Keir Starmer has an article in The Observer this morning which is headlined:
It's time to end the UK's divisions: Labour is for everyone
Except that is obviously not true.
Labour is apparently all about representing working people, except those whose rights he will not protect. There is no mention of them.
Nor is there mention of the young, the old, those with disabilities who are unable to work, those unemployed through no fault of their own, students, parents who do not or cannot work, and so many others. Is Labour not about them, too? Apparently not.
It's also for those who aspire. So what about those who are happy with life as it is?
Cone to that, the focus is, as always, on families. What about those with no close ties, or any at all, to theirs?
It's also for those who love their country. Does that mean those who think it is not a United Kingdom, or who really dislike the rotten inequality and its London-centred bias must look elsewhere?
There is no mention of how Labour will support the environment.
Nor how it will manage relationships with Europe.
Those who are not Zionists are ignored. They have been swept away.
And as for those without the means to succeed, there is no mention of how Labour will help.
Don't get me wrong. I think Labour will be better than the Tories. But let's not be satisfied with this extraordinarily low level of ambition. I want a government that embraces difference, and not only tolerates it but believes that strength comes from diversity, knowing that all have a role and something to offer.
I also want a government that embraces the challenges we face, including climate change, the rise of fascism, our growing international isolation and the threat of oppression.
Do I sense this aspiration in Starmer's rhetoric? No. All I sense is a commitment to those who measure success by material consumption. As aspiration goes, that's a deeply depressing goal in a country where we know that those possessed of good fortune already consume at levels way beyond sustainable limits.
Starmer is setting out to be a man who does not rise to the challenges. That is not a route to success.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Surely time to start calling Keir Starmer “The Invisible Man” from the Invisible Party. Like Blair and Brown before him a politician you can’t really trust to serve the interests of the many as opposed to the few when in office despite all the rhetoric! This is obvious just from their adoption of “fiscal rules” which if you could pin them down to ask why they’ve adopted them would result in the usual and widespread nonsense of not knowing who and how money is created and if you tell them would immediately howl this will result in hyper-inflation! They would be doing this despite the UK never having experienced hyper-inflation but corrupt Conservative and Labour governments having allowed private sector banks to blow an inflationary house price bubble for over fifty years and still continuing along with a growing housing crisis!
A fairly bland political speech Richard. He is of course correct about Sunak’s utter uselessness and this being a zombie government. But as you say, ‘loves this country and aspires for themselves and their family ‘……hey ho, that’s the kind of thing DM ‘journalists’ come up with.
I rather like this quote from Edwatd VII
“You don’t understand me!” he roared to a courtier who questioned why he was inquiring after the republican Keir Hardie’s health. “I am king of all the people!”
Now would it be too much to ask whoever replaces Sunak to be Prime Minister of All the People
Starmer has made the Labour Party electable and he will enter Government with a healthy majority. For that he has my respect. It is very easy to shout and complain from the sidelines but for once try and appreciate the difficult task he has in managing the Party to make it acceptable to the electorate. It is highly likely the Labour Party you want simply wouldn’t be.
So many absurd claims in so few words.
Might you tell me what sideline I am on?
And might you tell me what was so hard for Starmer when the Tories imploded before his eyes – he can take little credit for this.
And why are these things that I believe in unacceptable to Starmer’s Labour when most in thsi country want them?-
1) Natianlised utilities
2) A properly funded NHS
3) More social housing
4) Proper worker and trade union rights
5) A functuioning legal system
6) A green new deal
7) Codemnation of genocide
Has Starmer really won hearts and minds? Pull the other one.
“Starmer has made the Labour Party electable”
The Labour Party was electable before Starmer. The reason Corbyn did not get elected was people like Starmer.
❌Margaret Hodge prevented Labour winning https://tinyurl.com/mub7b53b
❌Labour Staffer ADMITS Bringing Down Corbyn https://youtu.be/nIzHq_BeknI
❌Anti-Corbyn officials worked to lose General Election http://tinyurl.com/2p8ua2d4
❌Mandelson undermined Corbyn https://tinyurl.com/mvpmrpjw
Suella Braverman, on the Laura Kuenssberg show this morning, claimed “Keir Starmer has the charisma of a peanut, who is overseeing a party that is a rabble of hard left maniacs”.
Well, she got one out of two correct – clearly it’s her own party that’s a rabble.
Keir Starmer sounds exactly like a Thatcherite and I believe that’s exactly what he is. How did we end up with a man with such beliefs leading the Labour Party?? I’ve said it before, but I really do despair.
Worse still, his Chancellor Reeeves is a straight down the line Thatcherite, playing the game as a ‘safe pair of hands’ for business and who has demonstrated little capacity for innovative thinlking in problem solving – the ones we need solving that is…
“the focus is, as always, on… hardworking…. families” there fixed it for you. You have to stay on message Richard if you want to get a Xmas card from LINO.
“I think Labour will be better than the Tories.” I disagree, they will be as bad, but with smiley new faces. “Look at us – we’re different” – yeah different but still the same old slo-mo train crash that is Britain. The avalanche of lobbyists will make sure of that. There is not a fag paper diff between tories and LINO in terms of declared policies and attitudes. Both are “owned” body and soul by the combo of big business and other countries.
I have always wanted the UK to do well, not in terms of tribal stuff (footy matches) but in terms of a country at ease with itself, a population well housed, well educated, healthy and able to enjoy the UK and what it has to offer. But it ain’t like that. The place has been hijacked by various groups that have zero interest in UK citizens and their well being. The two main parties are Sooty and Sweep – with assorted Harry Corbetts vying for control. This can’t go on. The UK needs a politicians and a political process that focuses on the needs & interests of UK citizens. LINO is functionally incapable of delivering this.
Well said Mike. And bollocks to Tory and labour flag shagging. Real patriotism is doing what you said. Ensuring a country’s citizens have decent housing, education, healthcare, a clean environment, reasonable income levels and so on.
As with any other failed enterprise the political class in the UK have become an inward looking entropic clique. Those who are within it will never be able to rectify what ails them. Obviously for any real life addressing politics to emerge in the UK FPTP needs to go but so does the corrupt and corrupting selection process for MPs.
[…] Starmer is setting out to be a man who does not rise to the challenges Funding the Future […]
Will Labour change in office? Will they continue with neoliberalism? Some are hoping against hope that the lack of real policies will allow them to become more progressive when actually in government. Alternatively, they are true believers in policies that have ,over more than four decades reduced our country to ruins. Starmer boasts about a changed Party. That Party has ditched the democratic socialism that produced an economic miracle in the six years following 1945. I was lucky to benefit from those policies. For the first 40 years of my life I lived in a country that was infinitely better than today. Real full employment for the first and only time in history. Working class kids went to university The Commons contained MPs who came from industry. They had experience of real life. That was real democracy. Gone!. The blueprint for recovery is there to see. The money is there. Study Richard Murphy. Starmer and Reeves blatantly lie about that. I saw a Labour woman on TV telling us the private sector will finance public services. Never happened anywhere. Starmer is a true believer in far right economics. His politics are approaching Fascism. He supports genocide. Nobody with a ounce of humanity should give him their vote
It’s very straight forward Starmer and Reeves are capitulators to the right-wing lie the government has no money creation powers! As such it’s a waste of time voting them in to office they won’t effect much change in a country that very much needs a lot!
As Naked Capitalism pointed out, Labour is now fully under the control of Blairites and Blair’s money, bar a few malcontents. Starmer’s inability to stick to any point of principle is directly in line with his shallowness in this Kabuki Theatre of public posturing.
Starmer is a ‘human rights lawyer’ who thought it OK that Palestinians should have their water cut off; he is a ‘unifier of the party’ who continues to dismiss black activist Diane Abbott for no reason at all, whilst happily welcoming white anti-migrant Brexiteer Elphicke. There is literally no limit to his fickleness; he is a man of blancmange masquerading as straw, without the functional usefulness of straw.
Go back to Mandelson’s comments about forgetting the poor because they’ve got nowhere else to go underpins Blair’s deal with Satan, which Starmer is being pushed to repeat. You don’t need hundreds of thousands of members with a social conscience who want you to take action, if you push to ‘the middle’ and just pretend to satisfy the wants of the moderate left/right by at least pretending to give them whatever they want…
The next Blair Labour 2.0 government is going to be a rococo masterpiece of illusionary performance guaranteeing nothing to anyone, underpinned by levels of cynicism, fraud and corruption which will make even the Tories gasp in admiration…