Well, perhaps not. But watching Labour tear itself apart is a bit.
As a somewhat disinterested onlooker, I’m inclined to make the following observations. Kier Starmer is the wrong man for the wrong time. Choosing him as leader is likely to prove as disastrous as choosing Jeremy Corbyn. That said, there was an honesty about Corbyn’s position. Hard left and that’s what you get. Precisely what it says on the tin. Starmer is a professional politician and is so slimy it is hard to pin him down. Having lost so badly this past week, he is floundering around looking to change that which is beyond change – not to mention suitable scapegoats. The Labour party is irredeemably at war with itself – the hard left on the one hand and the moderate centre left on the other. They probably hate each other with almost as much vigour as they hate the Tories.
Diane Abbott thinks that a return to hard left polices will be popular. Yeah, among the activists, maybe, but out here in the real world, among the very people they want to attract to vote for them, not so much.
Starmer’s decision to sack Angela Rayner has spectacularly backfired. I was bemused when I first heard the announcement as I thought that as she was elected by the membership, it wasn’t within his purview. It would seem that he has realised this and sort of promoted her. As well as sacking her, er… Who knows? He doesn’t seem to know what he is doing. That said, I suspect that Rayner is probably more in touch with the working classes in the old industrial north than Starmer – again, that said, her hard left policies are not popular with the actual working classes, the people who put Margaret Thatcher into power. The people who have recently overwhelmingly voted Tory. I’m also not sure that her accusing the party opposite of being scum when in the house went down too well with ordinary people either.
So where does that leave Starmer and his motley band? I am beginning to suspect that it is the same place that Lloyd George found himself in 1929 after a steady decline from the turn of the century. Which leaves a question. What next? What will fill the void? And who will be her majesty’s loyal opposition, because we have seen precious little of that from slimy Starmer.
Don’t understand the question. HM Opposition is the BBC, obvs.
Although you did say “loyal”. Hmmm.
I confess to being completely baffled by the continued existence of people on the hard left. There can’t possibly be a set of ideas that have been more thoroughly discredited. This presumably is why environmentalism is used as a trojan horse to try to persuade people to vote to have their lives destroyed. Over and over again I find myself saying, how can you possibly not know that socialism is a totally shit idea? It has failed spectacularly wherever and whenever it has been tried. If labour really want to connect with ordinary people they should try low taxes, small government, minimal government interference in people’s lives. Encouraging the return of personal responsibility. Not likely I know.
Baffles me, too. I think, though it is a case of clinging to the old workers v toffs mentality.
In my view part of the reason why Socialism has not been as discredited as Fascism has been is that Western societies have not had it drilled into them that Socialism is bad whereas we have, quite rightly in my view, been shown ample reason why Fascism is bad. I find it inexplicable that it is socially acceptable to have a Che tattoo or a hammer and sickle flag but not an Adolf tattoo or a Swastika flag. The symbols of both these horrific ideologies, Fascism and Socialism should be equally socially unacceptable.
“…clinging to the old workers v toffs mentality…
Ironic (or baffling) that those doing the clinging are usually at least middle-class.
Socialism works fine . . . . . until it runs out of other people’s money.
But real socialism has never been tried before. As they keep telling us, while ignoring all the other times it has been tried before and also ignoring the one thing that really hasn’t been tried before – Free market Libertarianism
The really puzzling thing is, why can’t Labour see their unforgiveable error, they abandoned their core vote, the country’s workers.
I don’t believe for one minute most blue collar tory voters are tory party supporters, they’re holding their noses and voting for what they hope is the least dangerous bunch of lunatics.
A patriotic party that gains the trust of and champions the real productive working people of this country will clean up, the tories (who resemble Blair’s labour more each day) better remember that.
UKIP could have been the catalyst but too many egos infighting and the biggest ego simply won’t hold the line, as shown in the last election when he withdrew TBP candidates, and look where handing the election to DePfeffel’s present girl friend has got us.
“…their unforgiveable error, they abandoned their core vote…”
Gillian Duffy….
Labour under Blair & Brown abandoned the working class and became the party of the public sector
It’s taken a long time, 20+ years, for working class to realise this and not vote for Labour. Problem is they hold their noses to vote Tory. As a free market libetarian I do too – the least worst vote
Dan Wootton sees this as a rejection of the metropolitan liberals in the Labour Party “who are trying to spark a culture war by telling us we´re sexist, racist, transphobic and bigoted”
“Woke culture,” he writes, “wasn´t just given a bloody nose, it was smashed into a thousand pieces” and the rest of Britain´s establishment, from schools to the National Trust, must get the message
. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9562311/
I have never voted labour. First election for which I was eligible was 1979. The “winter of discontent” – that absolute demonstration of how little people mattered to the then union paymasters put me off for good.
The current infantilised “woke” scum, who are the current rulers, make the old union barons look like the teletubbies.
The first thing labour have to do is demonstrate to the white majority that they don’t consider them a cancer. They have to actually demonstrate this. Words are irrelevant. They have to start purging, actually, properly start purging the “woke” filth.
I’m not holding my breath.
1979 I was too young, but I was campaigning for Maggie at school etc
1982 was my first when in sixth form. Local Conservative HQ amazed when pimply long haired biker walked in and asked for manifesto. They gave me a big bundle of publicity material, stickers etc too, some I still have.
I also advised them not to pre-judge people by age & appearance
PS Acne didn’t stop until 40+ and still have pus sinus drains and occasional spots
Starmer is one of those politicians that believes he’s entitled to rule us, and his job is to say the things that will make people vote for him.
But that’s backwards. Politicians should be saying what they really believe and intend to do, then we decide whether to accept or reject them. That’s how democracy works. You’re right, Corbyn’s honesty about being an extremist commie was better.
Starmer’s an extremist commie, too – but he’s going to try to get into power by pretending not to be.
Starmer’s problem is that he’s trying to be “all things to all men” which might have worked in the smoke filled backrooms before 1979, but in a world of digital, always-on and intrusive multimedia, he just looks like a hypocrite, swinging from one position to another in hope of finding one which will get him into number 10.
It’s all very well for him to blame his predecessor, but the truth is that his sticky fingers were all over the 2019 Election approach (particularly the absolute failure over BRExit), so he can’t escape that easily and when facing the tough questions it shows. He’s tried to put BRExit behind him, but the core of the parties executive aren’t the forgiving sort and for them BRExit is a political Rubicon that cannot be crossed without outright civil war.
As has been said, there is no route back to power for Labour that doesn’t go through Hartlepool and the Northern seats that the Tories captured in 2019, but this requires some form of accommodation with the (largely BRExit supporting) Northern working class, which is anathema to the Islington champagne socialists that run the party – for whom the working class are just a bunch of racist, bigoted, misogynistic white males. It’s hard to get elected if you openly despise the people you require the vote from.
So, Labour is being forced down the same path of ever-decreasing circles that the Liberals Party went down. Sure, they might form some future post-Tory coalition with the Greens, the SNP or the Lib Dems, but they will never be returned to power in their own right.
Who’s this Kier Starmer bloke ???
That’s part of the problem.