It’s you that want pure. I want to win.
Didn’t you stop being a Tory because they weren’t your sort of Tory?
If I support a particular set of ideas, I look for the political party that is close to them…that has always been the Labour Party apart from a brief engagement with the Liberals before I was old enough to vote. Even during the Blair/Brown years it was still the Labour Party. My “left wing-ness” is definitely not pure, I probably think more left wing than I actually do “left wing”.
For someone like me, Starmer’s Labour Party is a problem. It pivots right when what we actually need (in my opinion) is an alternative and not a watered down more palatable version of the status quo. I don’t want Starmer to be suddenly drawing up 5 year plans for a command economy but I don’t think it is too much to expect the Labour Party to try and make an argument rather than spend most of their energy avoiding them.
I don’t want Starmer to be avoiding difficult conversations about Brexit that is clearly not done and probably no longer the settled will of the British people. I want him to commit to investing in public services again…not hide behind fiscal rules that every government then goes onto break anyway.
I just want him to grow a spine other than the one that is co-joined to a fear of criticism from the right wing press. I am not going to praise or damn Corbyn (except for the 2019 shit show) but the 2017 manifesto was an alternative vision to the status quo…I would like Starmer to be offering any of that.
Winning an election means little without substance…Boris Johnson has proven that conclusively.
I want hope as much as I want rid of the Tories. And I will always vote to get rid of a Tory.
www.independent.co.uk
