Keir Starmer puts six key pledges ‘up in lights’ to win over swing voters
Keir Starmer puts six key pledges ‘up in lights’ to win over swing voters
Campaign material to include pledges on NHS wait times and recruiting teachers
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Because I remember the 10 pledges, which are now all but binned ?
That doesn't follow. The 10 pledges, many of which in fact still stand, despite what the Tories would have you believe, were not the only possible way of changing things.
Which ones stand ?
Which of these assertions are wrong ?
https://www.politico.eu/article/all-of-keir-starmers-u-turns-in-one-place/
Best to look at primary sources. Here are the 10 pledges.
Now, there's not a conveniently straight forward answer to all of this, so bear with me. But for my money, in terms of the headline of each pledge, all of them still stand. If things were simple, I'd be 10 for 10. Unfortunately for my argument, things are not so simple.
Starting at the top, with pledge 1: Economic Justice. Starmer is still pledged to economic justice, it's the raison d'etre of the Labour Party, but the devil is in the detail:
Increase income tax for the top 5% of earners, reverse the Tories’ cuts in corporation tax and clamp down on tax avoidance, particularly of large corporations.
The only one of those three policies that still stands is the tax avoidance clampdown. However, things are, again, not so simple. The income tax pledge has been dropped, but the money that was going to raise has been replaced with a different tax on the rich (VAT on private schools and, till the Tories nicked it, abolition of non-dom status). So, is that a 'broken pledge'? Or has he found a better way to achieve the same goal? Should he really be held to a policy if he thinks it won't work and he can do it better in a different way?
I'm not going to go through all the pledges like this. But, 3, 7, 8, 9 and 10 all still stand, I would argue in pretty much every detail. That's 5 out of 10. For the others, #2 and #5 has been scaled back, but replaced with I would argue similar policies that achieve similar goals. #4 and #6 are very different in all but the headline. I think the changes are justifiable, but it's perfectly understandable if you don't.
Now, my questions to you is: Should Starmer stick to promising to deliver all ten things in every detail, even if: he sincerely changes his mind (which people do); the circumstances genuinely change (which they have); or he sincerely thinks some of those things, good ideas or not, will lose him the election? Should he keep promising ten things at the risk of delivering none of them? Or, should he stick to five of them, and modify the other five, in order to deliver some of them?
For me, not getting elected would actually, definitively break all ten pledges, because it would mean he'd categorically failed at his job.
I think you are being incredibly generous in your interpretation. You’ve made no mention of statements he made on nationalisation,
In particular, equating Vat on private schools to a 5% tax increase in income tax is, I think, fanciful. Not least because you might be surprised that not every private school is Eton, educated the aristocracy. Indeed as has been well argued - they are a tool of social mobility for many.
You’ve not mentioned universal credit, tuition fees , outsourcing in the NHS, the list goes on.The article I’ve linked is fully sourced.
https://www.politico.eu/article/all-of-keir-starmers-u-turns-in-one-place/
So here’s what happened. Post Corbyn, he’s surfed on the back of his popularity, He Pledged and talked up strong social policy as was the mood of the Party at the time.
On winning the leadership contest, he swiftly purged the left of the party that had done so well in the elections. Corbyn and Abbot remain unable to stand as Labour MPs.
Then He made a beeline to big business, and assured them their profits were safe : labour (small L) will remain cheap and there will no increase in tax burden.
I did mention all of those things indirectly, because they were all in the pledges, and I mentioned all of the pledges. Those changes were all contained within the changes I acknowledged. Your argument was that the 10 pledges had been all but scrapped. I've shown that 5/10 still stand exactly as they were. Of the five remaining, three of them at least partly stand. So, at least half, at most 8/10, still hold up. In either case, they haven't been all but scrapped, which is what I was asked to show.