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Labour Leader: Keir Starmer III

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Having taken the trouble to hear him speak during the Labour leadership hustings, the gap between what he said then and what he says and does now is impossible to overstate.

I tend to agree. I understand he inherited a totally broken, discredited, defeated and humiliated party and has a huge, huge job just to stop people pointing and laughing at it, but to my eyes he is if anything making things even worse. I can not comprehend why he is whipping the party to support hard-right Tory authoritarianism and state unaccountability, why he whips to support a disastrous hard-Brexit etc. I don’t get it. WTF does he hope to achieve by supporting popularist-right shit every progressive left party should ideologically oppose and fight against by definition (and the others very consistently do so)? He has certainly ensured folk like me couldn’t possibly return to the party, that option is long gone, and I suspect our votes going to the Greens, SNP, LDs, or just staying at home will lose Labour a lot of seats next election. Meh.
 
No, no, not at all old man. You lefties are so cynical

Starmer is not joining the Telegrapgh to cravenly capitulate with the right. No, he’s bravely going into the Lion’s den to put his head right inside the Lion’s mouth and shout that there will be “no stepping back from our core principles” so loud that the lion will withdraw to a corner and cower before his forensic inevitables.

Starmer is a man of unbending principle and the Telegraph will have to look out
 
The Telegraph... as Sean says, it fits with the "win over the pundits" strategy but I doubt it will change many minds. So of limited pragmatic value, regardless of morality.

But he’s not going to do any of that: he’s going to try to talk to them about patriotism, law and order, stopping refugees, teaching young people to respect their elders. And after all that, come election time, the paper will be filled with stories about him defending child molesters and prosecuting soldiers and he’ll have pulled the party right for nothing.

Utter fantasy. He is seeking to step out of his bubble and into that of the people he wishes to convince that he and his party are becoming trustworthy. He quite rapidly picked up the low hanging fruit of those that wanted to vote labour but couldn't with the hard left in control but appears to have made little to no inroads yet into gaining the trust of the more conservative and understandably sceptical majority despite the very poor performance of the current government. By opting to f*ck business, the self employed during the virus, conservativism, etc... this current government has alienated much of it's traditional support in the centre and centre-right. Whether Starmer can restore trust in the labour party sufficiently to start winning over significant numbers of these votes remains to be seen but at least he is giving it a go. Even if he fails by moving labour towards a a semi-viable opposition he will eventually force the conservative party to moderate the behaviour of our currently extraordinary government.

There is no downside to this sort of thing in the short term that I can see. There might be in the medium term if he does a good enough job to get labour or a centre right conservative government elected and then neither does anything about the current vested interests progressively killing our society and economy. In this case it would be preferable that both parties remain untrusted and unsupportable by the majority in order to increase the chances for a new rational political movement to grow. No signs of this at present that I can see. Starmer and labour are the only viable option to moderate the destructive actions of our current government.
 
... I don’t get it. WTF does he hope to achieve by supporting popularist-right shit every progressive left party should ideologically oppose and fight against by definition (and the others very consistently do so)...
The respect of the establishment, and in particular the security services and political journalists. Given how his predecessor was monstered by this cabal you can't really blame him, but still.
 
Utter fantasy. He is seeking to step out of his bubble and into that of the people he wishes to convince that he and his party are becoming trustworthy. He quite rapidly picked up the low hanging fruit of those that wanted to vote labour but couldn't with the hard left in control but appears to have made little to no inroads yet into gaining the trust of the more conservative and understandably sceptical majority despite the very poor performance of the current government. By opting to f*ck business, the self employed during the virus, conservativism, etc... this current government has alienated much of it's traditional support in the centre and centre-right. Whether Starmer can restore trust in the labour party sufficiently to start winning over significant numbers of these votes remains to be seen but at least he is giving it a go. Even if he fails by moving labour towards a a semi-viable opposition he will eventually force the conservative party to moderate the behaviour of our currently extraordinary government.

There is no downside to this sort of thing in the short term that I can see. There might be in the medium term if he does a good enough job to get labour or a centre right conservative government elected and then neither does anything about the current vested interests progressively killing our society and economy. In this case it would be preferable that both parties remain untrusted and unsupportable by the majority in order to increase the chances for a new rational political movement to grow. No signs of this at present that I can see. Starmer and labour are the only viable option to moderate the destructive actions of our current government.
As I've said, I don't think there's anything wrong in principle in writing for The Telegraph. In practice there are going to be trade-offs, and I don't trust Starmer's team to be able to manage them in the party's favour. This expectation is based on all their actions to date, over the last couple of decades.

With respect, as someone who was so taken in by the FT's rebranding of an existing policy program that you rushed to share it as an example of change, you shouldn't be accusing others of being fantasists. I've said it before, but if you're going to frame all your contributions with insults about other members driven by faith etc., you need to be better informed.
 
The respect of the establishment, and in particular the security services and political journalists. Given how his predecessor was monstered by this cabal you can't really blame him, but still.

Nicola Sturgeon, Ed Davy and Caroline Lucas aren’t “monstered” for holding logical, progressive, tolerant and liberal views, they all consistently do the right thing on these issues, so why do Labour need to so fawningly clone the Tories, UKIP and The Daily Express?
 
^^^ I find myself disiking Starmer more and more. Having taken the trouble to hear him speak during the Labour leadership hustings, the gap between what he said then and what he says and does now is impossible to overstate. If you want an unprincipled liar for leader, he's your man.

Yes I agree, he's driven up too many blind alleys. Fearing the Labour Leave demographic by really taking on the serious Brexit problems. Running scared of accusations of opportunism in a health crisis - he's far too timid of challenging the shocking Tory incompetence and corruption over COVID.

He's like a rabbit in the headlights.
 
Yes I agree, he's driven up too many blind alleys. Fearing the Labour Leave demographic by really taking on the serious Brexit problems. Running scared of accusations of opportunism in a health crisis - he's far too timid of challenging the shocking Tory incompetence and corruption over COVID.

He's like a rabbit in the headlights.
You bloody lefties at it again. Starmer is not a rabbit, he’s a lion I tell you, a lion...

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As I've said, I don't think there's anything wrong in principle in writing for The Telegraph. In practice there are going to be trade-offs, and I don't trust Starmer's team to be able to manage them in the party's favour. This expectation is based on all their actions to date, over the last couple of decades.

With respect, as someone who was so taken in by the FT's rebranding of an existing policy program that you rushed to share it as an example of change, you shouldn't be accusing others of being fantasists. I've said it before, but if you're going to frame all your contributions with insults about other members driven by faith etc., you need to be better informed.

??? My main point:

"Some others apart from Starmer seem to be joining the effort to rebuild the credibility of the labour party with mainstream voters."

This is relevant because Starmer alone has little chance alone of restoring the lost trust in the labour party. Not just when the hard left were in control but for years prior. Whether labour has the material to do it I don't know given how ineffective they were before Corbyn but again they are doing the right thing in giving it go and it obviously helps that their competition is incompetent and establishing a poor record of governing.
 
They're not "monstered" because they aren't in a position to be the next PM.

Sturgeon/SNP has surgically removed both Labour and Conservative from Scotland though. She is the most effective politician in the UK IMO, and by a very long way. To show 100s of years of English establishment the door to such a degree is a real achievement. It is so annoying we don’t have anything of that calibre in Little England.
 
Nicola Sturgeon, Ed Davy and Caroline Lucas aren’t “monstered” for holding logical, progressive, tolerant and liberal views, they all consistently do the right thing on these issues, so why do Labour need to so fawningly clone the Tories, UKIP and The Daily Express?
The answer's in the question, really, the answer to your previous question too: why do these political leaders, who pose little danger to establishment interests and values, not get monstered by the establishment press? And why might Starmer want to demonstrate that he poses little danger to establishment interests and values?
 
Sturgeon/SNP has surgically removed both Labour and Conservative from Scotland though. She is the most effective politician in the UK IMO, and by a very long way. To show 100s of years of English establishment the door to such a degree is a real achievement. It is so annoying we don’t have anything of that calibre in Little England.
I'm sorry but what actual challenge does she pose to a) the Conservative Party b) Rupert Murdoch and c) rentier interests? None of the current mob give a toss about the union. Everyone is very happy to let the SNP take all Labour's seats, and the SNP are very happy to let the Tories go on making the case for independence simply by being in government and doing what they do. SNP-Conservative Party is a love match!

PS I'm not saying Sturgeon isn't a very able politician, but she has the 2nd easiest job in British politics!
 
I'm sorry but what actual challenge does she pose to a) the Conservative Party b) Rupert Murdoch and c) rentier interests?

Murdoch is interesting as the Scottish Sun runs noticeably different stories/front pages to the English equivalent. Murdoch is obviously utterly vile, but he always sides with winners and attacks losers. Labour are clearly losers throughout the UK, so they’ll get the monstering. His papers always bully the loser in everything.

PS I'm not saying Sturgeon isn't a very able politician, but she has the 2nd easiest job in British politics!

I can remember Scotland being a solid block for Labour (Wikipedia). They were the dominant party for a very, very long time. That level of total wipe-out doesn’t happen by accident.
 
Murdoch is interesting as the Scottish Sun runs noticeably different stories/front pages to the English equivalent. Murdoch is obviously utterly vile, but he always sides with winners and attacks losers. Labour are clearly losers throughout the UK, so they’ll get the monstering. His papers always bully the loser in everything.



I can remember Scotland being a solid block for Labour (Wikipedia). They were the dominant party for a very, very long time. That level of total wipe-out doesn’t happen by accident.
“Murdoch is vile but his support for the SNP proves they are good” is not a convincing line. Murdoch doesn’t side with parties just because he loves winners and hates losers, does he. There’s a little more to it than that.

And no, the type of success enjoyed by the SNP since 2015 doesn’t just happen by accident. Labour could learn a lot from them, such as singleness of purpose and fearlessness, also understanding the Scottish electorate just a little bit and keeping their headcase liabilities in the shadows instead of the shadow cabinet. But let’s not pretend the SNP face anything like the same situation as Labour, or represent anything like the threat to the establishment that Corbyn’s Labour did. I mean, the SNP are very much the model for Starmer’s Labour: very soft left contentless competence, with flags.
 
Sturgeon has had a pretty easy job, firstly in spite of Salmond appearing to be a slippery fellow long before the depths of his sleaze became apparent he was able (with some help from Donald Dewar) to do most of the heavy lifting. The SNP have been able to get away with being in many ways a single issue party like UKIP but with a far stronger and historic base. They will continue to benefit until after they achieve their aim, and this they will achieve. Only then will the true skill, if it is there, become apparent.
 
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