Labour’s Thatcherite Tories aren’t better post-election. Who could have guessed?

The 22 August 2024 marks seven weeks since the electorate hit the polling booths and voted the new Labour Party government in to a sweeping majority. We distinctly remember some promises about a “changed” country. Now is as good a time as any then to ask: “how’s that turning out?”

The answer should be obvious: not well:

So far, Rachel Reeves has decided that the following groups should be worse off, i.e. she thinks the Tories were too generous to them

🔹pensioners
🔹social housing tenants
🔹benefits claimants
🔹public sector workers

Is this the “change” we were told about?

— troovus (@troovus) August 21, 2024

A vote for Labour turned out to be

🟥 22-44% rise in Water Bills
🟥 Two Child Cap kept
🟥 10m pensioners Winter Fuel Allowance Axed
🟥 Big military spend increase
🟥 £3bn of NHS contracts offered to private sector
🟥 £5.5bn Austerity for Public Services
🟥 5,500 released early…

— Eóin Clarke (@DrEoinOCleirigh) August 21, 2024

#Newsnight So much for
Starmer’s promised “Change”! Reeves will continue with Tory Austerity, the Poorest will pay for the £23b budget gap!
Reeves choice is to Stop Winter Fuel Allowances, Increase Council rents above Inflation & continue Tory cap on Child benefit! #WhatChange?

— John Wakefield (@Leveller44) August 21, 2024

Let’s not forget propping up Israel committing an atrocious, utterly abhorrent genocide in Gaza:

And for ongoing British participation in an unimaginable genocide in Palestine. Sickening. https://t.co/8LJeHzZiyw

— Insight (@FoInsight) August 21, 2024

So, about how we thought, then.

Labour: all rather… Tory

Fresh out of the election, and Labour ChangeTM has unleashed another round of austerity misery on marginalised communities.

Ostensibly, chancellor Rachel Reeves has used her bogus “black hole” bluff and bluster to justify these poverty-entrenching measures. First it was maintaining the two-child limit on benefits. Then, she was cutting the winter fuel payment for millions of pensioners. Now, she’s raising social rents on council and housing association properties.

Of course, Reeves and “changed” Labour could be fixing the real issues harming sidelined communities. For instance, the new government could raise public sector workers pay in line with inflation – instead of offering miserly pay deals that amount to real-terms pay cuts.

Boosting benefits or bashing claimants? It has so far opted for the latter, rather than making social security a genuine safety net that supports people to live dignified, fulfilling lives.

It could do away with the parasitic social housing landlords hiding in faux not-for-profit sight. That is, housing associations turning tidy profits while leaving tenants in squalid, shoddy living conditions.

From ‘Milk Snatcher’ to ‘Kid Starver’

But then, the red rosette Tories were never going to do any of that, as plenty of people pointed out:

This what happens when you only change the colour of the rosette, the philosophy and ideology stay the same

People can’t claim they were not warned, it was their choice to ignore all the signs and the warnings

— The Dude Says No To Genocide ✊🏽 (@Wally_Bazoum) August 21, 2024

If you voted for this, you are part of the problem: well before the GE, Starmer & Reeves were exposed as the enemies they are – enemies of the most vulnerable, enemies of the elderly & enemies of working people. https://t.co/zThCZrMd3l

— Ros Scott-Hodgetts 💙 (@ros49) August 21, 2024

When politicians show you they’re corporate capitalist establishment stooges and shameless Thatcher fangirls, believe them the first time. One poster had a handy list of a number of times our new prime minister Sir ‘Kid Starver’ had lauded his idol the late Maggie ‘Milk Snatcher’:

As predicted.
It’s not as if Starmer was being secretive about being Tory.

He called himself a Tory all the time, 2023https://t.co/l1BzRoV7zS

Said Labour are the new conservatives, 2023https://t.co/qZtdzT26Q7

Starmer makes way for conservatism, 2022https://t.co/asPv8FZ5UM https://t.co/MbVNdJTjuQ

— George O – #StarmerOut #NHS15Rise, NuLabour=Tory (@George0rw3ll) August 21, 2024

And for that matter, Reeves may as well have had “THATCHERITE TORY ASS-KISSER” tattooed across her forehead in big bold print as well:

Rachel Reeves has been telling us exactly what she’d do in power for years, & now she’s able to do just that, with fuck all push back, because “Something something Get the Tories out” Something something Change”
& the Liberals who pushed for this shit Won’t be who’s affected.

— Michael Walsh (@thatbloodyMikey) August 20, 2024

Funnily enough, the Canary’s James Wright exposed her neoliberal Thatcher adulation back in March.

Change? In tie colour only

It’s the type of “told you so” that gives the left no satisfaction to point out. That’s because, at the heart of it, Labour’s Tory austerity 2.0 will kill unconscionable tens, if not hundreds of thousands more people. Invariably, it’ll be the poorest, most marginalised groups at the sharp end of this:

And the Starmerites would go apoplectic with rage every time we stated calmly that Starmer’s Labour are just red Tories. Not as an asinine opinion, but a simple statement of fact. Thanks to their petty politics, it will be the vulnerable who suffer yet again under more austerity.

— Occam’s Razor Zone✊🏾🇵🇸 #FuckIsrael (@OccamsRazorZone) August 21, 2024

This was the inevitable outcome of a Labour landslide:

Some of the reasons I didn’t vote Labour, and didn’t want them to get a super majority https://t.co/Q31xQrZ6L4

— Billion Dollar Brain #MDANT (@harryhpalmer) August 21, 2024

As with the Tories before, they have the numbers in parliament to put their billionaire and business agenda into action without challenge.

Still, massive raging hypocrite habits die hard with this government. The latest example? An austerity announcement bonanza during the parliamentary recess, so MPs have no chance for scrutiny. As one poster raised, Hoyle had lambasted the Tories for doing this previously:

Notice all this stuff of cuts, rent rises, winter fuel payments are all in the public domain when the House of Commons isn’t sitting – they’re on their 8 week summer break – not a word from Zionist Hoyle about MP’s should be told first – another rule gone.

— Carole Hawkins (@hawkins_carole) August 21, 2024

Less than two months into “changed” Labour, they’ve repeatedly bared their continuity Conservative fangs. At the end of the day, Starmerites are Tory in red tie, tooth, and claw-back cuts from the most marginalised members of society. What was it those gullible – or perhaps more accurately – lying little liberal lickspittles were adamantly telling everyone again?

They gonna get better once they’re in power I remember someone saying

— Val (@twofucksgiven) August 22, 2024

Six weeks ago, post King’s Speech: JUST BE PATIENT YOU UNREASONABLE LEFTIE CLOWN IT’S OBVIOUS THE OCTOBER BUDG-

Today: “Among the changes Reeves is believed to be considering are…Rejecting pressure to scrap the two-child benefit cap.”

Big fan of experts, personally https://t.co/JwHxtu5xmN

— Terri White (@Terri_White) August 21, 2024

After fourteen gruelling years, the Tories are out. Here’s to the next five under Starmerite Labour – Tories in all but name.

Feature image via the Canary