We can deduce this from the BBC report into her departure, which tells “Labour said Ms Gray will be replaced by Morgan McSweeney, who was previously chief adviser to the PM and masterminded Labour’s election campaign”. What a non-surprise. And there is more. Rather a lot more.
“Ms Gray has been subject to intense internal briefings and criticism in a government yet to reach its first 100 days in office, and it's that level of dysfunction that has made it clear to Sir Keir that something needed to shift”. Intense internal briefings from whom? Maybe, oh I dunno, someone like Morgan McSweeney could help us here? But do go on.
“Much more damaging for her, though, was the level of anger towards her at the heart of government, indicated by high level sources being willing to leak the BBC confidential details of her salary”. How high a level are those sources at? High enough to be at a Morgan McSweeney sort of level?
We are constantly reminded that McSweeney was the great election mastermind, while no mention is made of the smear campaign run against the Corbyn leadership, which effectively meant some within the Labour Party working to throw the 2019 General Election. Worse, the 32.1% of the popular vote achieved in that campaign was increased by this year to, er, 33.7%. That’s 6.3% shy of where Corbyn was in 2017. So why the landslide?
And clueless does not begin to describe the result. Like Laura Kuenssberg musing “Morgan McSweeney, who ran the election campaign, and is long time political ally of Starmer is the new Chief of Staff - politics over Whitehall?” No, just the result of another smear campaign.
The Murdoch Times has told “‘There was no grid for the first 100 days,’ a senior government source said. ‘And that was the one thing she was expected to be working on while everyone else was busy on the campaign. There was barely a single story about how the culture of government was being changed.’” Does anyone believe that the press would have stopped kicking Starmer if there had been a grid in place? Away with you.
Especially when the same paper is now sneering that Angela Rayner bought her partner a suit, and paid for it with her own money. But “there was no grid”. Yeah, right. Owen Jones asked the obvious question: “is it possible to engage with the fact that Morgan McSweeney's camp led the war against Sue Gray, and has now toppled her? Why pretend this is all the Tory press when you must know McSweeney's camp led the insurgency against her?”
Sources. They didn’t want to lose their Tory sources when The Blue Team were in Government, now they don’t want to lose the Labour ones. And why pretend that McSweeney is some kind of mastermind, just because he can shit all over his opponents? That’s not the same as delivering for the boss.
The right-wing press won’t be mollified by puerile infighting. Morgan McSweeney is about to learn a very hard lesson. Mastermind my arse.
https://www.patreon.com/Timfenton
What if, and hear me out here, the only thing they’re good at, and indeed care about, is infighting and getting one over on their perceived enemies. What if they don’t actually give a sh!t about improving the lives of those they’re supposed to represent and in fact only care about their own status and orchestrating bungs and sweeteners from potential donors. Oh, and the inevitable post political sinecure with the aforementioned donors.
ReplyDeleteBecause anyone paying attention since around 2015 would reach the above conclusion in short order, which begs the question what those who are paid a considerable amount of money to explain politics to the public have been looking at for the last 10 years.
Exactly. Starmer, like his Tory idols is only capable of punching down. The poor? Pensioners? The disabled? Out come the size 12 hobnails. Then we have the other side, the wealthy, the powerful, the 4th estate. When it comes to dealing with them, out come the carpet slippers
DeleteStarmer, like his predecessors, sees govt as a way of filling his and his colleagues boots. Thus taking on the biggest threats to our society are studiously ignored on the one hand, or actively sucked up to on the other.
To achieve this goal, the left were seen as the first hurdle, and once Labours right had worked with the Tory press to undermine, then finally break them, they have to stay broken.
Anyone else who threatens to rock the boat by pointing out the obvious flaws to Starmers grand plan are likewise, smeared, broken, and booted out.
All around is the rancid stench of hypocrisy. The Tory press declaring Labour should go to the polls, having been caught with their hands in the till. After years of defending exactly the same behaviour by their Tory heros. Meanwhile centrist twats whine that their hero's are being unfairly treated, and imagine how bad it would be Corbyn was in charge? Yes, just imagine. The press would be mauling him all right, but not for taking massive sweeteners, attacking pensioners, and threatening to do what even the Torys stopped short at - doing away with the NHS.
Change? What change was that?
The British political class, its social economic system and its corporate media are rotten-to-the-core corrupt. All of it is beyond saving. Up to the armpits in innocent blood at home and abroad.
ReplyDeleteIt's no longer necessary to forecast where this is going. It's obvious to anyone with a sense of decency and a functioning brain. It has been that way for decades.
@Anonymous: yes, I totally agree with you. The domestic problems of UK, which include climate disaster, economic deindustrialisation/destruction, needing health, education, and infrastructure renewal, plus fixing the anachronistic political structure and media, could be done.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately no-one in power wants to do this, so the UK is going to go down the toilet and become a wasteland (like some cities of the USA already). I find this a terrifying prospect, given I have to live here.
Once again, the Corbyn fanbhois bang on about vote share; it's absolutely irrelevant and what good did it do him? NONE. Corbyn was rejected comprehensively by someone more charismatic than a man with the demeanour of a dullard geography supply teacher. I will agree though that Labour didn't 'win' this time; more accurately the Tories 'lost', same as they did in 1997. Remember, Blair's government was the only Labour government to serve more than one term - Labour only gets in when the Tories cock up, not because their policies appeal and don't forget, Reform are hard on their heels too 'oop north'.
ReplyDelete08:02.
DeleteWrong.
Jeremy Corbyn was smeared for years by ranting righties in corporate media and from within the "Labour" Party.
Comprehensive conclusive evidence for both can be found in the LSE Final Report and the Forde Report.
Said ranting righties lies created a false image of Jeremy Corbyn. Which enough people were mug enough to believe and vote accordingly.
Which is why the "Labour" Party is now as far right reactionary and evil as the tories.
That's what happens when people are stupid enough to fall for phony "charisma".
A far right blue tory-on-far right red tory faction fight. Its details are largely irrelevant. That kind of bullshit was inevitable.
ReplyDeleteWhat is surprising is that it took so little time for Quisling reality to dawn. Even I thought they would initially throw a few policy crumbs before starting the thievery and infighting. But they are actually as malevolently block headed as the average Rothermere Heil and Murdoch Scum reader.
The Starmer behaviour at PMQs yesterday was so appalling as to merit a place in the bar of a Gnome Counties ale house reeking of stale aftershave and farts.
The triumvirate of Starmer, Reeves and Streeting are even beginning to look and sound like each other. The same insensate unblinking stare, dead face, weak chin and grotesque vowel sounds. It's not just "emotional space" they lack, it's integrity. Far right to the marrow.
Morgan McSweeney will go down in history as the mastermind behind the 2024 win, just like at each media appearance Mandelson is hailed the 1997 election winning guru.
ReplyDeleteBut if any journalist bothered to look back at the opinion polling they’d see Blair & Lord M inherited a highly popular winning side. The polls clearly show John Smith leaving the Tories an ever more distant second. Quiet now, don't mention that by the time of the 97 election Labour’s poll rating was lower than when the pair took over. So much for Lord M’s genius, but of course that doesn’t fit the accepted narrative so is ignored.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_1997_United_Kingdom_general_election
14:01.
DeleteThe 1997 election, like the 2024 election, wasn't "won".
The regimes occupying Downing Street in both cases got the keys because the previous tenants were too obviously incompetent thieving shithouses. Through default. It had fuck all to do with "winning". The current regime "won" a rigged game, as in 1997.
From 1979 this country has been administered by successive far right capitalist regimes. Hired front men and women interested only in their own gains (hilariously labelled "aspiration"). Not a trace of honest social decency in any of them. Cheaply bought, easily replaced by the next lowlife. The same template right across the declining West. Spengler knew whereof he wrote.
Which is why Britain is rotting from the head down. A country full of scared people.
This, like so much that is cynically ignored (or decried) by 'centerists' is a truth that the country is encouraged to forget. Like Foot, the 'hopeless leftie', who was comfortably leading the wicked witch until the Falklands war saved her, and inflicted neoliberalism firmly and squarely on the nation ever since.
DeleteDespite the nonsense from Labours right, none of Blairs removal of the party's core values was 'needed', Smith was on course for a hefty victory. His death was a tragedy for the nation not just the party.
What's also brushed aside is that New Labour lost 4 million voters between 1997 and 2005. Meaning, then, as now, it was stay at home, or vote even further right, Tory voters that kept Blair in power. Not, as we are forever told, Blairs election winning brilliance.
Stan you are 100% on the money about 1997 election. John Smith would have hammered the Tories just as much as Blair and Mandelson. They benefited from the work Smith did earlier before his untimely death. " If you see a pin flying through the air the grenade will be in John Majors mouth". Classic.
ReplyDelete