francovendee wrote: ↑8 May 2021, 8:27am
I had hopes when Starmer became leader that it would make the labour party more popular and electable.
It hasn't so is it him or his policies that people don't find appealing?
Oldjohnw wrote: ↑8 May 2021, 8:34am
But I have absolutely no idea what Labour’s policies are from Europe to Education or from healthcare to defence, or transport to energy.
I'll assume that you both really mean policies. And especially not values, personalities or politicians' behaviour.
1 For a long time Labour's policies have been a lot more popular than electoral results would suggest. That's easy to demonstrate with careful wording in surveys that removes obvious party connections. But policies play a very indirect part in our democratic processes.
2 Immigration might be an exception to this, but you have to be very careful with the data because of the high rates of change of opinion.
3 There haven't been major changes in Labour's policies, except on the EU following the referendum.
4 Johnson's policies are quite different from those of previous Conservative administrations. The most obvious is the new willingness to advocate public expenditure rather than "austerity". (This will end up with discussing the pork barrel issue, but it's still money.) And on the EU (excluding the May interlude.)
The "left-right" axis alone is totally inadequate to explain what's happening. The Conservatives' policies have changed suddenly as above. We also need "socially conservative - liberal" and "authoritarian - liberal", which of course are predominantly about values and the culture war rather than about policies.
Jonathan