advertisement


Labour Leader: Keir Starmer VII

“The Chair of Water UK, Ruth Kelly, states that water companies don't actually make much profit and that shareholders 'do need to see some sort of return'

Kelly was a New Labour Education Secretary and left Labour in 2018 when it was committed to nationalising water companies”

https://twitter.com/jrc1921/status/1659087984312954880?s=46&t=MNUZ63yrgDvorhewXKVM1w

As ever with the Labour right, policy positions - including exceptionally unpopular, vote-losing positions - can be explained with reference to their ideological commitments and assumptions , social milieu, political history, alliances and so on, but you can often just skip all that and go straight to material self-interest. While in politics they represent not voters but corporations, with a view to accepting money from corporations and going to work for corporations when they leave politics. So many of them are straightforward grifters operating in bad faith, no better than the worst of the Tories.
 
Good article from Grace Blackley here in TribuneMag on how Starmer has sold-out any progressive values Labour may have had to prop up a failing right-wing establishment.

PS Here are four truly prophetic quotes from former Labour leader John Smith (Twitter). He will be turning in his grave at the spineless wannabe Tory/UKIP impersonators his party has become under Starmer.
 
John Smith is oft spoken of as the great “what if” of U.K. politics. His early death, leaving behind a wife and daughters was indeed a personal tragedy, but it is also responsible for the revisionism that has arisen since his death. He was firmly on the Labour Right, a member of the right-wing Labour Solidarity Campaign- set up to combat the influence of the Labour Left- and a firm supporter of nuclear weapons. He was far from the left wing reformer he is remembered as by today’s Labour Party.

I do agree with @Seanm that Labour historically accommodated a tension between left and right. Excepting two brief periods- Benn in the 80’s and more recently Corbyn, the right has been firmly in control. The story of the Labour Party has not been so much a rightward drift as right-wing becoming ever more right and less socially democratic. A process that really accelerated under Kinnock, and the anomaly of Corbyn aside, a process that shows no signs of abating.
 
Sir Keir 'lucky' Starmer comes up trumps again.

As anyone would have seen watching the Sky News interview, Rishi Sunak is a total weirdo unable to communicate in anything approaching a natural manner. An unelected, billionaire weirdo.

Makes Sir Keir looks like David Letterman.
 
notaclue said:
As anyone would have seen watching the Sky News interview, Rishi Sunak is a total weirdo unable to communicate in anything approaching a natural manner. An unelected, billionaire weirdo.
Click to expand...

Sunak just comes across as a liar and a con-man to my eyes. Shiftiness personified. It is obvious the whole Tory thing is a second job, the primary role is for him and his offshore money-laundering class to cash-in to the tune of £billions. An oligarch masquerading as a technocrat in order to become an even more successful and unaccountable oligarch. Smiling politely whilst robbing us all blind.
 
Tony L said:
Sunak just comes across as a liar and a con-man to my eyes. Shiftiness personified. It is obvious the whole Tory thing is a second job, the primary role is for him and his offshore money-laundering class to cash-in to the tune of £billions. An oligarch masquerading as a technocrat in order to become an even more successful and unaccountable oligarch. Smiling politely whilst robbing us all blind.
Click to expand...
I believe we are being incredibly naive if we believe that these people are doing anything but promoting their own self interest.

A few hundred years ago people like Robert Clive took enormous risks to go out to India to make a vast fortune in order to come back to the UK and buy themselves a rotten borough to get into Parliament. Why would a thug and charlatan like Clive spend so much money and effort on becoming an MP if the end was not vast personal reward?

The East India Company itself was a model of Lobbying Parliament for corporate gain. Most MP’s were investors in the EIC.

Do we really think much has changed? If so, what is it about the basic structure of our Parliamentary processes that has changed?
 
You would have thought Sunak would have enough money for at least a dozen lifetimes by now. The combination of massive wealth plus the inability to communicate with normal people does make you wonder why he wants to be so prominent in politics. Probably a massive ego. Head boy. Prime Minister. Always wants to be at the top.
 
notaclue said:
You would have thought Sunak would have enough money for at least a dozen lifetimes by now. The combination of massive wealth plus the inability to communicate with normal people does make you wonder why he wants to be so prominent in politics. Probably a massive ego. Head boy. Prime Minister. Always wants to be at the top.
Click to expand...
It’s not about making money, it’s about maintaining control of a top down economic system and preserving it from the ravages of democracy. Fortunately for the Tories, Labour now has the same objectives, so rather than preserving the natural order it can now concentrate on pushing back the gains of democracy
 
gavreid said:
The right rounded on George Lansbury in much the same way as Corbyn was treated. That was also the only other time there was another leader from the left.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/george-lansbury-at-the-heart-of-old-labour-by-john-shepherd-129402.html
Click to expand...
Likewise Stafford Cripps. Since it’s inception, while socialists may have, to a degree, composed its rank and file, it’s leadership and whole party mechanism have been solidly in the hands of the Right.
 
Tony L said:
Good article from Grace Blackley here in TribuneMag on how Starmer has sold-out any progressive values Labour may have had to prop up a failing right-wing establishment.

PS Here are four truly prophetic quotes from former Labour leader John Smith (Twitter). He will be turning in his grave at the spineless wannabe Tory/UKIP impersonators his party has become under Starmer.
Click to expand...

Voters want him to reign in the left though (especially after 2019/JC), and show that he understands and mirrors their views/values (which admittedly don't seem particularly PF progressive). He also has to show Labour are a credible electoral force again - banging on like Corbyn is the last thing Labour need right now. Of course, Starmer might shift after winning the election (or indeed start shiting before the election - see recent EU comments) but first, he has to win the election.
 
Kirk said:
Voters want him to reign in the left though (especially after 2019/JC), and show that he understands and mirrors their views/values (which admittedly don't seem particularly PF progressive). He also has to show Labour are a credible electoral force again - banging on like Corbyn is the last thing Labour need right now. Of course, Starmer might shift after winning the election (or indeed start shiting before the election - see recent EU comments) but first, he has to win the election.
Click to expand...
Starmer is certainly shiting before the election and fully intends to carry on shiting on remainer hopes and dream afterwards

Starmer: 'No going back' to EU or single market under Labour

The idea that Starmer is playing 5D chess by saying one thing to get elected and will say another after the election is a triumph of hope over expectation and faith over reason.

Starmer’s popularity is *because* he is right wing, if there is no electoral impetus for change before the election, where will it come from afterwards?

Starmer is, as you so rightly say, a rightward shit. That is where his voters want him to go, so that is where he will go.
 
ks.234 said:
The idea that Starmer is playing 5D chess by saying one thing to get elected and will say another after the election is a triumph of hope over expectation and faith over reason.
Click to expand...

I think there's a very strong chance he'll say one thing before the election and another shortly afterwards. Constant u-turns are pretty much the only thing he's consistent at.
 
The message seems to be that if you are in the majority that now realise Brexit was a catastrophic mistake then you need to vote against both Conservative and Labour.

It is what I was going to do anyway, but every Starmer endorsement of far-right Tory/UKIP policy makes that decision even easier.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


advertisement


Back
Top