I found this interesting. It looks back at Sir Keir’s five years as the leader of Labour.
Here’s an interesting quote:
He turned left to win the party leadership and turned right to win a general election.
And regarding his campaign for the Labour leadership in 2020:
To win the backing of left-wing Labour activists, he backed a wealth tax on the top 5% of earners, abolishing university tuition fees, nationalising water and energy and restoring freedom of movement between the UK and EU countries. Whatever happened to those promises?
He’s a lying sack of shit and a class traitor
Exactly so. The beady eyed cunt says and does what he needs to, to obtain power.
He demonstrated that the left wing support was fake, purely for political gain, by taking from the most desperate in society to balance the books despite growing calls from millionaires themselves for a wealth tax.
The fucker is bent as a nine bob note as my granddad used to say.
Starmer has always felt to me like there is two versions of him. The stuff he as A Person believes and values - which is best displayed through his work before politics - and Starmer, The Politician, who understands that to change things you must first be in power.
The Person is well documented through his legal career, clearly someone who values human rights, due process, is against the death penalty, has no problem with prosecuting celebrities and politicians, etc. If he never entered parliament, I doubt anyone could claim he’s a tory.
But as Starmer, The Politician, it’s clear he’s willing to modify what he says and offers as a platform depending on the audience. He isn’t a populist - clearly - but it would be denial to claim his platform hasn’t changed between winning the Labour leadership, and the 2024 general election. I think it’s pretty obvious that he adopted a platform he thought would win the leadership, and then switched to one that would win at a general election.
What interests me is how much of The Person remains behind the moderation of The Politician.
Reading the 2024 manifesto, there is a lot of good Labour policy in there. Removing the VAT exemption on private schools is not really a financial decision (as it is being presented by The Politician) but a values judgement that rich people should not get subsidies for luxury goods or services. The same goes for non-doms.
I also think there is a thread of that thinking in the winter fuel payment decision. I absolutely think setting the bar at pension credit is too low, but people like my parents who have workplace pensions in addition to state absolutely do not need to be given hundreds of pounds a year to help with bills they can already easily afford.
The same also goes for landowners complaining about no longer paying diddly squat inheritance tax on land. Is the line too low? Possibly. Is the principle wrong? Absolutely not.
See also lords reform, nationalisation of the railways, infrastructure investment, decarbonising electricity, and a bunch of other stuff.
But if you look at how The Politician talks about a lot of this stuff, it is absolutely presented in ways which are clearly aimed at the Daily Mail, etc. How successful that strategy will be over time will be interested - and I suspect is flawed - but the actions really do matter more than the words.
That is not to say that I think everything is perfect, I don’t. I continue to be a trustee and volunteer at my local foodbank because of the system still being fundamentally broken, and I don’t think The Politician will be the person to fix that. But, I do think some progress is being made in some areas.
It’s rare to read something this reasoned online!
Thanks!
For all important matters, Starmer is as bought up by corporate interests as the tories.
It isn’t that to win the election he has to please voters. He mostly has to please the upper corporate class, who will use their immense media and financial power to do the rest of the work for him (ie. pleasing voters).
Unfortunately, he did that, and is little more than a corporate puppet.
He looks to be the Biden of the UK if polling is anything to go by. The next PM will be either Farage or whoever Musk parachutes into Reform UK to replace him (Andrew Tate perhaps).
The idea that Farage could ever be PM is laughable.
If come 2029 it looked like a realistic possibility then the level of tactical voting and vote swapping across Lab, LD, and Greens would be even more than 2024.
If Reform ever get more than 25-30 seats I’ll do a Paddy Ashdown and eat my hat.
Murdoch trash, blatantly biased article. ggwp
Murdoch doesn’t own Sky anymore. For a few years now, Sky has been owned by Comcast, the American conglomerate that owns NBC and Universal Pictures.
What bias do you think it shows? If it was biased in favour of Sir Keir then it probably wouldn’t mention the policy shifts that he has taken over the last 5 years. Or it would at least try to spin those policy shifts.
