#political dishonesty

[hjohn3]

The People Who Lie to Themselves

The Dishonesty at the Heart of Keir Starmer’s Labour

Source: iStock Photos

By Honest John

THAT THE Conservatives are political toast is now a truism of British politics. It seems everything Rushi Sunak touches turns to blight. With his increasingly wan smile, the Prime Minister frequently gives the impression of simply going through the motions, as though he himself no longer believes in the bizarre concoction of austerity economics and crude populism that has characterised his rudderless premiership. The latest scandal of aerated concrete threatening the physical collapse of schools and hospitals symbolises Tory Britain: after well over 13 years of ruinous Conservative rule, the country feels like it is literally falling to bits. With electoral projections predicting a Labour majority of anything between 40 and 140 seats at the next General Election, if the government ever did have a “narrow path to victory” as Isaac Levido claimed eight months ago, it now seems overgrown, mountainous and littered with fallen concrete.

With an average opinion poll lead of 18 points, historically unassailable at this stage In the electoral cycle, Keir Starmer’s Labour seem destined for power, possibly as soon as May next year. The party, pursuing an almost carbon copy of the tactics employed by New Labour in 1996/97 have been careful to shut down any conceivable Tory attack line by diluting, postponing and removing most of the headline policies that had made the Labour offer truly distinctive as recently as last year’s Party Conference. There has been much disappointment and complaining on the left at Starmer’s and Reeves’ caution, lack of ambition and even political cowardice at what appears to be a surrendering of any recognisable progressive agenda to the Tory settlement even as that very settlement appears to be in its death throes. The question of what Starmer’s Labour stands for as it gets ever closer to becoming the next government of the U.K. is constantly raised. Whereas I share those concerns, there seems to me to be something far darker at the heart of the Labour project that goes beyond normal electoral calculus: Labour is actually being wilfully or naively dishonest with the British people.

That dishonesty is fiscal, but also political.

Labour’s current fiscal policies are rightly criticised by disappointed supporters as symbolising the government-in-waiting’s lack of political courage, but are rarely taken to task for their lack of economic coherence. In short order, Rachel Reeves has “ruled out” increasing the top rate of income tax; increasing corporation tax above 25%; any increased borrowing for the first two years in government, and any form of wealth tax. Keir Starmer has recently joined the closing down of fiscal options by promising no increase in income tax at all. The Right have traditionally challenged past Labour Party spending plans with the knowing sneer “where’s the money coming from?”. Now that question is one of genuine objective political curiosity: how on earth is Labour going to govern after it has voluntarily committed to raise no new money whatsoever?

It actually gets worse. It seems to have been forgotten (and I sometimes think by Rachel Reeves too) that Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement last year, designed to stabilise the money markets after Liz Truss’ crazed tax cutting experiment, not only launched Tory Austerity 2.0 by keeping public spending below headline inflation, but also committed to reduce current spending by £22bn and capital spending by £14bn in 2025/26. Labour has signed up to the government’s spending plans and therefore has effectively committed itself to public spending cuts in its second year in office. Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rule (public debt to be less than public income by 2029) is of a piece with this.

The Labour response to criticism of its lack of spending plans, in a reprise of Truss’ mantras, is that Labour wishes to grow the economy and that this cannot be achieved by increased taxation. This of course takes as read the tired Tory assertion that all taxation is derived from income and that increased taxation therefore suppresses consumer demand. This sophistry ignores what governments can do to stimulate the economy with increased revenues, from whatever source, and refuses to countenance the reform of taxation of wealth and property. Even if one puts unexplored policy options to one side (including the rebasing of Council Tax) Labour seems to believe that the economy will grow as if by magic; that the very appearance of a Labour government will automatically attract inward investment, stimulate new businesses, fund capital infrastructure projects and increase wages. To the question “How?” the Labour front bench has no answer.

The fact is that Reeves at least, as a former economist at the Bank of England, knows full well that growth does not occur spontaneously. Investment-led growth requires deployment of fiscal actions by the government, whether that is through the tax breaks, quantitative easing, low corporation tax, low interest rates or the selling off of state assets favoured by the Right, or through the stimulus economics, capital infrastructure spend, government-backed lending and job creation initiatives favoured by the Left. Growth always requires decisive action by the Treasury. To pretend otherwise is either delusional, economically illiterate or, that word again, dishonest.

Starmer and his front bench, given their relentless and highly effective, critique of modern Toryism, also understand that the series of policy disasters inflicted by successive Conservative regimes - the social vandalism of austerity; the self harm of Brexit; the magical thinking of Trussonomics and the inadequate neo-Thatcherism of the hapless Sunak - has resulted in untold damage to the fabric of the British economy, to the resilience and adequacy of public services and to people’s standards of living. Labour know that the unprecedented ruin wrought by the various Tory iterations can’t be “fixed” by a little policy tinkering, some structural reform and fiscal conservatism. To imply otherwise is beyond dishonesty; it is a lie.

Politically, the public’s disgust with the Tories is real. The inchoate anti-austerity that could be detected in the Brexit vote, and even in the vote for Boris Johnson’s offer in 2019, is real. However, unlike its response to those choices, this time the public refuses to be gaslighted by the right wing media. Voters have accurately joined up the dots between Cameron’s “debt reduction” falsehoods of 2010 and the lived reality today of a collapsing NHS and crumbling classrooms. The public not unreasonably want ambulances to turn up, police to manage low level crime, their councils to have enough money to regenerate their town centres, for the unaccountable water companies to stop spewing sewage into the nation’s waterways, for trains to run on time, waiting lists to come down, courts to function and public buildings not to collapse. The Labour critique has done its job, but the opposition’s implication that these public expectations can be met solely by growth and “reform” and no restitution of the public spending cuts implemented by the Tories, is fundamentally and politically dishonest.

In truth, Labour once in office, will live its dishonesty. Perhaps, like Starmer’s cheerleaders earnestly hope, the new government will reverse all its commitments not to increase existing or introduce new taxes, drop Reeves’ fiscal rule and its proclaimed adherence to the 2022 Tory financial settlement, and set about raising revenue in order to stimulate the growth it claims it wants. Or perhaps it will militantly keep its financial word but achieve no meaningful change and let down the millions of voters Labour had encouraged to turn to it to reverse the destruction of the Tory years. There is no way out of this bind - Labour will be unable to avoid the charge of dishonesty whatever it does, or chooses not to do. Starmer and his team may be able lie to themselves in opposition, but as the Tories have discovered to their cost, you can’t lie to the electorate when in government and hope, for any length of time, to get away with it.

7th September 2023

[undergroundusa]

"…the propagandists of the Democrat Party would have the voting public deceived by memes that include points that are found nowhere in the Heritage Foundation’s text and the use of twisted rhetoric to misrepresent what Project 2025 actually espouses…"

ORIGINAL PODCAST CONTENT: https://www.undergroundusa.com/p/disingenuous-politically-motivated

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE, SHARE & EDUCATE

Project 2025: The Left's Politically Motivated Disinformation Serves No One

[athinginmotion]

The older I get the more I feel so cynical and disillusioned about the way people just use leftist/progressive politics (all politics but I expect it from the right) as a way to launder their uglier and baser impulses, such as being a bully, bloodlust, power-hunger, schadenfreude…also as a way to sneakily legitimise the same tedious banal bigotries (so many popular male leftists being almost comedically misogynistic is one obvious example.) Also I just can’t ignore any more the way people just outright lie or twist the truth to suit their agenda, even and perhaps especially if those people are on the same side as me. Not to sound like a big centrist lol as I’ll always always be on the left but I feel like some illusion I was previously labouring under has been snatched away the past few years. Anyway I know finding other people on the left fucking annoying is leftist 101 unfortunately but I’ve been finding it especially jarring recently and it makes me really cynical when I encounter any kind of utopian thinking because I don’t want to live in a society engineered by these people.

[eaglesnick]

"If history teaches anything, it teaches that self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly" -  Ronald Reagan

In his first speech outside of No 10, Sir Keir Starmer said:

“Our country has voted, decisively… for change. . You have given us a clear mandate and we will use it to deliver change”

If only that were true!  The sad fact is Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has failed utterly to excite or convince voters that he is the man to save this country from the terminal decline inflicted on us by 14 years of Conservative government.

No Mr Starmer, the country has not given you a “clear mandate" for change. We do want change but our votes went not to your right-wing Labour Party but to lesser parties like the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and more importantly Reform UK.

Either he is delusional or he cannot face the simple truth that the Labour Party under him is LESS popular with the public than when Jeremy Corbyn was leader. In May this year Starmer asked this rhetorical question:

“They (the electorate) still have questions about us: has Labour changed enough? "Do I trust them with my money, our borders, our security? My answer is yes, you can, because I have changed this party permanently,"

But the answer the voters gave on July 5th was a simple NO, we don’t trust you.

Overall Starmer’s Labour won LESS votes than Jeremy Corbyn in the 2019 election. When Corbyn lost that election, Starmer and his right-wing cronies within the Party heaped scorn and scathing criticism on Corbyn

Wes Streeting: 

“Jeremy Corbyn led the Labour Party to this defeat. Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet led the Labour party to this defeat. Jeremy Corbyn’s manifesto led the Labour Party to this defeat."

And in May 2020 The Financial Times had this headline:

“Starmer blames Corbyn for Labour’s election defeat “ (07/05/2020)

Rachel Reeves went even further:

“Jeremy Corbyn not fit to be Labour candidate at election, Rachel Reeves says  (Express 17/05.24)

 Reeves (Starmer and Streeting) got their way. The expelled Corbyn was forced to stand as an Independent. Dianne Abbott, also on the left of the Party, nearly suffered the same fate but the bad publicity this caused for Starmer forced him to reinstate her as a Labour candidate.

It is telling that whereas both Corbyn and Abbott won their seats with comfortable majorities, Wes Streeting, the poster-boy of Starmer’s “new” right-wing Labour Party, only managed a majority of 528: so much for Labour's “clear mandate".

If Starmer were to apply the same arithmetic criticism to himself regarding the total number of votes cast for Labour  in 2024 when compared to those cast in the 2019 election, then he would do the honourable  thing and resign. But that isn’t going to happen. The first-past-the post electoral system in this country means despite having gained only one third of the vote Starmer has a huge majority in the House of Commons. This isn’t the first time a massive majority of Parliamentary seats has been won despite the vast majority of the electorate voting for someone else.

What I find really worrying though is the apparent belief among Starmer and his inner circle that they have been given a “clear mandate” and that the country ‘voted decisively’ in their favour.

If we truly are to have a government that puts “country first, party second” then we must have honesty and integrity. But if Starmer is unable to be honest about his failure to do any better at gaining public support than Jeremy Corbyn did in 2019, then his government is already operating under the shadow of self-delusion.

As JF Kennedy once said:

 “The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.”

[pancoleon]

It's so cool living in a world where facts literally don't fucking matter. "A Corbyn style manifesto [...] don't provide funding and hope nobody notices."

Motherfucker the Corbyn manifestos were costed! It was in fact a big deal that it was costed! The press had a drag out half a dozen different cunts to justify why the Tory manifesto by comparison was not costed! You were in the shadow cabinet, you know this!

Starmer is desperate to do jack fucking shit and has had to reinvent substantial parts of the last 8 years to suit his narrative. He is one of the most dishonest politicians in the UK right now and the only thing he's stayed true and consistent in is going back on his word on every single promise made. At best this is to help him run cover when he also does jack fucking shit after getting into power. To hell with him and what remains of his fucking party.

[qqueenofhades]

So, uh. Let's recap:

1) The NYT itself was one of the BIGGEST PURVEYORS of the Crime n' Doomed!! headlines, and yet oddly enough, this seeks to do anything but take responsibility for them;

2) Wow they so badly want to make the Red Wave real, even after it never happened, that they're using the words "Republican rout" to describe the midterms;

3) "Decisive role" oh no, not the gerrymandering? Not the constant lying about inflation with no plan to fix it? Not the shitshows in Florida (and for that matter, NEW YORK, driven by the NYT's own Crime Crime Crime!!! beat that they're not acknowledging)? MYSTERY HOW THIS HAPPENED!!!

4) My god American political media is such a disgrace.

5) Truly.

[drdamiang]

AND TELL

AND TELL

let me show

you my dishonesty

it is

a glorious dishonesty

quite

spectacular

should stand me

in such good

for telling

power to

truth

putting all

the wonderful

lies you need

to believe

filed

and cross-referenced

in your head

[infinitysisters]

Esto

[antifaagainstapathy]

The same politicians who are against abortion are also opposed to comprehensive sex education and birth control 🤔

[zekedms]

You ever get a really bad take recommended by YouTube, say "What the shit?", go to the channel, and realize that you already looked at some of the extremely bad take in somewhere in the past thanks to that little red line?

[newbloggycat]

Quote of the day - Henri Queuile

Quote of the day – Henri Queuile

“Politics is the art of postponing decisions until they are no longer relevant.” – Henri Queuile http://www.pinterest.com

[undergroundusa]

"…his own party’s potentates calling into question both his mental acuity and ability to win in November, we are seeing the first three stages of grief appear in his demeanor; the beginning of his acceptance that he is destined to be a one-term and failed president…"

ORIGINAL PODCAST CONTENT: https://www.undergroundusa.com/p/biden-denial-anger-and-bargaining

PLEASE LIKE ON THE WEBSITE, SHARE & EDUCATE

Biden: Denial, Anger & Bargaining Are The First Steps

[yardsards]

and remember, voting for biden will not magically bar you from protesting his choices

(additionally, there's no rule saying you can't call and *threaten* to not vote for him- even if you are actually planning to vote for him over trump. just lie to the bitch, c'mon.)

"Biden is funding a literal genocide!"

Yeah - and so will Trump. Like, if you don't vote for Biden, Trump will win, and he will continue to send aid to Israel - in fact, he will likely send MORE aid to Israel. That's the reality of the world we live in.

And, to be honest, any US president will support Israel. Because the USA is Israel's ally. That's how foreign policy works.

So who do you prefer?

Biden, who has helped lgbtq rights, reproductive rights, infrastructure, the environment, lowered medication costs, supported unions, and done MANY good, progressive things,

Or Trump, who we already know is awful. Who we already know will destroy any human rights Biden managed to gain. Who will not help the environment. Who will not help trans people, or immigrants, or women.

Because those are your two choices. And if you think they're the same, you are dangerous to all marginalized people.

[lifewithaview]

Rowan Atkinson and Tony Robinson in Blackadder the Third (1987) Dish and Dishonesty

E1

Pitt the Younger is young and precocious, and has just been elected Prime Minister. Determined to keep his campaign promises, he announces his intention to strike Prince George from the Civil List. More to save his own skin than the Prince's, Edmund Blackadder announces Baldrick's candidacy for a vacant MP post in order to stop him.

*At the time the episode aired, Vincent Hanna was an actual newsreader, hence his credit in this episode as his own great-great-great-grandfather.

[davidaugust]

"We don't want to just be sort of truth nannies that fact-check every single thing on either side because that becomes very tedious." - Emma Tucker, editor-in-chief of The Wall Street Journal

Well, Emma, get the f out of the journalism business then.

h/t @wentrogue.bsky.social

[immaculatasknight]

Don't believe your lying eyes