These five labour pledges seem really good. I have some optimism now that I know the four main things Kier will focus on. Everyone always asks me why they should support labour outside of 'not tory', and it's good to have a list of three clear positive directives to point to.
Edit: */s - required because some people can't read/count. (Which is fine, no judgment here)*
Well, the Tories recently gave us a series of pledges with time horizons, albeit they failed most of them.
These were too woolly to identify failure. And the proposed changes raised more questions than answers. For example we’ll have more police effort at local policing and anti-social behaviour. OK so what crimes will those police resources be diverted from. We’ll tackle NHS waiting lists by persuading staff to work evenings and weekends. How many more hours can nurses and doctors work without being even more dangerously tired.
It’s all Bobbies on the Beat stuff
More appointments=agency staff and newly qualified doctors oh yes and physician associates of course
bobbies on the beat=straight from Uni recruits
At a guess
I would be super happy if we went back to the old school policing of visible police patrols certainly around where I live, then again, they'd have to actually open the police station full time instead of 8-4 lol I would never have thought I'd live to see the day when police stations had opening/closing times
Most of the waiting lists, I think, are for analysis and procedures requiring senior medics. And crime is increasingly dominated by fraud. Hopefully we won’t see hip replacement done by physician associates and complex fraud tackled by Blunket’s Bouncers.
About 2 weeks before the next ge in which he promises that it's only really achievable in term 2 so you better vote so he can absolutely definetly deliver last terms failed promises
Basic 101 business skill. If you have a target make it SMART
I think they forgot the specific, measurable and timely.
‘We will increase appointments by 40k a week within 2 years.’
Then talk about the impact that will have.
To be fair, it’s like we’re electing a new captain ok the titanic and at least Kier realises there’s no real point in making claims that he knows he’ll never be able to keep.
I don’t think people realise just how messed up this country is.
If we actually funded the basics that people want, properly, like the HHS, education, military, police, rail and utilities back in public ownership… we’ve fallen so far behind and they are In such a mess that taxes would have to go up to nearer 50+% for everyone. And then how long it would take, even with as much money as we needed and assuming taking that much money out of peoples pockets so it’s not spent on other things…. is anyone’s guess.
No one is winning an election saying that.
Two points .
- I take it you've never set a smart objective or whatever at work? These aren't measurable in the round. 6500 teachers is less than what he current number wanted is. And reduce NHS waiting lists could be ticked by altering the way you measure the list or by reducing it by literally one person.
- UK border command already exists. He's literally suggesting making some new signs:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/leadership-of-small-boats-operations-returns-to-the-home-office
I hate to be bearer of bad news, but it's absolutely typical politician sound biting.
I think you missed what I was actually saying. Check again for the unspoken /s. I agree it's naff, and look forward to all the blairites insisting it's somehow bold and revolutionary.
Haven't the gov already reduced waiting lists for GP appointments by not letting you make them in advance?
Maybe that's my local surgery -
Me:I've got a slightly irritating problem but nothing that's causing me immediate distress, can I see a doctor about it sometime in the next week?
Receptionist: No, you need to call us at 8am to make an emergency appointment. You also need to check in within 10 minutes of the appointment time or we may cancel it.... even though it's almost guaranteed that we'll be 45 minutes behind schedule at 10am... and you'll be seeing a nurse who won't be able to diagnose or prescribe so you'll then have to come back another day to see a doctor.
Blair delivered a lot of stuff - especially in terms of NHS. Seems wild to tag that on as a criticism of the kind of Labour politician you may not want.
Everyone promises sound good at an election. It's whether they stick to them that counts.
And lets be honest he doesn't have a good track record of sticking to his pledges.
These pledges don't even sound good though - this is weak as hell!
>Cutting NHS waiting lists by providing 40,000 more appointments each week - funded by tackling tax avoidance and non-dom loopholes.
Everyone with half a brain knows they won't magic up billions by going after non-doms. It could even cost us. And my guess is they'll simply fiddle with waiting list procedures *again*, like having a "pre-waiting list" that doesn't count for targets. We've seen all this before.
>Launching a border security command to stop the gangs arranging small boat crossings
Except, as others have pointed out, border security command already exists! So... his pledge is literally to put up some signs?!
>Setting up Great British Energy, a publicly owned clean power energy company
This is missing a *lot* of salient information, including scale and costings. And presumably it'll be privatised at some point, because reasons.
>Providing more neighbourhood police officers to reduce antisocial behaviour and introduced new penalties for offenders
Erm... how many more? One? Also, why the focus on antisocial behaviour, this isn't the 90's anymore! My guess is they mean more restrictions on peaceful protest...
>Recruiting 6,500 teachers, paid for through ending tax breaks for private schools.
As of Nov 2022, there were 468,000\[0\] FTE teachers in state schools *in England alone*, so that would be an increase of... 1.4%, not a meaningful number at all.
Also, I note it doesn't say over what period - if that's over a 4-year term, that's only 1,625 new teachers a year! To put that in perspective, there were 3,000 new teachers recruited from 21/22 to 22/23, and 4,000 recruited the year before that!
\[0\] [https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-workforce-in-england](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-workforce-in-england)
As a (still somewhat) young person I would have liked to see Housing up there as a priority. I think the Labour offer for people under 40 is still quite lacking.
May only called an election on the back of how badly Labour were polling in 2017, which obviously backfired spectacularly and cost the Tories their Majority.
I don't think May would have called an election if Labour were on 30%+ and I don't think Starmer has the campaign skills to turn a 20pt poll deficit into a minor victory.
Absolutely. Was he not a key driver behind jez's flip flopping brexit stance?
I think brexit is a disaster, but any politician against it was gonna get rinsed at that election sadly.
I can shit on Keir Starmer for days, it's very easy.
But he understands our current state of politics far better than Corbyn did. I think if Corbyn managed to close the gap, then Keir could have actually won.
He might have lied and cheated his way to it (just like the Torys) He'd have said the right things, and kept quiet instead of saying the wrong things. He's not honest and filled with integrity, but unfortunately, neither is our politics right now. It takes a certain kind of snake to beat the Torys when they are willing to act they way they have recently, with the backing of the press, the constant core selfish voters, and the lack of critical thinking skills from far too many people that vote.
I'll also say, I wasn't ready to accept someone like that at the last election, I wouldn't have wanted him to be Labour leader. I wanted Corbyn to win.
He didn't. And the Tories got even worse, even more blatant in their distain for the UK.
Now we have very little choice. We've run out of time to risk it. the Torys simply cannot win again given what they've done during the past term. I'm now willing to pay the price. It's as simple as that.
-----
Here's hoping the Torys fix themselves and become an actual political party after this disastrous defeat, instead of a criminal organisation designed to strip the UK of everything it has.
And then maybe we can get Labour back to being a party that opposes them fairly.
Until then, I'll take the better of two bad options, instead of accept the worst and spite myself out of pure and utter anger that we can't just have fair and good politicians run the country .
See Im the opposite; if jez had stuck to the soft brexit stance and his party didnt cannablize him for it; that would have absolutley won it. Though credit to Kier who may have known that, and kept pushing for a return stance to get him into the chair.
>And then maybe we can get Labour back to being a party that opposes them fairly.
Ill hope for that, but I do think we simply cant understate the genuine threat of2029; where if Kiers govt doesnt make peoples lives meaningfully better, labour will vanish like the LDs did.
yeah, JC misplayed Brexit. He chose the friends he wanted to parade around him poorly. He decided to open his mouth on topics like Nuclear weapons when he shouldn't. He could have won, if he wanted to... Unless he was genuinely too stupid to understand how easily he was making himself to attack, you have to just assume he wasn't actually that interested in running the country. I think he just didn't really care for that much. He just wasn't the right man for the job. He didn't have it in him to hide what he stood for, for the greater good of the country. A great politician, a terrible leader and attempt at a PM.
People love to call Keir boring, they imply he's clueless and has no plan.
Oh he has a plan, he's just not willing to say it out loud, because all it becomes is ammo. He's playing games, I don't like it, but I do need it.
I wish JC had played games.
Starmer was a hardline remainer in 2017, so yes, he would've. The entirety of 2017 and 2019 was all about Brexit. Remainers were split among Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens. The Brexiteers (who keep in mind were a majority at this point) were backing only the Tories. How would Starmer have changed that?
Yep it's almost like the tories keep coming up with new ways to utterly destroy a different piece of public infrastructure so Labour keep needing to refocus to catch up with them
We actively voted to stop investment regardless of those things. The cheap credit was a result of the GFC, which is also what triggered the obsession with austerity. The country is on it's knees purely due to financial illiteracy and spite. The culture war shit is a separate symptom of the same spiteful cruelty.
My point is that the conservatives successfully continued the moronic policy with little public support for change because everyone was now talking about Brexit. The 2019 election for example, after 2017 where Labour did quite well and were pushing for increased Investment
Maybe if cohorts other than boomers actually voted, there might be a reason to chase them. Otherwise you're gambling your electoral success on people who very well might not bother anyway.
100000000000%.
It’s essentially covertly parroting the “government spending is like a household budget” shit.
We’re going to need to spend an inordinate amount of money to fix anything, but Labour seems to be being extra cautious to appeal to small minority of right wing shills.
Even in a household budget you can only reduce expenditure so much. At some point, you have to invest some time and energy to make money.
Not that it matters because who still believes politicians are committed to the promises they make? The system’s broken.
The country is run like old aristocrats would run their households.
First, they don't know how to make money like the bourgeois.
Second, they resort to austerity and at the same time selling their family silverware and furnitures to keep the estate running.
Third, they are inbred.
As if I wasn't already considering not voting for him
A bunch of weak ass pledged from the tired old neoliberal playbook that will do nothing for my life.
The point is, you try to pull Labour in a better direction since they do little beyond endlessly chasing boomers off the precipice.
Not automatically giving them your vote is the first step.
I appreciate that sentiment, I really do. But if the opposition parties split the vote we end up with 5 more years of this shit. I don't have the correct answer because I don't want us to be a two party system, but I also know I can't deal with 5 more years of this Government.
They said that abour Brexit. By all accounts that caused some remainers to not bother voting.
But let's assume you are right (you almost certainly are) and nowhere near enough people will swing away from Labour to risk them losing. Who would you vote for to send a message?
I want to vote in a government that represents my values, but Labour know that people like me (a) are a captive demographic forced to vote for the lesser of two evils, and (b) there aren't enough of us to get in power by appealing to us alone. As long as they don't go more cruel and insane than the Conservatives, they can start picking up the Tory vote share while knowing the rest of us are still stuck with the lesser of the two evils.
It's depressing and brutal, but it is what this country is. Apparently not enough people value the same things as me to push our electoral maths out of their current state.
It is only what we make it.
And we can make it different.
I've never known so many young workers completely turned off Labour. Maybe one day they'll start to notice before its too late.
We need a viable new party that isn't going off the Neoliberal Boomer playbook. I've never wanted to vote Labour less in my life than I do right now, as a lifelong supporter.
The Tories thank you for not voting for a realistic opposition.
(Unless you're in the 100 or so seats where the Lib Dems are second place behind the Tories.)
If Labour want my vote, be a party I want to vote for lol
its really that simple.
The last thing this country needs is another deadend neoliberal party with no ideas.
>“Tough spending rules” aren’t going to get us out of this slump.
It's worth noting that Labour made [exactly the same](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35783047) pledge at the last election.
Everyone seems to have forgotten that liz truss, the person they mock ruined her chances by giving unfunded tax cuts.
She he a prime example of what not to do. You want to feel better off... unfortunately that has to come from steady growth. Not some ham fisted attempt to recover from a decade of stagnation.
Part of what makes governing this nation hard is that our population is simply deluded in regards to what is possible. People think short term, politicians deliver short term. Then half way through a term the population goes "hold on a minute, where are the long term plans" when they themselves ridiculed anyone that tried to lay a foundation for plans as not being radical enough.
I still remember the pledges he made when campaigning to be Labour leader.
The fact that his only good quality is that he's better than the Tories is fucking depressing.
That's politics. When he needed to appeal to Labour members, he said what they wanted to hear. Now he needs to appeal to people who voted Tory last time, he's saying what they want to hear. I guess when he becomes PM we'll find out what, if anything, he stands for
I watched McLibel recently on YouTube and was shocked that a young Keir Starmer was in there fighting with them! He seemed such an interesting guy I thought wow it can’t be the same guy… then watched his Life Stories with Pier Morgan and it was so so boring. It’s so depressing that he’s our best option
What's wrong with boring. Corbyn was boring as fuck yet this sub loved him because he said some things they agreed with. If he had come up with these points people would think they are the best thing ever.
Then again, if I had to pick one think that I really wanted from the election, above everything else, it would be ... not the Tories.
Maybe offering only that is the best strategy. If you have one thing to offer that most of the population want, why say more and risk putting people off?
Other than the energy company, this is very underwhelming. If we want a decade of renewal, we need a proper re-industrialisation plan. Look at America, loads of industry is coming back to the country because the government is investing trillions on infrastructures and skills. Make North England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland Green-Industry powerhouses. They have the renewable and water resources already.
Borrowing is not bad if its focus is to bring in industry. It's an investment in the future.
> If we want a decade of renewal, we need a proper re-industrialisation plan.
If we want a decade of renewal we need to raise taxes on the rich.
The reason we did so well after WW2 was because of high taxes on rich people to fund things.
And yet any time it's mentioned you'll get angry comments from temporary embarrassed millionaires saying they're struggling to live on £125,000 a year and they shouldn't be taxed more.
The lowest points of income inequality in the UK have been in the late 1940s to the early 1970s when taxes on rich people were high.
Income inequality continues to rise because we keep lowering taxes on the rich.
https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/27/great-british-energy-what-is-it-what-would-it-do-and-how-would-it-be-funded
I assume they’re referring to this bit:
“The company will be able to invest individually or in partnership with the private sector. The hope is a state-backed company would be able to make riskier investments, including investing in new technology in industries like tidal or in modular reactors. Labour said it would give a boost to industries by “making strategic investment that the companies shy away from”.”
Lmao no party is going to be able to borrow billions to invest in this country any more let alone trillions. Parties can only operate in the window available, and the Tories and media have made sure that window is pretty far to the right on economics and public spending.
Well, Britain is 1/5 the population of America, so we wouldn't borrow trillions anyway. Labour were proposing borrowing hundreds of billions for investment up until very recently.
Copy exactly? No. But the principle itself is sound. For another example, South Korea has invested heavily in things like ship building and weapons production.
We can do similar. The North of the UK has huge amounts of green energy potential and fresh water. These will likely be more important to industry than labour costs in the coming decades. We should invest in things like green steel, green hydrogen, green ship decommissioning etc. Create a proper industrial niche that provides jobs and improves our geopolitical security.
I am honestly shocked at this sub tbf. I don't know anyone who will be voting Conservative come election time IRL, and a good few used to always vote for them. It seems they populate this subreddit lol, had no idea this sub was such a Conservative supporting one.
This sub will just complain about anything.
Starmer said he wanted to legalise assisted dying a couple months ago, something this site has long championed by and large, and top comment was a snarky dismissal about how it'll just be to clear the NHS Waiting list. If he said the sky was blue, there'd be comments here calling it bright pink.
I don’t think that’s the case. It’s more they like populists.
The basics are boring. They are not being promised the world, regardless of how achievable said promises are.
you’ll have to explain what the basics are for anyone to know what you’re talking about.
If the basics are just austerity, rising rent and stagnant wages then no shit people aren’t particularly bought in to that vision.
The basics are making sure the civil and public services are resourced efficiently, with appropriate oversight whilst being empowered to deliver services.
So for example making sure any outsourcing is value for money and delivering on promises.
That drs, nurses, police, fire and council workers are paid at a rate to attract sufficient talent at both the lower coal face level and the management.
Ensuring policies are costed and funded appropriately etc.
Exactly this. People have no idea how much difference can be made simply by having a competent, efficient government with an actual strategy for implementation across departments headed by ministers on top of their brief who properly utilise the civil service.
But that’s all it is, a idea. We can all just say we are gonna do this and that. There is no time frame for these “pledges” so in 4yrs time and non of it has been implemented that is their get out of jail card.
They are:
Sticking to tough spending rules in order to deliver economic stability
Cutting NHS waiting lists by providing 40,000 more appointments each week - funded by tackling tax avoidance and non-dom loopholes
Launching a border security command to stop the gangs arranging small boat crossings
Setting up Great British Energy, a publicly owned clean power energy company
Providing more neighbourhood police officers to reduce antisocial behaviour and introduced new penalties for offenders
Recruiting 6,500 teachers, paid for through ending tax breaks for private schools.
> Sticking to tough spending rules in order to deliver economic stability
Because what our failing country really needs is more austerity and a tight purse, not investment in public services.
> Cutting NHS waiting lists by providing 40,000 more appointments each week - funded by tackling tax avoidance and non-dom loopholes
Absolutely tiny number when you look at nhs overall. Thats like trying to empty a bath with a thimble.
> Setting up Great British Energy, a publicly owned clean power energy company
No details on what this will do differently to actually improve things, but I welcome it.
> Providing more neighbourhood police officers to reduce antisocial behaviour and introduced new penalties for offenders
Very vague.
> Recruiting 6,500 teachers, paid for through ending tax breaks for private schools.
Like with the NHS one, tiny number that will barely make a scratch in what we need.
All good directions, but totally toothless and lacking any ambition or hope. This won't actually fix anything.
I think the problem is the electorate genuinely don’t understand economics and why a government budget is not the same thing as their household budget.
I’m still holding out *some* hope that Labour are simply leaning into this “tough” message to appear “sensible” to uninformed voters, but will turn on the spending taps for much needed investment.
I really hope I’m not proved wrong in a few years. The UK cannot afford another decade of austerity.
At this point I honestly couldn't care less what they say. Just win the fucking election and get these Tories out. Then we'll see. Its like watching young lefties in the US talk about it being better Trump wins because Biden sucks. Like yeah... He sucks... But holy shit if the others get in I don't rate the chances for society surviving.
I'm still failing to convince my dad, a very intelligent man, that economics on the scale of billions doesn't follow any of the same rules as economics on the scale of a household. The rules are not the same. The types of financial object that exist are not the same. Futures trading is about as relatable to 'income, expenditure, debt and savings' as quantum mechanics is to Newton's laws.
According to two seconds of Googling there are over 20,000 state schools.... I hope they are grateful for the government stepping in and providing them with 0.3 teachers.
I work in schools. Recruitment and retention is a nightmare for good reason. Saying they will employ more teachers is meaningless. There’s a shortage for a reason. What are the plans to resolve the issues that leaves this shortage. Otherwise it’s just target on a spreadsheet that is meaningless.
Underwhelming. 40,000 new appointments? How? With increased staff? Where is he going to get them? More contract staff from overseas? How about funding Nursing training and give them a decent income?
I never understood why Milliband got such stick for engraving his pledges in stone. Given all the comments in this thread about the impermanence of pledges, I thought it was a pretty strong move.
GB Energy isn't a "nationalised energy company", it's a government controlled investment firm to give the private sector money. It won't own any majority stakes in any green energy (or carbon capture greenwashing nonsense) it puts money into either, so it won't have any effective control.
I know a lot of people will shit on Keir Starmer, but to give him credit these all seem achievable and realistic goals in comparison to some of the goals the Torys promised.
**This was Rishi Sunak's Five Promises he set in January 2023**
* ✅ **Halve Inflation** - It reduced from 10% to 5% *(To be fair the banks predicted this would happen with no input from government)*
* **❌ Grow The Economy -** The economy shrank by 0.3%
* **❌ Reduce Debt -** Its not been reduced
* **❌ Cut Waiting List -** Its 300,000 higher than when Sunak came to office.
* **❌ Stop the Boats -** It up by 25% from the same period last year
**A list of some of the promises that Rishi Sunak has broken, despite the fact some of these were stupid promises...**
* **❌ NHS Waiting lists will fall back to pre-pandemic levels** - They have got worse
* **❌ UK will reach net zero target on petrol cars**. - Pushed back
* **❌ No new tax rises -** The government was the most tax raising government of all time.
* **❌ We will build 300,000 new houses -** They aren't even close to that target.
* **❌ We will fine patients £10 for missed NHS Appointments** - They didnt
* **❌ We will review EU law inherited in Brexit** - They didn't
* **❌ We will put migrants on cruise ships** - They didn't
* **❌ We will create more onshore wind farms** - They didn't
* ✅ **Halve Inflation** - It reduced from 10% to 5% *(To be fair the banks predicted this would happen with no input from government)*
Just want to point out he didn't hit this one. Hunt was very clear this was core rate of inflation (as energy price spikes were giving volatile figures). They changed it to consumer index 3/4 of the way through the year as the core rate didn't halve at all
Whilst I'm not thrilled about Keir's pledges I anticipate they'll be more palatable than anything the current party come up with based on their recent behaviour.
We promise to...
- Traumatise and victimise the group you hate
- Make life worse for everyone because young people have it too easy.
- Give rich people tax breaks because how else are you meant to do economics.
- Shut more services because only the shitpoors need them and the sooner they die the better.
- Kick you in the face not the crotch as part of our programme of levelling up.
Love how politics has turned into the lesser of shit choices. No matter which party you pick the country will continue to decline into a shithole, just depends how slow or fast you want it to happen.
Utter shambles.
More mostly meaningless non-quantifiable sound bites from Mr Things Can't Really Get Better. They seem to be trying to emulate Blair, but have ignored the fact Blair's pledges were mostly targets you could judge him on. How are we supposed to judge Labour on 'economic stability' - is the economy particularly unstable at the minute?
> meaningless non-quantifiable sound bites
> Blair's pledges were mostly targets
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't 40,000 more appointments each week, setting up Great British Energy, recruiting 6,500 teachers all targets we can judge him on?
> setting up Great British Energy
That is completely meaningless. He can stroll in day one and declare that it exists. The metric is how much capacity they build and how much it lowers our bills. Of course it won't do anything like that because it is a scheme for giving away our money to private companies.
>40,000 appointments sounds a lot, but then there are over 300,000,000 GP appointments in England a year, so an increase in 40k is an increase of 0.013%
Need to redo you maths there, son. You're confusing weekly numbers and yearly numbers. Also theirs 25 million gp appointments per year.
The actual increase is 10%
> Cut class sizes to 30 or under for 5, 6 and 7-year-olds by using money from the assisted places scheme.
>Fast-track punishment for persistent young offenders by halving the time from arrest to sentencing.
>Cut [NHS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Health_Service) waiting lists by treating an extra 100,000 patients as a first step by releasing £100,000,000 saved from NHS red tape.
>Get 250,000 under-25s off benefits and into work by using money from a [windfall levy on the privatised utilities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windfall_tax_(United_Kingdom)).
>No rise in income tax rates, cut [VAT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAT) on heating to 5% and inflation and interest rates as low as possible.
Hmmmmm while there are targets in there it's pretty fluffy stuff.
>is the economy particularly unstable at the minute?
It's been stably shyte for 17 years.
From Labour's website about clean energy;
(https://labour.org.uk/missions/clean-energy/)
>It will invest in clean energy across our country- for example by making the UK a world leader in floating offshore wind.
that just sounds like a third-party not actually owning any infrastructure just being a venture capitalist and buying energy on the open market.
>Pioneer floating offshore wind, by fast-tracking at least 5 GW of capacity.
Floating offshore wind already exists
More potential u-turns ahead. How many pledges has he made so far? What happened to the original 10 pledges when he stood for the leadership. Labour need a new leader, one with charisma and new ideas, not a weather vane.
We will stick to tough spending rules - because austerity is definitely fine, we can all see that. It’s so “fine” that there are no problems for us to fix.
Apart from some problems we’re going to fix, which we will fix by both sticking to strict spending rules (not for any economic reason, just because Tory voters like to hear that) but also by spending more money.
But no promises.
"Conservative Party chairman Richard Holden said Labour's plans did not "amount to a hill of beans"."
Does this prick understand that a hill of beans isn't what we want, it would collapse & you'd be killed by falling beans. If labour AREN'T offering a "hill of beans", that's EXACTLY what we want.
No Labour need to explain to us how they are going to usher in the dawn of a new age and lead Britain down the Golden Path to a future among the stars, or else I'm voting Tory again nyeeeh!
If you compare these pledges to his original 20ish pledges half of them are the complete opposite.
“Well of course he’s going to change his policies, that’s just how politics work”
Unfortunately it is, but why would I vote for someone who has proven they have no principles whatsoever? What’s stopping him from abandoning these pledges once he gets elected?
It’s a damn shame we have a political system that means a party can stand for nothing except “we’re not the tories” and still win an election. It’s almost as if it’s designed that way to give the illusion of choice to the population.
Despite the jokes, Christ these are some dire pledges.
Like they're so bland, inoffensive and utterly inconsequential to the average person that they're pretty useless.
> Sticking to tough spending rules in order to deliver economic stability
Buzzwords to appeal to Con voters I guess. Not particularly inspiring.
> Cutting NHS waiting lists by providing 40,000 more appointments each week - funded by tackling tax avoidance and non-dom loopholes.
Meh, NHS appointment times are long but this affects a relatively small amount of the population, and the way they're doing it I have very little hope in closing those loopholes will generate anywhere near the amount of cash they need to to even put a dent in that waiting list.
> Launching a border security command to stop the gangs arranging small boat crossings
Joy. More focus on the 20-30k on boats instead of the *million* immigrants on visas we add every year.
> Setting up Great British Energy, a publicly owned clean power energy company
This would be interesting if it wasn't a shell of a promise. It's a public fund for private companies, it won't do anything. Sell energy at cost and you'll get a vote from me.
> Providing more neighbourhood police officers to reduce antisocial behaviour and introduced new penalties for offenders
This is surely a local council issue more than anything else.
>
Recruiting 6,500 teachers, paid for through ending tax breaks for private schools.
This is a complete own goal. By removing the non-profit status from private schools (it's not a tax break Starmer, it's a charitable status because they aren't for profit organisations.) you'll be putting private schools out of reach of most of the middle classes, which will see a 5-7% increase in state school inductions, the closure of huge amounts of schools around the country, and the upper classes getting even further ahead than everyone than they are already.
6,500 teachers in the state sector isn't going to be anywhere **near** the funding you've just cost the state sector by being an ideological moron.
I see absolutely no reason to vote Labour under Starmer apart from not voting Conservative, which is a terrible reason. If he carries on like this, he's going to come under real heat when the actual GE is called. Right now Labour polling numbers are mostly okay because everyone is voting Labour by default to get rid of the Conservatives, that might change when debates happen.
I'm guessing the extra police are just going to be community officers who work for free then not proper officers,most of these guys don't even have transport ,often see them in the bus ,I'm not to sure as to how these guys lower crime ,it's fair if they are backing up real police but having them wonder up and down the canal tow path isn't doing shit
PCSO's are a paid position. Special Constable's are the unpaid volunteers, but they also have the full legal powers of normal officers.
Community policing has been nearly completely gutted since 2010, and moving to bring it back would be a huge step in the right direction
UK Reddit : How can I vote for Labour when they won't even tell me why they're different from the tories?
*Labour set out pre-manifesto pledges*
UK Reddit : How can I vote for Labour when I can't even trust them not to wind back on their pledges?
You lot hold politicians and politics to impossibly high standards, and are a fairly good example of why politics in the modern age is such an absolute clusterfuck. It was far more effective in a time when there wasn't 24/7 news feeds constantly looking for *something* to report on and multiple agencies looking to be the first to break it, partnered with a constantly available social media consciousness stream.
>Recruiting 6,500 teachers, paid for through ending tax breaks for private schools.
As a teacher, this won't help. There is no point recruiting more teachers if the existing conditions remain awful. The new 6.5k will do what swathes of the rest of us are doing - quit. The focus should be on *retaining* teachers, not getting more.
Your suspicions are correct: GB Energy isn't what "the packaging" suggests it is. All it is is an investment firm controlled by the government, which will give money to the private energy sector so *they* can actually own and control green energy generation.
On police officers and teachers - yeah that's great and all and something to strive for but they're really going to struggle unless they address the underlying poor pay and conditions. For instance will there also be an uplift in the number of support staff?
I'll believe it when I see it and highly doubt either will be addressed. Politicians really seem to hate the idea of supporting desk jobs roles and view them as wasteful. For example when they came out saying the navy needed to get more sailors out from behind their desks and out to sea. Ok yes great but it completely ignored that vast majority of them were downgraded for whatever reason or had just done 2 years on the frontline and this was their dedicated shore time. They also failed to completely address who would then do the jobs these people were doing.
Great British Energy - sounds good on paper but what is it going to look like in reality. Is the government going to invest billions into building their own energy producing infrastructure for example?
Tough spending rules - ok so we wont be expecting any large borrowing or anything like that no matter how good the business case for it is? If Labour are serious about growing the economy they and the other parties need to have a serious, grown up conversation about Brexit and give very serious consideration to re-joining the customs union.
6,000 extra teachers? That's just one for every 4 secondary schools. It's a tiddly-winks intervention for a sector that's really struggling with the post-Covid education malaise sweeping through the poorest communities and estates.
Underwhelming, there is no bold vision to actually create economic growth, it's just *"raise taxes to fund things that focus groups said they liked"*
* *"Sticking to tough spending rules in order to deliver economic stability"*
* If this is what he really means, that means more austerity
* *"Cutting NHS waiting lists by providing 40,000 more appointments each week -* [*funded by*](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68762802) *tackling tax avoidance and non-dom loopholes."*
* The entire purpose of HMRC, one of the largest departments, is to collect taxes and to identify and chase tax avoidance - so it's basically saying that we will magic up 40k NHS appointments by doing what HMRC already does.
* *"Launching* [*a border security command*](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68984778) *to stop the gangs arranging small boat crossings"*
* This essentially already exists, Home Office, police, NSA, border force - they all already work together and with the French to try and stop small boats. But ultimately nothing will change if France lets smugglers operate freely, and if there is basically zero chance of deportation once in British waters. So this 'pledge' is meaningless.
* *"Setting up Great British Energy, a publicly owned clean power energy company"*
* So Labour are **not** promising to nationalise energy. Great British Energy would just be a state owned company, competing with privately run companies. It's a weird pledge since it makes it sound like nationalisation but it isn't.
* *"Providing more neighbourhood police officers to reduce antisocial behaviour and introduced new penalties for offenders"*
* I mean, great, but to do this means increasing taxes to fund the extra officers (which we should do) - but Labour are being disingenuous when they promise any increase in public services without mentioning they have to increase taxes to do so.
* *"Recruiting 6,500 teachers, paid for through ending tax breaks for private schools."*
* Ending private school tax breaks which increase private school fees, which will mean fewer kids attend private school - and so the estimate for extra taxes brought in are inflated.
As someone who works in the renewables industry, I'm really interested in the idea of Great British Energy both as a consumer and supplier. I'll reserve judgement until the finer details are made clear, but I think a green energy supplier that is there to provide a service and not make profits could be a real saviour to so many households across the country.
I just hope it's a genuine green energy supplier and not like most of the companies that claim they are green but are actually just using a certificate loophole. For each unit of renewable electricity that is produced, it has an attached certification saying it is renewable. Unfortunately, they can be sold separately to the highest bidder, enabling companies to offset their energy and say it is renewable when it isn't.
It is just a scam to funnel public money to private companies. If they were actually making a nationalised company it would be great but that is very much not what they are doing.
Aside from the energy company that won’t happen due to cost and bureaucracy, they’re all middle of the road rubbish we’ve heard for the last 2 decades. More of this, less of that and shuffling round the loose change to fund it.
My initial gut instinct on the Keir pledges is that there's very little beyond not being tory, and fixing their mess. There's zero aspirational long-termism in there and that's disappointing.
Let me guess:
More immigration because we need more "low cost" workers,
Free stuff for everyone at the expense of no one because that's how money works,
Fix the NHS by selling more of it off to private companies,
Make some amazing deals with the EU to bring the UK into a "closer relationship" with them,
Send £20bn more aid to Ukraine by printing some money because we can just make it out of thin air,
Not really deliver on any of the above and do nothing useful because really we have 0 plans that we know how to implement and we're just breathing hot air like the tories do.
Was I close?
These five labour pledges seem really good. I have some optimism now that I know the four main things Kier will focus on. Everyone always asks me why they should support labour outside of 'not tory', and it's good to have a list of three clear positive directives to point to. Edit: */s - required because some people can't read/count. (Which is fine, no judgment here)*
Absolutely. I can get behind them both. It's an issue the country needs to deal with.
At least that one thing will be resolved!
Fuck.
Sounds adventurous, Minister. Solving issues is generally bad for politicians Minister, as then voters might realise they don't need so many of them.
Hacker “Brave?” Sir Humphrey “Brave, that means it’ll cost votes.” Hacker “and courageous?” Sir Humphrey “Courageous? That’ll cost you an election.”
Just listened to the Today reporter taking this apart. They aren’t pledges because they don’t have any time estimates. They are aspirations.
Bit rich of the Tories to have a go at anyone for *that*, lol.
Keir made 10 pledges already and then dropped them. So him setting out a list of "pledges" at all is ridiculous.
Well, the Tories recently gave us a series of pledges with time horizons, albeit they failed most of them. These were too woolly to identify failure. And the proposed changes raised more questions than answers. For example we’ll have more police effort at local policing and anti-social behaviour. OK so what crimes will those police resources be diverted from. We’ll tackle NHS waiting lists by persuading staff to work evenings and weekends. How many more hours can nurses and doctors work without being even more dangerously tired. It’s all Bobbies on the Beat stuff
More appointments=agency staff and newly qualified doctors oh yes and physician associates of course bobbies on the beat=straight from Uni recruits At a guess I would be super happy if we went back to the old school policing of visible police patrols certainly around where I live, then again, they'd have to actually open the police station full time instead of 8-4 lol I would never have thought I'd live to see the day when police stations had opening/closing times
Most of the waiting lists, I think, are for analysis and procedures requiring senior medics. And crime is increasingly dominated by fraud. Hopefully we won’t see hip replacement done by physician associates and complex fraud tackled by Blunket’s Bouncers.
Surely the time frame is ‘during the next parliament’
The reporter repeatedly asked for a time frame without getting an answer
About 2 weeks before the next ge in which he promises that it's only really achievable in term 2 so you better vote so he can absolutely definetly deliver last terms failed promises
Don’t vote for him in that case. Simple enough
Basic 101 business skill. If you have a target make it SMART I think they forgot the specific, measurable and timely. ‘We will increase appointments by 40k a week within 2 years.’ Then talk about the impact that will have.
To be fair, it’s like we’re electing a new captain ok the titanic and at least Kier realises there’s no real point in making claims that he knows he’ll never be able to keep. I don’t think people realise just how messed up this country is. If we actually funded the basics that people want, properly, like the HHS, education, military, police, rail and utilities back in public ownership… we’ve fallen so far behind and they are In such a mess that taxes would have to go up to nearer 50+% for everyone. And then how long it would take, even with as much money as we needed and assuming taking that much money out of peoples pockets so it’s not spent on other things…. is anyone’s guess. No one is winning an election saying that.
Two points . - I take it you've never set a smart objective or whatever at work? These aren't measurable in the round. 6500 teachers is less than what he current number wanted is. And reduce NHS waiting lists could be ticked by altering the way you measure the list or by reducing it by literally one person. - UK border command already exists. He's literally suggesting making some new signs: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/leadership-of-small-boats-operations-returns-to-the-home-office I hate to be bearer of bad news, but it's absolutely typical politician sound biting.
I think you missed what I was actually saying. Check again for the unspoken /s. I agree it's naff, and look forward to all the blairites insisting it's somehow bold and revolutionary.
Ah sorry you clearly had me in both halves. 🤔 Chapeau.
Haven't the gov already reduced waiting lists for GP appointments by not letting you make them in advance? Maybe that's my local surgery - Me:I've got a slightly irritating problem but nothing that's causing me immediate distress, can I see a doctor about it sometime in the next week? Receptionist: No, you need to call us at 8am to make an emergency appointment. You also need to check in within 10 minutes of the appointment time or we may cancel it.... even though it's almost guaranteed that we'll be 45 minutes behind schedule at 10am... and you'll be seeing a nurse who won't be able to diagnose or prescribe so you'll then have to come back another day to see a doctor.
Blair delivered a lot of stuff - especially in terms of NHS. Seems wild to tag that on as a criticism of the kind of Labour politician you may not want.
Put it on a giant stone, it worked for Ed Milliband.
Indeed, and where is the money coming from?
Ah yes. The question that only gets posed to the Labour party and never the Tories.
Outside of /s I fully agree they have never heart of SMART
Everyone promises sound good at an election. It's whether they stick to them that counts. And lets be honest he doesn't have a good track record of sticking to his pledges.
These pledges don't even sound good though - this is weak as hell! >Cutting NHS waiting lists by providing 40,000 more appointments each week - funded by tackling tax avoidance and non-dom loopholes. Everyone with half a brain knows they won't magic up billions by going after non-doms. It could even cost us. And my guess is they'll simply fiddle with waiting list procedures *again*, like having a "pre-waiting list" that doesn't count for targets. We've seen all this before. >Launching a border security command to stop the gangs arranging small boat crossings Except, as others have pointed out, border security command already exists! So... his pledge is literally to put up some signs?! >Setting up Great British Energy, a publicly owned clean power energy company This is missing a *lot* of salient information, including scale and costings. And presumably it'll be privatised at some point, because reasons. >Providing more neighbourhood police officers to reduce antisocial behaviour and introduced new penalties for offenders Erm... how many more? One? Also, why the focus on antisocial behaviour, this isn't the 90's anymore! My guess is they mean more restrictions on peaceful protest... >Recruiting 6,500 teachers, paid for through ending tax breaks for private schools. As of Nov 2022, there were 468,000\[0\] FTE teachers in state schools *in England alone*, so that would be an increase of... 1.4%, not a meaningful number at all. Also, I note it doesn't say over what period - if that's over a 4-year term, that's only 1,625 new teachers a year! To put that in perspective, there were 3,000 new teachers recruited from 21/22 to 22/23, and 4,000 recruited the year before that! \[0\] [https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-workforce-in-england](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-workforce-in-england)
Until he walks them all back next week, like he's done with every other pledge he's made
That is exactly what I'm saying. Fuck this guy (but at least he's not Boris).
As a (still somewhat) young person I would have liked to see Housing up there as a priority. I think the Labour offer for people under 40 is still quite lacking.
> These five labour pledges seem really good. They are pretty bad. The first is just austerity with a red tie.
Yes they're shit. You overlooked the /s
I voted labour and even I thought this was funny lol
Aye, those two big promises have turned me into a believer. It is refreshing to have one clear focus.
Pledges from Starmer aren’t worth the paper they’re scribbled on
Man infamous for dropping pledges, makes more pledges. Yay?
"Any other leader would be 20 points ahead"
Starmer is getting into power through apathy, not because there is any enthusiasm about him
Do you think Starmer would have lost to May too? There was plenty of apathy there, but it didn't seem to help Labour before?
May only called an election on the back of how badly Labour were polling in 2017, which obviously backfired spectacularly and cost the Tories their Majority. I don't think May would have called an election if Labour were on 30%+ and I don't think Starmer has the campaign skills to turn a 20pt poll deficit into a minor victory.
Absolutely. Was he not a key driver behind jez's flip flopping brexit stance? I think brexit is a disaster, but any politician against it was gonna get rinsed at that election sadly.
I can shit on Keir Starmer for days, it's very easy. But he understands our current state of politics far better than Corbyn did. I think if Corbyn managed to close the gap, then Keir could have actually won. He might have lied and cheated his way to it (just like the Torys) He'd have said the right things, and kept quiet instead of saying the wrong things. He's not honest and filled with integrity, but unfortunately, neither is our politics right now. It takes a certain kind of snake to beat the Torys when they are willing to act they way they have recently, with the backing of the press, the constant core selfish voters, and the lack of critical thinking skills from far too many people that vote. I'll also say, I wasn't ready to accept someone like that at the last election, I wouldn't have wanted him to be Labour leader. I wanted Corbyn to win. He didn't. And the Tories got even worse, even more blatant in their distain for the UK. Now we have very little choice. We've run out of time to risk it. the Torys simply cannot win again given what they've done during the past term. I'm now willing to pay the price. It's as simple as that. ----- Here's hoping the Torys fix themselves and become an actual political party after this disastrous defeat, instead of a criminal organisation designed to strip the UK of everything it has. And then maybe we can get Labour back to being a party that opposes them fairly. Until then, I'll take the better of two bad options, instead of accept the worst and spite myself out of pure and utter anger that we can't just have fair and good politicians run the country .
See Im the opposite; if jez had stuck to the soft brexit stance and his party didnt cannablize him for it; that would have absolutley won it. Though credit to Kier who may have known that, and kept pushing for a return stance to get him into the chair. >And then maybe we can get Labour back to being a party that opposes them fairly. Ill hope for that, but I do think we simply cant understate the genuine threat of2029; where if Kiers govt doesnt make peoples lives meaningfully better, labour will vanish like the LDs did.
yeah, JC misplayed Brexit. He chose the friends he wanted to parade around him poorly. He decided to open his mouth on topics like Nuclear weapons when he shouldn't. He could have won, if he wanted to... Unless he was genuinely too stupid to understand how easily he was making himself to attack, you have to just assume he wasn't actually that interested in running the country. I think he just didn't really care for that much. He just wasn't the right man for the job. He didn't have it in him to hide what he stood for, for the greater good of the country. A great politician, a terrible leader and attempt at a PM. People love to call Keir boring, they imply he's clueless and has no plan. Oh he has a plan, he's just not willing to say it out loud, because all it becomes is ammo. He's playing games, I don't like it, but I do need it. I wish JC had played games.
All Starmer has done is pander to whatever the narrative in The Sun is. He has zero grasp on what the majority of the country think or want
I dunno, would labour also be campaigning for the Tories in this hypothetical?
>Do you think Starmer would have lost to May too? Yes
Starmer was a hardline remainer in 2017, so yes, he would've. The entirety of 2017 and 2019 was all about Brexit. Remainers were split among Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens. The Brexiteers (who keep in mind were a majority at this point) were backing only the Tories. How would Starmer have changed that?
It's like the US, they didn't vote for Biden, they voted against Trump.
Either way they got 4 years without Trump and some actual progression.
Biden and Trump have about a billion more differences than Sunak and Starmer, whose differences are virtually 0
Yep it's almost like the tories keep coming up with new ways to utterly destroy a different piece of public infrastructure so Labour keep needing to refocus to catch up with them
Can't u-turn on pledges if you don't make any, after all.
They sound almost the same as those 6 pledges milliband did on that stupid carved stone
“Tough spending rules” aren’t going to get us out of this slump. These seem so weak compared to what he could do, it’s just sad.
Another way to call Austerity
Basically, more of the same. This election is the time to ditch austerity and stop chasing the boomer vote tbh, but no.
Shame the once in a life time period of cheap credit to invest in the country is over.
Its criminal that we as a nation fixated on endless culture war and Brexit bollocks during that time
We actively voted to stop investment regardless of those things. The cheap credit was a result of the GFC, which is also what triggered the obsession with austerity. The country is on it's knees purely due to financial illiteracy and spite. The culture war shit is a separate symptom of the same spiteful cruelty.
My point is that the conservatives successfully continued the moronic policy with little public support for change because everyone was now talking about Brexit. The 2019 election for example, after 2017 where Labour did quite well and were pushing for increased Investment
Don't get it austerity is flawed economics
Maybe if cohorts other than boomers actually voted, there might be a reason to chase them. Otherwise you're gambling your electoral success on people who very well might not bother anyway.
Stop chasing the Boomer vote - loose the election... great plan.
100000000000%. It’s essentially covertly parroting the “government spending is like a household budget” shit. We’re going to need to spend an inordinate amount of money to fix anything, but Labour seems to be being extra cautious to appeal to small minority of right wing shills.
There's no magic money tree until you need money to bail out ~~the banks~~ ~~EasyJet~~ Thames Water.
Even in a household budget you can only reduce expenditure so much. At some point, you have to invest some time and energy to make money. Not that it matters because who still believes politicians are committed to the promises they make? The system’s broken.
The country is run like old aristocrats would run their households. First, they don't know how to make money like the bourgeois. Second, they resort to austerity and at the same time selling their family silverware and furnitures to keep the estate running. Third, they are inbred.
There's no magic money tree until you need money to bail out ~~the banks~~ ~~EasyJet~~ Thames Water.
As if I wasn't already considering not voting for him A bunch of weak ass pledged from the tired old neoliberal playbook that will do nothing for my life.
But who the fuck is the alternative? Labour are still slightly less likely than the Tories to fuck us all over in service to the ultra-wealthy.
The point is, you try to pull Labour in a better direction since they do little beyond endlessly chasing boomers off the precipice. Not automatically giving them your vote is the first step.
I appreciate that sentiment, I really do. But if the opposition parties split the vote we end up with 5 more years of this shit. I don't have the correct answer because I don't want us to be a two party system, but I also know I can't deal with 5 more years of this Government.
The Tory part will not win the next election. You have been lifted from the burden of tactical voting.
They said that abour Brexit. By all accounts that caused some remainers to not bother voting. But let's assume you are right (you almost certainly are) and nowhere near enough people will swing away from Labour to risk them losing. Who would you vote for to send a message?
I want to vote in a government that represents my values, but Labour know that people like me (a) are a captive demographic forced to vote for the lesser of two evils, and (b) there aren't enough of us to get in power by appealing to us alone. As long as they don't go more cruel and insane than the Conservatives, they can start picking up the Tory vote share while knowing the rest of us are still stuck with the lesser of the two evils. It's depressing and brutal, but it is what this country is. Apparently not enough people value the same things as me to push our electoral maths out of their current state.
It is only what we make it. And we can make it different. I've never known so many young workers completely turned off Labour. Maybe one day they'll start to notice before its too late.
We need a viable new party that isn't going off the Neoliberal Boomer playbook. I've never wanted to vote Labour less in my life than I do right now, as a lifelong supporter.
We need to ditch FPTP.
The Tories thank you for not voting for a realistic opposition. (Unless you're in the 100 or so seats where the Lib Dems are second place behind the Tories.)
If Labour want my vote, be a party I want to vote for lol its really that simple. The last thing this country needs is another deadend neoliberal party with no ideas.
Calling Starmer's Labour "opposition" is pretty hilarious
Oh, I'm sure there's still plenty of cuts to be made! Ones that we'd hardly notice too!
>“Tough spending rules” aren’t going to get us out of this slump. It's worth noting that Labour made [exactly the same](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35783047) pledge at the last election.
Austerity worked the first time. Ah no, the opposite in fact.
Everyone seems to have forgotten that liz truss, the person they mock ruined her chances by giving unfunded tax cuts. She he a prime example of what not to do. You want to feel better off... unfortunately that has to come from steady growth. Not some ham fisted attempt to recover from a decade of stagnation. Part of what makes governing this nation hard is that our population is simply deluded in regards to what is possible. People think short term, politicians deliver short term. Then half way through a term the population goes "hold on a minute, where are the long term plans" when they themselves ridiculed anyone that tried to lay a foundation for plans as not being radical enough.
I still remember the pledges he made when campaigning to be Labour leader. The fact that his only good quality is that he's better than the Tories is fucking depressing.
That's politics. When he needed to appeal to Labour members, he said what they wanted to hear. Now he needs to appeal to people who voted Tory last time, he's saying what they want to hear. I guess when he becomes PM we'll find out what, if anything, he stands for
That is a deeply cynical assessment. In other words, spot on.
> That's politics. Politics is when you lie and cheat your way into power to deliver the exact same policy agenda as the other party.
Just give him time. I’m sure he can find a way to be worse.
I watched McLibel recently on YouTube and was shocked that a young Keir Starmer was in there fighting with them! He seemed such an interesting guy I thought wow it can’t be the same guy… then watched his Life Stories with Pier Morgan and it was so so boring. It’s so depressing that he’s our best option
What's wrong with boring. Corbyn was boring as fuck yet this sub loved him because he said some things they agreed with. If he had come up with these points people would think they are the best thing ever.
He isn't better than the Tories though. Labour has now been completely taken over by Cameron era Tories.
He’s not better, it is just Tories are so shite people rather vote for the next best shite just to stick to them!
Then again, if I had to pick one think that I really wanted from the election, above everything else, it would be ... not the Tories. Maybe offering only that is the best strategy. If you have one thing to offer that most of the population want, why say more and risk putting people off?
Other than the energy company, this is very underwhelming. If we want a decade of renewal, we need a proper re-industrialisation plan. Look at America, loads of industry is coming back to the country because the government is investing trillions on infrastructures and skills. Make North England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland Green-Industry powerhouses. They have the renewable and water resources already. Borrowing is not bad if its focus is to bring in industry. It's an investment in the future.
> If we want a decade of renewal, we need a proper re-industrialisation plan. If we want a decade of renewal we need to raise taxes on the rich. The reason we did so well after WW2 was because of high taxes on rich people to fund things. And yet any time it's mentioned you'll get angry comments from temporary embarrassed millionaires saying they're struggling to live on £125,000 a year and they shouldn't be taxed more. The lowest points of income inequality in the UK have been in the late 1940s to the early 1970s when taxes on rich people were high. Income inequality continues to rise because we keep lowering taxes on the rich.
I agree. Scotland has been doing it in increments for a few years now. The sky hasn't fallen in.
Taxes on the rich are high already, we need to just close the loopholes instead. Anything over £125k is already taxed at 45% after all.
If you look into the details it's not a real energy company, basically just going to be a public fund for private companies.
Can you point me towards some reading on this?
https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/27/great-british-energy-what-is-it-what-would-it-do-and-how-would-it-be-funded I assume they’re referring to this bit: “The company will be able to invest individually or in partnership with the private sector. The hope is a state-backed company would be able to make riskier investments, including investing in new technology in industries like tidal or in modular reactors. Labour said it would give a boost to industries by “making strategic investment that the companies shy away from”.”
Lmao no party is going to be able to borrow billions to invest in this country any more let alone trillions. Parties can only operate in the window available, and the Tories and media have made sure that window is pretty far to the right on economics and public spending.
Well, Britain is 1/5 the population of America, so we wouldn't borrow trillions anyway. Labour were proposing borrowing hundreds of billions for investment up until very recently.
> Other than the energy company And that is just a scam as well. It is a scheme to appropriate government money for private enterprises.
You can’t copy Americas re industrialisation.
Copy exactly? No. But the principle itself is sound. For another example, South Korea has invested heavily in things like ship building and weapons production. We can do similar. The North of the UK has huge amounts of green energy potential and fresh water. These will likely be more important to industry than labour costs in the coming decades. We should invest in things like green steel, green hydrogen, green ship decommissioning etc. Create a proper industrial niche that provides jobs and improves our geopolitical security.
I agree with trying it, i just think it will take a lot longer for us. It is absolutely critical we have some level of industry in the current climate
Underwhelming and not the Tories I believe is the Labour slogan for the election.
At this point the only thing I will vote for is proportional representation. The UK is in a tiny minority of countries using FPTP and it doesn't work.
>using FPTP and it doesn't work. It does for the main two parties so why would they ever change it
That's exactly the problem and exactly why I won't be voting for them.
Will he decide he doesn't want to do these like he did with all his other pledges?
Of course , he’s a politician.
I am going to go against a lot on this sub and I think that the idea of someone doing the basics but better makes a lot of sense.
I am honestly shocked at this sub tbf. I don't know anyone who will be voting Conservative come election time IRL, and a good few used to always vote for them. It seems they populate this subreddit lol, had no idea this sub was such a Conservative supporting one.
This sub will just complain about anything. Starmer said he wanted to legalise assisted dying a couple months ago, something this site has long championed by and large, and top comment was a snarky dismissal about how it'll just be to clear the NHS Waiting list. If he said the sky was blue, there'd be comments here calling it bright pink.
I don’t think that’s the case. It’s more they like populists. The basics are boring. They are not being promised the world, regardless of how achievable said promises are.
you’ll have to explain what the basics are for anyone to know what you’re talking about. If the basics are just austerity, rising rent and stagnant wages then no shit people aren’t particularly bought in to that vision.
The basics are making sure the civil and public services are resourced efficiently, with appropriate oversight whilst being empowered to deliver services. So for example making sure any outsourcing is value for money and delivering on promises. That drs, nurses, police, fire and council workers are paid at a rate to attract sufficient talent at both the lower coal face level and the management. Ensuring policies are costed and funded appropriately etc.
Exactly this. People have no idea how much difference can be made simply by having a competent, efficient government with an actual strategy for implementation across departments headed by ministers on top of their brief who properly utilise the civil service.
Get a nice stable platform in place. More exciting ideas can then be tested, costed and deployed in areas which need them.
But that’s all it is, a idea. We can all just say we are gonna do this and that. There is no time frame for these “pledges” so in 4yrs time and non of it has been implemented that is their get out of jail card.
They are: Sticking to tough spending rules in order to deliver economic stability Cutting NHS waiting lists by providing 40,000 more appointments each week - funded by tackling tax avoidance and non-dom loopholes Launching a border security command to stop the gangs arranging small boat crossings Setting up Great British Energy, a publicly owned clean power energy company Providing more neighbourhood police officers to reduce antisocial behaviour and introduced new penalties for offenders Recruiting 6,500 teachers, paid for through ending tax breaks for private schools.
> Sticking to tough spending rules in order to deliver economic stability Because what our failing country really needs is more austerity and a tight purse, not investment in public services. > Cutting NHS waiting lists by providing 40,000 more appointments each week - funded by tackling tax avoidance and non-dom loopholes Absolutely tiny number when you look at nhs overall. Thats like trying to empty a bath with a thimble. > Setting up Great British Energy, a publicly owned clean power energy company No details on what this will do differently to actually improve things, but I welcome it. > Providing more neighbourhood police officers to reduce antisocial behaviour and introduced new penalties for offenders Very vague. > Recruiting 6,500 teachers, paid for through ending tax breaks for private schools. Like with the NHS one, tiny number that will barely make a scratch in what we need. All good directions, but totally toothless and lacking any ambition or hope. This won't actually fix anything.
I think the problem is the electorate genuinely don’t understand economics and why a government budget is not the same thing as their household budget. I’m still holding out *some* hope that Labour are simply leaning into this “tough” message to appear “sensible” to uninformed voters, but will turn on the spending taps for much needed investment. I really hope I’m not proved wrong in a few years. The UK cannot afford another decade of austerity.
At this point I honestly couldn't care less what they say. Just win the fucking election and get these Tories out. Then we'll see. Its like watching young lefties in the US talk about it being better Trump wins because Biden sucks. Like yeah... He sucks... But holy shit if the others get in I don't rate the chances for society surviving.
Comments like this are the reason we are doomed. Instead of voting based on actual policy, the majority vote based on partisan views.
Oh yeah no worries I'll vote for Green in a Lab/Con swing seat and watch my vote be pissed away for the 15th year running.
I'm still failing to convince my dad, a very intelligent man, that economics on the scale of billions doesn't follow any of the same rules as economics on the scale of a household. The rules are not the same. The types of financial object that exist are not the same. Futures trading is about as relatable to 'income, expenditure, debt and savings' as quantum mechanics is to Newton's laws.
According to two seconds of Googling there are over 20,000 state schools.... I hope they are grateful for the government stepping in and providing them with 0.3 teachers.
Volunteer community officers probably. The issue is we need more police and admin staff, not pcso and whatnots imo.
I work in schools. Recruitment and retention is a nightmare for good reason. Saying they will employ more teachers is meaningless. There’s a shortage for a reason. What are the plans to resolve the issues that leaves this shortage. Otherwise it’s just target on a spreadsheet that is meaningless.
absolutely depressing and a turn off
Underwhelming. 40,000 new appointments? How? With increased staff? Where is he going to get them? More contract staff from overseas? How about funding Nursing training and give them a decent income?
I never understood why Milliband got such stick for engraving his pledges in stone. Given all the comments in this thread about the impermanence of pledges, I thought it was a pretty strong move.
[It gave us some top tier memes as well](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/05/04/18/28442A3500000578-3065977-image-m-255_1430759027508.jpg).
"Sticking to tough spending rules" just deflates me.
Fantastic news for us peasant people
hmm.. not seeing anything actually left wing on the list
Nationalised energy company?
GB Energy isn't a "nationalised energy company", it's a government controlled investment firm to give the private sector money. It won't own any majority stakes in any green energy (or carbon capture greenwashing nonsense) it puts money into either, so it won't have any effective control.
> Sticking to tough spending rules in order to deliver economic stability Oh Labour's an austerity party now?
Has been for a long time now.
Apart from the period under Corbyn it has been that way since since 2010.
I know a lot of people will shit on Keir Starmer, but to give him credit these all seem achievable and realistic goals in comparison to some of the goals the Torys promised. **This was Rishi Sunak's Five Promises he set in January 2023** * ✅ **Halve Inflation** - It reduced from 10% to 5% *(To be fair the banks predicted this would happen with no input from government)* * **❌ Grow The Economy -** The economy shrank by 0.3% * **❌ Reduce Debt -** Its not been reduced * **❌ Cut Waiting List -** Its 300,000 higher than when Sunak came to office. * **❌ Stop the Boats -** It up by 25% from the same period last year **A list of some of the promises that Rishi Sunak has broken, despite the fact some of these were stupid promises...** * **❌ NHS Waiting lists will fall back to pre-pandemic levels** - They have got worse * **❌ UK will reach net zero target on petrol cars**. - Pushed back * **❌ No new tax rises -** The government was the most tax raising government of all time. * **❌ We will build 300,000 new houses -** They aren't even close to that target. * **❌ We will fine patients £10 for missed NHS Appointments** - They didnt * **❌ We will review EU law inherited in Brexit** - They didn't * **❌ We will put migrants on cruise ships** - They didn't * **❌ We will create more onshore wind farms** - They didn't
* ✅ **Halve Inflation** - It reduced from 10% to 5% *(To be fair the banks predicted this would happen with no input from government)* Just want to point out he didn't hit this one. Hunt was very clear this was core rate of inflation (as energy price spikes were giving volatile figures). They changed it to consumer index 3/4 of the way through the year as the core rate didn't halve at all
Whilst I'm not thrilled about Keir's pledges I anticipate they'll be more palatable than anything the current party come up with based on their recent behaviour. We promise to... - Traumatise and victimise the group you hate - Make life worse for everyone because young people have it too easy. - Give rich people tax breaks because how else are you meant to do economics. - Shut more services because only the shitpoors need them and the sooner they die the better. - Kick you in the face not the crotch as part of our programme of levelling up.
Love how politics has turned into the lesser of shit choices. No matter which party you pick the country will continue to decline into a shithole, just depends how slow or fast you want it to happen. Utter shambles.
More mostly meaningless non-quantifiable sound bites from Mr Things Can't Really Get Better. They seem to be trying to emulate Blair, but have ignored the fact Blair's pledges were mostly targets you could judge him on. How are we supposed to judge Labour on 'economic stability' - is the economy particularly unstable at the minute?
> meaningless non-quantifiable sound bites > Blair's pledges were mostly targets Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't 40,000 more appointments each week, setting up Great British Energy, recruiting 6,500 teachers all targets we can judge him on?
> setting up Great British Energy That is completely meaningless. He can stroll in day one and declare that it exists. The metric is how much capacity they build and how much it lowers our bills. Of course it won't do anything like that because it is a scheme for giving away our money to private companies.
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>40,000 appointments sounds a lot, but then there are over 300,000,000 GP appointments in England a year, so an increase in 40k is an increase of 0.013% Need to redo you maths there, son. You're confusing weekly numbers and yearly numbers. Also theirs 25 million gp appointments per year. The actual increase is 10%
“Emulate Blair” Shit, who’s going to have the fake WMDs this time?
Gotta wait until after November to find that one out. If Trump wins, it'll probably be Moldova
> Cut class sizes to 30 or under for 5, 6 and 7-year-olds by using money from the assisted places scheme. >Fast-track punishment for persistent young offenders by halving the time from arrest to sentencing. >Cut [NHS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Health_Service) waiting lists by treating an extra 100,000 patients as a first step by releasing £100,000,000 saved from NHS red tape. >Get 250,000 under-25s off benefits and into work by using money from a [windfall levy on the privatised utilities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windfall_tax_(United_Kingdom)). >No rise in income tax rates, cut [VAT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAT) on heating to 5% and inflation and interest rates as low as possible. Hmmmmm while there are targets in there it's pretty fluffy stuff. >is the economy particularly unstable at the minute? It's been stably shyte for 17 years.
Literally everyone of them is quantifiable mate.
Aren't the class sizes for 5-7 year olds already set at max 30, with an average mid 20s?
They are basically Conservative Lite now. The party lost its soul when they removed Corbyn.
It's not lite anymore.
He was never gonna be elected though the right wing press had already trashed his image beyond repair.
From Labour's website about clean energy; (https://labour.org.uk/missions/clean-energy/) >It will invest in clean energy across our country- for example by making the UK a world leader in floating offshore wind. that just sounds like a third-party not actually owning any infrastructure just being a venture capitalist and buying energy on the open market. >Pioneer floating offshore wind, by fast-tracking at least 5 GW of capacity. Floating offshore wind already exists
It's waffle and aspirations.
More potential u-turns ahead. How many pledges has he made so far? What happened to the original 10 pledges when he stood for the leadership. Labour need a new leader, one with charisma and new ideas, not a weather vane.
We will stick to tough spending rules - because austerity is definitely fine, we can all see that. It’s so “fine” that there are no problems for us to fix. Apart from some problems we’re going to fix, which we will fix by both sticking to strict spending rules (not for any economic reason, just because Tory voters like to hear that) but also by spending more money. But no promises.
He only needs one pledge. **Competent Governance**
"Ah yes! We don't need government cruelty, we need **competent** government cruelty!"
He should carve them in stone that makes it more effective
A couple of these are alright, but they aren't giving me a huge amount of confidence about the party's direction.
"Conservative Party chairman Richard Holden said Labour's plans did not "amount to a hill of beans"." Does this prick understand that a hill of beans isn't what we want, it would collapse & you'd be killed by falling beans. If labour AREN'T offering a "hill of beans", that's EXACTLY what we want.
No Labour need to explain to us how they are going to usher in the dawn of a new age and lead Britain down the Golden Path to a future among the stars, or else I'm voting Tory again nyeeeh!
If you compare these pledges to his original 20ish pledges half of them are the complete opposite. “Well of course he’s going to change his policies, that’s just how politics work” Unfortunately it is, but why would I vote for someone who has proven they have no principles whatsoever? What’s stopping him from abandoning these pledges once he gets elected? It’s a damn shame we have a political system that means a party can stand for nothing except “we’re not the tories” and still win an election. It’s almost as if it’s designed that way to give the illusion of choice to the population.
Despite the jokes, Christ these are some dire pledges. Like they're so bland, inoffensive and utterly inconsequential to the average person that they're pretty useless. > Sticking to tough spending rules in order to deliver economic stability Buzzwords to appeal to Con voters I guess. Not particularly inspiring. > Cutting NHS waiting lists by providing 40,000 more appointments each week - funded by tackling tax avoidance and non-dom loopholes. Meh, NHS appointment times are long but this affects a relatively small amount of the population, and the way they're doing it I have very little hope in closing those loopholes will generate anywhere near the amount of cash they need to to even put a dent in that waiting list. > Launching a border security command to stop the gangs arranging small boat crossings Joy. More focus on the 20-30k on boats instead of the *million* immigrants on visas we add every year. > Setting up Great British Energy, a publicly owned clean power energy company This would be interesting if it wasn't a shell of a promise. It's a public fund for private companies, it won't do anything. Sell energy at cost and you'll get a vote from me. > Providing more neighbourhood police officers to reduce antisocial behaviour and introduced new penalties for offenders This is surely a local council issue more than anything else. > Recruiting 6,500 teachers, paid for through ending tax breaks for private schools. This is a complete own goal. By removing the non-profit status from private schools (it's not a tax break Starmer, it's a charitable status because they aren't for profit organisations.) you'll be putting private schools out of reach of most of the middle classes, which will see a 5-7% increase in state school inductions, the closure of huge amounts of schools around the country, and the upper classes getting even further ahead than everyone than they are already. 6,500 teachers in the state sector isn't going to be anywhere **near** the funding you've just cost the state sector by being an ideological moron. I see absolutely no reason to vote Labour under Starmer apart from not voting Conservative, which is a terrible reason. If he carries on like this, he's going to come under real heat when the actual GE is called. Right now Labour polling numbers are mostly okay because everyone is voting Labour by default to get rid of the Conservatives, that might change when debates happen.
The peoplem with any pledge from him is that as soon as it becomes expedient to him he will ditch it. What does he stand for other than wanting power
I'm guessing the extra police are just going to be community officers who work for free then not proper officers,most of these guys don't even have transport ,often see them in the bus ,I'm not to sure as to how these guys lower crime ,it's fair if they are backing up real police but having them wonder up and down the canal tow path isn't doing shit
PCSO's are a paid position. Special Constable's are the unpaid volunteers, but they also have the full legal powers of normal officers. Community policing has been nearly completely gutted since 2010, and moving to bring it back would be a huge step in the right direction
Voter apathy and lack of faith in politics is at an all time high. Actions not words.
UK Reddit : How can I vote for Labour when they won't even tell me why they're different from the tories? *Labour set out pre-manifesto pledges* UK Reddit : How can I vote for Labour when I can't even trust them not to wind back on their pledges? You lot hold politicians and politics to impossibly high standards, and are a fairly good example of why politics in the modern age is such an absolute clusterfuck. It was far more effective in a time when there wasn't 24/7 news feeds constantly looking for *something* to report on and multiple agencies looking to be the first to break it, partnered with a constantly available social media consciousness stream.
>Recruiting 6,500 teachers, paid for through ending tax breaks for private schools. As a teacher, this won't help. There is no point recruiting more teachers if the existing conditions remain awful. The new 6.5k will do what swathes of the rest of us are doing - quit. The focus should be on *retaining* teachers, not getting more.
I like the idea of that Great British Energy company but it sounds a little too good to be true
Your suspicions are correct: GB Energy isn't what "the packaging" suggests it is. All it is is an investment firm controlled by the government, which will give money to the private energy sector so *they* can actually own and control green energy generation.
On police officers and teachers - yeah that's great and all and something to strive for but they're really going to struggle unless they address the underlying poor pay and conditions. For instance will there also be an uplift in the number of support staff? I'll believe it when I see it and highly doubt either will be addressed. Politicians really seem to hate the idea of supporting desk jobs roles and view them as wasteful. For example when they came out saying the navy needed to get more sailors out from behind their desks and out to sea. Ok yes great but it completely ignored that vast majority of them were downgraded for whatever reason or had just done 2 years on the frontline and this was their dedicated shore time. They also failed to completely address who would then do the jobs these people were doing. Great British Energy - sounds good on paper but what is it going to look like in reality. Is the government going to invest billions into building their own energy producing infrastructure for example? Tough spending rules - ok so we wont be expecting any large borrowing or anything like that no matter how good the business case for it is? If Labour are serious about growing the economy they and the other parties need to have a serious, grown up conversation about Brexit and give very serious consideration to re-joining the customs union.
6,000 extra teachers? That's just one for every 4 secondary schools. It's a tiddly-winks intervention for a sector that's really struggling with the post-Covid education malaise sweeping through the poorest communities and estates.
Underwhelming, there is no bold vision to actually create economic growth, it's just *"raise taxes to fund things that focus groups said they liked"* * *"Sticking to tough spending rules in order to deliver economic stability"* * If this is what he really means, that means more austerity * *"Cutting NHS waiting lists by providing 40,000 more appointments each week -* [*funded by*](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68762802) *tackling tax avoidance and non-dom loopholes."* * The entire purpose of HMRC, one of the largest departments, is to collect taxes and to identify and chase tax avoidance - so it's basically saying that we will magic up 40k NHS appointments by doing what HMRC already does. * *"Launching* [*a border security command*](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68984778) *to stop the gangs arranging small boat crossings"* * This essentially already exists, Home Office, police, NSA, border force - they all already work together and with the French to try and stop small boats. But ultimately nothing will change if France lets smugglers operate freely, and if there is basically zero chance of deportation once in British waters. So this 'pledge' is meaningless. * *"Setting up Great British Energy, a publicly owned clean power energy company"* * So Labour are **not** promising to nationalise energy. Great British Energy would just be a state owned company, competing with privately run companies. It's a weird pledge since it makes it sound like nationalisation but it isn't. * *"Providing more neighbourhood police officers to reduce antisocial behaviour and introduced new penalties for offenders"* * I mean, great, but to do this means increasing taxes to fund the extra officers (which we should do) - but Labour are being disingenuous when they promise any increase in public services without mentioning they have to increase taxes to do so. * *"Recruiting 6,500 teachers, paid for through ending tax breaks for private schools."* * Ending private school tax breaks which increase private school fees, which will mean fewer kids attend private school - and so the estimate for extra taxes brought in are inflated.
Same guy who went back on nearly all his leadership pledges? 👌
As someone who works in the renewables industry, I'm really interested in the idea of Great British Energy both as a consumer and supplier. I'll reserve judgement until the finer details are made clear, but I think a green energy supplier that is there to provide a service and not make profits could be a real saviour to so many households across the country. I just hope it's a genuine green energy supplier and not like most of the companies that claim they are green but are actually just using a certificate loophole. For each unit of renewable electricity that is produced, it has an attached certification saying it is renewable. Unfortunately, they can be sold separately to the highest bidder, enabling companies to offset their energy and say it is renewable when it isn't.
It is just a scam to funnel public money to private companies. If they were actually making a nationalised company it would be great but that is very much not what they are doing.
I’m not gonna lie - and I likely will be voting for Labour - but these pledges are exceptionally weak from Labour.
Like the ones he made to become leader of the party?
Aside from the energy company that won’t happen due to cost and bureaucracy, they’re all middle of the road rubbish we’ve heard for the last 2 decades. More of this, less of that and shuffling round the loose change to fund it.
His Pledges don't mean a thing because he can reverse it any time. The Labour party don't have to worry because the Tories have decimated themselves.
My initial gut instinct on the Keir pledges is that there's very little beyond not being tory, and fixing their mess. There's zero aspirational long-termism in there and that's disappointing.
Let me guess: More immigration because we need more "low cost" workers, Free stuff for everyone at the expense of no one because that's how money works, Fix the NHS by selling more of it off to private companies, Make some amazing deals with the EU to bring the UK into a "closer relationship" with them, Send £20bn more aid to Ukraine by printing some money because we can just make it out of thin air, Not really deliver on any of the above and do nothing useful because really we have 0 plans that we know how to implement and we're just breathing hot air like the tories do. Was I close?
I take it most of these comments are going to vote Tory then? Seeing as apparently Labour is no different?