The Heartlands Tribune
@Labourheartland • 7,983 subscribers
Working Class Independent left-wing news, views, and opinions. #GTTO #StarmerOut Please Donate https://t.co/tdPMBfWdSf
Videos
Was it worth it? In 1970, the BBC interviewed Sidney Williams, a 73-year-old First World War veteran living at the Royal Star and Garter home in Richmond. He’d served in the trenches. A Lewis gunner. The interviewer asked him plainly: “How many people have you killed in the war?” He replied just as plainly: “Couldn’t say. I was in the Lewis Gunners.” A pause. Then the harder question: “Was it worth it?” His answer: “No.” No flourish. No speech. No grand theory of geopolitics. Just a man who had seen what modern war actually looks like - mud, metal and bodies - and who, half a century later, saw no glory in it. Before politicians talk about boots on the ground and historic destiny, they should listen to the men who were there. Sometimes history’s clearest verdict comes in a single word.
The Heartlands Tribune380,474 Aufrufe • vor 5 Monaten
Andy Burnham says Britain is paying too much for the basics and promises “more public control” over water, energy and transport. That sounds fine until you remember one rather important fact. The price of water and electricity is already controlled by the state. Ofgem sets the energy price cap. Ofwat sets price controls for water companies. Regulators already decide what private monopoly utilities are allowed to charge, what returns they can make, what investment plans they can claim for, and how much of the burden gets pushed onto households and businesses. So what exactly does “more public control” mean? Because if Burnham means more regulation, we have already tried that. It has failed. Bills are still too high, rivers are still polluted, infrastructure is still creaking, and private investors are still extracting from assets the public cannot live without. The problem is not a lack of public control. The problem is ownership. You cannot properly control a monopoly utility while leaving the monopoly in private hands and pretending the regulator is a substitute for democracy. This is where Burnham’s fiscal confusion matters too. He talks about giving people breathing space, but refuses to say the obvious: a sovereign government is not a household. Within the real limits of labour, materials, energy, skills and inflation, Britain can build and own what it needs. The real fiscal rule should be simple. If the public pays, the public owns. Not “public control” while private firms keep the pipes, cables, profits and ransom note. Public ownership. Public investment. Public accountability. Anything less is just the same failed model wearing a northern accent. #weownit #andy
The Heartlands Tribune27,700 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
I am fed up with journalists and pundits pretending they cannot work out how Starmer went from a so-called “landslide victory” to being booted out in two years. It was not a landslide. It was the Tory Party collapsing in public. Labour won a huge majority on barely a third of the vote. That was not love. It was exhaustion. And spare us the “decent man” routine. A decent man does not win the Labour leadership on ten pledges, then bin half of them once he has the job. A decent man does not promise public ownership, then run back to the market. A decent man does not attack austerity, then keep the two-child cap. A decent man does not promise to abolish tuition fees, then drop it. A decent man doesn't pretend genocide is not happening, while it's been screened on our TVs. A decent man does not sell hope to Labour members, then govern for donors, consultants, corporate interests and the permanent establishment. A decent man does not lecture the country on standards while taking clothes, glasses, hospitality, football tickets and freebies from wealthy donors, then act wounded when people notice. Starmer was forced to repay more than £6,000 in gifts after the row over donations and hospitality. This was not an accidental failure. It was a character revealed.. The man who promised clean politics gave us Mandelson. The man who promised integrity gave us managed slogans. The man who promised change gave us continuity with better lighting. The media class cannot explain Starmer’s collapse because they helped sell the myth. They told us he was serious. They told us he was competent. They told us he was decent. Working people looked at the bills, the broken promises, the arrogance, the freebies, the war posturing, the donor class, the u-turns and the empty technocratic mush, and reached the obvious conclusion. He was never the answer. He was the establishments man wearing a red rosette.
The Heartlands Tribune26,659 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
"The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged." 📉 Jeffrey Epstein describing the Trilateral Commission, where billionaires and politicians coordinate across continents to maintain "stability". Their stability. Not yours. ✅ Epstein: Member ✅ Mandelson: Member ✅ Starmer: Member ✅ Peter Thiel: Member ✅ BlackRock CEO Larry Fink: Member ✅ Former CIA Directors: Members Listen to Epstein brag about Bill Clinton, Paul Volcker, and "every great leader in America" filling out applications to join Rockefeller's club. Now ask yourself: when Mandelson leaked market-sensitive information to Epstein during the 2008 crash, was it a friendship or a network? And when Starmer appointed Mandelson as US Ambassador despite the files, was it poor judgment — or loyalty to the club? 🔥 Watch Epstein describe the system. Then decide who your government really serves. Paul Knaggs #TrilateralCommission #MandelsonFiles #StarmerOut #EpsteinNetwork #MandyFiles #StarmerLies
Labour Heartlands49,766 Aufrufe • vor 6 Monaten
Kwasi Kwarteng says the welfare bill is “unsustainable”. This from the man whose mini-budget sent markets into panic and mortgage bills through the roof. Kevin Maguire points out that welfare spending is forecast at 10.6% of GDP, lower as a proportion than in much of Europe. And over half of it goes on pensioners. But here is the part politicians rarely mention: millions of Universal Credit claimants are already in work. Public finances are not simply supporting people without jobs. We are topping up low wages while companies such as Tesco and Sainsbury’s report billion-pound profits. So spare us the lectures about Britain’s “welfare dependency”. The scandal is an economy where working people cannot afford to live on their wages, while profitable corporations expect the public purse to bridge the gap. #welfare
The Heartlands Tribune23,705 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
Sky News confirms what many could already feel on the ground. Labour’s support in London hasn’t just dipped, it’s fallen off a cliff, from 48 percent to 25. That isn’t a swing. It’s a rupture. Keir Starmer built a project on focus groups and managed decline, and now the voters have returned the favour. Prominent MPs are staring at their own obituaries, and the leadership looks less like authority and more like borrowed time. When a party forgets who it’s for, the public reminds it. Brutally. The "Uniparty" isn’t holding. It’s cracking under the weight of its own emptiness. Paul Knaggs, Labour Heartlands
Labour Heartlands31,091 Aufrufe • vor 3 Monaten
STOP USING PEOPLE WITH DSD AS PROPS FOR GENDER IDEOLOGY This is Nick, better known as That XXY Guy. Nick has a Difference of Sex Development, a medical condition. He is also a man. A male. And he is furious that activists keep dragging people like him into arguments about transgender identity as though their medical conditions prove that human sex is imaginary, fluid, or somehow no longer male and female. His message is blunt because it needs to be: people with DSD are not a mythical “third sex”. They are not political exhibits. They are not a convenient shield to be held up every time someone points out that sex is real. Nick is male. His XXY condition does not make him less male. It does not make him “both sexes”. And it certainly does not exist to prop up an ideology he does not consent to represent. More importantly, this is not Nick standing alone. The UK charity dsdfamilies, which supports children, young people and families living with Differences of Sex Development, has repeatedly warned against conflating DSD with transgender identity. DSD concerns complex physical differences in sex development. Transgender identity is a separate issue entirely. After the Supreme Court ruling, dsdfamilies warned against the “oversimplification, misrepresentation and weaponisation of DSD/Intersex by third parties”, stating that such misuse increases stigma and may discourage people from accessing support. Read that again. The people activists keep using as their biological trump card are telling them to stop. This is what ideological capture looks like: people with real medical conditions are spoken over, misrepresented and reduced to poster children for a political argument they never asked to carry. So listen to Nick. Stop claiming people with DSD abolish the reality of male and female. Stop pretending their conditions are interchangeable with transgender identity. Stop using other people’s bodies, medical needs and lived experience as ammunition for an ideology that does not even respect what they are saying. People with DSD need proper medical support, dignity, understanding and a voice of their own. They do not need activists appropriating their conditions to deny biological reality. #sexisbinary
The Heartlands Tribune21,959 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
Some people have been calling out Mandelson for years... Starmer and the government pretending they didn't know just doesn't hold water Back in 2023, Mick Lynch said Labour members and politicians should be supporting restrictions on Mandelson’s behaviour, pointing out that he was not a friend of the working class and that his influence should be curtailed. "I think all Labour members & all Labour politicians should be looking to support restrictions on Mandelson's behaviour... he's not a friend of the working class.. hopefully he'll have his responsibilities & his say curtailed" #Mandelson #starmer Keir Starmer Hat tip... Saul Staniforth
The Heartlands Tribune39,021 Aufrufe • vor 6 Monaten
Sir Keir Starmer's advice for voters today. If you don't like the changes we've made, I say, the door is open, and you can leave. I'm taking his advice, are you? What a shame, he ran this once great party into the ground... The Labour Party #Starmer #localelections2026
Labour Heartlands23,469 Aufrufe • vor 3 Monaten
The “forensic Starmer” myth died a death here. Liz Kendall didn’t defend him. She exposed the problem. In that exchange with Trevor Phillips, she admits the appointment was wrong, admits the facts mattered, admits the seriousness… then still says Starmer isn’t responsible. That’s not a defence. That’s damage control. Because the facts don’t move. He appointed Peter Mandelson, then blamed process when it blew up. Leadership isn’t about what you would have done. It’s about what you did. So here’s the question that killed the whole performance: If it was this serious… why make the appointment in the first place? #StarmerOut Liz Kendall #starmer #mandelson
Labour Heartlands23,654 Aufrufe • vor 4 Monaten
Their hope is a coronation, a quick change and carry on. But it’s the oldest trick in the book: meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Burnham is not the break from Starmer. He’s the continuity candidate, and they think we’re too daft to spot it. There's not a thing Burnham has said he'll do, that Starmer didn't promise to do... #AndyBurnham The Labour Party
The Heartlands Tribune12,568 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
Darren Jones playing the Inner Party Member from Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four makes his rounds, reciting the approved lines with the calm precision of a man who knows deviation is the only unforgivable sin, a blue-suited functionary in a system where repetition is proof and doubt is quietly erased. Darren Jones MP tells Lewis Goodall that accusations against Starmer aren't serious enough to warrant a Privileges Committee investigation. That’s the moment the script falters. They know if the full story is allowed into the light, it won’t go the way they’re telling you it will; it's not just a can of worms, it's a vipers' nest... #Mandelson #Starmer
Labour Heartlands19,303 Aufrufe • vor 3 Monaten
Clive Lewis MP says Wes Streeting becoming Prime Minister would be “the end of the Labour movement in this country.” The hard truth, Clive, is that the Labour movement inside the Labour Party has already been buried. What remains is a Westminster management brand wearing the old rosette like a stolen medal. Streeting would not be the end. He would be the logical conclusion. A Party of donors, lobbyists, media handlers and careerists does not suddenly become a workers’ Party because it swaps one suit for another. That is not renewal. That is just rearranging the deckchairs on a sinking ship while arguing over who gets the captain’s hat. Here's the awkward truth. The Labour Party did not die because of one man. It died because too many of its MPs chose power over principle, donors over members, and managed decline over working-class politics. Streeting would simply be the gravestone. #starmerout #resign
Labour Heartlands16,353 Aufrufe • vor 3 Monaten
Peter Mandelson: "I try to undermine Jeremy Corbyn every single day" There is an old saying, often attributed to Sun Tzu: if you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by. Jeremy Corbyn, who #Mandelson once infamously boasted of trying to “undermine every single day,” might be forgiven a wry smile this weekend. The Prince of Darkness spent years waging war on Labour’s socialist wing, using every ounce of his considerable influence to destroy a movement that threatened the very elite networks in which he was so deeply embedded. Now those same networks have brought him to ruin. #EpsteinFiles
Labour Heartlands23,218 Aufrufe • vor 6 Monaten
#TrialByJury The leader of the North Eastern Circuit, Caroline Goodwin KC, has just given the Justice Minister a reality check on Labour’s plans to limit jury trials to deal with the court backlog. You don’t solve a backlog by removing one of the oldest safeguards of liberty in this country. Trial by jury is not an administrative inconvenience. It is a protection against the power of the state. Create the chaos to present the solution. Labour is exacerbating the issue and then presenting the solution, and the solution always seems to involve less liberty, more state power, and fewer protections for the individual. Limit jury trials, and what you move towards are Diplock-style courts, trials decided by a single judge without a jury. We have been down that road before, and it was never meant to be normal justice. This country fought for jury trials. They are not a bureaucratic problem to be managed away. Be very careful when governments start talking about “efficiency” in the justice system. Efficiency for the state often means fewer rights for the people.
Labour Heartlands17,112 Aufrufe • vor 4 Monaten
Michael Foot was right. “We didn’t fight for the vote to give it away.” That was the whole point of #Brexit. Not fantasy. Not nostalgia. Not flag-waving theatre for careerists in Union Jack cufflinks. It was about sovereignty. Democracy. The basic right of the British people to hire and fire those who make their laws. That was all Brexit had to achieve. The rest was down to Parliament. Down to government. Down to the political class who spent years pretending to “respect the result” while doing everything possible to blunt it, bury it, sabotage it, or turn it into another managerial stitch-up. So when #Starmer now dresses up closer EU alignment as some grand rescue mission, let’s be honest about what is really happening. He is not fixing Brexit. He is exposing the failure of the politicians who never wanted to carry it out in the first place. His latest speech pledged to put Britain back at the “heart of Europe”, while Downing Street still claims the red lines on rejoining the single market and customs union remain in place. That is not leadership. That is triangulation with a Brussels postcode. Brexit did not fail because ordinary people voted wrong. It failing because the same political class that hollowed out our towns, sold off our industries, crushed our unions, privatised our utilities, and shipped power upwards and outwards was suddenly asked to return power downwards to the people. And they hated it. The people voted to take back democratic control. The shower of parliamentarians handed us delay, deflection, bad faith, managed decline, and then blamed the voters for the wreckage. That is the oldest Westminster trick in the book: fail the people, then accuse the people of failure. Michael Foot understood what Starmer never will. Democracy is not an ornament. It is not something to be admired in speeches and surrendered in treaties. It belongs to the people, or it belongs to nobody. We did not fight for the vote to give it away. And we certainly did not fight for it so Keir Starmer could hand it back wrapped in a focus-grouped bow that told him it will win back support. Here is the hard truth Starmer needs to face: he never had that support in the first place. He became Prime Minister by default, carried into Downing Street on the wreckage of a collapsed Tory Party, not on a great wave of public belief. There was no national love affair with Starmerism. No working-class uprising for managerial politics. No mass demand for grey men with donor-class instincts to tell the country what it really voted for. He mistook Tory collapse for Labour consent. And now he wants to mistake that thin mandate for permission to unpick Brexit by stealth. #JustResign
The Heartlands Tribune12,975 Aufrufe • vor 3 Monaten
They Don’t Even Know the Price of Milk You have to take your hat off to Nick Ferrari , if for nothing else but asking simple questions to people who should know the answers. 👉Not trick questions. 👉Not political traps. Just the basics. The kind of basics that are the political equivalent of asking the price of a pint of milk or a loaf of bread. And again and again, ministers don’t know. 👉A homelessness minister who doesn’t know how many homeless people there are. 👉A defence minister who doesn’t know how many ships we actually have available. 👉A Business Secretary who doesn’t know how many people are unemployed. 👉A Treasury minister whose answer to a fuel crisis is to offer a website to find cheaper petrol while the government makes millions a day in fuel duty. These are not difficult questions. These are the numbers that define their entire jobs. Imagine a shop manager who doesn’t know his stock. A farmer who doesn’t know how many animals he has. A site manager who doesn’t know how many workers are on site. They wouldn’t last a week. But in British politics, not knowing your brief is normal now. Because modern politics isn’t about running the country. It’s about media lines, slogans, and surviving interviews. This is what managed decline actually looks like. Not bombs and chaos. Not dramatic collapse. Just a slow lowering of standards where the people running the country are less competent, less experienced, and less serious with every passing decade. An ivory tower political class that has never run a business, never managed a payroll, never built anything, never fixed anything, now running an entire country. 👉They don’t know the numbers. 👉They don’t know the scale of the problems. 👉They don’t know the cost of living. 👉They don’t know the price of milk. 👉They don't know the people they are governing. And that tells you everything about the state of modern British politics. Not even a hard question like what's the cost of a pint of milk... #Costoflivingcrisis #FuelPrices #IranWar #LabourOut
Labour Heartlands16,460 Aufrufe • vor 4 Monaten
Here is a scene that could have been written by Dickens, if Dickens had lived to see the Labour Party accidentally film itself committing an electoral offence. Greater Manchester Police are investigating Labour after Gorton and Denton voters were told to hold up posters “if you want to get fed” at a campaign event They have been accused of treating - the offence of bribing voters with food Section 114 of the Act is admirably straightforward. A person is guilty of treating if he "corruptly, by himself or by any other person, either before, during or after an election, directly or indirectly gives or provides, or pays wholly or in part the expense of giving or providing, any meat, drink, entertainment or provision to or for any person for the purpose of corruptly influencing that person or any other person to vote or refrain from voting" Video Credit Tony Diver #Labour #GortonandDentonByElection
Labour Heartlands19,773 Aufrufe • vor 6 Monaten