I think it is fair to say that Starmer is best served to stay schtumm. Let the present shower mis-rule.
The time to lay out your stall is patently not now.
As soon as the date is announced for the general election then and only then can and will a detailed and costed plan/manifesto be layed out for the voters and pundits.
To expect and some even demand a deep and detailed plan now is imho unrealistic and some might say stupid.
And to constantly use this as a stick to beat the labour party (but neglect bashing others i.e. LibDems) suggest a subconcious bias/prejudice at best.
Well it is all about opinions. I dont agree, as you can imagine, but respect your stance. As I say they have won the race already for me. If they had an effective plan, in my opinion, they could turn a 20 point lead into one of the biggest majorities ever and that would give the Labour party amazing authority to execute on that plan.
For the avoidance of doubt my bias is quite conscious, not subconscious. My distrust of the current Labour party is based on my own assessment of their behaviour as an opposition party since their last time in government. And if you think they are best to keep quiet and let the tories misrule I am not sure that equates to doing their job as the opposition party, which we all partly pay for. Their last time in government was flawed, again only in my opinion, and I was pleased to see them gone. I have read that some of those key players from the last Labour govt are playing some role in advising the current team, which gives me cause for pause.
Now I cant wait to see this current government gone. They are abject and have made some horrendous decisions. But I cant just wave the next cab off the rank in without any sense of what they will do differently. I am not interested in blind hope. I want and expect more. So I am expecting Labour to show up and offer more. At the moment they are not. Maybe the FT is right and they have been caught out by the tory implosion. Maybe they thought they would have another 4 years to get themselves ready to govern. Maybe they appear vague because they are having to rush. In my opinion, to hammer a current government endlessly is ok when they are as bad as this lot, but to be critical of those who challenge the opposition to that govt is a bit unbalanced, 1 year out from a change. I wont use the phrase pathetic, like some, because that seems somewhat disrespectful. In a two party political system, which sadly is what we have ended up with, to fail to scrutinise both seems to miss an opportunity we have as voters to make a difference to what comes next.
As it stands I will vote Lib Dem. As said previously it is a vote aimed at bringing hopefully a greater balance to the british political system. I know I am not alone in that stance. I fully expect a big Labour majority of course. I plan to keep scrutinising, and criticising, them as the govt in waiting because they need to be the best they can be from the moment they walk through the door. If they want to be that then now is the time to lay out some further detail to help bolster their power base to act quickly, or to allow a level of refinement of the plans to optimise them before they implement.
Whatever my opinions are, and in the grand scheme if things they are irrelevant, I only really ask for a competent government that can do the fundamentals right, for the sake of the next generation and my kids.
