That Starmer fella...

Maybe those are the Labour party's reasons, but do you not think there might be some mileage in trying to persuade business that labour isn't a threat?

(Not saying your other arguments are wrong, but seems to me they address different things).

What’s Labour’s beef with business? Don’t wanna get sucked into that neoliberalism again?

Yeah, I guess I would agree that there is potentially some political capital in trying to persuade business that the Labour party isn't a threat, but in this circumstance I think the material benefits to be gained from increasing corporation tax outweigh that.

Ignoring the snarkiness from the comment below, the Labour party should be prepared to confront (big) business in some way or another, because in certain ways the needs of capital are often antagonistic to the needs of those who work, to the needs of the environment, to the needs of the social state etc. etc.

That should not be controversial or difficult to understand for a party with the word 'labour' in its name.

Labour are (or were) of the opinion that the spoils of capitalism should be split equitably between the workers and the bosses/shareholders, rather than the shareholders getting everything and the workers being happy with their weekly serving of gruel. This is clearly an anti-business position, as without the shareholders there wouldn't be a business.

Anyone caught observing that without the workers there wouldn't be a business either is a raving leftie looney and will be re-educated daily via their choice of Murdoch-owned newspaper.

I think the problem lies in the perception that there are two sides such that pro-workers means anti business.

Rightly or wrongly, people do seem to view this as a zero sum game, whereby the good of workers is pitted against business. You rightly use the term capital not business in your message, but I don't think average jo thinks in terms of capital Vs workers, but more in terms of "good for the economy or not", and is therefore pretty susceptible to an argument that labour = bad for business = bad for economy = everyone is poorer.

(I don't agree, but I think that is a very common and hard to shift narrative. And beating that seems to me to be necessary for labour to win)

The mess of party funding seems to be an impediment to anyone taking on 'big business'

However, I've seen little from Labour to suggest that their opposition to increases in corporate tax is due to a desire to counteract these narratives. It seems to me rather that the opposition to these CT rises is intended to signal to big business that a future Labour government poses no threat, after the Corbyn years in which the party was perceived to want to confront capital more directly.

I think it's partially both, but that's quite a complex narrative to sell, so I'm not surprised it's not landing. I'm a geek for this stuff and I don't quite have the hang of it yet. But that is broadly what they're briefing:

One senior party source tells me: “The approach being advocated by Ian Lavery and Richard Burgon is an unintended argument for austerity because it suggests you can fiddle with taxes and spending to pay off debt accumulated in an economic downturn. It’s the mirror of the argument George Osborne made a decade ago.

"Labour must be far more ambitious – we should be the party focused on working with business to grow the economy and tackle the long-term weaknesses of our unequal and insecure economy, which is the way Britain will balance the books,” they add. Ironically this idea of “the proceeds of growth” being the answer to the tax/spend problem is exactly what Cameron and Osborne espoused in Opposition before the financial crash.

Source: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/keir-starmer-labour-corporation-tax_uk_60382c72c5b610bcd98f4b6f

Labour now polling lower with YouGov than they did prior to the 2019 election

https://mobile.twitter.com/YouGov/status/1367527504643293189?refsrc=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1367527504643293189%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rllmukforum.com%2Findex.php%3Fapp%3Dcoremodule%3Dsystemcontroller%3Dembedurl%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FYouGov%2Fstatus%2F1367527504643293189%3Fs%3D20

Terrifying.

It’s all part of the plan.

It's important to be not be against anything you think a swing voter might be against, whilst also not being for anything an obvious labour voter would be for, in case you put off a swing voter, to gain the votes of people who are undecided by not making a decision and put off people who've decided to vote for you in the past by becoming as bad as those they voted against through a lack of decision.

Who knew that trying to appeal to Daily Mail readers whilst jettisoning a part of your base would have this effect?

It's not really true, though, is it? Not unless you take the ABSOLUTE BEST poll from the 2019 elections and the ABSOLUTE WORST from now. Poll of polls show it in context:

Don't get me wrong, I'm not happy about our stats, but I do find it a bit irritating to be lectured about how bad our current polls are from people who spent the last year deliberately misrepresenting and undermining the party's positions for clicks, and the last six years telling us to ignore Corbyn's historically unpopular polling.

I do find it a bit irritating to be lectured about how bad our current polls are from people

To be fair, I've not seen anyone lecturing. But considering you've spent at least some space in your posts noting Starmer's 20 point lead, and how his worst numbers were still better than Corbyn's best, it's probably fair game.

from people who spent the last year deliberately misrepresenting and undermining the party's positions for clicks

This is hardly unique to the last year though.

misrepresenting and undermining the party's positions for clicks

He had positions to undermine???

Don't get me wrong, I'm not happy about our stats, but I do find it a bit irritating to be lectured about how bad our current polls are from people who spent the last year deliberately misrepresenting and undermining the party's positions for clicks, and the last six years telling us to ignore Corbyn's historically unpopular polling.

This seems a bit of a strange thing to say? Starmer has had it on easy mode, he's essentially just had some people grumbling on social media.
Wait until you get a sustained attack from the blue ticks, your party trying to stab you in the back (and front), a hostile media and smears to deal with.

My concern (or one of them at least) with Starmer is that he comes across as very wooden. I don't doubt that he's intelligent, analytical, well-prepared, etc but he just comes across as so dull. Watching his "jokes" in the budget response speech was painful.

I guess it's possible that, up against Johnson, he'll attract those that are looking for something a bit deeper than a slightly humorous but meaningless soundbite but I'm not sure there's enough of them.

I'm not sure what the solution is, maybe an acting coach or something (although I imagine if that was revealed he'd get all sorts of stick for it).

@Ste_S is it easy mode for Starmer? He has a far more united opposition than he did, and one which is also encroaching on labour ground by spending more (even as they lurch to the right on other issues); a national emergency means people want to feel they can trust their government; and the last labour election results were some of the worst in history.

Whether you think other labour leaders had it worse or not partly depends on whether you think people thought he was crap because they believed the attacks on him, or whether people attacked him because he was crap.

You're also ignoring that is Starmer is getting an easier ride from media, that might be because of his actions and a reason for taking that path. Isn't that just strategy?

I completely agree with this worry. One of my biggest concerns is that people aren't rational and they conflate joking BS statements from a liar who'll say anything for 'authenticity', and careful (slightly wooden) performances seem cagey.

People are idiots.

Trump.

You're also ignoring that is Starmer is getting an easier ride from media, that might be because of his actions and a reason for taking that path. Isn't that just strategy?

They consider him non-threatening because he either openly backs the Tories or makes criticisms that are so vague or weird that they don't matter.

No one is able to explain how this translates into taking votes from the Tories.

Not sure that's a true representation of what's going on. We're in the middle of a global pandemic, where 000s/0000s die every day. The media are pretty busy reporting on that.

I completely agree with this worry. One of my biggest concerns is that people aren't rational and they conflate joking BS statements from a liar who'll say anything for 'authenticity', and careful (slightly wooden) performances seem cagey.

People are idiots.

Trump.

100%

Although Starmer is supposed to be the charismatic, good looking, electable leader Labour's been looking for since 2007. I do think he'll get better with time, though. Even Corbyn did.

This is one of the real failures of progressive politics. Progressivism is unintentionally racist and classist so yeah, a populist shaped vacuum sucks up all of the votes and as can be see so clearly you can't win anything with only the metropolitan vote.

EDIT. Not really the right post to reply to.

I do find it a bit irritating to be lectured about how bad our current polls are from people who spent the last year deliberately misrepresenting and undermining the party's positions

Bit of a role reversal isn't it?

Fine, but shouting about how evil the Tories were all the time didn't work either, for pretty obvious reasons. That seemed to activelt give votes to Tories?

To be honest I think he's just following polling, at least some of which suggests that at a time of national crisis they want him to be constructive.