Again:
Starmer is hostile to anything that could be used to drive a wedge between him and winning
Let them win and (at the very least) be better for a bit, and then more progressive.
At Leeds, the people behind the counters are the best. They have all these off peak traveller tickets in West Yorkshire and the machines never prompt you for the right one to use, but the people behind the counter just know and give you the cheapest combination by default. The saved me a fiver this week
Angela Rayner, the deputy leader? Anneliese Dodds, the chair? Ed Miliband, business secretary
Sure there are more…
Yeah, is there anything the left does better than factionalism!
Starmer is hostile to anything that could be used to drive a wedge between him and winning, which doesn’t seem a terrible strategy for the country. Would rather have 5 years of centre left government than another term of Tory leadership. Let the Overington window move slowly, but it’s easier to advocate for left wing policies if the right of labour is in charge (through party conferences) than from the outside.
That’s quite a pessimistic view! The biggest problem is the budget is tanked. Can labour invest in the future and deal with the shitshow of the last few years? QE is the easy way out but can they do that without having various things go tits up? Else they need to be good economic managers for a few years then translate that into a base that you can invest from. It’s going to be super tricky. But they can do lots of small things, in all sorts of directions that are not funding based. Local neighborhood policy was in the news today as a wedge issue. But there are lots of others. The environment. Schooling policy. Zero hours contracts, taxation of web giants, migration. All of these would be dramatically different under labour and even if only one or two were, it’s still a reason to vote them over the Tories.