Maybe Starmer is just a bit out of touch. For a long time he has tried to be a sensible centrist politician right? So I think he sees digital ID as a centrist way to reduce rates of illegal migrants working in the UK, while not bringing in draconian anti-immigration measures which might upset his MPs.

The Labour conference might be interesting. Maybe we will see some Labour figures calling for big changes to how Number 10 is behaving. I guess they want to see a government that doesn’t try to navigate a centrist path, but instead is more boldly leftist and progressive.

I think I’ve heard on the radio, and on shows like Newsnight, commentators saying that Starmer might not be very politically astute. So maybe he does genuinely think that digital ID is a reasonable solution to reduce illegal immigration, and maybe he just doesn’t realise how much the public opposes digital ID.

To put it another way, I don’t think Starmer is stupid. Maybe his political intuition isn’t the best though. I get the impression that he genuinely wants to improve Labour’s fortunes and he’s trying to pick some sort of middle path between the vocal left and the vocal right. I’m not sure digital ID will be a vote-winning path though.

Maybe he does really think this is a way to appeal to those who want controls on immigration, but without doing something too tough, which would alienate his MPs.

I think he’s probably making a mistake though. This digital ID policy seems to be very unpopular, with both the left and the right. The petition that opposes digital ID now has 1.7 million signatures, and it will probably get a few more.

Yeah I’m thinking this might be a mistake from Sir Keir. He’s trying to sell it as an anti-immigration measure but a lot of the people in the UK who are against immigration are also very suspicious of data collection by the government.

Or they just don’t care about civilian casualties. Maybe they bomb a building which they think is used by Hamas, and they don’t care if that bomb kills civilians as well.

I don’t have a problem with Israelis in general - it seems that some Israelis are completely opposed to the military action in Gaza. I do blame the current Israeli government for killing so many civilians though.

Israel often says things like “we don’t target civilians” but I don’t see how that’s an excuse. They shouldn’t be dropping bombs when the risk of civilian deaths is so high.

Let’s say you’re driving while drunk and you accidentally kill a pedestrian. You can say “well I didn’t intend to kill anybody” but that’s not an excuse.

But now there is a vacancy for the Labour deputy leadership, and Labour members might try to elect somebody who is even more left-wing, so the government might be pushed to the left.

Edit: I’m not saying that a more left-wing deputy leader of Labour is necessarily a bad thing. I’m just saying I don’t necessarily believe that Starmer was happy to remove Rayner. “Better the devil you know” and all that - Rayner was a known quantity to Starmer, and she didn’t criticise his leadership too much. Now there is a risk of someone critical of the government becoming the deputy leader of Labour, which could give Starmer more problems.

If it was a Tory they probably would have refused to resign and they would have kept their job.

Very true that people should pay their taxes, I agree with that. So maybe Rayner should have been allowed to pay the correct tax, and any penalties for late payment, and then she could have kept her job.

If you’re right then I think Rayner should have been able to keep her job, as long as she paid the tax and any penalties for late payment. Rayner losing her job means that Labour have done the bidding of the right-wing press.

I think it would be good if the UK had proportional representation - it’s a shame it’s unlikely to happen any time soon. Labour only got 34% of the vote last year, but this gave them 63% of the seats, and that might be one reason why the public is so unhappy at the moment.

Your politicians gut everything resembling a healthcare system, education system, energy infrastructure or useful industry, things that would actually allow you to create a healthy, innovative and powerful military.

You seem to suggest that a powerful military is a good thing then. Maybe it is. If Ukraine’s military had been more powerful (e.g. if they had been admitted to NATO) then Russia may never have been able to take Ukrainian land, or kill so many Ukrainian civilians.

you will get a small amount of overbudget and late weapons that will be shipped off to kill people in the middle East

I don’t believe in the UK harming anybody in the Middle East. I hope the UK doesn’t do that. I don’t see plans from the UK government that involve harming people in the Middle East with the UK military.

Defending the UK from the threat posed by Russia, mainly.

Defending the UK given the current state of the world is sensible, but I wonder how they’ll raise the cash for this

I got downvoted on Lemmy the other day because I said that I prefer Bill Gates to Musk.

Maybe there are things about Gates I don’t know. Maybe he is actually quite an evil person; I don’t know. But he does at least spend billions of dollars helping vulnerable people, right? And Bill’s stances on global politics are far more sensible than those of Musk.