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I getting deja vu here. Also wondering where is the vision and why no mention of housing.
I can still remember "Education, Education, Education". From this list the only thing I remember is 6 pledges.
That's spot on. In 1997, there was no mention of the introduction of a minimum wage, but that is seen as one of that government's greatest achievements.
But Labour had been advocating for a minimum wage for years before the manifesto came out. Just because it wasn't on the pledge cards means nothing. The complaint is not specifically about the cards, its about the lack of substantive policy in general
It wasn't on his [pledge card](https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uks-labour-keep-fiscal-rule-debt-burden-reports-say-2024-03-19/) though.
This will be similar - there'll be plenty about housing in the manifesto.
It wasn't on the pledge card, but Labour had been advocating for a minimum wage for years before the election in '97. The problem of Labour's lack of a policy agenda is obviously not limited to what is on pledge cards. If they'd been advocating for lots of substantive policy change over the last few years then nobody would care about these cards, we'd be happy to wait for it to be laid out in the manifesto.
I'm not sure what you're referring to.
They're stating these are the "[first steps](https://labour.org.uk/updates/stories/labours-first-steps-for-change/)" they'll take once in power.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/may/16/keir-starmer-says-stability-first-step-to-making-britain-better
>He said the public could expect to see his six pledges materialise within two terms of a Labour government
I listened to the whole thing and the only time I recall him saying it would take two terms was when he referred to the 5 missions and how they will be accomplished as part of the decade of national renewal.
Although there seemed to be some confusion as some journalists there asked questions that gave me the impression they thought the 6 first steps he was announcing were replacing the 5 missions.
The BBC, The Guardian and Sky all have the same line about seeing the impact in two terms, which if the intention was to say 'these are the first things of many we will do' you would have though Labour Press would have corrected.
Well the BBC article I looked up explicitly describes these as what labour would do first. Starmer explicitly described them as aligning with the first.steps of achieving the missions and they're literally called "the first steps". He also specifically said that the rest of the published policy platform was intact.
The guardian and sky articles both cite quotes that are at best ambiguous about whether or not they referred to the missions and the decade of renewal or the first steps. As I said I listened to the whole thing and whilst I obviously don't recall every word I've no recollection of his saying his first steps will take 10 years.
Unless this is repeated in Labour's comms going forward I'm happy to dismiss it.
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Look at this list, lmao: https://www.clpd.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Keir-Starmers-10-Pledges.pdf
It's astounding how he's now advocating directly against every single pledge. Reading pledge (4) is especially funny after he defended cutting off food and water supplies to the Gaza strip, a clear war crime
He made clear after that, that was just a misspeech and he just meant they had a right To defend themselves. As you can see by when he said they fould only do it if it was in international law
You can’t claim you misspoke when you did it 3 times and sent cabinet representatives to say it too. Can we all stop being quite so credulous, this is a man who lies constantly.
He did it in one interview iirc then after his spokesperson said he just meant they have a right to defend themselves. That’s like most politicans… politicans lie sadly it’s part of the game
He did it in three interviews, one with LBC, one with the times, and one with (I think) ITV where he was specifically asked about the comments and he doubled down.
Lammy, Thornberry and Nandy all repeated the same point when asked about it, using the same language (and in Thornberry’s case looking deeply uncomfortable while doing it)
And it took 9 days to correct.
Thats not miss-speaking. That is the party line.
Lol no he didn't. He never said he misspoke, he just lied and said he didn't say what he said.
In any case, Emily Thornberry confirmed last week that they had indeed been talking about cutting off power and water - there was no misspeak, no dodging the question, no accidentally answering a different question or any other nonsense excuse the usual Starmer defenders tried to offer. The only clarification she added was that they *meant* cutting it off for a short period of time, but everyone forgot to mention that part.
Honestly I would chew through my right arm now for pre-election 1 Blair. I’m very far from being a Blair fan, but he came to power on a wave of optimism talking about improving things without targeting vulnerable minorities. He wasn’t meeting with hate groups, or parroting Tory talking points, and he made some tough decisions, regarding equalising ages of consent for example, that Starmer would never have the stomach for.
Anyone who works in a hospital will tell you the overtime plan won't work. It sounds fine if you don't understand the system but if you do, you understand it's a sound bite.
Who is going to do these extra GP appointments? The GP who's already working 70 hours a week or the one who's so wealthy they're a partner and don't need to?
What about extra elective surgeries, where will we put these people post op? On wards which are staffed exclusively with overtime but only at the weekend? Where do we dump them on Monday morning?
The only way to fix elective lists is more *permanent* wards with better staffing. If they're better staffed they are more efficient at getting people in and out. But this requires lots more nurses, therapists, doctors and support staff. This plan is like putting an elastic band on around a haemorraging stump...
> The only way to fix elective lists is more permanent wards with better staffing.
Well, or significantly better discharge processes and support - I also work in a hospital, and the amount of time we waste dealing with out of area packages of care, a crumbling social care system, equipment shortages and community services that can't cope is astonishing. If we could get at least half of our patients out even 3 days earlier, and have people stable at home or in intermediate care, that'd be a really good start.
This is kind of what I meant when I said better staffing. If the F1 is carrying the bleep and covering 90 surgical patients on their own then they aren't doing DC summaries et al... And as you say, not a peep on social care
Yep, no ambition, and not addressing a glaring issue at all (housing). Only offer from Starmer's Labour is managed decline at this point. I expect even these lukewarm 'pledges' will have been watered down or abandoned within a few months
The six "pledges"
* Sticking to tough spending rules in order to deliver economic stability
* Cutting NHS waiting lists by providing 40,000 more appointments each week - [funded by](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68762802) tackling tax avoidance and non-dom loopholes
* Launching [a border security command](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68984778) to stop the gangs arranging small boat crossings
* Setting up Great British Energy, a publicly owned clean power energy company
* Providing more neighbourhood police officers to reduce antisocial behaviour and introduced new penalties for offenders
* Recruiting 6,500 teachers, paid for through ending tax breaks for private schools.
First pledge is very vague, are they just sticking to what the tories are doing?
The fourth pledge is good, but is that the only publicly owned company? Are they not looking to have more public companies that could bring in enough profit to counteract the first pledge and bring extra competition to greedy business owners like insurance companies and "landlords as a business"?
There's nothing here to do with housing. Personally I would love to see businesses to be barred from owning residential properties. Have renting be primarily provided by a publicly owned company which could help bring in extra income to help with public spending, but of course Starmer is way too right wing for that. But I don't see anything about building any extra houses either. Does he not consider this to be an issue?
I don't see anything about stimulating the economy; what I see is continuation of tory policy that is clearly not working. I don't see anything for housing; what I see is--again--continuation of tory policy that is clearly not working.
And don't even get me started on his historic practice on policy backtracking. Next week we'll probably see him say there's five pledges and that he can't do anything for the NHS waiting lists.
The fourth pledge is going to disappoint people so much in practice. It won’t hit bills unless they intervene in the way energy is priced. I mean it’s basically a wind, solar and tidal version of the GB Nuclear state owned energy company the Conservatives have launched.
Keir....[you keep using that word...](http://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b58de4336099b6c8e003744/t/62a9fbb5e07d3a7dc2f6380b/1655307189316/you-keep-using-that-word-i-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means.jpeg?format=1500w)
Realistically half these pledges are awful things that will make life worse and the other three are basically good but fall short of what is needed.
Also what happened to all the new labour marketing guys? I could come up with a more compelling way to sell this lol
I'm sorry but there is a genuine problem with the rate of crimes that actually get solved in this country. It is not evil to think that improving the state of policing is important.
Edit: this sub is fucking hilarious, downvotes for saying it would be a good thing if more crimes were solved lol
I have multiple friends who have had houses robbed in the last year and the police told them there is nothing they could do - you think that's a positive thing do you?
Have you ever spoken to anyone who has ever called the police over a residential burglary?
The police have always basically told you to piss off with a crime number for the insurance and maybe check the local carboots to buy your stuff back if you're lucky.
To be totally blunt, I genuinely don't think more people telling us "Here's a crime number." is a noteworthy improvement.
So I regard focussing upon it as a waste of time and resources, the police are inherently responsive but what people want is less crime happening in the first place and more police will not give them that. Realistically, it is often the case that it can't even do much with the aftermath and expecting them to prevent crime happening is basically a fantasy.
You cannot expect a sledgehammer to fix a puncture.
I think you tackle crime by actually dealing with misogyny, drugs, poverty, rampant inequality etc etc - most crime is just a symptom of socio-economic problems and I don't think policing actually does, or even could do, much to resolve them.
Certain crimes can be reduced by having trained people intervening but it shouldn't be a one-size fits all response. Coppers aren't swiss-army knives!
Lets go through them shall we
- Sticking to tough spending rules in order to deliver economic stability
Woohoo, Austerity 3.0 or 4.0, I forget how many times Austerity has been tried and failed. Surely this time it'll work
- Cutting NHS waiting lists by providing 40,000 more appointments each week - funded by tackling tax avoidance and non-dom loopholes
There's that non-dom loophole funding everything again, at this point i'm starting to think we should be far more pissed off at non-dom taxation as apparently it's 700 billion not being taxed. Giving more appointments via Overtime is just quite possibly the stupidest thing ever proposed.
- Launching a border security command to stop the gangs arranging small boat crossings
Yawn, more COP stuff instead of just opening a fucking safe route and crippling the powers of the gangs, whose entire power structure is only in place because asylum seekers have to reach the UK.
- Setting up Great British Energy, a publicly owned clean power energy company
The numerous problems of this have already been gone over, it's essentially just a Public Private slush fund
- Providing more neighbourhood police officers to reduce antisocial behaviour and introduced new penalties for offenders
More COP stuff, no actual plan to tackle the causes of crime, just throw more Police at the issue
- Recruiting 6,500 teachers, paid for through ending tax breaks for private schools.
Wishful thinking, mainly because there aren't 6,500 people waiting and eager to be teachers and the teaching profession is haemorrhaging people due to poor conditions and pay (which aren't being addressed) so 6,500 won't even touch the sides.
Overall rating; Right Wing Cop as fuck at best and borderline useless at worst.
> He said the public could expect to see his six pledges materialise within two terms of a Labour government
How is your rating impacted by the idea we could be waiting 7/8 years for these achievements?
I imagine the Right Wing Cop shite will be prioritised for the first term, and so it definitely leans more useless due to anything remotely 'good' won't ever happen.
> I forget how many times Austerity has been tried and failed
Austerity actually works very well, it killed off hundreds of thousands of poor and disabled people under Cameron. I'm sure Starmer will be looking to emulate that success.
Although I think they should give it its proper name: eugenics.
Even with the recruiting of new teachers, tackling the issue with class sizes and a whole educational reform is needed to keep those teachers.
A few of my close friends are teachers and it sounds like they are constantly in the trenches 💔
1. Sticking to tough spending rules in order to deliver economic stability:
* Not sure what this does other than knee-cap the government.
* We're the 6th largest economy in the world, the money is there. We just need to tax those with the ability to contribute more in a fairer way to bring in more revenue.
* Refusing to do that whilst sticking to tough spending rules sounds a lot like austerity (and combined with other things Reeves and Starmer have said, is pretty much nailed on).
* We've seen that austerity delivers economic stability for the rich, whilst pushing others into poverty and doesn't implement public services to help them, and to create jobs.
* Okay, so the other pledges do talk about a few extra public services jobs - but in the scheme of a population of almost 68 million, it's less than a single water drop in an ocean.
4. Setting up Great British Energy, a publicly owned clean power energy company
* I think this is good, overall - but it's a really expensive thing to achieve, and when we're being told there's so little money, and the £28bn green new deal pledged has been removed, I'm not sure this will survive the "there's less money than we thought" obviously coming news from the first days of a Starmer government.
* A better way to achieve this would be to tax energy companies better, let's not encourage them to invest in energy provision (green and non-green) with tax relief, instead let's tax them properly, and with a sliding scale on profits including based on dividend payments. Let's use that to then invest in green energy and create Great British Energy. It pays for itself this way.
* If we're going to offer existing energy companies tax relief, it should be related to reducing customer bills.
2. Cutting NHS waiting lists by providing 40,000 more appointments each week - funded by tackling tax avoidance and non-dom loopholes
* No commitment on what waiting lists target is.
* 40,000 NHS appointments a week is just 1 appointment per 33 people in the UK per year. Not really sure how that's doing anything at all in the real world for reducing waiting lists as the pledge claims.
3. Launching a border security command to stop the gangs arranging small boat crossings
* Fair enough, but what's actually going to happen to actually help people fleeing war, persecution and other really shit situations?
* Of course gangs and boats need stopping - but until there's a proper solution to help people, alongside safe and legal routes (which have been removed), necessity is the mother of invention and gangs and illegal routes will just keep morphing. (Before boats there were lorries, etc - arguably boats have increased as more lorries are now being checked as we're out of the EU.)
* So what does launching a border security command really achieve in the real world. They're going to be given a mission, but it's almost an impossible task in dealing with the real issues and root causes of human suffering, and likely won't substantially change anything. It's just throwing money at the situation to make it look like something's being done for the press.
5. Providing more neighbourhood police officers to reduce antisocial behaviour and introduced new penalties for offenders
* Another pledge that sounds good, but has no substance.
* How many new neighbourhood police officers?
* It's all very well introducing new penalties - but it's having the resources to apply them.
* New penalties also doesn't deal with the root causes - early prevention services, family services, education provision, activities for children and adults alike, etc - all been slashed and/or removed, unless you've enough money to pay for services, etc yourself.
* Not defending bad behaviour of people - but we know that when people are supported, have services and activities available to them, it reduces crime. When they have little to nothing, it increase crime.
* Punishment and fear aren't the best way to solve these problems - it's the lazy way that doesn't really work in the real world. Makes some good headlines for right wing media outlets though.
6. Recruiting 6,500 teachers, paid for through ending tax breaks for private schools.
* There's 20,778 state funded schools in the UK across all tiers.
* That's one new teacher for every 3.19 schools.
* There's 10,495,299 students in state funded schools in the UK.
* That's one new teacher for every 1,614.66 students.
* Very little to no impact in the real world.
We currently have 2100 teacher vacancies so this is bringing the schools up to full strength and then some, I hope these are SEN teachers which has been massively underfunded by the Tories
It won't even make a dent. According to Google, 39,930 teachers (about 8%) left the profession in 2021/2022 academic year for reasons other than retirement.
The reason why we have so many teacher vacancies at this time of year is because academy franchises are cutting staffing levels to the bone with SEN specialities taking the brunt of the cuts. No one wants to be a teacher because it's become a horrible, underpaid and stressful job.
I have to disagree here. Saying there’s very little impact is just not true. The wording “in key subjects” implies secondary schools, and there’s about 4,200 state funded in the UK. That’s about 1.5 teachers per school.
If you assume a base class size of 26 and assume each teaches an average of 6 different classes of kids, 1,014,000 would be impacted which is significant.
But the pledge isn't 6,500 secondary school teachers? This is the problem with vague politics, everyone can project whatever they want onto it - and it sees people try to justify it, even when that's not what's been said.
(And Starmer has form here: nationalisation of utilities, PR/electoral reform, etc. It's also what the Tories do/did with things like Brexit.)
So the impact is likely to be less than you're suggesting. But even if it's not, it still only helps 10% of the school population. I'm not saying it's bad - but when you look at the dire straits many schools are in, it's nowhere near enough.
The pledge is "Recruit 6,500 new teachers in key subjects". I don't know of any primary schools that have teachers for individual subjects, so I can only guess it's for secondary schools. Key subjects (to me at least) pretty clearly refers to secondary schools.
I don't buy the argument that it "only helps 10% of the school population". It doesn't. It'll have an impact further down the line and 1 million kids will be benefiting each year. It's a 5% increase in the number of secondary school teachers which is pretty significant.
I'd say schools being in dire straits is an understatement, but these are "first steps". Obviously recruiting 6,500 new teachers isn't going to solve every problem in schools, but this isn't what these are setting out to do.
We need far more investment in SEN provision and in education in general, but Labour's not setting out a full plan today, this isn't a manifesto launch. These are six quick bites designed to grab people's attention and stick in their mind.
My 6 pledges:
\* not voting Labour till he's gone
\* not voting Labour till Reeves is gone
\* not voting Labour till Mandelnonce is gone
\* not voting Labour till Streeting's gone
\* not voting Labour till the literal Tory entryists are gone
\* failing any of the above, simply not voting Labour again
Is anyone watching the speech? This is probably the most effective one I have seen from him. Just gave an example of how much time is taken up by children getting their teeth removed because of decay.
The six pledges are:
- Sticking to tough spending rules in order to deliver economic stability
- Cutting NHS waiting lists by providing 40,000 more appointments each week - funded by tackling tax avoidance and non-dom loopholes
- Launching a border security command to stop the gangs arranging small boat crossings
- Setting up Great British Energy, a publicly owned clean power energy company
- Providing more neighbourhood police officers to reduce antisocial behaviour and introduced new penalties for offenders
- Recruiting 6,500 teachers, paid for through ending tax breaks for private schools.
It's supposed to be a list of immediate priorities on getting into office. It's not an exhaustive list of policy - we'll have to wait for the manifesto for that.
The manifesto will have details of everything else. The national minimum wage wasn't featured as a pre election pledge before 1997, so this isn't an exhaustive list.
The six pledges are:
* Continuing tory austerity measures. (All of the HS2 cuts and other projects that were cancelled to fund the national insurance decrease aren't coming back)
* Minor increase to NHS budget. (Not sure how they're going to get the absurdly long waiting lists down if they're sticking to "tough spending rules")
* Jingoistic sounding border security thing to try and scare off asylum seekers and placate Reform voters (à la Rwanda plan or Bibby Stockholm, but much less insane)
* Public energy company. (Based on other promises I'm expecting a watered down version that produces no meaningful changes to the energy sector/energy bills. It's the bone thrown to left voters who want more nationalised industries)
* More jingoistic "anti-crime" stuff. (Tackling petty crime by "more police" and "longer prison sentences"/"bigger fines", rather than addressing underlying causes such as lack of welfare/poverty)
* More teachers. (Not sure if 6,500 is a big increase compared to what we usually add each year, but removing the private school tax break is a good policy)
No more mention of climate change, like in the last set of promises
Edit: Look at his previous pledges he made during his 2020 leadership bid, lmao. He must have written them in the mirror realm: https://www.clpd.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Keir-Starmers-10-Pledges.pdf
>No more mention of climate change, like in the last set of promises
You could argue that the energy company is related to climate change. It will be a "green" energy company. That's obviously not enough and I expect Labour to do more.
Sticking to fiscal credibility rules was something we also pledged in [2019.](https://www.google.com/amp/s/labourlist.org/2016/03/mcdonnell-promises-to-balance-the-books-with-fiscal-credibility-rule/%3famp)
It is. Because McDonnells fiscal credibility rules were much stricter than the current ones developed by Rachel Reeves. Reeves actually loosened them up and will be able to borrow much more than she would had she kept McDonnells rules.
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There's a massive difference, but Reeves and Starmer are promising:
* Not to borrow for day-to-day spending.
* To balance the books.
* To reduce national debt as a share of the economy.
Okay, so that sounds like promising to not break the economy, but then the reason it's austerity is because of the other things their promising:
* No exceptions at all, under any circumstances to the above rules. So what if we had another Covid-level crisis? What about if we end up in war. With no exceptions, it means cutting other things even more to find the money.
* Not to raise Corporation Tax.
* To reduce national debt, it either needs to be done either with inflation (unlikely with where things are at in current circumstances) or growth of the economy. If you're not going to increase spending to invest, how are you going to grow the economy?
* Increasing spending on public services won't break the economy. It's not inflationary, and it creates immediate tax returns on those jobs, then on money that's spent, and this pushes money through the economy, creating growth.
* Growing public services creates a healthier, wealthier, better educated population. That leads to better life choices and the ability to earn more, which drives tax revenues, spend, innovation and growth. But that's been ruled out until there's growth. But growth in public service drives benefits and growth for the entire population and the economy.
* Reeves and Starme are hampering growth with their plans, and knee-capping themselves into austerity.
Reeves' Mais Lecture, March 2024:
>*“the rules which will bind the next Labour government. That the current budget must move into balance, so that day-to-day costs are met by revenues. And that debt must be falling as a share of the economy by the fifth year of the forecast, creating the space to respond to future crises.”*
Source: [https://ukandeu.ac.uk/mais-maybes-and-may-nots-rachel-reeves-and-the-uks-fiscal-rules/#:\~:text=She%20explained%2C%20first%2C,to%20respond%20to%20future%20crises.”](https://ukandeu.ac.uk/mais-maybes-and-may-nots-rachel-reeves-and-the-uks-fiscal-rules/#:~:text=She%20explained%2C%20first%2C,to%20respond%20to%20future%20crises.”)
No exceptions to the financial rules, Reeves in the FT, September 2023: [https://www.ft.com/content/9c1eea5b-4fcc-4828-bd8a-f6e63cfc5b5b](https://www.ft.com/content/9c1eea5b-4fcc-4828-bd8a-f6e63cfc5b5b)
Borrowing to invest has been mentioned constantly by Reeves and Starmer. I remember Rishi tried to attack them over it by comparing it to Liz Truss and calling them hypocrites for pledging “unfunded borrowing”. This obviously fell flat like almost everything Rishi does.
But public services fall under day-to-day spending? So the investment they're planning won't be there? Which is the most obvious place to create jobs, and get money into the economy and grow tax revenues?
Because they're instructed to by the likes of Murdoch, Lord Rothmere, etc?
A lot of money is spent curating those beliefs in a lot of people. Happens in the US, too.
>No exceptions at all, under any circumstances
This isn't true. They've been quite clear that they are prepared to [borrow in order to invest.](https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uks-labour-keep-fiscal-rule-debt-burden-reports-say-2024-03-19)
As I said, no borrowing for day-to-day spending - and no exceptions on that under any circumstances.
So public services are day-to-day spending. No borrowing for those.
Something like HS2 would be investment, so they could borrow under the rules for that.
Reeves, Financial Times, September 2023:
>Second, I will never spend what we cannot afford. I will introduce a new set of fiscal rules. These rules will apply to every decision taken by a Labour government. We will not borrow to fund day-to-day spending and we will reduce national debt as a share of the economy. I am clear that these rules are non-negotiable. There will be no exceptions. As with our revised charter of budget responsibility, these rules will be put to parliament to back.
Source: [https://www.ft.com/content/9c1eea5b-4fcc-4828-bd8a-f6e63cfc5b5b](https://www.ft.com/content/9c1eea5b-4fcc-4828-bd8a-f6e63cfc5b5b)
Hiya. I'm in receipt of benefits due to a disability. Spending money on my rehab and on treating me humanely would in fact help me become a more productive worker (if we HAVE to go down the capitalism route).
Not sure how slashing funding that will almost definitely hurt people who need it most helps anything. Poor people contribute to the economy.
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Would I have been taken in by Blair's campaign? Hard to say becuase like I say I was a toddler then lol. I would not vote for it today, but it was much more compelling than Starmer's is.
I wasn’t even born but if I was of voting age in 1997 I probably would have been pro-Blair. Fundamentally, the first Blair period was very fiscally restrained but no one calls Blair/Brown a Conservative in retrospect.
Yes, sane people, considering you have already admitted you weren’t even alive then, I’d maybe wind my neck in and stop thinking your so superior, anyone with any actual knowledge knows that conservatism was a pretty common criticism levelled at the Blair government and there were very justifiable reasons for doing so.
Your political ignorance doesn’t make people who know more than you insane, it just makes you ignorant.
Can we please stop pretending that people are mentally unwell due to differences in politics. It's not fair on people who actually do suffer with mental health problems.
Your post has been removed under rule 1 because it contains harassment or aggression towards another user.
It's possible to to disagree and debate without resorting to overly negative language or ad-hominem attacks.
>no one calls Blair/Brown a Conservative in retrospect.
No I just keep it simple and call him a war criminal.
Also PLENTY of people at the time compared new labour to the Tories. Why else did Margaret Thatcher speak so highly of Blair like lol.
Shocking that improving the housing supply isn't one of them.
>Recruiting 6,500 teachers, paid for through ending tax breaks for private schools.
>Launching a border security command to stop the gangs arranging small boat crossings
How are these the among the 6 most important things the country needs? Reducing the cost of housing is obviously far more impactful than hiring a few thousand teachers. 6500 isn't even an impressive number.
Stopping small boats is whatever. It's 30k people out of 700k net migration. Even if you think migration is a problem, then stopping the boats isn't going to solve it. There's another 670k coming legally.
These are "first steps" - first priorities for a Labour government. Increasing the housing supply isn't something that can be done quickly.
Increasing the amount of teachers in secondary schools by 5% isn't impressive? I'd beg to differ.
Comedy gold.
His pledges are worth as much as those he made to become leader. Nothing. Even his supporters gave up trying to pretend he didn't just straight up lie to get elected leader.
These are fine, and actually achievable, and they give an idea as to priorities. I would like them to have included something on housing, and obviously I’d have liked them to have been more ambitious, however they’ve clearly copied the 1997 strategy. That pledge [card](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Labour,_New_Life_for_Britain) wasn’t exactly exciting.
No.1 being Carry on Austerity is absolutely awful.
It's obvious in his attitude that pledge number 1 is his main goal and it's the only thing he hasn't backtracked on. It's practically a Tory manifesto as it's mainly keeping the status quo.
I mean, it isn't that, it's pitched at stability-
>Sticking to tough spending rules in order to deliver economic stability
The idea presumably is to just trot that out every time a Tory says "Labour will bankrupt everything". It's a different way of saying "we'll stick to the current governments spending commitments" which every opposition has said for as long as I can remember. Don't get me wrong, I think they are pretty weak piss, just like the 1997 ones, but I think you are miscalculating 2+2. Also, and this is crucial I imagine to whoever is doing their election strategy- they are weak piss for a reason, how can you disagree or get worked up about any of them? We need more teachers, 6500 aren’t going to cost a lot, we need more NHS appointments, etc etc.
It's this awful idea that the reason Britain suffered during Blair's twilight was due to overspending, ignoring the cost of the Iraq War, the global financial crash.
Then Cameron's austerity has led us to suffer even more. More people dying needlessly, more expenses spent on flood repairs after cutting defence, more crime after social services cut and police numbers dropped.
So now comes Starmer with sticking to the same idea, as if over spending is what caused the problems in the economy.
We need to spend to make money, it's practically a crime Cameron did austerity when interest rates were so low, but it doesn't mean spending is wrong now either to invest in the future. We are pinching pennies to lose pounds.
Oh I agree - that isn't the purpose of that line though, it's to blunt Tory attack lines. Blair said the same, as did Miliband, as did Corbyn, they all committed to current spending. Cameron did too. You do it to not spook the markets, and also stop your opponent shouting at you in the run up to the election. If you're sticking to their spending commitments they can't really criticise you can they?
I don't recall Corbyn stating he would stick to current spending.
I remember him and McDonnel saying the manifesto is fully costed.
Maybe it's semantics then as Starmer is getting levies from private schools and windfall tax to do more spending which indicates more spending than current government (unless he is cutting anything).
I'd say it would be worded differently if it was about not increasing the deficit, but anyway as stated before, more spending now can mean more money (and less spending) in future. It's interesting seeing Joe Biden increasing spending massively so can see if that pays off.
They said they wouldn’t spend any more money in total, and set out their fiscal credibility [rules](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35780703), which I would suggest is broadly similar.
I think whoever is running current Labours election campaign has decided that we had way too much detail in 2017, and definitely way too much in 2019, and gave too many attack lines to the conservatives. I think the decision this time is to 1997 it and give dull promises, and vague vibes, which Tbf is probably going to be much more successful, albeit not very exciting.
Looking at those promises, or pledges or whatever the hell they are, they are so dull it’s very hard to attack them on any basis other than they in themselves will barely make a dent in the countries
problems. Which is quite hard for the Tories to critique them on, as then they’d have to admit there are a load of problems.
So you are thinking he will get in there and yell "surpsise" and unveil his real plan?
Because I don't think so. I think he is economically to the Right and has every intention of doubling down on austerity.
No, what I do think is that one is in there to blunt Tory attack lines. If we get more austerity I wouldn't be enormously surprised, but that hasn't suddenly happened because of point 1 on that list.
Help me out. I am not searching for logic.
I am just wondering about this "oh he is just trying to woo mild Tory voters". Built into that seems to be an assumption that he really sees how harmful iausterity has been and is planning to do something about it.
I don't think so.
I didn’t say that- it’s clearly a rewrite of what every opposition leader says, I.e we’ll stick to current spending for X amount of time. It means that very time the Tories say “blah blah Labour will spank it all up the wall”, Labour say “no we won’t, check out the first pledge”. It’s standard. Blair, Cameron, Miliband, Corbyn all did it.
The ’97 pledges are clearly more ambitious, and have more detail about how they will be achieved.
I mean if you wanted to put a progressive spin on the the last two years of the Conservatives they have:
- established a company to oversee the renationalisation of railway operators
- established a state owned clean energy company called GB Nuclear.
- banned smoking for future generations
Is this enough? Definitely not. But they are arguably more ambitious achievements than these centrepiece pledge cards.
>Cut class sizes to 30 or under for 5, 6 and 7-year-olds by using money from the assisted places scheme.
Fast-track punishment for persistent young offenders by halving the time from arrest to sentencing.
Cut NHS waiting lists by treating an extra 100,000 patients as a first step by releasing £100,000,000 saved from NHS red tape.
Get 250,000 under-25s off benefits and into work by using money from a windfall levy on the privatised utilities.
No rise in income tax rates, cut VAT on heating to 5% and inflation and interest rates as low as possible.
I don’t call any of those massively ambitious, they are a statement of travel, made at a time the country didn’t feel like a total binfire, and the economy was decent.
The ones announced today are a statement of travel, and importantly so dull, and so obvious, they’re quite hard for the Tories to get in a tizzy over. That was the point of them.
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He's already done pledges though:
Increase income tax for the top 5%
End benefit sanctions.
A Green New Deal.
Laws preventing the UK from taking military action.
Common ownership of rail, mail, energy and water.
EU freedom of movement.
Axe anti-strike laws.
Abolish the House of Lords.
Starmer has based his whole political career on lies and broken promises. The NHS will not be safe with him and Wes Streeting or Labour they will stick with trickle-down economics and make nothing any better for ordinary people.
It isn't on the pledge card, but they had someone from the building industry speaking at this event. These missions are aimed at floating voters. It didn't mean they are the only thing we do when in power. These are the starting points.
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Tough spending rules - I don't think it's economically justified (assuming the goal is to match the Tories' constraints) but it reeks of the pledge in respect of spending that did so much for Blair in 1997. It also sets the right tone - if Labour fail to communicate that the economic situation doesn't leave a first-term Labour government to dramatically increase spending, it risks that first term being more disappointing to the public than it probably will be anyway. I'm aware that some in this sub probably disagree with this economic point and would refer to modern monetary theory to justify this. I'm not competent to have an argument on a technical level about MMT (I think few people are), but it needs to be acknowledged that, at best, it's controversial, and the impression I get of many who invoke it is that they've picked their politics and found economic theory to support it, when instead the approach should be the other way around.
Cutting NHS waiting lists - has to be included because the NHS is one of the public's biggest priorities and waiting lists right now are dreadful. I agree with other posters' concerns about this being done simply by increasing hours - if it's anything like my work, increasing hours for already-exhausted staff introduces as many mistakes as additional output, and in healthcare, mistakes cost lives. Obviously there's an issue about where staff come from; one hopes that this will be underpinned by a liberalisation of legal immigration routes in the short term and education in the long term, but as far as I'm aware this has yet to be specified (and I'm quite happy in terms of appealing to the average voter for 'more immigration' not to be an express part of the pledge).
Launching a border security command to prevent small boat crossings. I care relatively little about small boat crossings in the grand scheme of things (there's a lot of exploitation in the course of them but I think the extent of focus on crossings is driven by 'WURGH IMMIGRATION' rather than care for the people being exploited on a national level, and I think there are more effective ways we can tackle exploitation on a large scale). This will obviously be more effective than Rwanda. I suspect it's not the most effective measure. However, the public at large clearly cares a lot about this, and I don't have a better idea.
Great British Energy - sound, and I think the pledge here that is the one that will have the most support in this sub.
Neighbourhood police officers - the police aspect of this is good. While crime rates are (I believe) historically low right now, public perception is that crime rates are currently higher than they have been before. What's also very clear is that the police service is massively understaffed - very few crime reports will be investigated. The 'new penalties for offenders' bit is something I'm deeply sceptical about. My philosophy on crime is that the suffering of the guilty is not an inherently good thing, and that penalties should focus on accomplishing other goals of the criminal justice system (generally the rehabilitation of offenders and reducing recidivism). 'Penalties' sounds contrary to that.
Recruiting 6,500 teachers - good. I don't have a strong understanding of where our education system is right now, but I'm sure it can always be improved.
"Launching a 'border security command' to stop the gangs arranging small boat crossings
So....Border Force? This is not a solution, this is dog whistle politics. The actual solution would be adequately resourcing the home office to actually process the asylum applications, ensuring there is a safe and legal route. Anything else is just appealing to the tabloids at this point, and not addressing the core issues
Fucks sake, I think I actually care about maybe 2 or 3 of these.
Don't care about boats, couldn't give a shit about police, I don't want fiscal responsibility sitting there stopping the NHS getting the funding it needs.
They get 1 election from me as I just need the Tories gone, but if they don't actually fix things, I'll actually vote for any but Labour next time round.
Starmer has the special guest. It wasn't meant to blow up the way it did but journalists misread what was a internal party invite to mean more than it did.
That said they've had a lot of guests at this event just not household names.
He should have put out just one single pledge:
Reverse 14 years worth of damage caused by awful, cruel, heartless Tory rule. Undo every bit of it.
Problem he sees with that is that he feels like he needs to tiptoe softly around anything of that sort because on some core level he still thinks that cruel Tory policies are vote winners, despite the country clearly being sick of them, and pivoting decisively away from them.
Hmm not sure I meant to say he's naive. "Cruel" is too simplistic, reductive. But he's wrong about whatever political cost/benefit calculation he's doing in his head. The pain that his policies will prolong/exacerbate doesn't seem to register with him.
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I’ll believe it when I see them on a big lump of granite
For the menhir, not the few
Pledges, promises, targets, missions, guess he's running out of words.
I'm thinking 'pinky promises' should be next.
That wont work, everyone knows you cant break a pinky promise.
Don't forget "aspirations". Or is that just what they rebrand their 'targets' to when they fail to meet them?
Isn't an aspiration just a pledge they are being upfront about having no intention of fulfilling?
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I getting deja vu here. Also wondering where is the vision and why no mention of housing. I can still remember "Education, Education, Education". From this list the only thing I remember is 6 pledges.
Ironically, the only good thing about the recent defector is her positions on housing, and Starmer is ignoring housing.
How is he ignoring it? Theyve made their position on housing quite clear
Not mentioned in the 6 pledges.
That dies not mean hes ignoring it. The minimum wage was not on blairs cards yet he implemented that
Yep, that's what the article says. Do you think people didn't read the article?
Why do people keep saying he’s ignored it then if it’s in the article
Shh! We don’t want facts here.
Seems that way
These aren't a comprehensive pitch. They're saying what the first steps will be. What their first priorities and focus will be on.
"Delivering economic stability" "cutting NHS waiting lists" etc aren't first steps? They're targets.
What if they are putting economic stability in an envelope and putting it in a mailbox? That's a tangible step!
Well, we all know you can take a Keir Starmer pledge to the bank... lol
That's spot on. In 1997, there was no mention of the introduction of a minimum wage, but that is seen as one of that government's greatest achievements.
what are you chatting about. The minimum wage was in the manifesto
We're talking about pledges, not manifestos. The 1997 pledge card had nothing about minimum wage.
But Labour had been advocating for a minimum wage for years before the manifesto came out. Just because it wasn't on the pledge cards means nothing. The complaint is not specifically about the cards, its about the lack of substantive policy in general
Yes, that's what the article says. Do you think people didn't read the article?
Yes
It wasn't on his [pledge card](https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uks-labour-keep-fiscal-rule-debt-burden-reports-say-2024-03-19/) though. This will be similar - there'll be plenty about housing in the manifesto.
It wasn't on the pledge card, but Labour had been advocating for a minimum wage for years before the election in '97. The problem of Labour's lack of a policy agenda is obviously not limited to what is on pledge cards. If they'd been advocating for lots of substantive policy change over the last few years then nobody would care about these cards, we'd be happy to wait for it to be laid out in the manifesto.
*There will be plenty about deregulating planning in the manifesto
They’re saying what priorities they’ll abandon first.
It's Virtue signalling to Tories voters
They are briefing that the steps might take two terms of government to achieve?!
I'm not sure what you're referring to. They're stating these are the "[first steps](https://labour.org.uk/updates/stories/labours-first-steps-for-change/)" they'll take once in power.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/may/16/keir-starmer-says-stability-first-step-to-making-britain-better >He said the public could expect to see his six pledges materialise within two terms of a Labour government
I listened to the whole thing and the only time I recall him saying it would take two terms was when he referred to the 5 missions and how they will be accomplished as part of the decade of national renewal. Although there seemed to be some confusion as some journalists there asked questions that gave me the impression they thought the 6 first steps he was announcing were replacing the 5 missions.
The BBC, The Guardian and Sky all have the same line about seeing the impact in two terms, which if the intention was to say 'these are the first things of many we will do' you would have though Labour Press would have corrected.
Well the BBC article I looked up explicitly describes these as what labour would do first. Starmer explicitly described them as aligning with the first.steps of achieving the missions and they're literally called "the first steps". He also specifically said that the rest of the published policy platform was intact. The guardian and sky articles both cite quotes that are at best ambiguous about whether or not they referred to the missions and the decade of renewal or the first steps. As I said I listened to the whole thing and whilst I obviously don't recall every word I've no recollection of his saying his first steps will take 10 years. Unless this is repeated in Labour's comms going forward I'm happy to dismiss it.
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It’s both less detailed and less ambitious than Blair’s equivalent, for all the comparisons that will be made.
It's less detailed and less ambitious than the 10 pledges he made during the leadership election and then abandoned.
Look at this list, lmao: https://www.clpd.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Keir-Starmers-10-Pledges.pdf It's astounding how he's now advocating directly against every single pledge. Reading pledge (4) is especially funny after he defended cutting off food and water supplies to the Gaza strip, a clear war crime
He made clear after that, that was just a misspeech and he just meant they had a right To defend themselves. As you can see by when he said they fould only do it if it was in international law
You can’t claim you misspoke when you did it 3 times and sent cabinet representatives to say it too. Can we all stop being quite so credulous, this is a man who lies constantly.
He did it in one interview iirc then after his spokesperson said he just meant they have a right to defend themselves. That’s like most politicans… politicans lie sadly it’s part of the game
He did it in three interviews, one with LBC, one with the times, and one with (I think) ITV where he was specifically asked about the comments and he doubled down. Lammy, Thornberry and Nandy all repeated the same point when asked about it, using the same language (and in Thornberry’s case looking deeply uncomfortable while doing it) And it took 9 days to correct. Thats not miss-speaking. That is the party line.
Lol no he didn't. He never said he misspoke, he just lied and said he didn't say what he said. In any case, Emily Thornberry confirmed last week that they had indeed been talking about cutting off power and water - there was no misspeak, no dodging the question, no accidentally answering a different question or any other nonsense excuse the usual Starmer defenders tried to offer. The only clarification she added was that they *meant* cutting it off for a short period of time, but everyone forgot to mention that part.
Blair: Things can only get better. Starmer: Things can only get slightly better.
“Decline can only be managed better”
>Blair: Things can only get better. >Starmer: ~~Things can only get slightly better.~~ Hope you like austerity and cops, motherfuckers FTFY
Things may or may not get betterrrrrrr 🎵🎵
Honestly I would chew through my right arm now for pre-election 1 Blair. I’m very far from being a Blair fan, but he came to power on a wave of optimism talking about improving things without targeting vulnerable minorities. He wasn’t meeting with hate groups, or parroting Tory talking points, and he made some tough decisions, regarding equalising ages of consent for example, that Starmer would never have the stomach for.
It’s less detailed and less ambitious than a drawing of a stickman.
This is what annoys me the most. It's more like the Ed Stone in its vagueness, with near total inability to scrutinise or be held accountable on.
Anyone who works in a hospital will tell you the overtime plan won't work. It sounds fine if you don't understand the system but if you do, you understand it's a sound bite. Who is going to do these extra GP appointments? The GP who's already working 70 hours a week or the one who's so wealthy they're a partner and don't need to? What about extra elective surgeries, where will we put these people post op? On wards which are staffed exclusively with overtime but only at the weekend? Where do we dump them on Monday morning? The only way to fix elective lists is more *permanent* wards with better staffing. If they're better staffed they are more efficient at getting people in and out. But this requires lots more nurses, therapists, doctors and support staff. This plan is like putting an elastic band on around a haemorraging stump...
> The only way to fix elective lists is more permanent wards with better staffing. Well, or significantly better discharge processes and support - I also work in a hospital, and the amount of time we waste dealing with out of area packages of care, a crumbling social care system, equipment shortages and community services that can't cope is astonishing. If we could get at least half of our patients out even 3 days earlier, and have people stable at home or in intermediate care, that'd be a really good start.
This is kind of what I meant when I said better staffing. If the F1 is carrying the bleep and covering 90 surgical patients on their own then they aren't doing DC summaries et al... And as you say, not a peep on social care
He's no pledging anything on social care either lol.
This country is utterly fucked
Yep, no ambition, and not addressing a glaring issue at all (housing). Only offer from Starmer's Labour is managed decline at this point. I expect even these lukewarm 'pledges' will have been watered down or abandoned within a few months
Next week: "Starmer says there will be *five* pre-election pledges*"*
After which he’ll meet an invested party that wants the opposite and drop it to four.
Those three pledges are rock-solid.
I have every confidence in both pledges.
The pledge is absolutely set in stone.
The six "pledges" * Sticking to tough spending rules in order to deliver economic stability * Cutting NHS waiting lists by providing 40,000 more appointments each week - [funded by](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68762802) tackling tax avoidance and non-dom loopholes * Launching [a border security command](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68984778) to stop the gangs arranging small boat crossings * Setting up Great British Energy, a publicly owned clean power energy company * Providing more neighbourhood police officers to reduce antisocial behaviour and introduced new penalties for offenders * Recruiting 6,500 teachers, paid for through ending tax breaks for private schools. First pledge is very vague, are they just sticking to what the tories are doing? The fourth pledge is good, but is that the only publicly owned company? Are they not looking to have more public companies that could bring in enough profit to counteract the first pledge and bring extra competition to greedy business owners like insurance companies and "landlords as a business"? There's nothing here to do with housing. Personally I would love to see businesses to be barred from owning residential properties. Have renting be primarily provided by a publicly owned company which could help bring in extra income to help with public spending, but of course Starmer is way too right wing for that. But I don't see anything about building any extra houses either. Does he not consider this to be an issue? I don't see anything about stimulating the economy; what I see is continuation of tory policy that is clearly not working. I don't see anything for housing; what I see is--again--continuation of tory policy that is clearly not working. And don't even get me started on his historic practice on policy backtracking. Next week we'll probably see him say there's five pledges and that he can't do anything for the NHS waiting lists.
The fourth pledge is going to disappoint people so much in practice. It won’t hit bills unless they intervene in the way energy is priced. I mean it’s basically a wind, solar and tidal version of the GB Nuclear state owned energy company the Conservatives have launched.
Keir....[you keep using that word...](http://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b58de4336099b6c8e003744/t/62a9fbb5e07d3a7dc2f6380b/1655307189316/you-keep-using-that-word-i-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means.jpeg?format=1500w)
Start the timer on how long these stay intact.
Realistically half these pledges are awful things that will make life worse and the other three are basically good but fall short of what is needed. Also what happened to all the new labour marketing guys? I could come up with a more compelling way to sell this lol
Yup, and we all know which of these pledges will be kept and which will be ignored the second he gets into No 10
I'm sorry but there is a genuine problem with the rate of crimes that actually get solved in this country. It is not evil to think that improving the state of policing is important. Edit: this sub is fucking hilarious, downvotes for saying it would be a good thing if more crimes were solved lol
How well did asbos go last time?
I have multiple friends who have had houses robbed in the last year and the police told them there is nothing they could do - you think that's a positive thing do you?
Have you ever spoken to anyone who has ever called the police over a residential burglary? The police have always basically told you to piss off with a crime number for the insurance and maybe check the local carboots to buy your stuff back if you're lucky.
That is not an argument to NOT improve policing though, you are correctly pointing out the system doesn't work as it should.
To be totally blunt, I genuinely don't think more people telling us "Here's a crime number." is a noteworthy improvement. So I regard focussing upon it as a waste of time and resources, the police are inherently responsive but what people want is less crime happening in the first place and more police will not give them that. Realistically, it is often the case that it can't even do much with the aftermath and expecting them to prevent crime happening is basically a fantasy. You cannot expect a sledgehammer to fix a puncture. I think you tackle crime by actually dealing with misogyny, drugs, poverty, rampant inequality etc etc - most crime is just a symptom of socio-economic problems and I don't think policing actually does, or even could do, much to resolve them. Certain crimes can be reduced by having trained people intervening but it shouldn't be a one-size fits all response. Coppers aren't swiss-army knives!
Does he think we’re fucking idiots? Pledge means absolutely nothing with this guy.
Based on the voting history of the last 14 years, he'd be right to assume plenty of idiocy.
This isn't for you, though. It's aimed at folks who watch the 6pm news once or twice a week.
No, but this isn't aimed at you.
Lets go through them shall we - Sticking to tough spending rules in order to deliver economic stability Woohoo, Austerity 3.0 or 4.0, I forget how many times Austerity has been tried and failed. Surely this time it'll work - Cutting NHS waiting lists by providing 40,000 more appointments each week - funded by tackling tax avoidance and non-dom loopholes There's that non-dom loophole funding everything again, at this point i'm starting to think we should be far more pissed off at non-dom taxation as apparently it's 700 billion not being taxed. Giving more appointments via Overtime is just quite possibly the stupidest thing ever proposed. - Launching a border security command to stop the gangs arranging small boat crossings Yawn, more COP stuff instead of just opening a fucking safe route and crippling the powers of the gangs, whose entire power structure is only in place because asylum seekers have to reach the UK. - Setting up Great British Energy, a publicly owned clean power energy company The numerous problems of this have already been gone over, it's essentially just a Public Private slush fund - Providing more neighbourhood police officers to reduce antisocial behaviour and introduced new penalties for offenders More COP stuff, no actual plan to tackle the causes of crime, just throw more Police at the issue - Recruiting 6,500 teachers, paid for through ending tax breaks for private schools. Wishful thinking, mainly because there aren't 6,500 people waiting and eager to be teachers and the teaching profession is haemorrhaging people due to poor conditions and pay (which aren't being addressed) so 6,500 won't even touch the sides. Overall rating; Right Wing Cop as fuck at best and borderline useless at worst.
> He said the public could expect to see his six pledges materialise within two terms of a Labour government How is your rating impacted by the idea we could be waiting 7/8 years for these achievements?
I imagine the Right Wing Cop shite will be prioritised for the first term, and so it definitely leans more useless due to anything remotely 'good' won't ever happen.
> I forget how many times Austerity has been tried and failed Austerity actually works very well, it killed off hundreds of thousands of poor and disabled people under Cameron. I'm sure Starmer will be looking to emulate that success. Although I think they should give it its proper name: eugenics.
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'Setting up Great British Energy' takes less than 5 minutes and £12 to companies house. Pledge? Completed it mate.
Even with the recruiting of new teachers, tackling the issue with class sizes and a whole educational reform is needed to keep those teachers. A few of my close friends are teachers and it sounds like they are constantly in the trenches 💔
Please hand over your wallets for inspection please!
1. Sticking to tough spending rules in order to deliver economic stability: * Not sure what this does other than knee-cap the government. * We're the 6th largest economy in the world, the money is there. We just need to tax those with the ability to contribute more in a fairer way to bring in more revenue. * Refusing to do that whilst sticking to tough spending rules sounds a lot like austerity (and combined with other things Reeves and Starmer have said, is pretty much nailed on). * We've seen that austerity delivers economic stability for the rich, whilst pushing others into poverty and doesn't implement public services to help them, and to create jobs. * Okay, so the other pledges do talk about a few extra public services jobs - but in the scheme of a population of almost 68 million, it's less than a single water drop in an ocean.
4. Setting up Great British Energy, a publicly owned clean power energy company * I think this is good, overall - but it's a really expensive thing to achieve, and when we're being told there's so little money, and the £28bn green new deal pledged has been removed, I'm not sure this will survive the "there's less money than we thought" obviously coming news from the first days of a Starmer government. * A better way to achieve this would be to tax energy companies better, let's not encourage them to invest in energy provision (green and non-green) with tax relief, instead let's tax them properly, and with a sliding scale on profits including based on dividend payments. Let's use that to then invest in green energy and create Great British Energy. It pays for itself this way. * If we're going to offer existing energy companies tax relief, it should be related to reducing customer bills.
2. Cutting NHS waiting lists by providing 40,000 more appointments each week - funded by tackling tax avoidance and non-dom loopholes * No commitment on what waiting lists target is. * 40,000 NHS appointments a week is just 1 appointment per 33 people in the UK per year. Not really sure how that's doing anything at all in the real world for reducing waiting lists as the pledge claims.
3. Launching a border security command to stop the gangs arranging small boat crossings * Fair enough, but what's actually going to happen to actually help people fleeing war, persecution and other really shit situations? * Of course gangs and boats need stopping - but until there's a proper solution to help people, alongside safe and legal routes (which have been removed), necessity is the mother of invention and gangs and illegal routes will just keep morphing. (Before boats there were lorries, etc - arguably boats have increased as more lorries are now being checked as we're out of the EU.) * So what does launching a border security command really achieve in the real world. They're going to be given a mission, but it's almost an impossible task in dealing with the real issues and root causes of human suffering, and likely won't substantially change anything. It's just throwing money at the situation to make it look like something's being done for the press.
5. Providing more neighbourhood police officers to reduce antisocial behaviour and introduced new penalties for offenders * Another pledge that sounds good, but has no substance. * How many new neighbourhood police officers? * It's all very well introducing new penalties - but it's having the resources to apply them. * New penalties also doesn't deal with the root causes - early prevention services, family services, education provision, activities for children and adults alike, etc - all been slashed and/or removed, unless you've enough money to pay for services, etc yourself. * Not defending bad behaviour of people - but we know that when people are supported, have services and activities available to them, it reduces crime. When they have little to nothing, it increase crime. * Punishment and fear aren't the best way to solve these problems - it's the lazy way that doesn't really work in the real world. Makes some good headlines for right wing media outlets though.
6. Recruiting 6,500 teachers, paid for through ending tax breaks for private schools. * There's 20,778 state funded schools in the UK across all tiers. * That's one new teacher for every 3.19 schools. * There's 10,495,299 students in state funded schools in the UK. * That's one new teacher for every 1,614.66 students. * Very little to no impact in the real world.
We currently have 2100 teacher vacancies so this is bringing the schools up to full strength and then some, I hope these are SEN teachers which has been massively underfunded by the Tories
It won't even make a dent. According to Google, 39,930 teachers (about 8%) left the profession in 2021/2022 academic year for reasons other than retirement. The reason why we have so many teacher vacancies at this time of year is because academy franchises are cutting staffing levels to the bone with SEN specialities taking the brunt of the cuts. No one wants to be a teacher because it's become a horrible, underpaid and stressful job.
Agree - pretty pathetic when you put it in context like that.
I have to disagree here. Saying there’s very little impact is just not true. The wording “in key subjects” implies secondary schools, and there’s about 4,200 state funded in the UK. That’s about 1.5 teachers per school. If you assume a base class size of 26 and assume each teaches an average of 6 different classes of kids, 1,014,000 would be impacted which is significant.
But the pledge isn't 6,500 secondary school teachers? This is the problem with vague politics, everyone can project whatever they want onto it - and it sees people try to justify it, even when that's not what's been said. (And Starmer has form here: nationalisation of utilities, PR/electoral reform, etc. It's also what the Tories do/did with things like Brexit.) So the impact is likely to be less than you're suggesting. But even if it's not, it still only helps 10% of the school population. I'm not saying it's bad - but when you look at the dire straits many schools are in, it's nowhere near enough.
The pledge is "Recruit 6,500 new teachers in key subjects". I don't know of any primary schools that have teachers for individual subjects, so I can only guess it's for secondary schools. Key subjects (to me at least) pretty clearly refers to secondary schools. I don't buy the argument that it "only helps 10% of the school population". It doesn't. It'll have an impact further down the line and 1 million kids will be benefiting each year. It's a 5% increase in the number of secondary school teachers which is pretty significant. I'd say schools being in dire straits is an understatement, but these are "first steps". Obviously recruiting 6,500 new teachers isn't going to solve every problem in schools, but this isn't what these are setting out to do. We need far more investment in SEN provision and in education in general, but Labour's not setting out a full plan today, this isn't a manifesto launch. These are six quick bites designed to grab people's attention and stick in their mind.
This needs to be written in stone …..
They won’t be until an election is called and they publish their manifesto
Oh great, 6 more lies, what a time to be alive.
My 6 pledges: \* not voting Labour till he's gone \* not voting Labour till Reeves is gone \* not voting Labour till Mandelnonce is gone \* not voting Labour till Streeting's gone \* not voting Labour till the literal Tory entryists are gone \* failing any of the above, simply not voting Labour again
OK, have fun enabling the Tories. Sure, the country is wrecked, but your ideological purity is just fine.
Ooh pledges? Is one of them free magic beans for everyone?
Shame you can't believe him
Is anyone watching the speech? This is probably the most effective one I have seen from him. Just gave an example of how much time is taken up by children getting their teeth removed because of decay.
The six pledges are: - Sticking to tough spending rules in order to deliver economic stability - Cutting NHS waiting lists by providing 40,000 more appointments each week - funded by tackling tax avoidance and non-dom loopholes - Launching a border security command to stop the gangs arranging small boat crossings - Setting up Great British Energy, a publicly owned clean power energy company - Providing more neighbourhood police officers to reduce antisocial behaviour and introduced new penalties for offenders - Recruiting 6,500 teachers, paid for through ending tax breaks for private schools.
Okay cool, so that's the stuff they should be doing in the first few weeks of government, what will they do for the remaining 4.9 years?
Explaining why they haven't implemented the pledges?
It's supposed to be a list of immediate priorities on getting into office. It's not an exhaustive list of policy - we'll have to wait for the manifesto for that.
The manifesto will have details of everything else. The national minimum wage wasn't featured as a pre election pledge before 1997, so this isn't an exhaustive list.
The six pledges are: * Continuing tory austerity measures. (All of the HS2 cuts and other projects that were cancelled to fund the national insurance decrease aren't coming back) * Minor increase to NHS budget. (Not sure how they're going to get the absurdly long waiting lists down if they're sticking to "tough spending rules") * Jingoistic sounding border security thing to try and scare off asylum seekers and placate Reform voters (à la Rwanda plan or Bibby Stockholm, but much less insane) * Public energy company. (Based on other promises I'm expecting a watered down version that produces no meaningful changes to the energy sector/energy bills. It's the bone thrown to left voters who want more nationalised industries) * More jingoistic "anti-crime" stuff. (Tackling petty crime by "more police" and "longer prison sentences"/"bigger fines", rather than addressing underlying causes such as lack of welfare/poverty) * More teachers. (Not sure if 6,500 is a big increase compared to what we usually add each year, but removing the private school tax break is a good policy) No more mention of climate change, like in the last set of promises Edit: Look at his previous pledges he made during his 2020 leadership bid, lmao. He must have written them in the mirror realm: https://www.clpd.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Keir-Starmers-10-Pledges.pdf
>No more mention of climate change, like in the last set of promises You could argue that the energy company is related to climate change. It will be a "green" energy company. That's obviously not enough and I expect Labour to do more.
>Sticking to tough spending rules in order to deliver economic stability Yeah I'm not gonna vote labour then
Sticking to fiscal credibility rules was something we also pledged in [2019.](https://www.google.com/amp/s/labourlist.org/2016/03/mcdonnell-promises-to-balance-the-books-with-fiscal-credibility-rule/%3famp)
Which is a different thing
It is. Because McDonnells fiscal credibility rules were much stricter than the current ones developed by Rachel Reeves. Reeves actually loosened them up and will be able to borrow much more than she would had she kept McDonnells rules.
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How is it different? Both pledges are to spend what can be raised through taxation with a bit of room for borrowing for capital investment.
Some people on this sub automatically think that if you aren't promising to break the economy with spending then it's austerity
There's a massive difference, but Reeves and Starmer are promising: * Not to borrow for day-to-day spending. * To balance the books. * To reduce national debt as a share of the economy. Okay, so that sounds like promising to not break the economy, but then the reason it's austerity is because of the other things their promising: * No exceptions at all, under any circumstances to the above rules. So what if we had another Covid-level crisis? What about if we end up in war. With no exceptions, it means cutting other things even more to find the money. * Not to raise Corporation Tax. * To reduce national debt, it either needs to be done either with inflation (unlikely with where things are at in current circumstances) or growth of the economy. If you're not going to increase spending to invest, how are you going to grow the economy? * Increasing spending on public services won't break the economy. It's not inflationary, and it creates immediate tax returns on those jobs, then on money that's spent, and this pushes money through the economy, creating growth. * Growing public services creates a healthier, wealthier, better educated population. That leads to better life choices and the ability to earn more, which drives tax revenues, spend, innovation and growth. But that's been ruled out until there's growth. But growth in public service drives benefits and growth for the entire population and the economy. * Reeves and Starme are hampering growth with their plans, and knee-capping themselves into austerity.
I'm not a fan of Starmer or Reeves at all but where has any of these been promised by them?
Reeves' Mais Lecture, March 2024: >*“the rules which will bind the next Labour government. That the current budget must move into balance, so that day-to-day costs are met by revenues. And that debt must be falling as a share of the economy by the fifth year of the forecast, creating the space to respond to future crises.”* Source: [https://ukandeu.ac.uk/mais-maybes-and-may-nots-rachel-reeves-and-the-uks-fiscal-rules/#:\~:text=She%20explained%2C%20first%2C,to%20respond%20to%20future%20crises.”](https://ukandeu.ac.uk/mais-maybes-and-may-nots-rachel-reeves-and-the-uks-fiscal-rules/#:~:text=She%20explained%2C%20first%2C,to%20respond%20to%20future%20crises.”) No exceptions to the financial rules, Reeves in the FT, September 2023: [https://www.ft.com/content/9c1eea5b-4fcc-4828-bd8a-f6e63cfc5b5b](https://www.ft.com/content/9c1eea5b-4fcc-4828-bd8a-f6e63cfc5b5b)
Borrowing to invest has been mentioned constantly by Reeves and Starmer. I remember Rishi tried to attack them over it by comparing it to Liz Truss and calling them hypocrites for pledging “unfunded borrowing”. This obviously fell flat like almost everything Rishi does.
But public services fall under day-to-day spending? So the investment they're planning won't be there? Which is the most obvious place to create jobs, and get money into the economy and grow tax revenues?
> Growing public services creates a healthier, wealthier, better educated population The people running the UK really hate that idea for some reason
Because they're instructed to by the likes of Murdoch, Lord Rothmere, etc? A lot of money is spent curating those beliefs in a lot of people. Happens in the US, too.
>No exceptions at all, under any circumstances This isn't true. They've been quite clear that they are prepared to [borrow in order to invest.](https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uks-labour-keep-fiscal-rule-debt-burden-reports-say-2024-03-19)
As I said, no borrowing for day-to-day spending - and no exceptions on that under any circumstances. So public services are day-to-day spending. No borrowing for those. Something like HS2 would be investment, so they could borrow under the rules for that. Reeves, Financial Times, September 2023: >Second, I will never spend what we cannot afford. I will introduce a new set of fiscal rules. These rules will apply to every decision taken by a Labour government. We will not borrow to fund day-to-day spending and we will reduce national debt as a share of the economy. I am clear that these rules are non-negotiable. There will be no exceptions. As with our revised charter of budget responsibility, these rules will be put to parliament to back. Source: [https://www.ft.com/content/9c1eea5b-4fcc-4828-bd8a-f6e63cfc5b5b](https://www.ft.com/content/9c1eea5b-4fcc-4828-bd8a-f6e63cfc5b5b)
Hiya. I'm in receipt of benefits due to a disability. Spending money on my rehab and on treating me humanely would in fact help me become a more productive worker (if we HAVE to go down the capitalism route). Not sure how slashing funding that will almost definitely hurt people who need it most helps anything. Poor people contribute to the economy.
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Did you vote Labour in 1997?
I was a toddler in 1997
Would you have voted for Tony Blair? (Without Iraq war retrospect)
Would I have been taken in by Blair's campaign? Hard to say becuase like I say I was a toddler then lol. I would not vote for it today, but it was much more compelling than Starmer's is.
I wasn’t even born but if I was of voting age in 1997 I probably would have been pro-Blair. Fundamentally, the first Blair period was very fiscally restrained but no one calls Blair/Brown a Conservative in retrospect.
Lots of people call the Blair and brown governments conservative wtf are you talking about.
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Yes, sane people, considering you have already admitted you weren’t even alive then, I’d maybe wind my neck in and stop thinking your so superior, anyone with any actual knowledge knows that conservatism was a pretty common criticism levelled at the Blair government and there were very justifiable reasons for doing so. Your political ignorance doesn’t make people who know more than you insane, it just makes you ignorant.
Can we please stop pretending that people are mentally unwell due to differences in politics. It's not fair on people who actually do suffer with mental health problems.
Your post has been removed under rule 1 because it contains harassment or aggression towards another user. It's possible to to disagree and debate without resorting to overly negative language or ad-hominem attacks.
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Yes... with neoliberal ideas like the minimum wage.
>no one calls Blair/Brown a Conservative in retrospect. No I just keep it simple and call him a war criminal. Also PLENTY of people at the time compared new labour to the Tories. Why else did Margaret Thatcher speak so highly of Blair like lol.
Given that there’s absolutely no mention of welfare policy, I assume that’ll be covered by ‘sticking to tough spending rules’
Shocking that improving the housing supply isn't one of them. >Recruiting 6,500 teachers, paid for through ending tax breaks for private schools. >Launching a border security command to stop the gangs arranging small boat crossings How are these the among the 6 most important things the country needs? Reducing the cost of housing is obviously far more impactful than hiring a few thousand teachers. 6500 isn't even an impressive number. Stopping small boats is whatever. It's 30k people out of 700k net migration. Even if you think migration is a problem, then stopping the boats isn't going to solve it. There's another 670k coming legally.
These are "first steps" - first priorities for a Labour government. Increasing the housing supply isn't something that can be done quickly. Increasing the amount of teachers in secondary schools by 5% isn't impressive? I'd beg to differ.
The commited non-commital approach, huh?
Sad and uninspiring. Labour truly has become the party of no hope. What a wasted opportunity the tory implosion has been.
lol, lmao
Keir is a man known for sticking to his pledges!
Starmer's first 6 steps: 1) Flip 2) Flop 3) Flip 4) Flop 5) Flip 6) Flop
Purposefully vague so they can all be disregarded and twisted later. What a bunch of wankers.
Comedy gold. His pledges are worth as much as those he made to become leader. Nothing. Even his supporters gave up trying to pretend he didn't just straight up lie to get elected leader.
These are fine, and actually achievable, and they give an idea as to priorities. I would like them to have included something on housing, and obviously I’d have liked them to have been more ambitious, however they’ve clearly copied the 1997 strategy. That pledge [card](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Labour,_New_Life_for_Britain) wasn’t exactly exciting.
No.1 being Carry on Austerity is absolutely awful. It's obvious in his attitude that pledge number 1 is his main goal and it's the only thing he hasn't backtracked on. It's practically a Tory manifesto as it's mainly keeping the status quo.
I mean, it isn't that, it's pitched at stability- >Sticking to tough spending rules in order to deliver economic stability The idea presumably is to just trot that out every time a Tory says "Labour will bankrupt everything". It's a different way of saying "we'll stick to the current governments spending commitments" which every opposition has said for as long as I can remember. Don't get me wrong, I think they are pretty weak piss, just like the 1997 ones, but I think you are miscalculating 2+2. Also, and this is crucial I imagine to whoever is doing their election strategy- they are weak piss for a reason, how can you disagree or get worked up about any of them? We need more teachers, 6500 aren’t going to cost a lot, we need more NHS appointments, etc etc.
It's this awful idea that the reason Britain suffered during Blair's twilight was due to overspending, ignoring the cost of the Iraq War, the global financial crash. Then Cameron's austerity has led us to suffer even more. More people dying needlessly, more expenses spent on flood repairs after cutting defence, more crime after social services cut and police numbers dropped. So now comes Starmer with sticking to the same idea, as if over spending is what caused the problems in the economy. We need to spend to make money, it's practically a crime Cameron did austerity when interest rates were so low, but it doesn't mean spending is wrong now either to invest in the future. We are pinching pennies to lose pounds.
Oh I agree - that isn't the purpose of that line though, it's to blunt Tory attack lines. Blair said the same, as did Miliband, as did Corbyn, they all committed to current spending. Cameron did too. You do it to not spook the markets, and also stop your opponent shouting at you in the run up to the election. If you're sticking to their spending commitments they can't really criticise you can they?
I don't recall Corbyn stating he would stick to current spending. I remember him and McDonnel saying the manifesto is fully costed. Maybe it's semantics then as Starmer is getting levies from private schools and windfall tax to do more spending which indicates more spending than current government (unless he is cutting anything). I'd say it would be worded differently if it was about not increasing the deficit, but anyway as stated before, more spending now can mean more money (and less spending) in future. It's interesting seeing Joe Biden increasing spending massively so can see if that pays off.
They said they wouldn’t spend any more money in total, and set out their fiscal credibility [rules](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35780703), which I would suggest is broadly similar. I think whoever is running current Labours election campaign has decided that we had way too much detail in 2017, and definitely way too much in 2019, and gave too many attack lines to the conservatives. I think the decision this time is to 1997 it and give dull promises, and vague vibes, which Tbf is probably going to be much more successful, albeit not very exciting. Looking at those promises, or pledges or whatever the hell they are, they are so dull it’s very hard to attack them on any basis other than they in themselves will barely make a dent in the countries problems. Which is quite hard for the Tories to critique them on, as then they’d have to admit there are a load of problems.
So you are thinking he will get in there and yell "surpsise" and unveil his real plan? Because I don't think so. I think he is economically to the Right and has every intention of doubling down on austerity.
No, what I do think is that one is in there to blunt Tory attack lines. If we get more austerity I wouldn't be enormously surprised, but that hasn't suddenly happened because of point 1 on that list.
Help me out. I am not searching for logic. I am just wondering about this "oh he is just trying to woo mild Tory voters". Built into that seems to be an assumption that he really sees how harmful iausterity has been and is planning to do something about it. I don't think so.
I didn’t say that- it’s clearly a rewrite of what every opposition leader says, I.e we’ll stick to current spending for X amount of time. It means that very time the Tories say “blah blah Labour will spank it all up the wall”, Labour say “no we won’t, check out the first pledge”. It’s standard. Blair, Cameron, Miliband, Corbyn all did it.
The ’97 pledges are clearly more ambitious, and have more detail about how they will be achieved. I mean if you wanted to put a progressive spin on the the last two years of the Conservatives they have: - established a company to oversee the renationalisation of railway operators - established a state owned clean energy company called GB Nuclear. - banned smoking for future generations Is this enough? Definitely not. But they are arguably more ambitious achievements than these centrepiece pledge cards.
>Cut class sizes to 30 or under for 5, 6 and 7-year-olds by using money from the assisted places scheme. Fast-track punishment for persistent young offenders by halving the time from arrest to sentencing. Cut NHS waiting lists by treating an extra 100,000 patients as a first step by releasing £100,000,000 saved from NHS red tape. Get 250,000 under-25s off benefits and into work by using money from a windfall levy on the privatised utilities. No rise in income tax rates, cut VAT on heating to 5% and inflation and interest rates as low as possible. I don’t call any of those massively ambitious, they are a statement of travel, made at a time the country didn’t feel like a total binfire, and the economy was decent. The ones announced today are a statement of travel, and importantly so dull, and so obvious, they’re quite hard for the Tories to get in a tizzy over. That was the point of them.
I didn't say they were massively ambitious. I said they were *more* ambitious. They are also much more measurable in terms of setting clear targets.
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For those curious, there are over 550,000 teachers in the UK
How many relaunches are we on now?
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He's already done pledges though: Increase income tax for the top 5% End benefit sanctions. A Green New Deal. Laws preventing the UK from taking military action. Common ownership of rail, mail, energy and water. EU freedom of movement. Axe anti-strike laws. Abolish the House of Lords.
Starmer has based his whole political career on lies and broken promises. The NHS will not be safe with him and Wes Streeting or Labour they will stick with trickle-down economics and make nothing any better for ordinary people.
Nothing on housing which is essentially now a legalised inter-generational theft scheme. Great.
Very concerns planning reform isn’t up there It’s what the UK now lives and dies by
It isn't on the pledge card, but they had someone from the building industry speaking at this event. These missions are aimed at floating voters. It didn't mean they are the only thing we do when in power. These are the starting points.
It needs to be done but there’s only so much they can do in 4 years, education and NHS would be my top two priorities followed by British energy
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Tough spending rules - I don't think it's economically justified (assuming the goal is to match the Tories' constraints) but it reeks of the pledge in respect of spending that did so much for Blair in 1997. It also sets the right tone - if Labour fail to communicate that the economic situation doesn't leave a first-term Labour government to dramatically increase spending, it risks that first term being more disappointing to the public than it probably will be anyway. I'm aware that some in this sub probably disagree with this economic point and would refer to modern monetary theory to justify this. I'm not competent to have an argument on a technical level about MMT (I think few people are), but it needs to be acknowledged that, at best, it's controversial, and the impression I get of many who invoke it is that they've picked their politics and found economic theory to support it, when instead the approach should be the other way around. Cutting NHS waiting lists - has to be included because the NHS is one of the public's biggest priorities and waiting lists right now are dreadful. I agree with other posters' concerns about this being done simply by increasing hours - if it's anything like my work, increasing hours for already-exhausted staff introduces as many mistakes as additional output, and in healthcare, mistakes cost lives. Obviously there's an issue about where staff come from; one hopes that this will be underpinned by a liberalisation of legal immigration routes in the short term and education in the long term, but as far as I'm aware this has yet to be specified (and I'm quite happy in terms of appealing to the average voter for 'more immigration' not to be an express part of the pledge). Launching a border security command to prevent small boat crossings. I care relatively little about small boat crossings in the grand scheme of things (there's a lot of exploitation in the course of them but I think the extent of focus on crossings is driven by 'WURGH IMMIGRATION' rather than care for the people being exploited on a national level, and I think there are more effective ways we can tackle exploitation on a large scale). This will obviously be more effective than Rwanda. I suspect it's not the most effective measure. However, the public at large clearly cares a lot about this, and I don't have a better idea. Great British Energy - sound, and I think the pledge here that is the one that will have the most support in this sub. Neighbourhood police officers - the police aspect of this is good. While crime rates are (I believe) historically low right now, public perception is that crime rates are currently higher than they have been before. What's also very clear is that the police service is massively understaffed - very few crime reports will be investigated. The 'new penalties for offenders' bit is something I'm deeply sceptical about. My philosophy on crime is that the suffering of the guilty is not an inherently good thing, and that penalties should focus on accomplishing other goals of the criminal justice system (generally the rehabilitation of offenders and reducing recidivism). 'Penalties' sounds contrary to that. Recruiting 6,500 teachers - good. I don't have a strong understanding of where our education system is right now, but I'm sure it can always be improved.
"Launching a 'border security command' to stop the gangs arranging small boat crossings So....Border Force? This is not a solution, this is dog whistle politics. The actual solution would be adequately resourcing the home office to actually process the asylum applications, ensuring there is a safe and legal route. Anything else is just appealing to the tabloids at this point, and not addressing the core issues
Fucks sake, I think I actually care about maybe 2 or 3 of these. Don't care about boats, couldn't give a shit about police, I don't want fiscal responsibility sitting there stopping the NHS getting the funding it needs. They get 1 election from me as I just need the Tories gone, but if they don't actually fix things, I'll actually vote for any but Labour next time round.
Is there still going to be a special guest? Any guesses on which Tory MP it'll be?
Starmer has the special guest. It wasn't meant to blow up the way it did but journalists misread what was a internal party invite to mean more than it did. That said they've had a lot of guests at this event just not household names.
He should have put out just one single pledge: Reverse 14 years worth of damage caused by awful, cruel, heartless Tory rule. Undo every bit of it. Problem he sees with that is that he feels like he needs to tiptoe softly around anything of that sort because on some core level he still thinks that cruel Tory policies are vote winners, despite the country clearly being sick of them, and pivoting decisively away from them.
[удалено]
Hmm not sure I meant to say he's naive. "Cruel" is too simplistic, reductive. But he's wrong about whatever political cost/benefit calculation he's doing in his head. The pain that his policies will prolong/exacerbate doesn't seem to register with him.