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Starmer betrays vulnerable and low-paid by abandoning promise to scrap Universal Credit

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Original article republished for non-commercial use from the Skwawkbox

bySKWAWKBOX (SW)09/01/2023 3 Comments on Starmer betrays vulnerable and low-paid by abandoning promise to scrap Universal Credit

Yet another promise shredded as Starmer maintains 100% weasel record

Starmer and a starving child

Keir Starmer has broken yet another promise – maintaining his perfect betrayal record – by abandoning his pledge to scrap the hateful and cruel Universal Credit system through which the Tories have inflicted years of misery and poverty on the UK’s lowest earning and most vulnerable.

Starmer’s Work and Pensions spokesman Jon Ashworth, challenged directly whether Starmer – who has already been mocked this week for claiming he will ‘renew’ the UK after thirteen years of Tory cuts without spending more – would honour his promise to scrap the system that has pushed huge numbers into abject poverty, responded that:

We’re going to reform universal credit … it’s a computer system. We’re not going to go back to the six different benefits that I think it brought together but we are going to reform it.

The lumping together of benefits that were previously tailored to the needs and circumstances of different types of claimant is one of the fundamentally damaging aspects of Universal Credit – and Labour had unequivocally promised to get rid of the whole system and ‘replace’ it with something fit for purpose, to show that ‘Labour is on the side of working people’, millions of whom rely on benefits to top up low pay they are forced to accept while employers fatten profits:

Starmer has already shredded every one of the promises he made to Labour members, including his promise to renationalise the NHS and utilities, a plan that is hugely popular with voters across the political spectrum. Now – after he and his health spokesman accepted large donations from private health interests – he has said that he intends to use more private providers behind the NHS badge and refuses to commit to increasing public sector pay or the services they provide.

Starmer was asked this week by an interviewer what the point is of voting Labour when he will be no different to the Tories. If there is any difference, it’s an even lower level of trustworthiness. A Starmer promise is not fit to wipe your backside with.

Original article republished for non-commercial use from the Skwawkbox

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Continue ReadingStarmer betrays vulnerable and low-paid by abandoning promise to scrap Universal Credit

Starmer ditches pledge to end NHS outsourcing

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/starmer-ditches-pledge-end-nhs-outsourcing

LABOUR leader Sir Keir Starmer’s apparent U-turn on a commitment to end NHS outsourcing is “morally wrong and politically self-defeating,” campaigners said today.

The criticism from groups including Keep Our NHS Public and Momentum came after Mr Starmer told Sky News he would seek to use the private sector in the health service more “effectively” if elected prime minister.

The policy breaks a promise Mr Starmer made during his party leadership campaign in spring 2020 to abolish the use of external private providers.

The volte-face follows comments by shadow health secretary Wes Streeting urging Tory ministers to use private hospitals to help clear Covid pandemic-related treatment backlogs.

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Continue ReadingStarmer ditches pledge to end NHS outsourcing

Stuart Hall: New Labour has picked up where Thatcherism left off

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https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/aug/06/society.labour

The Labour election victory in 1997 took place at a moment of great political opportunity. Thatcherism had been rejected by the electorate. But 18 years of Thatcherite rule had radically altered the social, economic and political terrain in British society. There was, therefore, a fundamental choice of direction for the incoming government.

One was to offer an alternative radical strategy to Thatcherism, attuned to the shifts that had occurred in the 1970s and 1980s; with equal social and political depth, but based on radically different principles. What Thatcherism seemed to have ruled out was another bout of Keynesian welfare-state social democracy. More significantly, Thatcherism had evolved a broad hegemonic basis for its authority, deep philosophical foundations, as well as an effective popular strategy. It was grounded in a radical remodelling of state and economy and a new neo-liberal common sense.

This was not likely to be reversed by a mere rotation of the electoral wheel of fortune. The historic opportunities for the left required imaginative thinking and decisive action in the early stages of taking power, signalling a new direction. The other choice was, of course, to adapt to Thatcherite, neo-liberal terrain. There were plenty of indications that this would be New Labour’s preferred direction. And so it turned out. In a profound sense, New Labour has adapted to neo-liberal terrain …

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/aug/06/society.labour

Continue ReadingStuart Hall: New Labour has picked up where Thatcherism left off

Working people deserve better than Austerity 2.0 from Labour

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/e/working-people-deserve-better-austerity-20-labour

UNITE leader Sharon Graham is absolutely right to demand assurances from Keir Starmer that a Labour government will not mean a continuation of austerity.

On this issue she speaks not just for her union but for the working class as a whole.

Austerity has beggared Britain over the last 13 years, impoverishing the public realm, cutting real wages for millions, and it is at the root of the cost-of-living crisis engulfing the country.

It is the expression of the drive by the capitalist class to make workers pay for the crisis which has unfolded, with pauses but without ending, since the bankers’ crash in 2008.

An end to austerity should therefore be the first and unbreakable commitment of any Labour government, as it was under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/e/working-people-deserve-better-austerity-20-labour

Continue ReadingWorking people deserve better than Austerity 2.0 from Labour

State of the UK Labour Party

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Two articles about the UK Labour Party, Craig Murray discusses the pointless Keir Starmer:

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Starmer’s role has been simply to emasculate the Labour Party, and to purge it of any elements that might seek to pose a threat to rampant neo-liberalism and wealth inequality. His efforts to ban Labour MPs from supporting striking railway workers must be anathema to anybody who has the slightest feel for the history and traditions of that party and indeed the most basic understanding of its very raison d’etre.

This Tony Benn quote from the 1980’s has come into vogue because it is prophetic, and the process appears now complete:

If the Labour Party could be bullied or persuaded to denounce its Marxists, the media – having tasted blood – would demand next that it expelled all its Socialists and reunited the remaining Labour Party with the SDP to form a harmless alternative to the Conservatives, which could then be allowed to take office now and then when the Conservatives fell out of favour with the public. Thus British Capitalism, it is argued, will be made safe forever, and socialism would be squeezed off the National agenda. But if such a strategy were to succeed… it would in fact profoundly endanger British society. For it would open up the danger of a swing to the far-right, as we have seen in Europe over the last 50 years.

Starmer is in one sense the apotheosis of this process. Not only has he acted to purge the Labour Party of socialism, he also offers so very little of a meaningful alternative to the Tories that there is very little danger of the Tories being voted out of office. Not only is he a safe right-wing backstop, he is a self-redundant safe right-wing backstop.

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Jeremy Corbyn Sophie Brown, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

and Jeremy Corbyn openly discusses the many parties that obstructed him. The article also discusses Julian Assange.

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The Guardian has long been viewed as the voice of the liberal-left in Britain, so it surprised many during the Corbyn leadership to see it act as one of the main media vehicles through which the campaign to bring him down was fought. 

The paper was a key part of the “anti-semitism crisis” that engulfed Corbyn’s leadership. From 2016-19, the Guardian published 1,215 stories mentioning Labour and anti-semitism, an average of around one per day, according to a search on Factiva, the database of newspaper articles. 

In the same period, the Guardian published just 194 articles mentioning the Conservative Party’s much more serious problem with Islamophobia. A YouGov poll in 2019, for example, found that nearly half of the Tory party membership would prefer not to have a Muslim prime minister. 

The Guardian’s coverage of anti-semitism in Labour was suspiciously extensive, compared to the known extent of the problem in the party, and its focus on Corbyn personally suggested that the issue was being used politically.

The late Jewish anthropologist David Graeber commented after the 2019 election: “As for the Guardian, we will never forget that during the ‘Labour antisemitism controversy’, they beat even the Daily Mail to include the largest percentage of false statements, pretty much every one, mysteriously, an accidental error to Labour’s disadvantage”.

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Keir Starmer says he is scrapping Labour’s manifesto and ‘starting from scratch’ on policy

Continue ReadingState of the UK Labour Party