Starmer is quite foolish even trying to depower the left of Labour tbh. He has none of tony blair's talent for coalition building and will rupture the whole party.
What is even worse that the absolute state of the Government is the absolute state of the opposition. We desperately need something to change radically in our politics.
Labour just needs to split and get it over with - there is no desire for compromise from any side of the party.
At least with the tories, they give the rhetoric of being priti Patel types but thus far they haven’t really done anything horrendous and you sort of feel the sensible tories still pull strings in the background.
I mean they haven’t yet proposed urinating on poor people or setting fire to immigrants or removing the vote from anyone under the age of 45 who doesn’t have at least £500k in assets, I suppose, so maybe you’re right…
Jack - brexit aside what has the nutty wing of the Tory party achieved? They only got in power because of said brexit.
Priti bangs on about stopping migrant crossings (for example) but there is nothing she can do - the daily mail crap all over her because of it but at the end of the day the sensible wing of the tories stop her doing something nuts.
name one truly trumpian thing they have managed to achieve yet? Aside from being generally crappy and a bit corrupt?
well delaying both lock down by several weeks when everyone could see they had to happen probably extended each by about 2 months - which is why we have spent more time in lockdown than almost any other country- that is pretty major
From the title of this thread I thought it was rightist bedwetter’s wet dream of the year every year since 1976 straight. Oddly the Labour Party is still here.
Chill - Agee the cull was horrible and basically decimated my tribe, but I still think there are enough non-zealots on the party to keep the ERG or the NRG in check - those guys are only 70/80 MPs.
problem with the tories is same problem with Labour - the membership are weirdos, so you get odd people getting to the top because normal people don’t join political parties.
What, you mean, Brexit aside, there’s not much to pin on them (apart from monumentally failing to address cladding issues that caused Grenfell, failing repeatedly to dole out the compensation due to Windrush generation members wrongly harassed and deported, presiding over the highest death rate per capita from Covid in the civilised world, not so much channelling as firehosing cash to dubious contacts and mates, increasing tax with disproportionate impact on the poorest workers to pay for benefits for wealthy retired boomers, monumentally cocking up the withdrawal from Afghanistan (despite months of warning and ability to plan cf like what the French did), presiding over a disastrous energy policy that allowed gas reserves to be deliberately depleted and cash returned to shareholders and leaves millions wondering whether they can afford to heat their homes over the winter, attempting to criminalise the RNLI fishing drowning people out of the sea, Gavin Williamson fooking up exam results for hundreds of thousands of school kids and causing all manner of other chaos whilst being more interested in posing for pictures with whips and tarantulas and policing portraiture in student common rooms…)
I quite agree, nothing much really… barely anything to speak of…
Tend to agree JCD - there’s a performative/optical element to it and not sure that the system with Union bloc votes that allowed Miliband E to nick it with the help of Len fooking McCluskey is necessarily the wisest course going forward either, but a symbolic victory over the loony brigade is worth having.
Otherwise we’ll get Richard khunting Burgon next and the country will be even more irreparably fooked than it already is.
Exactly Jack - from my perspective, it's not just about ideological opposition to socialism, but about having an effective, electable oppo to deal with the khvnts in power.
Problem is more that wherever Labour get their money it’s absolutely dwarved, even microscopic in comparison to the dark money flowing into Tory party coffers from oligarchs, arms dealers, “entrepeneurs” and Khunts Anonymous.
McDonnell is an utter c unt. But also a fool. Remember him saying ‘as we move into government’ before the last election? Totally mental. As are all extremists.
But with a hollowed out middle, what do you expect? people are sheep ffs.
The "wah-wah-wah - look at the state of Labour, they're just the WORST" is hilarious. Not ideal, but 100x less wtaf than the current shower in charge.
UK needs a PR system and Labour should spilt with half going to join the Socialist Worker and half to the Lib Dems. Tories need to split with 1/3 to UKIP, 1/3 to the Union Movement, and 1/3 to the Lib Dems.
We need a rainbow alliance of Labour, the LD's, Greens and ideally Nationalists as well in my view to fight the next election only as a united anti Tory front and promising to bring in PR if they win as JellyMonster indicates.
Labour I tend to agree is in existential crisis; but a slow gradual one; they are unlikely to die or be replaced very quickly at all hence I think we need the above or we could be lumbered with decades more Tory rule.
Quite separately whilst I know he is a shameless populist in many ways, we live in populist times, and I think given that Labour's leader ought to be Burnham. He could also, short term at least, probably unite the Starmer/Blairite wing of the party and the Momentum Corbynite loons for long enough to at least fight an election
without any seats in Scotland it would take a swing of absolutely mind-blowing proportions for Labour to win
this is the key point of course
it makes absolutely no difference what starmer does or doesn’t do at his conference if they can’t fix this (and it appears for the time being they can’t)
Indeed but party activists (same goes for the Tories) are the absolute last people in the world who should be making important decisions in my view (speaking as a completely inactive Labour member) - they are far more extreme and interested in politics than the average voter and the last people in the world who understand how to win elections/swing voters/the Red Wall etc over
Labour needs to advocate for PR, otherwise they’re probably screwed. A singular talent like Blair only comes along once in a generation.
They should also probably realise that while the average brit is on board with socialist spending, they are socially conservative and attracted to aspirational individualism.
The Labour party just has one fundamental issue that it is run by middle class socialists who are obsessed with causes that mean nothing to the man in the street and as a result their traditional voters no longer have anything in common with the party and no reason to vote for it. Hence the red wall at the last election voting for a party that at least said it would do something to deal with the issues that matter to normal people. If you're a jobless former steel mill worker up north you don't give a toss about the Palestinians.
attempting to criminalise the RNLI fishing drowning people out of the sea
Except this didn't happen and it was Farage who had a pop at the RNLI.
But Corbyn and his rich mates in unions need something to talk about around their £200 per head dinner sessions in islington. palestines seems to give them the best leftie chicks to ...serve
What Jelly said at 1 - and the sooner this happens, the sooner we will get good quality government back because the compromise required to form a governing coalition under PR will require drawing from a wider and better quality pool of talent than is available to the big two parties now, especially since Boris is fettered by blind loyalty to the headbanger Brexiteer wing of the party and Starmer is having to deal with factional dissent and the deluded cult of Corbyn.
party activists (same goes for the Tories) are the absolute last people in the world who should be making important decisions
This is exactly what Starmer is trying to achieve and it has set fire to a blue touch paper for the hard left activists who see him coming from a mile off.
Labour are finished thanks to Miliband's stupidity in dealing with the Falkirk ballot rigging, Momentum's general stupidity in thinking anyone other than middle class pseudo-trots and students will vote for "pure" socialism, Brown's ego and Clegg's vanity. Bozo has brought the Tories firmly back into the one nation sphere, which is what got them to be in a position to gather in the ERG frother voters despite them all bemoaning Cameron. Given his poorer background than lots of Tories, affinity for cycling, time in Brussels, having COVID etc. he is far more in tune with normal people than goons like JRM, and is exploiting the social goodwill that comes with the pandemic to set up the tax and spend that will remove the standard Labour line of attack.
Labour does not have any solutions that people can believe in.
As an example, there is a finite amount of housing. The only medium-term solutions to the current housing crisis are (i) increase supply and (ii) reduce demand.
Increasing supply would involve reducing building costs which requires (a) reducing bureaucratic requirements and effective taxes (e.g. having to pay contributions to local authority, build a percentage of social housing, etc) and (b) extracting via a tax or some other way a large percentage of increase in land values that result from rezoning of land from agricultural to residential use.
Reducing demand would involve limiting immigration from outside the UK and/or increasing the average household size through, e.g. increasing percentage of two parent families relative to one parent families, increasing percentage of 3 generational households and/or encouraging downsizing.
The Conversatives may be completely ineffective at reducing immigration but at least they say they are trying to reduce it and they acknowledge the link between immigration and housing demand vs supply. That makes them more attractive to many voters than Labour whose approach to anything seems to be to throw taxpayer money at it. However, voters are not stupid, they realise that taxpayer money being used to subsidise rents does not change supply/demand and just puts more money in landlords pockets. Labour will talk about how the Conservatives sold off council housing but most people still think that was a good thing: first, it reduced social separation/snobbery because it blurred the distinction between social housing and purchase housing; secondly because it increased supply of private rental property.
Starmer is low IQ, is intolerant of the views of others and has zero charisma. He's a disaster for Labour.
Not sure about the low IQ - state school - oxford - qc - dpp.
For the record: (i) Starmer was educated at Reigate Grammar School, an independent school; and (ii) Starmer did his undergraduate degree at Leeds, not Oxford. (He studied for the BCL at Oxford, which is not the same as getting in as an undergraduate. I also studied for the BCL at Oxford, albeit a decade and a half after Starmer, so I think it's fair for me to say that.)
He became a QC and DPP. You literally can't do that if you're stupid.
DPP = a five year political appointment by the government. Starmer's tenure as DPP was hardly an unqualified success. Many stupid decisions made, a lot of politicisation of the role, and leaving behind a CPS in deep decline. There have been some good DPPs, e.g. Ken McDonald, but also bad ones such as Barbara Mills. Obviously Starmer is not stupid in the sense of sub-normal IQ but it's very obvious that his mind is not the quickest or the most adept.
She resigned in 1998 after she was criticised in reports senior members of the judiciary for repeatedly refusing to bring prosecutions over deaths in police custody. One of Labour's many quango queens. Enough said.
Reigate Grammar was not an independent school when Starmer was admitted having passed the 11+.
It subsequently became an independent school in 1976 when he was 14 (and as he was already a pupil, his parents were not required to pay fees - nor were any other parents of pupils already at the school). The same thing happened at my old school in Surrey (a different one) which went private in 1977.
So it’s a bit of a distortion to say Starmer attended an independent school - when he got in and for his first 3 years there it was a 44 act grammar school like any other, for the remainder of his time there it was non-fee paying for him and all other pupils his age or older (unless they joined post-1976 perhaps) - fortunately so as I doubt his parents could have afforded the fees (esp with his mother an invalid).
The BCL is a tough course (and a tough one to get into) and he evidently did well enough at the criminal bar.
So it’s a bit of a distortion to say Starmer attended an independent school
Reigate Grammar School was always an independent school, just like every other direct grant grammar school. It's just that a portion of places at the school were funded by central government or the LEA. No different in principle to the later assisted places scheme.
for the remainder of his time there it was non-fee paying for him and all other pupils his age or older
This is simply a lie. I don't know the exact percentage of places at Reigate Grammar that were state/LEA funded in the early 1970s but it would certainly not have been 100%. On average for direct grant grammar schools (or 44 act grammars as you refer to them) it would have been about 50% (but with wide variation).
LOL @ Starmer is stupid. His skewering of Bozo shows he is patently not. He's in the unfortunate position of wanting Labour to achieve what New Labour set out to do but having to navigate a party that's so ridiculous it appointed a genuine retard as deputy leader and doesn't actually want power if it doesn't mean "pure" Labour - which is ludicrous given that the concept hasn't been electable for half a century, and even then was orchestrated by self-interested pigs from Animal Farm instead of comfortably off head-patters who tell the poor, middle-class and rich what to do while gaming the system for themselves (see Seamus Milne, trustfarian Wykehamist son of a BBC DG who gamed the school system to get his kids into grammar and lives in one of London's most expensive boroughs).
Are you talking about some exchange at PMQs? I don't think anyone else has noticed. Considering how much of Boris there is to skewer Starmer has done an appalling job. Captain Hindsight has been much more effective than any line Starmer has used on Boris. For the past three months the energy price issue has been on the horizon - not in the headlines but bubbling away in small pieces in the business pages and online. If Starmer had a high IQ he would have been raising it and going all out on it. But Starmer does not have a high IQ. He's a plodder. There's nothing wrong with that - I believe that plodding is underrated and should be praised and rewarded more. However, leader of the opposition requires more than plodding.
The purity stuff you mention is ironic because it's Starmer who is all about a (his) single orthodoxy whether on trans, on Israel, on BLM or on anything else. Starmer's purity is even more ridiculous than the Labour left's because at least the Labour left's purity represents an internally consistent if wrong perspective. Starmer's purity is of a very unappealing uno duce una voce type.
It will take a ‘Gang of Four’, with more organisational abilities, to strike out afresh: don’t think that it can be reformed from within.
And they’ll need to change positioning. A coalition of woke virtual signallers, trade union officials, and red-wall workers won’t work in England, or even Wales, let alone win seats in Scotland.
Reigate Grammar School was an 11+ state grammar school and all places were free between 1944 and 1976 when it went private because it was that or go comprehensive.
Same thing happened at my old school, RGS Guildford.
It was what happened in Surrey (a “beacon of comprehensivisation” in the phrase of the time). Some schools like Dorking Grammar became comprehensives under different names (in the car of Dorking it was The Ashcombe School).
So you are simply flat out wrong on this. I know because I grew up and went to school in Surrey and my Mum taught there throughout.
You can also Wikipedia it if you still don’t believe me.
The history of RGS Guildford was a bit more convoluted (it was founded as a free school and remained so for quite a long time, then had financial difficulties, then went private, then reverted to free grammar school status when people like Terry Jones and Bob Willis passed through it, then went independent again in 1977 but only boys who joined the school after that date were charged fees).
@Jackofhearts: You said that Reigate Grammar School "was a 44 act grammar school like any other" and I assumed that you were correct. However, it seems that it was not because it's not on this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_direct_grant_grammar_schools I defer to you on the history of comprehensivisation (is that a word) in Surrey and accept what you say but, in my defence, if it had been a 44 act grammar school then I would have been correct.
On trans issues I think Starmer today was typical Starmer - sat on the fence.
Yes, this is totally the issue with Starmer. I mean, I can see the arguments on each side on these issues. I can also see that reasonable people in good faith can be of one view or the other. The problem with Starmer is that whatever specific view the Labour Party adopts at one point in time is to be considered the only acceptable view. Any catch-all party, which Labour as one of two parties in an FPTP system must aspire to be, needs to be able to accept a diversity of opinion on a range of issues. That's how the Conservatives function and they are much the better for it.
“The school was founded as a free school for poor boys in 1675 by Alderman Henry Smith with Jon Williamson, the vicar of Reigate, as master. It remained in the hands of the church until 1862 when a board of governors was appointed.[citation needed]Under the Education Act of 1944 it became a voluntary aidedgrammar school, providing access on the basis of academic ability as measured by the 11-Plus examination. In 1976, it converted to its current fee-paying independent status.[3] At the same time the sixth form was opened up to girls. In 1993, the school became fully co-educational. In 2003, the school merged with a local prep school St. Mary's School.[4] This is now called Reigate St Mary's Prep and Choir School and serves as the junior school, taking children from three to eleven, most of whom then proceed to the senior school.”
Do some fooking research before you opine next time
Are you okay? I know you have a fairly awful mouth on you, but swearing about the Tories, and the left-wing of the Labour Party, and arguing about detail when someone points out (correctly) that Starmer attended a school that was independent school for the majority of his time there is not a good look for anyone.
Under the 1944 Act there were only 179 ‘direct grant’ (part private funded, part state funded) grammar schools, whereas there were 1200 ‘maintained’ schools (fully state funded).
So it’s wrong to say a 1944 Act grammar school means ‘direct grant’. It’s much more likely to mean ‘maintained’. Like Reigate, by the sound of it.
On the other hand, Starmer inherited a nice big detached house in Oxted so his family certainly wasn’t poor.
Lucky Surrey. Anyone here remember the ILEA? Think yourself lucky if you can’t. Now start telling us all how to spend our money, after you’ve taxed us to buggery.
And continued to dig yourself into a hole rather than accept that you were wrong. Even when I explained in detail the incorrect assumptions you were working off (did you get them from Lord Ashcroft’s hatchet job of an “unauthorised biography”, I wonder?).
Starmer is certainly wooden, lawyerly and the best of a bad lot but uninspiring as a leader and someone that the electorate is struggling to warm to. But banging on incorrectly about where he went to school as some kind of innuendo that he’s dishonest (in comparison to Bozomandias? do me a favour)/a hypocrite/champagne socialist/class traitor is wide of the mark and a bit ad hominem.
And yes I speak my mind fairly bluntly about this government and its many failings. Whether its incompetence is a matter of “malice” (what is this, some kind of “they don’t have the mens rea, not guilty m’lud” defence?) or callous indifference, ignorance and crass ideology is a subjective judgment. And yes, I think the (far) left of the Labour Party has been equally disastrous and culpable.
Jeremy Corbyn actually did properly go to independent school that was fee paying while he was there, as it happens. Doesn’t seem to have done him much good.
Boris Johnson famously went to Eton as did Mogg the Merciless; Sunak went to Winchester, yada yada yada. All very interesting and not at all myopically English and class-obsessed to draw inferences from that…
I did say I doubt his parents would have been able to afford independent school fees (he was one of four, his mother was a nurse before being an invalid, his father is usually described as a “toolmaker” (insert joke here)).
His parents likely weren’t on the bread line, so to speak, but that doesn’t mean they were particularly affluent, esp by standards of 1970s/1980s suburban Surrey.
This is all a bit of a distraction from the underlying problem, which is that Starmer doesn’t seem very good as a real politician. He was fast-tracked in and up because he was willing to suspend moral scruples while working for Corbyn.
That it’s been pointed out above how good he is in PMQs (let’s assume that’s correct) is just highlighting the weakness that he is just roleplaying a barrister there. If he were no good there, he’d really be in trouble. He’s helped by the fact there’s no obvious replacement (“friends” of Angela Rayner ignored here).
But PMQs (esp with a large majority and all the noise) has always been a bear garden/piece of political theatre.
Johnson can get away with not caring that anyone with half a brain can see he’s not on top of the material stuff, let alone the detail, and has nothing to offer when pressed but evasion, glib insults and weak jokes. Because only weird political obsessives watch or care.
He’ll repeal the fixed term parliaments act and call a GE in the next 18-20 months. Assuming his remodelled cabinet doesn’t continue to do as atrociously as the last one (brave, even heroic, assumption) and anyone can work out what “levelling up” even means and can think up some ideas to deliver it (see also Big Society, compassionate conservatism, etc).
Thread is TLDR but the labour party in its current form will not win a general election ever. Scotland is gone. Wales is turning tory. The north has turned tory.
They have no coherent policy on the stuff people care about and the 'progressive' social stuff is a massive turn off for lots of people.
They need to present a vision of a fairer society that people can get behind. Their whole agenda should be affordable (to buy as well as rent) housing, raising living standards for ordinary working families, sorting the NHS and addressing social exclusion
Jeremy Corbyn actually did properly go to independent school that was fee paying while he was there, as it happens. Doesn’t seem to have done him much good.
Corbyn was actually dumb. Something like an E or D at A-level then started some course at a polytechnic but didn’t finish it. Hardly the marks of a exceptional mind.
Starmer isn’t a very good political performer. Like Sunak, he’s got the brains for it but not the street smarts. Bodger the Toff is wiping the floor with these types and the country is getting used to it. Beyond depressing.
Classic RoF - descends into a debate about whether the school is really private or not. Rob starts off saying Starmer is unintelligent then quickly shifts to "not super-intelligent" when proved wrong, then hard agrees with him being middle of the road so as to navigate trying to appeal to the public while keeping the pseudo-Trots (who let's be clear have no redeeming features as they are all patronising well off people, either through politics or upbringing) at bay, but unwilling to just say "I agree".
The problem with the Labour party is its members in so far as they have any desire to be electable. Starmer is at the top because they don't hate him too much and is what they think Blair was. This shows their rank stupidity as they think the public is stupid and just wants a middle class barrister mouthpiece that Momentum can trojan horse so too clever by half retards like Seamus Milne in their Grauniad bubbles taking control. One thing both Johnson and Blair demonstrate is the public buy "things can only get better", not "tax the rich" claptrap. If they wanted to do something constructive about social mobility, they wouldn't have toppled Blair to have their revenge, paving the way for Clegg to gift the Tories an "in" and Miliband and Corbyn to cement the end of Labour.
Classic RoF - descends into a debate about whether the school is really private or not. Rob starts off saying Starmer is unintelligent then quickly shifts to "not super-intelligent" when proved wrong, then hard agrees with him being middle of the road so as to navigate trying to appeal to the public while keeping the pseudo-Trots (who let's be clear have no redeeming features as they are all patronising well off people, either through politics or upbringing) at bay, but unwilling to just say "I agree".
The problem with the Labour party is its members in so far as they have any desire to be electable. Starmer is at the top because they don't hate him too much and is what they think Blair was. This shows their rank stupidity as they think the public is stupid and just wants a middle class barrister mouthpiece that Momentum can trojan horse so too clever by half retards like Seamus Milne in their Grauniad bubbles taking control. One thing both Johnson and Blair demonstrate is the public buy "things can only get better", not "tax the rich" claptrap. If they wanted to do something constructive about social mobility, they wouldn't have toppled Blair to have their revenge, paving the way for Clegg to gift the Tories an "in" and Miliband and Corbyn to cement the end of Labour.
It was actually John Major that broke the mould with a lower taxes and higher social mobility platform, in the process roasting Neil Kinnock against all expectation.
Major had actually walked in the shoes of the people that strategy appealed to though. He grew up in Brixton with his family living in a bed sit. They had to a share a bathroom with all the other families living in the building. He'd seen first hand how aspirational poor people were despite their circumstances and that they wanted opportunities, not handouts from taxing the rich.
The joke is on anyone who thinks they’ll get that from Johnson. We are entering the most socially regressive period in this country’s history for centuries.
Rob starts off saying Starmer is unintelligent then quickly shifts to "not super-intelligent" when proved wrong
@bananaman: Obviously Starmer is not low intelligence in a general sense. However, he is low intelligence for the role he's doing.
The evidence given for Starmer's intelligence on this thread was the school he went to, the university he did his postgrad at, and that he was a QC and DPP. As I already said, I happen to have done the same postgrad at the same university as Starmer. Indeed, my sister also did, as did two people I studied with for undergrad (and a couple others were admitted but did not go). So I can say that one does not have to be of particular intelligence to either get admitted or complete that postgrad.
There's another thread here about status anxiety and how people fret over what university they go to, what suburb they live in, etc. Doubtless one of the reasons is the British tendency to categorise people's intelligence as based on where they went to school/university rather than basing it on how they perform in their current role. Johnson is clearly more intelligent than Starmer. Johnson is lazy as hell and Starmer is more hard-working, but it's difficult to perform as leader of a political party if you don't have a level of intelligence that Starmer lacks.
The Labour Party is led by people who are, or are beholden to, fringe academic type lefties who love nothing more than to go on marches about Palestine and Cuba and blather on about gender and other identity politics issues but rely on the votes of people who worry about how to pay the gas bill and whether the police are ever going to do anything about the noisy family of junkies next door or the kids making life harder on the estate hell.
The party is badly out of touch with its base when it comes to immigration as well. Patel is far closer to the average working-class person.
I agree Starmer isn’t stupid, but he does lack the ability to think on his feet and he has absolutely no charisma. Love him or loathe him, Boris does have that bit of “magic” successful politicians need. Even Corbyn was an engaging speaker and able to connect with people emotionally.
Starmer seems to think politics is like law where it matters whether you are “right” or not. You don’t win elections with pedantic, intellectual argument. You win them by appealing to the voters on an emotional / psychological level.
Corbyn was woeful in the HoC. He was - allegedly - good speaking to a large (Momentumite) audience, the very definition of preaching to the converted.
Johnson’s act is the same one he’s pulled all his career. It’s politics as light entertainment. People think he’d be fun over a pint (possibly true, but not a great qualification for being PM). Starmer I agree comes across as serious.
Eventually the country might get tired of a PM who is essentially the political version of Benny Hill. And come to realise that some more seriousness wouldn’t be a bad thing.
“The Labour Party is led by people who are, or are beholden to, fringe academic type lefties who love nothing more than to go on marches about Palestine and Cuba and blather on about gender and other identity politics issues but rely on the votes of people who worry about how to pay the gas bill and whether the police are ever going to do anything about the noisy family of junkies next door or the kids making life harder on the estate hell.”
I don’t think this is true of Starmer, Nandy, Phillips, Cooper, Benn or even Rayner. It was certainly true of Corbyn, McDonnell, Milne & co.
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I know he's trying to crush the left so liberal types think it's fine actually, but the guy is a bigger liar than Boris Johnson.
Basically every single thing he's publicly campaigned on or professed to care about, he's turned around and done the exact opposite.
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What is even worse that the absolute state of the Government is the absolute state of the opposition. We desperately need something to change radically in our politics.
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Really? I hadn't noticed that I have to say.
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The Labour party appears to be some sort of middle class guilt club these days. Absolutely no idea who or what they represent.
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Labour just needs to split and get it over with - there is no desire for compromise from any side of the party.
At least with the tories, they give the rhetoric of being priti Patel types but thus far they haven’t really done anything horrendous and you sort of feel the sensible tories still pull strings in the background.
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“Thus far they haven’t really done anything horrendous and you sort of feel the sensible tories still pull strings in the background.”
wow. what drugs are you on and can I have some, they must be AWESOME?
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I mean they haven’t yet proposed urinating on poor people or setting fire to immigrants or removing the vote from anyone under the age of 45 who doesn’t have at least £500k in assets, I suppose, so maybe you’re right…
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Jack - brexit aside what has the nutty wing of the Tory party achieved? They only got in power because of said brexit.
Priti bangs on about stopping migrant crossings (for example) but there is nothing she can do - the daily mail crap all over her because of it but at the end of the day the sensible wing of the tories stop her doing something nuts.
name one truly trumpian thing they have managed to achieve yet? Aside from being generally crappy and a bit corrupt?
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I mean during covid they spent as much money as any normal gov would.
cutting universal credit is classic Tory not hard Tory.
Gimmie one example of something HARD TORY that the number of brexit loons in cabinet would have warranted?
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well delaying both lock down by several weeks when everyone could see they had to happen probably extended each by about 2 months - which is why we have spent more time in lockdown than almost any other country- that is pretty major
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From the title of this thread I thought it was rightist bedwetter’s wet dream of the year every year since 1976 straight. Oddly the Labour Party is still here.
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ah how quickly we forget the political behemoth that was change uk
boris kicked all the sensible ones out of the party in 2019 - it’s just the paste eaters left these days
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Chill - Agee the cull was horrible and basically decimated my tribe, but I still think there are enough non-zealots on the party to keep the ERG or the NRG in check - those guys are only 70/80 MPs.
problem with the tories is same problem with Labour - the membership are weirdos, so you get odd people getting to the top because normal people don’t join political parties.
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What, you mean, Brexit aside, there’s not much to pin on them (apart from monumentally failing to address cladding issues that caused Grenfell, failing repeatedly to dole out the compensation due to Windrush generation members wrongly harassed and deported, presiding over the highest death rate per capita from Covid in the civilised world, not so much channelling as firehosing cash to dubious contacts and mates, increasing tax with disproportionate impact on the poorest workers to pay for benefits for wealthy retired boomers, monumentally cocking up the withdrawal from Afghanistan (despite months of warning and ability to plan cf like what the French did), presiding over a disastrous energy policy that allowed gas reserves to be deliberately depleted and cash returned to shareholders and leaves millions wondering whether they can afford to heat their homes over the winter, attempting to criminalise the RNLI fishing drowning people out of the sea, Gavin Williamson fooking up exam results for hundreds of thousands of school kids and causing all manner of other chaos whilst being more interested in posing for pictures with whips and tarantulas and policing portraiture in student common rooms…)
I quite agree, nothing much really… barely anything to speak of…
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The squealing from McDonnell and his crusty ilk this morning is most gratifying. Starmer needs to do this.
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The trouble is they take so much money through Momentum and the hard left. If they lose that they are in schtuck.
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Tend to agree JCD - there’s a performative/optical element to it and not sure that the system with Union bloc votes that allowed Miliband E to nick it with the help of Len fooking McCluskey is necessarily the wisest course going forward either, but a symbolic victory over the loony brigade is worth having.
Otherwise we’ll get Richard khunting Burgon next and the country will be even more irreparably fooked than it already is.
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Maybe. But the taking of Momentum money and clown car sh1tshow that results likely means other money is not available to them.
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Exactly Jack - from my perspective, it's not just about ideological opposition to socialism, but about having an effective, electable oppo to deal with the khvnts in power.
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JackofHearts - I would suggest all of those things are a result of incompetence rather than malice.
The problem is that the calibre of person who goes into politics now is probably lower than it has ever been. Look at PMQs today for goodness sake.
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Problem is more that wherever Labour get their money it’s absolutely dwarved, even microscopic in comparison to the dark money flowing into Tory party coffers from oligarchs, arms dealers, “entrepeneurs” and Khunts Anonymous.
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McDonnell is an utter c unt. But also a fool. Remember him saying ‘as we move into government’ before the last election? Totally mental. As are all extremists.
But with a hollowed out middle, what do you expect? people are sheep ffs.
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Did Jolyon ever get his party up and running?
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The "wah-wah-wah - look at the state of Labour, they're just the WORST" is hilarious. Not ideal, but 100x less wtaf than the current shower in charge.
UK needs a PR system and Labour should spilt with half going to join the Socialist Worker and half to the Lib Dems. Tories need to split with 1/3 to UKIP, 1/3 to the Union Movement, and 1/3 to the Lib Dems.
Solved it.
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We need more tolerance, and more centrism.
One cannot possibly claim a democracy if it means that a majority can absolutely and irreversibly remove rights from a minority.
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We need a rainbow alliance of Labour, the LD's, Greens and ideally Nationalists as well in my view to fight the next election only as a united anti Tory front and promising to bring in PR if they win as JellyMonster indicates.
Labour I tend to agree is in existential crisis; but a slow gradual one; they are unlikely to die or be replaced very quickly at all hence I think we need the above or we could be lumbered with decades more Tory rule.
Quite separately whilst I know he is a shameless populist in many ways, we live in populist times, and I think given that Labour's leader ought to be Burnham. He could also, short term at least, probably unite the Starmer/Blairite wing of the party and the Momentum Corbynite loons for long enough to at least fight an election
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this is the key point of course
it makes absolutely no difference what starmer does or doesn’t do at his conference if they can’t fix this (and it appears for the time being they can’t)
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Indeed but party activists (same goes for the Tories) are the absolute last people in the world who should be making important decisions in my view (speaking as a completely inactive Labour member) - they are far more extreme and interested in politics than the average voter and the last people in the world who understand how to win elections/swing voters/the Red Wall etc over
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pedant alert. all the MPS who win elections are also party members....
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Labour needs to advocate for PR, otherwise they’re probably screwed. A singular talent like Blair only comes along once in a generation.
They should also probably realise that while the average brit is on board with socialist spending, they are socially conservative and attracted to aspirational individualism.
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Are they having the Clause 4 moment?
I firmly believe that lefties will soon shoot themselves in the foot again and blame everyone apart from themselves. And Starmer will be turfed.
The arrogance of Unite's spokeswoman (the most voluble opponent) was remarkable. Her world starts from her and ends there.
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The Labour party just has one fundamental issue that it is run by middle class socialists who are obsessed with causes that mean nothing to the man in the street and as a result their traditional voters no longer have anything in common with the party and no reason to vote for it. Hence the red wall at the last election voting for a party that at least said it would do something to deal with the issues that matter to normal people. If you're a jobless former steel mill worker up north you don't give a toss about the Palestinians.
attempting to criminalise the RNLI fishing drowning people out of the sea
Except this didn't happen and it was Farage who had a pop at the RNLI.
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But Corbyn and his rich mates in unions need something to talk about around their £200 per head dinner sessions in islington. palestines seems to give them the best leftie chicks to ...serve
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What Jelly said at 1 - and the sooner this happens, the sooner we will get good quality government back because the compromise required to form a governing coalition under PR will require drawing from a wider and better quality pool of talent than is available to the big two parties now, especially since Boris is fettered by blind loyalty to the headbanger Brexiteer wing of the party and Starmer is having to deal with factional dissent and the deluded cult of Corbyn.
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This is exactly what Starmer is trying to achieve and it has set fire to a blue touch paper for the hard left activists who see him coming from a mile off.
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Also ironic, the thought that Labour will never win again without Scotland when it was Labour that let Scotland off the leash.
Maybe when devo max finally turns into independence Labour will be able to win enough seats in England and Wales alone to return to Downing St.
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Labour are finished thanks to Miliband's stupidity in dealing with the Falkirk ballot rigging, Momentum's general stupidity in thinking anyone other than middle class pseudo-trots and students will vote for "pure" socialism, Brown's ego and Clegg's vanity. Bozo has brought the Tories firmly back into the one nation sphere, which is what got them to be in a position to gather in the ERG frother voters despite them all bemoaning Cameron. Given his poorer background than lots of Tories, affinity for cycling, time in Brussels, having COVID etc. he is far more in tune with normal people than goons like JRM, and is exploiting the social goodwill that comes with the pandemic to set up the tax and spend that will remove the standard Labour line of attack.
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Labour does not have any solutions that people can believe in.
As an example, there is a finite amount of housing. The only medium-term solutions to the current housing crisis are (i) increase supply and (ii) reduce demand.
Increasing supply would involve reducing building costs which requires (a) reducing bureaucratic requirements and effective taxes (e.g. having to pay contributions to local authority, build a percentage of social housing, etc) and (b) extracting via a tax or some other way a large percentage of increase in land values that result from rezoning of land from agricultural to residential use.
Reducing demand would involve limiting immigration from outside the UK and/or increasing the average household size through, e.g. increasing percentage of two parent families relative to one parent families, increasing percentage of 3 generational households and/or encouraging downsizing.
The Conversatives may be completely ineffective at reducing immigration but at least they say they are trying to reduce it and they acknowledge the link between immigration and housing demand vs supply. That makes them more attractive to many voters than Labour whose approach to anything seems to be to throw taxpayer money at it. However, voters are not stupid, they realise that taxpayer money being used to subsidise rents does not change supply/demand and just puts more money in landlords pockets. Labour will talk about how the Conservatives sold off council housing but most people still think that was a good thing: first, it reduced social separation/snobbery because it blurred the distinction between social housing and purchase housing; secondly because it increased supply of private rental property.
Starmer is low IQ, is intolerant of the views of others and has zero charisma. He's a disaster for Labour.
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Not sure about the low IQ - state school - oxford - qc - dpp.
Solution to housing is to:
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Low PQ maybe ? Like EQ, but political.
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For the record: (i) Starmer was educated at Reigate Grammar School, an independent school; and (ii) Starmer did his undergraduate degree at Leeds, not Oxford. (He studied for the BCL at Oxford, which is not the same as getting in as an undergraduate. I also studied for the BCL at Oxford, albeit a decade and a half after Starmer, so I think it's fair for me to say that.)
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DPP = a five year political appointment by the government. Starmer's tenure as DPP was hardly an unqualified success. Many stupid decisions made, a lot of politicisation of the role, and leaving behind a CPS in deep decline. There have been some good DPPs, e.g. Ken McDonald, but also bad ones such as Barbara Mills. Obviously Starmer is not stupid in the sense of sub-normal IQ but it's very obvious that his mind is not the quickest or the most adept.
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Was he made QC before becoming DPP or does it come with the job?
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The QC appointment was 2002 and DPP 2008 - must be the KBE that comes with the DPP job,
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Nana that’s all well and good but the price is legitimised racketeering for the toffs and the absolute end to any social mobility at all.
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Barbara Mills was a good DPP, I worked for her. Tony Hetherington was the best.
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She resigned in 1998 after she was criticised in reports senior members of the judiciary for repeatedly refusing to bring prosecutions over deaths in police custody. One of Labour's many quango queens. Enough said.
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Reigate Grammar was not an independent school when Starmer was admitted having passed the 11+.
It subsequently became an independent school in 1976 when he was 14 (and as he was already a pupil, his parents were not required to pay fees - nor were any other parents of pupils already at the school). The same thing happened at my old school in Surrey (a different one) which went private in 1977.
So it’s a bit of a distortion to say Starmer attended an independent school - when he got in and for his first 3 years there it was a 44 act grammar school like any other, for the remainder of his time there it was non-fee paying for him and all other pupils his age or older (unless they joined post-1976 perhaps) - fortunately so as I doubt his parents could have afforded the fees (esp with his mother an invalid).
The BCL is a tough course (and a tough one to get into) and he evidently did well enough at the criminal bar.
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Reigate Grammar School was always an independent school, just like every other direct grant grammar school. It's just that a portion of places at the school were funded by central government or the LEA. No different in principle to the later assisted places scheme.
This is simply a lie. I don't know the exact percentage of places at Reigate Grammar that were state/LEA funded in the early 1970s but it would certainly not have been 100%. On average for direct grant grammar schools (or 44 act grammars as you refer to them) it would have been about 50% (but with wide variation).
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The BCL is significantly harder to get into than undergrad.
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LOL @ Starmer is stupid. His skewering of Bozo shows he is patently not. He's in the unfortunate position of wanting Labour to achieve what New Labour set out to do but having to navigate a party that's so ridiculous it appointed a genuine retard as deputy leader and doesn't actually want power if it doesn't mean "pure" Labour - which is ludicrous given that the concept hasn't been electable for half a century, and even then was orchestrated by self-interested pigs from Animal Farm instead of comfortably off head-patters who tell the poor, middle-class and rich what to do while gaming the system for themselves (see Seamus Milne, trustfarian Wykehamist son of a BBC DG who gamed the school system to get his kids into grammar and lives in one of London's most expensive boroughs).
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Are you talking about some exchange at PMQs? I don't think anyone else has noticed. Considering how much of Boris there is to skewer Starmer has done an appalling job. Captain Hindsight has been much more effective than any line Starmer has used on Boris. For the past three months the energy price issue has been on the horizon - not in the headlines but bubbling away in small pieces in the business pages and online. If Starmer had a high IQ he would have been raising it and going all out on it. But Starmer does not have a high IQ. He's a plodder. There's nothing wrong with that - I believe that plodding is underrated and should be praised and rewarded more. However, leader of the opposition requires more than plodding.
The purity stuff you mention is ironic because it's Starmer who is all about a (his) single orthodoxy whether on trans, on Israel, on BLM or on anything else. Starmer's purity is even more ridiculous than the Labour left's because at least the Labour left's purity represents an internally consistent if wrong perspective. Starmer's purity is of a very unappealing uno duce una voce type.
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The Celtic Labour Party amiright?
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It must be time for New New Labour.
It will take a ‘Gang of Four’, with more organisational abilities, to strike out afresh: don’t think that it can be reformed from within.
And they’ll need to change positioning. A coalition of woke virtual signallers, trade union officials, and red-wall workers won’t work in England, or even Wales, let alone win seats in Scotland.
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Reigate Grammar School was an 11+ state grammar school and all places were free between 1944 and 1976 when it went private because it was that or go comprehensive.
Same thing happened at my old school, RGS Guildford.
It was what happened in Surrey (a “beacon of comprehensivisation” in the phrase of the time). Some schools like Dorking Grammar became comprehensives under different names (in the car of Dorking it was The Ashcombe School).
So you are simply flat out wrong on this. I know because I grew up and went to school in Surrey and my Mum taught there throughout.
You can also Wikipedia it if you still don’t believe me.
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The history of RGS Guildford was a bit more convoluted (it was founded as a free school and remained so for quite a long time, then had financial difficulties, then went private, then reverted to free grammar school status when people like Terry Jones and Bob Willis passed through it, then went independent again in 1977 but only boys who joined the school after that date were charged fees).
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@Jackofhearts: You said that Reigate Grammar School "was a 44 act grammar school like any other" and I assumed that you were correct. However, it seems that it was not because it's not on this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_direct_grant_grammar_schools I defer to you on the history of comprehensivisation (is that a word) in Surrey and accept what you say but, in my defence, if it had been a 44 act grammar school then I would have been correct.
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Rob what's Starmer's view on trans issues? Don't think I've really heard him comment.
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Labour is totally out of touch with normal people (which is great news for us Tories.)
On trans issues I think Starmer today was typical Starmer - sat on the fence.
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Yes, this is totally the issue with Starmer. I mean, I can see the arguments on each side on these issues. I can also see that reasonable people in good faith can be of one view or the other. The problem with Starmer is that whatever specific view the Labour Party adopts at one point in time is to be considered the only acceptable view. Any catch-all party, which Labour as one of two parties in an FPTP system must aspire to be, needs to be able to accept a diversity of opinion on a range of issues. That's how the Conservatives function and they are much the better for it.
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RC you really are a total prick
“The school was founded as a free school for poor boys in 1675 by Alderman Henry Smith with Jon Williamson, the vicar of Reigate, as master. It remained in the hands of the church until 1862 when a board of governors was appointed.[citation needed]Under the Education Act of 1944 it became a voluntary aided grammar school, providing access on the basis of academic ability as measured by the 11-Plus examination. In 1976, it converted to its current fee-paying independent status.[3] At the same time the sixth form was opened up to girls. In 1993, the school became fully co-educational. In 2003, the school merged with a local prep school St. Mary's School.[4] This is now called Reigate St Mary's Prep and Choir School and serves as the junior school, taking children from three to eleven, most of whom then proceed to the senior school.”
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reigate_Grammar_School
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Do some fooking research before you opine next time
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Act_1944
do you see the bit where it talks about church schools?
that’s Reigate, that is
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Are you okay? I know you have a fairly awful mouth on you, but swearing about the Tories, and the left-wing of the Labour Party, and arguing about detail when someone points out (correctly) that Starmer attended a school that was independent school for the majority of his time there is not a good look for anyone.
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Under the 1944 Act there were only 179 ‘direct grant’ (part private funded, part state funded) grammar schools, whereas there were 1200 ‘maintained’ schools (fully state funded).
So it’s wrong to say a 1944 Act grammar school means ‘direct grant’. It’s much more likely to mean ‘maintained’. Like Reigate, by the sound of it.
On the other hand, Starmer inherited a nice big detached house in Oxted so his family certainly wasn’t poor.
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Lucky Surrey. Anyone here remember the ILEA? Think yourself lucky if you can’t. Now start telling us all how to spend our money, after you’ve taxed us to buggery.
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I pointed out that it was a distortion.
You took issue (incorrectly) with that.
And continued to dig yourself into a hole rather than accept that you were wrong. Even when I explained in detail the incorrect assumptions you were working off (did you get them from Lord Ashcroft’s hatchet job of an “unauthorised biography”, I wonder?).
Starmer is certainly wooden, lawyerly and the best of a bad lot but uninspiring as a leader and someone that the electorate is struggling to warm to. But banging on incorrectly about where he went to school as some kind of innuendo that he’s dishonest (in comparison to Bozomandias? do me a favour)/a hypocrite/champagne socialist/class traitor is wide of the mark and a bit ad hominem.
And yes I speak my mind fairly bluntly about this government and its many failings. Whether its incompetence is a matter of “malice” (what is this, some kind of “they don’t have the mens rea, not guilty m’lud” defence?) or callous indifference, ignorance and crass ideology is a subjective judgment. And yes, I think the (far) left of the Labour Party has been equally disastrous and culpable.
And I swear. Frequently.
But wotevs.
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Jeremy Corbyn actually did properly go to independent school that was fee paying while he was there, as it happens. Doesn’t seem to have done him much good.
Boris Johnson famously went to Eton as did Mogg the Merciless; Sunak went to Winchester, yada yada yada. All very interesting and not at all myopically English and class-obsessed to draw inferences from that…
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Jack its just as daft trying to pretend that Sir Keith is some of working class hero.
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In fairness, apologies, the “malice” point was bigbadbillybob’s nonsense, not yours.
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Did I say that, AITS? I don’t think I did.
I did say I doubt his parents would have been able to afford independent school fees (he was one of four, his mother was a nurse before being an invalid, his father is usually described as a “toolmaker” (insert joke here)).
His parents likely weren’t on the bread line, so to speak, but that doesn’t mean they were particularly affluent, esp by standards of 1970s/1980s suburban Surrey.
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The last (perhaps only) working class person to be PM was John Major, fwiw.
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Starmer’s background is actually quite similar to Major’s in some ways.
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Although Starmer a lot more academically successful.
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This is all a bit of a distraction from the underlying problem, which is that Starmer doesn’t seem very good as a real politician. He was fast-tracked in and up because he was willing to suspend moral scruples while working for Corbyn.
That it’s been pointed out above how good he is in PMQs (let’s assume that’s correct) is just highlighting the weakness that he is just roleplaying a barrister there. If he were no good there, he’d really be in trouble. He’s helped by the fact there’s no obvious replacement (“friends” of Angela Rayner ignored here).
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Don’t disagree with that, YOTP.
Maybe in time someone like Dan Jarvis or Andy Burnham. Or Yvette Cooper.
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He’s weirdly boring and passionless (perhaps because he thinks being forensic will work against Bozza).
He needs to get better at the knockabout stuff.
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But PMQs (esp with a large majority and all the noise) has always been a bear garden/piece of political theatre.
Johnson can get away with not caring that anyone with half a brain can see he’s not on top of the material stuff, let alone the detail, and has nothing to offer when pressed but evasion, glib insults and weak jokes. Because only weird political obsessives watch or care.
He’ll repeal the fixed term parliaments act and call a GE in the next 18-20 months. Assuming his remodelled cabinet doesn’t continue to do as atrociously as the last one (brave, even heroic, assumption) and anyone can work out what “levelling up” even means and can think up some ideas to deliver it (see also Big Society, compassionate conservatism, etc).
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Heh at Owen Jones whingeing about it all in the Graun.
What a tosser.
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Thread is TLDR but the labour party in its current form will not win a general election ever. Scotland is gone. Wales is turning tory. The north has turned tory.
They have no coherent policy on the stuff people care about and the 'progressive' social stuff is a massive turn off for lots of people.
They need to present a vision of a fairer society that people can get behind. Their whole agenda should be affordable (to buy as well as rent) housing, raising living standards for ordinary working families, sorting the NHS and addressing social exclusion
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Parts of the smaller town and smaller city North voted Tory because Corbyn was a disaster.
They may not all come back at the next election.
I think electoral reform also needs to be on that list, DDST.
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There is some great stuff on youtube on this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhjQlD4391M&t=1922s
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Jeremy Corbyn actually did properly go to independent school that was fee paying while he was there, as it happens. Doesn’t seem to have done him much good.
Corbyn was actually dumb. Something like an E or D at A-level then started some course at a polytechnic but didn’t finish it. Hardly the marks of a exceptional mind.
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Electoral reform is seen as obvious stitch up to help a party that can't win on its own merit though. No one will fall for that.
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Can’t win on its own merit under a ludicrous first past the post system with a democratic deficit.
Not really the damning indictment you think it is.
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No party has secured a 50% majority of the popular vote since before WWII.
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Bozza got 43.6% in 2019, meaning 56.4% did not vote Tory.
Thatcher in her 1987 landslide (bigger than Bozza’s in terms of seats) got just over 42%.
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Starmer isn’t a very good political performer. Like Sunak, he’s got the brains for it but not the street smarts. Bodger the Toff is wiping the floor with these types and the country is getting used to it. Beyond depressing.
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Classic RoF - descends into a debate about whether the school is really private or not. Rob starts off saying Starmer is unintelligent then quickly shifts to "not super-intelligent" when proved wrong, then hard agrees with him being middle of the road so as to navigate trying to appeal to the public while keeping the pseudo-Trots (who let's be clear have no redeeming features as they are all patronising well off people, either through politics or upbringing) at bay, but unwilling to just say "I agree".
The problem with the Labour party is its members in so far as they have any desire to be electable. Starmer is at the top because they don't hate him too much and is what they think Blair was. This shows their rank stupidity as they think the public is stupid and just wants a middle class barrister mouthpiece that Momentum can trojan horse so too clever by half retards like Seamus Milne in their Grauniad bubbles taking control. One thing both Johnson and Blair demonstrate is the public buy "things can only get better", not "tax the rich" claptrap. If they wanted to do something constructive about social mobility, they wouldn't have toppled Blair to have their revenge, paving the way for Clegg to gift the Tories an "in" and Miliband and Corbyn to cement the end of Labour.
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Classic RoF - descends into a debate about whether the school is really private or not. Rob starts off saying Starmer is unintelligent then quickly shifts to "not super-intelligent" when proved wrong, then hard agrees with him being middle of the road so as to navigate trying to appeal to the public while keeping the pseudo-Trots (who let's be clear have no redeeming features as they are all patronising well off people, either through politics or upbringing) at bay, but unwilling to just say "I agree".
The problem with the Labour party is its members in so far as they have any desire to be electable. Starmer is at the top because they don't hate him too much and is what they think Blair was. This shows their rank stupidity as they think the public is stupid and just wants a middle class barrister mouthpiece that Momentum can trojan horse so too clever by half retards like Seamus Milne in their Grauniad bubbles taking control. One thing both Johnson and Blair demonstrate is the public buy "things can only get better", not "tax the rich" claptrap. If they wanted to do something constructive about social mobility, they wouldn't have toppled Blair to have their revenge, paving the way for Clegg to gift the Tories an "in" and Miliband and Corbyn to cement the end of Labour.
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Heh. Agree totally. Blair actually wanted to govern. Unlike any of these jokers. Which is why they hate him still.
THREE GENERAL ELECTIONS. ONE COOL BRITANNIA. ;)
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It was actually John Major that broke the mould with a lower taxes and higher social mobility platform, in the process roasting Neil Kinnock against all expectation.
Major had actually walked in the shoes of the people that strategy appealed to though. He grew up in Brixton with his family living in a bed sit. They had to a share a bathroom with all the other families living in the building. He'd seen first hand how aspirational poor people were despite their circumstances and that they wanted opportunities, not handouts from taxing the rich.
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The joke is on anyone who thinks they’ll get that from Johnson. We are entering the most socially regressive period in this country’s history for centuries.
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@bananaman: Obviously Starmer is not low intelligence in a general sense. However, he is low intelligence for the role he's doing.
The evidence given for Starmer's intelligence on this thread was the school he went to, the university he did his postgrad at, and that he was a QC and DPP. As I already said, I happen to have done the same postgrad at the same university as Starmer. Indeed, my sister also did, as did two people I studied with for undergrad (and a couple others were admitted but did not go). So I can say that one does not have to be of particular intelligence to either get admitted or complete that postgrad.
There's another thread here about status anxiety and how people fret over what university they go to, what suburb they live in, etc. Doubtless one of the reasons is the British tendency to categorise people's intelligence as based on where they went to school/university rather than basing it on how they perform in their current role. Johnson is clearly more intelligent than Starmer. Johnson is lazy as hell and Starmer is more hard-working, but it's difficult to perform as leader of a political party if you don't have a level of intelligence that Starmer lacks.
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What Bentines and Lemo said.
The Labour Party is led by people who are, or are beholden to, fringe academic type lefties who love nothing more than to go on marches about Palestine and Cuba and blather on about gender and other identity politics issues but rely on the votes of people who worry about how to pay the gas bill and whether the police are ever going to do anything about the noisy family of junkies next door or the kids making life harder on the estate hell.
The party is badly out of touch with its base when it comes to immigration as well. Patel is far closer to the average working-class person.
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I agree Starmer isn’t stupid, but he does lack the ability to think on his feet and he has absolutely no charisma. Love him or loathe him, Boris does have that bit of “magic” successful politicians need. Even Corbyn was an engaging speaker and able to connect with people emotionally.
Starmer seems to think politics is like law where it matters whether you are “right” or not. You don’t win elections with pedantic, intellectual argument. You win them by appealing to the voters on an emotional / psychological level.
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Corbyn was woeful in the HoC. He was - allegedly - good speaking to a large (Momentumite) audience, the very definition of preaching to the converted.
Johnson’s act is the same one he’s pulled all his career. It’s politics as light entertainment. People think he’d be fun over a pint (possibly true, but not a great qualification for being PM). Starmer I agree comes across as serious.
Eventually the country might get tired of a PM who is essentially the political version of Benny Hill. And come to realise that some more seriousness wouldn’t be a bad thing.
But I’m not holding my breath.
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“The Labour Party is led by people who are, or are beholden to, fringe academic type lefties who love nothing more than to go on marches about Palestine and Cuba and blather on about gender and other identity politics issues but rely on the votes of people who worry about how to pay the gas bill and whether the police are ever going to do anything about the noisy family of junkies next door or the kids making life harder on the estate hell.”
I don’t think this is true of Starmer, Nandy, Phillips, Cooper, Benn or even Rayner. It was certainly true of Corbyn, McDonnell, Milne & co.
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