This raises serious questions.
1. What on earth is going on in the Labour Party?
2. Why is Keir Starmer seemingly incapable of sticking to his own pledges and promises?
One more question. Have any Keir Starmer supporters on this board altered their initial impressions of him over the years, even just a little bit?
Here are three answers:
1) They're battering the Tories, by the biggest margin since I've been alive, and the ones in the party who seem to like to lose, are trying to make them lose again, or don't understand that if you don't win, you get less than zero.
2) Because the world changed. Pandemic, Hyper Inflation, Energy Crisis, War, a shift to the far right with brexit, faced three different PM's and already seen two off. You're still throwing shot putt's in the decathalon, when everyone else is concerned about the other 9 events with more points up for grabs.
3) Yeah, I was a small fan before, but didn't vote for him as I wasn't a member. I'm a member now though, and would vote for him.
He knows what he needs to do to win, and put the Tories to the sword, and won't let people risk undermining that. It's great that he manages to handle the press, so that zero the far right throw at him can stick.
For the 20th time:
Pushing for a left-sided party (which has lost two elections), at the time of a far-right uprising (which they're currently seeing off) is the worst thing to do, the only approach with any logic is to control the centre, just like it has been for any vote in a two horse race.
Saying "but we've got a big lead now", push for more left-sided polices doesn't really work, when the reason they are winning by so much of a margin in the first place is because they haven't pushed that.
Labour need two terms to overcome the damage caused, just scraping a win, or risking a loss in one won't change much, they need a big win and then to hold that.
There's no manifesto in place, it's not going to be like the Tory manifesto.
As for the article, highlighting the BAME makeup of the exodus is irrelevant, compared to what they're pushing for with regards to Labours direction. This is even more so when the article clearly mentions that BAME/ women representation will go up. Why even mention the BAME aspect, can BAME people not vote for white and vice versa? 26/48 councillors were BAME, 22/48 white, in a city which has a roughly 50/50 BAME/ White split. Labour have massive control over the council, having councillors going in the direction of a winning Labour party is more important than one which want's to pull in the losing direction. Even if they go down to 40 councillors and 8 independents, this is better than having 48, with 20 pulling in the wrong direction.