Here’s the issue: Keir Starmer’s neoliberal, right-wing Labour Party is in pole position (or should that be “poll” position) to win the next general election by a landslide – but has the same policies as Rishi Sunak’s Tory government.

Starmer, and his shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves, have both said they will not impose any policies that change the current status quo that is making the super-rich much richer, driving working people and the poor further into poverty, and ushering privatisation into public services to make them cash cows for fat cats (as we’ve seen with energy and water).

So, what is the point of voting for their party?

It’s actually worse than ‘Tory Fibs’ is suggesting. Starmer, Reeves and the rest don’t just want power for its own sake – they want it in order to ensure that power cannot be taken by anybody with plans that would actually improve the quality of life here, with public services that actually serve the public well, fair pay for everyone and a social security system that doesn’t persecute people who need help.

Influential people are now starting to accept that this is the situation. It is the reason academics have contacted Starmer, urging him to change his mind.

The letter by 70 economists and social policy experts, states that they

are concerned that your current economic programme for government will not transform the economic orthodoxy that has made this country poorer, less cohesive and more unequal than fifteen years ago.

The maintenance or extension of cuts in the current economic climate will only serve to deepen the poverty and hardship many are already facing.

They urge Starmer to turn

from an out of date, economically and socially destructive approach towards a model which improves wellbeing, works in alignment with our environment, and achieves social justice.

Failure to table an alternative will mean not only wasting that opportunity but many lives and futures as well.

Unpack that a bit:

Starmer Labour’s current approach is out of date.

It is economically and socially destructive.

And the party’s current policies will destroy many lives.

Alternative – workable – policies are suggested all the time. Here’s one, from a former Labour leader:

But it has fallen on deaf ears. Starmer isn’t interested.

His attitude represents a huge u-turn for party still known as “Labour” and its leader. Only a few years ago, he was claiming that his party would replace the current system with something completely different. But this week Justin Madders, Starmer’s shadow minister for employment rights, confirmed that this had been abandoned for a “continuity Tory” approach:

Here’s Damo to explain Starmer’s – and Reeves’s – economic policy, and why it is so harmful, in a little more detail:

It seems clear that Starmer has undergone a major change of heart, turning away from the people Labour is supposed to serve, and towards the city fat cats who are leeching our money away from us.

Madders tried desperately to deny any such change during his media turn:

Saul Staniforth (above) is right: if a leader’s principles depend on economic circumstances, then they are not principles. If they were principles, Starmer would have the economic circumstances under constant review, with a demand out to all his advisers for them to provide him at all times with plans that would achieve the needs of those principles in any situation.

The situation now has been summed up – again by ‘Tory Fibs’ – thus:

Yes. Both are failing us – the citizens of the UK.

In times like this, the electorate has a duty to look elsewhere for a government-in-waiting – not to cling to forlorn hopes that Starmer is a secret socialist who will turn back to the left as soon as he has installed himself in Downing Street. We see no evidence for this at all.

The Green Party has good economic plans. So do the Independents who used to represent Labour but have left because of the likes of Starmer and Reeves.

Have you looked at what they are offering? Or are you determined to vote for policies that will harm you terribly, simply because of some outdated tribal loyalty?

Now is the time to work out what you stand for – and to demand it from your representatives.

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