I think that encapsulates my thoughts perfectly. We have a thoroughly incompetent party in power and they still look miles more electable than Labour. I don’t really blame Starmer for that, he’s had no chance in the covid era to really attack the government on anything because whatever is said is batted away with ‘nobody could have done better’. That large swathes of the country accept that says as much about the world we live in as anything else, but that’s life.
As you say Going Up, the Scottish situation also doesn’t help Labour.
I’m left with the overwhelming feeling that the United Kingdom deserves a lot better than what we’re currently getting from all our political representatives. Let’s be frank, if Boris is the best of the lot then we’re in a deep deep hole.
As abhorrent as Maggie was to many, at least you knew who she was and what she stood for. And it wasn’t her own gain.
Repsonding directly to the OP, Labour needs to get back to a Blairite style. Centrist policies that appeal to the masses. That’s what the country votes for time and again.
But *what are those centrist policies*
No one knows!
This is the problem. The centre is difficult to actually define. It is exactly where labour has (Corbyn in 2019 aside, the 2017 manifesto, really wasn't especially radical) tried to pitch itself but it keeps missing the mark as it's not as simple.
Everyone thinks of themselves as 'a normal person who just wants sensible policy' but as we've seen in the last few years, people will fall out over minor details of trade tariffs and just about any bit of shite and inconsequential shit you can think of. We're a lot more atomised and a lot more temperamental as an electorate than 1997. Not Tories. Schools and Asbos. That wouldn't wash now.
Write down 10 'common sense centre ground vote winning policies' and send them to labour. You could be leader cos they haven't got ten between all of them.
I think to win, you've got to be more creative. The lib Dems have been pulverised in the last few elections. Their entire purpose is to be the centre ground.
They should have made hay from labour going left. They got murdered.
I agree with you that we've got a really miserable crop at the moment and I think it's partly down to the inertia and their unwillingness to try and form/build/create a national consensus around anything new or slightly risky.
I'm no defender of Corbyn, but at least the lad tried. At least it was some sort of energy. At least he *tried* to address issues.
Boris is a walking focus group response mechanism and Kier is just, well, wet.
I agree about Scotland, as I don’t think a Labour government has been returned without Scottish labour MPs making the majority ever.
Murdoch is an interesting one though, as I do not think he has anywhere near the power he used to.
Yes he owns The Times and The Sun but Sky has long left his dirty little fingers.
The power is now held by FB, Twitter and the like.
They don't really wield power in the same way Murdoch did.
The power is wielded by the party who can successfully manipulate them. I'm not say they are apolitical, more that it's about how you game the system and the right have understood that more profoundly than labour.
Corbyn's social media strategy was nothing short of brilliant in 2017. Then the Tories woke up to it and blew it out the water in 2019, learning much from both Corbyn and Trump and indeed the Brexit vote.
That's another reason why starmer has failed so far. He's not realised that copying Blair and being mild doesn't make waves any more. It doesn't provide clicks. It might provide nice editorials in the papers, but that's so much less relevant.