Firstly Labour went mildly social democratic, offering policies to the right of Nordic conservative parties in some areas. Just to contextualise what "full left" means in this respect. (A concrete example is parental leave, where the Norwegian conservative party is fine with far higher statutory pay than Labour would even dare suggest even under Corbyn)

Secondly, I see this, but at the same time Corbyn was the most vilified politician in the UK in a generation and he still got close to a win with that program. Suppose Corbyn could do that at a point where the Tories were not historically unpopular. In that case, it's clear Starmer could have stuck to his pledges to be "pragmatic continuity Corbyn" and walked this election - most of the actual policies in the 2017 manifesto were highly popular when polled, including with conservative voters.

Agree.

I mean - from my point of view there are two glaring issues in this election that are just being coughed aside in a deeply disingenuous way, by all parties (with maybe the exception of the LibDems, a bit):

1) Brexit. For this not to be on the agenda when it has been the most ruinous decision made in the last 10 years of our political history is just ...well, weird at best, totally surreal at worst. Widely recognised [even by many? most?] of those who voted for it as now being a mistake, it just seems insane to leave any discussion off the table.

2) Tax rises. Everyone knows that for our UK standard of living to continue (or even - lol - rise), the money has got to come from somewhere. And that place can only really be taxes. All of the parties seem to be pulling out a magic hat full of magic money - an honest conversation would have all the parties in a room agreeing that someone, somewhere has got to pay for all this stuff.

Anyway, wow, gone well off topic. Sorry Dang!

RE 1, it was pretty much the sole discussion of the last election and the winning party slogan was "Get Brexit Done" (ie let's stop this endless talking about this).

There's very little public appetite to focus on it again for now. I disagree with Starmer on a lot but he's right to totally shut down discussion on this until after an election

1) It's politically toxic. As soon as anyone says anything they'll be accused of betrayal etc

2) The UK's in a bit of a hole that it can't really tax and spend out of. What we need is more like sane government and economic growth. Just not having something like Boris's "fuck business" and tearing up our trade agreements for a while would help.

> It's politically toxic.

I think you're probably correct, as only the Green Party seem to be committing to moving back in (one reason I'm considering voting non-Labour for the first time in my life). I wonder though, do you think this will last forever, especially in the face of consistent polling suggesting that twice as many people think it was a bad idea as think it was a good one? [0]

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/987347/brexit-opinion-po...

My guess is Labour once in power will move to undo some of the more stupid bits of Brexit like having different animal health regs so you can't export fish or meat without great difficulty. I can't see full rejoining in the near future but maybe becoming more like Norway or Switzerland.

I hope you're right about bringing alignment with EU regs, although I'm not optimistic, given how safe Starmer seems to want to play it.

I didn’t vote for it, and think Brexit was bad, but also agree that the EU is overly bureaucratic, un-democratic, and doesn’t see countries as truly autonomous (eg tries to be redistribute wealth between the countries). The best scenario now is probably somewhere in the middle.

The EU today is significantly different to the original idea, but I can see the UK entering into the single market and military partnerships etc (contrary to popular opinion, there are lots of free trade agreements worldwide that don’t have full regulatory alignment!).

I understand where you're coming from. I agree that the EU needs a lot of work. I'd just prefer if we were in it getting stuck in and spear-heading that transformation.

However, what I'm really wondering is whether (and when) there will be a gradual political shift in the UK towards rejoining.

If labour ran on a manifesto of higher taxes and reverse brexit this election would be a shitshow.

I don’t actually agree that our taxes/spending have to increase in order to get a better standard of living - what we need is services which function better for the same costs.

Just to put this in context, the last time as you say a "full left" government ruled, over the span of six years we:

- Built the NHS

- Decolonised India, Pakistan, Burma, Sri Lanka, and Jordan

- Nationalised the coal industry, electricity utilities, railways and long-distance haulage

- Established a national childcare service

- Paved the way for the creation of National Parks and introduced public rights of way

There is a lot of progress that can be made with a genuine left-wing government with a majority, even in a time of economic upheaval. With Reform splitting the right-wing vote this is the best opportunity the left has had in my lifetime. But Starmer is in the lead, banning MPs from attending strike pickets and talking about how he's had to give up his pledges on the NHS in order to "grow the economy".