Sir Keir Starmer - Labour Party Leader

[Felicity, I guess so]

This has probably been mentioned before but kier Starmer bears an uncanny likeness to max headroom.

No, Max Headroom had a lot more facial expressions and human warmth

[Antepli Ejderha]

I wonder who wrote that for him.

Sacked in the morning.

[Nefertiti2]

Reminder: we could have had a minority Labour government, but stopping Corbyn was more important

https://twitter.com/REWearmouth/status/1348221785372844033?s=20

[DCI Harry Batt]

Going against his party's policy, and reneging on his own personal pledges. I mean, neither of those should be a surprise to anyone who was paying attention. But still worth noting.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Is there any chance that Starmer could be (a) forced to change tack or (b) deposed, any time before the next general election?

[Snake Plissken]

Not unless he upsets a Guardian columnist by criticising their cooking or something. Then the knives will come out.

[Kowalski]

This morning I woke up and said to myself "This is the day I give Sir Keith a new chance, a clean fresh start, a new beginning, a fresh look with less cynical eyes" , in short I was so magnanimous I was magnanimity personified.

Two hours later I found one of his articles about the Poll Tax or something behind the Telegraph paywall and I am now bereft. I was fully ready to transmit my forensic magnanimousness to my carefully curated social media bubble but how can you do that without reading his golden words? I am now bereft, bereft I tells ya.

[wingco]

Keir Starmer positioned himself as an ardent Remainer to distance himself from Corbyn and that formed the basis of his appeal for a great many of my Centrist Mates. If they're feeling cheated, they're being studiously quiet about it.

[Nefertiti2]

Keir Starmer positioned himself as an ardent Remainer to distance himself from Corbyn and that formed the basis of his appeal for a great many of my Centrist Mates. If they're feeling cheated, they're being studiously quiet about it.

There's a surprise. I consider the continued attack on Corbyn by the Centrist Mates wing seems to be displacement from their role in having been complicit in enabling a far right takeover, and eliminating the opposition.

[hobbes]

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Starmer is a supine bollock.

[E10 Rifle]

And now he's reaching for "party of the family" reactionary bollocks. It's notable that his move to the right has been primarily on social matters rather than economic ones; it's pure Blue Labourism - with a dog-whistle to throwing yer gays and trans and foreigns under the bus. Which should distress the apparently impeccably socially liberal metropolitan Centrist Mate tendency - yet, strangely, it doesn't. As long as they're not the ones under the bus, it's all "pragmatic and necessary". Funny, that.

[wingco]

The "party of the family" stuff is awful. It's all so insulting. Does he think he can impress the Red Wall types and retain the support of younger progressives, hoping they don't notice what the fuck he's up to? He's as subtle as a Tim Brooke-Taylor union jack waistcoat.

[E10 Rifle]

Yes, it's Greek-girl-from-Common-People-ing the Plain People Of Our English Northern Towns. It's the nouveaux football fan off of The Fast Show shouting "immigration controls!" to impress his fellow-supporters. Hideous.

[Satchmo Distel]

Thread is blocking me for some reason

(or my phone's fucked)

Let me take a guess :-)

[Kowalski]

I'd rather be The Daily Mail's man on my knees, than my own man on my feet.

[Duncan Gardner]

Let me take a guess :-)

Don't bother

[Snake Plissken]

It's notable that his move to the right has been primarily on social matters rather than economic ones;

https://twitter.com/DanielaGabor/status/1348211300942434306

He's somehow managing to put the Labour Party to the right of Joe Biden.

[Fussbudget]

I can't reconcile trying to appeal to those fabled Red Wall voters with his constantly writing paywalled articles for the Telegraph. Is that what he thinks they read?

[E10 Rifle]

Was just thinking about that. Biden's nowhere near my ideal of a progressive Democrat, but you've got a sense of what he stands for and what his message is in a way you just don't with Starmer.

Part of this is, I think, that he's new to politics. He wasn't even an MP when the crash happened and Labour were last in power, he knows little of the party's internal highways and byways, which has made him very easy prey to the Party Machine Right, who seem to be pretty much calling all the shots now.

[Satchmo Distel]

The only possible (but not credible) defence is that the Tories have gone to the hard fascist right so there's a vacancy in the centre-right, but even this ignores the fact that the Tory vote always comes home to roost in the general election (e.g. "moderate Toriess voting for Johnson last time).

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Keir Starmer positioned himself as an ardent Remainer to distance himself from Corbyn and that formed the basis of his appeal for a great many of my Centrist Mates. If they're feeling cheated, they're being studiously quiet about it.

As a Remainer (intensely) and a centrist (to some extent. enough to be a Lib Dem member anyway, though very much on the left of my party), I absolutely loathe Starmer as I've said before. But I wasn't a member of the Labour Party. I can only assume that the failure of your centrist Remainer friends to feel, and express, appropriate scorn and outrage at Starmer must be because they are Labour members and their experience of Labour internal battles against the Momentum lot have been so bitter, intense and scarring that it has sown a degree of animosity to the Left which trumps any more rational appraisal of Starmer. I haven't been in those battles or suffered whatever vitriol has been thrown around in them so it's easy for me (as well as kind of irrelevant of course) to say now that I would prefer Corbyn.

[Nefertiti2]

and as a number of people have pointed out there are lots of progressive ways he could support families, by arguing for decent housing policies, fighting zero hours contracts, resisiting academies and even offering free broadband when schools are closed.

Instead he's waving a come and get me flag at Paul Embery

[Nefertiti2]

As a Remainer (intensely) and a centrist (to some extent. enough to be a Lib Dem member anyway, though very much on the left of my party), I absolutely loathe Starmer as I've said before. But I wasn't a member of the Labour Party. I can only assume that the failure of your centrist Remainer friends to feel, and express, appropriate scorn and outrage at Starmer must be because they are Labour members and their experience of Labour internal battles against the Momentum lot have been so bitter, intense and scarring that it has sown a degree of animosity to the Left which trumps any more rational appraisal of Starmer. I haven't been in those battles or suffered whatever vitriol has been thrown around in them so it's easy for me (as well as kind of irrelevant of course) to say now that I would prefer Corbyn.

Have to say that the bitter instensity was all one way. Momentum went out and campaigned for Joan Ryan, for goodness sake.

[Nefertiti2]

Reagan for all his many faults didn’t sound like an adenoidal sales manager explaining why he’d missed his targets again.

he offered a dream. Starmer only offers excuses

https://twitter.com/solhugheswriter/status/1348301972609388544?s=21

[Johnny Velvet]

If everyone will forgive me for indulging in some free-association, there is a possibility that Starmer could be even more damaging for the Left than one might realise if he does get elected.

By the time the next election rolls around, the Conservatives will have been in power for 15 years. That’s a long time for any administration and as Andy Beckett noted in a recent column by that stage the government is likely to appear tired and exhausted. Even its supporters in the media won’t be able to shy away from that and it’s also possible that many of the people who voted Conservative since 2010 will think that another five years of Tory rule would be a bit of a stretch. I remember Michael Caine, of all people, once saying that he tended to oscillate between voting Conservative and Labour because he thought it was unhealthy for one party to be in power for too long. There are probably quite a few British voters who harbour similar thoughts. So it’s possible that, assuming he’s still Labour leader in 2024, Starmer wins the election essentially because of his opponents’ weaknesses rather than any visionary or dynamic work undertaken by himself or his party. In that scenario, it’s inevitable that he would govern pretty much as many people here, myself included, imagine he would govern – a craven, milquetoast style of government that marches to the beat of the tabloid drum, clamps down on immigration, throws LGBTQIA+ people and non-white people under the bus (to borrow E10’s succinct phrasing), bombs at least one Middle Eastern or majority Muslim nation while solemnly intoning that it’s for their own good and makes no serious attempt to reign in the forces of capital that are contributing to the climate apocalypse. But none of that will serve to discredit him or his style of politics in the eyes of his supporters or the media. They’ll simply point to him being the Labour leader who finally ended almost two decades of Conservative hegemony as evidence that this kind of politics is the only way to secure a liberal government in Britain and that anyone advocating otherwise is a dangerous fool. I don’t want to say I hope I’m proven wrong because even a Starmer government is better than any Conservative government (though please correct me if that’s my white, Irish privilege manifesting). But I can see it happening.