That Starmer fella...

15%

Yeh, imagine what that will look like next year when in full blown recession, energy prices have been felt over the winter,b inflation has flowed through to everything and Truss has u-turned on big tax cuts for PAYE, frozen public sector pay but probably cut corporation tax and top rate of tax for high earners and no one has gone to Rwanda

Yeh, imagine what that will look like next year

a drop to 12% ?

Tbh I don't think it's a bad policy but it's a drop in the ocean and the weakness of it betrays a poor grasp of communication strategy.

I get that the strategy is to drip feed various policies to deal with the cost of living crisis on a daily basis to make it more difficult for Tories to criticise.

But after Brown did his bold intervention we needed to respond to that by being bold too. Otherwise it looks watered down.

It's a start, is the best I can say. It's not a bad policy. But compared to what we need the delivery is beyond lacklustre.

My perception of Starmer is he doesn’t stand for anything.

I appears that he follows what he thinks will appeal to groups, often floating voters, and this makes him look insincere.

I think stonehedge did a pretty solid summary of what he stands for a few pages back.

It's mainly centrist dad suff like human rights and the rule of law.

Doing that pointy thumb first finger thing is contrived. For that reason alone I'm out.

Totally this. Tory power thumb point can totally GTFO

I appears that he follows what he thinks will appeal to groups, often floating voters, and this makes him look insincere.

I think this is a fair criticism. I don't think it's true - I think Starmer has fairly decent, solid principles, he just knows that if he's honest about them he'll lose the next election - but I also think that this means they're they're missing something fundamental in terms of the offering and they've not replaced it with anything else.

If you think of any successful politician you can sum up what they stand for in a few words. Blair: fair meritocracy. Trump: protectionist psychopathy. Biden: pragmatic boringness. These impressions might be wrong, but they're a set of values you can hang policy announcements off the back of. They're context.

Starmer is missing his context. He's defined what he isn't. He needs to define what he is. And I think he might've missed the boat on that. He tried to do it at conference but who the hell watches conference? No-one normal. So it's allowed this void to sort of take shape any time he announces policy, it feels as though they aren't grounded on any firm principles.

Maybe it'll be enough. But someone who isn't a strong interviewer/speaker should compensate for it with the back office stuff - strategy, policy wonkery, baseline value repetition and establishment. I'm worried the failure to address this gap in good time speaks to a weakness in the back office stuff too.

I think most people would sum him up as the status quo and that isn't what people want from opposition

Critique of the new announced energy/cost of living strategy
https://twitter.com/RichardJMurphy/status/1559067346903437312

Criticism seems to be 'this is a short term plan to get us through the next six months, not a long term plan to get us through the next six years'.

Which is true as far as it goes but that's a bit like slagging off an orange for not being an apple. It's not meant to be an apple. It's an orange. This policy isn't going to be enacted - Starmer is the leader of the opposition - but to show that it is possible to have a solution, but the Tories have so far declined to bother with one. It's a 'pressure the Tories' policy not a 'this is what we'd do as a party of government' policy. It's working too:

https://twitter.com/LBC/status/1559072038018600963

Given that Liz Truss is pretty much the definition of a weather vane, this could work. If (and it's probably a pretty big if) Labour can create enough pressure around this then the Tories will likely enact a watered-down version. It's nowhere near enough, but a lot better than 10% of the population being in fuel poverty in a couple of months' time.

I don't think many view him as the current status quo. You can't get much further away from Johnson.

I disagree, personality wise he might not be Johnson but on policy for the last couple of years it has been hard to view him as the change candidate, offering mainly tweaks around the edges of current policy, the differences of policy between ERG headbangers and One Nation tories are probably further apart than between what the opposition party have been offering versus Johnson.

I think what he tried to set out at conference actually was OK and Rachel Reeves economic plan was reasonable but you rarely here them articulate these positions when challenged and land up sounding like they don't offer an alternative vision

Johnson spunked his way into the place as different from the status quo, riding on the sewage stained coattails of Trump draining the swamp from his evil, swampy lair at the heart of the swamp. I think when people say Keir is status quo they're thinking down, down to the quo of old, when politicians were just a bit dull and normal rather than openly narcissistic psychopaths.

What potential issues would there be of having both publicly owned energy and private? Why cant there be competition between public energy and private.

10%? More like 50% if you define fuel poverty as spending more than a quarter of your income on heating and electricity.

Depends how you define it. I was quoting End Fuel Poverty’s statistics and, tbf, they do have quite a narrow definition of what fuel poverty is.

According to them, it’s gotta take you below the poverty line. But I do agree with you that the number of people who are gonna really feel it is much higher than 10%, me included.

On that note, is anyone signed up for Don’t Pay UK?

This policy isn't going to be enacted

Indeed - and that's the fundamental privilege of opposition that Starmer needs to remember he can use! Sometimes he seems so pre-occupied with looking like a "party of government" (whatever that means) that he leaves open goals.

But if he offers pie in the sky tosh then that leave them open to the old arguments of labour economics crap with money. Which the public always lap up.

Indeed - and that's the fundamental privilege of opposition that Starmer needs to remember he can use

For whatever reason though the conservatives can just make shit up and no one worries about how financially realistic it is but if labour don't fully cost their every suggestion they are financially irresponsible.

Don't you remember Liebour cRaShEd ThE eCoNoMy!!!1!

Liebour cRaShEd ThE eCoNoMy!!!1!

See, it's written down and is now trufax.

Down Down I see what you done did there...

🤭