You mean lawyers are, shock horror, insisting, on instruction of clients, that the Government follows the law? After all if what the Government was trying to do wasn't actually illegal they wouldn't keep getting told they can't do what they're trying to do...
-
Our new ticketing site is now live! Using either this or the original site (both powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!
Keir Starmer and the Labour Party
- Thread starter deltic
- Start date
- Status
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R
RailUK Forums
Indeed, and the result very much seemed like a foregone conclusion.
Looking at election results from the 1970s and 1980s this area seems to have moved markedly towards Labour in recent times, and has never been under serious threat from the Tories since.
edwin_m
Veteran Member
Labour seem to be coming in for some stick on here for not moving fast enough to undo Brexit and also for not resisting it hard enough. Maybe, like the BBC, if you're getting flak from both sides you're roughly in the right place?
We're now seeing the effects of Brexit, and it should now be clear that trying democratically to reverse or mitigate it was actually very much in the best interests of the country. In fact, had someone other than Corbyn been in charge, we quite possibly wouldn't have had the referendum in the first place (Tories felt free to head to the right as Labour weren't challenging the centre ground). And given the disarray on the Tory side, a clear Labour line in opposition to Brexit in 2019 under someone like Starmer would probably have carried the day in getting a second referendum or at least pushing the government towards a less damaging deal.
Nicholas Lewis
Established Member
For sure Corbyn aided and abetted the Tories in delivering Brexit
How do you square that one? Was he in the planning meetings advising them on how to reclaim the votes they lost from UKIP? (remember them?)
GS250
Member
- Joined
- 18 Mar 2019
- Messages
- 1,031
There were always going to be losses and gains. The losses were going to come earlier than the gains. It's being able to attribute events directly to brexit as opposed to lockdown or any other geo political event. Rejoining the the single market means opening up our labour market to Eastern Europe once more. Great for employers but not for wages. The nursing crisis may be resolved but it means wages stay stagnant. Then again, would there be a massive movement of people from East to West anyway? The cost of living here v wages was becoming a problem long before the brexit vote.
Labour have generally stood on the principle of being for the 'working class'. However, their position on brexit during the last election was perceived to not be in line with this.
Unfortunately, in this case the simple and slightly misleading when you think about it inn detail was catchy and appealed to the tribalistic nature of humans. Saying, "yes we joined the EU, but the issue is that the low quality jobs disappeared due to deindustrialisation under Thatcher and we were in power for 12 years and didn't rectify it" isn't one that really fills the electorate with confidence.
The problem (or one of the problems) was that decently-paid industrial jobs disappeared and the people who had had those jobs were often left with low quality jobs like distribution, call centres and security. Labour applied a bit of sticking-plaster through minimum wage, working family tax credits and so on but couldn't bring back those jobs. They also didn't reverse the outsourcing of work like social care.
Indeed, if you joined a factory as an apprentice, there are a whole variety of roles that you could move upwards into, both technical and managerial. Whereas in a warehouse and you join, the technical track of progression has largely disappeared.
GS250
Member
- Joined
- 18 Mar 2019
- Messages
- 1,031
Unless we nationalise every business though, the govt can't really have any effect on internal company structure. However, encouraging apprentice schemes, maybe even funding them is a step in the right direction. Companies constantly bemoan difficulty recruiting for decent skilled and experienced staff yet the answer has possibly always been there on the shop floor. Putting a virtual boundary in place, in some cases the nonsense of having a 'graduates only' approach for generalist roles that are expected to become managers of some description is effectively creating an 'us and them' culture.
Not really heard anything from Labour about its intention to turn Britain back into a more industrialised nation. However as has been pointed out above, quite often new industrial complexes, especially warehouses are 90% minimum wage type positions and then something of a vacuum to management. Of course external roles and opportunities will be created in the form of those who will maintain and repair the equipment. However, in the past, they would have learned their trade internally.
I don't think I was suggesting internal company structures, the issue is that simply the technical progression isn't really a factor in some roles. Perhaps you might be able to encourage companies through tax breaks so that, say, the conveyor belts in a warehouse are serviced by employees rather than contractors; but I think that simply logistics and retail work just doesn't have the same complexity as mining or manufacturing.
Perhaps we could encourage companies to recruit from the shopfloor and fund part-time degrees?
Indeed, I think this is the poisoned chalice of the services sector, particularly with large companies, where the aim of the game is following standardised procedures; whereas a smaller company may be more open to innovations and have a more favourable ratio of generals to troops.
One view is that it's quite an insult to the working class to assume that they all support Brexit!
I certainly know a number of people who identify as working class who think that Brexit was a mistake.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Indeed. Simple messages. "Get Brexit Done" - Johnson. "Make America Great Again" - Trump.
Straplines which attract those looking for simplistic answers, and those foolish enough to think Trump and Brexit will make their lives personally better. But Brexit has had no obvious benefits and Trump certainly didn't Make America Great Again. The world started respecting America again somewhere around early November 2020, maybe the world will start respecting us again circa May 2024 when Starmer might at least put this country on a somewhat better path than it has followed of late.
Last edited:
Whilst there's many who object to free movement of people we can't have zero movement of people as we have an aging population.
Without some movement we are likely to find ourselves without enough staff to do everything that needs doing.
With lockdown highlighting to a lot of people that they could live on 80% of their pay and/or not needing the stress of work a lot of people near retirement age have left the workforce.
Add to that the numbers leaving (who may have come from the EU or not) and it's why many are finding it hard to recruit/retain staff.
If there's a falling number of working age people supporting those who are retired after a while that's going to cause issues. Note I'm not saying that we should allow as many people as possible to come here, however the fiction that we don't need anyone from overseas needs to be called out.
Evening everyone.
Having discussed it between us we think that it’s probably necessary to debate Labour’s policy on Brexit in this thread as it’s going to be fairly difficult not to in the coming year or two.
Any other Brexit stuff (how it’s going, trade deals, whatever else you wish to discuss) needs to go in the general Brexit Thread where possible, just to avoid us duplicating things.
Thanks all.
Having discussed it between us we think that it’s probably necessary to debate Labour’s policy on Brexit in this thread as it’s going to be fairly difficult not to in the coming year or two.
Any other Brexit stuff (how it’s going, trade deals, whatever else you wish to discuss) needs to go in the general Brexit Thread where possible, just to avoid us duplicating things.
Thanks all.
Nicholas Lewis
Established Member
Labour started that by creating a view that everybody deserved a university education when in reality society needs a mix of all people at all levels to deliver a functioning society for all. They should have done far more to improve wage levels and called out companies abusing workers rights.
The Tories allowed the polytechnics and central institutions to become universities in 1992, which greatly increased the number of university students at a stroke. But it was probably Labour's fault really.
GS250
Member
- Joined
- 18 Mar 2019
- Messages
- 1,031
Not everyone is capable of sitting through a degree course. They may however excel at a vocational skill. Ditto others may be capable of sitting a degree but would rather crack on with something else. A trade, NVQ or maybe a HND. You can always do a degree at some point later in your career if your want to reach the next level in some jobs.
Labour insisting as many go to university as possible isn't really encouraging. That hasn't helped the situation in the USA where even moderate jobs look for a degree. You've got a lot of talented people unable to fulfil their potential in bigger companies because they can't pass the HR firewall.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
You know why that was, right? To massage the unemployment figures.
gg1
Established Member
Not relevant to the point under discussion which is the massive increase in the percentage of young people studying for a degree, whether that degree was obtained at a polytechnic or an ex-polytechnic rebranded as a university is irrelevant.
IMO setting a target of 50% of young people attending university was one of the worst decisions made by the Blair government.
Nicholas Lewis
Established Member
Totally agree and whilst equality of opportunity was the goal the reality of any modern society is you need people at all levels to make it function effectively. The apprentice system recognised this supported by technical colleges and then the polytechnics supplied people who could apply modern theory into practice leaving teh universities for the more research based effort. What Blair should have done is improve wages and conditions for those at the bottom of the pile and limit teh power of the top but he got sucked into the high life and lost touch with reality. Brown new this and tolerated it for a period of time before making a move for the top job.
I for one don't do well in written coursework, however (even though I work in engineering which is very heavily reliant on those with a degree) I've managed to thrive and progress my career with having a degree.
I suspect in part as over only ever worked in smaller companies where it's easier to prove myself rather than needing a piece of paper from several years ago that shows then I could do something (but may have zero relevance on the tasks I currently undertake).
That said I can understand the point of degrees as it should allow you to take a taught concept and apply it to a given situation.
Likewise it is possible to have taken me longer to get to the same point in my career than if I had a degree, however there's no certainly in that.
As such there's certainly a need to have both routes available (degree and work based learning), if anything given that having the option of work based learning is essential for those with degrees anyway, then why not have it open to anyone who is capable?
And it was not the Tories, a decade earlier, going and signing the death warrant for so many manufacturing and industrial jobs?
The truth is that Tory and Labour governments alike have presided over increased participation in higher education, for which there is public demand. This started before 1997 and has continued after 2010. You may think this is a good thing or a bad thing, but saying 'it's all Labour's fault' is silly. Tory and Labour governments have both tried to improve the provision of apprenticeships, which most agree is a good thing.
The Labour government introduced the minimum wage (against Tory opposition, naturally), but there are limits to what a government can do in a market economy.
Butts
Veteran Member
One of the most helpful additions they could have made was to raise SSP to at least the Minimum Wage level at the same time.
This would have helped the low paid particularly during the recent pandemic when many couldn't afford to take time off due to the paucity of SSP.
Did they? Or was it just a process of deindustrialising common to most Western economies which had been occurring since the 70s?
For simpler manufacturing jobs you’re never going to compete with the far east who can throw cheap labour at jobs. To be competitive on the world stage productivity is key. Take the Mini plant in Oxford, back in the 70s the British Leyland plant employed 20,000 people, now it’s 3-4,000. But they’re almost certainly producing more better quality cars now than they were then.
UK Manufacturing output kept rising through the second half of the 20th century, it’s just that the services sector took off so as a proportion it declined.
What would you have expected government to do to keep employment in these sectors high? What cost would that have had?
Indeed, there's a reason why engineering is still here and it's because the quality is very high.
If you want a (say) toy car made China will do it for less, if you want an aircraft part then China won't get the quality high enough frequently and so it is often cheaper to get it made in the UK.
In my own, highly niche, field, companies in Hong Kong, India or Singapore will often look for advice from the UK or US. The locals just don't (yet) have the depth
brad465
Veteran Member
Starmer making a strong statement towards those still loyal to Corbyn in the party:
www.thetimes.co.uk
Back me or quit Labour, Keir Starmer tells hard left
Sir Keir Starmer has issued a challenge to the hard-left Labour MPs who oppose his plans for government to either back him or leave the party.Labour is due to b
www.thetimes.co.uk
Why do I get the feeling that if Jeremy Corbyn had said that, the headline would be talking about a Stalin-esque purge?Starmer making a strong statement towards those still loyal to Corbyn in the party:
Back me or quit Labour, Keir Starmer tells hard left
Sir Keir Starmer has issued a challenge to the hard-left Labour MPs who oppose his plans for government to either back him or leave the party.Labour is due to b
The death warrant is signed for low-end white-collar jobs too, artificial intelligence to replace them, eg self-service ATM machines which can read and bank cheques, those lower middle-class occupations such as bank teller, are an endangered species, note how many small towns do not possess any banks with staff. We need to do some serious thinking as to the direction of employment in our society is heading. I used to think of those who advocate Universal Income as idealistic cranks, but nowadays I'm not so sure.
Last edited:
- Status