Manchester mayor Andy Burnham might actually have a chance of saving Labour from itself, which is exactly why Keir Starmer won’t give him a chance, argues Ash Sarkar.
IMO the issue is that Tony Blair so comprehensively changed politics that parties can’t win elections in the UK anymore from a leftwing platform. The alternative is that the government/Starmer are sitting there being told that a leftward move is significantly more popular than their current platform, and that they are - suicidally - ignoring that evidence due to ideology.
How would one square the implicit suggestion that Starmer is taking bold ideological stances with the fact that the one thing everyone agrees about him is he lacks a clear ideology?
parties can’t win elections in the UK anymore from a leftwing platform
How would we know? Which party with more than a couple of percentage points of the vote has actually run an even slightly leftwing campaign since Blair and Brown? The only one I can think of is Corbyn, and he was sabotaged by his own MPs and the party apparatchiks who would (somewhat like the article) rather lose than allow anyone with even vaguely leftist policies to win.
Yeah, I think it’s more that they want those fat donor cheques and are doing contortions with polling data to come up with the policies those donors want.
IMO the issue is that Tony Blair so comprehensively changed politics that parties can’t win elections in the UK anymore from a leftwing platform. The alternative is that the government/Starmer are sitting there being told that a leftward move is significantly more popular than their current platform, and that they are - suicidally - ignoring that evidence due to ideology.
How would one square the implicit suggestion that Starmer is taking bold ideological stances with the fact that the one thing everyone agrees about him is he lacks a clear ideology?
How would we know? Which party with more than a couple of percentage points of the vote has actually run an even slightly leftwing campaign since Blair and Brown? The only one I can think of is Corbyn, and he was sabotaged by his own MPs and the party apparatchiks who would (somewhat like the article) rather lose than allow anyone with even vaguely leftist policies to win.
We can’t know for sure. My point was that logically they’d be following what their internal polling / researchers are telling them.
Yeah, I think it’s more that they want those fat donor cheques and are doing contortions with polling data to come up with the policies those donors want.
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