This Once Great Movement Of Ours

[JimJamUK]

That is code for "Ghayouba should have been included".

A widespread feeling locally that MacAllister is the one favoured by party HQ - given all that has gone on, I wonder whether that will help or hinder his chances.

You do wonder if at some point the fixers will cotton onto the fact everyone knows who they are fixing contests for and therefore make it look like they are fixing it for one candidate so people vote for their secretly preferred candidate instead (or is this all a bit 3D chess?).

[JimJamUK]

These days she’s probably best known to many younger and more political people for her ‘tribute’ to Margaret Thatcher. While the media and political scene was dominated by sympathetic voices (understandable given an old lady had just died), Jackson was rather less supportive of Thatcher.

[JimJamUK]

After 44 years Neal Lawson has been expelled from the Labour Party because he tweeted that people should vote Green in some places back in 2021. Given it’s taken 2 years for him to be expelled, I’d like to think someone recently got tired of his endless repetition in the media of the 3 Ps (Progressive, Proportional and Pluralism), but knowing Labour it’s probably just reflects how long the bureaucracy takes to do anything.

[JimJamUK]

I'm recent weeks, and this morning, Labour are really trying to reinforce the 'when elected we won't change a thing' narrative.

I'm genuinely wondering why. Is it internal polling?

Part of it is the long-standing fear that Labour will mess up the public finances/economy, part of it is preparing the public for how awful things are (and therefore there’s little room for manoeuvre), and part of it I just don’t know. You can achieve the first 2 while still making it clear that you have a few headline spending commitments that you prioritise because they are so important and will make a difference eg; the NHS.

[JimJamUK]

Blair was able to promise (and generally deliver) widescale social and institutional change without spending a penny and making a commitment to continuing Tory spending plans for two years.

Labour has in theory committed to or at least heavily briefed a very radical constitutional and democratic programme on things like devolution, the HoL and expanding the electoral franchise. My worry is that they focus on pushing through these trendy progressive ‘reforms’ (most but not all of which are poorly thought through) instead of tackling things that actually matter in ordinary peoples day-to-day lives.

[JimJamUK]

The Labour mayor of Northumberland North of Tyne has quit the party and looks like he will stand as an independent for the forthcoming North East Combined Authority mayoral election. He wanted to be the Labour candidate but was blocked by the party in favour of the elected Police and Crime commissioner (which covers more of the new body). He’s been martyred by the left of the party online but I’m doubtful of his electoral process (in fact, the anointed candidate did much better electorally, insofar as these things can be attributed to the individual). I’m not sure many members of the electorate even know who he is nevermind are actually able to say something he’s achieved.

[JimJamUK]

My immediate reaction to this story is that none of the things you capitalized have any reason to exist other than Northumberland (and Labour lol). English local government reform and its consequences...

Both major parties are obsessed with creating ever more devolved bodies that have little actual power or money. That of course doesn’t stop the post-holders and candidates from claiming they have/will be able to solve all manner of things and the electorate believing them.

[JimJamUK]

Congratulations to Kim McGuinness for winning 74% of the vote on a 50% turnout, with only 0.1% of ballots spoilt! She'll be an excellent Labour candidate.

I look forward to her ending child poverty in the North East.

[JimJamUK]

Labour are reported as saying they can’t get rid of the 2 child benefit cap because then they might have to get rid of things like the bedroom tax. Reeves wouldn’t publicly commit to getting rid of the bedroom tax today.

Given that’s been policy at the last 3 elections (pretty much the only welfare policy Miliband clearly promised to reverse), you would have assumed abolishing it was a given. It makes you wonder what costed policies Labour will actually commit to changing, especially before the manifesto.

[JimJamUK]

So it seems like I've seen a lot of news about Labour attempting to triangulate on a variety of issues, most recently with its refusal to support self-ID for trans people but also with the two-child cap, Starmer attempting to get Khan to back off on ULEZ, etc. However, being American, I'm sure that my news is likely to skew more left-leaning and more outrage-filled. I wanted to ask those more knowledgeable than my ITT 1. is my perception warranted and 2. if so, why Labour is moving so far to the right when it's so far ahead anyway? It seems to me that, if there is a time for triangulation, the time for it would be in the face of a close election and certainly not when you're likely to win in a blowout.

I think you’ve gotten a fair impression. The past couple of elections have seen a pretty left wing platform (more in rhetoric than policy it should be said) and Starmer promised to keep pretty much all of it during his leadership campaign. He made some further big spending commitments earlier in his leadership, but for maybe the past year it’s become much more moderate (albeit with some stumbles eg; the trans issue), especially the past few weeks or so. It’s still not clear how triangulated they will be by the election and once in government.

As for why they’re triangulating now, there’s a sense that Labour now have a lead on the economy but it’s a fragile one. The governments finances are so bad they don’t want to be seen as spending money we don’t have, which has meant rowing back on basically every spending commitment that gets brought up. There’s probably some expectations a management, they don’t want to keep big promises that immediately upon getting into office they have to abandon. Also, Labour may need a lead of 5-10% nationally to win a majority, so they don’t want to alienate too many swing voters. There’s still an expectation that there will be some swing back to the Conservatives (10-15% Labour lead), so a further swingback beyond that may get into hung Parliament territory.

[JimJamUK]

No, he's just clumsily responding to a gotcha question that he hates being asked with a tautology. I can guarantee that there isn't a single subject that he would less like to talk about by this point.

It’s one of those questions where you would look ridiculous to almost everyone if you answered anything but “no, women don’t have penises”, even when many people would be able to have a much more nuanced opinion on transgender issues, including those yet to have reassignment surgery.

[JimJamUK]

On self-identification, the debate in Scotland really poisoned this issue. As much as some may not want to hear this, the uncompromising position of the Scottish government has led to a significant growth in anti-transgender commentary and made almost every moderately pro-transgender rights politician scared sh*tless of talking about transgender people full stop for fear of being tarred with unlimited self-identification (and all the extreme examples/hypotheticals that have now replaced ordinary transgender people in the debate).

[JimJamUK]

Duffield going over to the Tories has been rumoured several times now, but still absolutely nothing.

It has been pointed out that aside from *that* issue, she agrees with them on relatively little and is not likely to be happy there. Maybe the other rumour - that she will retire shortly before the GE - has more chance of happening now after Labour's shift on trans issues.

She is/was associated with the soft left Open Labour and seemed to take the standard progressive position on everything but transgender rights. The only time she has made the news for a long time for non-transgender issues was her recently attacking Starmer over his support for the 2 child cap, which is hardly the sort of position that someone about to defect to the Tories would take.

[JimJamUK]

Yesterday the courts ruled that the planned expansion of ULEZ could go ahead, a win for Sadiq Khan and a defeat for the Tory run boroughs that brought the action.

He almost immediately announced it would go ahead next month as previously scheduled - looks like all that talk last weekend that Starmer would "intervene" was a load of fluff. Who knew?

Well how was he supposed to “intervene”, explicitly attack Khan publicly and threaten to suspend him? The reality is ULEZ, whether you think it’s a good or bad policy, is going to be more electorally toxic before and around the time of its implementation. If you’re going to implement it, then do it ASAP and either show people’s fears were overblown or at least make them get used to the policy. What you certainly don’t do is delay it long enough to allow the 2024 mayoral election to be a referendum on it and keep the issue in the spotlight as long as possible. How some Labour “insiders” think the latter would be a good idea is beyond me.

[JimJamUK]

Peak THIGMOO as the Mayor of Bristol lost a election battle for the new Bristol seat to… the Mayor of Lewisham in South London Damian Egan.

Egan was born and was raised in Bristol and is impressive but still shows how unpopular Rees is

Was just coming to post about THIGMOO. The People of Bristol voted to abolish the mayoralty last year so he clearly wasn’t popular with the public, but that didn’t necessarily mean Labour members/fixers weren’t still going to choose him as a candidate.

[JimJamUK]

There will still be something of a squeeze I suspect - though it may be worth noting too that currently the Green poll support is rather less ex-Labour than has traditionally been the case.

Is it? There’s a small minority of ex-Tories which may be a bit higher than normal, but it’s still overwhelmingly people who voted Green/Labour/Lib Dem at the last election. The last time they ‘surged’ in 2015 it was very disproportionately 2010 Lib Dem rather than 2010 Labour voters (though the sort who would have otherwise been 2015 Labour voters).

[JimJamUK]

I'm speaking overall--Blair spent quite a lot but his tenure as leader of Labour was still a major shift to the right (as was the case for most left-of-center parties in the 1990s). Starmer seems unwilling to commit to anything at all. And, again, the total abandonment of any sort of commitment to trans rights or migrant rights.

Since when did Labour ever commit to trans or migrant rights? The former is a very niche issue that was never the subject of high profile concrete promises, while the latter has never been a key policy area for Labour. Insofar as it has been, it’s been taking *anti* migrant stances eg; the commitment in 2017 to end freedom of movement, the ‘controls of immigration’ mugs in 2015, and Gordon Brown’s “British Jobs for British Workers” remarks.

Labour is not a party that has historically defined itself by its support for American style social progressivism. If you want to attack Starmer as ideologically empty then the economic/public services angle is better, though it’s worth remembering that dropping commitments to do things is not necessarily the same as committing to oppose them, and once in government parties can find themselves moving in either ideological direction if policies are seen as doable or even necessary.

[JimJamUK]

This seems like unnecessarily boxing yourself in (particularly on income and property taxes)

https://twitter.com/hugogye/status/1695539358743314505?s=61&t=I1DE8_cg7gmZrc...

[JimJamUK]

It looks like he is making life hard for himself in government. Can he really raise the top rate of income tax without breaking his promise-or is that frozen now until 2029? Also, I'm not fully across Britain's tax system, but wouldn't some indirect taxes-aka levies-increase automatically? Even a promise to not increase the tax burden at all on 'working people' will be difficult to keep.

Given wages will rise in absolute terms, Labour could de facto increase taxes just by keeping the current bands and letting more people’s income drift into higher tax bands. The top rate of income tax pledge is obviously very cautious given it’s been Labour policy since Miliband, but it’s not a massive revenue raiser. If you wanted to raise a lot of money progressively through income tax, you’d have to go down the Corbyn route of increasing taxes on the upper middle class which risks alienating ‘aspirational’ voters. I can’t see Labour raising corporation tax or anything else that would be seen as ‘anti-business’. That leaves a rather limited number of smaller taxes that can be raised like tobacco duty or something.

[JimJamUK]

Well that poll looks hard to believe, it has to be said.

The Westminster voting intention has Labour down 1% on 2019 which is hard to believe, though that still finds a 19% gap between Labour’s lead at Westminster and Khan’s lead as mayor.

[JimJamUK]

The Redfield and Wilton poll has the Conservatives doing much better among younger voters, while the geographic split sees Labour win in Outer London while the Conservatives win in Inner London. This is not the 1st time that this pollster has produced ‘interesting’ results.

[JimJamUK]

My impression, sure to be proven wrong, is that it is noticeably less toxic than it has been in ages?

[JimJamUK]

Starmer's speech was disrupted by a protestor who chucked glitter over him

They want a ‘House of Citizens’. Unelected randos who are expected to give the ‘correct’ opinions on how to run the country (and politicians take their instructions).

[JimJamUK]

It’s amazing how many politician seem willing to sacrifice their careers over the exact wording of an amendment that will be defeated and even if passed would have no impact on either our government or importantly either of the governments currently at war 1000s of miles away.

[JimJamUK]

I think there’s an argument that losing a prominent right winger on this is weirdly beneficial: because they can credibly argue that it isn’t about a left vs right thing and it means that someone I suspect they want to bring back is one of the main people in the media on this. Not ideal obviously but better than a factional civil war.

Phillips is often quite left wing on actual policy and has previous form on foreign policy (she represents a constituency with a big Muslim population).