That Starmer fella...

I'd guess he'll announce support for the unions stance, with fence sitting caveats.

Given there was probably one of the largest ever union meetings today, 400k virtually attended and the NEU is now being backed by Unite, Unison and GMB, you might expect some Labour engagement

Perhaps it is a reassuring sign that Starmer's team isn't as leaky as Johnson's.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jan/03/keir-starmer-calls-for-immediate-lockdown-in-england-as-covid-cases-soar

He was good today in PMQs

Absolute scenes. That last question was pure savagery.

https://twitter.com/12rulesforwhat/status/1351916091258372098

The white supremacist LBC caller on the Starmer interview is a far right activist who was encouraged by LBC to call in.

If it's good enough for the BBC...

So, its open season for Starmer at the moment, it appears? Lets see how he does now the briefings are beginning to appear in the press. Be interesting to watch how he deals with it.

20 points ahead etc etc.

I suspect his strategy will essentially be to ignore it. There was a recent study which found that 4% of people in the UK thought Starmer had made the Labour party worse, and 48% felt that he'd made it better. The ex-Momentum type left is a loud voice online, but it is small in terms of the broader electorate, and his strategy will effectively be to show that.

The SCG of MPs doing stuff this asinine will help him in that. It's like they deliberately want to sideline themselves https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/labour-conference-demands-left-starmer_uk_602118d2c5b6d78d44483980

Odd, but the current articles I've seen about the place haven't really been from the Left though, more Centre and Right?

Well I think the criticism that he needs to say what he's for is fair - covid has meant we're all in a holding pattern and he's stuck in this cautious halfway house which he needs to break out of - and that seems to be what the Guardian / Times type pieces seem to be saying.

I didn't realise this was what you were talking about, and assumed it was the constant sniping from the sidelines that's been going on since Starmer became leader, which by and large is coming from the left of the party.

So, its open season for Starmer at the moment, it appears? Lets see how he does now the briefings are beginning to appear in the press. Be interesting to watch how he deals with it.

Starmer has essentially had it on easy mode up until now to get to be four points behind the Tories. The press has essentially left him alone, his party aren't trying to stab him in the back, and the Tories handling of Covid has resulted in 113k+ deaths.

Essentially, I think this is the best Starmer can do. Once Covid is less of an issue, or the press start to notice him, or his party start to stab him in the back (or front), the gap is going to widen.

Well I think the criticism that he needs to say what he's for is fair

It is, but does he really need to. It's ages until an election , is there much point in committing to things now? That's obviously a bit of a cynical view but I'm sure it's been considered.

Oh don't get me wrong, I don't think he should be committing to specific policy. Covid is going to change everything, and something which seems obvious now will seem insane in six months time. Now's not the time to lay out policy commitments.

But he's done phase one of his plan - he's shown that the Tories have a credibility deficit. And he's brought our polling up to equal pegging. I think now he needs to start articulating how a Labour government would differ from the Tories in terms of its vision and its sense of justice - how it feels in short. Cameron had his big society, Blair had Cool Britannia. I think we're starting to get a feel for Starmer's vision - soft left policies wrapped in the flag - but I'd like to start seeing more of Annalise Dodd's (excellent) plan for the economy, I'd like to see more from Rayner, Nandy, Miliband, Lammy, Thornberry.

I'm not one of these people who think Starmer is another Blair. But his caution - which has been a benefit for the last year - is beginning to leave a vacuum into which his enemies can pour their mischief making. We saw an analogous thing with Corbyn - his constructive ambigiity on Brexit was a benefit to him in 2017 but a disaster in 2019 - and I'd like Starmer not to fall into that trap by staying cautious too long. I'd like to see more of an active vision within the next six months or that'll become critical, and we might start seeing leadership challenges - which is the last thing we need.

It is, but does he really need to. It's ages until an election , is there much point in committing to things now? That's obviously a bit of a cynical view but I'm sure it's been considered.

I think he does. Nodding along with the Tories with regards to Brexit and Covid will harm in the future. How can he criticize the government further down the line, when he essentially agreed with them, so as not to upset the DM readers?

What do you think of the possibility the vacuum exists because he's got nothing substantial to offer?

This is an interesting article highlighting one of Starmer's problems, that he has lost the youth vote.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/09/young-voters-labour-opening-green-party

Labour can't win unless it has the young on its side, because most older people are not going to vote for it. And without vision, there is nothing to inspire the young to support it.

Labour is really lucky the LibDems went for whatever-his-name-is rather than Layla Moran, or this predicament could be even worse.

What do you think of the possibility the vacuum exists because he's got nothing substantial to offer?

Very unlikely. I think he's allowed his factional enemies to paint him in that way, which is a tactical mistake, but it's not based in reality - Starmer is a guy who can put a team together with a specific vision in mind, and he's done exactly that. In fact he's already unofficially announced the sorts of policies he's likely to follow (effectively: soft left policies wrapped up in the flag) by employing Claire Ainsley as his policy chief (her book, The New Working Class, details around 30 of them, all values based - to those of us who've read it, the flag stuff is no surprise). My only criticism of him is that he should start articulating some of the values and vision behind those policies.

Let's say the Greens absolutely sweep the board and take all the young city dwelling vote. It's unlikely but let's take it as a hypothetical. They're still a minority of the vote.

If Labour genuinely wants to win it must focus on the broadly left/right of centre, non-radical swing voters, a democraphic it effectively ignored in 2019. I'm not saying that the youth don't matter, I'm not saying the left don't matter, what I'm saying that the swing vote is more significant because it's a) bigger, and b) every 2019 Tory voter we convert to Labour is worth double. The focus is not on us politics nerds in the cities. It's out there in the market towns.

Presumably we’ll start to see more policy/values/vision in the lead up to local elections over the summer?

That sounds like the Pasok / PS / SPD strategy. It could work, but it never has anywhere else so there's no reason to expect it will here. And it isn't: we're not winning tory voters as we're not ahead in the polls.

Rather than that tired old model we need to learn from Biden and build a broad coalition that includes the left and the young, and inspires people, rather than boring them rigid!

Interesting you say learn from Biden given he was the middle ground candidate (i.e. not Sanders) and as far as I can see, inspired some of the same pushback from the left in the US.

Biden was the establishment choice, but it's more about style than policies necessarily. Biden engaged with the left. He gets on well with Sanders personally and Sanders campaigned for him and got his supporters to do so too. And Biden is popular amongst the young, seen as a kindly grandfather figure rather than a bossy authoritarian like those figures in the article showed Starmer is.

And it worked. Biden essentially won because he flipped 4 or 5 key states. He was able to do that because he had left (mostly BAME) activists in the big cities, Atlanta, Milwaukee, Detroit, etc campaigning hard for him, people like Stacey Abrams in Atlanta.