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1945BestYear

By the 3rd of July Sunak and Fleet Street is going to have half the country convinced Starmer is going to collectivise all land, businesses, and women.


mesothere

Labour need a dead cat to draw attention away from it tbh, otherwise it'll just be spammed to high heaven. Re run that ad calling Sunak a paedo, job done


visualzinc

I mean they just need to fight fire with fire. If the Tories can put up "Commie Corbyn wants to take your kids out of school" posters, the day before the election, then everything should be on the table.


HoratioTheBoldx

Where's Diane Abbott when you need her 😂


Alexdeboer03

I think its disgusting the prime minister can lie on live tv and the host doesnt tell him off for it


hotdog_jones

>I think its disgusting the prime minister can lie on live tv First time watching TV? jk jk Tbf the host can't be expected to know what is and isn't a lie when these guys are pulling dodgily justified "research" and stats from out of their arses. Starmer is the one who failed to immediately and effectively counter the lie.


Alexdeboer03

On question time somebody does fact checking real time and somehow informs fiona bruce who then very quickly mentions it


hotdog_jones

Question Time platforms cranks and grifters all the time and they very rarely get fact checked unless they something corporeally false. Sunak saying that Labour's economic plan is going to cost X amount based on deduction and shady research isn't going to be something easily researched in a split second. The Labour manifesto is still baking and only they definitively know how they're going to cost their policy - and again, Starmer failed to explain that until it was too late.


Alexdeboer03

I think they only fact check things that either labour or the tories say, must be too lazy to check the grifters or something. And the host can definitely say wow thats a specific number and it seems disingenuous


Dave-Face

[That doesn't always go so well...](https://inews.co.uk/news/media/fiona-bruce-what-say-stanley-johnson-question-time-stepped-down-refuge-2206792)


Sweaty_Leg_3646

At the very least, she could have let Starmer respond rather than interrupting him when he tried. Julie Etchingham was a shite moderator. I don't like Starmer at all but he got done dirty.


hotdog_jones

This simply isn't true. [He had the 45 full seconds to respond to the first 2k lie](https://www.youtube.com/live/heP8-evLKvA?si=1ayNO4myw0BadlM6&t=2263). It's trotted out [again a couple of minutes later](https://www.youtube.com/live/heP8-evLKvA?si=Ag89solopixY3BUp&t=2394), to which Starmer - again - doesn't tackle it at all. He's asked directly to respond about the tax and is given almost the entire time to speak and still manages waffles around it.


ES345Boy

Labour are about to learn that no amount of Starmer guest articles in the S*n or the Telegraph is going to stop the right wing press from printing any old nonsense or giving Labour a smackdown if they fancy doing it. The Labour right can't out-Tory the actual Tories, and they'll never stop the right wing press. Sold their souls for nothing.


Sir_Bantersaurus

One difference is that the £350 million was more tricky to dispute and the debate focused on just how much we really send. The message being either way we send money to the EU. This time the main story all day is that the Treasury is denying their official figures. There is a better chance this story cuts through as the Tories lying.


Snobby_Tea_Drinker

Doubt it, because the only part the Treasury is denying is that it’s a Civil Service independently produced figure, which is the sort of detail that flies over the heads of voters. Labour has screwed up its tax messaging badly (“won’t raise taxes for working people” is a complete non-answer as that would include almost everyone) and this “£2,000” is the sort of blunt, crude tool that lands.


redsquizza

I'm hoping it doesn't have that kind of reach. And I blame a combination of the moderator and Starmer's politeness for not nipping it in the bud. Such a grenade lobbed into the debate should have been allowed to be put down immediately by Starmer but the moderator allowed Sunak to repeat it like a broken record. He tried time and again to say what nonsense it is but was not allowed and he's not the kind of person to just shout over others. There was far too much deference to Sunak. He's PM in name only at the moment and it's painfully obvious they're not going to be in government so I don't quite know why ITV are pandering to a loser that will have zero power in a months time. I fear the BBC will have even more deference to Sunak in their debate, which starkly shows for me what an uphill battle against the media Starmer has faced his whole time as leader.


xPositor

The current government are dead in the water. No doubt about that. Either Kier isn't bothered because he believes he's now a shoe in, or he doesn't have the passion/desire/ability to be all over the issues that are thrown at him - he has to be the loudest voice in the room, not deferring to others. Now we have a situation where, even if the number is wrong, Starmer missed the opportunity to knock down claims of being a party that will immediately raise taxes (to the "perceived detriment" of the average person). Now people think "what is he hiding?" - and we're not sure. Not going to change the outcome - currently, but I'm pretty sure he'd like a strong majority this time next month.


redsquizza

For me I'd prefer him not to be a ranting, raving debater, we've had enough of that from the likes of the children running the tory party like Johnson, Truss and Sunak. Which he would have come across as had he pushed on the £2k. The moderator should be ashamed of herself.


xPositor

>The moderator should be ashamed of herself. The format was terrible, but the next leader of this country should be able to make their voice heard, regardless.


haushaushaushaushaus

lmao Starmer's incompetence being called politeness.


redsquizza

🙄 This subreddit is a joke. Did you actually watch the debate? For me it was clear he was holding back so as to not interrupt the moderator or Sunak and I think that was politeness and not wanting to be seen to be shouting, ranting and raving like a desperate man he was opposite. So when he was firmly told "no, we'll cover that in the tax section" he should have just shouted over her and called Sunak's bullshit out? I suppose if he *had* interrupted Sunak, you'd find something wrong with that too?! Such is the state of the people in this subreddit. And, of course, Corbyn would have smashed it, right? 🤦‍♂️


Milemarker80

> For me it was clear he was holding back so as to not interrupt the moderator or Sunak and I think that was politeness and not wanting to be seen to be shouting, ranting and raving like a desperate man he was opposite. Funny, looked like he was inept to me. He's just not good at all at on the spot speaking - he deliver's a speech a bit better than he used to, but he's so wooden and slow witted in interviews and environments like these debates.


haushaushaushaushaus

I know it upsets you that people are allowed to criticise centrist daddy but this is too much


No_Raspberry_6795

Do we know when the Maniefestos are coming out. We don't even know the policies yet. Why have a debate before the manifestos are released? I can't check anybodys policies, isn't this all theoretical atm.


kontiki20

Goes to show how Labour should be calling for various wealth taxes, increased capital gains etc. The Tories are going to accuse them of wanting to raise everyone's taxes anyway so what difference would it make?


cheerfulintercept

Maybe that’s what they are planning? The no tax increases on working people messaging keeps a door open to tax wealth…


Milemarker80

> Maybe that’s what they are planning? The no tax increases on working people messaging keeps a door open to tax wealth… No, Labour were committed to not taxing wealth waaaay before they also shut the door on taxing working people - which gives you an idea of their current priorities. See eg https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66634187


cheerfulintercept

Ah yes, of course. I’d seen that but forgotten it. I think they’re hooked on the growth mantra to be honest. If that doesn’t work it’s going to be back to tax / spend.


nonbog

Come on. They plan to scrap the non dom status and tax private schools. Both of these taxes are clearly aimed at the wealthy and not people like us


Milemarker80

> Both of these taxes are clearly aimed at the wealthy and not people like us That's irrelevant, that's not what we're talking about - we're talking about actual, progressive wealth taxes, like Biden is campaigning on in the US, or the French have just implemented over the channel. Nom dom status is fiddling around the edges and the kind of minor irritation that even the Tories have picked up and run with - which is about the limit of Starmer's ambition.


nonbog

While I know it’s not the wealth tax you’re suggesting, it’s not irrelevant. It shows that Starmer’s priorities are protecting workers, not the rich, like you implied in your comment


Old_Roof

Absolutely spot on. This is media driven nonsense


Dave-Face

>It’s like no one’s learnt any bloody lessons from 2016. Or 2015, or 2010, or any of the last 3 presidential elections in the US. The liberal strategy has never been to question the legitimacy of a Conservative line of attack - only to deny it, or better yet (in their eyes) pre-emptively deny it. So if the Conservatives say people seeking asylum are a problem and we need to stop the boats, liberals will insist they'll stop the boats better! Whoops, the Conservative narrative is legitimised and both parties are talking about boats, rather than the broken asylum and immigration system that causes them. Same with trans rights, tax rises, austerity, etc. - all of these 'debates' have been legitimised by Labour failing to counter the Conservative narrative. So at this point it is difficult for Labour to argue against the narrative that they caused the 2008 recession, because the've spent the last decade insisting they need to 'win back trust' on the economy. The politicians doing this aren't unaware, they are simply in agreement with the Conservatives that systemic reform is either bad or unnecessary. They'll just run the system better. I'm a bit less cynical about random liberal commentors, like you'd see here or other political communities, I'm sure most are just a bit daft or ignorant rather than malicious. But there's only so many times you can see takes like "Starmer's 'strong' stance against \[trans rights/immigration/tax rises\] is good because it means the Conservatives can't attack him with it" before you have to accept that no one is that divorced from reality. They know the Conservatives aren't going to stop that attack, they're just happy that Starmer is taking that position.


Nomadmanhas

It's why you need a Trump/imran khan like figure on the left to shut this down. No respect, and take them down for the liars that they are.


60sstuff

It’s pretty simple. Get a picture of Tunbridge Wells. Get a really good one so it looks nice and leafy and green. And then slap “"We inherited a bunch of formulas from Labour that shoved all the funding into deprived urban areas and that needed to be undone. I started the work of undoing that." Put one of those up in every deprived, run down, poor and forgotten parts of the country. If they still vote Tory they are beyond saving