Eliot

The Labour Party is 120 years old today, I thought I’d do a thread of some of its greatest achievements for which we can all be proud

Actually it is a bad policy with clear inbuilt exploitations and obvious onward labour market distortion

The assisted suicide Bill should not come back via a private member's Bill as it became a farcical process and a terrible policy mess. Campaigners need a party or parties to support it. Labour does not and it was not in the 2024 manifesto. theguardian.com/society/2026/m…

The Assisted Dying Bill raised more questions than it answered. My piece in @LabourList >>> labourlist.org/2026/05/assist…

@robjeffecology @Iainite_Iain @cgdav135 That is simply not what is being proposed. In fact it is the exact opposite, the reforms specify whole family units.

@Iainite_Iain @cgdav135 You support ripping children from their parents that this govt is enacting in policy. Shame on you.

The vast majority of the public actually do want some kind of controls on immigration. It might not go down well in Hackney or Brighton, but that's the truth.

Net migration has fallen to… a city the size of Norwich, every year. The mad Boriswave is the only reason this level is considered a “low”. @ShabanaMahmood is restoring fairness and control to our immigration system.

This is Labour members - not the general public, not even Labour voters. Labour MEMBERS. These days, a very liberal group of people. And they support what @ShabanaMahmood is doing.

@cmw2003 Poor parliamentary management is the foundational stone upon which Starmer’s fall was built. All the metrics and data are noise compared to the staggering fact that even with a 165 seat majority Starmer has struggled to get key legislation through the House

I listen to Burnham and I understand that he will have a better grip of the PLP, but it's hard to see how his popularity will not end up shattered in seconds due to the bureaucracy we live in.

@jhallwood 100% a Starmer ally briefing to punish “disloyal” ministers. They’re on a scorched earth approach now

I hope not because this would just be really demeaning.

V popular argument on the Right that our current problems are the result of ~statism/~socialism, & that the market-liberal reforms of the last ~half century were a mirage (contradicting Thatcher's own claim that her greatest achievement was Tony Blair/New Labour, because they ~continued much of her legacy). Here's a reminder of what the state used to do in the pre-Thatcherite era: 👉Own/run water, gas, electricity, railway companies as nationalised public monopolies (all sold off in '80s/'90s, often to foreign states, sovereign wealth, PE funds etc.) 👉Own/run municipal bus companies, coal mines, airlines, car factories, steelworks, telecommunications, shipbuilders & much else besides (all privatised in '80s/'90s, many mothballed entirely) 👉Build ~50-100k municipal homes/yr & impose rent controls on the PRS (social housebuilding, and ALL housebuilding, is now a tiny fraction of the post-war peak, millions of units have been privatised under R2B, rent controls were lifted in '88, & the Housing Benefit Bill exploded) 👉Impose strict controls on Forex & the export of capital abroad (controls lifted in 1979 & never re-imposed) 👉Have full employment as consensus policy aim & an attempt to control incomes & prices through Pay Boards/Price Commissions + corporatist relationship with trade unions (all abolished, with trade unions slowly emasculated, & with out-of-work/sickness & disability benefits bill exploding) 👉Impose punitive taxes (of 80/90%+) on high/"unearned" incomes 👉Spend ~5% of GDP on public capital investment/fixed capital formation (collapsing to ~1-2% in Thatcherite decade, where it has hovered around since) Britain's pre-Thatcherite political economy had levels of state involvement in PRODUCTION + NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT + the MANAGEMENT/DIRECTION of capital (not simply redistribution + regulation, as today), that are unimaginable nowadays. Many of the phenomena Ben describes below have little to do with anything approaching a social-democratic political economy – the "massive taxes" (relative to GDP) are largely a function of demographics, common across the developed world (even though our base rate/higher rate/additional rate are MUCH lower than they once were). The regulatory regime in water, energy etc. is a product of privatisation itself. And what we're seeing on stuff like the Renters'/Employment Rights Acts, energy subsidies, judicial rulings on pay via Equalities Act, minimum wage etc. is an attempt by legislators to perform a kind of post-hoc, bureaucratic, progressive distributional correction to the outcomes of a growth model still based on private ownership of core sectors, poor collective bargaining, low levels of public investment, outsourcing, PFI/PPP, globalisation/import dependency, financialisation, with the state desperately facilitating continued FDI etc. etc. rather than altering the growth model itself (which has been broken since 2008).

@AscendedYield Ministers become accountable and responsible in so far that their department is the shareholder. The level of control is determined by the model post nationalisation not the mere act of being nationalised

politicians should be careful what they wish for, once you nationalise these things, you become accountable for them, the investment and pricing decisions are handled by ministers, in the context of squeezed public finances and stagnant real incomes, politicians will always opt to delay or cancel needed investment in these services and not raise prices for consumers as needed to reflect production or operating costs

@MrMutantes “Collapse into an early general election” the party has a 400 seat majority

I wonder what the Burnham v Streeting numbers look like should Burnham reject rejoin

@_lwalter_ Broadly speaking the fiscal rules are here to stay because of the bond market. Some flexible changes are possible be we have to be realistic that the endless money of the 2010s is not available to us anymore

@Michaelknife1 @jhallwood Momentum pushed that angle of “no to a Tory Brexit” rather than no to Brexit. The better option for Labour in 2018/19 would have been to support May’s Withdrawal Agreement, demand fresh elections for a mandate to negotiate the subsequent deal.

@jhallwood I still think Corbyn missed his moment by not going all in on a socialist, 'People's Brexit'

Labour voters actually want to rejoin and actually it would help us win is like deja vu from those in 2019 who convinced themselves the red wall would just grin and bear it. In the better elections of 2017 and 2024 Labour made it clear they accepted the referendum result.

@_lwalter_ This issues with Starmer are deeper than policy though, he isn’t suited for the job

@s8mb @sjarichards @JacobMalhotra It faces slightly more as it is easier to private capital to be raised for housing that it is for public capital to be allocated to it

@sjarichards @JacobMalhotra It’s interesting how many fans of social housing don’t realise that it faces all the same hurdles that private housebuilding does.

Social housing faces the exact same planning barriers; you still need Yimbyism to cut through them. And whose taxes do you think are paying for social housing? It’s those pesky well paid graduates.

Britain has just 446 homes per 1,000 people, the second worst rate in Europe. Compere that with 560 per 1,000 in France, or 565 in Finland. The UK is short about 6.5 *million* homes. The country needs to build every type of housing it can, council housing is not nearly enough.

@AaronBastani @DespoticInroad And with all the cronyism and nepotist triumphant indulgence please spare a thought for Will Straw he failed to ever become a Labour MP despite his dad’s faction controlling the NEC for most of his life

@DespoticInroad I don’t think the left are anywhere near as bad. But that’s probably because they’ve had less opportunity to be. It’s genuinely ridiculous with the Labour establishment. The complete triumph, and decadence, is part of it imho

Sue Gray’s son (yes, he’s an MP - and yes, he joined Commons in 2024) being in the middle of this shot tells you a lot about the Labour Party. And why it might be broken for good. The worst things its rivals say about it - are mostly true.

@TomHulme79 Each department to have a Director of Better

@post_liberal I think that is slightly unfair, Labour in 2017 was a pro-Brexit party. It wasn’t until 2019 that we abandoned those principles

I think the Labour party plan to prevent catastrophic losses at the next GE is slowly coming into view. Rebrand. Change leader. Consolidate the old Remain vote in the same way that Reform have consolidated the old Leave vote and pose as the best placed party to keep out Reform.