Starmer, so long faced with the question “What is Labour for”, is now, at long last, putting some answers forward. As for the Tories, “The government has lost control of the British economy - and for what? They've crashed the pound - and for what? Higher interest rates. Higher inflation. Higher borrowing. And for what? Not for you. Not for working people. For tax cuts for the richest 1% in our society. Don't forget. Don't forgive”. He even laid claim to a Tory staple.
Labour would be the party of “sound money”. After the towering ineptitude of Kwarteng and Ms Truss, it is true that this would be less difficult than at any time in the past. The party would, in Government, work to a target of carbon-free energy by 2030 - and thereby achieve energy security. He would oversee stabilising of the economy, and the NHS “back in good health”.
This had one effect on the Tories, their cheerleaders and those advising them: all became spooked in very short order. Today’s front pages from the Murdoch press - both Times and Sun - as well as the Mail and Express, did not so much as give Starmer’s speech a mention. Didn’t happen. As for the flat earthers at the IEA, whose wise counsel crashed the economy, well.
A state-owned green energy company to lead to move to carbon free electricity? “Great British Energy...will be a disaster, with Ministers picking winners, and civil servants making an expensive mess of deployment”. Not half as expensive a mess as Kwarteng, aided and abetted by, er, the IEA.
Daniel Hannan: an intervention of towering stupidity
His feeble whining was echoed by Darren Grimes: The Crafty One told anyone not yet asleep “Sir Keir Starmer tells us to ‘don’t forgive, don’t forget’. Don’t worry, millions won’t - that’s why they won’t vote Labour”. Meanwhile, the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog, like their press masters, said as little as possible. Didn’t really happen.
But the pièce de résistance had to go to Dan, Dan The Oratory Man, whose on-off relationship with reality was definitely on the off side in a piece for Conservative Home: “No, the pound isn’t crashing over a trifling batch of tax cuts. It’s because the markets are terrified of [Keir Starmer]”. It’s someone else’s fault! The selling is all down to more of those Bitter Remoaners™!
And that shows not only that the tribalist right is on a defensive hair trigger, but also why the appeal of a Starmer Government - boring, maybe, but reassuringly competent, and outside the influence of the Tufton Street mafia - spooks the Tories so easily. Especially as last week’s tax cuts and extra borrowing may have to be reversed in order to placate the markets.
Which, in turn, could back Ms Truss and her Chancellor into a corner, with the letters of no confidence raining down on them. As Ian Dunt put it, “There's a genuine chance Truss doesn't make it to Christmas”. She’s delusional enough to think the Tories could still win a snap General Election, I reckon.
So Starmer and his pals have to hope that al-Jazeera’s Labour Files trilogy doesn’t gain too much traction. Because he is now very close to Number 10.
https://www.patreon.com/Timfenton
15 comments:
The BTL comments on the ConHome Hannan piece are hilarious. A combination of "Tories" complaining the site has been spammed and "former Tories" telling "Tories" some hard truths.
And yes, about that Al-Jazeera program, it's why, together with the already forgotten Forde Report, I have very great difficulty feeling any sort of pleasure at the current Labour polling or Tory misfortune. The country did not need to be in this predicament if a certain faction didn't behave so appallingly and if I do Vote labour again it will be with a heavy heart and a clothes peg on my nose.
"Effective speech[s]" are ten-a-penny. Hitler made plenty of them. Most of them are merely dog whistles.
As predicted, the Starmer Quisling has come up with sticking plaster. Doubtless even some of that will be as deeply betrayed as his previous treachery.
And, of course, his actions will be carefully calibrated to deceive the naive and gullible. The same political evil as Bliar/Brown, the aim being the shallow and desperate absurdity of "Anyone but the tories". The same poisoned creed that led to mass murder abroad and intensification of far right toryism at home.
The fellow and his promoters are utter frauds. Given the public record and previous examples there can be no pleading ignorance of what will inevitably follow.
The DM has run a glowing piece on Mrs Starmer. I see it is a warning shot from the DM to the Tories - “sort your act out or we back Starmer as we backed Blair in ‘97”
sturdyAlex on that Twitter notes:
“Tory govts' answer to the question "why is this awful thing happening on your watch?"
2010 Because of the last Labour gov't
2015 Because of the last Labour gov't
2017 Because of the last Labour gov't
2019 Because of the last Labour gov't
2022 Because of the NEXT Labour gov't”
Re pegs, Gulliver.
I imagine that most of the audience for this blog will have, to a greater or lesser extent, similar feelings. But some time in the next 2 years there will be an election and, even more ominously, a morning after election day. The choice that has to be made is not going to go away, nor will the result of that choice.
Some of the people we might have to vote for will have been complicit in what the Al-Jazeera programme illustrated. But not to vote for them will effectively to be complicit in a continuation of what we have seen being done to this country over the last 12 years.
There IS a difference, even if it's completely lost (performatively, I suspect) on some.
Wear Your Peg With Pride!
13:06.
Not a novel observation, but still highly relevant in terms of current propaganda.
At this rate blue and red tories are going to disappear up each other's arses. It doesn't matter which goes first.
The total UK electorate is about 46•5 million.
The current "prime minister", and therefore the government, was put in place by 81,326 members of a far right racist party.
Welcome to "democratic" Britain 2022.
‘Ere, wot’s all this abaht a commie gavermint led by comrade Starmer?
Never gonna ‘appen, not wiv Essex leadin’ the wye.
Eel be nashernehlyzin ar tattooz, peersins, track sewts an tryners if ee az iz wye.
Wot next? Free ice creem f’dem muslamic terrorists? Olidee camps in Sarfend f’dem illegal immugrints?
I ad dat nice Liz Truss in the backer me cab once. But she left er manny at home, so I took er gratis, know warrameen?
Gawd bless the new King an Princer Wiles. Proper gents dey ar. Salter de erf.
@14:49
Fully agree Bow.
You might not have much in the way of education - your grammar shows that - but you've hit the nail on the head.
The prospect is about as welcoming as being asked whether you would prefer to be fried to death or boiled to death.
UKania has now become like its great hero, the US; two large parties with all but those two effectively excluded from coverage, both of them trying to out-do each other as to who can wave the most and the biggest flags in the faces of the plebs, both of them following essentially the same political and economic ideology which has got us to here, both of them eager for power for themselves rather than for anything genuinely useful they might do for the overwhelming majority of the population once they get it.
Saying that one must vote Labour "...or else the nasty Tories will get in again!" contains the same logic as the assertion that we must be friends with the mass murderers of Saudi Arabia because its human rights record is (so we are ordered to believe) marginally better than that of China.
The Al-Jazeera documentaries which have aired this week have shown what Labour actually is, and the fact that it is now led by a condign liar who will say anything to get elected only adds to the impression of sociopathy and even psychopathy from those controlling it.
The trouble with being told (as Burllington Bertie does above) to 'vote for the lesser evil' is that you still end up voting for evil...
There's a huge difference between the tories and the Quisling Gang.
The tories no longer pretend they're anything other than thieving, lying, hypocritical gobshites.
But, as Al Jazeera have demonstrated so admirably, the Quislings are infested root and branch with all those evils.... which they continue to deny. Rotten-to-the-core all of them. Which is why they will again betray this country if they get the chance, naturally favoured by the Murdoch/Rothermere scumbag oligarchs.
Libertarian quacks claim Soros is shorting the pound, when it's actually their friend Crispin Odey, who describes this government as "the gift that keep on giving".
@ Bertie
The pertinent part of my comment was “The country did not need to be in this predicament if a certain faction didn't behave so appallingly”.
This blog rightly concerns itself, primarily, with our appalling legacy print media and it’s true that the Corbyn era opposition truly got it in the neck from this section of the fourth estate, as all Labour oppositions (and most Labour governments) tend to. What made it so much worse was that the legacy media’s usual witch hunt was of a magnitude worse because they were aided and abetted by half the PLP and the right wing of the Labour party itself.
Ask yourself this simply question, knowing what the people of this country are now going to have to endure (and have endured since the elevation of De Pfeffel in 2019), do you think these terrible people would do anything different? Do you think they would put their own self esteem and status aside and work with the left of the party to prevent another Tory government?
And given that we know how they behaved, do you think these people should be rewarded with power? do you even think people who behave this way against ostensibly their own side should even have power?
And why is it always, always the left that have to hold their noses?
Starmer?
A sort of Joe McCarthy peddling Laura Ashley chintz....with the assistance of an apprentice selling the Rothermere Daily Heil.
All the appeal of a fart in a bottle.
08:40.
Stand by for arcane platitudes in response. It's what red tories do.
Slavery is freedom! Ignorance is strength!......That sort of thing.
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