Interesting. Starmer is not to be trusted on individual issues or things he says, but I - and I think Lewis, and you - fundamentally trust him, on another level, to run the country right. Not to do all the things we'd want him to, of course, but, well, what Helen said.
Your opinion of Keir Starmer is shared by me, and also millions of British voters who are critical of KS from both his left and his right but will vote for him anyway for sheer lack of alternatives.
I think the thing that concerns me most, as a believer in democracy, is the lack of ideological diversity the 2024-29 parliament is likely to have. There aren't going to be that many Tories in the chamber, and Starmer has been ruthless about his own party's left flank, leaving the parliament dominated by a relatively narrow segment of the political spectrum. Even though that's also the bit of the spectrum I inhabit, I still don't think such homogeneity is good for representation or governance.
I'll be voting for KS. I think this is the first and easiest step. I can see a situation where there are some independent MP's and the left of the PLP snapping constantly at his heels. Even with a strong majority, which i'm not entirely confident he'll achieve, he will likely see an uptick in the pro-Palestine marches/protests. They are likely to see him a soft target, especially with various left-MP's on board potentially a couple of Muslim independent MP's. He's inheriting a poor economy and a fragile international situation, the path from an election win is going to be far from easy.
Starmer is entirely deceitful. He is the true 'heir to Blair'. He will double down on all Blair's destruction of the UK hard evolved constitution and further eviscerate the authority of Parliament and hand rule over to more utterly unaccountable quangos. And we have a poor economy because all the Tories have done since 2010/2014 is to carry on as Continuity Blairites. predicably that has failed.
So we have a horrible choice. (a) we need to give Toryism a very good kicking and (b) we need to keep Starmer out of power.
Reading this over my early AM coffee halfway around the world in ‘LoCali’ I know I’m well beyond my depth commenting on party politics on the other side of the pond. But the parallels with some well known figures in the US are interesting. The famed pol otherwise known as HRC comes to mind. Chunks of what you wrote about Starmer could be pasted onto her and fit quite nicely. But nothing proved a bigger handicap than her penchant for acting like a wind vane. Personally she lost me for good over Iraq, because just a few years before she’d used her bully pulpit as First Lady to crow about her brave anti-war valedictory address at Wellesley (posh American women’s college). Fast forward a few years and she came up short against a guy who was able to make an audacious move up from the junior varsity by cashing in on his own opposition to what had become a very unpopular war. Of course, he then went on to approve drone strikes against American citizens abroad. Maybe there is something about politics that doesn’t square well with the concept of integrity? I may need to run that one by my pal Candide…
The biggest risk to Labour/Starmer winning is that he will simply illegalize the opposition and attempt to (perhaps successfully) establish a long term left wing dictatorship.
I think there's a general perception that Labour in 2024 will be not much different to Labour in 1997, that it's basically made up of people who believe in the system and will respect its norms. That might be true, but there's a lot of worrying signs that it also might not be.
1. Debanking will accelerate a lot under Labour. The Tories, being useless, have failed to pass a law stopping this trend before calling the election. Labour's allies inside banks have already tried many times to simply collectively illegalize running conservative organizations in the UK, and have tried to kick Farage out of the country entirely. Whereas the Tories made some limp-wristed threats and introduced (but didn't finish) legislation, Starmer resolutely refused to condemn it. He will continue to applaud as the sort of left wing women appointed to banking "ethics" committees simply wipe out a much weakened conservative party. He wouldn't ban the right directly because he's not the type, but he very much is the type to look on impassionately as his fellow travellers do it for him.
2. The left in 1997 was humbled by a century of being proven absolutely wrong about everything. They had been forced to watch as east Germans celebrated the fall of their left wing governments, as the USSR gave up on trying to make their ideas work. They were deeply humbled by their legacy of rank failure, and Blair had used that to drag Labour to the right. The left in 2024 has NOT been humbled in this way, and the generation that still remembers those lessons have largely but incorrectly concluded their mistakes were economic (plus are increasingly irrelevant anyway). They have the mentality of the left in 1937, not 1997, and as such are far more radical and fanatical. We see this fanaticism daily in their policies and cultural outputs; there is no moderate centrism there.
3. Starmer's background outside the civil service is human rights law, an extremely vague and expansive set of legal powers that is almost entirely used to override the political will of voters. He is steeped in a culture that sees what voters want as something to be legalistically dismissed in some obscure court - this is NOT the type of job you'd want an actual politician to have specialized in, but as far as I know he has never condemned this profession or expressed any distress about the way it's been abused. This strongly implies that he will continue to look for legalistic ways to embed himself and his allies permanently in power.
4. He has openly discussed doing things specifically designed to exclude the right from politics, like by giving immigrants the automatic right to vote i.e. any time the people who actually have experience of living in the UK decide Labour is terrible he'll just allow in a wave of new client voters who owe their allegiance to the left. This is a quick way to destroy whatever little faith remains in democracy, as indeed by that point it would not meaningfully be one, but he clearly doesn't care and sees manipulating the franchise as a perfectly reasonable way to hold onto power.
Overall it looks like the UK is heading into very dangerous waters. The EU was in effect a form of half-finished and semi-permanent left wing dictatorship. What Labour may have in store for the country will be that on steroids. People who vote for the Left will be fully to blame.
Precisely. Starmer is entirely deceitful. He is an unreformed Trotskyite. His 'plan' is to destroy any vestige of democratic accountability and create an untouchable caste of technocratic managerialists and use Parliament to legislate against itself to make it illegal for it to reverse his policy impositions. I absolutely loathe Toryism but Starmer is simply evil.
I don't think we can call him evil because he really hasn't done much so far except take part in ordinary politics, which isn't evil. Quite the opposite.
My fears about Starmer are based on a reading of the tea leaves, and especially aren't about only him but the sort of people he associates with, supports and who support him. It's very much a fear of the way things seem to be heading.
Whoa there. It was he who got a Blair's immigration changed such that immigrants to the UK - legal or illegal - were immediately entitled to full state benefits. His whole agenda is driven by his Trotskyite upbringing. He has made all this very clear. His agenda is to entirely displace parliamentary government and replace it with a bureaucratic technocratic state. That is he does not think the 'we; have any right to govern ourselves.
Interesting. Starmer is not to be trusted on individual issues or things he says, but I - and I think Lewis, and you - fundamentally trust him, on another level, to run the country right. Not to do all the things we'd want him to, of course, but, well, what Helen said.
Yes, that's a good way of putting it. Of course, the other options aren't great, which helps Starmer!
Your opinion of Keir Starmer is shared by me, and also millions of British voters who are critical of KS from both his left and his right but will vote for him anyway for sheer lack of alternatives.
I think the thing that concerns me most, as a believer in democracy, is the lack of ideological diversity the 2024-29 parliament is likely to have. There aren't going to be that many Tories in the chamber, and Starmer has been ruthless about his own party's left flank, leaving the parliament dominated by a relatively narrow segment of the political spectrum. Even though that's also the bit of the spectrum I inhabit, I still don't think such homogeneity is good for representation or governance.
Completely agree. Indeed, I'd like to see Farage and Corbyn in the next parliament, notwithstanding my profound disagreement with both.
I'll be voting for KS. I think this is the first and easiest step. I can see a situation where there are some independent MP's and the left of the PLP snapping constantly at his heels. Even with a strong majority, which i'm not entirely confident he'll achieve, he will likely see an uptick in the pro-Palestine marches/protests. They are likely to see him a soft target, especially with various left-MP's on board potentially a couple of Muslim independent MP's. He's inheriting a poor economy and a fragile international situation, the path from an election win is going to be far from easy.
Yes, a Starmer government could hit the rocks very quickly, given the difficult economic situation. It's certainly going to be interesting!
Starmer is entirely deceitful. He is the true 'heir to Blair'. He will double down on all Blair's destruction of the UK hard evolved constitution and further eviscerate the authority of Parliament and hand rule over to more utterly unaccountable quangos. And we have a poor economy because all the Tories have done since 2010/2014 is to carry on as Continuity Blairites. predicably that has failed.
So we have a horrible choice. (a) we need to give Toryism a very good kicking and (b) we need to keep Starmer out of power.
Reading this over my early AM coffee halfway around the world in ‘LoCali’ I know I’m well beyond my depth commenting on party politics on the other side of the pond. But the parallels with some well known figures in the US are interesting. The famed pol otherwise known as HRC comes to mind. Chunks of what you wrote about Starmer could be pasted onto her and fit quite nicely. But nothing proved a bigger handicap than her penchant for acting like a wind vane. Personally she lost me for good over Iraq, because just a few years before she’d used her bully pulpit as First Lady to crow about her brave anti-war valedictory address at Wellesley (posh American women’s college). Fast forward a few years and she came up short against a guy who was able to make an audacious move up from the junior varsity by cashing in on his own opposition to what had become a very unpopular war. Of course, he then went on to approve drone strikes against American citizens abroad. Maybe there is something about politics that doesn’t square well with the concept of integrity? I may need to run that one by my pal Candide…
Yes, HRC is a very similar politician! Whilst I accept that politicians must make certain compromises, the flexibility of some is just too much...
The biggest risk to Labour/Starmer winning is that he will simply illegalize the opposition and attempt to (perhaps successfully) establish a long term left wing dictatorship.
I think there's a general perception that Labour in 2024 will be not much different to Labour in 1997, that it's basically made up of people who believe in the system and will respect its norms. That might be true, but there's a lot of worrying signs that it also might not be.
1. Debanking will accelerate a lot under Labour. The Tories, being useless, have failed to pass a law stopping this trend before calling the election. Labour's allies inside banks have already tried many times to simply collectively illegalize running conservative organizations in the UK, and have tried to kick Farage out of the country entirely. Whereas the Tories made some limp-wristed threats and introduced (but didn't finish) legislation, Starmer resolutely refused to condemn it. He will continue to applaud as the sort of left wing women appointed to banking "ethics" committees simply wipe out a much weakened conservative party. He wouldn't ban the right directly because he's not the type, but he very much is the type to look on impassionately as his fellow travellers do it for him.
2. The left in 1997 was humbled by a century of being proven absolutely wrong about everything. They had been forced to watch as east Germans celebrated the fall of their left wing governments, as the USSR gave up on trying to make their ideas work. They were deeply humbled by their legacy of rank failure, and Blair had used that to drag Labour to the right. The left in 2024 has NOT been humbled in this way, and the generation that still remembers those lessons have largely but incorrectly concluded their mistakes were economic (plus are increasingly irrelevant anyway). They have the mentality of the left in 1937, not 1997, and as such are far more radical and fanatical. We see this fanaticism daily in their policies and cultural outputs; there is no moderate centrism there.
3. Starmer's background outside the civil service is human rights law, an extremely vague and expansive set of legal powers that is almost entirely used to override the political will of voters. He is steeped in a culture that sees what voters want as something to be legalistically dismissed in some obscure court - this is NOT the type of job you'd want an actual politician to have specialized in, but as far as I know he has never condemned this profession or expressed any distress about the way it's been abused. This strongly implies that he will continue to look for legalistic ways to embed himself and his allies permanently in power.
4. He has openly discussed doing things specifically designed to exclude the right from politics, like by giving immigrants the automatic right to vote i.e. any time the people who actually have experience of living in the UK decide Labour is terrible he'll just allow in a wave of new client voters who owe their allegiance to the left. This is a quick way to destroy whatever little faith remains in democracy, as indeed by that point it would not meaningfully be one, but he clearly doesn't care and sees manipulating the franchise as a perfectly reasonable way to hold onto power.
Overall it looks like the UK is heading into very dangerous waters. The EU was in effect a form of half-finished and semi-permanent left wing dictatorship. What Labour may have in store for the country will be that on steroids. People who vote for the Left will be fully to blame.
Precisely. Starmer is entirely deceitful. He is an unreformed Trotskyite. His 'plan' is to destroy any vestige of democratic accountability and create an untouchable caste of technocratic managerialists and use Parliament to legislate against itself to make it illegal for it to reverse his policy impositions. I absolutely loathe Toryism but Starmer is simply evil.
I don't think we can call him evil because he really hasn't done much so far except take part in ordinary politics, which isn't evil. Quite the opposite.
My fears about Starmer are based on a reading of the tea leaves, and especially aren't about only him but the sort of people he associates with, supports and who support him. It's very much a fear of the way things seem to be heading.
Whoa there. It was he who got a Blair's immigration changed such that immigrants to the UK - legal or illegal - were immediately entitled to full state benefits. His whole agenda is driven by his Trotskyite upbringing. He has made all this very clear. His agenda is to entirely displace parliamentary government and replace it with a bureaucratic technocratic state. That is he does not think the 'we; have any right to govern ourselves.
Oh I see, you're going back to his time as PP? I don't know much about what he did in that period, so will defer to your judgement.
Only what I have read. And tried to divine. The next five years will reveal if I am correct, or not.