How UK politics may change with Corbyn

Infinite Chaos said:

LibDems and Conservatives have leaders the majority of the party are rallying around though.

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The LibDems, not so much. Tim Farron is pretty unpopular with his own MPs. To such an extent that when he joined a group of them on a train they changed carriage.

The Tories though, are great at rallying round a new leader and showing collective unity, even when half the party don't believe in the direction the new leader is planning on taking the party.

Andalublue said:

Well, you would say that, wouldn't you, but no one's fooled.

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Hmn? You honestly think Brexit hasn't delivered huge shock to all of the major parties?

Andalublue said:

May's making a ham-fisted play for Labour and UKIP votes while she perceives both to be in weakened states. She's doing that by adopting Labour's rhetoric - her speech today, as several commentators have pointed out, echoes almost to the word several speeches Ed Milliband made in the run-up to the 2015 GE.

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Please elaborate on what you feel this Labour actually is and what May is actually doing?

My view is that May is the latest in the long line of Conservative leaders since John Major who actually endorsed capitalism. May has stated outright that she feel big govt is the solution and not the problem. That is not claiming Labour's clothes - David Cameron introduced more taxes than reduced them, took more aim at bankers than given credit for. Truth is, Thatcher's free market revolution has been in decline since Thatcher left and Major took her ideas on. She simply states what some Tories have been doing these last few years but not making open policy and they are things that seem to echo Labour when in fact they do not.

It was not just the sentiments but the tone that were striking. She slammed business, echoing Labour’s dichotomy between good and bad capitalists. She kept talking about tax avoidance, even though the rules have already been dramatically tightened; she claimed that the rich had coped fine after the crisis while workers hadn’t (the truth, of course, is more complex).

She believes in stakeholder capitalism, rather than shareholder rights: she sees companies as agents of the social state, with duties other than maximising profits and following the law.
But while a seminal moment, we should be neither shocked nor surprised. Much of the speech merely formalised the current consensus; in practice, very little might change. The difference is that until now Tories intervened, taxed and attacked the rich, but didn’t make it the centrepiece of their pronouncements. Link.

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Andalublue said:

~ The difference is that May has zero intention of holding big business to account for unpaid taxes or for treating their workforce badly or for taking huge dividends while their business heads for bankruptcy. Where's the policy initiative to tackle any of that? She's been at the top of government for 6 years already, did she just forget to mention any of these things before now?

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That's where you are actually ignorant of what's been happening, as the passage above states - business has been held account (if not all including the biggest) and there was no need for policy initiative on something that has already been happening.