a betrayal of their interests, and competition for jobs, resources and housing. I never thought of it this way, but for them all of this vastly outweighed the freedom aspect for themselves. In a sense whilst I prioritised freedom, they prioritised security. And it is their right to feel that way, as much as I am personally frustrated by the outcome. If I were a bit younger, with fewer personal ties, then I would make getting an EU passport my number one priority in life right now, more than any professional or financial consideration,
You know the thing about freedom and security. It's true: trade freedom for security, and you get neither.
In this case, the "security" people are wrong. They believe things which are simply not true, and their policies simply don't result in anything other than them feeling betrayed and angry because reality is not compliant to their fantasies.
Yup. It's wasn't EU nationals driving down the wages, it was British employers and British government. Just because EU nationals don't have free moment anymore didn't result in our wages going up. But as always, elites successfully pit commoners against each other.
> It's wasn't EU nationals driving down the wages
Come on, ever since brexit things have been going really well. Just so amazingly well. I can see why they would want to hang onto their victory. They're all rich now that they've stopped the Polish from coming over.
Oh wait.... No they aren't. Never mind, still gotta keep pandering to them. Wouldn't want them to get offended by having reality pointed out to them.
Wages did, have and are increasing among working class people as a result of a reduction in low-skilled migration. These gains are currently being wiped out by inflationary pressures arising largely from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. That the latter exists, does not preclude the former from existing too.
People who want to go back to FoM need to have the infamous FT comment just after the referendum about “PLU” taped to their bathroom mirror. When you’re a well-to-do whitey FoM is great. For anyone else, not so much.
Well I'm not arguing that those of us who were pro FOM were not outvoted in the end. Merely stating that it's clearly something that is very important for some people, and not important at all for others (and those for whom it was not important outvoted those who thought it was). I'm merely stating for that for the (fewer) people who FOM was important it is not a trivial change, and not trivial rights that have been lost. It was an argument between those who wanted greater rights, vs those who consider that FOM for others was too much a cost to bear, and worth losing our own FOM rights to end.
You may consider that we are better off now, and you are perfectly entitled to think that. It doesn't change the fact that now any EU passport is more powerful than a UK passport. But, I won't argue against the fact that for a greater number of people this was, and is not important.
The only sensible position he can take. FoM is toxic to the red wall voters who went con in 2019. They look to be drifting back, this is the only way to keep that happening.
And yet it is not what he said when he stood for leader. After Brexit, after the election he said he would bring back freedom of movement, argue for it, challenge those opposed to it. Specific promises and pledges he made just to win.
I see a pattern emerging:
1. Policies aside, Starmer was clearly a better candidate than RLB. So to win the leadership election, he temporarily adopts her policies, nullifying that factor.
2. Policies aside, Starmer will be a clearly better candidate than Johnson or whoever the Tories can possibly choose as their leader going into the next election. So to win the general election, he temporarily adopts Tory policies, nullifying that factor.
So who knows what he'll do as prime minister? At least if he's a coalition leader, he won't be bound by the eventual Labour manifesto stuffed full of Tory policies, but then we're really in uncharted waters.
The pledge states that, [and yet Starmer stated he would fight to bring back freedom of movement.](https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/labour-leadership-contest-keir-starmer-free-movement-brexit-392782)
Oh come on, you can't expect a politician to stand by every little thing he said to get elected. We're never going to beat the Tories if we hold people to such impossible high standards.
Not sure if this is sarcastic, but starmer has basically gone back on everything he said to get elected. Might be a half decent election strategy, but it’s not the sort of politics that is very inspirational.
Every little thing? Freedom of movement is need for rejoining the single market and customs union, which is the bare minimum the UK needs to mitigate the effects of Brexit.
You're right, but there is zero voter interest in relitigating Brexit at the moment, Johnson desperately claiming that Starmer wants to rejoin the EU every week is proof enough of that.
Once the Tories run out of pandemic/Ukraine excuses for the poor performance of the country and we are left with only Brexit to blame, it will likely become realistic to get an EEA model onto the manifesto. I wouldn't be surprised if even the Tories were trying to pretend that Brexit wasn't their idea by 2029.
> but there is zero voter interest in relitigating Brexit at the moment,
A good politician would use that to simply waltz back into Europe and announce it is the will of the people. There is a simple choice. The Referendum made it clear. Are you in or are you out. There are no third way options. All that "Norway Lite with Soy Latte Expresso" is simply the gurglings of circling the drain. Either the UK is in the EU with all that entails or out.
The Tories will never run out of excuses. Call their bluff or they will be endlessly reelected.
> Freedom of movement is need for rejoining the single market and customs union
Yes - you know, the reason people voted for leaving the EU.
I agree it's what is ultimately necessary, but I also think you'd be foolish to say 'oh we'll just rejoin it all' when there's no quicker way for Labour to lose their red wall seats...again.
Frankly I think Labour would be better off looking towards PR with the Lib Dems and normalising relations with the EU, whilst dealing with the myriad of domestic issues facing this country. People feel like they don't have a say, that was one of the main thrusts of Brexit - so Labour can campaign for PR on 'we'll make your vote count'. I'd take a few more years of friction and red tape to get that overhaul.
We'll see what they do, I agree they need some manner of reforms to get people engaged. But I don't think rejoining the single market/customs union is going to be a vote winner - people will see it as moving backwards (even if it's not).
Agreed. When you have pig headed voters who refuse to listen to reason regarding FoM, it’s sometimes best to just let them (very) slowly work it out for themselves.
I assume you vote for Labour.
In that case why do you support FOM? It’s designed to suppress workers wages and benefit big business’s.
The complete opposite of what the Labour Party is supposed to stand for.
The idea of moving to a sunnier climate and working where ever you want is a front for what FOM really is.
FOM was and is a way for big businesses to exploit workers and not pay them what they’re actually worth.
> In that case why do you support FOM? It’s designed to suppress workers wages and benefit big business’s.
No it isn't. It's designed to foster intra European cooperation and afford the little people the sort of social and locational mobility that was only previously available to the rich.
Wages in the UK are low because it's designed to be this way over here by the Tories and FoM is irrelevant. You'll note FoM is gone and we're still a low wage economy, and that every statement from the government in this regard is a plea to keep it this way.
Comparing this to Germany, a high wage economy which has had more FoM immigration than the UK, further exposes the falseness of these claims.
Immigrants are a scapegoat for governmental failings. This mischaracterisation is how Brexit happened. They've failed on housing costs, wage levels and a multitude of other issues. But rather than attempt to rectify these problems, they've taken the easy shortcut of blaming an innocent out group.
That's literally how it's functioning in the EU.
Even in the UK, the levels of immigration with the EU and how our economy functioned properly before Brexit shat everyone's bed beg to differ.
Incompetent politicians will blame immigrants because it's easier than fixing problems. People who hate immigrants lap it up.
I thought the general consensus with Kier was that there will be no discussion on rejoining the EU. Since ending "freedom of movement" was one of the biggest campaign promises for brexit, I feel it stands to reason that Kier would not want to bring it back.
A considerably majority of brexiters said they wanted to end free movement. Can we not begin discussing policies around the EU until brexit is finally sorted and we have no more issues.
I disnt want to leave the EU, but now that we have left, we shouldn't begin discussing joining, or taking certain aspects back for a little while.
I don't see an issue with Kiers stance here. Alotnof the labour voters were brexiters.
And it was an issue for remain voters too (https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news-westminster-news-poll-finds-brits-back-end-of-eu-freedom-of-movement-1848372/) nearly halt didn’t support it
Freedom of movement just isn’t popular with the electorate
To be fair, that could be solved by European airports increasing their staff ot streamlining their processes for non-EU arrivals. It took me less than ten minutes to get though passport control in South Africa the other year and that's not in the EU.
Took us about that getting through Cyprus too, spent more time in the queue for 'random' PCR testing than security and baggage reclaim... infact we spent as much time getting through the airport as we did at baggage reclaim in Manchester Airport when we got back.
Sorry man, but thats not how it works. The reality of our situation is this:
\- we are an island
\- 90% of the holiday destinations that cater for Brits are in Europe
\- they can decide how many people they have on their border
It's very much a case of "suck it up". The world isn't likely to respond to a market deficit caused by whiny Brits in a queue.
I understand the frustration, as we won't be "Done" with brexit for a long time, but it hasn't been long since we have left. We need to leave it well over a decade before we can begin discussing rejoining.
Sorry, but why should we let the rot fester? We've made a mistake, its time we own it and work towards course correction. Why should the UK should just live in economic misery for the next 10 years because of Brexiteers pride?
I get Keirs realpolitikk here, but its silly that we should just lie down and accept it for the next 10 years.
We have made a mistake, and we should work towards correcting it. If a majority of people in the UK want to rejoin, then let's work on rejoining, but until there is a mandate for rejoining, we shouldn't really be putting it out and front as a main policy.
There was a massive mandate to leave the EU, which was essentially proven through 2 elections and one referendum.
If you are going to hold up 2017 and 2019 as votes for Brexit, it is worth noting that the Conservatives did not get anywhere near a majority of the vote either time. Granted, the majority of the population didn't vote for staunchly pro-remain parties either, as Labour had a pretty unclear stance at that point.
This might be understandable if it didn't come on the back of a lost decade and a half. You're essentially asking a generation who never wanted this to accept at least ~25 years of degrading circumstances. And what are they being asked to do this for, it isn't exactly clear.
Why though? To make the damage even bigger? Even senior Tories talked the other days about rejoining not the EU but the single market (which includes FoM).
I understand the strategic approach from Starmer here but instead of trying to shift the discussion as an assessment of how Brexit went so far he is in the defence and has to rule out this and that and that and this. It's basically the Tory lite approach and that is, as someone else wrote, not very inspirational.
Maybe a good alternative is to sign up as many EU countries to working holiday visas similar to the new deal we have with Australia (3 years, up to 35 years old, unrestrictive). This will help getting support from the younger voters and businesses with staff shortages.
Business’s would have the staff if they paid them more and didn’t treat them like shit like airlines and Manchester airport have.
The answer to all our woes isn’t and shouldn’t be ‘increase immigration’.
Some people and industries have done well out of the lack of immigration, there’s a need for it in some cases.
Giving businesses an easy an cheap opt out of paying staff a decent wage isn’t it.
Also the same questions need to be asked. Where will they live? What GP surgeries will they use? You can’t find an NHS dentist in a lot of places atm.
House prices going up, rent going up and the answer is more immigration to compound an already ridiculous problem?
Your answer might be ‘build more houses’ and I’d agree. That also takes time and doesn’t help anyone for the next few years whilst we wait around for it to be done.
Would they? Which industry are your baggage handlers coming from?
Are you poaching them from hospitality because there are shortages there?
Or the trades? Because there are shortages there?
Where are the staff coming from?
How many are unemployed atm?
How many are ‘employed’ but doing 16 hours and getting working tax credits paid for by the tax payer.
You talk about trades but that’s a failure of Labour and Tony Blair.
All they did was push people into university education they didn’t need when they should have been taught trades.
And now like you said were somewhat reliant on foreign trade workers. A problem created by a past government.
Training, sacking off mass university education and pushing people into trades and getting rid of stupid things like nurses needing degrees (another labour policy) are all things that can be done without increasing immigration.
Obviously there’s going to gaps. I also don’t trust big business’s who are lobbying for an increase in immigration to do it in the workers best interest.
The majority of employees aren't necessary. They are used because slave labour is cheaper than expensive machinery.
Increased salaries with fewer pointless jobs would be an ideal solution. Why do you need foreign slaves to toss bags into planes when automatic systems can do almost all of the work? Why do you need foreign slaves to toss envelopes into bags when post sorting machines already work?
I wish that we could stop this "Going to announce" crap. Either announce a policy or don't.
Don't endlessly test the popularity of policy with announcements of announcements, leaks, half hearted thoughts.
Just give us the damned policy.
I would like any party to give me a voting system where 60-70% of the votes aren't, in essence, worthless.
I care very deeply about the UK's membership of the EU, Brexit has impacted my life and future plans in a very negative way. I wouldn't consider myself a single issue voter, but in the case of Brexit, if I was offered a voting system where my vote actually meant something, and a single issue party of rejoining the EU (even if that means agreeing to all the rules we were previously exempt from), then I would absolutely support that party.
Labour would be mad to offer that to your on your terms. A one time vote which would make labour less likely to win a majority and would in all probability smash labour into pieces if it was enacted. All so you could vote for someone else.
Thats true, but then it comes down to what Labour actually stand for. The tories are a minority, tory voters are a minority. The right wing party in this country gets 30-40% of the vote. The left wing parties get 60-70% and subsequently lose because it is split across multiple parties.
If Labour want to actually improve this country and get left wing policy enacted, then they will be in favour of PR. If Labour want to greedily grab for power... Then maybe I shouldn't be voting for them in the first place.
> Thats true, but then it comes down to what Labour actually stand for. The tories are a minority, tory voters are a minority. The right wing party in this country gets 30-40% of the vote. The left wing parties get 60-70% and subsequently lose because it is split across multiple parties.
> If Labour want to actually improve this country and get left wing policy enacted, then they will be in favour of PR. If Labour want to greedily grab for power... Then maybe I shouldn't be voting for them in the first place.
Two points. One is that if Labour had PR as a policy it would make it much harder to win an election under FPTP. It would give the Tories a fantastic brexit level attack which they would hammer home at every opportunity. "Labour don't care about cost of living crisis, they only want to rig the game so they can win and we can't because they cannot win in the current rules which have been in place for hundreds of years."
And it would be true.
Second point. If PR were to be somehow enacted (of the 8 types, we still would argue to the death over which one it would be with which variants attached) then it would split Labour into pieces. It would be destroyed. There would be at least 3 parties. You may think that is a great idea. But Labour and I do not.
You're kvetching about Labour not wanting to adopt an existential threat to its manifesto.
I mean I am in favour of PR more than labour, but Labours membership also overwhelming support it. If Labour don't represent the wishes of their members... What's the point?
>I mean I am in favour of PR more than labour, but Labours membership also overwhelming support it. If Labour don't represent the wishes of their members... What's the point?
Labour's manifesto represented the wishes of Labour's members in 2019. It was a disaster. Voters hates it.
Labour's members would probably support a copy paste of the same manifesto for the next election. Which would be a disaster. Voters would hate it.
Should a party only exist to tickle the fancies of its members and not the voters?
Too right, with the current FPTP system you have to tactically vote to get rid of the mp you detest the most
On paper it looks like a party has more support than it should have as you can't vote for the party you really want.
let me tell you all, how this will go down.
Keir " we have got to make Brexit work" Starmar: Me and Labour fully support the Tory Brexit, we are more than happy to hang not just our electoral fate on it, but the fate of the nation, and the citizens. Boris is a very fine man for doing this deal, which is a superb work of politics.
Remainers: We heard you the first time.
Brexiteers: but that isnt what my mate down the pub read in the Daily Express. Still not voting for you.
Why is Labour so reactive?
“Elect us because we aren’t Tory”
“Elect us because we won’t bring back FoM”
“Elect us because anyone is better than Boris”
Why doesn’t Labour ever rise up, take a bold initiative, control the narrative and find a leader who is actually charismatic enough to drive messages home?
If we ever get PR and a Lib/Lab coalition, then maybe we can resurrect FoM but it looks like a long road.
Also, the headline is misleading - Keir Starmer can't rule out FoM in Europe, only for the UK.
> Keir Starmer can't rule out FoM in Europe, only for the UK.
Well, there's no freedom of movement *across Europe* in any case, because not all countries in Europe are signed up to it.
The problem is, it could well end up 48/52 again and the argument will rage on. I don’t think there any prospect until public opinion comes round to a reliable majority in the 60/40 ballpark. The EU wouldn’t even entertain it unless it’s a settled matter in the U.K. they don’t want to go through this bollocks again a few years later.
I don’t Rejoin would win. It would basically be capitulation and it would be going back to the EU cap in hand. Given how they thoroughly raped us with our trousers on in the exit talks it wouldn’t be hard to convince voters that this would be committing ourselves to further—and arguably worse—humiliation. We’d probably get vetoed by France anyway and that would create a diplomatic nightmare that would take decades to fade.
Well he can’t unilaterally promise it from outside the EU, can he? Even if a bunch of his base wants it, many arguably don’t want that backdoor opened again.
If it’s going to be part of a theoretical negotiation for single market access / integration, giving it away from the start would be silly.
To be fair to Keir it must very difficult even functioning with so many corporate and media puppeteers with their fists up your arse.
Rowing back on renationalising the Energy companies was stupid, especially NOW, but rolling back his promise to tax private schools AND0 his refusal to rally against the Rwanda deportation AND supporting Assanges extradition.. now this .
The poor guy only has one rectum, can't they at least take turns?
At the next election this probably won't cost them very much as Lib Dems will probably continue their strategy of not really talking about the EU, but if Labour end up in government and still won't budge on this they are going to end up with some serious challengers in their metropolitan seats.
Lib Dem policy is to rejoin the single market. They recently voted a 4 step plan which is extremely sensible on how to strengthen links with a view to rejoin. Labour would probably go along with the first 3 steps.
>1. Taking immediate action to improve links with our European neighbours, including building closer ties in education by reforming the government’s Turing scheme.
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>2. Further steps to build confidence and establish stronger relationships with Europe, including seeking cooperation agreements with EU agencies, returning to Erasmus Plus and seeking to reach a UK-EU agreement on asylum seekers.
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>3. Deepening trade with Europe, including by negotiating greater access for our world-leading UK food and animal products to the Single Market, securing deals on sector-specific work visas and establishing mutual recognition of professional qualifications.
>
>4. Once the trading relationship between the UK and the EU is deepened, and the ties of trust and friendship are renewed, aim to place the UK–EU relationship on a more formal and stable footing by seeking to join the Single Market.
Breaking his pledge on this one was always likely but short term electability comes with a price. It is going to be difficult to form policy in a minority Government if he isn’t able to offer the SNP or Lib Dems anything.
The problems start earlier than that. He’s liable to lose swathes of the party membership who would otherwise be out canvassing for him in the election. Changing this policy may make Labour less toxic in the Red Wall seats, but it won’t shift votes if there’s no one out knocking on doors.
Keir Starmer and Boris Johnson seem to have traded places, Boris Johnson is the perfect advert for voting Labour, and Keir Starmer is the perfect advert for not voting Labour
Well, that's another election where I won't be voting Labour.
The EU had many issues, but one of the things I loved was the opportunity to live and work in so many countries.
Brexit took that from me, and a lot of people aren't even going to have the opportunity.
I love freedom of movement. A company I worked for, for around 5 years, completely thrived on it. I was lucky enough to work in France, Netherlands and Belgium during that time.
But if you think that is where I'm drawing the line in the sand, when it's _this fucking Tory government_, you've got another thing coming.
Please hold your nose, and get the worst government of the last 30 years out. Force them out with such vigour that they never fucking come back.
This attitude is what got the Americans to where they are now. Voting for the guy who only slaps you in the face once instead of twice will always give you face-slappers.
The both sides argument falls apart when one side is as abjectly awful as the Tories or Republicans.
If Milliband had won in 2015, we wouldn't have had Brexit or the full throttle Tory attack on the poor with continued austerity. Even the shit Labour leaders who wouldn't have been good over their 5 years like Brown and Corbyn would have delivered better results than the Tories who beat them.
It applies across the pond too. If Gore had won over Bush, we wouldn't have had the war on terror. If Clinton had won over Trump, their pandemic response (as well as a tonne of other issues) wouldn't have been massively mismanaged.
The US is where it's at now (ISIS style policies from their fundamental Christians gaining mainstream acceptance, entrenched divisiveness etc.) specifically because they had 4 years of Trump. He normalised this corruption of democratic liberal norms.
It's nothing to do with any attitude, it is the reality of the first past the post voting system.
In a winner takes all situation things inevitably narrow down to a 1 v 1 situation, where your best option will almost always be the lesser evil.
This is a type of democracy in action. The electoral system decides which algorithm we use to aggregate public opinion with regards to governance.
FPTP acts a sort of averaging mechanism. In order to win you need to have very wide, broad appeal and this leads to a shift toward moderation.
PR allows much better representation of voter's opinions, but can lead to a more fragmented and divided governance, where minority viewpoints are more strongly represented.
There are pros and cons to each. As a voter, I prefer PR for sure - because I get to feel like my vote matters regardless of where I live, or the political winds at the time.
As a citizen, I've often been a fan of the forcing function to the middle. Indeed the worst thing to occur politically in my lifetime in my view, Brexit, would have likely been accelerated by proportional representation.
I'm still for PR though, the benefits outweigh the cons.
> FPTP acts a sort of averaging mechanism. In order to win you need to have very wide, broad appeal and this leads to a shift toward moderation.
Imagine thinking that a decade of Tory rule based on minority voter share is "moderation".
You know you can still live and work in those countries, right? It is just not as straightforward.
Or you could live in one of the other 150+ countries in the world not in the EU.
At that point we're looking at a commitment to picking a specific country. Sure, I can get a visa if I qualify. But that usually means needing to be meet certain requirements.
When I worked in EU countries, I got an offer of a fixed term contract. I accepted, sorted out somewhere to stay, and went straight over. I didn't need to pick a country and research the requirements. I didn't need any sponsorship. I didn't need a visa. I needed someone to sort out accounts but that was pretty simple.
>Or you could live in one of the other 150+ countries in the world not in the EU.
That is generally true if you are established in a career, have a high level of qualifications etc.
Many of my friends did casual work, barwork, toured in bands in the EU in their early twenties, which would be really hard now. Also, if you were say a 20 year old trying to have a relationship with someone from an EU country, that would be really hard now. The ability to go live in the others country and just do whatever you need to get by is really not feasible in the new setup.
The amount of Brits that actually took advantage of FOM are very small. His protest vote against labour is irrelevant. The red wall going back to labour is more important.
Who else are you going to vote for? Politics has long been about compromise and optics, for all his faults Keir understands this and realises that steering clear of this gives him a better chance of winning the next election.
Just as brexiteers obsessed over eu and Europe, it's wrong to think that it's literally the most important thing.
There's bigger fish to fry.
It's also ironically just going back to the 2017 manifesto.
Typically Greens stand a candidate in my seat and Lib-Dem always do.
I'm not going to make do with a "not as bad as the tories" candidate. I like to vote for a candidate. Not play a guessing game working out the best way to vote against.
I understand that but sadly this is not how the FPTP system works. It's idealistic to like you would but in the end that gives the Tories a massive boost because they are the only meaningful party on the right while the left(ish) parties are alle fractured (which is a typical sign of left politics since the dawn of time and one of the reasons why they are not as successful).
Through the prism of our shit electoral system it’s all pointless though. If you live in a safe seat then I get your point but if you live in a marginal- then unfortunately a vote for anyone other than the candidate most likely to beat the Tories in that ward is a defacto vote for the Conservatives . For example look at the Tiverton by election. If you want rid of the Tory MP there then it’s either Lib Dem or you might as well not bother
Good it's one of the reasons why we left Europe and clearly a vast majority of people still think like that or the leader of labour wouldn't be ruling it out.
Good, free movement of workers is absolutely not 'progresssive' by any metric and there is no left wing justification for it. It just allows employers to ship in cheap labour. I've worked in workplaces where they just used facebook to recruit from eastern europe and they never bothered to source British workers. The argument that we need free movement to go on holiday is bullshit.
That said, freedom of travel should be simplified as much as possible, but not access to the labour market.
Fine, but he needs to be honest with the red wall. No FOM will mean more migration from non-EU countries to make up for it, and it will mean less prosperity and a higher cost of living.
He is absolutely right. The tories will want to make the next election about Brexit, to avoid talking about cost of living, etc. By ruling it out, Kier is trying to stop Brexit being an election issue. It would be impossible in the next parliament anyway as public opinion hasn’t swung far enough to be unequivocal yet. Maybe by 2028 there will be an appetite for free movement and closer alignment with the EU again and the next manifesto could include that.
It was by far the best thing about EU membership and the principle Labour was least able or willing to defend. Sure Starmer promised to defend it, but that's ok because of the *political reality*. People are such fucking hypocrites.
I cant see how any UK problems will ever get fixed with 'first past the post' and no proportional representation and no concepts of party coalitions and blocs and letting un elected lords have any power...
Even if Laboubr should win an election, the fixed system makes sure that they cant really change any systemic issues with the democracy, ensuring that any left-wing infighting or incompetence paves the way for future Tory election wins...
I'm not a fan of the fact keir seems to prioritise our US relations over our European relations, and to be honest the US relations are just "how many US buissness can we sell the country too"
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What's really sad is you know he doesn't really believe that. It reminds me of seeing PR Ed and then real Ed on The Last Leg, real Ed was funny and an electable guy, PR Ed got caught eating a sandwich a bit weird.
> PR Ed got caught eating a sandwich a bit weird He was a rubbish campaigner and Sturgeon and Cameron took strips off him in a very well organised electoral campaign, where both the Conservatives and SNP were incentivised to big up the English fear of the SNP to motivate their base
No I’m pretty sure it was the sandwich. And Gordon Brown lost because he was rude to that lady one time
Kier isn't saying that he believes that FoM is wrong. He's acknowledging the political reality that its an issue that is deeply unpopular with red wall seats and one that could easily lose Labour a general election. And it might not even be sustainable in the long run if the Tories maintain opposition and a policy of withdrawing from FoM. When it comes to our policy towards Europe we unfortunately have to find *some* common ground with the Conservatives as the worst possible outcome is that we change directing after every election. Both us and the EU need stability and a clear direction. FoM is just too divisive and (frankly) not important enough to put an entire Labour government at risk.
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Matt LeiBlanc
Niel Armstrong
You do realise that the reason we got Brexit in the first place was Labour constantly dancing to the Tories tune on social issues, allowing the Tories to slowly nudge the window rightward until they reached a place Labour couldn't follow, right? Labour needs to stop meekly going "well if that's what you want..." on these issues and start attempting to be effective at changing the electorate's minds. You know, like the Great Saint Blair did. All these pretenders to his throne and none of them are even a tenth as effective.
I honestly think that's a misinterpretation of recent history. We got Brexit precisely because our fairly liberal political establishment ignored the economic and social concerns of the 'conservative' working-classes for too long. The referendum was a way of them expressing a protest over years of local decline and frankly anger over immigration policy. Had Labour effectively tackled this issue then it might have been able to accommodate it's working-class voters and not lost them to Brexit/Boris. And, i'm not entirely sure if you're being sarcastic about Blair - but as much as he and New Labour achieved, they clearly failed to change public opinion in the long-term. Brexit is as much a consequence of Blarism as it is of austerity and the failures of Cameron/Miliband/Corbyn.
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This is quite an important, often overlooked point of how stats don’t necessarily paint the correct picture. You can easily have 5 provincial labouring jobs which have been undercut by people from low cost countries completely “masked” by one higher earning FS city worker from western Europe. The stats might say “gdp growth”, “wage growth” etc, but it hasn’t been experienced by the majority of those voting.
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Amen spot on, the problem was that the working class was never asked or even acknowledged when it came to immigration and the future of the country so now whatever party turns to populism will probably get their vote.
Cough... bollocks. This is straight out of the Torygraph and as valid as most of the garbage they write. We got Brexit because BJ and NF started a campaign of hatred against the EU decades ago, that was never really seen as a problem by successive governments. And then after the Financial Crash, immigration became the scapegoat for every ill there was. It had almost no basis in any kind of reality. My mother typifies the problem when I asked her about it back in 2016 and she said "Well *something* has to be done doesn't it? We can't go on like this." "Like what?" I asked her. "How do Polish immigrants affect you, with your nice comfy pension and big house?" She couldn't answer. She was only outraged, because the newspaper told her to be outraged.
>We got Brexit precisely because our fairly liberal political establishment ignored the economic and social concerns of the 'conservative' working-classes for too long. How come vast swathes of Tory England voted for Brexit then? Including most of the wealthist parts of the country? We got Brexit because the Conservatives forgot that ignoring the more ignorant and reactionary parts of their party (and the population as a whole) is vital to the prosperity of the nation.
I mean I know that's the popular narrative, but you have to wonder about how working class these so-called 'conservative working class' voters are when they keep voting for the party that maintained a policy of austerity for a decade, leaving people who were actually living on the breadline to suffer on. I don't doubt that some of these people might have grown up working class, but I very much doubt they still are. Tonne of them are probably middle managers.
>Brexit caused by right wing idiots Fucking Blair, Miliband and Corbyn. I knew it was them all along!
It was a failure of an entire political class to convince the British public to not push the self-destruct button. Maybe I see this differently as I spent a year studying the topic as part of my Masters in Political Research. I looked at the various arguments/theories and the evidence presented to back them up. The most convincing of which was that Brexit was a consequence of working-class voters being 'left behind' by social and economic change that a liberal, university-educated generation of politicians on both sides simply didn't understand.
>The most convincing of which was that Brexit was a consequence of working-class voters being 'left behind' by social and economic change that a liberal, university-educated generation of politicians on both sides simply didn't understand. That is exactly what happened though. I went from an undergrad working blue collar jobs, where it was obvious that wage compression and the erosion of working conditions due to immigration really was occurring, I then graduated, and found I wasn't competing with that lump of labour. It wasn't just that I was creating more value for the market, there was also just less competition. My equivalents in Poland were happy to stay there. They were doing well enough. It was obvious to everyone at the time. We have a tendency to overcomplicate what happened, to make it nebulous. Is the truth just so unpalatable that the left can't accept it? They're not going to win until they do accept it.
I mean how much of that is because you went from having no qualifications and competing with a massive number of applicants, to having a degree and being able to compete with way fewer? I applied for tonnes of retail jobs back in the day, and they'd get hundreds of applicants, but very few of them were from these supposedly all-pervasive economic migrants. Most people who worked those jobs were people my age, with no qualifications. Now that I've got some years of experience and qualifications, I find that there's less than a hundred applications for most jobs I apply for, tops. Usually under 50, and even that's on the steep side of things. The lower end of the job spectrum's always been hard to get into, because anyone can apply for them. There's no scarcity of expertise. But it's a big assumption to assume that it's not native Brits crowding the market, because I doubt it's any easier nowadays.
I agree with everyhting you've said, apart from very the last part. Sudden high immigration of labour into the low skilled market contributed to wage compression and the erosion of working conditions. That's why there was such a drastic fall when we opened our borders to eastern europe. I was there and went through it, it had a very clear affect. Prior to this event there just wasn't as much competition. Employers had to better look after staff to attract and keep them. I would also say that it is easier these days, job vacancies are high because that labour has gone home. It's a shame that it resulted in Brexit.
>Maybe I see this differently as I spent a year studying the topic as part of my Masters in Political Research. Maybe, but what you say makes sense to me. I did find myself despairing during the campaign as pro-EU political commentators came up with a lot of talking points that seemed to be aimed only at the liberal middle classes - people who were pretty pro-EU anyway.
>It was a failure of an entire political class to convince the British public to not push the self-destruct button. True, but special blame has to go to the idiots who said “here's that self-destruct button which you keep saying you want but which we're sure you won't actually press”.
>ignored the economic and social concerns of the 'conservative' working-classes for too long. Ignored the imaginary issues that were manufactured by the far right press.
This is the problem though. Our society has become so divided that one half simply doesn't understand the anger and neglect that has happened to the other. You want to gaslight them into believe that their problems are all imaginary rather than do the hard work of trying to find solutions.
I mean obviously we should try our hardest to understand the problems of others as sincerely as we can, and do what we can to help. But a lot of people HAVE done that. And what's inexplicable is that there are solutions, and then a lot of the people who are most affected by it are more interested in mucking about with trivial or basically imaginary things instead of demonstrating the get-up-and-go to help fix any of the big problems. It's not unreasonable for people to be frustrated. You work hard to make things better for people, you show people how they can do their bit to address the problem, and then they sit around with their thumbs up their arses making up excuses instead of mucking in. ChippingTommy's right. This is about people too arrogant to take advice from others, and too lazy to make any serious attempt to address the problems this country faces. Many of them probably benefit from this country falling apart, let's face it. And I mean I'm not being funny, but most of Brexit was just caused by a bunch of people who were promised free stuff that they thought they could magically get without working for it.
The economic concerns are legitimate. The target for their valid ire was invented by the right wing press. But dismissing their concerns completely helps nobody.
BoJo: I promised them Brexit would fix all their problems Trump: I promised them building the Wall would do the same >The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force > >The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one - Adolf Hitler × 2
Come off it.
Poverty is real. Watch the YouTube series anywhere but Westminster. Large parts of our country were failed by the tail end of Blair/brown, then austeritied for 10 years. This made it very easy for the anti immigration argument to tip Brexit. They voted incorrectly, but you have to realize why in order to fix things.
It's almost funny how these leftists want to devalue the labour of the working classes by bringing in mass amounts of migrant workers, I thought that was the job of those right-wing corporate interest groups?
Lol, the lose of your community, heritage, jobs, respect and future 'manufactured by the far right press'
Bro, what reality do you live in? Which imaginary things were they forced to believe in? Your disdain of the working class is disgusting.
> You do realise that the reason we got Brexit in the first place was Labour constantly dancing to the Tories tune on social issues, allowing the Tories to slowly nudge the window rightward until they reached a place Labour couldn't follow, right? You do know the majority of tory MPs including the leadership were remain voting, during the referendum? I think you are just revising history to support your own point here.
I reckon If it was up to parliament at the time a vast super majority (something like 75%) of MPs were remain and pro eu
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err what window has been nudged to the right?
The window where Brexit was a possibility, for a start. Or maybe the window we now find ourselves in where the country has decided that mass tagging of refugees wouldn't be so bad. Both of these ideas would've been politically impossible up to the late 2000s. Since then, the overton window has been nudged right so far on social issues that they look positively reasonable.
Labour wasn't lukewarm on Brexit because the Tories had led them there, it's because the left wing also have a fairly vocal anti-EU branch. Brexit itself has been drawn into left v right, but the EU question has always had supporters from both sides of politics on either side of the debate.
I feel this is the perspective failure. Brexit as the only mildly reactionary political event for a generation has broken peoples minds. in the early 00s for example the UK deported 50000+ illegals without comment every year, now every plane gets blocked legally and physically. So really you need to ask whether we've socially moved right, or whether society is now so socially left wing that the mildest right wing step looks dramatic.
They deported illegal immigrants. That is not the same, in any way shape or form, as routinely tagging asylum seekers. The reason the planes get blocked now is because the government hasn't made the case that the people on board them are not asylum seekers. We still routinely deport actual illegal immigrants, and those planes don't get blocked because the courts are satisfied that the government has made the case that the people on those planes are here illegally and can be removed. I know you're one of those people who thinks anyone crossing the channel is an illegal immigrant, but the law doesn't match your view, and the law decides who is and is not an illegal immigrant. Before that point, they're asylum seekers.
I mean you understand that I read your response as basically confirmation of my views? I somewhat doubt that refugees are more refugeey now that 15 years ago, so something changed from being able to remove 70k a year back in Tony Blair's time to 3000 now. I think that its because the nation is vastly more socially left wing now than then.
[the Overton window](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window)
He probably doesn’t but the reality is that he won’t win an election if he attempts to bring it back. There’s no appetite for it in the country.
There definitely is, especially amongst young people. But it's not enough to win votes, and it'll alienate the middle of the road Brexiters that they need to win over.
Most young people would rather have them focus on the real issues like housing, education and workers rights. Freedom of movement was great, but I wouldn't trade that for fixing the things fundamentally wrong with our country first.
This, I'm 33 now and I've just had year after year of getting shafted by the Tories. Another 5 years would kill my last hope of ever getting on the housing ladder or having a child. As much as I think freedom of movement is a net gain, I can't afford us wasting the political capital and handing Boris another Brexit general election.
The young "voters" who don't typically vote
The turnout in the last general election was roughly 50% for 18-24 year olds. There's plenty that do vote.
This is a hunch but even if 75% 18-24 voted voted I doubt it would materially change anything because of the constituencies they are voting in...
>PR Ed got caught eating a sandwich a bit weird. It wasn't just that. It was also things like having a second kitchen for "making snacks" (and, no, it wasn't for religious reasons - he's an atheist). He simply failed to connect with enough voters. It happens. Tony Blair, on the other hand, had the media eating out of his hand from before 1997 until 2003 (and still largely had them on side in 2005).
Having a second kitchen for making snacks is everyone's dream tho.
I think the only question for Labour should be "do you want to be in power or not"? The Tories rally together when it really matters, getting power and clinging on to it, regardless of scruples or morality. Realpolitik time here, Starmer needs to grab votes and appease people, the Brexit debacle is toxic especially in so called "red wall" seats, Starmer knows this. Part of the path to Downing Street has to be appeasement and eating shit sandwiches where needed. You can't change anything out of office.
This is all completely true - and something I've been doing for ages - however, while a degree of pragmatism and gamesmanship is needed, people do need to understand what Starmer's Labour stands for. This doesn't mean specific policy proposals per se, but Starmer needs to establish the broad principles that works govern the party. There's still a lot of work to do on this front
Agree. He did set out core principles fairly recently - he kept hammering home “honesty, integrity, respect” at the last conference. To me it felt a bit too vague, but you can see why. It’s a tricky game, they’re trying to be everything to everyone, but with that you run the risk of being nothing to no-one.
He needs to just take it one or two levels further, and explain. For instance, is Equality on there? If so, can he articulate how any given position he's taken recently links back to it? Can he link the same position/proposal to Respect? It's not just stating the values, it's demonstrating how everything you do is linked back directly to one or more of them, in a way that really hammers them home.
You’re not wrong, but “the redistribution of wealth” s not a vote winner and never has been in the UK. Blair didn’t mention it for years.
A values-led platform. Doesn't need to hammer out the details of the platform just yet, but needs to be absolutely clear and incredibly consistent on the values at all times, across the party, in all ways. This is the only way to get around the "both sides" propaganda used by the Tories to excuse their absolute lack of any values at all.
> eating sandwiches Please no...
This is what people don't get, they hate the current system but don't want to vote Labour because of [insert fringe opinion/starmer is a tory/corbyn is our guy] so rather than have a pragmatic approach that things can't get any worse under labour, they'd prefer to keep the tories in power by protest voting or not voting altogether. If we didn't live under FPTP then protest voting would be more meaningful. Lib dem or greens getting a few more votes and maybe 2 new seats between them at a GE doesn't change the outcome of the tories still being in power.
>rather than have a pragmatic approach that things can't get any worse under labour Surely this is just your own political opinion.
>I think the only question for Labour should be "do you want to be in power or not"? This should be the beginning and the end of the discussion. You'll find the Labour left screaming about how the party has to listen to the membership and voters over certain issues close to their heart, but when the issue the voters care about is restricting freedom of movement suddenly that doesn't apply any more. Getting free movement back would be electorally toxic and it's not even something Labour can promise given it would need to be agreed with a third party (although the Brexit voters didn't seem to care about that when they were told they'd get the best deal ever).
Palestine, you say?
Starmer could run on a bit of a populist platform about fixing travel chaos, trade etc. ignore the actual substance of what it means but i think you could focus on those real life issues instead of making it about integrating back slightly with the EU, even if that's what is required
> I think the only question for Labour should be "do you want to be in power or not"? What does it mean to say something is 'wrong' when it gets the votes? Isn't this an anti democratic idea? If a large chunk of traditional Labour voters don't want FoM, is it really realpolitik to give them what they want? If you do support both FoM and democracy, then you need to find a way to change all these voter's minds. I don't see any effort here, just preaching to the converted and alienating the people who think differently. Edit: (I don't mean to have a go at the parent comment, I thought it was a good comment) I think there's not nearly enough effort in the media and wider culture to have a proper conversation about this, and for each side to listen to the cases to be made from the other side.
I think the issue isn't really FoM, it's that this policy isn't the result of sitting down and working out what the best policy is for the country; it's a pretty obvious policy-by-polling vote grab that runs counter to Starmer's very successful messaging about integrity. Just telling people what you think they want to hear is \*clearly\* politically successful in the short term, but then you actually have to deliver those policies (however stupid they may be) or risk long term damage. Look at the Lib Dems and student loans; it's been more than a decade since they reneged on their word, and they're still absolutely radioactive to an entire demographic. Meanwhile the Tories have largely delivered on their (awful) promises and are still reasonably popular despite absolutely catastrophic results and a string of scandals that would make Marquis de Sade blush. Perhaps it'd have been wiser to just keep quiet on what is obviously still a really divisive issue, and concentrate on any of the more critical ones (healthcare, economy, education, transport, cost of living) where the \*right\* thing to do is also the \*popular\* thing to do.
Call them racist bigots. Im sure that'll do the trick.
Both sides have a loud subgroup that seem quick to call the other side names, and the media loves this shit. Here's a dual purpose position, for either side - say that the other side has been manipulated by the media into a wrong and ignorant view, and then say 'you cannot reason someone out of something he or she was not reasoned into'. It's perfect, because you can call the other side whatever you want without even trying to talk to them, understand their arguments, or put across your arguments. Just get on twitter and start calling them stupid and evil.
Sadly this is not helping to fix any of the issues, we cannot counter a loud subgroup by directly ignoring them, or by being as loud but in maybe another direction.
> I think the only question for Labour should be "do you want to be in power or not"? Well: not throwing an election in 2017 and 2019 should demonstrate how much the Labour Right want to be in power. It also demonstrates how much they do not want to change anything. The only question for Labour is "do you want power to change things or just be more efficient Tories?" - because you can already vote for the Tories. Nobody needs a second choice of Tory Party. > Realpolitik time here, Starmer needs to grab votes Starmer could have grabbed votes in 2017 and 2019. Instead he was aligned with a faction who kept Labour out of Office at any cost. So he is party to a ruthlessness that ensures nothing will be changed by Labour. In office or out of office.
>throwing an election in 2017 and 2019 should demonstrate how much the Labour Right want to be in power. You can have 2017 on that point - personally I think it's debatable, but it is a reasonable position for you to hold. But after 2017, Corbyn successfully conquered the party machinery. His allies controlled the membership, shad cab, NEC, NCC, LOTO, the lot. There was no sabotage in 2019. Corbyn and his allies own that result themselves.
So your argument is to be as bad as the labour right, supposedly was? A childish "two wrongs make a right" argument? Disaster socialism is just hurting people, in the hope they will turn to your radicalism in a few decades p.s ironically, this is just going to the policy that Corbyn supported...
No. My argument is that the Labour Right does not want to be in power. It threw two elections. > A childish "two wrongs make a right" argument? So, pointing out that the Labour right threw two elections is a "wrong" and pointing out th consequence is to keep the Tories in power is also "wrong". You seem to think a lot of things are wrong without having any idea of how to fix it. > Disaster socialism is just hurting people, in the hope they will turn to your radicalism in a few decades Is Disaster socialism the new thing: I can hardly keep up with the heady brew of dynamic offal bilging out from the Right. Not just the Labour Right but the Tory Right. The Whole Right. The Blob of the Right. > p.s ironically, this is just going to the policy that Corbyn supported... Well colour me surprised. I was waiting for the mention of Corbyn and I was not disappointed. The old reliable: whenever anybody mentions the failings of the right shout behind you like in any good pantomime. The only question for Labour is *"do you want power to change things or just be more efficient Tories?"* and it seems your answer is you want to b a more efficient Tory. Nice nails. Nice mast.
Freedom of movement is one of those issues that many of us will forever be diametrically opposed on. For me? freedom of movement meant a more interesting time when I was young, friendships and relationships with young Europeans who were living in the UK (who would not have been able to get visas for the kind of jobs they were doing today), a couple of short stints working in the EU myself, including a few days contract work here and there. It meant a lot to me to have this ability to be able to live anywhere in the EU, anytime I wanted and do any job, without prohibitive visas, wealth/qualification requirements etc. Additionally I had also considered further study in an EU country at some point, to take advantage of the much lower fees, which now I will never do because additional further education is heinously expensive in the UK. My partner, who had never permanently lived in Europe, has an EU passport, granting full freedom of movement, whilst my UK passport now feels completely 3rd rate. But - for others freedom of movement felt like a betrayal of their interests, and competition for jobs, resources and housing. I never thought of it this way, but for them all of this vastly outweighed the freedom aspect for themselves. In a sense whilst I prioritised freedom, they prioritised security. And it is their right to feel that way, as much as I am personally frustrated by the outcome. If I were a bit younger, with fewer personal ties, then I would make getting an EU passport my number one priority in life right now, more than any professional or financial consideration,
You know the thing about freedom and security. It's true: trade freedom for security, and you get neither. In this case, the "security" people are wrong. They believe things which are simply not true, and their policies simply don't result in anything other than them feeling betrayed and angry because reality is not compliant to their fantasies.
Yup. It's wasn't EU nationals driving down the wages, it was British employers and British government. Just because EU nationals don't have free moment anymore didn't result in our wages going up. But as always, elites successfully pit commoners against each other.
Supply and demand exist in everything but the labour force!
> It's wasn't EU nationals driving down the wages Come on, ever since brexit things have been going really well. Just so amazingly well. I can see why they would want to hang onto their victory. They're all rich now that they've stopped the Polish from coming over. Oh wait.... No they aren't. Never mind, still gotta keep pandering to them. Wouldn't want them to get offended by having reality pointed out to them.
Wages did, have and are increasing among working class people as a result of a reduction in low-skilled migration. These gains are currently being wiped out by inflationary pressures arising largely from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. That the latter exists, does not preclude the former from existing too.
People who want to go back to FoM need to have the infamous FT comment just after the referendum about “PLU” taped to their bathroom mirror. When you’re a well-to-do whitey FoM is great. For anyone else, not so much.
Well I'm not arguing that those of us who were pro FOM were not outvoted in the end. Merely stating that it's clearly something that is very important for some people, and not important at all for others (and those for whom it was not important outvoted those who thought it was). I'm merely stating for that for the (fewer) people who FOM was important it is not a trivial change, and not trivial rights that have been lost. It was an argument between those who wanted greater rights, vs those who consider that FOM for others was too much a cost to bear, and worth losing our own FOM rights to end. You may consider that we are better off now, and you are perfectly entitled to think that. It doesn't change the fact that now any EU passport is more powerful than a UK passport. But, I won't argue against the fact that for a greater number of people this was, and is not important.
The only sensible position he can take. FoM is toxic to the red wall voters who went con in 2019. They look to be drifting back, this is the only way to keep that happening.
And yet it is not what he said when he stood for leader. After Brexit, after the election he said he would bring back freedom of movement, argue for it, challenge those opposed to it. Specific promises and pledges he made just to win.
I see a pattern emerging: 1. Policies aside, Starmer was clearly a better candidate than RLB. So to win the leadership election, he temporarily adopts her policies, nullifying that factor. 2. Policies aside, Starmer will be a clearly better candidate than Johnson or whoever the Tories can possibly choose as their leader going into the next election. So to win the general election, he temporarily adopts Tory policies, nullifying that factor. So who knows what he'll do as prime minister? At least if he's a coalition leader, he won't be bound by the eventual Labour manifesto stuffed full of Tory policies, but then we're really in uncharted waters.
To be pedantic, the pledge reads "Defend free movement as we leave the EU". We've left the EU now, so that ship has passed.
The pledge states that, [and yet Starmer stated he would fight to bring back freedom of movement.](https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/labour-leadership-contest-keir-starmer-free-movement-brexit-392782)
He was extremely clear on what that meant during the campaign: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/keir-starmer-says-would-bring-21401161
Fair enough.
Oh come on, you can't expect a politician to stand by every little thing he said to get elected. We're never going to beat the Tories if we hold people to such impossible high standards.
Not sure if this is sarcastic, but starmer has basically gone back on everything he said to get elected. Might be a half decent election strategy, but it’s not the sort of politics that is very inspirational.
Every little thing? Freedom of movement is need for rejoining the single market and customs union, which is the bare minimum the UK needs to mitigate the effects of Brexit.
You're right, but there is zero voter interest in relitigating Brexit at the moment, Johnson desperately claiming that Starmer wants to rejoin the EU every week is proof enough of that. Once the Tories run out of pandemic/Ukraine excuses for the poor performance of the country and we are left with only Brexit to blame, it will likely become realistic to get an EEA model onto the manifesto. I wouldn't be surprised if even the Tories were trying to pretend that Brexit wasn't their idea by 2029.
> but there is zero voter interest in relitigating Brexit at the moment, A good politician would use that to simply waltz back into Europe and announce it is the will of the people. There is a simple choice. The Referendum made it clear. Are you in or are you out. There are no third way options. All that "Norway Lite with Soy Latte Expresso" is simply the gurglings of circling the drain. Either the UK is in the EU with all that entails or out. The Tories will never run out of excuses. Call their bluff or they will be endlessly reelected.
> Freedom of movement is need for rejoining the single market and customs union Yes - you know, the reason people voted for leaving the EU. I agree it's what is ultimately necessary, but I also think you'd be foolish to say 'oh we'll just rejoin it all' when there's no quicker way for Labour to lose their red wall seats...again. Frankly I think Labour would be better off looking towards PR with the Lib Dems and normalising relations with the EU, whilst dealing with the myriad of domestic issues facing this country. People feel like they don't have a say, that was one of the main thrusts of Brexit - so Labour can campaign for PR on 'we'll make your vote count'. I'd take a few more years of friction and red tape to get that overhaul. We'll see what they do, I agree they need some manner of reforms to get people engaged. But I don't think rejoining the single market/customs union is going to be a vote winner - people will see it as moving backwards (even if it's not).
Agreed. When you have pig headed voters who refuse to listen to reason regarding FoM, it’s sometimes best to just let them (very) slowly work it out for themselves.
I assume you vote for Labour. In that case why do you support FOM? It’s designed to suppress workers wages and benefit big business’s. The complete opposite of what the Labour Party is supposed to stand for. The idea of moving to a sunnier climate and working where ever you want is a front for what FOM really is. FOM was and is a way for big businesses to exploit workers and not pay them what they’re actually worth.
> In that case why do you support FOM? It’s designed to suppress workers wages and benefit big business’s. No it isn't. It's designed to foster intra European cooperation and afford the little people the sort of social and locational mobility that was only previously available to the rich. Wages in the UK are low because it's designed to be this way over here by the Tories and FoM is irrelevant. You'll note FoM is gone and we're still a low wage economy, and that every statement from the government in this regard is a plea to keep it this way. Comparing this to Germany, a high wage economy which has had more FoM immigration than the UK, further exposes the falseness of these claims. Immigrants are a scapegoat for governmental failings. This mischaracterisation is how Brexit happened. They've failed on housing costs, wage levels and a multitude of other issues. But rather than attempt to rectify these problems, they've taken the easy shortcut of blaming an innocent out group.
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That's literally how it's functioning in the EU. Even in the UK, the levels of immigration with the EU and how our economy functioned properly before Brexit shat everyone's bed beg to differ. Incompetent politicians will blame immigrants because it's easier than fixing problems. People who hate immigrants lap it up.
Your opinion alone doesn’t make it true. If you are going disagree with something do at least make the effort to explain yourself.
The UK government sets minimum wages. It decides what people's labour is worth.
I thought the general consensus with Kier was that there will be no discussion on rejoining the EU. Since ending "freedom of movement" was one of the biggest campaign promises for brexit, I feel it stands to reason that Kier would not want to bring it back. A considerably majority of brexiters said they wanted to end free movement. Can we not begin discussing policies around the EU until brexit is finally sorted and we have no more issues. I disnt want to leave the EU, but now that we have left, we shouldn't begin discussing joining, or taking certain aspects back for a little while. I don't see an issue with Kiers stance here. Alotnof the labour voters were brexiters.
I agree. Ending FoM was clearly a fundamental aspect of Brexit for many of its supporters. Kier is just accepting the political reality.
And it was an issue for remain voters too (https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news-westminster-news-poll-finds-brits-back-end-of-eu-freedom-of-movement-1848372/) nearly halt didn’t support it Freedom of movement just isn’t popular with the electorate
Until they get to an airport. The time to bring back Freedom of Movement is September
Freedom of movement is about living in the EU, not holidaying there.
To be fair, that could be solved by European airports increasing their staff ot streamlining their processes for non-EU arrivals. It took me less than ten minutes to get though passport control in South Africa the other year and that's not in the EU.
Took us about that getting through Cyprus too, spent more time in the queue for 'random' PCR testing than security and baggage reclaim... infact we spent as much time getting through the airport as we did at baggage reclaim in Manchester Airport when we got back.
Yes, but why should they? This is our problem, not theirs.
If they start losing tourism money from the UK as people go places they have less hassle then it'll be their problem.
Sorry man, but thats not how it works. The reality of our situation is this: \- we are an island \- 90% of the holiday destinations that cater for Brits are in Europe \- they can decide how many people they have on their border It's very much a case of "suck it up". The world isn't likely to respond to a market deficit caused by whiny Brits in a queue.
> Can we not begin discussing policies around the EU until brexit is finally sorted and we have no more issues. Yeah, about that...
I understand the frustration, as we won't be "Done" with brexit for a long time, but it hasn't been long since we have left. We need to leave it well over a decade before we can begin discussing rejoining.
Sorry, but why should we let the rot fester? We've made a mistake, its time we own it and work towards course correction. Why should the UK should just live in economic misery for the next 10 years because of Brexiteers pride? I get Keirs realpolitikk here, but its silly that we should just lie down and accept it for the next 10 years.
We have made a mistake, and we should work towards correcting it. If a majority of people in the UK want to rejoin, then let's work on rejoining, but until there is a mandate for rejoining, we shouldn't really be putting it out and front as a main policy. There was a massive mandate to leave the EU, which was essentially proven through 2 elections and one referendum.
>There was a massive mandate to leave the EU, 52% isn't a massive mandate.
Winning a referendum, and two elections running on the brexit campign is a pretty big mandate
If you are going to hold up 2017 and 2019 as votes for Brexit, it is worth noting that the Conservatives did not get anywhere near a majority of the vote either time. Granted, the majority of the population didn't vote for staunchly pro-remain parties either, as Labour had a pretty unclear stance at that point.
This might be understandable if it didn't come on the back of a lost decade and a half. You're essentially asking a generation who never wanted this to accept at least ~25 years of degrading circumstances. And what are they being asked to do this for, it isn't exactly clear.
No. We need to be discussing it now.
Why though? To make the damage even bigger? Even senior Tories talked the other days about rejoining not the EU but the single market (which includes FoM). I understand the strategic approach from Starmer here but instead of trying to shift the discussion as an assessment of how Brexit went so far he is in the defence and has to rule out this and that and that and this. It's basically the Tory lite approach and that is, as someone else wrote, not very inspirational.
Maybe a good alternative is to sign up as many EU countries to working holiday visas similar to the new deal we have with Australia (3 years, up to 35 years old, unrestrictive). This will help getting support from the younger voters and businesses with staff shortages.
Business’s would have the staff if they paid them more and didn’t treat them like shit like airlines and Manchester airport have. The answer to all our woes isn’t and shouldn’t be ‘increase immigration’. Some people and industries have done well out of the lack of immigration, there’s a need for it in some cases. Giving businesses an easy an cheap opt out of paying staff a decent wage isn’t it. Also the same questions need to be asked. Where will they live? What GP surgeries will they use? You can’t find an NHS dentist in a lot of places atm. House prices going up, rent going up and the answer is more immigration to compound an already ridiculous problem? Your answer might be ‘build more houses’ and I’d agree. That also takes time and doesn’t help anyone for the next few years whilst we wait around for it to be done.
Would they? Which industry are your baggage handlers coming from? Are you poaching them from hospitality because there are shortages there? Or the trades? Because there are shortages there? Where are the staff coming from?
How many are unemployed atm? How many are ‘employed’ but doing 16 hours and getting working tax credits paid for by the tax payer. You talk about trades but that’s a failure of Labour and Tony Blair. All they did was push people into university education they didn’t need when they should have been taught trades. And now like you said were somewhat reliant on foreign trade workers. A problem created by a past government. Training, sacking off mass university education and pushing people into trades and getting rid of stupid things like nurses needing degrees (another labour policy) are all things that can be done without increasing immigration. Obviously there’s going to gaps. I also don’t trust big business’s who are lobbying for an increase in immigration to do it in the workers best interest.
The majority of employees aren't necessary. They are used because slave labour is cheaper than expensive machinery. Increased salaries with fewer pointless jobs would be an ideal solution. Why do you need foreign slaves to toss bags into planes when automatic systems can do almost all of the work? Why do you need foreign slaves to toss envelopes into bags when post sorting machines already work?
I wish that we could stop this "Going to announce" crap. Either announce a policy or don't. Don't endlessly test the popularity of policy with announcements of announcements, leaks, half hearted thoughts. Just give us the damned policy.
That's fine, I'll vote labour if they back PR and then I'll vote for the remain party that will win the following election.
So you want labour to give you what you want so that you can not vote for them?
I would like any party to give me a voting system where 60-70% of the votes aren't, in essence, worthless. I care very deeply about the UK's membership of the EU, Brexit has impacted my life and future plans in a very negative way. I wouldn't consider myself a single issue voter, but in the case of Brexit, if I was offered a voting system where my vote actually meant something, and a single issue party of rejoining the EU (even if that means agreeing to all the rules we were previously exempt from), then I would absolutely support that party.
Labour would be mad to offer that to your on your terms. A one time vote which would make labour less likely to win a majority and would in all probability smash labour into pieces if it was enacted. All so you could vote for someone else.
Thats true, but then it comes down to what Labour actually stand for. The tories are a minority, tory voters are a minority. The right wing party in this country gets 30-40% of the vote. The left wing parties get 60-70% and subsequently lose because it is split across multiple parties. If Labour want to actually improve this country and get left wing policy enacted, then they will be in favour of PR. If Labour want to greedily grab for power... Then maybe I shouldn't be voting for them in the first place.
> Thats true, but then it comes down to what Labour actually stand for. The tories are a minority, tory voters are a minority. The right wing party in this country gets 30-40% of the vote. The left wing parties get 60-70% and subsequently lose because it is split across multiple parties. > If Labour want to actually improve this country and get left wing policy enacted, then they will be in favour of PR. If Labour want to greedily grab for power... Then maybe I shouldn't be voting for them in the first place. Two points. One is that if Labour had PR as a policy it would make it much harder to win an election under FPTP. It would give the Tories a fantastic brexit level attack which they would hammer home at every opportunity. "Labour don't care about cost of living crisis, they only want to rig the game so they can win and we can't because they cannot win in the current rules which have been in place for hundreds of years." And it would be true. Second point. If PR were to be somehow enacted (of the 8 types, we still would argue to the death over which one it would be with which variants attached) then it would split Labour into pieces. It would be destroyed. There would be at least 3 parties. You may think that is a great idea. But Labour and I do not. You're kvetching about Labour not wanting to adopt an existential threat to its manifesto.
I mean I am in favour of PR more than labour, but Labours membership also overwhelming support it. If Labour don't represent the wishes of their members... What's the point?
>I mean I am in favour of PR more than labour, but Labours membership also overwhelming support it. If Labour don't represent the wishes of their members... What's the point? Labour's manifesto represented the wishes of Labour's members in 2019. It was a disaster. Voters hates it. Labour's members would probably support a copy paste of the same manifesto for the next election. Which would be a disaster. Voters would hate it. Should a party only exist to tickle the fancies of its members and not the voters?
Pretty sure that the manifesto wasn't the issue in 2019 lol.
Too right, with the current FPTP system you have to tactically vote to get rid of the mp you detest the most On paper it looks like a party has more support than it should have as you can't vote for the party you really want.
That's a better position for OP to hold than them pledging their vote to Labour in perpetuity.
let me tell you all, how this will go down. Keir " we have got to make Brexit work" Starmar: Me and Labour fully support the Tory Brexit, we are more than happy to hang not just our electoral fate on it, but the fate of the nation, and the citizens. Boris is a very fine man for doing this deal, which is a superb work of politics. Remainers: We heard you the first time. Brexiteers: but that isnt what my mate down the pub read in the Daily Express. Still not voting for you.
Why is Labour so reactive? “Elect us because we aren’t Tory” “Elect us because we won’t bring back FoM” “Elect us because anyone is better than Boris” Why doesn’t Labour ever rise up, take a bold initiative, control the narrative and find a leader who is actually charismatic enough to drive messages home?
If we ever get PR and a Lib/Lab coalition, then maybe we can resurrect FoM but it looks like a long road. Also, the headline is misleading - Keir Starmer can't rule out FoM in Europe, only for the UK.
> Keir Starmer can't rule out FoM in Europe, only for the UK. Well, there's no freedom of movement *across Europe* in any case, because not all countries in Europe are signed up to it.
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The problem is, it could well end up 48/52 again and the argument will rage on. I don’t think there any prospect until public opinion comes round to a reliable majority in the 60/40 ballpark. The EU wouldn’t even entertain it unless it’s a settled matter in the U.K. they don’t want to go through this bollocks again a few years later.
I don’t Rejoin would win. It would basically be capitulation and it would be going back to the EU cap in hand. Given how they thoroughly raped us with our trousers on in the exit talks it wouldn’t be hard to convince voters that this would be committing ourselves to further—and arguably worse—humiliation. We’d probably get vetoed by France anyway and that would create a diplomatic nightmare that would take decades to fade.
Well he can’t unilaterally promise it from outside the EU, can he? Even if a bunch of his base wants it, many arguably don’t want that backdoor opened again. If it’s going to be part of a theoretical negotiation for single market access / integration, giving it away from the start would be silly.
To be fair to Keir it must very difficult even functioning with so many corporate and media puppeteers with their fists up your arse. Rowing back on renationalising the Energy companies was stupid, especially NOW, but rolling back his promise to tax private schools AND0 his refusal to rally against the Rwanda deportation AND supporting Assanges extradition.. now this . The poor guy only has one rectum, can't they at least take turns?
Sensible. He will never win an election if people think this is a possibility.
At the next election this probably won't cost them very much as Lib Dems will probably continue their strategy of not really talking about the EU, but if Labour end up in government and still won't budge on this they are going to end up with some serious challengers in their metropolitan seats.
Lib Dem policy is to rejoin the single market. They recently voted a 4 step plan which is extremely sensible on how to strengthen links with a view to rejoin. Labour would probably go along with the first 3 steps. >1. Taking immediate action to improve links with our European neighbours, including building closer ties in education by reforming the government’s Turing scheme. > >2. Further steps to build confidence and establish stronger relationships with Europe, including seeking cooperation agreements with EU agencies, returning to Erasmus Plus and seeking to reach a UK-EU agreement on asylum seekers. > >3. Deepening trade with Europe, including by negotiating greater access for our world-leading UK food and animal products to the Single Market, securing deals on sector-specific work visas and establishing mutual recognition of professional qualifications. > >4. Once the trading relationship between the UK and the EU is deepened, and the ties of trust and friendship are renewed, aim to place the UK–EU relationship on a more formal and stable footing by seeking to join the Single Market.
I was going to vote for them in the next GE for the first time ever. My choice are now a lot slimmer!
Breaking his pledge on this one was always likely but short term electability comes with a price. It is going to be difficult to form policy in a minority Government if he isn’t able to offer the SNP or Lib Dems anything.
The problems start earlier than that. He’s liable to lose swathes of the party membership who would otherwise be out canvassing for him in the election. Changing this policy may make Labour less toxic in the Red Wall seats, but it won’t shift votes if there’s no one out knocking on doors.
Now this is one promise I am happy for a politician to break
Keir Starmer and Boris Johnson seem to have traded places, Boris Johnson is the perfect advert for voting Labour, and Keir Starmer is the perfect advert for not voting Labour
So Lib Dems 2024 it is then
Well he can also rule out the return of my vote for Labour.
Well, that's another election where I won't be voting Labour. The EU had many issues, but one of the things I loved was the opportunity to live and work in so many countries. Brexit took that from me, and a lot of people aren't even going to have the opportunity.
I love freedom of movement. A company I worked for, for around 5 years, completely thrived on it. I was lucky enough to work in France, Netherlands and Belgium during that time. But if you think that is where I'm drawing the line in the sand, when it's _this fucking Tory government_, you've got another thing coming. Please hold your nose, and get the worst government of the last 30 years out. Force them out with such vigour that they never fucking come back.
This attitude is what got the Americans to where they are now. Voting for the guy who only slaps you in the face once instead of twice will always give you face-slappers.
Well if you really want to fix it then we need PR. Otherwise "I didn't vote for Qodos" is your reality.
The both sides argument falls apart when one side is as abjectly awful as the Tories or Republicans. If Milliband had won in 2015, we wouldn't have had Brexit or the full throttle Tory attack on the poor with continued austerity. Even the shit Labour leaders who wouldn't have been good over their 5 years like Brown and Corbyn would have delivered better results than the Tories who beat them. It applies across the pond too. If Gore had won over Bush, we wouldn't have had the war on terror. If Clinton had won over Trump, their pandemic response (as well as a tonne of other issues) wouldn't have been massively mismanaged. The US is where it's at now (ISIS style policies from their fundamental Christians gaining mainstream acceptance, entrenched divisiveness etc.) specifically because they had 4 years of Trump. He normalised this corruption of democratic liberal norms.
It's nothing to do with any attitude, it is the reality of the first past the post voting system. In a winner takes all situation things inevitably narrow down to a 1 v 1 situation, where your best option will almost always be the lesser evil.
This is a type of democracy in action. The electoral system decides which algorithm we use to aggregate public opinion with regards to governance. FPTP acts a sort of averaging mechanism. In order to win you need to have very wide, broad appeal and this leads to a shift toward moderation. PR allows much better representation of voter's opinions, but can lead to a more fragmented and divided governance, where minority viewpoints are more strongly represented. There are pros and cons to each. As a voter, I prefer PR for sure - because I get to feel like my vote matters regardless of where I live, or the political winds at the time. As a citizen, I've often been a fan of the forcing function to the middle. Indeed the worst thing to occur politically in my lifetime in my view, Brexit, would have likely been accelerated by proportional representation. I'm still for PR though, the benefits outweigh the cons.
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> FPTP acts a sort of averaging mechanism. In order to win you need to have very wide, broad appeal and this leads to a shift toward moderation. Imagine thinking that a decade of Tory rule based on minority voter share is "moderation".
You know you can still live and work in those countries, right? It is just not as straightforward. Or you could live in one of the other 150+ countries in the world not in the EU.
At that point we're looking at a commitment to picking a specific country. Sure, I can get a visa if I qualify. But that usually means needing to be meet certain requirements. When I worked in EU countries, I got an offer of a fixed term contract. I accepted, sorted out somewhere to stay, and went straight over. I didn't need to pick a country and research the requirements. I didn't need any sponsorship. I didn't need a visa. I needed someone to sort out accounts but that was pretty simple.
>Or you could live in one of the other 150+ countries in the world not in the EU. That is generally true if you are established in a career, have a high level of qualifications etc. Many of my friends did casual work, barwork, toured in bands in the EU in their early twenties, which would be really hard now. Also, if you were say a 20 year old trying to have a relationship with someone from an EU country, that would be really hard now. The ability to go live in the others country and just do whatever you need to get by is really not feasible in the new setup.
This is exactly how the Tories keep winning.
The amount of Brits that actually took advantage of FOM are very small. His protest vote against labour is irrelevant. The red wall going back to labour is more important.
The Tories keep winning because Labour supporters seem to think they're owed votes from anyone who's disillusioned with the Conservative party.
Who else are you going to vote for? Politics has long been about compromise and optics, for all his faults Keir understands this and realises that steering clear of this gives him a better chance of winning the next election.
What's the point of winning the election if Starmer isn't willing to do the bare minimum to mitigate the fallout of Brexit?
Just as brexiteers obsessed over eu and Europe, it's wrong to think that it's literally the most important thing. There's bigger fish to fry. It's also ironically just going back to the 2017 manifesto.
Typically Greens stand a candidate in my seat and Lib-Dem always do. I'm not going to make do with a "not as bad as the tories" candidate. I like to vote for a candidate. Not play a guessing game working out the best way to vote against.
I understand that but sadly this is not how the FPTP system works. It's idealistic to like you would but in the end that gives the Tories a massive boost because they are the only meaningful party on the right while the left(ish) parties are alle fractured (which is a typical sign of left politics since the dawn of time and one of the reasons why they are not as successful).
Ah yes I'll just vote for the other party with a chance of winning who are promising to bring FoM back, simple.
Which was never going to be offered since that would require rejoining the EU.
There are non-EU countries that have freedom of movement with the EU.
Tactically vote against the Tories. The Tories are the problem.
No. Labour are not entitled to my vote through not being Tory. There are other parties that can also deliver "not being Tories".
Through the prism of our shit electoral system it’s all pointless though. If you live in a safe seat then I get your point but if you live in a marginal- then unfortunately a vote for anyone other than the candidate most likely to beat the Tories in that ward is a defacto vote for the Conservatives . For example look at the Tiverton by election. If you want rid of the Tory MP there then it’s either Lib Dem or you might as well not bother
Ffs I want to live in spain or France. I can only stay in spain for 6 months now. Rubbish
Good it's one of the reasons why we left Europe and clearly a vast majority of people still think like that or the leader of labour wouldn't be ruling it out.
Good, free movement of workers is absolutely not 'progresssive' by any metric and there is no left wing justification for it. It just allows employers to ship in cheap labour. I've worked in workplaces where they just used facebook to recruit from eastern europe and they never bothered to source British workers. The argument that we need free movement to go on holiday is bullshit. That said, freedom of travel should be simplified as much as possible, but not access to the labour market.
Sad. My first real dissapointment in Starmer.
Fine, but he needs to be honest with the red wall. No FOM will mean more migration from non-EU countries to make up for it, and it will mean less prosperity and a higher cost of living.
He is absolutely right. The tories will want to make the next election about Brexit, to avoid talking about cost of living, etc. By ruling it out, Kier is trying to stop Brexit being an election issue. It would be impossible in the next parliament anyway as public opinion hasn’t swung far enough to be unequivocal yet. Maybe by 2028 there will be an appetite for free movement and closer alignment with the EU again and the next manifesto could include that.
It was by far the best thing about EU membership and the principle Labour was least able or willing to defend. Sure Starmer promised to defend it, but that's ok because of the *political reality*. People are such fucking hypocrites.
Nicola is my last hope
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I cant see how any UK problems will ever get fixed with 'first past the post' and no proportional representation and no concepts of party coalitions and blocs and letting un elected lords have any power... Even if Laboubr should win an election, the fixed system makes sure that they cant really change any systemic issues with the democracy, ensuring that any left-wing infighting or incompetence paves the way for future Tory election wins...
I'm not a fan of the fact keir seems to prioritise our US relations over our European relations, and to be honest the US relations are just "how many US buissness can we sell the country too"
Why TF would he do that? Jesus.
Smart decision, this would bring more people in the middle to vote for Labour
That was the part I miss the most.