Starmer VIII: Labour will set you free

[idunnosomename]

Has he hired a 7ft tall photographer?

[Sebastian Cobb]

Sounds like everyone's feeling a little listless in big keef hq.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jun/11/not-full-of-confidence-labour-frets-over-starmers-response-to-tory-chaos

Another rebrand soon come?

[Blumf]

Oh god, not more homework.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Oh god, not more homework.

I quite liked the bitter jibe about him sat in his ivory tower writing his book while the people at the coal face are left with no direction.

That means that while Starmer may be writing a book on his political philosophy, some of his closest colleagues still struggle to understand what their leader stands for. "What is his project?" asked one shadow minister.

[Ferris]

Did they ever finish the policy analysis? That was due around now wasn't it? Or was it 2023?

[Sebastian Cobb]

Did they ever finish the policy analysis? That was due around now wasn't it? Or was it 2023?

You mean the one Annelise Dodds was doing? Yet when asked about policy the other week just mumbled something about the website?

To be fair as an absolute weasel if I was given that task I'd assume there's no point starting it because they'll have changed their mind umpteen times before it's due.

[Blumf]

Polices, reports, plans, vision for the future - the guy doesn't release anything. I expect is the same for farts, no wonder he looks so bad.

[Ferris]

You mean the one Annelise Dodds was doing? Yet when asked about policy the other week just mumbled something about the website?

Yeah that's the one. Sounds like she's stuck in!

To be fair as an absolute weasel if I was given that task I'd assume there's no point starting it because they'll have changed their mind umpteen times before it's due.

Yeah same for me - wait until a month before the deadline and check if it's still needed, then dash something off if so.

Then again, I'm not trying to rebuild trust in a foundering organization.

[shoulders]

Sounds like everyone's feeling a little listless in big keef hq.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jun/11/not-full-of-confidence-labour-frets-over-starmers-response-to-tory-chaos

Another rebrand soon come?

"I think he doesn't get enough credit for segueing out of Corbynism without being pulled into a betrayal narrative," said one senior party figure. "The membership know what he's trying to do. He's taken them on a journey and they're now his members and they're his people."

Pulled into a betrayal narrative? Why did hundreds of thousands of people leave the party then? Also 'going on a journey' is Frank Lampard tier shite.

[Ferris]

Can't believe someone genuinely used "on a journey". It'll be "we go again" soon enough.

[Fambo Number Mive]

As someone still in the party, I will never be his member or his person. Voting against his bullshit every chance I get.

[Johnny Yesno]

As someone still in the party, I will never be his member or his person. Voting against his bullshit every chance I get.

Yep, same.

[olliebean]

It's gonna be Streeting next. May as well just get used to it.

[shoulders]

The man weirder looking and acting than Ed Miliband and plainly less trustworthy.

[Zero Gravitas]

Would get me closer to tearing my card up, the promise of slow background democratic restoration of the party is all well and good, but if I'm also forced to get mental flashes of that face on a head whenever I read official communications I'm gonna snap.

[Famous Mortimer]

More elected members of local Liverpool branch resign in disgust:

https://skwawkbox.org/2022/06/10/liverpool-labour-group-loses-two-thirds-of-remaining-officers-as-vice-chair-and-treasurer-quit-party-in-disgust/

[olliebean]

The man weirder looking and acting than Ed Miliband and plainly less trustworthy.

He gave a good performance on Question Time the other day. Actually managed to sound like a socialist. I didn't believe a word of it, but many will. So he'll get the votes the same way Starmer did.

[Quote]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jun/11/poll-says-keir-starmer-worse-choice-for-pm-than-boris-johnson?

This doesn't look good for Corbyn Starmer.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Video - open for a surprise
https://twitter.com/Agitate4Change/status/1535705691985412096

[Poobum]

Hahaha, that's brilliant. Suits him perfectly.

[king_tubby]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/06/10/keir-starmer-thatcher-wrong-british-society/

"The trouble with this kind of photoshoot is that people look at the surroundings and assume it's my living room," says Sir Keir Starmer. "I did one in Scotland and there were piles of books on architecture lying around. People did all this analysis of what I was reading."

Sadly I couldn't read the rest as I didn't want to give the Telegraph any money. I'm pretty sure it encouraged the proletariat to seize the means of production and guillotine the oligarchs though.

[Blumf]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/06/10/keir-starmer-thatcher-wrong-british-society/

Sadly I couldn't read the rest as I didn't want to give the Telegraph any money. I'm pretty sure it encouraged the proletariat to seize the means of production and guillotine the oligarchs though.

Seems I can. I like this bit:

He gave another curiously flat display at Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday. It is often said that attacking the Government at these set pieces is all the harder when you are confronted with an open goal – and Starmer did his best to spoon it over the bar from five yards out.

Code Select Expand

Keir Starmer: 'Thatcher was wrong about British society'

The Labour leader on why he doesn't believe in showmanship and how he hopes that the political pendulum is swinging towards competence

Starmer: 'I don't buy into the argument that politics is a celebrity business and you have to be a showman'


"The trouble with this kind of photoshoot is that people look at the surroundings and assume it's my living room," says Sir Keir Starmer. "I did one in Scotland and there were piles of books on architecture lying around. People did all this analysis of what I was reading."

The photographer has taken us to a very well-appointed suite on the top floor of the FitzWilliam hotel in Belfast. Starmer is visiting the city to talk to local politicians and businesses about the Northern Ireland protocol. He takes another look around. "They'll be complaining I've spent £10,000 on the blinds and saying: 'Look at his lime green chair. What does it mean?'"

No doubt most public figures face similar levels of scrutiny in the age of social media. But the cod analysis of Starmer is perhaps exacerbated by the fact that, more than two years on from him taking over as leader of the Labour party, he remains something of a public enigma.

The former head of the Crown Prosecution Service shifts uncomfortably in a chair and then stands stiffly on the balcony as the photographer directs him. Incongruously, the Blackadder theme tune is playing over the room's sound system. It is remarkable how much more at ease and personable he is when cameras are off and we are chatting one-on-one.

I'm far from the only one to notice the difference. In a BBC interview earlier this week, Starmer's deputy Angela Rayner said: "When I'm with Keir and there's not a camera in his face he's such a funny character and such a nice guy." She suggested his time as a lawyer had conditioned him to take the passion out of his public performances. Rayner, who has at times been accused of a surfeit of passion, said she often wants him to "put more welly into it".
Starmer with deputy Angela Rayner – she has said she wants him to "put more welly into it" Credit: Eddie Mulholland

The question is whether Starmer's inability to emote and perform in front of the cameras is a fatal flaw in a modern politician. After all, the 59-year-old is not going to be able to tour the country having one-on-one conversations with every member of the electorate.

He gave another curiously flat display at Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday. It is often said that attacking the Government at these set pieces is all the harder when you are confronted with an open goal – and Starmer did his best to spoon it over the bar from five yards out.

The general consensus was that this week couldn't have gone much better for the Labour party. On Monday, Boris Johnson faced a vote of no confidence from the MPs in his own party and only narrowly won. The Prime Minister is badly wounded, his authority damaged and his ability to govern compromised. And yet, with Johnson's jugular exposed, Starmer chose to quiz him on health policy rather than internecine warfare in the Tory party.

Over the past two years, the Labour leader has been pitched against one of the great entertainers of modern politics. Arguably this has thrown his own woodenness into stark relief. But Starmer is hoping that the political pendulum is swinging back from charisma and towards competence.

"I don't buy into the argument that politics is a celebrity business and you have to be a showman," he says. "Politics and governing countries is a serious business. It requires focus, dedication, integrity, and application of the highest standards.

"I think the country's a bit tired of the idea that it's all a bit of entertainment. In the middle of a cost of living crisis, people are less interested in laughing at the Prime Minister's jokes and more interested in what he's actually doing to help them pay their bills."

Starmer believes that it is the building economic crisis, as much as the issues around Partygate and whether Johnson lied to Parliament, that has led to the Prime Minister facing mutiny in his ranks. "I think that some of his MPs would probably be prepared to overlook some of the trust issues if they thought he had a plan and was delivering."
Placeholder image for youtube video: wL_taLF759w

He was surprised, he says, at the size of the vote against Johnson and believes the Prime Minister was, too. But he also believes the failure to oust him will further tarnish the Conservative brand.

"Tory MPs had a very clear choice on Monday: show some backbone and get rid of him or prop him up. And they've chosen to prop him up. They have chosen to weld themselves to Boris Johnson knowing all of his failings."

"There are plenty of colleagues saying this is the best outcome for the Labour Party: a deeply damaged Prime Minister who is unpopular out there across the country. I think that's right. So whatever the party interests may be, it's in the national interest that he goes now, not least because issues, like those in Northern Ireland, need to be resolved. I don't mind who I face in the general election. I really don't."

Starmer is also hoping that those who need convincing of his abilities to lead a fractious nation in difficult times will look to his track record of leading a fractious political party in difficult times. He also believes that the work he has done in transforming Labour following the ousting of Jeremy Cobyn as leader is the best demonstration of his hidden fire.

"You don't make the changes we've made to the Labour party over the last two years without being absolutely passionate about the need to win," says Starmer. "When I took over most people told me it wasn't possible for Labour to come off the back of that general election loss [in 2019] and win the next general election. I've never believed that.

"Since the day I took over as leader of a party, I've been utterly focused on how I transform it from one that lost very badly in 2019 to one that can win an election.

It is clear in terms of what we've done on anti-Semitism, the strong stance we're taking on Nato, the way we have developed a very pro-business approach on the economy."

He also cites the rule changes that have been made and which will govern the party's next leadership contest. These should make it less likely the top job will go to a candidate from the more radical fringes. So is he ready to declare "mission accomplished" on changing the Labour party?

"It's never job done. We've done a significant amount. When someone like Louise Ellman rejoined the Labour Party, who had left it because of their concerns over anti-Semitism, yeah, that was a special moment," he says. "I'd always said that whether we were making progress on anti-Semitism was not for me to judge. It was for other people who had left the Labour party or felt they couldn't vote for the Labour party."

Does he think it is possible that Corbyn will ever be allowed to rejoin Labour? "Jeremy's obviously lost the whip. And I think it's very difficult to see circumstances now in which that situation is going to be resolved."

In another sign of how much the party has changed, Mick Lynch, the general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers union, recently claimed Starmer is "not on the side of workers" and that Labour has become a "bland democratic party". Lynch suggested that other unions are considering their affiliation to Labour.

With the UK facing a chaotic summer of strikes, including mass strikes across the national rail network to cause disruption in mid-June, Starmer probably won't mind a few insults being hurled his way by more militant trade unionists like Lynch.

"Nobody wants to see strikes and all the disruption that they cause," says Starmer. "We want the strikes averted and we urge everyone to come back around the table to negotiate. There is still time to stop this massive inconvenience to the public."

Having overhauled the party, his second task was then to expose the Government as unfit. That's been the work of the last six to nine months, in which Starmer says he's been "ably assisted by Boris Johnson".

The third task is to lay out the Labour party's programme for government. This leg of Starmer's agenda is still very much a work in progress. He and Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, have repeatedly bashed the Tories for being the party of "low growth and high taxes".

"Low growth is the single biggest challenge that we face – that is the Achilles heel of this Government," says Starmer. "The growth over 12 years has been very, very poor and very, very low. There's no point blaming Covid. There's no point attributing this all to Ukraine."

But the obvious questions are: what would Labour do to boost growth and which taxes would it lower?

It is notable that the main point on which the party has recently driven the political agenda has been in getting the Government to impose a windfall tax on energy companies to raise money to help households struggling with their utility bills. Having initially rebuffed Labour's calls for a windfall tax, Chancellor Rishi Sunak eventually pulled a screeching U-turn and imposed an even bigger levy than Reeves had demanded. However, that has only added to the nation's already enormous tax burden.

Earlier this week, Lord Mandelson, one of the architects of New Labour, called for the Labour party to "raise its sights" and for Starmer to "accelerate" the development of policies in order to "turn the intellectual tide" rather than just wait for Johnson's government to implode.

Sir Tony Blair has also urged Starmer to lay out a programme that is "radical without being dangerous" and one shadow cabinet minister has been quoted as saying: "Keir still needs to set out a vision beyond primary colours."
Starmer during this week's Prime Minister's Questions

Starmer is not wholly convinced. "We need the broad framework. We need that optimistic, aspirational, ambitious vision for Britain. But two years before an election – if that's what it is – it's primary colours that matter.

"If there's one thing I'm not short of, it's advice from other people on what we need to do to take the Labour party forward." That said, he does admit to having regular contact with New Labour grandees like "Peter, Tony and Gordon".

"I'm very mindful of the fact that the Labour Party won three elections from 1997 onwards, we haven't won since and I'm determined that we're going to win the next general election," he says. He adds that Labour has been talking to the "winning teams" in the US, Germany and Australia. "We are making sure that we've got a world class campaign when it comes to the next general election."

Rumour has it that Labour is planning a blitz of policy announcements in the lead up to the autumn conference in September. For now Starmer is keeping his cards very close to his chest. He talks of a skills deficit in the country. David Blunkett is heading up a commission on skills for young people but that remains a "work in progress".

Labour is also spending time on developing a preventative health strategy and looking at how the UK can lead the transition to new green energy solutions. Starmer also says he's focusing on "harnessing the spirit of the pandemic".

"If ever there was evidence that Margaret Thatcher was wrong about there being no such thing as society, we just saw it in the pandemic.

"Obviously, we now need to spell out what that alternative plan is. And, you know, we are spending a lot of time on that project. People will push me and ask: 'Where's the precise detail here? Where are the pounds and pence against every column?' At this stage, I'm not going to spell out in microscopic detail what we can do, because we could still be two years away from a general election."

It is perhaps understandable not to detail his policy agenda to the last pound and pence. But in broad terms, would he, for example, like to reduce the UK's overall tax burden?

"When I'm asked about tax, my first answer is we've got to grow the economy," he says, somewhat evasively. "As a general proposition, we want to keep taxes as low as we can to ensure that the economy thrives and grows. But at the same time, we do need a fair taxation system."

I try to drill down into specifics. Labour opposed the Government's increase in National Insurance contributions by 1.5 per cent, which came into effect in April, just as inflation was racing towards double figures. Would Starmer reverse it? "If we were in government we wouldn't have brought it in. And that's why we voted against it."

But, given the policy has now been implemented, would he reverse it? "We voted against it because it was the wrong tax at the wrong time. It's taxing working people and businesses as we're coming out of Covid and right in the middle of a cost of living crisis."

I point out that the economy is likely to be struggling to recover and inflation high for some time to come and give him one more opportunity to commit to reversing the National Insurance hike. "We'll set out our plans nearer the election for everybody to see," he says.

Starmer couldn't be in a better place to demonstrate the importance of pragmatism and practicality in overcoming passion. After PMQs on Wednesday, he flew to Dublin to meet the Irish President Michael Higgins, the Taoiseach Micheál Martin as well as members of the Irish business community. He spent Thursday and Friday in Belfast.

His visit came against the backdrop of a threat by Johnson's government to rip up a post-Brexit trade deal for Northern Ireland. In response, the European Commission has said it will respond to any unilateral UK move on the protocol by "using the legal and political tools" – raising the prospect of a trade war.

"A lot of issues remain under the Northern Ireland protocol – I'm not going to pretend there aren't issues," says Starmer. "But with good faith, with guile, with graft, with statecraft, and with trust, they can be resolved." He places a special emphasis on the word "trust" and emphatically argues that the solution wouldn't be found "through unilaterally introducing legislation, which could breach international law".

Starmer thinks that the starting point for the resolution of challenges in Northern Ireland must be the Good Friday Agreement, which "is as important today as it was on the day it was signed". However, he believes this route to resolution is being undermined by the lack of trust that the various parties have in the present occupant of Number 10.

"The idea was that the British Prime Minister, of whichever political party, would be the honest broker – a sort of guarantor of the Good Friday Agreement along with Ireland – and that's the role that successive Prime Ministers have played," says Starmer.

"But I have been really struck – both in Dublin and Belfast – at the lack of trust in this Prime Minister. Nobody sees him as an honest broker. And that is a fundamental problem."


[shoulders]

"Tory MPs had a very clear choice on Monday: show some backbone and get rid of him or prop him up. And they've chosen to prop him up. They have chosen to weld themselves to Boris Johnson

Such a fucking moron. They didn't, they are deeply divided and he should be playing on the fact the government are divided.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Its inexplicable that he is unwilling to mount an attack on tory indecisiveness, especially given as its a line Johnson trotted out to attack him. Instead he's saying that if Johnson had a plan the tories would pull together behind him.  Fucking hell

[Zetetic]

Love "Fed up with the state of the Britain? Why not bring in the people who run the Labour Party?" as an argument.

[shoulders]

The conspiracy narrative that Starmer isn't actually trying to get Labour elected in 2024 resurfaces.

[Fambo Number Mive]

Any other Labour leader etc.

Johnson must be so glad Starmar is Labour leader.

Boris Johnson makes a better prime minister than Keir Starmer would despite Partygate, the cost of living crisis and the confidence vote in Johnson held by his MPs, according to the latest Observer poll.

The Opinium figures, which will raise further concerns within Labour over the party leader's performance, shows that the prime minister has a two-point lead over his opponent. It also reveals that Starmer's party holds a narrow two-point lead, compared with a three-point lead in the last poll a fortnight ago. Labour are on 36% of the vote, with the Tories up one point on 34%. The Lib Dems are on 13% with the Greens on 6%...

[shoulders]

Keith's inability to translate any of the anger over the Covid parties to support for Labour is criminally incompetent.

Desperately sad Corbyn couldn't have not agreed to the election and hung on for a few months to be opposition leader during Covid, which would have - temporarily - swept away Brexit as an issue. He would have marmalised Johnson and Hancock. What's more, it would still have been a hung parliament.

[Johnny Yesno]

Having initially rebuffed Labour's calls for a windfall tax, Chancellor Rishi Sunak eventually pulled a screeching U-turn and imposed an even bigger levy than Reeves had demanded. However, that has only added to the nation's already enormous tax burden.

Oh no! I feel so enormously burdened by the taxes fossil fuel corporations have to pay.

[Quote]

Anyone but the deluded cult of the Labour right would've known that having no policies, no personality, no vision and basically nothing to offer but more of the same (but boring) was a terrible strategy.

No doubt they'll spin it that Keith is actually laying the groundwork and winning back trust for the next Labour leader to go big, after five years of moaning that winning was all that matters and anything else is purity politics nonsense.