He hasn't done that. Labour aren't going to suddenly reverse that position. How has he sat on the fence? He's done the exact opposite of that and ruled something out. As for the Lib Dems doing well, most people couldn't even tell you who their leader is. They've had a bit of a boost from disillusioned former Tories who would never vote for Labour. They're at about 10%, which is roughly where they always are, barring their recent extreme low. A substantial chunk of younger voters will never touch them with a bargepole. Brexit was toxic for the Labour Party, largely due to Corbyn's absolute dogshit handling of it. Starmer's not silly enough to want to keep having people associate his leadership with both things. Distancing himself from it and drawing a line under it is exactly what he should be doing. It's happened, the Tories have ****ed it up and he's pointed to their handling of it.
The problem for Labour is many of their traditional voters are also Little Englanders, who agree with Brexit, irrespective of the arguments for and against.
Maintaining the status quo is both sitting on the fence while giving the half of the electorate who'd like the status quo to go **** itself is absolutely doing that Most people couldn't tell you who the Lib Dem leader is, even when he turns up for cringy photo ops breaking a blue wall with a yellow hammer...and yet they actually have seen an upturn in their turnout, for example Chesham & Amersham which can't be handwaved away like North Shropshire - and here's the thing with handwaving, it fails to explain why the Labour vote dropped in the two aforementioned byelections Meanwhile, on the subject of young voters, how many of those has Starmer run out of Labour since taking over? And, no, don't try saying every last one of them was a Corbyn supporter, actually ask why If anyone's handling of Jonestown was dogshit it was Starmer insisting on a 180 right on the verge of an election which not only weakened their position by making it a black and white issue for those who like to paint things in the blackest and whitest lines, but then going back on that position once his feet are under the table which begs the obvious question what his position actually is: does he want to be part of the EU like he did in December 2019, or does he have no interest whatsoever as he does in February 2022? A flip-flop like that's impossible to ignore, and the only surprise is that hasn't been lobbed at him at PMQs as often as you'd expect
What he wants is irrelevant. It's not going to happen. Any party running on it right now will be unelectable. It's that simple. If he ran on rejoining at the next election, then he'd be handing it to the Tories, just like Corbyn did. He failed miserably and anyone following his lead will do the same.
That's a bit early. He's the bloke on the right of this footage with the Flying V. His brother was at this gig, as were Mrs B and I.
And this, Ladies & Gents, is why the Met Police is a lost cause. The criticism felt by rank and file officers - most of whom are trying to do a difficult job to the best of their abilities - is a direct result of the lack of training and poor supervision and lax internal discipline that brings the Force into disrepute. The Federation are a toothless entity and too often Reps are officers just looking for a cushy number, totally unsuited to be helping to develop cultural change. Often they are the worst offenders. Blaming Sadiq Khan and defending the dubious Dick just emphasises this disconnect. It is clear that they are in full self defence mode and that is never a state where change will be effected. https://news.sky.com/video/met-police-cressida-dick-was-the-right-person-to-lead-change-12542167
Realistically, the only reason why anyone thinks that running on rejoining makes them unelectable is because they're giving too much power to the Mail, Express, Telegraph and Sun - or to put it another way, trying to appease them long enough to not have them sharpening their knives And that's simply bollocks, because the second an election is called they'll descend on Starmer like a pack of hungry wolves regardless, for example look at the Mail trying to make a story out of Starmer having a beer in the Labour office in July 2021 - you know, when the restrictions had been lifted so there was no reason for this to be bad, but because he was making BoBo look almost as bad at PMQs as Jeremy Clarkson did on an episode of Top Gear they tried making that a thing for a good couple of weeks before giving up as Putin had gifted him an opportunity to look Prime Ministerial...and how's that worked out for the last week? If Starmer thinks they won't go for him once an election is called he's in trouble, especially after De Pfeffel threw the Saville grenade at him a couple of weeks ago which, as bollocks as it was, the fact that one's been doing the rounds on the Guido forums since literally the day Starmer became Labour leader undermined the Grauniad's oft-repeated theory that nobody had anything to chuck at him - and when you have the likes of Cleverley and my local MP... ...which reminds me, I'm accepting donations for bottles of Yazoo as he lives five minutes walk from me - as does his the other house on the same street I've seen him coming out of more than once, but I hate to engage in idle speculation about him schtupping somebody who isn't his wife... ...keeping that little lie on the boil, and you know one of the Sun or Mail will try and chuck that in on election day on the belief that whatever fine they have to pay is nothing compared to keeping the Tories in for another 4-5 years. So **** appeasing them, piss them off, start with sticking up for the NHS instead of whipping their MPs to abstain on healthcare votes en masse if for no other reason to say, hey, at least we're sticking up for the NHS instead of fobbing them off with some applause followed by a real terms wage cut and not even suppling them with the badge they paid £7 for
And do you think that these traditional voters are more or less likely to vote Labour when they are being called "Little Englanders", which admittedly is quite mild as many on the "intellectual left" of Labour seem to actively despise them. Funny these intellectuals aren't clever enough to know that as long as they don't understand a large proportion of their (should be) core vote, they aren't going to get into government again.
Those voters ( *** ) are all : - thick - "racist" - ignorant - "uneducated" - < insert as appropriate > and don't the PIPEs (TM) love crowing about it., *** Years ago, when the BNP had a surge in support leading to gaining seats in council elections etc, someone summed up the cognitive dissonance perfectly ... BNP voters : THICK people who normally vote LABOUR
The Sudetenland part of the analogy has already happened (2014) . When Beijing Biden was USA VP. We are now hoping that we don't get the Poland 1939 part of the analogy.
It also has to be said that the issue with policing in general is that it attracts a very narrow slice of the political spectrum, hence you constantly have officers being racist, misogynistic, or generally acting like they can't tell the difference between being an active police officer and being an edgelord on 4chan Who would have thought that people with authoritative power fantasies might be encouraged to start a career where they can lock people up for looking at them funny?
The BNP were and presumably still are completely right wing. It's voters drifted to UKIP. I don't see any evidence that they'd normally vote for Labour.
What is the BNP election track record in constituencies/wards that normally vote Tory ?? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_National_Party_election_results#Local_elections Yep, the remark seems to be spot on.
The BNP seem to have had most of their best electoral successes in council wards that have a strong historical support for Labour. The remark seems to be spot on.
