U-turn... guess who?

[gregorgregorovich]

of course it is....but it needs funding and one key issue we have right now is that we need to borrow to invest and because of the tories economic failures it is now more expensive to borrow because we've lost our AAA rating. Debt is completely acceptable under certain parameters.

The tories always like to use the credit card example when they talk about labour taking on debt (despite the tories taking on far more for no gain), but that isn't a good example of incurring debt to invest. A better analogy is taking a bank loan to fund a house extension. Building the extension will create value on your house financially, but also socially it will create more space, maybe a home office to allow you to do your job and earn income, maybe a gym so that your family will save on gym memberships and have a much healthier lifestyle. Hard and soft benefits of that investment. the problem we have is that the household debt has skyrocketed under the tories, so when labour go to the bank for the extension loan, the bank see us as a bigger risk (no longer AAA rated) so will charge us more interest, which might mean we never see that financial value in the extension in our lifetime.

We could of course just print money, as a solution to raise capitol to invest, but that isn't consequence free either.

There will be investment under Labour, but it'll be limited because of the absolute car crash of an economy and social system that the tories have created.

Or, we could legislate for a much fairer tax system for the vast, vast majority of the people in this country. Reinforce the Inspection agencies as Labour did in 1998, which were subsequently dismantled by the Coalition almost as soon as they gained power,scrap the revolving door for jobs between Treasury policy makers and the Big 4 accounting firms. Even Christine Lagarde and the IMF are speaking in favour of a blooming wealth tax now for Chrissakes.

 

[Geoff_B]

Surely all the mess is around the comms.... You have had Keir Starmer & Chris Bryant this week, Bryant yesterday morning stating that it is not going to be dropped, but just a few hours later it is. At least get everyone singing from the same hymn sheet and it doesn't look as messy.

 

[Scrote]

This has been appallingly handled by the Labour leadership - the comms have been dreadful. Why the need for a specific announcement which now looks and smells like a U turn? let it drop, announce the individual policies later in the manifesto. Instead you gift the Tories another opportunity to look like you flip flop. This was needless.

Surely all the mess is around the comms.... You have had Keir Starmer & Chris Bryant this week, Bryant yesterday morning stating that it is not going to be dropped, but just a few hours later it is. At least get everyone singing from the same hymn sheet and it doesn't look as messy.

It's more centrist incompetence. Based around the idea that you can stand in the middle and cherry-pick the best ideas.

Without an ideology a political party is rootless. There is nowhere to grow from.

And on the flip side it doesn't take very much pressure to force a U-turn (or whatever we want to call it) because they're always targeting populism over policy.

Without having the ideology underpinning the policy no-one knows why they're actually pushing any particular thing and so it becomes difficult to argue for it when questioned. No matter how lazy the questioning.

If an idea is good then fight for it.

 

[ThePrisoner]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1755661643634123081

 

[HolgateCorner]

I remember ‘the lady who was not for turning’.

And she was a disaster the country has never recovered from.

Yes you need principles and values but the last thing we need in political leaders is dogmatic pursuit of pledges and policies without regular review and reflection.

 

[homesickblues]

You turn if you want to!

 

[Borotommo]

I trust him much much much much more than the other lot in power now, who have shown their true colours again and again. We need a change of government. I'm not pretending that everything will magically become better overnight with a labour government, but we need to get rid of the cliquey, non-functioning, back biting, self-serving, morally corrupt tory party. Or do we buy into their rhetoric that everything is the fault of lefty lawyers and people in small boats?

They’re not just morally, but literally corrupt

 

[Chris_Boro]

The Tories are going to spend their last month's in office laying economic landmines for the next Labour government. They simply don't give a toss about the damage this will do and the people who will suffer.

Countless billions will need to be spent over the next 10-15 years to begin to repair the damage. Meanwhile, those that caused the damage in the first place will sit in their yachts waiting to do it all over again.

 

[BiggEggo]

View attachment 71536
View attachment 71537

Big shock right! Who could have guessed?

Wish Fishi and Co had u-turned on racking up national debt.

They've trebled that from billions into trillions.

Their sound financial management claim now looks like a pair of soiled pants wrapped around their ankles.

If they keep on looting the public purse all the way to a autumn election we will probably need to call in the liquidator.

Time to put down the Daily Express fella.

 

[Scrote]

I remember ‘the lady who was not for turning’.

And she was a disaster the country has never recovered from.

Yes you need principles and values but the last thing we need in political leaders is dogmatic pursuit of pledges and policies without regular review and reflection.

She had principles and values and pursued them with an iron will.

To the people benefitting from the reforms she made it was ideologically ideal.

Just because you disagree with the outcome it doesn't mean the dogmatic pursuit wasn't successful.

 

[mercury_redstone7]

Still be voting for the Labour Party, like I did previously. UTLP UTB.

 

[Laughing]

Why would any party want to take the mess the country is in at the moment. Both major parties seem to be hell bent on losing an election. Just my opinion.

Not a very intelligent opinion though.

 

[1finny]

It's more centrist incompetence. Based around the idea that you can stand in the middle and cherry-pick the best ideas.

Without an ideology a political party is rootless. There is nowhere to grow from.

And on the flip side it doesn't take very much pressure to force a U-turn (or whatever we want to call it) because they're always targeting populism over policy.

Without having the ideology underpinning the policy no-one knows why they're actually pushing any particular thing and so it becomes difficult to argue for it when questioned. No matter how lazy the questioning.

If an idea is good then fight for it.

But, and you know this.
An ideology only works if you get a chance to govern.

Those who determine the winners of elections won’t let the ‘wrong‘ ideology (anything remotely anti capitalist) get in power.

And, with our first past the post system we are not going to force the change we want.

 

[The Card Cheat]

I remember ‘the lady who was not for turning’.

And she was a disaster the country has never recovered from.

Yes you need principles and values but the last thing we need in political leaders is dogmatic pursuit of pledges and policies without regular review and reflection.

In any other walk of life, changing your mind and making adjustments when it’s obvious something isn’t going to work is seen as a positive thing. There’s this weird idea around politics that somehow it’s brilliant to grimly hold onto something which is causing yourself and more importantly the general public huge damage.

 

[equaliser]

Im still yet to see in any way in which a starmer government will be any better...

You'd better vote Tory then

 

[Geoff_B]

In any other walk of life, changing your mind and making adjustments when it’s obvious something isn’t going to work is seen as a positive thing. There’s this weird idea around politics that somehow it’s brilliant to grimly hold onto something which is causing yourself and more importantly the general public huge damage.

That maybe true, but it turns out in this case that the 28b figure wasn't actually ever going to be spent. Whoever originally costed it (as I don't believe they just plucked a figure out of thin air) must have made a bad misstep somewhere. Labour had never actually managed to calculate how they would spend the 28b figure and therefore got themselves into abit of a mess, which they never really needed too.

Obviously the party line is they can't honour it because of the economy, which in someway would be true if they had calculated how to actually spend it. They probably have had to downgrade it but got themselves in a tangle, for no reason over a headline figure.

In the long run I don't think it will make much impact though, with all things political this story is much bigger inside the westminster bubble, than the rest of the country, and I imagine a good majority of the country couldn't give 2 hoots.

 

[SuperStu]

In any other walk of life, changing your mind and making adjustments when it’s obvious something isn’t going to work is seen as a positive thing. There’s this weird idea around politics that somehow it’s brilliant to grimly hold onto something which is causing yourself and more importantly the general public huge damage.

Sorry, can't agree that's what has happened here. Investing in our economy and environment would be a good thing. Certainly not something to cause huge damage to the public. Read BBGs posts #27 and #38.

 

[HolgateCorner]

She had principles and values and pursued them with an iron will.

To the people benefitting from the reforms she made it was ideologically ideal.

Just because you disagree with the outcome it doesn't mean the dogmatic pursuit wasn't successful.

She was the worst thing that ever happened to this country.

She had no ideology or plan other than blaming the unions for the problems and then taking them out. There was nothing else, she was truly populist, doing whatever she thought would win her elections. She closed down our industrial base and put nothing else in place leaving whole swathes of the country to rot, but not the south east Tory areas.

Principles and values? Yer joking aren’t you?

 

[equaliser]

No investment until the economy improves.

The economy needs investment to improve.

Its a perfect system.

That's not what Labour is saying. Starmer's point is that investment is now much much more expensive than it was when the pledge was made - because of the interest rates on government debt - so it would be foolish and irresponsible to stick to the pledge. Do you get that? Are you denying that that is the case, because it is an incontrovertible FACT.

There is another FACT SuperStu - and one I would like you to own. It is that when you post this thread about Starmer doing a U-turn, you ARE being a Tory shill. You are spreading the discourse that the right-wing media will run with for as long as they think it has mileage. Maybe right up to the election if they think there is evidence it is having cut-through in the polls. Keep on spreading fella, keep on doing the Tories' work.

Or wind you neck in and face a fact: DEBT INTEREST HAS SKYROCKETED SINCE TRUSS AND KWARTENG'S KAMIKAZE BUDGET AND £28 BILLION IS UNAFFORDABLE. Global investors will sink any government that issues spending commitments without a credible fiscal plan. The proof is an extra £400 a month when people are re-negotiating their mortgages. To bury your head in the sand is idiotic. Mortgage-payers don't have that luxury. Yet you demand the Government should. As the great economist John Maynard Keynes - whose demand management policies you urge us to follow - said:

“When the facts change, I change my mind - what do you do, sir?”​

 

[SuperStu]

She was the worst thing that ever happened to this country.

Agree.

she was truly populist, doing whatever she thought would win her elections.

Disagree. She hated the working class and the unions and was willing to do whatever damage it took to put them in their place. I don't think she'd have changed up her politics or messaging to keep winning elections.

She closed down our industrial base and put nothing else in place leaving whole swathes of the country to rot, but not the south east Tory areas.

Agree.

Principles and values? Yer joking aren’t you?

You get what Scrote means though right? Not our principles and values, obviously, but she was definitely a politician with a set view of what she wanted Britain to be like and all her time in power was spent making that happen.

Whereas with Starmer, as much as most on here don't like to hear it, he did set out 10 policy pledges to become Labour leader and he has reversed on all of them. The only reasonable conclusion to draw is that he doesn't really care whether its this policy or that policy, so long as he gets to be PM at the top of it all.