| Oh go on then it's been a while. The future. Happy New Year...... 20:29 - Dec 30 with 434 views | BanksterDebtSlave |
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/dec/30/keir-starmer-detached-labour-pa
A key centre-left Labour MP says Keir Starmer appears to lack a clear sense of purpose due to his detachment from his party’s traditions, and casts doubt on whether he can become one of its more successful prime ministers.
In A Century of Labour, a book published to mark 100 years since the formation of the first Labour government on 22 January 1924 under Ramsay MacDonald, Jon Cruddas says that Starmer – while clearly a “decent” and “principled” man – “remains an elusive leader, difficult to find”.
Cruddas, MP for Dagenham and Rainham and a former party policy chief, writes that “apart from his actual name, little ties Starmer to the ethical and spiritual concerns of Labour’s early founders, figures such as Keir Hardie and George Lansbury”.
He continues: “His approach to economics does not appear to be grounded in any specific theoretical understanding of inequality, material justice and welfare distribution. Despite a successful career as a human rights lawyer, as Labour leader Starmer appears disinterested [sic] in questions of liberty and freedom.”
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| Oh go on then it's been a while. The future. Happy New Year...... on 21:04 - Dec 30 with 356 views | factual_blue |
Which does he like least?
IDF?
IDS?
or IBS? |  |
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| Oh go on then it's been a while. The future. Happy New Year...... on 21:32 - Dec 30 with 317 views | DJR |
The following from the article accords with my view of Starmer, which I think is partly explained by the fact that he has no political background, being a largely career civil servant, and thus in my view no real political views or instincts, unlike, say, Blair. But, sadly in my view, he is the only game in town
The impression the Labour leader leaves, Cruddas suggests, is of someone disconnected from the party’s roots and history. “Starmer often seems detached from his own party and uncomfortable in communion with fellow MPs.
“In his immediate circles, he appears to value the familiar and unchallenging. It is difficult to identify the purpose of a future Starmer government – what he seeks to accomplish beyond achieving office. Labour appears to be content for the coming election to amount to a referendum on the performance of the governing Conservatives rather than a choice between competing visions of politics and justice.”
As he writes about a century that has produced only six Labour prime ministers – MacDonald, Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown – Cruddas offers his own reinterpretation of Labour history by assessing how its competing traditions and visions for advancing socialist justice – the belief in redistributing wealth, increasing liberty and freedom, and ideas on how to promote human virtue – have played out.
He argues that Labour leaders only succeed when they unite those traditions, and the people associated with them on the left, right and centre of the party.
Cruddas says that in his campaign to succeed Jeremy Corbyn in 2019, Starmer’s 10 policy pledges had brought together those political traditions and ideologies around a central idea: what Starmer called “the moral case for socialism”. But once in office, Starmer performed a series of “pivots” or U-turns, he says, that saw him abandon many of the 10 pledges, including those on public ownership, the implementation of tax rises for the top 5% of earners and constitutional reform.
He also “oversaw a brutal centralisation of power on strictly factional lines and the removal of any signs of independent thought from prospective Labour candidates”.
Unlike the post-war Attlee government or Blair in 1997, Cruddas doubts whether Starmer has a convincing or detailed enough programme for government. “Even after four years in post, Keir Starmer remains an elusive leader, difficult to find,” he writes. “He is clearly an honest, decent man engaged in politics for principled reasons. Yet there are few contributions to help reveal an essential political identity and little in the way of an intellectual paper trail.”
He says the ditching of campaign commitments “guarantees a complicated future relationship with his party”. Cruddas concludes by warning that without more connections to the party’s traditions and values, and a clearer offer to the electorate, an election win could bring real dangers and even existential risk. “Without such reconciliation, a party of labour could be destroyed by victory.” [Post edited 30 Dec 2023 21:42]
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