Keir Starmer Labour Leader

neverdie said:
Spoiling the ballot, as is perfectly understandable, is a protest against the ballot. As someone else said, at least these people which politically spoil the ballot are open to using, and do use, the hard won vote. They just don't use it as you like it (another hard won freedom).
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The best way to protest about the inadequacy of the listing on the ballot, is by not voting, and /or making a formal complaint to the appropriate government department.

Sorry, but this spoiling of the ballot sheet is self-delusion. If someone spoils their ballot their views are not known by anyone except themselves, they are in effect inside their own self-styled 'silo' /or raging at the moon.

I suppose you could say it's understandable, in the sense it's the equivalent of sticking two fingers up, but then it becomes gesture politics only and carries no real weight... might as well cast their vote for Screaming Lord Sutch and the Monster Raving Looney Party (would possibly help them save their deposit*).... hmm, that might just catch the eye of someone in officialdom!

(* that's assuming they are on the ballot)
 
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Maticmaker said:
The best way to protest about the inadequacy of the listing on the ballot, is by not voting, and /or making a formal complaint to the appropriate government department.

Sorry, but this spoiling of the ballot sheet is self-delusion. If someone spoils their ballot their views are not known by anyone except themselves, they are in effect inside their own self-styled 'silo' /or raging at the moon.

I suppose you could say it's understandable, in the sense it's the equivalent of sticking two fingers up, but then it becomes gesture politics only and carries no real weight... might as well cast their vote for Screaming Lord Sutch and the Monster Raving Looney Party (would possibly help them save their deposit*).... hmm, that might just catch the eye of someone in officialdom!

(* that's assuming they are on the ballot)
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How is not voting a good way to protest at all? And why do you think you're the arbiter of what is the correct way to protest vote?

By not voting, you just aren't engaging whatsoever but it isn't a protest. You're just lumped in with the people who were too lazy to go, or didn't give a shit about politics, or were too stupid to know how or when to vote. The people that the politicians can safely ignore, in other words.

You could say the same about spoiling the ballot I guess, but if you choose to do that, you're engaging at least. You're using your right, you're just choosing to not vote for any of them. The statistic is, x amount of people wanted to vote and are interested in the outcome, but hated all of them so much they wouldn't vote for them - so pay attention. Although, admittedly, you are lumped in with the people who were too daft to work out how to fill the ballot paper out correctly...
 
nickm said:
Oh no! A politician running for office has said something to distance himself from his very unpopular predecessor! Unbelievable!
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Of course it's not a big deal that a politician is a liar, it's completely normal. Just like it's not a big deal that you're obfuscating, it's just what you do.

It's still obviously newsworthy, even if it's the most believable thing.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
It kind of isn't. Being two faced and smarmy is a core part of the job description for any politician. That's how they get elected. The "prick" thing is maybe more debatable. Although I've never met a politician I didn't dislike.
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I agree!
 
Ekkie Thump said:
I agree!
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They’re all twats, basically. The only rational way to approach a GE is to read the policies of the various parties and vote for the one that’s closest to how you want to see the country run (and be prepared to disagree with at least some of those policies)

Refusing to vote for a party because you’re annoyed about something that the head of that party once said just seems silly to me. Especially when that party is up against an organisation as toxic as the Tories. You don’t even need to read up their policies. Just look at what’s happened to the Uk during their time in charge.
 
Starmer is so shite in a number of different ways that he’s become the Mr Burns illness door.

Labour are offering careers a 52p rise which is beyond terrible yet it isn’t discussed because it has to go up against debating Starmer endorsement of war crimes or how stupid he looks attacking a labour manifesto he got elected. And that’s not even mentioning the corporate donations.

Plus tbh I’m sure how all politicians are 2 faced bastards is a argument in favour of voting for a guy who has dropped every pledge he ran on in labour leadership race.
 
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'People are sick of politicians who promise and don't deliver'.

Yes. You. You lying prick. You've broken more promises out of office than most do in an entire term in office.
 
Here's the thing about conmen.

If you are convinced that you are in the know, the one not decieved by the lying because you are in on it.

Guess what?

You are the mark.

He lied through his teeth to win an election. He is lying to you now. That is the only true thing any of us know about him.
 
heap-of-paper-sales-receipts-in-a-mound-isolated-on-white-background-E6XWAG.jpg
 
Sweet Square said:
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I’ve seen the video. His point was Israel have “the right to defend itself” which he repeated in response to the follow up question, adding in the bit about international law. It was a very unimpressive interview but he wasn’t arguing that it’s ok to deny Gaza food and water. Apart from anything else, it would be an unbelievably stupid thing to say on live radio. And I don’t think he’s that stupid. And why add the bit about international law if he’s defending their right to do something that so obviously contravenes it?

This is all by the by anyway. We’re arguing about sound bites. What matters here is that he’s sympathetic to Israel. And I understand why that pisses people off. That’s the main issue. Not some sort of gotcha over a garbled interview answer.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
I’ve seen the video. His point was Israel have “the right to defend itself” which he repeated in response to the follow up question, adding in the bit about international law.
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Pogue Mahone said:
And why add the bit about international law if he’s defending their right to do something that so obviously contravenes it?
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And the bit after that - “but I don’t want to step away from the core principles that Israel has a right to defend itself.” Which in this interview Starmer establishes means cutting off water and power.
Pogue Mahone said:
it would be an unbelievably stupid thing to say on live radio. And I don’t think he’s that stupid.
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Why can’t Starmer be stupid ? We are talking about a guy who this week on national television slagged off a manifesto he got elected on. During his time as director of public prosecutions he tried to jail two people at a protest for impersonating police officers….the two people were wearing fancy dress outfits.

He has been a reactionary idiot who can’t stop lying since winning the leadership. After October 7th a lot of people wanted blood thirsty revenge against the Palestinians. Starmer wanted to show he was the most devoted and so backed war crimes on live radio. He has done a similar tactic on a range of other issues - Kicking the left out of Labour, going against the NHS workers strike, Murdoch parties, accepting more freebie gifts than any other labour leader since Blair, etc.
Pogue Mahone said:
This is all by the by anyway. We’re arguing about sound bites. What matters here is that he’s sympathetic to Israel. And I understand why that pisses people off. That’s the main issue. Not some sort of gotcha over a garbled interview answer.
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True and the policy is the main problem. But it’s a soundbite which sums up the issues with Starmer - moral cowardice and very right wing. Also soundbites do matter. If Starmer was saying all sorts of bigoted slurs in an interview we wouldn’t be dismissing it.
 
Starmer won the sky leader debate poll 2 to one and is on course (not certain even now) for a huge victory.

For a useless prick he seems to be doing so much better than the brilliant Jeremy Corbyn that it is almost like he isn't a useless prick and JC was.

That is thinking you don't see very often on Redcafe. Could it be that Redcafe is shit at political analysis. Interested minds need to know.
 
Don't Kill Bill said:
Starmer won the sky leader debate poll 2 to one and is on course (not certain even now) for a huge victory.

For a useless prick he seems to be doing so much better than the brilliant Jeremy Corbyn that it is almost like he isn't a useless prick and JC was.

That is thinking you don't see very often on Redcafe. Could it be that Redcafe is shit at political analysis. Interested minds need to know.
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I mean he's basically walking into an open goal tap-in situation. Unlike his predecessor he didn't have the albatross of Brexit around his neck (which has come and gone, and proven to be an unmitigated disaster), and he has the benefit of coming up against a historically unpopular Tory government that's butchered the handling of the pandemic, crashed the economy and has wheeled in pretty awful unelected PMs in Truss and Sunak. And despite the stars aligning for him he still manages to come across as uninspiring, untrustworthy and largely unpopular, and even manages to lose his first election debate to Rishi Sunak of all competitors. To top it all off he's cemented himself as a genocide apologist and someone who seemingly despises much of Labour's membership base, something which would no doubt come back to bite him in consequent elections if/when the Tories get their act back together and Labour inevitably loses the right-wing gammon vote he's desperately been courting.

Starmer will be in number 10 but its hardly an endorsement of his capabilities and suitability to being a good prime minister. Just as it wasn't for Boris, Truss or Sunak.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
It kind of isn't. Being two faced and smarmy is a core part of the job description for any politician. That's how they get elected. The "prick" thing is maybe more debatable. Although I've never met a politician I didn't dislike.
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He's not flip-flopping on an issue here or there. It's not details about how much gets spent in a particular department. It's the entire manifesto and vision. But I want to highlight that he was Shadow Brexit Secretary and vocally and forcefully pushed through a second referendum in that manifesto past a reluctant Corbyn (which IMO turned a bad result for Labour into a landslide loss). Like many things in that manifesto, a Brexit 2nd referendum wasn't just a small detail, it was a fundamental, deep statement about the future of the UK , its relation with its largest trading partner, and the meaning of the most important event in recent British politics (the Leave vote) --- and it was personally supported and pushed by Starmer in his official role. Which he has also gone back on fully and completely.
Can you imagine Blair calling for nationwide nationalisation of the commanding heights? Or for leaving the European Union?

This is fundamentally an empty man. (Which also explains his endorsement of collective starvation of Gaza - it was a sensible policy for that moment and to distance himself from anti-semitic Corbyn).


In the Indian elections recently concluded, my state saw a fight between two alliances of 3 parties each. Two of the parties can very roughly be analogised to Labour and Tories, and were indeed on opposite sides. The remaining 4 are literally factions of each other. To put it into, again very rough, British terms, it would be

Tory + Official SNP (most 2nd rung leaders) + Official Lib Dems (the founders' nephew and some 2nd rung Lib Dem leaders)
vs
Labour + Fake SNP (Sturgeon + most grassroots SNP workers) + Fake Lib Dems (founder + most grassroots Lib Dem workers)*

It was a fun election!
A successful candidate for the "Tory" analogue was a guy who went from SNP (before it was divided) -> Labour -> Tory, timing each defection for maximum chance of winning his seat! A guy joined Fake Lib Dems from Official SNP because he had a grudge against one Tory candidate, and he moved to that seat and beat him! After doing badly, half of Official SNP now wants to go back to Stuurgeon! The state chief of Labour jumped ship to the Tories weeks before the election, Labour won his pocket borough against his chosen candidate.

Despite the results being positive in my view, the politics of my state are an absurd farce; each candidate barely represents a party, let alone an ideology. I think Starmer's "two-facedness" is exactly as bad as this because of how fundamentally he has done a 180 on everything.


*calling them Official/Fake because our Election Commission declared that the factions allying with the Tories were the real ones in both cases)
** also in this analogy I was torn between calling it UKIP or SNP, it is both, was a far-right Tory ally, but is also a regionalist party.
 
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Don't Kill Bill said:
Starmer won the sky leader debate poll 2 to one and is on course (not certain even now) for a huge victory.

For a useless prick he seems to be doing so much better than the brilliant Jeremy Corbyn that it is almost like he isn't a useless prick and JC was.

That is thinking you don't see very often on Redcafe. Could it be that Redcafe is shit at political analysis. Interested minds need to know.
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With the Tory implosion and very public, atrocious record over the last 4 years, a monkey in a suit would win this 2024 election for Labour.
 
Don't Kill Bill said:
Starmer won the sky leader debate poll 2 to one and is on course (not certain even now) for a huge victory.

For a useless prick he seems to be doing so much better than the brilliant Jeremy Corbyn that it is almost like he isn't a useless prick and JC was.

That is thinking you don't see very often on Redcafe. Could it be that Redcafe is shit at political analysis. Interested minds need to know.
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Or it might be we give a shit about the quality of the winner and not how much they won by. The last politician who lied his way to a landslide victory turned out to be a bit of a disappointment.

This isn't football.
 
No it's far more important, but at the same time, I will take starmer 1000 times out of 1000 over the Tories. I have stopped caring that he's not exactly what I want a labour leader to be.

If the Tories get back in they will have a mandate to be even worse than they already have been, and that is worse than anything labour will do, by a huge margin.

That is all I care about eight now. The choice is starmer or sunak, it's not a hard one at all for me.
 
Fluctuation0161 said:
With the Tory implosion and very public, atrocious record over the last 4 years, a monkey in a suit would win this 2024 election for Labour.
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I disagree with quite a few things regarding Starmer's policies, but this isn't true at all. You put someone like Corbyn there who was a rabbit in headlights when leading the party and the gap would never be that big infact I suspect there would be a hung parliament. The usual Tory attack lines haven't stuck this time and Labour have ran a better social media campaign and a better campaign overall. Starmer has also made an effort to win over some Tory voters which is needed to win a majority.
 
TheGame said:
I disagree with quite a few things regarding Starmer's policies, but this isn't true at all. You put someone like Corbyn there who was a rabbit in headlights when leading the party and the gap would never be that big infact I suspect there would be a hung parliament. The usual Tory attack lines haven't stuck this time and Labour have ran a better social media campaign and a better campaign overall. Starmer has also made an effort to win over some Tory voters which is needed to win a majority.
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Well said.
He was pressed last night on a statement he made saying that Corbyn would make a good PM.
Honestly. What was he supposed to have said about the party leader going into an election.

As he said last night, he knew, as most of us knew, that labour had no chance of winning. So what he said back then was of no consequence.
 
pacifictheme said:
No it's far more important, but at the same time, I will take starmer 1000 times out of 1000 over the Tories. I have stopped caring that he's not exactly what I want a labour leader to be.

If the Tories get back in they will have a mandate to be even worse than they already have been, and that is worse than anything labour will do, by a huge margin.

That is all I care about eight now. The choice is starmer or sunak, it's not a hard one at all for me.
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A false dichotomy if ever there was one. You're voting for your local MP and their party, not for the president. Chances are in your area it makes no difference which way you vote anyway in terms of who ends up winning the seat, so you might as well make a statement and help ensure state funding for the party that most closely matches your own beliefs, whoever that may be, by voting for their candidate.
 
TheGame said:
I disagree with quite a few things regarding Starmer's policies, but this isn't true at all. You put someone like Corbyn there who was a rabbit in headlights when leading the party and the gap would never be that big infact I suspect there would be a hung parliament. The usual Tory attack lines haven't stuck this time and Labour have ran a better social media campaign and a better campaign overall. Starmer has also made an effort to win over some Tory voters which is needed to win a majority.
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Oh he's made more than an effort but I doubt it's that effort more than people's mortgages going up that's seen such a swing. People (particularly Tory voters) are inherently selfish and vote for their own financial interests in the main. There was no way back for the Tories after that Truss/Kwarteng cluster feck of a budget.

Many traditional Labour voters are rightfully annoyed at Starmer because he doesn't need to pander to every right wing whim and had hoped he might offer up something for the people that have been truly shafted over the last 14 years.
 
CassiusClaymore said:
Oh he's made more than an effort but I doubt it's that effort more than people's mortgages going up that's seen such a swing. People (particularly Tory voters) are inherently selfish and vote for their own financial interests in the main. There was no way back for the Tories after that Truss/Kwarteng cluster feck of a budget.

Many traditional Labour voters are rightfully annoyed at Starmer because he doesn't need to pander to every right wing whim and had hoped he might offer up something for the people that have been truly shafted over the last 14 years.
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In 2019 whilst not as bad, the Tories had still suffered numerous disasters but Labour weren't able to run an effective campaign. No doubt people are tired of the Tories now but if Labour ran a disaster of a campaign like 2019 then the result would still have been closer. No matter how shite things get, people still tend to vote for Tory or Reform now punishing themselves further.

Fully agree with your second point, would have liked Labour to be more adventurous in a number of aspects and dedicate total fawning to the right wingers. Think there was a balance to be had.
 
TwoSheds said:
A false dichotomy if ever there was one. You're voting for your local MP and their party, not for the president. Chances are in your area it makes no difference which way you vote anyway in terms of who ends up winning the seat, so you might as well make a statement and help ensure state funding for the party that most closely matches your own beliefs, whoever that may be, by voting for their candidate.
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I am voting to remove the conservatives. That's all.

And yeah my local MP is likely safe, it's a very Tory area sadly. Labour are the main opposition, but no party is close to the conservatives here.

Either way, only two parties stand a chance of being elected nationally, so I will vote for one of them (labour, never Tory).
 
Witnessing the debate, Starmer is taking Truss' election campaign. The key distinction being that the Conservative Party (members) by and large liked it whilst the Conservative Parliamentary Party and other forces by and large despised it.

"Growing the pie" for Truss = "Wealth creation" for Starmer. It's kind of smart if disingenuous because the Tories can't criticize it without alienating their own membership base.
 
Sir Kid Starver will join the long list of uncarismatic PMs in British history but might also join the list of war criminals like his idol Tony Blair.
 
Don't Kill Bill said:
Starmer won the sky leader debate poll 2 to one and is on course (not certain even now) for a huge victory.

For a useless prick he seems to be doing so much better than the brilliant Jeremy Corbyn that it is almost like he isn't a useless prick and JC was.

That is thinking you don't see very often on Redcafe. Could it be that Redcafe is shit at political analysis. Interested minds need to know.
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Did he cause the collapse of the Tories, then? He truly must be brilliant.
 
TheGame said:
In 2019 whilst not as bad, the Tories had still suffered numerous disasters but Labour weren't able to run an effective campaign. No doubt people are tired of the Tories now but if Labour ran a disaster of a campaign like 2019 then the result would still have been closer. No matter how shite things get, people still tend to vote for Tory or Reform now punishing themselves further.

Fully agree with your second point, would have liked Labour to be more adventurous in a number of aspects and dedicate total fawning to the right wingers. Think there was a balance to be had.
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In 2019 we hadn't had COVID and all the corruption and mismanagement (putting it nicely) that came from that, we hadn't started really feeling the affects of Brexit either and we still had the aforementioned Truss clusterfeck on the horizon.

I think far too much weight is put into the difference an election campaign makes to voters. The majority of people will have made their minds up how they are going to vote already and the odd performative tv debate or showing up at a car factory for a photo op isn't going to do much to change their opinion.
 
CassiusClaymore said:
In 2019 we hadn't had COVID and all the corruption and mismanagement (putting it nicely) that came from that, we hadn't started really feeling the affects of Brexit either and we still had the aforementioned Truss clusterfeck on the horizon.

I think far too much weight is put into the difference an election campaign makes to voters. The majority of people will have made their minds up how they are going to vote already and the odd performative tv debate or showing up at a car factory for a photo op isn't going to do much to change their opinion.
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It's not the election campaign as such, its the performance of Starmer and Labour leading to the election and for a while now and the ability to handle any clusterfecks from their side. Brexit is still a sore topic for some hence Labour (much to my dismay) haven't mentioned anything about it. Farage in the mix has also taken the Tory vote away.
 
berbatrick said:
He's not flip-flopping on an issue here or there. It's not details about how much gets spent in a particular department. It's the entire manifesto and vision. But I want to highlight that he was Shadow Brexit Secretary and vocally and forcefully pushed through a second referendum in that manifesto past a reluctant Corbyn (which IMO turned a bad result for Labour into a landslide loss). Like many things in that manifesto, a Brexit 2nd referendum wasn't just a small detail, it was a fundamental, deep statement about the future of the UK , its relation with its largest trading partner, and the meaning of the most important event in recent British politics (the Leave vote) --- and it was personally supported and pushed by Starmer in his official role. Which he has also gone back on fully and completely.
Can you imagine Blair calling for nationwide nationalisation of the commanding heights? Or for leaving the European Union?

This is fundamentally an empty man. (Which also explains his endorsement of collective starvation of Gaza - it was a sensible policy for that moment and to distance himself from anti-semitic Corbyn).
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He was completely hopeless as Shadow Brexit Secretary.

The Second Referendum affair was a joke. They promised to get a new deal within six months and put it to a vote. A majority of people in the UK even now don't understand what they voted for, including Starmer who always said he wanted the same benefits inside and out of the EU.
 
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