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Does Starmer need to gain ground with the left to win?
Why ask this rhetorical when your previous point was supposed to be:
I think it's a bit ridiculous to say it isn't for people on the left or progressives.
Your angle cannot simultaneously be: "Starmer doesn't need to pander to the left" and "saying Starmer isn't pandering to the left is ridiculous".
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Not really incompatible.
There's a difference between aiming to offer enough to a group to keep their support, and pandering to or gaining ground with a group.
I think he's trying to do the former. He can still be "for" the left or progressives (both things I would say about myself) even if in some ways he's trying to appeal to a wider audience.
Because it implies that an electoral strategy is to pick one group from what you've seemed to identify as tribes, rather than trying to build breadth.
Does Starmer need to gain ground with the left to win? Or does he need to gain ground elsewhere whilst trying not to alienate the left? Yes, obviously there's a question about how well he's doing that, but we've had a 'play to the base' Labour leader and it didn't work electorally. There needs to be an attempt to look more broadly.