Labour’s ‘boil a frog’ tactic is pulling the party away from voters but towards rich donors
Many years ago, a right-wing cuckoo in the Labour Party called Peter Mandelson assured the party’s then-leaders that they could shift their policies as far to the political right as they fancied because Labour voters didn’t have anywhere else to go.
He was wrong; at every general election after the 1997 landslide, the party lost voters as socialists abandoned what they saw increasingly as a party of Tories in red ties. It took the arrival of Jeremy Corbyn as leader to reverse the trend, with the re-injection of genuinely transformative policies.
And we all know what happened to him: right-wingers he had allowed to remain in the party (in the belief that it should be a genuinely “broad church”, whatever that means?) stabbed him in the back and sabotaged the 2017 (and probably the 2019) general election, eventually forcing him out.
Now, under Mandelson acolyte Keir Starmer, Labour is once-again a hard-right party. He has abandoned any “continuity Corbyn” left-wing pledges in order to follow policies that are indistinguishable from those of Rishi Sunak’s current Conservative government.
Despite this, Starmer’s Substitute Tory Party (formerly Labour) is being tipped to win the next general election by a landslide. Why?
It could be because the Sunak government is now blatantly corrupt, with new evidence of ministers (including the prime minister) lining their own pockets and those of their cronies in big business emerging every day.
It could also be because Starmer has drip-fed his right-wing policies into Labour’s programme for government slowly – giving party members and tribal followers an opportunity to forget (or simply fail to notice) the cumulative lurch to the far right that they represent:
I feel like we are witnessing a social experiment.
The Labour party is trying to see how much extremism its members will support, by doing it "Boil a frog," style.
Little by little.
If the last nudge to the right didn't cause you to leave then we'll try another.
Still keep you?— David Williams (@MrDaveyWilliams) August 29, 2023
Look at the recent announcement that a Labour government will continue to inflict poverty on 1.1 million UK children in defiance of the party’s own reason for existing (lifting working and working-class people out of poverty).
After this announcement, polls showed no lessening of enthusiasm for a Labour government – and only 20 Labour MPs seem keen to remind their leaders of the party’s duty to its members and supporters:
20 .. Pathetic … Corbyn dealt with 172 … They're all middle class managers looking out for their bank accounts https://t.co/bfTKVqvjKd
— Rin 💙 RIP Labour ☠️ #GTTO (@rins2pworth) August 29, 2023
Why the lurch rightwards?
Obviously this is where Starmer’s political loyalties lie. He was never interested in re-balancing the economy to stop rich employers from impoverishing their workers, or to stop the destruction of our environment for the sake of a quick profit, or to stop the privatisation of our national treasures like the NHS for another quick profit.
But there’s a financial necessity too. One clear detrimental result of his rightward lurch has been an exodus of members away from a Labour Party they now consider toxic. This, along with a series of poor financial decisions, mean Starmer’s party very quickly frittered away the more-than £12 million Jeremy Corbyn had put in its bank account.
It needed funds – and went looking in the same place as the Tories:
Starmer isn't dragging the Labour Party right because that's where the voters are.
Starmer's dragging the Labour Party right because that's where the "donors" are.
This isn't pragmatism over idealism. It's corruption over democracy. https://t.co/p26tHOm3I0
— Frank Owen's Legendary Paintbrush🥀🇵🇸🇾🇪 (@OwenPaintbrush) August 29, 2023
The result is clear: two parties – Labour and the Tories – with the same policies, because they have the same people bankrolling them.
And with Starmer’s Labour working for big business, another element of the UK’s broken political system is coming into clearer focus:
Don’t be surprised Labour has exact same policies as the Tories. This is the system running as it should.
Problem is not Sunak or Starmer. It’s that Britain’s not a democracy. It’s an oligarchy.
Whole charade is predicated on you having no real choice👇pic.twitter.com/R4W6RXibjr
— Matt Kennard (@kennardmatt) August 30, 2023
That’s right. It seems the UK has been controlled by the same tiny group of super-rich influencers for many decades, with the wishes of voters coming a distant second to their selfish desires.
Continuing to vote for Labour means continuing to let this tiny minority run the rest of us into the ground for their own profit and perverse enjoyment.
It makes no sense at all.
And yet the polls show that is exactly what the majority of people want.
If you know anybody who has been misled or is deluded in this way, then for the sake of the United Kingdom and everyone in it, please explain their mistake to them. It might take a while but it will be worth it in the long run.
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The Labour candidate in the Uxbridge by election was centrally imposed.
I think it highly unlikely, therefore, that his decision to oppose the ULEZ expansion was all his own work. I think Starmer was probably involved.
Labour could have won on the issue if it had not chosen to run away.
Some people say that you cannot trust Starmer. But in one very real sense that is wrong: You can trust him to betray you.
Talk to you friends and help expose the true nature of Starmer and why we should not vote Labour whilst he is in charge of it.
Blair and Brown as Prime Ministers were even worse than the Tories against working class women pensioners and to the 1950s to 1980s born ladies.
Labour since the late 1970s has had a continuous extreme ageist misogyny against the retirement money of working class women.
Tories stopped the prior version of triple lock annual increase of state pension money from 1980, and Blair and Brown’s Labour governments continued that policy.
From 1983 and continued through Labour’s governments, men got automatic National Insurance credits when on unemployment or sick benefit, without a requirement to seek work, til even men lost that in 2018. This was not granted to women when they lost state pension / full works pension from age 60 since 2011.
Blair and Brown stopped the Widows Pension from women aged in their 40s til 60.
They also halved inherited state second pension, from the original 100 per cent.
Not til 2003 did the top waged pay worker National Insurance contributions above the maximum salary threshold of that system. Then paid only 1 per cent and today still only 2 per cent, whilst working class pay the full 12 per cent.
The list of discriminations by Labour against the vital retirement money of the state pension to women continues in a long list.
Labour’s 1997 to 2010 governments failed to get rid of the Tory 1995 pension act that rose women’s pension age from 60 to 65, and added pension age 66, 67 and 68 from 2007.
To men and women the loss of money is from 60 as women lose pension money and men and women the same lose pensioner benefits, including Pension Credit as single men and women.
Pensioner husbands lost Pension Credit from 2019 when the wife is below the risen pension age, which is worse now to the 1960s ladies, who turned 60 from 2020 and have pension age 67 from Labour.
Women have pension age 68 born from 1980 onwards from Labour.
Only a potential new party can put the National Insurance Fund on the firm foundation of a human right, being a mutual, people owned, and bring back pension age 60, with the means to fund compensations as well from changes to National Insurance. As well as policies for all ages.
Seeking volunteer admin (costs you nothing but your time) to bring the party into existence, please. No technical knowledge in running a party brand required as have sourced a specialist law firm in London.
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http://www.over50sparty.org.uk