radiofree.asia

Keir Starmer’s Labour is now copying ten-year-old Tory election messaging

Outlets like the Canary warned that Labour under Keir Starmer would be a Conservative government in all but name. This has played out as expected, with the party pushing policies that target old people, sick and disabled people, and people from other countries. And now, Labour is even aping Tory election messaging:

Where have we heard ‘vote for us or face chaos’ before?

Oh yeah, that’s right – this famous tweet from then-prime minister David Cameron in 2015:

How did that work out?

Chaos under… Labour?

The dark irony of what Cameron said was that the proceeding nine years of Tory rule were pure chaos from start to finish. We went through five Tory prime ministers in that time and we suffered more scandals than you could shake a Black Rod at. As a result of this, the ‘chaos with Ed Miliband’ line became a meme.

It’s unclear why Labour would want to remind everyone of this farcical moment in British politics; especially as the chaos and human suffering has continued without pause since Starmer took over from the Tories.

As you’d expect, the replies to the campaign have not been positive:

Some have noted that Labour is losing significant blocs of voters because it’s directly attacking them:

Tweet which reads: 'According to govt statistics there are 16.1mil disabled people in U.K. whose vote you’ve just lost. 8.7mil pensioners who’s vote you’ve lost. Lost the student, Waspi, and environmentalists vote. 👇🏻 You screw over public they’re not forgiving. #VoteGreenParty #VoteIndependent'

Canary journalist Ed Sykes argued that Labour itself is to blame for the rise of Reform, and that it can’t win over the public by pointing at its own mess and demanding that voters clean it up:

‘Working people’

Another thing which stands out is the reference to ‘working people’. The reason it stands out is Labour is attempting to appeal to ‘working people’ at the same time that it’s going out of its way to immiserate sick and disabled people with limited or no capacity to work:

The Canary’s Steve Topple covered the recent Amnesty International report into the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) under Labour:

Jen Clark, Economic and Social Rights Lead at Amnesty International UK, summed up the situation saying:

“Lives are being ruined by a system that is cruel – it erodes dignity by design. We are in a state of severe human rights violations. The social security system is impenetrable, inadequate, and for some completely inaccessible. There can be no tinkering of the system – it has gone too far, and it is too late. There must be full reform. It is broken from start to finish and intentionally sets people up to fail.”

These harrowing accounts coincide with personal stories from across the country, showing how the system is failing those who need it most.

John Stainton, 63, dedicated much of his life serving his country as a civil servant in the Ministry of Defence, even earning an OBE for his work in Afghanistan. But after being diagnosed with aggressive Multiple Sclerosis (MS), his life took a terrifying turn.

Forced into early retirement in 2022, he found navigating the DWP’s Personal Independence Payments (PIP) claim process “alien” and “disjointed.” Despite the impact MS had on his life, assessors initially gave him a low mobility score and refused him points for the daily reality of his condition.

“It took me about 15 months in total from when I first rang up to when the appeal came out,” John said:

“The DWP wrote to me chuckle, chuckle, chuckle, and said they were delighted to tell me they’d decided I deserve PIP. I thought, you haven’t decided, you’ve been told by a judge.”

It’s additionally grim that Labour’s plan to appeal to able-bodied people by victimising those who are disabled isn’t even working, as polling for the upcoming local elections shows:

On the national level, some polls suggest Labour is on track for the same sort of wipeout that the Liberal Democrats (rightfully) suffered after they entered into a coalition government with the Conservatives:

 

The death of ambition

While Labour is still promising ‘change’, an increasing number of people are convinced that Labour is changing things for the worse. Accordingly, many are highlighting that the party is mirroring the death spiral politics of the American Democrats:

The big problem for Labour isn’t just that ‘lesser of two evils’ politics always leads to ruin; it’s that there’s no longer a convincing argument that Labour is a lesser evil.

Featured image via Number 10

By The Canary

This post was originally published on Canary.