{"id":6334,"date":"2024-01-06T12:25:46","date_gmt":"2024-01-06T12:25:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=6334"},"modified":"2024-01-06T12:25:49","modified_gmt":"2024-01-06T12:25:49","slug":"is-starmer-a-red-tory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=6334","title":{"rendered":"Is Starmer a Red Tory?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There’s quite a bit of noise online about how Keir Starmer<\/a> is really a “red tory” because he isn’t socialist enough (or at all). Now don’t get me wrong – he’s nowhere near left-wing enough for my taste, although neither was Jeremy Corbyn<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But a red Tory? Well perhaps, but at least he’s red rather than blue. But whilst he’s dropped socialist policies, he doesn’t seem to have dropped all<\/em> socialist policies – he’s still in favour of nationalising the rail industry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That doesn’t sound very Tory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He’s in favour of extending free breakfasts to every primary school in the UK if he’s dropped the plan for free lunches in every school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That doesn’t sound very Tory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does It Matter?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Well of course it matters!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if the choice is effectively between a hopefully competent red Tory leading the Labour party in government, or a pathetic waste of space leading a dysfunctional blue Tory party in government, the choice is easy. The kind of government I<\/em> want just isn’t a choice at this point. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately we have to compromise and settle for the least damaging government we can feasibly get. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Conspiracy Theory<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Now most “he’s a red tory” commentators out there are probably perfectly innocent, but the Tories have started pushing their message as if a current unscheduled election in May is on the cards. And they aren’t above pushing black propaganda – after all their 2% National Insurance cut is very conveniently timed for a May election when the stealth tax rises are about to kick in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are some of those “red Tory” allegations, propaganda by the Tories to discourage left-wing Labour supporters from voting? Or for voting for no-hopers?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we want to be sure that the current bunch of corrupt clowns is removed from government, we have to vote tactically<\/em> (and avoid potential “fake” tactical voting sites). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s quite a bit of noise online about how Keir Starmer is really a “red tory” because he isn’t socialist enough (or at all). Now don’t get me wrong – he’s nowhere near left-wing enough for my taste, although neither was Jeremy Corbyn. But a red Tory? Well perhaps, but at least he’s red rather […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[2191,2192,2189,2190,176],"class_list":["post-6334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-blue-tory","tag-keir-starmer","tag-labout","tag-red-tory","tag-tory","category-3-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/mstdn.social\/@grumpygrimnir\/111708992141078804","error":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1f2KI-1Ea","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6334"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6336,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6334\/revisions\/6336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}