Keir Starmer needs to be persuaded to support socialist social care policy. He must go
Keir Starmer: someone recently said he’d run out of Brylcreem long before he ever gets to run the UK and on the basis of this failure, that is just as well.
This is a shocking indictment of the man who pretends to be the Labour Party’s leader.
Keir Starmer had to be told to oppose the Conservative plan to increase National Insurance that poor people pay – increasing poverty – under the pretext that it is to fund social care.
National Insurance rates are 12% on weekly earnings of between £162 and £892, and 2% on weekly earnings above £892. And only paid if you are an employee. It's a tax on poor people with a job that rich people don't pay, which is why the Tories want to increase it by 2%.
— Ian (@biscuitsgod) September 3, 2021
It’s worse than that – it is class warfare, and a class war in which Starmer seems firmly on the side of the rich few against the masses who made him Labour leader.
Firstly, let’s address the elephant in the room: nobody has to be taxed to pay for social care. The government owns the magic money tree and can simply create the cash.
The principal reason we talk about people being taxed to pay for such measures is because taxation is needed to control inflation – but inflation hasn’t been a problem whenever the Tory government has created money for itself and its friends over the last 11 years, so it doesn’t seem a problem.
If we accept that improving social care may cause inflation, then there are better ways to tax that problem away. For a start, there is a very rich part of society that isn’t taxed nearly enough – and won’t be forced into starvation or onto the streets if they are asked to pay a little more:
Social care should be modelled on the NHS: Free at the point of use, accessible to everyone who needs it.
That should be funded by tax rises on the super-rich and big businesses, not by raising taxes on the working class.
— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) September 3, 2021
The issue with Starmer that this has revealed is the fact that he had to be told – in fact, it seems he is resisting calls for him to support this commonsense policy. And people are calling him out on it:
“Pressure grows on Starmer to back tax on rich to pay for social care”.
Really!! If @Keir_Starmer needs pressure to make him see this, then he is definitely in the wrong job! Not representing the working class! And has the establishment’s interest over ours!
Time to go Keith!! pic.twitter.com/yObq9BnbqY— Emz The Socialist #FreePalestine 🇵🇸 (@EmzTheSocialist) September 4, 2021
Even Tory ministers are coming out against the government plan – before Starmer:
When I read the quote in this picture I was like oh great Labour are finally getting their shit together and giving proper attack lines.
Then I read the tweet and saw it was from… a Tory minister.@philbc3 might be onto something. https://t.co/qyKpvCvAjE
— Grace Blakeley (@graceblakeley) September 5, 2021
(Sorry but I don’t know who @philbc3 is or what that person may have said about it. Blame Grace, not me.)
The worst part of this is that previous Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had a perfectly good policy for funding social care – and Starmer hasn’t even had the wit to mention it. Fortunately Corbyn’s shadow chancellor is on hand to remind us all:
Just a gentle reminder of what was in our document “Funding Real Change” explaining the funding of Labour’s Manifesto, which included funds for social care. “Labour will tax capital gains at the same level as income tax.” Looks like the idea is catching on https://t.co/jmLfZclgVQ
— John McDonnell MP (@johnmcdonnellMP) September 5, 2021
This last comment is perhaps the most incisive – and the most damning against Starmer:
https://twitter.com/Normanjam671/status/1434507624263921666
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Definitely no War on Poverty pls. Look at the results of the War on Drugs and the War on Terror – more of both.
Mike:
Having read this essay on Corbynism and Starmer it is well worth reading, as it fairly describes the attitudes that persisted at those times and comments on the growth of Labour under Jeremy Corbyn, where Starmer who promised to maintain it, could have capitalised on it rather than as he done, thrown the baby out with the bathwater.
here’s a postscript, where the article makes that clear:
Postscript
Since writing this article in early December 2020, the dangers highlighted here appear to be affecting the party’s polling. Surveys have consistently reported a figure for the Conservatives of between 40–44 per cent, while Labour has slipped back and now posts 10 point deficits. Support has been lost to the Liberal Democrats, Greens, and the nationalist parties, as the argument outlined here forecast. Likewise, Starmer’s hitherto positive ratings are now in retreat.25 The Shadow frontbench’s strategy—which has seen Labour continue with the process criticisms while at the same time trying to burnish its patriotic credentials—has not sustained the party’s recovery. Similarly, in the first few months of the new year, Labour opposed Boris Johnson’s plans to raise corporation tax, reluctantly voted against the government’s Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Bill and over 2021’s Easter weekend, embroiled itself in a damaging row with Labour’s LGBTQ organisation after Starmer visited and endorsed the work of the Jesus House, a church that endorses so-called homosexual conversion therapy.26 Taken together, Starmerism is not so far proving to be a winning formula for keeping Labour’s voter coalition together. Quite the opposite.
Full article here:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-923X.12996
I don’t think that Starmer cares what happens to the Labour Party, some would ask who is pulling his strings more than what does he really believe in? Which is the position I would adopt, sadly though with a corrupt mass media that serves itself by deflection rather than the reality, people never have the ability to see the wood for the trees, and so follow trends rather than facts.
I disagree, this is exactly what National Insurance was created for. What SHOULD happen is that NI should be reformed. There should be no UEL and there should be no lower rates. The lower amount should also be higher than the Living Wage.
The main reason, in the past, for ensuring that NI was raised was that ‘technically’ NI isn’t a ‘tax’ It’s ‘National Insurance’ the fund for the NHS and other benefits. It was how some politicians of the past weasel worded their way out of breaching promises not to raise taxes.
Simply updating the system would itself raise the necessary funds and, if done along the lines suggested, would also provide some relief to those at the bottom end..