There was always some hope that during this election campaign Keir Starmer might reveal what he really believed so that we might understand what a Labour government with him as leader might look like before we were expected to vote for it.
The good news is that we now know.
The bad news is that what we now know is that his priority is bullying anyone who disagrees with him, most especially if they are a woman of colour who might have something considerably more useful to say on racism than his Zionist worldview permits. If they also happen to think Labour should be left of centre, heaven help them.
As a result we now know that he is apparently unworried about appearing to be an aggressor, a misogynist, possibly racist, and most certainly as committed to eliminating the left as Hayek ever seemed to be. He may think himself otherwise, but that's how he comes across.
Those things are perceptions, I admit. But what we also know is he, and many others, lied about the conclusion of the investigation into Diane Abbott. It concluded many months ago, and that was denied.
As bad, he pretends he cannot decide, as he has repeatedly done on this matter, suggesting issues were still open when they were not.
Alternatively, he claims that he does not have the responsibility to decide when that seems very obviously untrue.
So, he comes across as untruthful, a procrastinator and a man without a shred of principle.
At least we now know that.
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We must know that by now and despite this he will be our PM! I despair!
“World-beating” despair! To coin the phrase of another liar who won a landslide election! Doesn’t say much for the English people’s sense of judgement does it!
Lord Acton wrote ‘power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely’.
Fortunately Starmer does not have absolute power.
I recall treading the phrase ‘man is fitted for power in proportion to his ability to put chains upon his own conduct.’ I can’t remember who, possibly Edmund Burke. There are such people and a collegiate approach in a cabinet of independently minded colleagues is better than an executive President like the United States.
Fortunately Starmer does not have absolute power.
It’s not for a lack of trying though. Ian. Yesterday’s Spectator encapsulates this drive for power in the article: ‘Labour’s parachute regiment bolsters the Starmtroopers’
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/labours-parachute-regiment-joins-the-starmtroopers/
Scary stuff.
‘
I posted late yesterday the Deputy Editor of the Spectator has a Youtube video saying Trump’s conviction was a bad day for democracy.
You were right to highlight this. An appalling abrogation of commitment to Justice and democracy.
Still, even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Well at least now you’ll be voting for who leads your country!
Here in the Netherlands they’ve just appointed a civil servant – Dicķ Schoof – to be the next PM, since nobody had the stomach to accept Wilders as PM. The fact his nickname is Tricky Dicky due to the fact he overstepped his responsibilities in the past doesn’t matter.
Plus they’re going to appoint an extra-parliamentary cabinet since the 4 coalition parties couldn’t agree on a coalition accoord.
I give it 1 year max… we have extreme right PVV, conservative VVD, a new conservative party and a farmer protest party in a very unholy alliance.
That situation is deeply worrying …
“So, he comes across as untruthful, a procrastinator and a man without a shred of principle.”
Agree. But.
“eliminating the left as Hayek ever seemed to be”. Hayek was against “large gov”, the end point of Hayek was a wierd low-gov/no gov utopian fantasy world.
We can see the end result by a cursory glance at the UK today.
It would be facile to claim the same for Starmer & his crew. In fairness to Hayek he was not a stupid man, but like all theorists had zero common sense.
By contrast, what we are dealing with in the Starmer-crew are corrupt un-patriotic ciphers.
Corrupt: Silly-boy Streeting and the “dontations” from private health the most obvious, plenty of others within LINO doing the same. in different sectors.
Un-patriotic: Akehurst & his “We believe in Israel” org. Perhaps UK politicans should focus 1st & foremost on the UK – why support a foriegn power in a country a long way away & with which the UK has zero in common? Votes in Durham North be warned.
I could have quite easily inserted the Tory label into the above – it would both read & mean the same.
His Orwellian defenestration of Faiza Shaheen from Chingford and Woodford Green – even worse than the Abbott business.
Yet BBC refuses to probe.
Nick Robinson on R4 Today programme pretending to quiz Liz Kendall – about Abbott – repeating ‘why can’t Starmer take decisions?’ – letting her keep repeating ‘ we have to get the best possible candidates’.
Proving he was not actually interviewing her , he did not take the open goal – ‘so is Luke Akehurst – who is on record as saying the UN is anti semitic, and parachuted into a safe seat – better than Faiza Shaheen – an academic specialising in inequality and tirelessy campaigning in Chingford until yesterday?
We know the BBC will seamlessly move – or has already moved – to be part of Starmers truth bending thought police.
And I’m a Labour Party member.
I think Starmer is anti-Semitic and Akehurst most definitely so
Richard, thanks for this.
I too think Starmer and Akehurst, and the whole Starmerite clique are antisemitic, as Jonathan Cook King ago pointed out, because they operate this “right kind of Jew/wrong kind of Jew” trope, that is basically antisemitic. (See Jonathan Cook on Starmer’s Labour as institutionally antisemitic https://twitter.com/Jonathan_K_Cook/status/1334636482041176065?s=19).
The problem is that, just as the Tory Party (whom I now call “the Destructive” Party) suffered a hard Right Coup from the “Thatcherism on steroids” ERG, so the Labour Party has suffered a coup by a VERY
Nasty, thuggish Right Wing Zionist 5th column, turning it into a clone of the Likud Party, & even of Israel’s neo-Fascist government.
I want the Hydra-headed top of the sociopathic, racist, bloodstained, Zionism-captured Faux-Labour Party to be defeated at the GE
The men – Starmer, Streeting & Lammy
The women – Rayner, Reeves, Nandy & Thornberry
Then I want Faux-Labour to shrivel into irrelevance via Pasokification, so the REAL Labour Party can revive.
Many/Most? voters on the doorstep will be unmoved by the anti-semitic label.
But:
Starmer, Akehurst and the rest of the LINO rabble currently in control of Labour are most definitely anti-patriotic.
They put the interests of the country last because of: funding from foriegn governments, foreign corporations, foreign finance groups etc etc.
They are in politics for two things: power (which gives them a kick) and what they can get later down the track. Thus the only thing they represent is themselves.
They have zero interest in voters & their needs. Voting for a performing chimp would give a better (albeit randomised) result.
The purge of Labour MPs is to remove those with any sort of social conscience – this makes it easier for Starmer/LINO to pretend to speak with one forked tongue.
As for Robinson, safe pair of hands, face fits, part of the UK media propaganda machine. A puppet. A 5 year old talks more sense than this imbecile.
Are you sure about this?
Please see below:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/uk-labour-leader-starmer-opens-up-about-his-familys-jewish-traditions/
Yes
How come you think Starmer is anti-Semitic? His wife is Jewish and his children have been brought up in the Jewish faith. He has not once spoken out against of Israel’s thirst for revenge with women and children maimed and killed.
Starmer supports the Zionist cause which argues that Jews must treated differently because they are Jewish. Many Jews think that anti-Semitic. I see their point.
IDS will likely be delighted that Faiza has been blocked as a Labour candidate, and being forced to stand as an independent so as not to throw away all the hard work since 2019, since the most probable outcome is a split “left” (Faiza and Labour, though I don’t actually believe Labour are left at the moment!) vote, meaning IDS may retain the seat he very nearly lost in 2019!
Of course, if that happens, you can guarantee Labour and the media will blame Faiza for splitting the vote, rather than admitting parachuting in a Starmer yes-man against a popular ex-Labour candidate did so…
Parachuting a yes woman actually
This article in the Guardian from Faiza Shaheen would appear to back up your perception.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/31/faiza-shaheen-labour-deselected-chingford-woodford-green-general-election
Shockingly awful treatment.
Yet Starmer welcomes candidates like Luke Akehurst.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/may/31/luke-akehurst-labour-activist-turned-controversial-election-candidate
You are right in highlighting this
Starmer has already shown he is a weak man.
He can only lead through force majeure, not strength of personality or character.
That he cannot tolerate dissenting voices means he is not a fit leader of a ‘broad church’ party which reflects a range of centre to left opinion, as he cannot marshal the arguments that supports his neoliberal direction for the party.
That he has been unable or unwilling to present a rationally argued alternative to Thatcherism demonstrates fitness only for ‘nothing much’.
The electorate might vote for ‘nothing much’ in the short term, just to get the Tories out, but Starmer will be barely tolerated, without enthusiasm or affection.
No-one is ‘buying in’ to Starmerism, a politics of anomie.
As far as power is a factor, Machiavelli was very aware of the human propensity for corruption. He saw corruption emerging as a result of ‘absolute power’.
I’m sure there are useful messages for the Starmedici in the Discourses, if our favourite militant centrist would only listen.
Machiavelli recommended:-.
a) control of the rich;
b) balancing the power of the differing and competing interest groups within society;
c) placing time limits on office holding for those in power, as power corrupts progressively;
d) constraining the exercise of power by office holders, as the corruption of power tends to ‘weaken the government’;
e) destroying harmful institutions to limit future corruption (murder the sons of Brutus).
You’re right about how we may reasonably perceive Starmer.
I don’t think this is new. It has been apparent for many years, essentially since the Brexit referendum.
Whatever one’s views of Brexit, Starmer’s actions in that regard are, IMO, damning. He has tried to walk both sides of the line, being dishonest and pushing democracy to the limits. One might think that is to further a principled belief in being in the EU (though that doesn’t excuse unprincipled actions). Perhaps from a remainer perspective this is less obvious, because he appeared to be pursuing a desired agenda. But he subsequently flipped his view.
From my perspective Starmer’s actions were consistently Machiavellian, first supporting his party leader and making promises to become deputy leader, then completely reneging on these promises. He’s stuck the knife into colleagues when this suited his political agenda and personal objectives. He has back tracked on many many promises.
His Machiavellian behaviour and lack of principles have been obvious for a long time.
Richard you are completely right, but it’s not new.
Even though in extreme conditions it could lead to situations such as we are facing in the Netherlands, some form of PR is an absolute must in the UK. As the past 30 or so years have shown, the bigger your party becomes, the more impossible the task is of keeping a disparate party together.
The current shambles that the Labour party is simply underlines this point and makes the letter bold as well.
For all the attention given to when PR fails, the media never focusses on relatively politically stable countries like Germany or France.
Social media and 40 years of neocon politics have a lot to answer for.
Well said. The Zionist worldview has been cemented by the parachuting of Israel lobbyist Luke Akehurst into North Durham as Labour candidate. Many current Labour and Tory MPs are supporters of their respective Friends of Israel lobby groups.
Bear in mind this goes back to Corbyn and even Miliband because of their pro-Palestinian position. The weaponisation of fake antisemitism including against my own Jewish(!) friends and family has been and still is the biggest political smear campaign I’ve ever seen. Now with Gaza they are exposed for what they are but they don’t care; but there is opposition now.
Might Mr Starmer’s attitude to Mr Assange have been an indicator of what was to come, perhaps from Mr Starmer and from his contexts?
For quite a while now I have been paying less attention to politics/current affairs that normal simply because of the awfulness and corruption (for want of a better word) of the current government.
Now that we have an election I was expecting to be somewhat energised but so poor are the choices (and indeed our chances as human beings) that I’m even more depressed by it all. I’m not sure that I have fully costed my depression though.
You are not alone
Almost five weeks to go…
Pure agony
He reminds me of the (Groucho) Marx quote:
“I have principles, and if you don’t like them, I have others”
I’m saddened that all the current discourse in the media and on this excellent forum deals in Tories v Labour. There are other options in this election. I know that FPTP makes it very hard for smaller parties to gain traction and seats but please even up the discussion by admitting there are other places to put your vote. I personally refuse to be cowed into tactical voting.
I have said so – many times
I’m not sure why it never occurred to me before but I decided to look up “money” in Wikipedia. What you read there in many ways explains why you have a creature like Keir Starmer!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money
That is grim
Contrast the Wikipedia article with this 2008 paper by Bill Mitchell:-
http://www.fullemployment.net/publications/wp/2008/08-10.pdf
One of the consequences of not properly understanding how money works is the following:-
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/02/the-observer-view-on-the-social-care-crisis-whoever-wins-the-election-it-needs-addressing-urgently
The so-called progressive Oligarchic Press is deeply guilty of superficially pretending to care but at the end of the day not willing to make the effort to understand how the caring needed for a civilised society can be funded. It’s not willing because the very wealthy hold too much sway over what it says not least being reliant on advertising for its own funding not to mention this same group seeking to minimise its taxation.