I think those on the left of the Labour party are generally far more likely to vote for Starmer than the centre ever was to vote for Corbyn (or RLB). The people out canvassing and campaigning are still going to be very left-leaning. He might not have been their first pick but they’re far less likely to throw their toys out of the pram than those in the centre (who can defect to other parties occupying similar ground easily).

But Starmer can’t start taking those people for granted. If he begins alienating minorities, he begins to alienate the young, and it could snowball pretty dangerously for Labour. That’s the point. As SH said earlier, his team will have clearly done the arithmetic on this one (as with everything) and have decided who they can marginalise, but they need to be careful about being “sensible” and “grown-ups”

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You didn’t suggest a better way, you said that a better way was possible but you didn’t say how or who else might have outlined it. To be clear, I’m not expecting a comprehensive alternative position or approach, but summaries like “binning off the respect of progressive labour to suck off people that are already lost” don’t feel especially even handed, especially given that I think Starmer is doing exactly what he did in the Leadership campaign.

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Loads more people die from corona, mass unemployment and catastrophic climate change happen and cause a popular uprising.

Unfortunately when this happens Kier triangulates himself into a coma and we end up with Priti Patel as prime minister and everyone congratulates Britain as a wonderful liberal country with a woman prime minister that is the child of immigrants and ignore the fact that she’s a sociopathic facist.

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If he carries on with his patronising paternalistic white-privilege bullshit he’ll be regularly called out for it and rightly so, and he’ll lose my vote while he’s at it.

Bit of a tricky one for me, this. I spent a lot of the last few years telling people who didn’t like Corbyn that the party was important, not the man. So would feel like a hypocrite if I didn’t vote Labour because the leader was now a spineless dipshit. But at the same time, he’s a spineless dipshit.

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It’d be a tough decision but if he carries on paying lip service to racist power structures there’s literally not a way I can back them

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Beyond that, the movement is more important than the party IMO. Still a member, still expect to remain a member for the moment, would still vote Labour in my particular constituency, but I’d have a tough time telling someone whose find the new rhetoric objectionable that they shouldn’t pay heed to the Greens for example.

One particular red flag for the leadership I think is that the Lib Dems have identified BAME voters as an opportunity for them in their electoral review, and while I’d love to think that everyone will see through their emperor’s new clothes nonsense, it worries me that some people will perceive Labour as throwing them under the bus just at the time another party comes calling looking as if they’ve changed for the better.

literally how the lib dems keep existing innit (c.f. drug law reform in 90s/student fees in 00s etc)

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read a highly upvoted defence of Starmer’s comments on a Labour community basically saying he was right to say that because he was talking on LBC and talking to people who wouldn’t normally vote Labour.

Feels like Ed Milliband again but substituting saying ‘strikes are wrong’ with this crap about Colston. That was right at the start of Ed’s time and I think it still contributed to the lack of faith in his Labour party in 2015…

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Marvin Rees on C4 News got a grilling from Krishnan Guru-Murthy and managed to stay moderate without coming across as a simpering, centrist twat.

It’s not difficult and the LOTO should be able to do it. Especially one who is forensic and strategic and whatnot.

Couldn’t work out what LOTO meant for a moment there (Lord of the… otters?)

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The OtterMan Empire will rise again!

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The future Prime Minister can’t be seen to be supporting illegal activities, however justified they are. He had no choice.

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It’s the difference between supporting the action and understanding it.

You can formally not approve of someone’s action, without saying it’s “completely wrong”.

You can understand and express disappointment that the proper channels had failed, that “with consent” was an exhausted option.

You can say you don’t condone the action, but understand the anger and frustration behind it.

You can say it’s “completely wrong” that it had to take this action to remove a statue honouring a slave trader.

Again, as the leader of the Labour Party, he’s not gone on air unprepared, so that means he decided to use the words he did. And for that, he’s rightly being criticised.

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victimless crime tho innit

not feeling that. whatever forum you’re on, as loto your statements are reported across the board. “it’s ok, his statement was insulated within those millions those millions of people on a forum whose mo is clippable content” seems naïve at best.

Not just that, LBC is a platform that the rest of the media produce headlines from; much like Today or the Evening Standard it’s a platform that allows you to set the tone of a debate if used carefully (why do you think Farage spends so much time on it).

Unfortunately all the headlines from yesterday say that Starmer thinks that the removal of the statue was “completely wrong”. Not that the way it was removed was “wrong” or he “can’t condone criminal damage” of any monument.

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this is because of the statues isnt it

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