That Starmer fella...

I am surprised that #3 made the top 5 - is it high in voters' minds / has it got worse in the last decade? For anyone under the age of about 50 housing must be a lot higher.

He wrote to me today

Me too. Busy guy.

3 Make Britain’s streets safe

I assume it’s about repairing potholes. If my local Facebook / Nextdoor / WhatsApp’s are anything to go by it’s a vote winner.

If my local Facebook / Nextdoor / WhatsApp’s are anything to go by it’s a vote winner.

and getting hoodied scooter riders off the roads

potholes

My local Councillor said it's 90% potholes and dog shit that she hears about.

Are the potholes that bad you need the highest sustained growth in the G7 to deal with them?

he means put people in jail, he's been pretty pro jail for his entire career, and the few times he's spoken about policy are to hire cops and criminalise more behaviour

dude loves prisons, and it's not really sensational to say that

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jul/03/riot-prosecutions-sentences-keir-starmer

A vote for Labour on Thursday is a vote for more jobs, more police on the streets and to protect our NHS.

https://labour.org.uk/keir-starmers-open-letter-to-the-country-vote-labour-for-more-jobs-more-police-on-the-streets-and-to-protect-our-nhs/

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/sadiq-khan-london-mayor-labour-greenwich-b1986492.html

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/keir-starmer-tories-crime-police-government-b927354.html

Boris for prison 2024

Feed dogs asphalt, make them shit in potholes, 2 birds 1 stone.

housing must be a lot higher

Yeah, this really really really should have been one of the five

The amount of reported crime that leads to a successful prosecution has dropped to 4% under the Tories. It’s a huge issue for many people and a guaranteed vote winner. Whereas building houses is, sadly, controversial and not a vote winner so it’s completely understandable why he chose safer streets over more streets.

It doesn’t mean there won’t be policy changes to build more houses, when Blair came to power a lot of the more radical policies weren’t front and centre of the manifesto.

Sadly the British electorate seem to prefer short, snappy slogans to policy detail so you can understand why there’s just 5 focus areas.

Also, this map shows why housing is not a priority:

1 Attachment

he's been pretty pro jail for his entire career

He was director of public prosecutions. The most prison-putting job in the whole country. I can’t begin to imagine how much dissonance a left-leaning, socially conscious, empathic future Labour leader must have felt being in charge of putting people in prison.

That map is somewhat misleading

^ this.

74% not owning outright and the zone can still be blue I think?

Whether you like him or not (I don't particularly), his approval ratings are becoming impressive.

I'd say only a small portion of that is from leveraging Tory failures... and I can see some (enough) frustrated Tories voting for Starmer at the next election.

Right, so who should replace him?

Resting his ego, now there's some good advice

The only killer blow Starmer can deliver is at a General Election. Until that time he has to do what he can to get heard in a media landscape controlled by Tory leaning outlets.

I passionately want these fuckers out and that has to be the priority for any left leaning person. The last thing we need now is an infighting Labour Party, so let’s get behind the democratically elected leader and get the job done.

. If you look at their website every day, it's 90% stories about the Tories, and hardly anything about Labour. And when there are stories about Labour they are highly critical of them

I have started watching Novara news as they now have a nightly news show and they cover the issues I am interested in more often but as a left wing news outlet, they still shred Labour daily

Sadly the British electorate seem to prefer short, snappy slogans to policy detail so you can understand why there’s just 5 focus areas.

You need the headlines to decide if engaging and understanding the detail is something you should prioritise. Communication 101. Nothing to do with the capability of the electorate.

Park life?

I'd say that avoiding being taken down in the current climate IS progress! You need a path to power and then a plan, not the other way around.

There are some positioning wins from Labour/Starmer, for example: talking about the need for global standards/trade when Brexit topics come up which really creates stealthy alignment with EU standards/trade without being anti-Brexit, or becoming 'crap news' fodder.

good time to remember adam curtis's comments on liberal nihilism with starmer putting out his personal letter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKFhK40wDjE

I really liked his speech yesterday. Starmer has had a problem of being a poor performer, and launching too many detailed micro-policies without context. Yesterday was about fixing both those issues, and he acquitted himself admirably on both imo.

He doesn't need to be exciting. He doesn't need to be original. He just needs to not scare enough Tory voters that they'll take a punt, and by enough of a margin that we kick their corruption out of government for a generation.

There are plenty of criticisms to make of Starmer; he's far from a perfect politician. But at this point it's like criticising a cheese and pickle sandwich because it has the wrong type of pickle on it, when the only other option for lunch is a flaming bag of shit and rocks hurled at your face by a trebuchet.