The next leader of the Labour Party will be chosen by the Labour Party. MPs, those members of Trades Unions who pay the political levy, and party members will decide who succeeds Jeremy Corbyn as leader, and also who will be deputy leader. It is the kind of immutable fact that is not permitted to enter the thought patters of media folk - whether that media is the print or broadcast kind. They all want to choose, too.
So it was that this morning’s edition of the Radio 4 Today Programme - quite apart from allowing Thought For The Day to be given over to Tim Stanley of the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph; perhaps no-one more religious wanted to do it - went on about the qualities the new leader will require. Yes, the BBC wants a say as well. But no-one wants to stick the bugle in like the Murdoch press.
And the Murdoch press, in the person of those at the Super Soaraway Currant Bun, knows who it does not want as Labour leader, as yesterday’s editorial made crystal clear. “EVEN in a crowded field of terrible options for new Labour leader, Keir Starmer stands out as a stone-cold loser” it screamed. So what is their problem with Starmer’s candidacy?
“The man best known for his dismal failures as Director of Public Prosecutions [no citation] and for talking Labour into its suicidal ‘people’s vote’ strategy”. Which was agreed by rather more people than him. But do go on. “Sir Keir, the multi-millionaire human rights QC now posing as a working-class boy”. They have no problem with Geoffrey Cox [QC], or indeed alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson [stinking rich].
Perhaps it has something to do with the latter two being Tories? Looks like it. “Only one alternative is LESS likely to win back working-class voters in the North: Emily Thornberry … another sanctimonious Islington barrister who sneers at working people”. Debatable whether she did, and Starmer doesn’t. But the Murdoch goons know “Labour would be insane to pick either. Especially now we know the election result flattered Corbyn”.
How so? “The boundaries are still skewed in Labour’s favour - and the Brexit Party seems to have gifted Corbyn 20 northern seats by preventing certain Tory victories”. Aw diddums! What the Liberal/SDP Alliance did in 1983 by splitting the anti-Tory vote was fine, though. Or as most people call it, the usual stinking Murdoch hypocrisy. But enough.
As DPP, Starmer was such a “dismal failure” (to quote the Sun’s happy phrase) that, as the New European has observed, “When his term of office ended in 2013, [the then Government] asked him to stay on”. A Tory-led Government. “Posing” as a working-class boy? His parents - “He was a factory worker in East Surrey, and she a nurse”. And while Bozo went to Eton, “Starmer was educated at a local grammar school in Reigate”.
His work included “the 13-year-long McLibel case in which two young campaigners, Helen Steel and David Morris, took on the might of McDonalds … Starmer acted as unpaid adviser to the pair”. Also, “In 2005 he won the Bar Council’s Sydney Elland Goldsmith Award for his outstanding contribution to pro bono work in challenging the death penalty across the Caribbean and also in Uganda, Kenya and Malawi”.
What the Murdoch press just told everyone is that it is scared shitless of Keir Starmer. It he was that bad, they wouldn’t need to lie. He isn’t. So they do. I’ll just leave that one there.
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6 comments:
The right wing are becoming increasingly bullying in tone and seemingly won't rest until we are crushed by increasingly authoritarian capitalism. As for millionaire labour politicians, they shame the Tories as they are prepared to enact policy that could adversely affect their own finances for the benefit of the wider community-an anathema to the crew of the death star on the government benches.
The Murdoch/Rothermere gang are paid to peddle far right lies. So nobody with a functioning brain believes a word they vomit. Or gives a shit of who they're "terrified of".
The issue with Starmer, as it is with any leadership candidate, is what are the proposed policies?
Take Brexit out of the sight line and you get a better focus.
There is a huge shock awaiting any candidate who thinks of repeating the methods and policies of Windbag Kinnock1 and mass-murdering War Criminals Blair-Brown. The new, youthful expanded party membership is vastly different from those gulled by those frauds. Important lessons have been learned......though those lessons have been ignored by too many in the PLP, which is why they are a dwindling out-of-touch-rump who seem to think being an MP is like "having a job".
Candidates would do well to mark one of Robert Bolt's greatest compositions from A Man For All Seasons:
"I believe, when statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties......they lead their country by a short route to chaos."
For "for the sake of their public duties" read "merely to repeat evil policies to falsely 'win' an election". Which in the end is all Blair-Brown did, which is why they are held in such contempt by party members. And who can honestly deny the appalling murderous Blair-Brown policies which helped underpin the current chaos and social destruction in the East? Or their equal culpability in socioeconomic attacks on virtually every community outside the M25?
Starmer and Thornberry may well be worthy candidates. But I'll believe worthy actionable policies before I'll believe weasel rhetoric and spin doctor bullshit. That is the real lesson to be drawn from the Blair-Brown years and current predictable behaviour of their PLP apologists.
Meanwhile, Murdoch/Rothermere and their gutless employees can go fuck themselves. They don't count when it comes to conscience.
Sorry Tim, think you're being suckered here.
Murdoch et al doing some pretty soft hit jobs on Starmer, so you think they are frit of him. "Must be the guy to go for, then!"
We don't even know who's standing yet, and they'll be plenty more frit of some others if they do stand.
Keep your powder dry.
I don't think the British electorate care much for millions of dead Arabs mate. And politics is a sociopath technocraticism with a reality TV facade. I read a book called modernity and the holocaust a while by back and it made a lot of sense.
As depressing as that is, I'd agree. A good chunk of the public can barely name more than two or three MPs. I really doubt they're obsessed over an illegal invasion that happened a decade and a half ago.
(Never mind their selective memory over it. Before the invasion polls showed that the public were in favour of invading Iraq. Afterwards not only were people against it, but they were convinced that they'd always been against it.)
Spot on Tim. Good analysis.
The old, 'look over there' trick in action again.
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