Steve Coogan accuses Labour of paving way for Reform UK
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2025/jul/05/steve-coogan-accuses-keir-starmer-labour-of-paving-way-for-reform-uk?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
by 457655676
Steve Coogan accuses Labour of paving way for Reform UK
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2025/jul/05/steve-coogan-accuses-keir-starmer-labour-of-paving-way-for-reform-uk?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
by 457655676
32 comments
I believe all roads lead to david cameron and goerge osbourne. Osbourne with austerity and cameron with brexit
‘Ideological belief’ is the death knell of decent policy.
Maybe shut the hell up Steve, and enjoy your fortune.
>“The success of Reform, I lay squarely at the feet of the neoliberal consensus, which has let down working people for the last 40 years and they’re fed up,” he said. “It doesn’t matter who they vote for, nothing changes for them.
>“Keir Starmer and the Labour government have leant into supporting a broken system. Their modus operandi is to mitigate the worst excesses of a broken system and all that is is managed decline. What they’re doing is putting Band-Aids on the gash in the side of the Titanic.”
He’s sort of nailed it there for me. Our current model is terminally broken and it doesn’t matter who is in charge the result will be the same. At least Labour don’t seem to be actively working against the country and are making some worthwhile improvements. But whilst the same credit card style economics, lack of investment and an aging, sicker population we’re just going to go backwards regardless of what you do.
The last 15 years of decline and decay have backed us into a corner. Everything is run down a broken; as a population we are sicker than we’ve ever been and our public infrastructure is failing. We need radical solutions to have a hope of getting out of this hole.
I don’t even particularly disagree with him, but I’ve had enough of random celebrities thinking their political opinions are important
[Steve Coogan has now been charged with terrorism.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lEjEGbAFzJU&pp=ygUQU3RldmUgY29vZ2FuIEJCQw%3D%3D)
The electorate has a serious case of apathy. The Tories were increasingly out of ideas following Brexit, but once they finally bled out, they’ve been replaced by a Labour government that looks a half life of the Conservative party itself.
The main parties in a stupor will inevitably lead to smaller fringe parties making in roads, no matter how small or temporary. Starmer’s banking on losing the left vote being offset by incomings from the Tories on the center right, but it’s already been proven per the GE that won’t happen. Tories will either sit out or vote Reform until their own party looks back on its feet again. Starmer’s Labour is standing on eroding ground.
He’s not wrong. Focusing energy in blaming the Tories for everything, whilst having no ideas to actually deal with the problem,( aside from his immoral and useless PIP reforms), are as much to blame. Liberals have spent so long looking down on working class people, what did they expect? I say that as a socialist myself.
‘Neoliberal consensus’
That’s been you Steve. Now it’s not working and doesn’t make you so quite so edgy you’re changing tune to stay popular. Celebrities are still celebrities.
Why does anybody listen to these types of people, they are just spouting whatever populist shite comes to mind. They use Buzzwords like Neoliberalism makes me laugh. The UK still spends a huge amount on public services, Neoliberal policies are probably the only thing that has kept the country afloat these past decades. Reform is probably more Neoliberal than any other party right now, so people flocking to them completely disproves his idea. It’s clear why reform are growing, failure to lower immigration (this is the main reason), the feeling that British citizens are not prioritised, a stagnant economy, and unfair distribution of capital spending (something he mentions).
TBF – with just 33% of the vote a mandate for supporting genocide, combined with classic Tory policies of punching down on elderly, disabled and vulnerable their base is already knackered.
Throw in the now inevitable Autumn tax increases to the middle class ( the ones who voted the Tories out )
They will be a single term government.
It was a political choice to use austerity during that time
He’s nailed it here tbh. This crap neoliberalism reboot isn’t working for anyone.
Let’s be honest, Starmer would prefer Reform to get in than a centre left or left wing Labour. He doesn’t care.
Are you sure Steve ? Are you sure it’s just not Allen partridge influencing people by dancing on a table wearing just a studded leather jock strap ?
Your argument makes no sense. If you’re using the Iraq war (which they started) as a defence for not being ready for a bust, it still doesn’t explain why during those years they were proclaiming they eradicated boom & bust.
It would help if coverage of Reform stopped treating them like a legitimate party or as if their entire platform didn’t orbit the blaming of refugees and immigrants for every problem. Farage is a grifter and a conman, a populist in the same vein as Trump. The media are frothing at the mouth for his continued rise in the polls but he’s done literally nothing of substance to deserve it.
He’s click bait.
He’s a provocative fucking bumper sticker.
He’s resourced to campaign on prejudice, not govern or lead by consent.
If you thought the Tories were bad, and they were fucking awful, just remember that the worst excesses and fringe politics of the Tories migrated to Reform where they were welcomed with open arms.
Or you’ll get with Reform is gaslighting. They don’t know how to solve issues, just find the scapegoats so the electorate are distracted from the real grift work.
Nah, I usually have time for Partridge but this is a bit of a reach. The uncomfortable truth is there is a fairly sizeable chunk of the British population who are staunchly right wing and unappeasable by any reasonable political party. You can give them as much support, concessions, winter fuel payments, triple locks etc as you want, they will still do what they do.
They will soak up concessions from other parties and continue to vote for ukip/reform/bnp etc. Currently we are facing the reality that right wing organisations have adapted to the social media disinformation age in a more aggressive way and using mass dementia as an electoral strategy. It’s not just a UK thing, it’s happening the world over.
It’s not as if all reform voters are broke and disenfranchised, desperate for a party to represent them. A lot of them are wealthy.
The ones who are disenfranchised, destitute, more often than not simply don’t vote.
Well with a “we’ve tried relentlessly attacking the disabled again and now we’re all out of ideas!” attitude, of course they are.
People had enough of that with the Tories and expected Labour to be different but they have been doing the exact same thing the Tories were doing.
He’s summed it up for me exactly.
I made the below post on the day of the election last year, and Starmer has lived up to my worst fears.
“I’ll be back to voting Green, they won’t win but what’s the point in voting for someone you don’t believe in? If you vote for the “least bad realistic option” then even if they win, you’ve still got someone you didn’t want. Screw tactical voting.
This election is the first one where I’ve gone in not giving a shit who will win. Labour will win but it won’t win because many believe in them but because people want to “get the Tories out”.
“Get the Tories out” isn’t a sustainable reason for Labour’s popularity if it doesn’t make meaningful changes in their reign but they won’t, Starmer has been very clear they won’t and will largely follow the Tories discredited austerity style fiscal rules. When Labour are in power, they’re going to lose the “we’re not the other guys!” reason for people to vote for them and what else will they have to ask people to vote for them at the next election? “Get the Tories out” isn’t an exciting goal if we’ve nothing much better to replace it.
I never thought I’d be so disinterested by the Tories being flattened but I genuinely don’t understand how people are excited by the Tories being replaced by a slightly better version of them.
My worst fear prediction is they’ll mess about with centre-right, pro-business bollocks, people will become disillusioned and apathetic. This will create a very fertile breeding ground for the far right to exploit that disillusionment for the next election. It’s happening now in France after Macron’s dire leadership, it’s happened elsewhere in Europe and throughout history.
This isn’t an original prediction, Tony Benn predicted as much and unfortunately his conditions for this nightmare scenario are all going as he said they would.
“If the Labour Party could be bullied or persuaded to denounce its Marxists, the media – having tasted blood – would demand next that it expelled all its Socialist and reunited the remaining Labour Party with the SDP to form a harmless alternative to the Conservatives, which could then be allowed to take office now and then when the Conservatives fell out of favour with the public. Thus British Capitalism, it is argued, will be made safe forever, and socialism would be squeezed of the National agenda. But if such a strategy were to succeed… it would in fact profoundly endanger British society. For it would open up the danger of a swing to the far-right, as we have seen in Europe over the last 50 years.””
Know a lot of Reform voters. It’s immigration and demographic change. Always has been. Always will be. Everything else is a secondary issue
I genuinely dont know what Labour stand for at the moment other than to religiously apply the previous Conservative government’s economic policy. I see very little if any policy initiatives that help out workers and the less fortunate. They seem to be counting on the public finding Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch to be a worse option. People want change and will vote for whoever says they’ll deliver it – whether that change is good or bad. Labour are treading water.
I just love how Labour was the reason the Tories were awful.
Labour was the reason brexit didn’t work out.
Labour are the reason GDP is in the toilet.
Labour are the reason energy prices are high.
Labour are now the reason that Reform are gaining popularity.
Its like we expect so much more from Labour, much more than we expect from any other single political party to have ever existed.
Every single public infrastructure has so much rot and dead ends. And so incredibly slow and bureaucratic that they need reforming and mass lay offs to make them within budget and operate like a non profit business. Like caps on government contracts and maximums on expenses. Lay offing people that are not productive and updating legacy systems to make processes faster and easier. Like why I can’t I receive certain letters about my information through an online portal. I have to call and then wait 10 days for this to be processed.
Wrong target. Corbyn tried a different direction and the UK establishment did everything they could to discredit him.
Labour is shite but if it went in the direction Coogan wants they’d get massacred by the right wing press, who set the Overton window in the UK.
Labour being shite is a symptom not the cause.
Is it me or is it uncharitable to say that this feels like a biblically ignorant take?
The only policy Reform has that anybody really knows or cares about is fixing the problem of immigration and many in the south think this is a trick they are wrong – there is a problem and Labour and the pathetic shower before them are doing nothing. Moving from expensive hotels to cheaper ones is not going to swing opinion. Needs Labour to have an Australian moment and put an end to the nonsense of an open border where the guy delivering your take away came on a dingy last week and is living in your local Premier Inn.
Accuses Labour of paving the way for Reform
Votes Green
We wanted a boring charmless leader and we got one. Hoping that he would work diligently in the background improving things.
I am not giving up. Starmer still has four years to turn things around. He must want to, so once a few obstacles are removed maybe he will.
And no, this is not comfidence, it is hope (and hope is so very weak).
What
A
Legend.
Wish I loved Alan partridge as much as I love Steve Coogan.
But his role in the day to day will suffice.
THAT………… is a goal!
What about mass legal and illegal uncontrolled immigration including millions of death cult members? Personally I don’t believe Reform will do what is needed (repel,refuse,remove policies for our survival) either so all the main parties are as useless as each other.
How much louder do people have to say “tax the rich” to make it so that the rich are actually taxed properly, instead of, y’know, taking money from disabled people??? This is pretty damn basic and we’re still at this point where the rich haven’t been taxed properly yet, allowing them to gain more inhuman amounts of power and influence. How little is the integrity of our government that they still haven’t actually made actionable plans for this?
Participating in this broken system only continues to make them more powerful. The system does not work, many people have been saying this for many years now, and yet our government is constantly in this mindset that it’s fixable by just continuing with the same system. It’s honestly beyond incompetent at this point, and their inability to communicate why they’re not making these changes is appalling.
This very much could be the end for Labour.
If they screw this up I can see them falling behind the Lib Dems and Green as an alternative to the Tories or Reform.
This was Labour one and only chance get us away from cycle of Slashing Public Services and Raising Taxes which has put this country on a downward spiral even since the Cameron and Osbourne gave us Austerity.
Yes the Tories fucked this country up but it doesn’t mean Labour just continue down the same road.
If they continue down this path that they seem so intent on doing they will end up losing to Reform.
If that happens they will be forever known as the party that put Reform into power and that will be the end of Labour as Party because anybody with a braincell can see that Reform would be absolutely devastating for the country and people will never forgive Labour for squandering this opportunity.
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