The new party leader sold himself to the membership with a manifesto on which he then reneged. He lied his way to the Top Job. Then came changes designed to keep the left from taking power ever again. Starmer told party members that if they didn’t like that, the door was open and they could leave. Left-leaning departures were compared to fleas being “shaken off”.
Could it get worse? Sure thing: revelations about the behind the scenes presence of one Peter Mandelson chased away more members, persuaded yet more to stay at home or be absent elsewhere when the call for canvassers, leafletters and phone bankers came. Mandelson’s appointment as UK ambassador to the USA opened yet another can of worms.
But, came the Mandelson faction’s response, the left had nowhere else to go, no other place on the ballot paper to mark their cross. This was their clincher, the cornerstone that allowed them to kick out the left, tack to the right and capture all those social conservatives. But, as Captain Blackadder might have observed, there was only one thing wrong with that: it was bollocks.
Worse, Starmer had scored a monumental own goal when a report he commissioned - from Martin Forde KC - was effectively shelved and dismissed. Bad mistake: the report described a “hierarchy of racism” within the party. So no-one should have been surprised when Nels Abbey noted that “Black and Brown Britons appear to be done with Labour”.
Our free and fearless press’ demonising of Green Party leader Zack Polanski had little effect. Their lack of Reform UK scrutiny was so, so telling: Farage and his pals are an Establishment party. The rest of the Establishment gives the game away by giving Reform UK a free pass, right down to the party fielding, and getting elected, an actual Holocaust denier.
The attacks on Polanski and the Greens - trying the anti-Semitism smear while publishing anti-Semitic caricatures of Zack - have convinced no-one. Labour using Steve Reed - who had to apologise for calling a Jewish businessman a “puppet master” - to deploy smears against the Greens would be comical, were it not so jaw-droppingly stupid, so utterly tragic.
And contributing in no small measure to Labour losing more than half the seats it was defending is the uncritical support of the Israelis bombing, shelling, sniping, rocketing and otherwise burning alive tens of thousands of people, and not only in Gaza and the West Bank. The attempts to smear any criticism of Israel as “anti-Semitism” aren’t working. Because it isn’t.
The conclusion is as before: the Labour Together cancer must be cut out before it kills a once great party stone dead. The Greens need to push back - as aggressively as it takes - against the anti-Semitism smears, because New New Labour is good at one thing, and one thing alone - dirty tricks.
Keir Starmer and his cabal have taken a huge Parliamentary majority and wasted the freedom it gave them to be a genuinely progressive force, a force for good. Now they are falling apart. No-one should be in the least surprised.
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Don’t worry, Tim, help is on its way for Starmer; from Sir Anthony Seldon, who the PM ought to listen to as he is Honorary Historical Adviser to 10 Downing Street and, as the author of books on successive ex-Prime Ministers from Major to Sunak, is best kept in with if a glowing testament to his time (2 years?) in office is to be achieved.
ReplyDeleteSeldon’s wise counsel, delivered in today’s Observer, is to build on Starmer’s master stroke of bringing back Harriet Harman and George Brown to attract the young voters lost to Polanski’s Greens, by finding places in his government for David Milliband ‘to head up a new Growth Ministry’ and David Milburn, to reform the ‘broken civil service’. But Seldon saves the best for last by urging that Tony Blair should be Foreign Secretary because ‘with the world at its most dangerous state since the end of the cold war, why would you not want a man known in every capital across the world?’ ( Elvis, the Pope and Michael Jackson not currently being available, presumably).
All I can say is roll on AI; it surely couldn’t be worse than what currently passes for ‘reality’
Anyone thinking Mister Tony Blair is the answer obviously doesn’t understand the question.
DeleteHere in sunny Waltham Forest the Greens went from zero seats to 31/60, which all goes to show something although I'm sure I don’t know what.
No worries, Tim. There'll be another shithouse along after the Quiff Quisling disappears for the usual payoff. Possibly Wes "£250k a year from private 'health'care" Streeting or Rachel From Accounts. Even "I waited fourteen years for this" Lammy. None of whom will make a blind bit of difference except to their bank account and pathetic sell-out "careers".
ReplyDeleteNo surprise if Starmer rocked up as a junior assistant to fellow fascist war criminal and mass murderer Blair in the proposed land thieving Gaza Estate Agents. As a Zionist-without-qualification he'll have no problem wading through the blood and bodies of innocent Palestinians. He might even join fellow Quisling Tom "Liar" Watson at US fascist corporation Palantir to undermine our National Health Service. Both know how to betray decency.
Starmer made a soap opera speech this morning with his usual air of discovery. The kind of self pitying bullshit written by some half-wit political tramp like McSweeney or Cummings. It won't save him or his type. They've outlived their usefulness, suckers.
What's at stake here isn't Starmer - nobody gives a shit about him - it's what kind of country Britain wants to be. He's merely the latest employee of failed capitalism, the latest here-today-gone-tomorrow gobshite. There's a queue behind him.
This country has been on the steady road to outright fascism for forty seven years. The same cycle of history repeated across the world. So here's the invoice: pay up or tell Starmer, his employers and apologists to stick it up their collective arse.
Meanwhile, Britain will deserve all it gets if it is mad enough to put that nazi racist gargoyle Farage anywhere near government. But after Brexit nobody would make book on it.
Gosh.
ReplyDeleteNo corporate media coverage of the Ukrainian "models" Versus Starmer property trial.
I wonder why......