That Starmer fella...

Is this a genuine question?

Like any political party, it's trying to get a broad enough sector of voters to win power. The policies are then left leaning, but intended to have fairly wide support.

I think it's a bit ridiculous to say it isn't for people on the left or progressives.

But you know, maybe I'm too centrist for you, I've even voted lib dem before.

He apologised for using the acronym MILF. It doesn't say he wasn't repeating what other said.

What's unreasonable about this question?

Starmer isn't making any significant gains in the polls, so "who are these actions meant to appeal to?" is a fair concern, given that they don't seem to be connecting with an

Which of Starmer's policies or actions are intended to gain ground with "the left"?

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.

Which of Starmer's policies or actions are intended to gain ground with "the left"?

Does he really need to gain ground with the "left"? To be brutal there aren't really many other options for them.

The Tories have a huge boost at the moment with the vaccine program going well. Labour were ahead in the polls a couple of months ago.

Anecdotally Starmer seems to be making a positive impact on a lot of those voters that Labour had lost but years away from a general election during a national crisis probably isn't a time to judge with any certainty.

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".

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.

Does he really need to gain ground with the "left"? To be brutal there aren't really many other options for them.

Yes. Labour loses seats by margins smaller than total Green vote share.

Sure, but (despite this being an oversimplification given there isn't a straight line of political preference) to get all of those voters to the left, are you really sure that they won't lose more on the right?

The possible pool of voters to the left seems a lot smaller than the possible pool of voters to the right. Are they more likely to gain all of the green votes but lose none to the right? Or gain a smallish proportion of floating Tory voters to the right but hope to lose fewer to the left than they gain?

Also bearing in mind a democratic legitimacy point, that policy aiming for the middle is probably preferable to policy aiming for either side of the spectrum (and therefore likely to be longer lasting, too)

Sure, but (despite this being an oversimplification given there isn't a straight line of political preference) to get all of those voters to the left, are you really sure that they won't lose more on the right?

I think there are two things here.

One, your begging the question that they will gain votes from those on the right.

Two, if they do move to the right, the issue (which started this discussion) is returned to. Who are the Labour party positioning themselves for?

The possible pool of voters to the left seems a lot smaller than the possible pool of voters to the right. Are they more likely to gain all of the green votes but lose none to the right? Or gain a smallish proportion of floating Tory voters to the right but hope to lose fewer to the left than they gain?

No denying the truth of this. Swing voters are gold dust for political parties. So the strategy makes perfect sense from that perspective.

But it shouldn't be denied that it's dangerous, or put forward that the policy is de facto correct. There's no evidence that Labour is able to capture those/enough voters on the right (that I'm familiar with), and there is evidence Labour will shed other voters on the left which will cost seats. Add to this the larger, normative, issue of what the policy cost is to capture them, and you can understand people's worries.

Also bearing in mind a democratic legitimacy point, that policy aiming for the middle is probably preferable to policy aiming for either side of the spectrum (and therefore likely to be longer lasting, too)

I'm sorry, but I don't see that at all. I don't think centrist = democratic legitimacy. A party which is able to win votes from the people who support their policies, and then represent them/those policies in parliament, is the essence of democratic legitimacy. An electoral system which makes this more difficult (i.e., FPTP) is a hindrance to this, and therefore, democratic legitimacy. That is, if Labour is forced to move to the centre/right to gain political power (rather than because of ideas/beliefs), then democratic legitimacy is questioned.

Picking up all the Green votes seems incredibly unlikely though, they're not a directly analogous party to Labour. The Green vote increased between 2017 and 2019 so they were clearly looking for something more than left leaning policies.

Plus, doing so without losing other support would be incredibly difficult. Trident is the obvious example: would binning that to win Green votes win more votes than the policy lost?

Beggars belief to me that anyone could read that report and come out of it thinking 'no that's absolutely fine and the govt shouldn't have stepped in'. This isn't some football match, we are meant to be the party of workers, and workers at Liverpool Council legitimately were scared for their safety. I'm angry too, but I'm angry at the people at fault in Liverpool Council who gave the Tories the stick to beat us with.

The people Starmer's Labour is for is the voters. I admit I'm not super impressed by him - I sit left of centre - but I think he's made a calculation that the two wings of the party are never going to unite, and he needs to focus on where the voters are. And the voters do not follow this stuff the way we wonks do. It's not what I want to hear. But if the strategy means a Labour government is more likely then it's worth a go.

If we make a net loss on May's local election I'll agree that strategy isn't working. But honestly, I can't see that happening. People forget how far we've come in a year:

Election Maps UK
@ElectionMapsUK
Westminster Voting Intention:
CON: 39% (-7)
LAB: 37% (+8)
LDM: 9% (-1)
Via
@BMGResearch
, 16-19 Mar.
Changes w/ 7-9 Apr 2020.

Picking up all the Green votes seems incredibly unlikely though

I'm not suggesting picking up Green voters, I'm suggesting Labour will lose supporters to the Green party - as has happened (and the LibDems, but I don't see that happening at the same levels again any time soon).

Just to add - the demographic shift which is potentially going to be very damaging to the Tories, and the right in general, is age. Labour has incredible potential here. But these are people who will happily vote Green if Labour doesn't appear to be the party which represents them.

Quick responses on these:

1. I guess I reject the idea that moving a bit in one direction means no longer being 'for' the left. It's a question of degree, so if they were entirely throwing away labour policy then I'd accept this, but I don't think they are - it feels like the left of the party aren't used to not getting their way.

2. Maybe I don't mean democratic legitimacy - not saying that a majority view is illegitimate. But stable and preferential? Yes, I do think that. The more a party is happy taking positions which are closer to the middle ground, the less the chance there is that anything enacted (if they get in power) is then simply changed again when they lose power. I think that stability is an important and good thing, and (as we've seen with brexit) nudging over 50% to pass something that also has huge opposition is not a recipe for balanced, good politics

'no that's absolutely fine and the govt shouldn't have stepped in'

Literally no one is saying that this is "absolutely fine". The point is that the council fucked up, and should be held to account, but that the people who should be appointed to correct the mess should be democratically appointed by the people of Liverpool. It's also a devastating self-own for Labour to effectively say 'we can't manage this problem, send in the Tories'.

Here's noted hard left Leninist Andrew Adonis making just that point in the Times (behind a paywall so forgive the combo of quote text and image):

John Dewey got it right: “The solution to the ills of democracy is more democracy”, it is not the suspension of democracy. Which is why the answer to Liverpool’s governance problems is to elect a new mayor as soon as possible, not for central government to send in commissioners and suspend the normal statutory operation of a large part of local government in the city, as Robert Jenrick has instructed.

it feels like the left of the party aren't used to not getting their way

[hollow laughter echoing around the universe for all eternity]

I guess I reject the idea that moving a bit in one direction means no longer being 'for' the left. It's a question of degree, so if they were entirely throwing away labour policy then I'd accept this, but I don't think they are - it feels like the left of the party aren't used to not getting their way.

Totally fair. It's pretty hard to tell where they're trying to move at the moment. What you do see, however, is Starmer distancing himself from the left. If this becomes a firmer position, and a move towards being centrist rather than left, this will have a knock-on effect on voters as we've seen it in the past. Again, I understand the strategy, the strategy is logical, but it's not without risks.

And beyond strategy, there are normative issues many may have with the approach, which leads to:

Maybe I don't mean democratic legitimacy - not saying that a majority view is illegitimate. But stable and preferential? Yes, I do think that. The more a party is happy taking positions which are closer to the middle ground, the less the chance there is that anything enacted (if they get in power) is then simply changed again when they lose power. I think that stability is an important and good thing, and (as we've seen with brexit) nudging over 50% to pass something that also has huge opposition is not a recipe for balanced, good politics

I agree that centrist parties can result in stable governments, but they also, largely, perpetuate the status quo. That's the point about stability. However, I don't think the status quo is sustainable. People are getting poorer, the environment is getting shitter, racism and sexism and ablism and other forms of injustice continue. People will make these things a priority in their voting preferences. Brexit wasn't (only) a result of non-centrist political beliefs. Those political beliefs were directly the outcome of decades of the status quo. In this was, centrist parties will only push people towards extremes.

I agree with all of that, except I'd argue that centrism doesn't mean things staying the same, it just means ending up somewhere that the largest number of people should be happy with (assuming people spread over left to right) - so centrist to me means moving to the left where policies have become fairly right over time.

centrism - trying to make right wing politics more palatable to the left, but never the other way round.

There's a whole discussion right above this message about how the intention is to appeal to voters who are further right in that they may vote Tory. The opposite of what you're sneering about

By enacting righter policies to convince them, and trying to keep any lefties on board by keeping those policies as palatable as possible. Although I also think it does actual work the other way to some extent when Rishi steals a load of labour policies and sells them to the right, although still manages to cut Tory donors in.

The whole Labour making any effort to appeal to the right of the party is a sell-out and sneering at the centrist dads seems quite a denial of where politics in this country is at the moment.

But it's both isn't it? Labour try and offer some stuff for those who are to the right of the members because that's where they're lacking support; however they don't try and change all of their policies, with the aim that when they're in power those same voters are convinced by the whole package and they get a further left policy platform than the Tories.

obviously when labour do it, they do so by reaching to the right, when Tories do it, they reach to the left...

Your take on this is significantly more reasonable than what I'm seeing in my FaceBook feed, which mostly seems to be based on Howard Beckett's gibberings and cowardly bullshit from the Tribune.