Child poverty: this figure is from 2016 so it’s probably a lot worse now. But the official figures are based on average incomes – which have fallen – so the number of kids who are actually struggling to survive may be enormous.
Isn’t it incredible that the Levelling-Up minister, Michael Gove, can’t admit what his Tory governments have done over the last 13 years.
They have caused the worst fall in living standards since records began, pitched 14 million people into poverty – including four million children, forced millions into dependency on food banks, and they haven’t got a scrap of shame about it.
And the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg didn’t even have the guts to counter him about it.
Here’s Peter Stefanovic with what she should have said:
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Why are the so-called experts surprised that we all stopped buying non-essential items in November?
The cost of essentials – food, energy, housing – has rocketed due to stupid Tory political decisions; we don’t have the money to spare.
Did they really think we’re stupid enough to keep going off and buying things we can’t afford?
Apparently so:
Some of us predicted that the UK would fall into recession as a result of the idiocy of the Tory fools and we were right.
It seems they have no response to it, other than to express vacant surprise at the blindingly obvious.
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This being a bank holiday weekend, This Writer is either otherwise occupied or almost totally incapacitated, so I’m putting up material that has interested me – and I hope it interests you. Make of it what you will:
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This being a bank holiday weekend, This Writer is either otherwise occupied or almost totally incapacitated, so I’m putting up material that has interested me – and I hope it interests you. Make of it what you will…
… but I will say that I agree with Phil – if anyone had suggested that exports would plummet by a third before Brexit happened, it would have been condemned as “Project Fear” by Brexiteers.
This disaster became unavoidable after those damned fools seized control of the public discourse.
Here’s the clip:
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The excuses man: it seems Keir Starmer has gone back to his Big Book of Excuses to explain why so many former members have turned away from the Labour Party under his leadership. But his words don’t ring true.
Membership of the Labour party plummeted by nearly one-fifth in the year after Keir Starmer became leader, it has been revealed.
The party had 432,213 members at the end of 2021, down from 523,332 in 2020.
Starmer has claimed that this vertiginous drop in membership is an expected part of the political/electoral cycle – but this is not true. Either he has been fed false information or he is deliberately lying.
that the fall reflected a “very familiar pattern”.
He said the party’s membership figure “goes up dramatically” ahead of elections or leadership contests, then “flattens back down again”.
“I’ve looked at the patterns – they are exactly as we would have expected,” he added.
But this is belied by the figures for his immediate forerunner, Jeremy Corbyn’s, leadership.
On the day before the 2015 general election, when Ed Miliband was still leader, Labour’s membership stood at just 201,293.
Then Mr Corbyn was elected leader – and by January 10 the following year, membership had nearly doubled to 388,407.
By December 2017, the membership had surged to a high of 564,443 – possibly in response to Labour’s much-better-than-expected result in that year’s general election. That’s nearly three times as many members as when Ed Miliband had lost the election two and a half years previously.
It is now slightly more than two and a half years since Mr Corbyn lost the 2019 election to Boris Johnson. It would be wrong to compare his 363,250 surge in membership between 2015-17 with Starmer’s loss of 91,119 because there hasn’t been an election this year, but the numbers are still damning.
By December 2018, Mr Corbyn’s Labour had indeed lost members – but not as many as Starmer’s party. Membership stood at 518,659 – a fall of 45,784.
Membership started climbing again in advance of the 2019 general election. By the time of the leadership election in which Starmer was elected to run the party, membership was back up to 552,835.
Then it started haemorrhaging.
By November 2020 it stood at 495,961 – the first time it had dipped below half a million since Mr Corbyn had taken it to that height.
So whereas Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership saw party membership rise by more than 300,000 members – and stay there, Keir Starmer has overseen a continuous exodus of 120,622 people during his time as leader.
That’s not a familiar pattern – certainly not when compared with the meteoric rises seen under Mr Corbyn.
If Labour can’t even be honest about its own membership, how can we ever trust Starmer when (if?) he ever announces any policies?
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THIS IMAGE IS FROM FIVE YEARS AGO: back then, the TUC said real wages were still lower than they were when the financial crisis hit in 2008. After all their protestations of making life better for us, the Tories have only inflicted worse suffering upon us.
The Conservatives have delivered the fastest fall in real wages ever recorded.
That’s right – and you can be sure Tory MPs will be celebrating their achievement in making the pound in your pocket practically worthless to you.
It flies in the face of every claim they’ve ever made in order to get your vote – remember Boris Johnson’s protestation that he was going to deliver a “high wage” economy, only last year? Who was stupid enough to believe that?
But they don’t care because they have feathered their own nests very nicely.
Remember: it didn’t have to be this way. It is Conservative government policies that have put you in a situation where you will not be able to afford the simple necessities of life.
Here’s the BBC:
While average wages rose 4.7% between April and June, that was outpaced by inflation – or price rises – which is growing at a much faster pace.
As a result, the “real value” of pay fell by 3%, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Household budgets are being hit by soaring energy bills as well as higher food and fuel costs.
The rise in prices has fuelled the UK inflation rate to a 40-year high of 9.4% and the latest figure due to be published on Wednesday is forecast to be higher.
The gap between pay growth and inflation is the biggest since records began more than 20 years ago.
Remember when the Tories froze public sector pay for years at a time, and private pay rises were limited to around one per cent per year (except for bosses, who wrote their own cheques as usual, and MPs who have their pay determined by an “independent” organisation that always offers higher-than-inflation pay increases)?
If pay had risen realistically at that time and afterwards, would we have been able to withstand this shock? I ask merely for information.
Wage growth has been behind inflation for most of the Tories’ time in office since 2010. It is Conservative Party policy to ensure that you are paid less, and that you are less able to afford vital goods and services.
It goes back to the “Starve the Beast” plan that George W Bush used in the United States – the idea being that tax cuts make public services impossible to provide and unaffordable to the general public, who are put into permanent wage slavery to pay off the debts they rack up trying to pay for (as an example) health care. Liz Truss is a huge fan of Starving the Beast.
And the government is still trying to fob us off with its usual excuse:
Julie Marson, minister at the Department for Work and Pensions, said… “Being in stable employment is one of the best ways for people to get on.”
This is clearly not true under the Tories.
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Despair: the indifference of the Conservative government that UK voters put into office by a landslide means that – unless you’re a millionaire like them – you are going to struggle to survive over the next few years. Does voting Tory still seem a good idea?
UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak has let voters down badly.
His failure to do anything meaningful to tackle the cost of living crisis, coupled with inflation and high taxation, mean people are facing the biggest fall in living standards since records began in 1956. Worst-hit will be people on benefits, for whom Sunak offered absolutely nothing at all.
Watch Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies as he lays out the bad news:
I’m not going to suggest that any Vox Political reader was stupid enough to vote Tory. But somebody is bound to find this article and consider responding along the lines that the alternative was Jeremy Corbyn “and we’d all be in a terrible state with him in charge!”
But this is quite clearly nonsense. Corbyn was never allowed to be in charge and so any such claims are just childish speculation.
We know why he wasn’t allowed to be in charge:
You were told he was an anti-Semite, and that was a lie.
You were told he wanted to dismantle the UK’s armed forces, and that was a lie too.
You were told he was a friend of Vladimir Putin, and that was also a lie. The friends of Vladimir Putin are currently sitting in Downing Street pretending to be his enemies.
In broader terms, the Tories won because you were told that Brexit would be good for you and voting Tory was the only way to “Get Brexit Done”. That was the biggest lie of all; Brexit has been an unmitigated disaster for the people – and the economy – of the United Kingdom.
As your Tory friends struggle to make ends meet over the coming years and months, please don’t hesitate to remind them of the facts that they ignored because they preferred the convenient lies.
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Rishi Sunak: he’s squeezing you until your pips squeak. How do you like it?
UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s spring statement – and the pitifully few measures he announced in it to counter the cost of living crisis that he helped create – means citizens are facing the largest fall in disposable income since comparable records began in the 1950s.
That was the verdict of the independent Office of Budget Responsibility, as reeled off on the BBC’s Politics Live.
See for yourself:
Unless you are a millionaire, you’re probably going to face money trouble.
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Please share the image, or even tweet it to @Keir_Starmer if you like it.
Keir Starmer’s recent past is catching up with him, if the latest approval ratings are any indicator.
And there is worse to come, judging by early responses to his latest moves.
The figures put Starmer’s approval rating at -39. It is a sad indictment against him that his most favourable rating comes not from Labour voters, but from supporters of the Liberal Democrats. Perhaps they believe he’ll open up electoral chances for them…
BREAKING: Starmer's approval has fallen to -39
Poll: "Do you think Keir Starmer is doing well or badly as leader of the Labour party?"
In contract with current prime minister Boris Johnson, Starmer also comes off poorly. Remember, this is Starmer’s rating against a known, habitual liar whose Brexit has caused a national food shortage, whose response to Covid-19 has killed around 200,000 people while corruptly funnelling cash to Tory donors and whose retreat from Afghanistan was so poorly-planned it may be likened more accurately to a rout.
Against this failure of a prime minister, Keir Starmer is 18 points behind…
At this moment, which of the following individuals do you think would be the better Prime Minister for the United Kingdom? (29 Aug):
— Redfield & Wilton Strategies (@RedfieldWilton) August 30, 2021
And nearly a year and a half after becoming Labour leader to shouts of joy from right-wing tubthumpers who swore that anybody but Jeremy Corbyn would put Labour 20 points ahead of the Tories, Starmer has put his party eight points behind…
… and questions are being asked about whether even this position is being artificially aided by right-wing media coverage after a period in charge that would have seen multiple challenges to his immediate forerunner:
That Starmer polls so badly and so consistently for over a year and yet the media is silent about a need for a leadership review is troubling to say the least and it leads to question about their impartiality.
— John Smith (son of Harry Leslie Smith) (@Harryslaststand) August 30, 2021
Latest developments in the Starmer debacle include a decision to refuse New Labour stalwart and Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham an opportunity to make a speech at the party conference later this month:
The decision to block Burnham’s Labour conference speech shows how precarious Starmer’s position has become. https://t.co/0TjgP0uyv7
— Kevin Pascoe #PoliticsOfFairness (@KevinPascoe) August 30, 2021
Then there are these developments – some of which This Site has already covered:
This week in Labour:
• Labour staff vote for strike action • Young Labour reveal they’ve been silenced from participating at conference • Man who made Labour Party Political Broadcasts expelled • Oldest Trade Union affiliate expelled
He stands accused of hypocrisy as he prepares to betray one of his own leadership election pledges in order to exclude Ian Hodson, BFAWU president, from membership on fabricated, trumped-up charges:
As @Keir_Starmer prepares to exclude Bakers Union boss, Ian Hodson let us remind ourselves of his Pledge number 7 of 10, which he was elected as party leader:
'To strengthen workers’ rights and trade unions” — working “shoulder to shoulder with trade unions.” '
He is silent about current Tory plans to increase the privatisation of the National Health Service (because he supports them? I’ll be publishing an article on this shortly):
What the hell is @UKLabour doing about the privatisation of the #NHS. Not hearing much at all from them???
— Rose Shillito 🟨🟥 #FreeAssange (@rozzleberry) August 30, 2021
Meanwhile Starmer’s crusade against socialists in a democratic socialist party continues. Is it because the Labour Left is the only wing of the party that is actually pushing him to do his job?
Labour left pushes Keir Starmer to oppose cut to triple lock after '40 years of state pension squeeze' https://t.co/XDaf4wpB0e
As James Meadway points out, below, this is elementary politics. Starmer should know that it is an opportunity to claim thousands of votes from Boris Johnson’s Tories at the next election, but seems uninterested. Perhaps the rumours are accurate and he really is trying to undermine his own party?
Of course Labour should defend the triple lock. Aside from the merits of the case, Tories breaking a manifesto promise to hit their own base is a free gift electorally. https://t.co/AY17Dx7VK6
Underpinning everything is the false pretext for the removal of left-wingers: Starmer’s fake crusade against anti-Semitism.
Among the latest victims of this is Graham Bash. His crime? Signing an open letter from a proscribed organisation – 18 months before it was proscribed.
Those who know him, know that Graham Bash is a decent, thoughtful, principled & empathetic socialist (he would hate me saying this, but he’s not on any social media, so…) Now he’s auto-excluded from @UKLabour, along with scores of other left-wing Jews 🤬https://t.co/m1il69sXlE
Mr Bash is, of course, Jewish – and this fact alone makes a mockery of Starmer’s crusade. Think about it – he is expelling Jewish people as anti-Semites.
Doesn’t work, does it?
It cannot be just that Graham Bash, a Jewish socialist, a campaigner for over 50 years for Labour Party & trade union movement is now threatened with expulsion on these derisory charges. I support Graham & call for this disgraceful action to be dropped. https://t.co/wSe4ldUB8q
There is a possible reason for this illogical behaviour, though.
Starmer is widely believed to be acting under orders from the Board of Deputies of British Jews – a Tory-dominated organisation that campaigned hard (but failed) to depose Jeremy Corbyn from the Labour leadership.
It has now been revealed that the BoD works closely with the Israeli Embassy and has strong links with the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs (which campaigned against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement to pressure Israel into ending its persecution of Palestine) and the Israel Defence Force (the Israeli military who seem to spend much of their time murdering defenceless Palestinians).
In other words, this organisation appears to be an arm of the Israeli government dedicated to influencing UK political advantages to carry out policies supporting that foreign power, rather than helping the people of the UK.
And Starmer is their puppet.
So, the Board of Deputies, an org that worked tirelessly to remove Corbyn, has said for the first time in it's 2020 Trustees' Report, that it has a "close working relationship with the Embassy of Israel in the UK" and "links to the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs & IDF." pic.twitter.com/aJ2PUoshjX
People are, understandably, angry that Starmer is fighting an undeclared war on the left of his own party…
I’m sorry but how are we meant to unite with the Labour right “to get rid of the Tories” when the Labour right are going to war with us – the left – instead of the Tories?
There are clear implications for Labour’s future electoral chances:
Any party wanting support of the Corbynite/socialist left is going to have to make it clear they denounce the fabricated 'Labour antisemitism crisis' created by HQ staffers to discredit Corbyn & the left, by weaponising & overstating antisemitism in Labour, because #ItWasAScam
I feel so proud to no longer be part of the cesspit that Labour now is. It is totally liberating not to have to abide by their rules or their ridiculous racist hierarchies. Free the people. Long live socialism.
That is how matters stand at the time of writing – although as I have been typing, This Writer has no doubt that Starmer and his cronies will have found another way to sabotage their own party.
At a time when the UK has the worst Government in its history, it also has the worst Opposition in its history. What a disaster.
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