I have published this video this morning. In it, I note that Keir Starmer received gifts of more than £18,000 to polish his image in the run-up to the election – including £2,485 on glasses.
Really? Does this mean he's a man who is more interested in style than substance?
And does it mean he's also a man willing to be in hock to his donors?
None of this feels good about a new prime minister.
The audio version of this video is here:
The transcript is:
How much should Keir Starmer spend on glasses?
That does sound like a rather odd question, except for the fact that apparently, he spent £2,485 on glasses in the period running up to the election.
Does that matter? Well, yes. Not because we're discussing his vanity, but because those glasses were donated for his benefit by a Labour peer who was previously the chair of ASOS, the clothing retailer.
Worse than that, Starmer was donated £16,200 worth of clothing by the same man. So, Starmer's image has been created as a result of corporate donations. You might say, it wasn't corporate donations, it was because this person was a Labour peer. And he's entitled to give money to Starmer. But is he? Is that right?
Is this appropriate? I mean, let's just go back to those glasses. How much can you spend on glasses? I know a little bit about glasses. I've worn them for 50-odd years. And they aren't simple, these things. In fact, these are trifocals, and they have to have anti-glare because I'm sitting surrounded by, well, three lights to get this image that you're seeing.
So, this not a very straightforward pair of glasses, of which I got two, when I bought them, because they offered me that option, and they came in at £300.
So he's got a lot of pairs of glasses, I can only presume. And that's again to create an image.
Now I'm not very worried if Starmer is a vain man. We know that Sunak has been. He's been spending over £3,000 apparently on suits, and even so, he still can't afford the last two inches of the trouser leg.
I'm more worried about Starmer accepting gifts. Now that's not hypocritical, that's not criticising the left for the sake of it. I think we can safely presume that Sunak could afford to pay for his own suits. But Starmer took corporate gifts to do that. Corporate or personal, I don't care which. Because in either case, he is now, in my opinion, in hock to somebody who's given him, well, nearly £20,000 to create an image, a style.
And I'm not interested in image and style very much. A little bit. Because, yes, I admit, I've been told to wear this colour shirt for the purposes of making videos, because I look better.
And, look, Starmer also happens to wear dark shirts, because apparently they suit him better too. And I can understand he wants a decent pair of glasses.
But, eighteen plus thousand pounds we're now talking about in total for this image?
No, I want a man of substance as Prime Minister. And I'm not totally convinced we're going to get one.
But worse than that, I do think we might be getting a man who's willing to be in hock to corporate donors for the benefit of this. And I don't care who gives him that much money, corporate or personal, I believe he should be free of such influences. And that's what really matters here.
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No substance voters have yet again made a mockery of democracy and simply rearranged the deckchairs on a sinking ship. What else is there to say about this general election?
But have they? If you look at percentages – Labour did much worse than in 2017, just a bit better than in 2019. If you look at the absolute number of votes – Labour got fewer votes than in 2017 and I think even in 2019. What voters said is that they are not happy with how our system works (probably lowest turnout after WW2) and that they’re not happy with either Tory or Labour (these two put together will end up with the vote share of 55 per cent on the turnout of under 60 per cent), but fptp got Labour in this instance a gigantic majority.
This result scares me. There is obviously lots of apathy among the electorate which can be a perfect breeding ground for the far right. Reform ended up second in (I think) more than one third of England. I can see them making huge headway in the next GE – and fptp will be to their advantage then. We don’t have a two-round majority system like France which will (almost certainly) prevent far right from gaining an absolute majority.
In 2019 Labour picked up 202 seats with 10,269,051 votes.
In 2024 Labour achieved 412 seats with 9,712,011votes..
…so over 200 seats more but with about 550,000 fewer votes.
Such is the UK electoral system.
Style over substance I think is the phrase you are looking for.
Unfortunately that appears to be what people vote for, if the last 20+ years are to be believed; and what a hollowed out, toxic Isle we are as a result.
Mr Streeting has nice suits now too. It would be an interesting piece of research to see if the sartorial improvements in the erstwhile Labour shadow cabinet are relative to the amount of corporate donations they’ve received.
“And the animals looked from pig to man……” 🙁
Vanity, venality, corruption all is vanity, venality and corruption and well covered in the book “The Starmer Project”
Starmer has form on this.
vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas
Corbyn will be the Father of the House.
Local democracy DOES work.
MP, Votes, % share, registered, turnout, turnout change
Corbyn 24,120 49.2% 72,582 68% -5.20%
Starmer 18,884 48.9% 71,300 54% – 5%
Corbyn got 25% more actual votes ~ 5k and higher percentage share than Starmzy – who starts off his ‘landslide’ with that personal embarrassment and no one should let him forget it.
Labour got millions fewer votes than previous elections under Corbyn but many more seats – mysteriously.
At first sight – The Great Knight Dope is going to need all these extra seats as the real opposition will be on his benches … for a short time
I’ll pop back after some breakfast with some London ruminations.
Neat stats
And if he is Father of the House that is very funny – and gives him a priority in speaking orders
If Lindsay Hoyle calls him. We’ve seen how impartial he really is.
And yet they will actually believe they have won a landslide because Starmer has made Labour more electable.
I think Corbyn will be the MP with the second longest continuous service.
Edward Leigh was also first elected in 1983 and (according to the list in Wikipedia) sworn in before Corbyn.
If they had stayed on, it would have been Barry Sheerman or Harriet Harman, who served continuously from 1979 to 2024. Peter Bottomley was the last MP serving from 1974 or earlier.
Thank you, Andrew.
Fun facts: Bumley, as Nick Ridley called him, is cousin by marriage to Jeremy Hunt, Harriet Harman and Kitty Usher. Hunt inherited his seat from his cousin, Mrs B.
Lowest turnout since 2001 – 59%, before that it only 1918 was lower.
Starmer’s party got 9.6million votes.
Corbyn’s Labour got 13million in 2017 and 10.2 million in 2019
Of all eligible voters, Starmer’s party only got 20%
This Government is not representative, is illegitimate, and work to remove them should start straight away.
Regards
This is grim
Keir Starmer the Great Knight Flop!
He enters Downing Street as a naked emperor in his supposed great majority cloth – He shouldn’t even have been leader – his constituents know better, well over half of them from 2017 certainly do!
2017 – 41,343, 70.1%
2019 – 36,641, 64.5%
2024 – 18,884, 48.9%
———————
The other London results are revealing too – 53% seems to be coming up a lot!
City of London is a weird one…
IDS got away with murder – again!
Thanks to Starmer replacing the most popular local candidate who had to stand as independent and got as many votes as the official Labour parachutist!
Votes, % share, registered, turnout, turnout change
Thornberry 22,946 53.7% 74,122 58% -11%
Abbott 24,355 59.5% 77,797 53% -15.5%
Lammy 23,066 57.5% 75,906 53% -7.3%
Hillier 24,724 59.3% 78,262 53% -10.3%
Blake 15,302 39% 73,369 53% -17.9%
Creasy 27,172 59.3% 76,338 60% -8.1%
The multiple 53% turnouts are…spooky. .
Terrible stuff
A video is coming on this
I think there is very little substance to anyone in the new Labour administration. Starmer’s attention to his image may have had some effect on the outcome of the election as may the changes he has made to the party, but I can’t help feeling that Labour has not so much achieved power as had power thrust upon it.
Having spoken to some who still manage to be loyal party activists I have become convinced that Labour has nothing, absolutely nothing, under its sleek exterior. The new administration quite literately has no idea what to do; it knows it must do something, but it does not understand the economy and so is turning, in desperation to the City for its salvation. That has never turned out well in the past and there is no reason to suppose it will now.
So we can look forward to the City having all the power, but, as in the story of the fox and the tiger, the City will only have all the power because the government believes it to have all the power.
Now is the time to put pressure on them for behind their brash exterior they are timid mice, and their bullying is merely a cover for their cowardice. Now is the time to put pressure on them before their policies are cast in stone. If they continue on their present track they will fail.
Starmer seems to have more pairs of glasses than Elton John. The main high street chains of opticians always offer BOGOF, not sure why you need to spend thousands rather than hundreds on spectacles.
Me neither
This is your whole issue – you fail to comprehend that anyone could have different (and equally valid) opinions to your own.
As a democrat I know hordes of people disagree with me – and spend my life arguing my position.
How wrong can you be?
@Chad Parsons. Pray tell me, why would someone need to spend thousands of pounds on glasses?
Thank you, John.
Has Starmer been “folletted”?
I’m going to be judging him more on the policies put in place over the next few years. I will also be writing to Labour MPs with slimmer majorities letting them know I lent them my vote to ditch the Tories, but next time could be different if I dont see some real progress in more progressive policies.
We all know “gifts” get thrown about willy nilly, personally I don’t care what glasses he wears, but his policies do concern me.
And yet it was not always like that. I can remember an enormous amount of fuss being made over a gift of a potted plant being made to a local councilor.
I was in the Civil Service for over thirty years and at one time was required to attend courses in London. The beancounters showed that the time spent traveling cost more than flying from Glasgow to Heathrow so I flew.
On return I had to enter the number of Airmiles accrued in the Hospitality Book!
PS,
sorry forgot to say congratulations to the Greens, if only we had PR
then again where would that put Reform??
“If we had PR, where would that put Reform?”
As the Electoral Reform Society point out, you cannot assume that a vote for a Party under FPTP reflects the political belief of the voter.
The other consideration is, of course, which type of PR did you have in mind? Different types produce different results.
https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/voting-systems/types-of-voting-system/
A video is coming on this
If it helps him to see better, the issues the country now has, then I’m all for it.
His glasses are for being seen not for seeing.
“Is Keir Starmer all style and no substance?”
Yes.
Given that Starmer’s vote share is lower than Corbyn’s 2017 election result but Starmer has a landslide victory this strongly suggests that under our FPTP electoral system there is a built-in bias towards right-wing thinking but it was disgust with the Conservative government’s poor management of the country that triggered the landslide. All Starmer had to do was to portray himself as right-wing in his thinking.
Indeed. About 500,000 fewer votes than Corbyn in 2019, and 200 more seats.
This more than anything shows how undemocratic and unrepresentative FPTP is
Regards
Agreed
There is speculation on what Starmer’s ‘bank of England independence’ moment might be – to send an immediate message that ‘things are now different’.
He did recently say he was going to ‘clean up politics ‘, much to Andrew Rawnsleys’s delite .
Cant see him doing any such thing, but if he did set up a commission to take corruption out of politics – especially money and ‘gifts’ it would be an easy early win and cost nothing – but of course he will do no such thing.
And there is this “helping hand” as well.
https://www.declassifieduk.org/pro-israel-tycoon-gives-labour-half-a-million-pounds/