UK Politics

Why reference a fable at all if you're going to totally ignore it's message?

The tories have been the same arrogant, entitled breed the whole time. Labour have still lost to them repeatedly so it seems weird to chalk it up to luck this time.

You're partly right, of course. Everything is always down to multiple factors.

However, Starmer clearly deserves some credit for Labour's success (and, I think, some credit for the Tories' failures). It's perfectly possible for the Tory vote share to fall and for Labour's to fall, too, which we saw happen under Corbyn, or for the Tories to have an unpopular leader and to still win because the Labour leader makes themselves even more unpopular (as we also saw under Corbyn and Miliband). Those things aren't happening now, so Starmer must be doing something right.

He didn't cancel all the pledges. This is Tory misinformation that some people have swallowed. Here are the pledges. In fact, looking at the headline of each pledge, he's still promising the same broad directions for all ten of them.

Some policy details have changed (justifiably, I think). But not completely. For example, under pledge 1, they've found other taxes to raise instead of income tax: different policies, same overall goal. Is that a broken pledge? Maybe, but it seems a bit much to say he has not only to to tax the rich but do it in the exact way he promised five years ago lest he be accused of lying.

Others, like pledge 3, on climate justice, are still entirely in place, as are 7, 8 and 10.

Some, have changed a lot. I don't think the foreign policy or immigation stuff really resembles his current policy positions. But I also don't think he should let himself be dragged down by unpopular positions once their unpopularity is clear.

I don't personally think that shifting specific policies, but keeping the clear overall direction, is such a big deal. Your mileage may vary, obviously, but we should at least talk about what has actually happened, not repeat Tory propaganda at each other!

More accurately it was “Starmer changes his pledges more than he changes his underwear” followed by:

“That’s just not true”

Followed by a lot of discussion pointing out that while he may have scaled back some aspects of his pledges, he has also gone to great lengths not to promise very much at all over the last 5 years because the Tories keep making it financially impossible to promise anything.

Far be it from me to refute such diligent investigative reporting but this is the paper you say “no you keep it” when handing a homeless person a pound, an online petition, the National paper of the SNP and a reddit thread.

Even if Starmer did fundamentally change his beliefs on every policy listed, the fact that in 5 years since he became leader we are now in record debt, our NHS is all but crushed, our current government is so overtly corrupt there are billions being stolen every year and my local river is literally full of shit… I think any opposition leader can readjust their priorities a little.

A lot of it was a perception issue, certainly the Israeli government has done a lot of damage to the reputation of Israel.

Corbyn was playing against a stacked deck as the UK media is Tory-aligned, but he failed to change the narrative.