The die was cast early on: Burnham’s offer to run as the Labour candidate was vetoed by a paranoid leadership: if someone genuinely popular were to become leader, what might follow? Being of independent thought, listening to the voters, making a centre-left party a genuinely centre-left party, doing away with the authoritarian control freakery. This could not be tolerated.
So it was that an ideologically acceptable candidate, Angeliki Stogia, was selected. The public were told that only Labour could beat the Reform UK hopeful, professional bigot Matthew Goodwin, representing the limited company of self-appointed Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage. And it was with representing those opinion polls that Labour began to unravel.
At that point, it was a three-way fight, the third party involved being the Greens, whose candidate, Hannah Spencer, was a plasterer and plumber. In other words, she was a working class woman who worked among the working class. Once upon a time, Labour would have been happy to have folks like her representing them. Not any more. Her presence was ignored.
This, though, was only the start of what developed as a series of smears and other dirty tricks, most of which were eagerly lapped up by the larger part of our free and fearless press, who in turn showed their appetite for low-grade client journalism and guaranteed that the wider electorate will trust them even less, if such a thing were possible, when future contests come around.
“To all voters … do not listen to these people. Do not vote for the Greens. They want to legalise all drugs and teach our children to use drugs including crack and heroin and let our daughters be used for legal prostitution … No Green madness in our community” it told. Bridget Phillipson later claimed that Labour had fought a “positive campaign”. I’d hate to see a negative one.
So Labour lost. Worse, they came third behind Reform. In turn, there were claims of “sectarianism”, which is code for Scary Muslims. Yes, those followers of The Prophet were so sectarian that they supported a white woman whose party leader is a gay Jewish man. The press was its usual disgusting self, seeing the establishment rejected and whining accordingly.
Keir Starmer was as bad, if not worse. Labour claimed George Galloway was somehow responsible for the Greens’ success. This was tosh. Starmer called Ms Spencer, more or less, a divisive extremist. He claimed - leading a party whose membership is in significant decline - that the Greens could not replicate their success country-wide. Be careful what you wish for, eh?
So much whinging, so many hostages to fortune, and even from the Labour leadership, so much racist dog whistling. They lost, and lost badly. Voters now have “somewhere to go”, to borrow Peter Mandelson’s happy phrase. And all that leadership can do is to claim they’re listening. When they’re not.
Once again: the Labour Together cancer has to be cut out, before it kills a once great party stone dead. Otherwise they will keep losing. That is all.
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3 comments:
The whole campaign showed the Rights politicians and their media lackeys at their very worst. See Mik Wrights (broken bottle boy) analysis for just 'some' of the right wing talking heads extremist drivel.
Of course, and right on cue, Reform took the Trumpian 'stolen election' road, with words like 'extremist' 'Muslim' and of course, 'woke' all thrown into the mix.
The irony meter, after Reform and Labours talk of 'divisive sectarianism' duly exploded...
Will Labour learn anything from this? Of course not. Starmer and co's job 'is' to make Labour unelectable, so a change of course is hardly likely now.
Nice to see Starmer and the Mail fully aligned now: Starmer with his 'extremism-of-the-Left' Greens and the Rag with a shrieking GREEN MENACE headline on the front page every day.
A consummation devoutly to be wished, as the philosopher-poet Bo Diddley famously wrote in his iconic tragedy Before You Marcuse Me Take a Look at Yourself.
Now look what you've done, Tim! That nice Labour Together chap Josh Simons has had to resign after he, in emails to GCHQ, falsely alleged that reporters investigating Labour Together's funding were linked to a “pro-Kremlin” network, a mistake, surely, that anyone could make.
Poor old Keir, it's not been a good week all things considered. Still, the US and Israel attacks could be the chance to turn things around, his Thatcher/Falklands moment if you like. And his reassuring words today, 'British planes are flying in the air', certainly fired this listener with an unaccustomed surge of patriotic zeal.
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