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Labour Leader: Keir Starmer IV

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Either he stages the political equivalent of Elvis' 68 Comeback Special or else he's Labour's Michael Howard and he'll be gone by the autumn. I suspect the latter.

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Either he stages the political equivalent of Elvis' 68 Comeback Special or else he's Labour's Michael Howard and he'll be gone by the autumn. I suspect the latter.

E1IHuHjWUAIp_uR
Quite possibly. He's a man without natural allies in the PLP, especially after pissing off the soft left at the weekend.

Then again' look how long Theresa May hung on in somewhat similar circumstances.

I think he will hang around for a bit longer. The right wing of the party won't move against him until they are sure their preferred candidate can win. And that probably will not be the case until the rules for electing the party leader change. I expect that to become a key battleground in the next few months.

Labour Party conference will be very interesting this year.
 
Starmer just does not inspire people as I have said before he comes across as boring even when he is challenging Johnson . The labour voters now love Boris so labour need a clone ! any turnip haired untruthful , lazy labour candidates ? or at least someone with personality
 
Either he stages the political equivalent of Elvis' 68 Comeback Special or else he's Labour's Michael Howard and he'll be gone by the autumn. I suspect the latter.

E1IHuHjWUAIp_uR

There needs to be a clear articulation of his vision for the country or he is done for, in my opinion
 
Tories won seats in all the deprived areas , no one wants the present labour party , they need to get back to supporting the working class , phil.
Well, no one is supporting the working classes but this doesn’t stop the Tories winning; they just attract enough of the WC racists & little Englanders. This has always been the case to a greater or lesser degree.

I don’t think Labour even know who the working class people are any more or how to reach them. Just look at the last election.
 
Watched Raynor this morning. Is this what Labour will be? Flip flopping leaders continuously. I don’t really dislike her but I dislike the assertive opportunism.
 
Labour seems to have back itself into a corner over Israel so much so that it's unable to even comment on the latest Israeli attrocities including the bombing of the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City yesterday.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...886c9a-b1c6-11eb-bc96-fdf55de43bef_story.html

The US (that nice Biden chap) blocked a UN security council statement calling for a ceasefire yesterday.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-toll-rises-as-un-envoy-warns-over-escalation
Some Labour politicians have condemned what's happening.

Even Starmer called for Israel to respect international law:

https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1391833073470345217

Problem is, as you say, he was immediately pounced on by the usual suspects:

https://www.thejc.com/news/uk/starm...onse-to-israeli-palestinian-violence-1.516534

Labour lost this battle as soon as it let the likes of In Austin dictate its terms.
 
Some Labour politicians have condemned what's happening.

Even Starmer called for Israel to respect international law:

https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1391833073470345217

Problem is, as you say, he was immediately pounced on by the usual suspects:

https://www.thejc.com/news/uk/starm...onse-to-israeli-palestinian-violence-1.516534

Labour lost this battle as soon as it let the likes of In Austin dictate its terms.

He says nothing about the bombings though. To ask Israel to respect international law is like, well, politely, a complete waste of time... This began because of the ethnic cleansing about to take place in occupied East Jerusalem.
 
A good summary of the post-reshuffle state of play:

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...ner-sacking-starmer-base-labour-deputy-leader

Always worth reading Sienna Rodgers. She's the nearest thing to an honest broker you'll find when it comes to internal party politics.

This guy, on the other hand...

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...eformed-if-it-looks-outwards-not-just-inwards

An entirely dishonest broker. Factional... moi?!
Haha! I see he’s noticed the emergence of “new digital businesses” and is proposing a radical program of training in something called “digital skills”!

1997 forever.

He’s in the New Stateman as well, savaging Starmer. This really is playing out exactly like a cautionary tale about reanimating the dead. It’s the bizarrest thing. I know the current crop of right wingers are brain dead ‘90s revivalists but even I didn’t thing they’d get Mandy out of the freezer.
 
He says nothing about the bombings though. To ask Israel to respect international law is like, well, politely, a complete waste of time...
True, but he does put the escalating violence in context: the assault by Israeli armed police on al-Aqsa mosque. I thought he had also mentioned the forcible eviction of Palestinians from homes in East Jerusalem too but maybe I imagined that.

If his criticism is too mild, that makes the reaction from Ian Austin et. al. even worse: these days, if you call for Israel to respect international law, you get thrown in jail. ;)
 
I've only read second hand accounts. It looks...not interesting enough to actually read (fair bit of re-heated Blue Labour guff; static and instrumentalist approach to values) but more interesting than the strategy that's supposed to be based on it. For instance the book deals with young people, low wages, precarity - it's not all about pensioners and patriotism.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/ab...ad_button&newbks=1&newbks_redir=1&redir_esc=y

I shall read the whole book.

By the way, yesterday I saw on French TV an interview with Alain Badiou - a communist philosopher at the École Normale Sup. He was interesting on democracy - he thinks that parliamentary democracy is essentially a tool for preserving the power of rich elites, a tool for stopping structural change. There may be a lesson in that, a way of explaining what happened and what is happening in the UK Labour Party.
 
True, but he does put the escalating violence in context: the assault by Israeli armed police on al-Aqsa mosque.

I really don't know how that was allowed to happen - someone has taken their eye off the ball big time here. Maybe the Israeli government has been too obsessed of late in working out who is supposed to be PM in the wake of the latest round of election results to take any notice of what has been happening on their doorstep.

I thought he had also mentioned the forcible eviction of Palestinians from homes in East Jerusalem too but maybe I imagined that.

Apparently a court case is pending on whether to allow the eviction of residents from their houses in Sheikh Jarrah in favour of Jewish settlers but the decision has been postponed. Too late to quell the rising tension and violence though, it would appear.

If his criticism is too mild, that makes the reaction from Ian Austin et. al. even worse: these days, if you call for Israel to respect international law, you get thrown in jail. ;)

It would kind of help if those voices calling for Israel to respect international law would also call out Hamas to stop firing thousands of missiles into Israel - it's not much to ask but it would be a start! ;)
 
parliamentary democracy is essentially a tool for preserving the power of rich elites, a tool for stopping structural change. There may be a lesson in that.

Yes, this is not a controversial view and goes to the heart of Labour’s schizophrenia. Labour was born out of the need for structural change, but also wants to enjoy as much of the preserved power of rich elites as possible. People like Mandelson spend the majority of their time on rich elites to the extent that the working class in places like his former constituency now feel better represented by the Tories
 
This really is playing out exactly like a cautionary tale about reanimating the dead. It’s the bizarrest thing. I know the current crop of right wingers are brain dead ‘90s revivalists but even I didn’t thing they’d get Mandy out of the freezer.

I can understand the mindset as it is a decaying obsolete party analysing the only time in 45+ years it has held power. It is just rearranging deckchairs though as the whole world has changed since Blair’s electoral success and Labour have ended out out of touch and out of time. It only has old 1970s to 1990s politics to offer a 21st century world.

I detest Mandelson, but his recent quote of “lose lose lose Blair Blair lose lose lose lose” was bang on. The area I fundamentally disagree with him is reanimating Blair is obviously not the answer to anything. To my mind the only logical conclusion is to accept we are witnessing the total systemic failure of UK politics and get very firmly behind a cross party platform of real electoral reform.

PS I’m surprised there has been no mention of the Tory Queen’s Speech setting the stage for a pure Trump/Republican-style ‘voter ID’ strategy to very deliberately remove votes from the poor and marginalised. If the requirement is actually a photo-ID then it could even apply to me as my passport is somewhere around its expiry date, I don’t have a driving license, and as I work for myself I have absolutely no need for photo-ID. I do have a volunteer’s ID for the museum, but I’d be surprised if that counted. I’d expect hundreds of thousands, even millions, to be cut adrift by this. Deliberately.
 
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