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I really hope this is something that Miliband and the rest of the party can work around. A party is not the leader, but we cannot go through another decade with leadership not giving climate change the incredibly serious treatment it requires.
I'd be genuinely surprised if he got that passionate about anything.
I know they need to win back Red Wall Labour voters but with the bold green policy Ed Miliband favours, they might get more young people enthused and out to vote which could be crucial in a lot of constituencies. I can't see why they wouldn't vote Green and voting intentions show quite a few people on the left leaning that way.
Young people don't vote in big enough numbers to make any difference in elections though. There might have been an increase when Corbyn was leader, but they were largely racking up votes in places where they were already winning, so it was useless.
Unfortunately, it's the 60+ brigade who decide elections and whose votes the parties need to court. Which is why every party is a NIMBY party.
Starmer is about to change this dynamic with the addition of younger voters and EU residents.
It's very annoying that you're completely spot on. There has been decent evidence of the younger vote making a substantial dent in Welsh politics, but that's understandable considering the change in voter laws, but the rest of the UK? Yeah, no chance.
Not until something major comes to pass anyhow, guess we can hope.
I thought it didn't make much of an impact, and reduced overall voting percentages because they didn't turn out?
Starmer is a proven lawyer.
I think that's unfair to lawyers, and too fair to Starmer. Man's a bare-faced liar.
It's an old line by the late Peter Cook uttered during one of Private Eye's many libel trials.
I know.
You can never be too unfair to lawyers. I note that Shakespeare agrees with me on this one:
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."
Still too kind to Starmer.
Starmer “wasn’t interested in hope and change”.
With each passing day Starmer becomes repugnant to someone like me who was a traditional Labour voter. A right-wing Starmer government could enable decades of future neoliberal Tory ones.
Is there a particular mechanism are you worried about in that regard? Off the top of my head there's the Overton window type stuff and just the elimination of the leftist voice that has historically come from labour. I'm more scared of the tories figuring their shit out and realising that all they have to do is not say the quiet part out loud to be electable again, which is kind of independent of starmer.
After years of being a Labour member and stepping back and taking a good look at things, I now can’t help but see Labour as controlled opposition (and more or less just one aspect of the same political party - much like the bipartisan USA system).
I think it’s always been this way, though. Perhaps the great gains for democracy and socialism in Britain have always happened as a result of the ruling class seeing revolution abroad and knowing they need to concede at home. Perhaps, Labour has always been the mechanism for that.
I heard David Lammy on LBC yesterday doing his best impression of a Tory being outraged that someone dared to throw orange confetti at a wedding. And I felt I really have little in common with him.
I guess concessions are better than nothing. But I have a similar feeling about alienation from Starmer labour. I was, at least in principal, in favour of moderation of policy to get more electoral success. I'm getting a "not like that" illustration of why I was wrong in real time.
I'm not sure that in this period of history we're going to see that. I think the big gains for working people happened first at the start of the 20th Century (universal vote) and 1945 (Welfare State). These things happened around the same times across the West. I tend to think that they were a response to the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the fear of Western countries welcoming the Soviet armies after 1945. Since then we've seen reversals of social gains. Certainly since 1980s neoliberalism economic policies ruthlessly pursued by governments of the Left and Right.
Out of interest did you join the party with the wave of others in order to vote for Jeremy Corbyn or were you a member of the party for years before this?
Long before Corbyn. I'd believed that a Labour govt - even if centre-right - was better for people than anything else. After the Blair years, I'd say that a Labour government relocates some funding towards the most obvious extremes of poverty but other than that carried on the neoliberal agenda it inherited from Thatcher and Major.
I worked in education and the last Labour government continued Tory policies, introduced forms of privatised funding (PfI) and enabled Michael Gove's "reforms". Some of the worst aspects of education - the various "National Strategies" were implemented under Labour and gave the Right some great ideas.
There really isn't much difference in policies between the main parties. Just differences in "style". You pick your team and defend them whatever. It's another form of what James O'Brien calls elsewhere the "Footballification" of politics.
Around 2010 a friend of mine made noises about getting into politics. They said they'd join the tory party not because they sided with them on policy or liked their ethos, but because they'd be "winning for a long time so that was the only way to have any impact". At the time it put me off my friend, but really I should have taken this as a lesson about where politicians come from and their motivation. Starmer just seems like a prime example of someone who sees the game as more important than the people of this country. Is that definitionally true of "centrists"? I can't believe a principled person can look at the state of the nation and think. Yes, we need to very urgently make no major changes.
I find myself largely in agreement with him.
It seems you can now categorise environmentalists into two distinct groups:
Group 1 prioritizes preservation over progress, insisting on halting all developmental projects to protect every speck of biodiversity. This includes everything from rare newt species to broader environmental concerns, which are used as reasons to oppose various forms of green energy initiatives such as battery factories, solar installations, wind and tidal turbines. The ironic consequence of this approach is that despite protecting individual species in the short term, long-term survival becomes more precarious as global warming accelerates unchecked.
Group 2, which I personally identify with, holds a more pragmatic view. This group acknowledges the inevitable environmental impact of green technologies, such as harm to individual species and certain ecosystem disturbances. Yet, they firmly believe that without expediting the implementation of green technology, we risk compromising the planet's overall sustainability.
While I understand and appreciate the intent behind the preservationist approach, I feel frustrated. In my view, their well-meaning actions might inadvertently exacerbate the very environmental crises we're striving to mitigate.
Seemed to me that Starmer falls in the “I don’t really believe there’s a climate catastrophe happening” camp.
If he did, he wouldn’t say stuff like this or - more importantly - avoid adopting policies that require immediate action when he gets into power.
“Tree huggers” = people who believe the climate catastrophe is an imminent existential crisis.
"Tree Huggers" to me is a short hand for Group 1 but that is subjective and either of us could be right.
I think it is a big claim to say Starmer doesn't believe in the climate catastrophe, we should probably have a bit more evidence before making such a claim.
I don't know why you'd think that given that the language is used specifically in rejection of miliband's green agenda which includes extensive investment in green energy.
You seem to have both set up a weird "group 1" strawman (that if it really exists is entirely marginalised from the actual debate) and an idealised version of starmer that doesn't correspond with his expressed views.
Those that prioritise preservation over progress have weaponised ecology to block development. They are sadly far from marginalised. For example a significant portion of NIMBYs abuse environmental law to block development from occurring near to them. You only have to look at the ban on on-shore wind for an example of this. People were worried about visual amenity, not ecology. That didn't stop them using ecology as part of their argument to get them banned.
Exactly. Your example about onshore wind (bird conservation as a convenient figleaf) shows precisely that NIMBYs are not environmentalists at all, hence not in "group1" by definition.
The "evidence" is clearly that the Green Agenda isn't at the top of Labour's plans. I heard Starmer on LBC last week refusing to defend ULEZ and Sadiq Khan. I heard Starmer also telling young environmentalists in Gillingham when challenged about which side of the climate debate he was on, saying "the side of economic growth." Two weeks ago, Starmer decided to u-turn on the Green Plan Labour had been developing.
What more evidence do you need?
If we do face an existential crisis then it means actually doing radical stuff. Postponing things until Rupert Murdoch or one of the other oligarchs tell us it's ok, isn't an option.
I heard Starmer on LBC last week refusing to defend ULEZ and Sadiq Khan.
Dont forget that Khan has green lit the Silvertown tunnel, which will have massive negative environmental impact on the east of London
Kind of, but right now all that traffic is pushed though the Blackwell tunnel, Woolwich or Dartford so if anything it's spreading it out a bit compared to now. That said, anyone using it will have to be ULEZ compliant now anyway.
I wasn’t aware of it. Now having read about it, I agree.
None of that has anything to do with his unprofessional outburst.
In your opinion, which you are entitled to hold.
In my opinion it does go some way towards explaining it. I feel Starmer falls into Group 2 here and the outburst was directed towards members of Group 1.
I've felt very much the same way myself and found myself saying things like "fuck newt lovers" when what I actually should be doing is explaining the above and advocating for members of Group 1 to join Group 2.
Starmer knows that the right wing is going to accuse him of being too cosy with climate protesters, so he’s desperate to appear tough on “tree huggers”. I doubt these anonymously attributed comments are real.