SIR Keir Starmer was accused of “reheated Blairism” today after he vowed Labour’s planned reforms would be like Clause IV “on steroids.”
…
A Momentum spokesperson said: “Labour members and trade unions want what the public wants: transformative policies to fix the Tories’ broken Britain, from public ownership of public services to wealth taxes.
“By pursuing a path of reheated Blairism, the Labour leadership wouldn’t just be undermining party democracy.
“It would repeat past mistakes, leaving intact a deeply unequal and unpopular economic system. It’s time for change.”
I find it difficult to understand the strategy behind Starmer’s speech which on a superficial level is bound to annoy so many. He’s not popular anyway, why make it worse?
While a general election isn’t expected for some time is his team relying on mainstream media getting behind him? Will that work?
His spokesperson told Byline Times that the Labour Leader has a “long-standing view against PR”
Labour Leader Keir Starmer actively opposes a move to proportional representation for the House of Commons – putting him at loggerheads with the party membership and trade unions, Byline Times can reveal.
On Wednesday, this newspaper reported that the 350,000-strong union USDAW had become the latest to call on Labour to back scrapping Westminster’s winner-takes-all voting system, First Past the Post.
Two-thirds of trade unions that support the Labour Party now back a major change to Westminster’s voting system amid a mounting campaign among the party and union grassroots.
But Starmer’s official spokesperson has now revealed that the Labour Leader has a “long-standing view against proportional representation”. When asked to clarify if the Labour leader was against PR he said “yes”.
“He isn’t looking to change the electoral system…It’s not something that’s a priority for him,” Starmer’s spokesperson added.
Labour delegates overwhelmingly backed PR at last year’s party conference – after mega-unions Unison and Unite supported the shift. But they do not control the manifesto – a process that is steered by the Labour Leader and his allies on the National Executive Committee.
STUDENTS and education unions slammed Labour’s “betrayal of millions of young people in desperate need of hope” today after the party’s increasingly right-wing leadership dropped a pledge to abolish cripplingly high university tuition fees.
Sir Keir Starmer’s latest U-turn on yet another left-wing pledge which got him elected leader in 2020 will help to condemn “millions of future students to a life of debt” and leaves Britain even further away from the publicly funded higher education system it needs, they stressed.
The move is likely to draw criticism from the party’s left, which has repeatedly warned that attempts to please the right-wing press while failing to offer a genuinely progressive alternative will only benefit Tory Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
With Tory MPs branding Jeremy Corbyn’s successor “Sir Flip-Flop,” Mr Sunak attempted to capitalise on the situation in a fiery Prime Ministers Questions today saying Sir Keir has made a “series of broken promises.”
These include now abandoned pledges to renationalise public services, increase income tax for the highest earners and defend freedom of movement post-Brexit.
Left wing faction Momentum compared Starmer’s shifting position to that of Nick Clegg, who famously went into the 2010 general election pledging to abolish tuition fees only to triple them when in government. A spokesperson for Momentum said: “This move wouldn’t just fly in the face of party democracy and the wishes of Labour Students. It would be a betrayal of millions of young people in desperate need of hope. The Labour leadership should learn from Nick Clegg’s failure, not repeat it.”
The former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn made similar comments. He tweeted: “Young people should not be saddled with a lifetime of debt just because they want to get an education. Abolish tuition fees, restore maintenance grants and deliver free education for all.”
Cullen commented that, although the outcome of today’s meeting appeared to be set, nurses will remain in dispute with the government over pay and staffing.
“Tuesday’s meeting with Steve Barclay appears a foregone conclusion,” said Cullen. “Different unions and different professions came to different, but respectable, conclusions on this pay offer.
“The deal being accepted by others does not alter the clear fact that nursing staff, as the largest part of the NHS workforce, remain in dispute with the government over unfair pay and unsafe staffing.”
And Cardwell exposed his link to the account when he tweeted one message pretending to be Gorst, thenimmediately deleted it and was stupid enough to put the same message out on the ‘Spam’ account moments later
Right-wing Labour MP Jess Phillips has deleted a tweet in which she said she bought her first home at the age of twenty and described how it changed her and her children’s ‘fortune’
…
Phillips has previously told the Financial Times, presumably in an oddly-placed effort to boost her working-class credentials, that at age 22 she was living in a ‘squat’
