Marwood's law of British politics states that whenever UK politicians and media start banging on about 'the chattering classes' or 'the liberal elite' you know that a really terrible idea is about to be advocated and enacted.
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And yet many of the major issues they did listen to them on (taxation, labour market protections, NHS) contributed to the fractured state of our society.
A little bit of humility is called for. No one gets everything right.
Having now read it in full I declare the author to be schizophrenic and one personality is desparate for editorial approval while the other is out drug seeking. The article is bollocks and adds nothing to the nations collective knowledge.
This will appeal to the maybe half a dozen voters in the UK who aren't progressive or liberal and aren't going to vote for Reform or the Tories but want Reform and Tory policies anyway
They said this about McSweeney when it he took over from Grave back in Autumn but the party's situation has only gotten worse since then. All of his efforts to appeal to the right have failed while more and more of the party base has been pushed away.
When Trump self-evidently wants to bring peace by giving half of Ukraine to Russia, how does Britain going all-in on defending Ukrainian territorial integrity not "risk destabilising the alliance"?
Hard Labour (and what a truly terrible name that is) seems to boil down to responding to Reform UK with more racism, responding to Trump destroying the post-war order by building a security state with its own, aggressive foreign policy, and also responding to Trump by, er, sucking up to Trump.
None of which makes any sense - the best way to respond to Reform UK is by offering something different; the best way to replace NATO in Europe is with a security alliance based on the EU; the best way to respond to Trump is proudly and independently (cf. Canada, Denmark).
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the simplest answer to the question why people like McSweeney are pushing this stuff is that it's what they believe, and if they didn't have this lot of rationalisations for pushing it they'd have come up with another lot.
Hard Labour are basically unserious people who have morals dependent upon circumstance. The only thing they believe in is having power and keeping power. They have zero life experience outside of Westminster, many of them never having a real job in their lives. Time to clean the stables.
I like all the replies to this that are like 'lol this isn't news, this is what the Old Labour Right are like now' (yes, it is, and it's shite) or 'yes but it's briefing not policy' (as if we can't all see the policy and that it's steering in this direction)
Don't get me wrong, I'm not for a second suggesting Labour in 2025 are remotely socialist but that describtion described a large government with the state controlling things, not the free market.
Can't read this as there is a paywall but since when did the Times report accurately on Labour thinking?Looks like yet more speculation designed to create outrage amongst progressives so that we get cross with all the wrong people....
I do struggle to understand how a centre left party that doesn’t believe in income distribution or spending public money is anything more than a more competent version of Cameron’s Conservatives.
i think thats kind of the point, we have to keep pretending the political and economic environment is the 1970s, so we don't repeat the actual conditions, and instead compete for who does the best Thatcher impression.
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A little bit of humility is called for. No one gets everything right.
https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/hard-labour-keir-starmer-jason-cowley-v68rblnzl
a) raging tories
b) unreformed marxists
seems to kinda disprove the hypothesis...
So staying the same yeah? A kind of... conserving if you will.
Damon Albarn: “Park Life!”
When Trump self-evidently wants to bring peace by giving half of Ukraine to Russia, how does Britain going all-in on defending Ukrainian territorial integrity not "risk destabilising the alliance"?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not for a second suggesting Labour in 2025 are remotely socialist but that describtion described a large government with the state controlling things, not the free market.
Hard Labour, good grief.
Iconoclasm !
https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/hard-labour-keir-starmer-jason-cowley-v68rblnzl