If a Kier Starmer-led Labour Party wins the next election, you will not notice the difference from the Tories. Key pledges from 2017 and 2019, to nationalise rail, energy and water have been dumped, although polls showed the policies to have a lot of public support. Billions in subsidies have been poured into these industries, enriching their foreign owners and directors at the expense of the tax-payer.  Labour has conceded that rail might be taken back into public ownership, because much of it has already been taken back in order to save rail services from collapse in private hands. Even that policy is likely to be dropped at the last minute, because Starmer has an ideological aversion to nationalisation and anything else that might upset big business. He wants Labour to replace the Tories as the party of big business.

We have been fed the baloney that Labour lost in 2017 and 2019 because its nationalisation policies were unpopular with the electorate. The recent Forde Report proved that to be wrong. The 2017 result was so good that the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP)was fearful that Jeremy Corbyn might become Prime Minister despite the efforts made by the Party’s officials and PLP to sabotage him.  Their efforts were redoubled in order to ensure Corbyn’s defeat at the 2019 election.

Johnson’s landslide was thanks to Labour’s undermining of itself and the weaponising of the concocted anti-Semitism story, which Margaret Hodge MP made into a media industry, for which she had a season ticket to the BBC newsroom and every editorial office in Fleet Street.

Leaving  the water companies in private hands is particularly scandalous.

The Environment Agency (EA)recently urged that executives of the nine water and sewerage companies should go to jail for deliberately allowing raw sewage to flow into our rivers and coastal waters. Instead, they are paid multi-million pound bonuses.
This is the position Labour wants to preserve. The EA described the performance of the water companies as the worst seen for years.  Spillages have now become so frequent that they are hardly newsworthy,. The fines imposed are levied on the companies, not on the directors who are responsible, and are derisorily small in comparison to the companies’ profits.

The pollution of our environment has taken us back decades, becoming worse since the UK was released from EU regulation. Yes, when the Brexiteers talked of getting back control, one of the things they meant was getting back the freedom to empty sewage into our waterways and the sea.

All the indications are that Starmer is happy to wait for the Tories to become unpopular enough to lose the next election, rather than have Labour with radical policies that win the support of the people.

His vision is that limited.