Keir Starmer: A Misunderstood Political Genius

He may have his detractors on the left, but Keir Starmer is a true political phenomenon who has already proven himself perhaps the greatest politician in the history of British politics. 

Just consider his remarkable track record.

You have to admit that it takes a certain amount of genius to get parachuted into a safe Labour seat that's never been lost to the Tories since it was created in 1983.

Then to participate in an internal coup against the party's democratically elected leader just over a year later was a demonstration of his breath taking audacity (it's just a shame that silly Labour Party members failed to appreciate Owen Smith's ice cream van of political delights isn't it?).

After the Labour right's failed 2016 chicken coup, they then almost failed in their efforts to sabotage the 2017 election meaning the Labour surge delivered the biggest swing in the party's favour since 1945.

Something needed to be done, and Keir Starmer was the man to do it.

In 2019 the Labour right desperately needed to lose the next general election in order to take back control of the Labour Party, and handing Boris Johnson a whopping great majority to impose a ruinous radical-right Brexit shambles was clearly a small price to pay for to achieve this over-riding objective, wasn't it?

These people clearly have their priorities absolutely spot on.

So Keir Starmer came up with the ideal plan to drive away pesky northern Labour voters in their millions. He was going to tell the 150+ Labour held constituencies that voted leave in 2016 that Labour was now "The Party of Remain", and indicate to everyone, that after three tedious years of Brexit horse trading he was going to prolong the whole interminable process even longer by holding a "sore loser" referendum.

And if anyone needed to be shown that they had no place in the Labour Party, it's the stupid gullible idiots who thought Britain would be better off outside the EU. Am I right?

2017 proved that it's much harder to deliberately throw a general election than anyone had ever imagined, but in 2019 Keir Starmer turned out to be the man to deliver Labour the electoral thumping that so many of their MPs were craving.

This guy really delivers doesn't he?

Then Starmer delivered again with a masterful Labour leadership election campaign, in which he lied through his teeth about virtually everything in order to dupe Labour members into believing in the absolute fantasy that he was going to continue with Corbyn's humanist democratic socialist policies, when he was, and always will be, a loyal servant of capitalism and establishment interests.

It's been genuinely delightful to see Starmer backtrack on all of his pro public ownership pledges and impassioned speeches against NHS privatisation, hasn't it?

And if anyone needed to suffer a cruel betrayal, it's the stupid gullible socialists who genuinely believe that some things (public transport, energy, water, mail, education, health ...) are too important to be left in the hands of greedy and reckless capitalist profiteers. Am I right?

Then in another political masterstroke Starmer bragged to Andrew Marr that he would lie to people again if he thought it would win him more political power, proving that he's every bit as dishonest as Boris Johnson, but somehow even more open and upfront about being a cynical and opportunistic political liar than the bloviating oaf.

If anyone deserved to be shown that Labour's not the political party for them, it's people who are sick of being lied to by politicians, isn't it?

After winning the Labour leadership election Keir Starmer immediately binned all of his pro-Remain posturing, rubber stamped Boris Johnson's shambolic Brexit mess, and pledged never to try to make any substantial improvements to it.

And if anyone needed to be shown that the Labour Party delights in betraying them, it's stupid gullible Remainiacs who thought Britain made a mistake in quitting the EU in a hailstorm of Tory jingoism, incompetence, and hubris. Am I right?

After he cleverly cheated his way to the top of the party Starmer immediately brought in new leadership election rules to make sure the Labour Party would always be led by people like him. We all rolled around laughing at the way his new rules would have excluded every person of colour who has ever stood to be Labour leader, as well as all but two of the women who have ever been nominated too, including both of the women who had the temerity to stand against him in 2020.

If anyone needed to be given a right good kicking by the Labour Party it's uppity women and pesky people of colour isn't it?

One of the absolute best things about Starmer is the way he's finally got to grips with antisemitism.

Instead of endlessly apologising and desperately trying to get the right-wing dominated Labour Party bureaucracy to deal with antisemitism allegations in a quick and efficient manner like his disgraced predecessor, Starmer's playing an absolute blinder by having his goons systematically accuse left-wing Jews of being self-hating antisemites, and driving more Jews out of the Labour Party than any Labour leader in history!

After the shambles of the Corbyn years, Starmer honestly doesn't get enough credit for turning Labour into an institutionally antisemitic party that weaponises the antisemitic "self-hating Jew" trope to bully and exclude scores of Jews.

And if anyone needed to be subjected to systematic persecution by Starmer's Labour Party it's the Jews isn't it?

Another of Starmer's great achievements is his development of an excellent "Hierarchy of Racism" within the Labour Party, and making Labour a Hostile Environment for people of colour. Imagine the balls it takes to block 19 mainly Black and Asian Labour councillors from seeking re-election in Britain's most multicultural city of Leicester, after having deliberately thrown the Forde Report and all of its anti-racism recommendations in the bin! 

Starmer is a man who takes a no-nonsense approach to telling Black and Asian voters that Labour isn't the party for them, and he deserves a lot of credit for it.

Not only is Starmer doing a wonderful job of maintaining a "Hierarchy of Racism", he's also brought back all the anti-immigrant mug people like Yvette Cooper who so wisely abstained on Theresa May's unlawfully racist Hostile Environment in 2014, facilitating the Windrush scandal and the systematic abuse of thousands of Black and Asian Brits across the country.

And if anyone needed to be made unwelcome in Starmer's Brave New Labour Party it's Windrush Brits and those stupid, annoying anti-racists, isn't it?

Another of Starmer's major political achievements was driving anyone with any kind of socially liberal principles out of his shadow cabinet by instructing them to abstain on Tory legislation to give impunity to rape cops, and to those who commit war crimes in British military uniforms.

If anyone needed to be driven away from the Labour Party it's the kind of wishy washy social liberal who thinks British soldiers shouldn't be committing war crimes, and that undercover cops shouldn't be tricking unsuspecting women into having sexual relationships with them. Am I right?

Another of Starmer's triumphs was banning several Labour-affiliated organisations, and then retroactively purging loads of Labour Party members for having shared links and social media posts in the times before they were banned.

It's genuinely hilarious that Labour is led by a lawyer who clearly detests the concept of due process, and if anyone needed to be driven away from the Labour Party it's the kind of naive idiot who believes in fairness and natural justice, isn't it?

One of the best things about Starmer is the way he's actively turned his back on ordinary workers in the midst of an unprecedented inflation crisis. He's absolutely right to ignore the pleas of British workers who have simply had it too easy for too long, and fully deserve to have their living standards eroded away by inflation and capitalist greed. It's not like the founding principle of the Labour Party was to represent the interests of workers in the corridors of power, is it?

And if anyone needed to to be shown the cold shoulder by the Labour Party it's those tiresome workers and irksome trade unionists, isn't it?

And Keir's made it absolutely clear that when he tries to drag Britain into another foolish, unwinnable, and unlawful war of aggression, he'll viciously purge anyone within the Labour Party who tries to warn him not to.

If anyone needed to be driven away from the Labour Party it's the kind of pathetic snowflake who thinks Britain shouldn't be arming apartheid states and blood-soaked tyrannies like Israel and Saudi Arabia, or creating terrorism breeding grounds and vast refugee crises by reducing foreign countries to rubble, isn't it?

Another of Keir's genius moves was to get a trendy bunch of London image consultants to tell him to try to trick working class people into voting for him with a fascism-adjacent ultranationalist propaganda blitz of "flags, family, and fatherlandism", before rigging Labour selection processes to exclude working class people in favour of the kind of upper middle class, comfortably wealthy liberal-capitalists the Labour Party is meant to be represented by.

If anyone needed to be patronised like a bunch of idiots and excluded from participation in the Parliamentary Labour Party, it's the working class, isn't it?

You have to applaud Starmer's judgement in appointing a private health bankrolled lickspittle like Wes Streeting as his shadow health minister, and allowing him to publicly attack NHS workers and repeatedly spout NHS privatisation propaganda.

If anyone needed to be completely disillusioned by the Labour Party it's those daft idiots who love the NHS, and consider it the finest achievement of any Labour government in history, isn't it?

These awful leftists have tried to claim that Starmer's politics is just reheated Blairism, but this is incredibly unfair. In 1997 Blair stupidly tried to give people hope that Britain deserved better than Tory sleaze, chaos and continued national decline, and he foolishly tolerated alternative views within the Labour ranks, allowing the likes of Tony Benn, Robin Cook, and Jeremy Corbyn to defy him over the Iraq invasion, without even mercilessly hounding them out of the party to create a closed ideological echo chamber like Starmer obviously would have done.

Keir Starmer is just a man with the the downright good sense to tell centrists exactly what they want to hear? "We're lying to you, we don't care, nothing is going to get better, and we're just going to be marginally more competent than the Tories at managing Britain's inevitable economic decline", and he deserves a lot of credit for that.

So it's sickening to see all these Jews, people of colour, socialists, trade unionists, social progressives, and Remainers queuing up to air their petty grievances about being lied to and abused by Starmer's Labour when people have been saying literally the most horrible things about our beloved leader.

They've called him "The Silent Knight", and "Keith Stalin", and "a haircut in a suit", and they've even deliberately misspelled his name as "Kier"!

Just think about the pain and trauma these awful people have caused to poor old Keir with their horrible mouth words ... and then they have the absolute temerity to whine that they're merely being systematically purged, marginalised, discriminated against, abused, and ignored!

Have they no sense of perspective?

Keir Starmer is like a 1997 era Tony Blair without any of the useless and unimportant things like charisma, inspiration, oratory skills, verve, or tolerance of other people's opinions.

All in all, he's an absolute dream boat for sensible liberal-capitalist centrists isn't he?

It's as clear as day that Keir Starmer is so much more than a "boring haircut in a suit". He's as dishonest, vindictive, and profoundly unlikeable as politicians get, and isn't this exactly the kind of person that us Brits demonstrably love to be ruled over by?

And who could possibly doubt Starmer's genius strategy of driving away pesky, annoying, and unimportant minorities like:

• People who wanted the UK to leave the EU
• People who wanted the UK to remain in the EU
• People who are sick of political liars
• Workers
• The trade unionists who actually fund the Labour Party
• The clear majority of Brits who believe in public ownership
• People who disapprove of rape cops and war criminals
• Genuine socialists
• 200,000+ Labour Party members and activists
• People who don't want Britain to repeat horrifying foreign policy disasters like Iraq
• Social progressives
• The working class
• People who believe in democracy and natural justice
• People who love the NHS and respect NHS workers
• Anti-racists
• Women
• People of colour
• Jews

In order to appeal exclusively to important core political demographics like:

• Comfortably wealthy Guardian hacks on six figure salaries
• Fading celebrities who remember their receding heydays coinciding with Blairism
• Liberal-capitalist twonks who support political liars, as long as it's their political liar
• Billionaire capitalists, media moguls, and private health profiteers
• "Soft Tories" who want vicious, dishonest, radical-right neoliberalism that's just a fraction less malicious than the Tories themselves

The man's a misunderstood political genius, and there's no way that the British public could ever be foolish enough to believe that they deserve better.

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Why Clement Attlee was the greatest PM of the 20th Century

Clement Attlee was born on January 3rd 1883 and served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom between July 1945 and October 1951. He was, in my view, by far the best UK Prime Minister of the 20th Century and his government was an inspiration to the developed world.

When Attlee's Labour government came to power in 1945 the UK was a blitzed-out and war fatigued nation with the biggest national debt in its entire history (more than 237% of GDP). Attlee's government rapidly reconstructed and restructured the UK economy to avoid a post-war crisis, founded the NHS, improved pensions, introduced Legal Aid, nationalised core industries, improved workers' rights and built hundreds of thousands of decent houses a year to replace the appalling slums that George Orwell wrote about in The Road To Wigan Pier.

The really incredible thing is that this amazing post-war government reconstruction and investment frenzy actually resulted in a huge drop in the national debt.

Attlee's government took on a massively complex post-war reconstruction project; lifted millions of people out of dire poverty, ill-health and slum dwellings at the same time; and they did it in such a way that he actually ended up significantly reducing the national debt in the process.

In light of all of his incredible achievements, not least the foundation of the NHS during his tenure, I have no hesitation in saying that Attlee was the best Prime Minister of the 20th Century.

It's very interesting to contrast the 40%+ drop in the national debt Attlee's government achieved between 1945 and 1951 through their investment and reconstruction agenda with the massive increase in the scale of UK public debt after a decade of this ruinous Tory austerity agenda.

After a decade of being continually blitzed with Tory austerity propaganda lies that public debts can be reduced by slashing wages, public services, education, and investment, it may seem somewhat surprising that the national debt fell dramatically despite all of Attlee's spending and investment.

The reality of course is that all of the Tory austerity propaganda has always been economically illiterate nonsense designed to dupe the gullible into supporting the radically right-wing Tory agenda of massively enriching the tiny mega-rich minority, whilst making the rest of us pay the tab with an unprecedented period of wage repression, public service cuts, infrastructure under-investment, and ideologically driven vandalism of the social safety net.

Attlee proved the correct way to reduce debts and dramatically increase prosperity is through infrastructure investment, decent wages, education, public ownership, social housing, and the development of advanced public services.

History is shouting us a clear message that strategic investment is the key to recovery, not some ludicrous economic fairy tale that there is no alternative to a load of endlessly repeated Tory "let's cut our way to growth" austerity nonsense.

Clement Attlee proved that it is absolutely possible to make life better for all sectors of society through strategic investment, whilst actually reducing the national debt in the process.

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic the Tory Chancellor Rishi Sunak is proposing to let whole sectors of the UK economy simply die off, and threatening the most savage package of cuts to the social safety net in history, proving the Tory determination to do the precise opposite. 

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. Access to my online writing will always remain free. If you see some value in what I do, please consider supporting my work with a small donation/subscription.

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A critique of the fake-Jennifer copy n' paste Tory propaganda operation

A hyper-partisan Tory diatribe is doing the rounds on social media, with many of the iterations purporting to be from the actress and comedian Jennifer Saunders.

The reality is that the poorly written blame-shifting Tory rant was one of those dire copy n' paste jobs that are always doing the rounds in Tory, far-right, and Brexity circles (like the copy n' paste post pretending that the poster had read the Lisbon Treaty for example).

The actual Jennifer Saunders has been forced to come out and distance herself from this vile Tory rant, but that hasn't stopped the page owners from crying victimhood because they were cornered into deleting the post, and posting yet more pro-Tory propaganda on the Saunders fan page.

It's become clear that hyper-partisan Tories are infecting all kinds of local "for sale" pages, community groups, and fan pages with their disgusting pro-government propaganda, and this obnoxious copy n' paste rant is still doing the rounds in Facebook pages and groups all over the country.

As far as I can see nobody has done a comprehensive critique of this mega-viral copy n' paste nonsense, so I guess it's up to me to go through it point by point:

Anyone who has questions about the government's handling of the crisis is a "crayon eater".

An opening sentence aiming insults at anyone who questions the government suggests that this is going to be a very long way from an impartial appraisal of the facts.

The funny thing about this opening salvo is that someone has actually corrected the grammatical errors that appeared in the now deleted version from Fake-Jennifer, but they somehow decided not to correct any of the provable lies, deceptions, and displays of grotesque political illiteracy in the rest of the statement!

This is a lie. Plain and simple. It's a complete misrepresentation of how NHS procurement works.

In 2018 the Tory government set up a government-run company called NHS Supply Chain to manage NHS supplies, with the Tory health secretary Matt Hancock controlling the shares, meaning the government does deal with logistics for the NHS.

The Tories restructured the NHS supply chains to put the health secretary in ultimate charge, but the hyper-partisan copy n' paste Tory liars definitely don't want you to know that.

Furthermore the Tories repeatedly ignored warnings that NHS stockpiles were woefully inadequate. Jeremy Hunt ignored the warnings after Operation Cygnus in 2016, and Hancock ignored the warningsover inadequate PPE again in 2019.

It's difficult to express the level of contempt you should feel towards someone claiming to "respect" NHS doctors and nurses, whilst simultaneously seeking to deflect blame away from their beloved Tories, and onto the NHS.

Operation Cygnus took place in 2016, not "two years ago", and as already mentioned, the NHS actually said that they were unprepared for a respiratory pandemic, with particular concerns about the hopeless lack of protective gear, plus insufficient intensive care beds and respirators.

The Tories were still busy inflicting their austerity cuts to the NHS, and further reducing bed capacity, so the appeals for more PPE fell on deaf ears. The claim that the Operation Cygnus report included the quotes "we can flex" and "we are OK" is frankly absurd, as anyone who has ever set eyes on an internal bureaucratic report before can attest.

The Brexit bit is absolutely confounding. It's ridiculously obvious that four years of Brexit chaos, stemming from the fact the Brexiteers never even had a plan for how to actually do it, means government has been utterly distracted on all the Brexit issues.

The idea that the NHS said "we are OK" is bizarre enough, but "we are OK because ... Brexit" is absolute ridiculousness.
 

Questioning whether the NHS Supply Chain company which is ultimately controlled by Matt Hancock even understand that ships take time to travel from China is being posited as a defence of the government!

Then there's a criticism of globalisation. Why oh why didn't we prioritise UK-based manufacturers? Well because if any government had attempted to do that then the Tories and their minions in the right-wing propaganda rags would have screeched "protectionism", "communism", "Marxism" at them, just like they did with Labour's modest proposals to renationalise rail, water, and the national grid.

You see running things in the national interest is absolutely forbidden by the Tory ideology, if there's the remotest chance of it interfering with the profiteering of capitalists.

And now to make excuses for this grotesque capitalism above the national interest Tory ideology, the Tory tribalists are making out that NHS managers are responsible for the neoliberal globalisation agenda, not the politicians who made the prioritisation of local suppliers illegal!

As a result of four decades of neoliberal pro-privatisation politics, mainly pushed by the Tories, the majority of care homes are now operated by profit-seeking private companies, therefore the Tories are absolved of blame!

The idea that the government should just let care home residents die in a pandemic because the care home is privately operated is quite frankly disgusting.

OK, if the care homes couldn't cope with their responsibilities during the crisis and needed bailing out at the public expense, lets have the debate about renationalisation of care services after the crisis is over, but the government's first priority in this pandemic should obviously be to prevent people from dying, wherever they happen to be. 

It doesn't matter how many times you write MANAGERS in capital letters, the fact remains that the secretary of state Matt Hancock has ultimate responsibility.

And look, it's not just the NHS to blame for the Tory failings either, it's journalists and ordinary members of the public too (who the copy n' paste Tory propaganda brigade quite obviously regard with absolute contempt).

Anyone with any sense can see that the corporate media are crap, not because they criticise the Tories, but because they continually allow them to play politics on easy mode, whilst continually attacking the opposition, and even outright faking scandals about them.

As for ordinary members of the public expressing their opinions, you hardly had to be a trained virologist or epidemiologist to figure out that just letting the virus spread exponentially through the population for weeks instead of following the established WHO protocol (test, trace, isolate) was a very poor strategy in the crucial early stages.

That's why South Korea - who tested and contact traced from the beginning - has a total of 243 deaths, and the UK has 20,000+ according to the official statistics, and almost certainly double that when all the care home and community deaths are finally counted.
 

"The government has probably made some mistakes" is some hell of an under-estimate in regards to a crisis that's taken tens of thousands of lives, followed by rather a lot of words to argue that anyone who dares to discuss what these "probable mistakes" might be, deserves to be dead.

Ah yes, "let's get through this and beat this together" by ... erm ... copy n' pasting incredibly divisive, hyper-partisan Tory screeds full of outright lies, blame-shifting, Trumpian rhetoric, ALL CAPS SHOUTING, and a load of insults and sneering condescension towards ordinary members of the public who dare to ever engage their critical thinking skills.

The worst thing about fake-Jennifer and all the other Tory partisans sharing this outrageous rubbish is that they're probably stupid enough to believe that propagating such egregious blame-shifting lies is good for the country, because they're incapable of separating the interests of Boris Johnson and his cabinet of hard-right thugs, from the interests of the nation as a whole (which are obviously best served by not having a lazy, incompetent, elitist liar like Johnson running the show).

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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Who was behind the NHS Susan Tory propaganda account?

Somebody has been stealing the identity of NHS staff in order to set up fake Twitter accounts to sow public confusion and support the government narrative of the day, whatever it happens to be.

These fake NHS worker accounts began by pushing the pseudo-scientific "herd immunity" strategy before switching purpose to begin pushing for the easing of coronavirus restrictions - which will obviously lead to another wave of deaths if it's done before the government has developed the capacity to carry out mass testing and contact tracing.

The "NHS Susan" account was one of them, which posed as a pro-EU, disabled, trans, junior doctor who was pushing a #BanTheClap campaign to stop people clapping for the NHS on Thursdays.

The intention was clearly to sow confusion and create a fake veneer of medical approval towards policies and ideas that the vast majority or real NHS staff would strongly object to.
But it was always completely fake because the photograph that was used on the "NHS Susan" account is actually a picture of a Greek nurse called Mia who was featured in an article about the valuable contribution of foreign medical workers in the NHS.

An independent investigator from Far Right Watch has claimed that "NHS Susan" was part of a botnet of at least 128 propaganda accounts, all operated from a single Hootsuite account.

The Hootsuite account is reportedly registered to a single individual, with three others having permission to post, although the exact identities and employment details of these individuals hasn't yet been revealed.

The investigator hasn't released the bot operators' identities yet, but they claim to have contacted the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), asking questions, and offering to share the data they've collected on the propaganda botnet for the purposes of internal investigation, but they've said they've been given the cold shoulder.

You would have thought that at the very minimum the DHSC would have a duty of care towards NHS employees who have had their identities stolen, but apparently nobody there is even remotely interested in investigating what's been going on.

One thing that did happen was that when people started investigating who was behind these bots, the Tory propaganda accounts like "NHS Susan" were instantly killed off.

It seems highly unlikely the mainstream media will pay any attention to this pro-Tory disinformation campaign, just like they ignored the massive orchestrated Tory election fraud on election day 2019, and the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and the bizarre antics at the Department of Education when Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings were running the show there.

In the wake of the initial revelations the DHSC has launched an extraordinary counter-campaign replying to every verified Twitter account to have Tweeted about the scandal with a copy n' paste assertion that "these claims are categorically false" and a link to a web page that doesn't actually contradict a single one of the claims.

It's absolutely undeniable that fake accounts like "NHS Susan" were created by somebody, and that they stole the identity of real NHS staff for the profile pictures, so the claim that the story is "categorically false" is blatantly untrue.

Perhaps some of the assertions aren't exactly correct (we'll see soon enough if/when additional data is released), but the kernel of the story, the fake pro-Tory Twitter accounts, is undeniably true because people have got the screenshots, so it's simply a lie to say the whole thing is "categorically false", especially when not a shred of counter-evidence has actually been produced.

A more sensible and less partisan approach from the DHSC would have been to announce an investigation into who was behind the fake NHS accounts, and to categorically condemn the theft of NHS staff members' identities (who, after all, are their own employees).

The fact that the DHSC has gone down the road of blanket denial, whilst offering no condemnation of the identity theft, and providing no counter-evidence whatever to actually undermine the claims does look deeply suspicious.

There will be more revelations about this Tory propaganda botnet later today, hopefully including the exact identities of the individuals who have been operating it.

The account to follow for more information is John O'Connell.

Footnote: You may have noticed that I stopped producing blog posts for several months. The reason is that Facebook has changed their algorithm to make links to my site almost invisible. Even when literally thousands of people share the link, barely anyone actually sees what's been shared. It feels like wasted effort producing articles that virtually nobody reads, when I can still produce infographics and informative posts that are seen by hundreds of thousands.

I'm going to give it another try, but it's unlikely that I'll return to writing blog posts as consistently as I used to.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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13 of the best bits from Labour's 2019 manifesto

Before I get started, it's vital to say that you should definitely read the Labour Party manifesto for yourself rather than solely relying on other people's interpretations of it.

Don't let the right-wing billionaire propaganda barons and their mercenary hacks tell you what to think about it, don't fall for the Tories' fake Labour Manifesto website, and also remember that this article of mine isn't a comprehensive analysis either, it just covers some of the main themes.

If you don't have time to read it for yourself now, bookmark it and read it later: Labour Manifesto 2019

Investment not austerity

The Tory austerity ideology has failed.

The list of austerity failures is spectacular: the worst post-crisis economic recovery in centuries, the worst sustained collapse in UK workers' wages since records began, the lowest level of infrastructure development in the developed world, the UK's AAA credit ratings gone, the national debt doubled, collapsing public services, soaring violent crime, the lowest level of house building since the 1920s, and a plague of poverty spreading across the United Kingdom.

"Let's cut our way to prosperity" was always economically illiterate madness, when the tried and tested economic method has always been investment in infrastructure, education, transport, research and development, high-skill jobs, and affordable housing.

Labour will throw Tory austerity into the dustbin of history where it belongs, and actually invest in our economy to increase our future economic potential, rather than strangle it like the Tories have been doing for the last nine years.

The centrepiece of Labour's investment strategy is the development of a national investment bank, with the explicit aim of lending to businesses, infrastructure projects, and other productive sectors of the economy across all of the UK's regions, rather than just leaving investment to the private banks, who continually target the majority of their investments at property price speculation and gambling on the global derivatives casino.

If you want investment targeted at the engines of economic productivity, rather than used to re-inflate the house price bubble, or gambled on the kinds of junk bond derivatives that caused the 2008 economic crisis, Labour's economic strategy is the correct choice to make.

National Education Service

Education should be treated as a right which benefits everyone in society, not just the individual who receives it, not a commodity to be rationed out in order to maximise profits for the rich.

Labour's plan to create a National Education Service to provide free education to anyone who needs it, no matter their age, education level, or background is a truly transformative policy on a level with Labour's creation of the NHS back in 1948.

Things change so fast in the modern world that most people change careers multiple times in their working lives these days, meaning successful economies need flexible a flexible workforce.

Labour's education policy isn't just that young people get a good education without paying through the nose for it for their entire working lives, it's that anyone who loses their job, or chooses to change careers, can acquire the retraining and skills they need, at any age.

The National Education Service wouldn't just be for kids and young people at university, it would be for all of us.

Public ownership

Do you think that vital public infrastructure and services like the railways, water supply, Royal Mail, broadband infrastructure, national grid, and prisons should be operated by private profiteers as money-making enterprises, or as not-for-profit public services?

The overwhelming majority of British people believe in the not-for-profit public service option, however the unrepresentative Westminster establishment class have spent the last four decades defying the public will and transferring ownership of £billions in public assets to their wealthy mates.

Labour's 2019 manifesto represents a golden opportunity to set about reversing this process, and de-privatising things that should never have been given away to private profiteers in the first place.

Labour's manifesto includes commitments to de-privatise the water supply, the national grid, Royal Mail, the railways, broadband infrastructure, and prisons.

The privatisation fanatics will try to argue de-privatisation costs too much, but the way they come up with their ludicrous figures is to treat de-privatisation as an expense (money down the drain), rather than an investment (providing returns on investment).

A report from Grenwich University found that de-privatisation of key public services would pay for itself within the space of just 7 years.

Reverse Tory wage repression

The UK is the only economy in the developed world
where the economy has been growing but wages have
been falling in real terms.

Tory wage repression policies like allowing the spread of exploitative Zero Hours Contracts and years of below-inflation public sector pay freezes have resulted in a lost decade of wage growth for UK workers, and the longest sustained decline in the real value of workers' wages since records began.

Labour understands that workers with money in their pockets spend more, which creates economic demand, which creates more jobs, which creates more prosperity in a virtuous circle.

Henry Ford understood this in the 1930s, which is why he gave his factory workers good enough salaries that they could afford to buy his cars.

The Tories failed to understand this, and adopted the view that the best way to increase profits for the very rich, is to decrease the wealth of the very poor, as if the economy is a static balance sheet with a rigidly set supply of money to be carved up in the way that best benefits their mega-rich donors.

Labour understands that the economy is dynamic, and that there's actually more possibility for the wealthy to make money if workers have money to spend.

Thus Labour is pledging to raise the Minimum Wage to £10 straight away to give UK workers the pay rise they deserve, and to reverse the Tory public sector pay cuts in order to bring wages back up to the level they were before nine years of Tory austerity extremism.

Restore the NHS
 

If you haven't needed to use the NHS in recent times, perhaps you're unaware of how bad things have become after nine years of being deliberately under-funded, run-down, and ideologically vandalised by the Tories. If you really don't know, please take the time to speak to someone who works in the NHS about how much worse things have got since 2010.

Labour will give the NHS the funding it needs to pick itself up off its knees, they'll restore NHS Bursaries in order to combat the NHS staffing crisis, and they'll reverse the radically right-wing Tory NHS privatisation agenda that saw a record £9.2 billion in NHS services fall into private hands last year.

Labour will also ensure that all parts of the NHS, the treatment of patients, the employment of staff and medicine pricing are all fully excluded and protected from any international trade deals.

Housing

Four decades of right-wing "leave it to the market" ideology has created a housing disaster, with nowhere near enough homes being built to meet demand, and literally millions of people priced out of home ownership altogether.

Labour housing policies include: 

• Building more houses, with at least 150,000 new council houses per year by the end of the parliament.

• Rent controls and binding minimum standards for private landlords in order to prevent unscrupulous profiteers renting uninhabitable hovels at rip-off prices.

• Scrap the Tories' bogus definition of 'affordable', which is set as high as 80% of market rents, and replace it with a definition that is actually linked to local incomes

• A concerted effort to combat the homelessness epidemic that has absolutely soared since 2010

• New powers to allow local government to bring empty properties back into use.

• A £1 billion fire safety fund to ensure nothing like Grenfell ever happens again.

Rebuild local government

Some of the most devastating impacts of Tory austerity extremism have been felt at local government level, as a result of the extraordinary 67% cuts to local government funding.

If you've been wondering why your council tax bills keep going up, but your local services keep getting worse and worse, the Tory local government cuts are entirely to blame.

Labour's manifesto pledges to reverse these devastating cuts, and ensure local government funding is restored to pre-2010 levels.

Dignity for disabled people

Literally thousands of disabled people have died within weeks of being declared "fit for work" and thrown off their disability benefits by the Tory disability denial system, which isn't just an inhumane way of treating some of the most vulnerable people in society, it actually costs more to administer than it will ever save in reduced disability benefits.

Labour will end this systematic abuse of disabled people, adopt the social model of disability, and promote the acceptance of neurodiversity.

After a decade of unprecedented UK government hostility to disabled people (so bad it's been condemned by the United Nations), Labour are pledging to actually listen to disabled peoples desires, and care for their needs.

Public procurement

From Serco and G4S stealing hundreds of millions from the public through electronic tagging scams to the collapse of Carillion, there are countless examples of public procurement disasters.

Labour won't outlaw outsourcing, but they will dramatically reform the way government sources from the private sector.

Firstly Labour will end the current presumption in favour of outsourcing public services and introduce a presumption in favour of insourcing.

They will also stop the public getting ripped off by taking back all PFI contracts over time.

One key change will be the introduction of best practice public service criteria, meaning no more government contracts for companies based in tax havens, with poor environmental records, or who pay poverty wages to their employees.

Environment

Labour's commitment to the environment is written throughout their manifesto, from large infrastructure projects like the construction of 9,000 wind turbines and massive investment in solar technology, to legislative action like banning fracking and incorporating climate and environmental impacts into government budget forecasts so that the cost of not acting will be factored into every fiscal decision.

Green protesters will be disappointed that Labour haven't committed to making Britain a zero carbon economy by 2030, instead aiming for a net-zero-carbon energy system within the 2030s, looking for credible pathways to speed up the process.

This means Labour's zero emissions target is 2039 at the very latest, the Lib-Dems' target is 2045, and the Tories are intent on delaying until 2050.

Foreign Policy

One of the big reasons the political establishment class hate Jeremy Corbyn so much is that he's been proven right on foreign policy so many times, while they've been proven horribly and disastrously wrong.

Back in the 1980s Corbyn was protesting against Apartheid in South Africa, opposing UK weapons sales to Saddam Hussain, and encouraging peace negotiations in Northern Ireland. He was on the right side of history, and mainstream politics caught up with him in the 1990s in rejecting Apartheid racism, and finding a peaceful solution to the Northern Ireland conflict.

In 2003 Corbyn famously opposed the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and was proven absolutely right about his warning that this invasion would set off a spiral of conflict that will fuel the wars, the terrorism, the depression, and the misery of future generations.

The ISIS terrorists grew out of the lawless terrorism breeding ground the US and UK created in Iraq, and then in 2011 Corbyn was one of the minority of MPs who opposed doing the same thing to Libya, which turned out to be a policy with deadly blowback in Britain as the Manchester Arena bomber came back to Britain from the terrorism breeding ground that our political elites decided to create there.

Labour's manifesto commits to avoid imperialist war mongering, and to put human rights at the heart of Britain's foreign policy objectives, which obviously means ending the Tory policy of flogging weapons to tyrannies, terrorism-spreaders, and war criminals.

Final Say referendum

The Tory decision to gamble the entire future of the UK with a completely undefined option on the ballot paper has created an absolute shambles. 

There's obviously no easy way of clearing up such a calamitous and divisive Tory mess, and anyone who says there is is either an idiot, or lying through their teeth.

Labour's proposal is to get rid of Boris Johnson's bodge job Brexit (which is even worse than the proposal Theresa May cobbled together), renegotiate a Brexit that doesn't annihilate the economy, and then put the decision back to the public in a final say referendum.

It's far from ideal holding a referendum between a defined Brexit and remain, because this is how it should have been done back in 2016, but at least it offers a credible choice to both sides of the Brexit debate, and avoids totally screwing over the 48% (like Boris Johnson and the Tories are taking such delight in doing) or screwing over the 52% (like the Lib-Dems are threatening).

Workers' rights


Last but definitely not least is Labour's position on workers' rights, which you'd expect to be good from a party calling itself "Labour".

• Give British workers a well deserved pay rise with a £10 minimum wage, and the reversal of the callous Tory squeeze on public sector pay.

• Provide free education for all means British workers will be have a right to improve their skills on the job, or acquire new skills when moving between jobs.

• Strengthen protections for whistleblowers and rights against unfair dismissal for all workers.

• Scrap punitive Tory anti-trade union laws.

• Ensure no income tax rises at all for anyone earning below £80,000 per year.

• Ensure workers have a say within government by creating a Minister for Employment Rights

• Ban long-term Zero Hours Contracts and bogus fake self-employment contracts in the gig economy.

Conclusion

Labour's manifesto provides a blueprint for a better, fairer, healthier society in which all sectors of society enjoy the benefits of increased national prosperity, rather than just the mega-rich elitists.

Policies like investment in infrastructure and services, restoration of the NHS, de-privatisation of monopolies, action to combat the housing crisis, free education for all, and improved workers' rights aren't just abstract things that don't really matter. They're policies that have the potential to shape all of our lives for the better.

If this election is going to be fought on policies and which party has the better blueprint for what the UK could become in the future, this manifesto is a winner.

If however it's fought out in the political sewer, with deceptions, smears, lies, vacuous personality politics, fake websites ... then there's every chance these transformative policies will never see the light of day as the militant hard-right, ultranationalist, pro-privatisation, billionaire-bankrolled Tories spend the next five years trampling on ordinary people in order to rig society ever more in the favour of the billionaires who fund their entire operation.

We're at a crossroads as a nation, between what Labour have laid out here, and a very dark path indeed.

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