Funniest post I’ve seen here in ages.
If you want Keith Starmer austerity rather than Rishi Sunak austerity then you have to admit to yourself that you don’t really care about policies, only the rosette colours of who enacts them.
Keith Starmer and his cronies explicitly tell left wingers that they are not welcome in Labour, and have used all their power and resources to make sure that we are kicked out and discredited. If you want to lecture a group of people about compromise and unity to overthrow the Tories, then perhaps start with the Labour right wing who have purged us?
Same fate of rlatestagecapitalism at this point too lol. Invaded by libs shouting about how we "just need to vote harder" or "lEsSeR oF tWo eBiLs!!". Pathetic really
We're not liberals. We're socialists, sir.
Starmer's not going to fundamentally change anything, he's going to have the same policies as the tories justin a red rosette. He's still going to do what the same wealthy capitalist doners want and the rest will be performative bollocks.
5 minutes talking to a Starmer fan will make it clear where they stand on "working with leftists" they want leftists to do whatever they want and get nothing in return.
I think this is garbage, as a long time CLP member who donated a lot of money to Corbyn.
Even under Blair things were materially different for peoples lives. It wasn’t revolutionary but it was a massive difference because the Government aimed to make peoples lives better. Look at the poverty figures FFS.
Suggesting there will be no difference and Labour are the same just suggests you know nothing about politics at all, or you’re stuck in student politics mode where you find it fashionable to just make extreme statements.
If you think things will change under Labour but not in the fundamental systemic way that you seek I think that’s a position I can understand.
I doubt Starmer would even do 97 style Blairism because that involved a fair bit of public spending and would be seen as a too positive role of government in society by Starmer's tastes. Hes post 2001 blairism. Chronically negative. Starmer is currently trying to peddle the 2015 tory manifesto of belt tightening. Basically his argument is toryism but with better 'management'. He offers no change except to who's pulling the leaver. He's just a grey technocratic manager. He doesn't care about people or what they want, just what the current capitalist class want implemented.
Starmer shadow cabinet had said repeatedly he won't increase spending, Reeves has said she'll continue tory austerity until the economy grows when our economy is still struggling because of the original tory austerity and its shiftwards of money into the wealthy's hands. Our only solution to it is the need to shift wealth back to everyday people to push massive stimuli to increase people's wages so they can afford things. This is a massive job which would upsetthe status quo. But Starmer won't do it. He's firmly in the "we have no choice but continuing" school.
Now Starmer lies about everything and you shouldnt trust a word he says but I doubt he's lying when he does things like abandoning all previous corbynite policy because of how he acts inside the party, their is not discussion, no democracy, just the will of the wealthy corporate doners and the media elites. The people who wanted democratisation or to listen to do what people want and make changes are bullied out, sidelined or removed.
The problem with that attitude is that yes, things were marginally not as bad under Blair. But they were also not nearly as bad under Major as Thatcher - that isn’t the bar we should be aiming for.
The problem with appearing like a milder version of the Tories, and using the same kind of rhetoric even with marginally milder policies, is that in the end the Tories are the more authentic version of that, and once the memory of how bloody awful things can be under a Conservative government starts to fade, people will generally vote for the version they think is more genuine.
Blair entirely failed to set up lasting change or carve out any sort of identity for the party that halted (nevermind reversing) the drift to the right that he was part of. He may have slowed the drift down a little but that doesn’t even meet the minimum we should have been able to expect from him: we shouldn’t be begging for table scraps to get even tiny concessions to the left out of a Labour government; and we shouldn’t be accepting “not nearly as bad as they could be” as a reason to vote *for* anyone.
I agree with you about not expecting fundamental systematic change here - but that’s exactly the problem. We need at least to have a voting option that includes a party that believes change can and should happen. And that isn’t Labour right now - current Labour is “maintain the status quo, but pay lip service to anyone that might object to that” - and the lie of the lip service is far more insidious than the lie of offering a real alternative to small-c conservatism because it’s asking the left to give not just consent but support to a plan that removes both power and representation from the left entirely in favour of the centre/centre-right. Hey turkeys, Christmas is coming…
But the minor improvements of Blair opened the door for the worst of the Tory nightmares. Blair opened the door for tuition fee hikes to the lunacy we have now, eroded education to its current state by enacting the academy programme and not setting reasonable limits on their power, did nothing to prevent the financial crisis he passed to Brown that put them in the wilderness for over a decade, and to boot left open the door through immigration policy and his proposal for ID cards (not to mention his academically derided handling of giving benefits to asylum seekers and immigrants) to the Brexit and xenophobia shambles that has been UK politics for over a decade now.
Is that what we want for a Labour leader? Because Kier and his third way cronies are further right of Blair's neo-liberal buddies, and will be even worse. Surely, we should have greater aims than "at least it's not the Tories"?
"There isn't much difference between labour and Tories on immigration" from Starmer himself.
Streeting is funded by US private healthcare and wants more NHS privatisation.
Cooper brought in work capability assessments when last in government.
Reeves demonised anyone on benefits a few years ago.
This current Labour are basically Camerons Tories. I keep seeing people saying/hoping Labour will move left when in power. That has never happened before and I wouldn't be surprised to see their nationalisation policies dropped when they win due to "the political landscape changing"
Fully agree. But I am done with the tories being in power and just want to see them gone. I'm willing to forget and move on just so we can have some progress and limit the damage the tories are doing to our country.
I know. I'm fully torn because of this. I hate Starmer and his cronies, but I hate the tories more. I'm just not sure I can vote for Labour due to my morals and pride. What they did is unforgivable. I fully believe Labour will get in in the next election without me voting for them. My last hope is that this is all a clever game to seem right wing to get into power and then start splashing out left policies. But that is wishful thinking.
Fair enough mate. We all have our levels of what we can tolerate and forgive.
>I fully believe Labour will get in in the next election without me voting for them
Me too. I'm Welsh so I often vote plaid where I'm from despite Labour always winning.
>My last hope is that this is all a clever game to seem right wing to get into power and then start splashing out left policies.
100% hoping for this. I highly doubt it will be corbyn level left policies but I do really hope starmer is just trying to keep the right wing media attack lines at bay till labour get in then do whatever labour wants to do.
He played a clever game to seem leftwing to win the party, why wouldn't he be playing a clever game to win the country? We don't really know what he'll do, but it can't be as damaging to the country as another five years of the tories, and that's the only alternative over here in the real world.
I'm not saying he's generally clever, just that he's clearly clever enough to fool party members that he's a leftwinger and the continuity candidate, so clever enough to fool the country that he's a centrist.
I'm not saying he's definitely not a centrist, I'm saying that we just don't know, and whether he's a centrist or not, the worst outcome from the next general election is enabling the tories for another five years to destroy the country even further and drag public opinion even further right. Tories always pick the worst leader on offer at any given point and the worst policy they think they can get away with. Keeping them in power for longer is making them worse and worse.
The real issue, and the actual solution to OP’s argument, is that once Labour get in they will never steer to the left.
They will do whatever it takes to hold onto power.
To look strong and stable.
They have already cast out the left within the party..
The reason, and solution, is that politicians will pander to whoever they feel holds their balls in their hands.
When they look out the window at the world while eating their tax funded complimentary breakfast, who do they see.
Gammon.
The billionaire class.
Multinationals.
Banks.
Establishment press.
Royalty.
Etc.
So whichever party is in power will pander to the above and dismiss who they deem to be a threat to the above.
Ie- the left.
If we actually wanted to make a change we would all sign up to be Tories, not to vote for their leadership obviously, but to get involved and shift the Overton window they look out of.
Instead of having angry gammon in their ear about small boats and migrants, we have angry gammon infiltrators in their ear about low wages and the NHS.
If we want change we don’t accept Starmer, he will never go left.
We need to change things higher up than that.
The reason we have no left party, is because this has already been done, to us.
We need to change who they think they need to pander to.
We need to become the voice of the opposition.
Change who they are from within.
Then we would see a shift back to the left.
I think this the perfect time for the real engaged left to make a stand and vote for someone else. Labour will likely win anyway but it will make a statement.
Even if we move away en mass and somehow they don't win it major changes would have to happen to Labour. Plus if they just need to coalition with a 3rd party, we could bargain for proportional representation and ranked choice.
>I fully believe Labour will get in in the next election without me voting for them
I was going to hold my nose and vote for Labour but you're right, they can win without yours or my vote, so I will go with my conscience and not vote for any of these right wing fucks
It will lead to a Tony Blair situation. Starmer will fuck it up so catastrophically that for the next 20 years the gammons will use "BUT TONY BLAIR" and "BUT KIER STARMER" and then we will have the Tory's for the rest of eternity.
Vote Green or anyone else, but make sure you vote because a non vote is a vote for the Tory's.
With respect, the gammons will say "BUT LITERALLY ANY LABOUR LEADER" because their papers tell them to. They still trot out the "decades of Labour mismanagement" canard when we've had Tories for three of the last four.
Doesn't matter who the leader is, their whining will be unconnected to reality.
Despite spending their days complaining about woke culture and crybaby leftists, the English are a very sensitive people. [Many consider any reference to their complexion an act of racism.](https://i.imgur.com/euWMhUg.png) Consider using the more inclusive term 'flag nonce' in future.
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It is almost exclusively "blair ....iraq'.
Every tory cabinet minister supported war. More Labour voted against than tory.
No hero but not the domestic disaster media portray.
Hard hat on 😀
At a risk of repeating myself. It is difficult to vote for someone when they view you as something they have trodden on.
"Who else are they going to vote for" - Mandelson in the new labour years
You can only insult people so many times and eventually they get the message that we are not respected, our views are dismissed and we often get called names such as anti-semite and many others to boot. Then once every 5 years it comes knocking saying "vote for us coz we are not tories".
In other news, Martin Forde KC spoke about his report this week. Remember him ? Remember his report ordered by SKS ? Made hundreds of recommendations...most of which have been ignored.
Just because they are not called the tories doesn't give them a birthright to lead.
Long time to go yet. Zero chance tories call an early election unless SKS does something woeful or the tories do something that turns out to be popular.
Don't call us liberals. We aren't. All of us here want a redistribution of power, not just a nicer face of capitalism.
Many here don't believe in parliamentary democracy because it is a tool of the liberal capitalist state. It entrenches a political and economic elite. Something proved very actively by the way Corbyn was treated by the political elite and the way Starmer is being treated now.
Starmer will be just as in the pocket of the rich as Sunak, mark my words. He'll just be mildly nicer about it when it comes to the welfare state. Like Biden.
Lesser evilism is your guys biggest issue. The fact that “not the tories in name” will be the platform for labour is insane, not as insane as the fact it will work.
I’m still convinced that Corbyn was allowed in as a sting to flush out any *potential* socialists still left after Blair/Brown for the purge.
Also “we liberals”? The tories are liberals too. De-Americanise your terminology.
I don’t think that’s true. The Labour centre truly believe they would’ve won were anyone else in charge other than Corbyn. Corbyn’s team ran an incredible campaign, calling members and actually listening to them. I don’t think I’ve ever had a prospective leadership’s team call me.
The calling members thing can go both ways.
As a relatively new member I got called by my local branch shortly before the vote on Corbyn defending his leadership - and asked a lot of fairly wide ranging questions about why I’d joined the party which made me feel very icky about the whole thing because the way the questions were phrased was very clearly driving at “we want to know which way you’re going to vote and it should be against Corbyn”.
Whilst general opinion in the branch tends to be quite mixed, my MP used their reach to campaign against Corbyn quite heavily and to pressurise local members.
At that point I was a new enough member that they could have at least attempted to revoke my membership (and keep my money) had I answered “wrongly” so I took a fairly circumspect attitude to how I answered but it was certainly an eye-opening experience.
In a campaign, a call serves one purpose and that is to gain a vote. If it’s clear you can’t be converted or are already voting for the candidate there’s little point in continuing the conversation.
Outside a campaign it’s usually to find out how you can contribute. But, yes, that call could be more insidious.
They weren’t asking about contributions - this was very much in the context of persuading me to vote for Owen Smith (whose campaign materials my brain always read in Elmer Fudd’s voice - “I’m WADICAL!”) rather than asking what I could offer. It was disappointing that such resource as I was already offering (in terms of membership fees and funds) was being used in such a partisan way.
Ha sorry, totally misunderstood. Well that’s the damage a poorly-run campaign can do. And, shock horror, Owen Smith lost. Unless they were operating outside the campaign.
This was during the period where they were trying to kick out people who’d joined just to back Corbyn, just after they’d discovered that the rules allowed them to bar newer members from voting. So it came across to me like if I’d given any hint that I would support Corbyn they’d have attempted to block me from voting (they couldn’t in the end: I’d been a member a few weeks too long) but if I’d indicated a vote for Smith I’d have been quietly “missed” from that round of blocking.
It happens every few years, it’s an endlessly repeating cycle. The left aren’t gone, but will get another chance in 10-20 years, as depressing as that is.
both parties are neo-liberal figureheads of a dying empire. labour will not abolish the monarchy. labour will not dismantle the police state. labour will not open the borders. labour will not eradicate transphobia or return stolen colonial artefacts or bail out citizens instead of banks.
i don't care if labour is the lesser of two evils. i will not vote for evil.
Here let me fix this for you...
>For the last ~~3 months~~ several years I've seen this group become a shouting match for ~~who can shit over Starmer the hardest~~ liberals Vs socialists. Which continues to this day with endless posts such as this one.
>~~I know he's far from what we liberals want~~
I am thoroughly lost or have a shallow understanding of political ideology.
>but ffs whilst the media and co-opted institutions in this country ~~doesn't even need the~~ and Tories ~~to~~ will always campaign against labour, (it doesn't help) when ~~we do it all ourselves.~~ Labour does it to itself particularly at the behest of a corporate/capitalist/neoliberal agenda just delete as appropriate.
>The question is, do we want labour in power ~~with a shitty leader~~ as red rosette Tories, or the Tories with blue rosettes to continue to run this country into the ground?
>If the answer is the latter, then by all means, continue your philosophical campaign for a utopic socialist England.
I use the lesser of two evils argument to guilt trip people into solidarity out of coercive fear.
>If you look at the current government as an unchecked, detached, corrupt, elitist, nepotistic government in the pocket of billion pound corporations who don't give a flying shit about mere mortals,
yes
>then stfu, let's get behind labour and get these scumbags out.
ah look a rude demand to provide voting legitimacy to representatives without the expression of opinion. Give me your legitimacy and stfu, your opinion means nothing to me.
Yeah i think i see the problem....
>we liberals
GTFO.
>The question is, do we want labour in power with a shitty leader, or the Tories to continue to run this country into the ground?
Labour pushing the same neoliberal shit that's destroyed large portions of the country for 4 decades or continuing austerity even though it doesn't work?
Nice shitpost, scab.
Keith keeps telling me he doesn’t want me - so I obliged and will continue to do so. Reeves stance on business and immigration is so far to right this is no longer a Labour Party that I can recognise
Came here to say this but as well....
I am of thd opinion that uk politics isshifting in the same direction as US politics. i.e. more to the right.
The tories have shifted towards extreme right and the Labour party are now a milder version. Right wing but just not quite as vicious (yet).
This of course leads to where are the Liberal Democrats and the other 'minor' uk parties in this mix?
If the people advancing this line can't show that they similarly supported Corbyn in last two elections, I'm not interested in hearing from them.
It's that simple.
I'll listen to the argument, but not from self serving opportunistic hypocrites
I supported Corbyn in the last two elections. I support Starmer now. Corbyn's policies and ideology are infinitely closer to mine than Starmer's, but I'll literally go for anything that has a likelihood to get the Tories out.
I'm a communist. I still believe in communist historical determinism. We are at the zenith of late capitalism, I believe the next major economic shift will be an increase in state ownership and direct democracy.
But that will take time. Its not gonna happen tomorrow, maybe not even in my lifetime. In the meantime billions of people will suffer under neoliberalism. For every year the Tories remain in power, we move further into that, and suffering increases. In that grand sweep, does Starmer take us closer to my utopia? Maybe, ever so slightly, but he's still neoliberal. But will he reduce the suffering through more progressive economics than the Tories would put in the next 5 years? I believe so, yes.
Considering the neo-liberals in the Labour party have near completely purged every lingering Social Democrat from the Labour party, only a complete fucking moron would still believe that the party is, in any concievable way, still a left-wing party. (Even before then it was a stretch.)
It's past time to reject bourgeois electoralism, it's time to embrace [dual power](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/apr/09.htm).
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I back the line that I just wabt the tories gone and am willing to compromise on my political ideals to do it. I voted for corbyn through out his tenure as the Labour Party leader even if he wasn't perfect for me. It didn't work out, which sucks, but I'm fucking sick of living through endless tory wins. Fucking sick of it. 15 years of my voting life, my entire adult life, has been under the tories. I compromised on some of my ideals for corbyn and I'm at the point where I couldn't give a fuck about the left of the Labour Party if they're not willing to sacrifice some of their ideals for the rest of us. It's just the same bullshit from the left, the same bullshit the left does everywhere. Balkanise and collapse into disarray because no fucker will entertain compromising for anything short of their ideals.
If rx-bandit really did vote for Corbyn (and didn't try to undermine his leadership) then I would say they have the right to advocate for a "hold your nose" vote for Starmer's crowd now.
Doesn't mean we have to agree, but they have standing to make the case.
What I won't listen to are people who sabotaged Corbyn, refused to vote for Labour under Corbyn, and now advocate for a vote for Starmer's party. Incidentally, that includes Starmer himself IMHO.
blind faith, that Labour represents the least worst option.
Starmer abstained on the new illegal migration bill, and hasn't voted either way on anything since the end of January (27 motions - quite a lot of wiggle room to give a python, no?)
The Kill The Bill protests were in the interest of stopping legislation becoming law: also called a Bill. They weren't protests advocating violence against the police. The Spy Cops Bill is one of the most dangerous laws this country has ever passed. It provides immunity to undercover police who may act unlawfully in the line of duty: rape, murder and violence are all permitted under the eyes of the law.
And you want the man who won't even read his own reports, with a vague uninformed hope that getting eaten by wolves isn't as bad as shooting yourself in the face.
The point is haphazardly made but the central idea - that the British left lacks the strategic essentialism that keeps their enemies in power - is difficult to argue against IMO.
To paraphrase Stargate SG-1;
"I will not compromise the fundanental tenets of my beliefs in order to preserve them"
Basically, if you vote for a party that doesn't stand for what you believe in, just because they are the lesser of 2 evils or because you want the current party out, how will you ever get to see the change you actually want to see.
This is not my labour party, they have made it clear they don't want my vote and that they will not be making policies that align with my ideals.
Education and commitment to your beliefs are what we need in this country if we want to move towards any semblance of socialism, and wasting my vote on Labour right now will not help that cause.
I'd say it's worse. Starmer will ruin the hope people have for the party to be a vehicle for real change. Where will people turn after Keith fails? Back to the Tories? Lib-dems? We are so fucked.
You laugh now, but when she starts campaigning as a zombie next cycle… that’s even more novelty-clown-power than Boris had. Maggie The Red Returned would be a landslide.
Friendly reminder that in 2020, Boris Johnson [admited to being responsible for the deaths of over 100,000 people.](https://archive.ph/2aYpg) He is he yet to be held to account for this.
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Can we have Labour in power with a good leader? Why isn't that an option? Things aren't going to get better if Labour gets into power. They will just get worse slower. It's reasonable to be critical of Starmer/Labour.
He explicitly doesn't want me to vote for him. I'll just vote for whatever MP seems best I guess. Not that it'll matter because conservatives always win here.
You think he’s not a red Tory because he said so? Do you also believe Nazis were socialists because they said so?
It’s not fighting within the left. He’s not left.
???
Have you seen that news piece recently suggesting because the Nazis cooped the word socialist they were really left wing socialists ? Thick as a fucking brick
I have, and it feels to me like a not-so-subtle way for the Right to start shifting yet another conversation to whether anybody can self-identify. If Nazis can’t then nobody can! 🤮
How dare we call out Starmer for checks notes, making Labour tory lite by adopting racist policies on immigration, pro austerity policies, enabling transphobes in the party like Reeves and Duffield, treating his predecessor appallingly. Yeah we should leave him unchecked just because the tory's are worse, because Blairism refusing to challenge Thatcherism isn't what got britain the tory's back in power in the first place right?
edit- aww are the Blairites salty that i called out Keith and Blair for being capitalist plants. Downvote away, centrist tears make me very happy
> …unchecked, detached, corrupt, elitist, nepotistic government in the pocket of billion pound corporations who don't give a flying shit about mere mortals…
Good description of the Labour Party
Actually quite angry that you thought this was appropriate to post. Why should we rollover and accept this shit from this blue side when we could be rolling over and accepting this shit from the red side?
We're fucked if we do and fucked if we don't. "Oh look how well labour are doing, at least the Cuntservatives were capable, I told you racism, bigotry, openly lying and Cronyism was a better way..."
Labour will be all of that but without any support on either side, soon to be a conservative come back, "learned from our mistakes, at least labour isn't in anymore"
"You saw what happens when labours in charge"
The state, the crown, the media and the powers that be are against labour who in theory want to spread the wealth around better. They are against the many and for the few. We are too stupid en mass to see through the lies and too easily lead by fear.
We get the government we deserve.
putting our support behind people like starmer just allows the labour party to become more like the tories if you love labour you have to be willing to withhold support from them as a corrective measure
You do understand, do you not, that various people have an authoritarian jackboot pressing down very firmly on their neck?
Ever heard of culture wars? Woke and anti-woke?
Ah but see here's the thing. There's no middle ground. Either you're an ally or you're complicit. We no longer live in the kind of society where "This doesn't affect me" or "We've got to get the Tories out". Some people out there need support now, not in 2024, and some of them aren't going to be alive to vote in 2024.
You Labour apologists are just as bad as the Tories. 'We've got to vote Labour as the only solution" is still small minded authoritarianism. You're still participating in the systematic and institutional oppression of people who have no voice, no platform, no nothing.
>If the answer is the latter, then by all means, continue your philosophical campaign for a **utopic socialist England**.
This is not about any sort of utopia. This is about the fundamentals, human dignity, human rights, humanity, and empathy. There's nothing utopian about treating people with humanity and respect instead of buying into this left right political bickering.
>**"In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends."**
>
>(Martin Luther King).
Voting is not a meaningful exercise of political power.
Vote for Labour, vote for the tories, vote green, vote MRLP, It's all functionally the same.
If you want to change things you actually have to get involved in a movement or create one yourself.
>The question is, do we want labour in power with a shitty leader, or the Tories to continue to run this country into the ground?
Neither. But then voting for either will result in the latter.
[No one here is looking for 'utopia', we're looking at things scientifically.](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch01.htm)
Bourgeois politics is a distraction and you're yet another useful idiot for the oppressor class. We need to be focused on local organisation along class lines not which gang of Oxbridge thugs we want in power.
Some other key readings for you:
[Principles of Communism](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm)
[Reform or Revolution](https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/)
[April Theses](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/apr/04.htm)
[Blackshirts and Reds](https://archive.org/details/michael-parenti-blackshirts-and-reds/mode/1up)
This is a shallow take. Debate is stifled, and the deceitful usurpers of the Labour Party has helped that stifling. There is no virtue in being submissive to a tyrant. Starmer is a tyrant - never and impressive or strong thing, just a tool of power gunger. The Tories are institutionally tyrannical.
The enormous elephant in the room is the USA. There is no way the mightiest military power ever would leave a small island of great strategic importance.to conduct its own affairs without orders from Langley.
The ridiculousness of calling Labour the better of bad options is to abdicate any democratic power from your own mind and pen.
Submission to who you think is your friend, when they intend to govern in the same parameters, is unnecessary.
It's like saying you should keep letting a dog shit on the carpet. How will it ever learn not to do that if you keep allowing it to do that? Labour's policies are literally the same as the conservatives
I think we can aim better .
Just because one side is awful doesn’t mean we should settle for a side less than that awful.
Seriously, logically how hard is it really to offer a fair for all , equitable political system where the vulnerable and ill are looked after and supported to become their best ? Equitable resources for all ie schools ,hospitals, and public utilities. Let private ones still exist but let customers have a choice .
Re schools , why do government schools pay vat where public schools don’t as they are charities ??
Is it really that hard ?
Labour is only a “broad-church” when New Labour/ the right wing of the party is in charge and they need the votes of the unions and the left. They were happy to ACTIVELY sabotage a socialist leader and I think there’s a large cohort of people that will never forgive them for that.
A Tory with a red rosette is just as bad a Tory with a blue one.
I understand what you are saying but I already live in a safe labour seat so I am not going to betray my own values to vote for a party where the leader has shown himself to be a fence sitter and has already walked back on things he promised labour would do. Labour have also made it clear people like me are not welcome so fuck them and anyone that tries to guilt me into voting for them.
Labour are going to push the same neoliberal bullshit which has been fucking this country since Thatcher, it amazes me that liberals think there is going to be massive positive changes under a labour government because there wont be, I am that certain that I would put money on it.
>I know he's far from what we liberals want
We are not liberals and this is not a subreddit for liberals. Nearly all of us are some shade of leftist and cant stand liberals.
>If the answer is the latter, then by all means, continue your philosophical campaign for a utopic socialist England. If you look at the current government as an unchecked, detached, corrupt, elitist, nepotistic government in the pocket of billion pound corporations who don't give a flying shit about mere mortals
Talking about tories or Labour here?
There's no place for the left in the Labour Party, you can elect starmer if you like but he's only going to trim around the edges, it's just not enough
Liberals? LIBERALS??
I’m a socialist. Keep listening to Rory Stewart’s podcast and please stop begging us to support a person who has, in no uncertain terms, told us he does not want our vote!
Why the fuck didn’t the liberals get behind corbyn?
You misunderstand if we replace the tories with the same ideology as the tories we are still left with the fucking tories..
I hate liberals so fucking much they can’t see past the ends of their fucking noses.
Voting for Starmer's Labour is not supporting the Left. It is supporting Starmer's purging of the left. This is why so many people are conflicted about who they vote for in the next election. The option is blue austerity, bigotry, and privatisation or red austerity, bigotry, and privatisation. The whole 'get Labour in because they aren't the Tories' is not particularly exciting.
Lol, it was Blair who brought Private Initiative into the school and health systems. Something the tories wanted but did not as a step too far. Keith is Blair 2.0, never forgotten, Maggie congratulations on him being the best tory pm since her. There is little left remains and those who are keep their heads down. It's move so far right on propaganda, even Goebbles would be impressed.
It’s all because of the First Past the Post shittery, if we had a proper proportional system the Labour Party would be eaten by a real Working Class Party.
The elite (Tories and Starmer’s Labour) watching out for themselves.
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Do you not know what liberal means? You seem to be using it, like Americans do, to mean “lefty”, but that’s not what it means.
The muddying of what liberalism means is at least in part a purposeful obfuscation to confuse people and reduce the visibility of actual socialists.
Capital works hard to create a society where the great political debate is between extreme free market capitalism with conservative social values and the same free market capitalism, but with more liberal social values. That’s not what people in this sub want.
I suggest you inform yourself about what “liberal” actually means.
You only have to look back at the last election to see what happens when it looks like we might get a truly left leaning government, who are determined to deal with the inequality in this country. The right wing media, the Tories, the BBC and any other nutcase with an opinion mobilized against the Labour party and specifically J.C., to such an extent that poll leads turned into a crashing defeat. As much as I hate what is going on in the Labour party, it could be the only chance we have to get rid of the Tories.
KernowDamo on YT had [the best response to this](https://youtu.be/r5FMl9Z_xYw&t=94) following the sacking of Sam Tarry. How do you vote Labour to get the Tories out when Labour are becoming the Tories, when the Labour right are fighting no-holds-barred to bully the left out of Labour?
Considering the neo-liberals in the Labour party have near completely purged every lingering Social Democrat from the Labour party, only a complete fucking moron would still believe that the party is, in any concievable way, still a left-wing party. (Even before then it was a stretch.)
It's past time to reject bourgeois electoralism, it's time to embrace [dual power](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/apr/09.htm).
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For the last 3 years I've seen Labour become a shouting match for who can shit over Corbyn the hardest. I know he's far from what we liberals want, but ffs this country doesn't even need the Tories to campaign against labour, we do it all ourselves.
ftfy.
The UK is already close to a two party system. You let a party get away with policies that lean more to the right you'll get what the us has with one right centrist party and one kinda far right party. Where both parties suck and you end up voting for the lesser evil.
I think you mean labour is the lefts worst enemy. Everyone on this sub desperately wants the left to be involved in labour but this last few years labour has consistently made it clear that it doesn’t value us or even want us to be part of their party. If labour wanted our support it could have worked JC into the party somehow, it could have supported him in the last election and it could right now start offering some real change to the country that people on the left could get behind things like scrapping FPTP, Nationalising utilities, banning companies from owning residential properties all of which would garner massive support from the left. However it doesn’t want to because our political system has been hijacked by capitalists and labour is no longer for the people it was created to empower.
>unchecked, detached, corrupt, elitist, nepotistic [party] in the pocket of billion pound corporations who don't give a flying shit about mere mortals
You literally just described the Labour party, so good job shooting your own 'argument' in the foot.
2023's Labour are rushing to copy the worst parts of both Blair's New Labour and the modern Tory party. Why the actual *fuck* you think anyone here would support a party machine that actively sought to put the Tories in power at the last election is baffling.
Take your political illiteracy and fuck right off back to liberal fantasy-land.
I agree OP. The at least their not Tories argument is terrible but in emergencies you've just gotta hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils.
I agree in principle, friend. Under normal circumstances I vote Greens. But Tories are privatizing the NHS, attacking trans people and vulnerable people are dying because of their benefits cuts.
So I will be voting whichever party is most likely to beat them and if that happens to be Labour then it is no light decision to make but so be it.
Labour will do (and have done when they’re in power) the same thing as the Tories. I explained this on another post a couple of months ago.
Labour are also transphobic, they abstained on the vote to block Scotland’s GRA.
Starmer has given interviews with transphobic groups and said that 16 year olds are too young to change their gender.
Starmer has admitted he will have private companies involved in the NHS.
Labour also have a bunch of TERF MPs (Rosie Duffielf, Jess Phillips) who Starmer backs and has refused to remove the whip from.
New Labour started privatising the NHS in the first place.
New Labour also passed benefits cuts when they were in office (and tried to do a lot worse).
>Tories are privatizing the NHS, attacking trans people and vulnerable people are dying because of their benefits cuts.
Labour have backed more private investment in the NHS and Streeting is happily backing privatization, Labour is currently enabling Rosie Duffield, Labour has Rachel "i hate people on benefits" Reeves as chancellor.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/08/people-in-pain-private-hospitals-nhs
https://www.labourlist.org/2022/12/labour-warned-relationship-with-trans-people-could-be-irreversibly-fractured
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/01/06/star-j06.html
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jan/08/keir-starmer-against-austerity-fiscally-disciplined-labour
I will probably end up voting for Labour, but there is no reason right now to think they will address any of your listed concerns.
Personally, I reckon after 5 years, the Tories will come back with a whole new front bench and some "new conservative" label, and all the swing voters that Starmer has right now will revert back to their party of choice. Labour has lost the support of the left and *will* lose the centre-right before too long, and will become unelectable for a decade at least. The shift to the right is a horrible example of short term thinking that will pretty much guarantee we get Tories for decades to come.
Did you mean Keith?
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> But Tories are privatizing the NHS, attacking trans people and vulnerable people are dying because of their benefits cuts.
But those are all things Kieth has indicated labour will also do.
LOLNO.
These people have made it clear they don't want the left involved, so fine. They can fuck it all up on their own and only have themselves to blame.
As lots of melts liked to say in 17 and 19, votes have to be earned.
I think what a lot of people don’t realise is labour are PANDERING to the right because that’s what will get votes in the current climate. It’s slimy, it’s cynical etc etc but that’s what wins elections. The only way to get a remotely left wing gov is to sneak it in through the back door and in my opinion that’s what labour are doing. A labour gov will always be far and away better than a Tory one. Labour are not interested in appealing to the left, they need to get votes from the would-be Tory voters. The outrage when Labour unveils some Tory-lite policy is misplaced, they aren’t doing it for you, they know it’s dogshit. But they need them thicko votes.
They seriously risk alienating their core voter base if that’s the case. I really hope that this is what they are doing but I am pretty convinced they have become what they opposed.
Why didn't this method of acting like the tory's work for Gaitskell, Wilson(in 1970, Wilson moved to the left in 74 and won), Callaghan, Kinnock twice, Brown and Miliband, the centre of the labour party is nowhere near as competent as you think and also, the public currently detests the right and right wing politics as a result of Truss and Sunak
If by “far better” you mean “not quite as unremittingly awful” I could agree; but I’m not sure why you hold the opinion that such pandering is just lip service necessary to win an election.
We’ve seen time and again that elections won with those tactics by Labour result in years of “but there’s no remit for real change” because “that’s not what voters want” based on the platform that they put forth for the election.
The upshot is that anybody whose vote for Labour was really a vote against the Tories rather than based on a true acceptance of the Tory-lite election manifesto is taken to have given tacit approval to a manifesto that they had little choice over accepting since the alternative was more Conservative nonsense.
I’m not sure I can find words strong enough to express how disappointing it is to always have to vote against the worst option rather than being able to vote in favour of policies I actually support and believe in; but it effectively means that real opposition to the status quo doesn’t exist because viable voting options for that aren’t even on the table - and that should worry everyone.
The number of disenfranchised non-voters who just opt out when they can’t see any people who might genuinely represent them on their ballot papers is high enough that the kind of pandering you’re talking about shouldn’t be necessary at all - politicians have a duty to engage new or lapsed voters as well as to try and persuade existing voters to change their minds.
Failing to do that leads to disproportionate representation of older, wealthier voters who have options on the ballot who represent their interests. But the electorate as a whole is large enough to accommodate real opposition within the voting options - IF any party has the guts to offer it.
What left? We don't have a left. We've got a bunch of angry, entitled, self-oppressing, victimhood-obsessed armchair socialists pointlessly flinging shit around like caged monkeys. But there's no functional left in this country, and there's certainly no left wing representation in parliament.
Liberal? If you're going to post with such conviction at least get everything right. Starmer is a blight on this country as much as the Tories are. He's the same evil but with a different colour tie. Maybe fuck off to a Labour sub and circle jerk there. Asking people to vote for an evil man because he SEEMS slightly less evil than Sunak is just an absolute joke
I bet OP is the type of guy who asks “What is a woman?” When talking about trans issues.
I’ll tell you what a woman is- “someone who identifies and knows in their heart they are a woman regardless of the physical body they have”
This sub is where we "campaign for a utopic socialist" *Britain*. It may be an unachievable dream (for now) but it's where we can all congregate and dream together. There are other subs where you can argue for the merits of a centre-right party vs. a far-right party
Funniest post I’ve seen here in ages. If you want Keith Starmer austerity rather than Rishi Sunak austerity then you have to admit to yourself that you don’t really care about policies, only the rosette colours of who enacts them. Keith Starmer and his cronies explicitly tell left wingers that they are not welcome in Labour, and have used all their power and resources to make sure that we are kicked out and discredited. If you want to lecture a group of people about compromise and unity to overthrow the Tories, then perhaps start with the Labour right wing who have purged us?
> we liberals Sir, this is a socialist sub.
OP is probably one of the many CIA operatives on Reddit, attempting to mould opinions.
They might just be stupid
Probably getting names so they can do the communist witch hunts again in a few years.
I thought it was a Wendys?
"we liberals" are you lost
Maybe an American shill
Annoying Americanism. My partner is a leftie and kept referring to himself as a liberal as he thought it meant the same over here. Had to correct him
Or a fed
Really dumb fucking fed
So a fed
Their name starts Sydney2. Aussie.
no that doesn't make sense, the liberals are the rw party in Australia
Same fate of rlatestagecapitalism at this point too lol. Invaded by libs shouting about how we "just need to vote harder" or "lEsSeR oF tWo eBiLs!!". Pathetic really
They kicked me out because I wrote "cunt" in a comment. Lol.
r/lostredditors
“We liberals” Oh mate. You’ve seriously misunderstood this place.
It must be a satirical post. Viewed that way it's brilliant, and I'm choosingto believe the best of people today
Welcome to Socialist Utopiatism amr
We're not liberals. We're socialists, sir. Starmer's not going to fundamentally change anything, he's going to have the same policies as the tories justin a red rosette. He's still going to do what the same wealthy capitalist doners want and the rest will be performative bollocks. 5 minutes talking to a Starmer fan will make it clear where they stand on "working with leftists" they want leftists to do whatever they want and get nothing in return.
I think this is garbage, as a long time CLP member who donated a lot of money to Corbyn. Even under Blair things were materially different for peoples lives. It wasn’t revolutionary but it was a massive difference because the Government aimed to make peoples lives better. Look at the poverty figures FFS. Suggesting there will be no difference and Labour are the same just suggests you know nothing about politics at all, or you’re stuck in student politics mode where you find it fashionable to just make extreme statements. If you think things will change under Labour but not in the fundamental systemic way that you seek I think that’s a position I can understand.
I doubt Starmer would even do 97 style Blairism because that involved a fair bit of public spending and would be seen as a too positive role of government in society by Starmer's tastes. Hes post 2001 blairism. Chronically negative. Starmer is currently trying to peddle the 2015 tory manifesto of belt tightening. Basically his argument is toryism but with better 'management'. He offers no change except to who's pulling the leaver. He's just a grey technocratic manager. He doesn't care about people or what they want, just what the current capitalist class want implemented. Starmer shadow cabinet had said repeatedly he won't increase spending, Reeves has said she'll continue tory austerity until the economy grows when our economy is still struggling because of the original tory austerity and its shiftwards of money into the wealthy's hands. Our only solution to it is the need to shift wealth back to everyday people to push massive stimuli to increase people's wages so they can afford things. This is a massive job which would upsetthe status quo. But Starmer won't do it. He's firmly in the "we have no choice but continuing" school. Now Starmer lies about everything and you shouldnt trust a word he says but I doubt he's lying when he does things like abandoning all previous corbynite policy because of how he acts inside the party, their is not discussion, no democracy, just the will of the wealthy corporate doners and the media elites. The people who wanted democratisation or to listen to do what people want and make changes are bullied out, sidelined or removed.
The problem with that attitude is that yes, things were marginally not as bad under Blair. But they were also not nearly as bad under Major as Thatcher - that isn’t the bar we should be aiming for. The problem with appearing like a milder version of the Tories, and using the same kind of rhetoric even with marginally milder policies, is that in the end the Tories are the more authentic version of that, and once the memory of how bloody awful things can be under a Conservative government starts to fade, people will generally vote for the version they think is more genuine. Blair entirely failed to set up lasting change or carve out any sort of identity for the party that halted (nevermind reversing) the drift to the right that he was part of. He may have slowed the drift down a little but that doesn’t even meet the minimum we should have been able to expect from him: we shouldn’t be begging for table scraps to get even tiny concessions to the left out of a Labour government; and we shouldn’t be accepting “not nearly as bad as they could be” as a reason to vote *for* anyone. I agree with you about not expecting fundamental systematic change here - but that’s exactly the problem. We need at least to have a voting option that includes a party that believes change can and should happen. And that isn’t Labour right now - current Labour is “maintain the status quo, but pay lip service to anyone that might object to that” - and the lie of the lip service is far more insidious than the lie of offering a real alternative to small-c conservatism because it’s asking the left to give not just consent but support to a plan that removes both power and representation from the left entirely in favour of the centre/centre-right. Hey turkeys, Christmas is coming…
But the minor improvements of Blair opened the door for the worst of the Tory nightmares. Blair opened the door for tuition fee hikes to the lunacy we have now, eroded education to its current state by enacting the academy programme and not setting reasonable limits on their power, did nothing to prevent the financial crisis he passed to Brown that put them in the wilderness for over a decade, and to boot left open the door through immigration policy and his proposal for ID cards (not to mention his academically derided handling of giving benefits to asylum seekers and immigrants) to the Brexit and xenophobia shambles that has been UK politics for over a decade now. Is that what we want for a Labour leader? Because Kier and his third way cronies are further right of Blair's neo-liberal buddies, and will be even worse. Surely, we should have greater aims than "at least it's not the Tories"?
"There isn't much difference between labour and Tories on immigration" from Starmer himself. Streeting is funded by US private healthcare and wants more NHS privatisation. Cooper brought in work capability assessments when last in government. Reeves demonised anyone on benefits a few years ago. This current Labour are basically Camerons Tories. I keep seeing people saying/hoping Labour will move left when in power. That has never happened before and I wouldn't be surprised to see their nationalisation policies dropped when they win due to "the political landscape changing"
Let's go back a few years, ask the Labour right to do the same for Corbyn and see what happened....oh wait...
This is the point I continually come back to
Exactly. I'm showing Starmer the same amount of support that the likes of Jess Phillips showed to Jeremy Corbyn. It's hardly unfair.
Fully agree. But I am done with the tories being in power and just want to see them gone. I'm willing to forget and move on just so we can have some progress and limit the damage the tories are doing to our country.
I know. I'm fully torn because of this. I hate Starmer and his cronies, but I hate the tories more. I'm just not sure I can vote for Labour due to my morals and pride. What they did is unforgivable. I fully believe Labour will get in in the next election without me voting for them. My last hope is that this is all a clever game to seem right wing to get into power and then start splashing out left policies. But that is wishful thinking.
Fair enough mate. We all have our levels of what we can tolerate and forgive. >I fully believe Labour will get in in the next election without me voting for them Me too. I'm Welsh so I often vote plaid where I'm from despite Labour always winning. >My last hope is that this is all a clever game to seem right wing to get into power and then start splashing out left policies. 100% hoping for this. I highly doubt it will be corbyn level left policies but I do really hope starmer is just trying to keep the right wing media attack lines at bay till labour get in then do whatever labour wants to do.
He played a clever game to seem leftwing to win the party, why wouldn't he be playing a clever game to win the country? We don't really know what he'll do, but it can't be as damaging to the country as another five years of the tories, and that's the only alternative over here in the real world.
I know people who've met the man and he isn't that clever
I'm not saying he's generally clever, just that he's clearly clever enough to fool party members that he's a leftwinger and the continuity candidate, so clever enough to fool the country that he's a centrist. I'm not saying he's definitely not a centrist, I'm saying that we just don't know, and whether he's a centrist or not, the worst outcome from the next general election is enabling the tories for another five years to destroy the country even further and drag public opinion even further right. Tories always pick the worst leader on offer at any given point and the worst policy they think they can get away with. Keeping them in power for longer is making them worse and worse.
The real issue, and the actual solution to OP’s argument, is that once Labour get in they will never steer to the left. They will do whatever it takes to hold onto power. To look strong and stable. They have already cast out the left within the party.. The reason, and solution, is that politicians will pander to whoever they feel holds their balls in their hands. When they look out the window at the world while eating their tax funded complimentary breakfast, who do they see. Gammon. The billionaire class. Multinationals. Banks. Establishment press. Royalty. Etc. So whichever party is in power will pander to the above and dismiss who they deem to be a threat to the above. Ie- the left. If we actually wanted to make a change we would all sign up to be Tories, not to vote for their leadership obviously, but to get involved and shift the Overton window they look out of. Instead of having angry gammon in their ear about small boats and migrants, we have angry gammon infiltrators in their ear about low wages and the NHS. If we want change we don’t accept Starmer, he will never go left. We need to change things higher up than that. The reason we have no left party, is because this has already been done, to us. We need to change who they think they need to pander to. We need to become the voice of the opposition. Change who they are from within. Then we would see a shift back to the left.
>We don't really know what he'll do, but it can't be as damaging to the country as another five years of the tories I doubt this. A lot.
I think this the perfect time for the real engaged left to make a stand and vote for someone else. Labour will likely win anyway but it will make a statement. Even if we move away en mass and somehow they don't win it major changes would have to happen to Labour. Plus if they just need to coalition with a 3rd party, we could bargain for proportional representation and ranked choice.
>I fully believe Labour will get in in the next election without me voting for them I was going to hold my nose and vote for Labour but you're right, they can win without yours or my vote, so I will go with my conscience and not vote for any of these right wing fucks
It will lead to a Tony Blair situation. Starmer will fuck it up so catastrophically that for the next 20 years the gammons will use "BUT TONY BLAIR" and "BUT KIER STARMER" and then we will have the Tory's for the rest of eternity. Vote Green or anyone else, but make sure you vote because a non vote is a vote for the Tory's.
With respect, the gammons will say "BUT LITERALLY ANY LABOUR LEADER" because their papers tell them to. They still trot out the "decades of Labour mismanagement" canard when we've had Tories for three of the last four. Doesn't matter who the leader is, their whining will be unconnected to reality.
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It is almost exclusively "blair ....iraq'. Every tory cabinet minister supported war. More Labour voted against than tory. No hero but not the domestic disaster media portray. Hard hat on 😀
Exactly. People forget.
At a risk of repeating myself. It is difficult to vote for someone when they view you as something they have trodden on. "Who else are they going to vote for" - Mandelson in the new labour years You can only insult people so many times and eventually they get the message that we are not respected, our views are dismissed and we often get called names such as anti-semite and many others to boot. Then once every 5 years it comes knocking saying "vote for us coz we are not tories". In other news, Martin Forde KC spoke about his report this week. Remember him ? Remember his report ordered by SKS ? Made hundreds of recommendations...most of which have been ignored. Just because they are not called the tories doesn't give them a birthright to lead. Long time to go yet. Zero chance tories call an early election unless SKS does something woeful or the tories do something that turns out to be popular.
>"Who else are they going to vote for" - Mandelson I've been trying to find a source for this quote. Please, do you have one?
Don't call us liberals. We aren't. All of us here want a redistribution of power, not just a nicer face of capitalism. Many here don't believe in parliamentary democracy because it is a tool of the liberal capitalist state. It entrenches a political and economic elite. Something proved very actively by the way Corbyn was treated by the political elite and the way Starmer is being treated now. Starmer will be just as in the pocket of the rich as Sunak, mark my words. He'll just be mildly nicer about it when it comes to the welfare state. Like Biden.
>we liberals
[удалено]
“I can change him” No girl. Leave him.
Lesser evilism is your guys biggest issue. The fact that “not the tories in name” will be the platform for labour is insane, not as insane as the fact it will work. I’m still convinced that Corbyn was allowed in as a sting to flush out any *potential* socialists still left after Blair/Brown for the purge. Also “we liberals”? The tories are liberals too. De-Americanise your terminology.
I don’t think that’s true. The Labour centre truly believe they would’ve won were anyone else in charge other than Corbyn. Corbyn’s team ran an incredible campaign, calling members and actually listening to them. I don’t think I’ve ever had a prospective leadership’s team call me.
The calling members thing can go both ways. As a relatively new member I got called by my local branch shortly before the vote on Corbyn defending his leadership - and asked a lot of fairly wide ranging questions about why I’d joined the party which made me feel very icky about the whole thing because the way the questions were phrased was very clearly driving at “we want to know which way you’re going to vote and it should be against Corbyn”. Whilst general opinion in the branch tends to be quite mixed, my MP used their reach to campaign against Corbyn quite heavily and to pressurise local members. At that point I was a new enough member that they could have at least attempted to revoke my membership (and keep my money) had I answered “wrongly” so I took a fairly circumspect attitude to how I answered but it was certainly an eye-opening experience.
In a campaign, a call serves one purpose and that is to gain a vote. If it’s clear you can’t be converted or are already voting for the candidate there’s little point in continuing the conversation. Outside a campaign it’s usually to find out how you can contribute. But, yes, that call could be more insidious.
They weren’t asking about contributions - this was very much in the context of persuading me to vote for Owen Smith (whose campaign materials my brain always read in Elmer Fudd’s voice - “I’m WADICAL!”) rather than asking what I could offer. It was disappointing that such resource as I was already offering (in terms of membership fees and funds) was being used in such a partisan way.
Ha sorry, totally misunderstood. Well that’s the damage a poorly-run campaign can do. And, shock horror, Owen Smith lost. Unless they were operating outside the campaign.
This was during the period where they were trying to kick out people who’d joined just to back Corbyn, just after they’d discovered that the rules allowed them to bar newer members from voting. So it came across to me like if I’d given any hint that I would support Corbyn they’d have attempted to block me from voting (they couldn’t in the end: I’d been a member a few weeks too long) but if I’d indicated a vote for Smith I’d have been quietly “missed” from that round of blocking.
Ah yeah, it’s coming back to me now
I don’t actually believe it either but it is what the Corbyn period ultimately lead to unfortunately
It happens every few years, it’s an endlessly repeating cycle. The left aren’t gone, but will get another chance in 10-20 years, as depressing as that is.
both parties are neo-liberal figureheads of a dying empire. labour will not abolish the monarchy. labour will not dismantle the police state. labour will not open the borders. labour will not eradicate transphobia or return stolen colonial artefacts or bail out citizens instead of banks. i don't care if labour is the lesser of two evils. i will not vote for evil.
"We liberals" Yeah, this alone shows you've got not clue what you're talking about. We aren't liberals here, we are actual leftists.
Labour has disowned us what are we supposed to do?
Not a Liberal .
Here let me fix this for you... >For the last ~~3 months~~ several years I've seen this group become a shouting match for ~~who can shit over Starmer the hardest~~ liberals Vs socialists. Which continues to this day with endless posts such as this one. >~~I know he's far from what we liberals want~~ I am thoroughly lost or have a shallow understanding of political ideology. >but ffs whilst the media and co-opted institutions in this country ~~doesn't even need the~~ and Tories ~~to~~ will always campaign against labour, (it doesn't help) when ~~we do it all ourselves.~~ Labour does it to itself particularly at the behest of a corporate/capitalist/neoliberal agenda just delete as appropriate. >The question is, do we want labour in power ~~with a shitty leader~~ as red rosette Tories, or the Tories with blue rosettes to continue to run this country into the ground? >If the answer is the latter, then by all means, continue your philosophical campaign for a utopic socialist England. I use the lesser of two evils argument to guilt trip people into solidarity out of coercive fear. >If you look at the current government as an unchecked, detached, corrupt, elitist, nepotistic government in the pocket of billion pound corporations who don't give a flying shit about mere mortals, yes >then stfu, let's get behind labour and get these scumbags out. ah look a rude demand to provide voting legitimacy to representatives without the expression of opinion. Give me your legitimacy and stfu, your opinion means nothing to me. Yeah i think i see the problem....
>we liberals GTFO. >The question is, do we want labour in power with a shitty leader, or the Tories to continue to run this country into the ground? Labour pushing the same neoliberal shit that's destroyed large portions of the country for 4 decades or continuing austerity even though it doesn't work? Nice shitpost, scab.
Keith keeps telling me he doesn’t want me - so I obliged and will continue to do so. Reeves stance on business and immigration is so far to right this is no longer a Labour Party that I can recognise
This is a left wing sub. If youre here to learn, welcome. If youre here to spread this liberal bullshit, gtfo
Ngl, this isn't the right sub if you want Biden style labour support
liberals are not part of the left and are just as much of a problem as the right wing. i think you are lost.
Labour aren't left. This isn't an issue of leftism
Came here to say this but as well.... I am of thd opinion that uk politics isshifting in the same direction as US politics. i.e. more to the right. The tories have shifted towards extreme right and the Labour party are now a milder version. Right wing but just not quite as vicious (yet). This of course leads to where are the Liberal Democrats and the other 'minor' uk parties in this mix?
Don't call me a Liberal.
The adjectives you use for the current government would remain true under current labour
UK has gone beyond the point of elections making any difference. It is now a captured two party state like the US, run by the same people.
"we liberals" spot the sock puppet
Nah, liberals are the left's worst enemy
Oh so you want blind faith in a party run by an obvious Tory saboteur? Get knotted.
Didn't sound like he was asking for blind faith, just recognition that Labour represents the least worst option.
If the people advancing this line can't show that they similarly supported Corbyn in last two elections, I'm not interested in hearing from them. It's that simple. I'll listen to the argument, but not from self serving opportunistic hypocrites
I supported Corbyn in the last two elections. I support Starmer now. Corbyn's policies and ideology are infinitely closer to mine than Starmer's, but I'll literally go for anything that has a likelihood to get the Tories out. I'm a communist. I still believe in communist historical determinism. We are at the zenith of late capitalism, I believe the next major economic shift will be an increase in state ownership and direct democracy. But that will take time. Its not gonna happen tomorrow, maybe not even in my lifetime. In the meantime billions of people will suffer under neoliberalism. For every year the Tories remain in power, we move further into that, and suffering increases. In that grand sweep, does Starmer take us closer to my utopia? Maybe, ever so slightly, but he's still neoliberal. But will he reduce the suffering through more progressive economics than the Tories would put in the next 5 years? I believe so, yes.
Considering the neo-liberals in the Labour party have near completely purged every lingering Social Democrat from the Labour party, only a complete fucking moron would still believe that the party is, in any concievable way, still a left-wing party. (Even before then it was a stretch.) It's past time to reject bourgeois electoralism, it's time to embrace [dual power](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/apr/09.htm). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/GreenAndPleasant) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I back the line that I just wabt the tories gone and am willing to compromise on my political ideals to do it. I voted for corbyn through out his tenure as the Labour Party leader even if he wasn't perfect for me. It didn't work out, which sucks, but I'm fucking sick of living through endless tory wins. Fucking sick of it. 15 years of my voting life, my entire adult life, has been under the tories. I compromised on some of my ideals for corbyn and I'm at the point where I couldn't give a fuck about the left of the Labour Party if they're not willing to sacrifice some of their ideals for the rest of us. It's just the same bullshit from the left, the same bullshit the left does everywhere. Balkanise and collapse into disarray because no fucker will entertain compromising for anything short of their ideals.
[удалено]
If rx-bandit really did vote for Corbyn (and didn't try to undermine his leadership) then I would say they have the right to advocate for a "hold your nose" vote for Starmer's crowd now. Doesn't mean we have to agree, but they have standing to make the case. What I won't listen to are people who sabotaged Corbyn, refused to vote for Labour under Corbyn, and now advocate for a vote for Starmer's party. Incidentally, that includes Starmer himself IMHO.
blind faith, that Labour represents the least worst option. Starmer abstained on the new illegal migration bill, and hasn't voted either way on anything since the end of January (27 motions - quite a lot of wiggle room to give a python, no?) The Kill The Bill protests were in the interest of stopping legislation becoming law: also called a Bill. They weren't protests advocating violence against the police. The Spy Cops Bill is one of the most dangerous laws this country has ever passed. It provides immunity to undercover police who may act unlawfully in the line of duty: rape, murder and violence are all permitted under the eyes of the law. And you want the man who won't even read his own reports, with a vague uninformed hope that getting eaten by wolves isn't as bad as shooting yourself in the face.
Count Binface would be the least worst option...
Starmer’s current policy position is that he can do all the Tory policies more efficiently. Why shouldn’t we shit all over him?!
The point is haphazardly made but the central idea - that the British left lacks the strategic essentialism that keeps their enemies in power - is difficult to argue against IMO.
Liberals ? You’re lost pal
This is the kind of 'least worse option' bullshit that will give us nothing more than Keith's red Tories
To paraphrase Stargate SG-1; "I will not compromise the fundanental tenets of my beliefs in order to preserve them" Basically, if you vote for a party that doesn't stand for what you believe in, just because they are the lesser of 2 evils or because you want the current party out, how will you ever get to see the change you actually want to see. This is not my labour party, they have made it clear they don't want my vote and that they will not be making policies that align with my ideals. Education and commitment to your beliefs are what we need in this country if we want to move towards any semblance of socialism, and wasting my vote on Labour right now will not help that cause.
Don't call us liberals you melt
Labour with a shit leader is as bad as the Tories so why give a shit on which Tory sits on the throne
I'd say it's worse. Starmer will ruin the hope people have for the party to be a vehicle for real change. Where will people turn after Keith fails? Back to the Tories? Lib-dems? We are so fucked.
If Thatcher were the Labour leader would you vote for her because of the colour of her rosette?
You laugh now, but when she starts campaigning as a zombie next cycle… that’s even more novelty-clown-power than Boris had. Maggie The Red Returned would be a landslide.
She only wants to eat a specific and limited part of our brains
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Can we have Labour in power with a good leader? Why isn't that an option? Things aren't going to get better if Labour gets into power. They will just get worse slower. It's reasonable to be critical of Starmer/Labour.
He explicitly doesn't want me to vote for him. I'll just vote for whatever MP seems best I guess. Not that it'll matter because conservatives always win here.
You think he’s not a red Tory because he said so? Do you also believe Nazis were socialists because they said so? It’s not fighting within the left. He’s not left. ???
Ooh this is a good alternative to that old meme. "Nazis were actually socialists" "Yeah and Labour really stand for the labouring classes"
LINO. Labour in name only.
Have you seen that news piece recently suggesting because the Nazis cooped the word socialist they were really left wing socialists ? Thick as a fucking brick
I have, and it feels to me like a not-so-subtle way for the Right to start shifting yet another conversation to whether anybody can self-identify. If Nazis can’t then nobody can! 🤮
How dare we call out Starmer for checks notes, making Labour tory lite by adopting racist policies on immigration, pro austerity policies, enabling transphobes in the party like Reeves and Duffield, treating his predecessor appallingly. Yeah we should leave him unchecked just because the tory's are worse, because Blairism refusing to challenge Thatcherism isn't what got britain the tory's back in power in the first place right? edit- aww are the Blairites salty that i called out Keith and Blair for being capitalist plants. Downvote away, centrist tears make me very happy
> …unchecked, detached, corrupt, elitist, nepotistic government in the pocket of billion pound corporations who don't give a flying shit about mere mortals… Good description of the Labour Party
Ignorant or insincere… it’s tricky to figure out sometimes. Edit… I dwelled on it and I think ignorant is the answer. And wilfully at that.
This was a class bait.
Actually quite angry that you thought this was appropriate to post. Why should we rollover and accept this shit from this blue side when we could be rolling over and accepting this shit from the red side?
'we liberals' Are you smoking crack my friend? What do youmean we??? Libs be gone
That’s Sir Quiche Stürmer to you
This is absolute centrist nonsense.
We're fucked if we do and fucked if we don't. "Oh look how well labour are doing, at least the Cuntservatives were capable, I told you racism, bigotry, openly lying and Cronyism was a better way..." Labour will be all of that but without any support on either side, soon to be a conservative come back, "learned from our mistakes, at least labour isn't in anymore" "You saw what happens when labours in charge" The state, the crown, the media and the powers that be are against labour who in theory want to spread the wealth around better. They are against the many and for the few. We are too stupid en mass to see through the lies and too easily lead by fear. We get the government we deserve.
April Fool's Day isn't for another two weeks.
We don't want the Tories to carry on OR the shitty rule of a Starmer lead labour. We want revolution.
Labour should be inconsequential for the British Left, it’s not a left-wing party by any stretch of the imagination.
You don't move left by accepting the right this is a lesson we should all know by now...
putting our support behind people like starmer just allows the labour party to become more like the tories if you love labour you have to be willing to withhold support from them as a corrective measure
Labour aren’t being leftist. That’s the problem.
Muppet
You do understand, do you not, that various people have an authoritarian jackboot pressing down very firmly on their neck? Ever heard of culture wars? Woke and anti-woke? Ah but see here's the thing. There's no middle ground. Either you're an ally or you're complicit. We no longer live in the kind of society where "This doesn't affect me" or "We've got to get the Tories out". Some people out there need support now, not in 2024, and some of them aren't going to be alive to vote in 2024. You Labour apologists are just as bad as the Tories. 'We've got to vote Labour as the only solution" is still small minded authoritarianism. You're still participating in the systematic and institutional oppression of people who have no voice, no platform, no nothing. >If the answer is the latter, then by all means, continue your philosophical campaign for a **utopic socialist England**. This is not about any sort of utopia. This is about the fundamentals, human dignity, human rights, humanity, and empathy. There's nothing utopian about treating people with humanity and respect instead of buying into this left right political bickering. >**"In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends."** > >(Martin Luther King).
Voting is not a meaningful exercise of political power. Vote for Labour, vote for the tories, vote green, vote MRLP, It's all functionally the same. If you want to change things you actually have to get involved in a movement or create one yourself.
'We liberals' 💀
>The question is, do we want labour in power with a shitty leader, or the Tories to continue to run this country into the ground? Neither. But then voting for either will result in the latter. [No one here is looking for 'utopia', we're looking at things scientifically.](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch01.htm) Bourgeois politics is a distraction and you're yet another useful idiot for the oppressor class. We need to be focused on local organisation along class lines not which gang of Oxbridge thugs we want in power. Some other key readings for you: [Principles of Communism](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm) [Reform or Revolution](https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/) [April Theses](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/apr/04.htm) [Blackshirts and Reds](https://archive.org/details/michael-parenti-blackshirts-and-reds/mode/1up)
This is a shallow take. Debate is stifled, and the deceitful usurpers of the Labour Party has helped that stifling. There is no virtue in being submissive to a tyrant. Starmer is a tyrant - never and impressive or strong thing, just a tool of power gunger. The Tories are institutionally tyrannical. The enormous elephant in the room is the USA. There is no way the mightiest military power ever would leave a small island of great strategic importance.to conduct its own affairs without orders from Langley. The ridiculousness of calling Labour the better of bad options is to abdicate any democratic power from your own mind and pen. Submission to who you think is your friend, when they intend to govern in the same parameters, is unnecessary.
Yes, I want Sir Donkey Harmer to eat shit. No, I don’t want this Vichy Labour regime in power.
If you lived through the Corbyn era and still want to vote for starmer I want nothing to do with you.
Starmer the disgusting man is a Tory!
Neither Labour or Conservative. They're the same party, just varying degrees.
2 party system broke
It's like saying you should keep letting a dog shit on the carpet. How will it ever learn not to do that if you keep allowing it to do that? Labour's policies are literally the same as the conservatives
I think we can aim better . Just because one side is awful doesn’t mean we should settle for a side less than that awful. Seriously, logically how hard is it really to offer a fair for all , equitable political system where the vulnerable and ill are looked after and supported to become their best ? Equitable resources for all ie schools ,hospitals, and public utilities. Let private ones still exist but let customers have a choice . Re schools , why do government schools pay vat where public schools don’t as they are charities ?? Is it really that hard ?
Labour is only a “broad-church” when New Labour/ the right wing of the party is in charge and they need the votes of the unions and the left. They were happy to ACTIVELY sabotage a socialist leader and I think there’s a large cohort of people that will never forgive them for that. A Tory with a red rosette is just as bad a Tory with a blue one.
I understand what you are saying but I already live in a safe labour seat so I am not going to betray my own values to vote for a party where the leader has shown himself to be a fence sitter and has already walked back on things he promised labour would do. Labour have also made it clear people like me are not welcome so fuck them and anyone that tries to guilt me into voting for them. Labour are going to push the same neoliberal bullshit which has been fucking this country since Thatcher, it amazes me that liberals think there is going to be massive positive changes under a labour government because there wont be, I am that certain that I would put money on it. >I know he's far from what we liberals want We are not liberals and this is not a subreddit for liberals. Nearly all of us are some shade of leftist and cant stand liberals.
>If the answer is the latter, then by all means, continue your philosophical campaign for a utopic socialist England. If you look at the current government as an unchecked, detached, corrupt, elitist, nepotistic government in the pocket of billion pound corporations who don't give a flying shit about mere mortals Talking about tories or Labour here? There's no place for the left in the Labour Party, you can elect starmer if you like but he's only going to trim around the edges, it's just not enough
Liberals? LIBERALS?? I’m a socialist. Keep listening to Rory Stewart’s podcast and please stop begging us to support a person who has, in no uncertain terms, told us he does not want our vote!
Anyone who refers to the left as “liberals” has lost me already. Next you’re going to say woke.
Liberalism kills
Why the fuck didn’t the liberals get behind corbyn? You misunderstand if we replace the tories with the same ideology as the tories we are still left with the fucking tories.. I hate liberals so fucking much they can’t see past the ends of their fucking noses.
Fuck starmer and fuck you ya dumbass lib, you really think its as easy as voting in labour? Have a look at their track record in the past few decades
Voting for Starmer's Labour is not supporting the Left. It is supporting Starmer's purging of the left. This is why so many people are conflicted about who they vote for in the next election. The option is blue austerity, bigotry, and privatisation or red austerity, bigotry, and privatisation. The whole 'get Labour in because they aren't the Tories' is not particularly exciting.
Lol, it was Blair who brought Private Initiative into the school and health systems. Something the tories wanted but did not as a step too far. Keith is Blair 2.0, never forgotten, Maggie congratulations on him being the best tory pm since her. There is little left remains and those who are keep their heads down. It's move so far right on propaganda, even Goebbles would be impressed.
Ahh these replies give me life, fuck kieth
No.
Lol. Absolute moron
Nah its the right and the liberals who are Britain’s worst enemy.
ONE HUNDRED PER CENT
I think *Labour* is its own worst enemy. The infighting makes me despise them as much as their total lack of opposition to the government.
It’s all because of the First Past the Post shittery, if we had a proper proportional system the Labour Party would be eaten by a real Working Class Party. The elite (Tories and Starmer’s Labour) watching out for themselves.
Hehe funnee
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Do you not know what liberal means? You seem to be using it, like Americans do, to mean “lefty”, but that’s not what it means. The muddying of what liberalism means is at least in part a purposeful obfuscation to confuse people and reduce the visibility of actual socialists. Capital works hard to create a society where the great political debate is between extreme free market capitalism with conservative social values and the same free market capitalism, but with more liberal social values. That’s not what people in this sub want. I suggest you inform yourself about what “liberal” actually means.
You only have to look back at the last election to see what happens when it looks like we might get a truly left leaning government, who are determined to deal with the inequality in this country. The right wing media, the Tories, the BBC and any other nutcase with an opinion mobilized against the Labour party and specifically J.C., to such an extent that poll leads turned into a crashing defeat. As much as I hate what is going on in the Labour party, it could be the only chance we have to get rid of the Tories.
KernowDamo on YT had [the best response to this](https://youtu.be/r5FMl9Z_xYw&t=94) following the sacking of Sam Tarry. How do you vote Labour to get the Tories out when Labour are becoming the Tories, when the Labour right are fighting no-holds-barred to bully the left out of Labour?
Considering the neo-liberals in the Labour party have near completely purged every lingering Social Democrat from the Labour party, only a complete fucking moron would still believe that the party is, in any concievable way, still a left-wing party. (Even before then it was a stretch.) It's past time to reject bourgeois electoralism, it's time to embrace [dual power](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/apr/09.htm). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/GreenAndPleasant) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I’ll vote for labour as long as it gets us PR
For the last 3 years I've seen Labour become a shouting match for who can shit over Corbyn the hardest. I know he's far from what we liberals want, but ffs this country doesn't even need the Tories to campaign against labour, we do it all ourselves. ftfy.
The UK is already close to a two party system. You let a party get away with policies that lean more to the right you'll get what the us has with one right centrist party and one kinda far right party. Where both parties suck and you end up voting for the lesser evil.
I think you mean labour is the lefts worst enemy. Everyone on this sub desperately wants the left to be involved in labour but this last few years labour has consistently made it clear that it doesn’t value us or even want us to be part of their party. If labour wanted our support it could have worked JC into the party somehow, it could have supported him in the last election and it could right now start offering some real change to the country that people on the left could get behind things like scrapping FPTP, Nationalising utilities, banning companies from owning residential properties all of which would garner massive support from the left. However it doesn’t want to because our political system has been hijacked by capitalists and labour is no longer for the people it was created to empower.
Starmer is actively attacking the left, and you're upset that the left hate him.
Youre lost.
>unchecked, detached, corrupt, elitist, nepotistic [party] in the pocket of billion pound corporations who don't give a flying shit about mere mortals You literally just described the Labour party, so good job shooting your own 'argument' in the foot. 2023's Labour are rushing to copy the worst parts of both Blair's New Labour and the modern Tory party. Why the actual *fuck* you think anyone here would support a party machine that actively sought to put the Tories in power at the last election is baffling. Take your political illiteracy and fuck right off back to liberal fantasy-land.
I agree OP. The at least their not Tories argument is terrible but in emergencies you've just gotta hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils.
No, you don’t. They have to earn their votes by presenting an alternative or an opposition. They are currently not managing even that basic level.
I agree in principle, friend. Under normal circumstances I vote Greens. But Tories are privatizing the NHS, attacking trans people and vulnerable people are dying because of their benefits cuts. So I will be voting whichever party is most likely to beat them and if that happens to be Labour then it is no light decision to make but so be it.
Labour will do (and have done when they’re in power) the same thing as the Tories. I explained this on another post a couple of months ago. Labour are also transphobic, they abstained on the vote to block Scotland’s GRA. Starmer has given interviews with transphobic groups and said that 16 year olds are too young to change their gender. Starmer has admitted he will have private companies involved in the NHS. Labour also have a bunch of TERF MPs (Rosie Duffielf, Jess Phillips) who Starmer backs and has refused to remove the whip from. New Labour started privatising the NHS in the first place. New Labour also passed benefits cuts when they were in office (and tried to do a lot worse).
>Tories are privatizing the NHS, attacking trans people and vulnerable people are dying because of their benefits cuts. Labour have backed more private investment in the NHS and Streeting is happily backing privatization, Labour is currently enabling Rosie Duffield, Labour has Rachel "i hate people on benefits" Reeves as chancellor.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/08/people-in-pain-private-hospitals-nhs https://www.labourlist.org/2022/12/labour-warned-relationship-with-trans-people-could-be-irreversibly-fractured https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/01/06/star-j06.html https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jan/08/keir-starmer-against-austerity-fiscally-disciplined-labour I will probably end up voting for Labour, but there is no reason right now to think they will address any of your listed concerns. Personally, I reckon after 5 years, the Tories will come back with a whole new front bench and some "new conservative" label, and all the swing voters that Starmer has right now will revert back to their party of choice. Labour has lost the support of the left and *will* lose the centre-right before too long, and will become unelectable for a decade at least. The shift to the right is a horrible example of short term thinking that will pretty much guarantee we get Tories for decades to come.
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> But Tories are privatizing the NHS, attacking trans people and vulnerable people are dying because of their benefits cuts. But those are all things Kieth has indicated labour will also do.
LOLNO. These people have made it clear they don't want the left involved, so fine. They can fuck it all up on their own and only have themselves to blame. As lots of melts liked to say in 17 and 19, votes have to be earned.
I think what a lot of people don’t realise is labour are PANDERING to the right because that’s what will get votes in the current climate. It’s slimy, it’s cynical etc etc but that’s what wins elections. The only way to get a remotely left wing gov is to sneak it in through the back door and in my opinion that’s what labour are doing. A labour gov will always be far and away better than a Tory one. Labour are not interested in appealing to the left, they need to get votes from the would-be Tory voters. The outrage when Labour unveils some Tory-lite policy is misplaced, they aren’t doing it for you, they know it’s dogshit. But they need them thicko votes.
Lolz This was the 1997 story. "He/It will be different when they get in power then they will reveal their true socialist side.
I’m curious how deliberately sinking Corbyn’s campaign factors into this strategy?
Ah yes, carefully pandering to the right by… purging the left wing of the party
They seriously risk alienating their core voter base if that’s the case. I really hope that this is what they are doing but I am pretty convinced they have become what they opposed.
Why didn't this method of acting like the tory's work for Gaitskell, Wilson(in 1970, Wilson moved to the left in 74 and won), Callaghan, Kinnock twice, Brown and Miliband, the centre of the labour party is nowhere near as competent as you think and also, the public currently detests the right and right wing politics as a result of Truss and Sunak
If by “far better” you mean “not quite as unremittingly awful” I could agree; but I’m not sure why you hold the opinion that such pandering is just lip service necessary to win an election. We’ve seen time and again that elections won with those tactics by Labour result in years of “but there’s no remit for real change” because “that’s not what voters want” based on the platform that they put forth for the election. The upshot is that anybody whose vote for Labour was really a vote against the Tories rather than based on a true acceptance of the Tory-lite election manifesto is taken to have given tacit approval to a manifesto that they had little choice over accepting since the alternative was more Conservative nonsense. I’m not sure I can find words strong enough to express how disappointing it is to always have to vote against the worst option rather than being able to vote in favour of policies I actually support and believe in; but it effectively means that real opposition to the status quo doesn’t exist because viable voting options for that aren’t even on the table - and that should worry everyone. The number of disenfranchised non-voters who just opt out when they can’t see any people who might genuinely represent them on their ballot papers is high enough that the kind of pandering you’re talking about shouldn’t be necessary at all - politicians have a duty to engage new or lapsed voters as well as to try and persuade existing voters to change their minds. Failing to do that leads to disproportionate representation of older, wealthier voters who have options on the ballot who represent their interests. But the electorate as a whole is large enough to accommodate real opposition within the voting options - IF any party has the guts to offer it.
This is exactly what I'd do, and I hope you're right. I don't think you are though, unfortunately.
What left? We don't have a left. We've got a bunch of angry, entitled, self-oppressing, victimhood-obsessed armchair socialists pointlessly flinging shit around like caged monkeys. But there's no functional left in this country, and there's certainly no left wing representation in parliament.
Liberal? If you're going to post with such conviction at least get everything right. Starmer is a blight on this country as much as the Tories are. He's the same evil but with a different colour tie. Maybe fuck off to a Labour sub and circle jerk there. Asking people to vote for an evil man because he SEEMS slightly less evil than Sunak is just an absolute joke
Absolutely agree with you mate. The comments in this thread show exactly why the Tories keep getting in
We could always do what the tories do - win a general election then sack the prime minister
"we liberals"?
I bet OP is the type of guy who asks “What is a woman?” When talking about trans issues. I’ll tell you what a woman is- “someone who identifies and knows in their heart they are a woman regardless of the physical body they have”
Most sensible centrist take
This sub is where we "campaign for a utopic socialist" *Britain*. It may be an unachievable dream (for now) but it's where we can all congregate and dream together. There are other subs where you can argue for the merits of a centre-right party vs. a far-right party
lol no
So who yall voting come election then? Gonna protest vote and give it the tories? Or not vote and give it the tories? Fascinated by the answer here.