'Keir Starmer' is such a strange name
Next Labour leader - Starmer and Rayner win
- Thread starter Kaos
- Start date
That's "Sir Keir Starmer", to you!
He was named after Keir Hardie.
It's a bit misleading to say Starmer was privately educated. The school he went to only became a fee-paying school after he was already there. He got in through the 11-plus exam.
Exactly the same with another white male who represented a London constituency who was recently the leader as well I believe
I guess operation smear starmer has started from the corbynistas
I see the infighting and smears have already started.
I'm hoping most of the people who wanted RLB will see the problem with that and give him a chance. I will, and I voted Nandy.
I'm hoping most of the people who wanted RLB will see the problem with that and give him a chance. I will, and I voted Nandy.
They're people like Dobba. They won't.
Jesus wept I didn’t realise it was Rayner. Thick as mince
I'll give him the sort of chance Starmer gave Corbyn (i.e. only after he wins a second leadership election)
It's what he'd want.
Plenty of leading commentators on the left have expressed their support for Starmer, which is a courtesy Corbyn rarely got from the centre. I can virtually guarantee Starmer will not have to deal with left-wing MPs acting as did the likes of Ian Lavery, Mike Gapes or Wes Streeting. The treatment Starmer will get from the ‘Corbynite’ MPs and commentators will really highlight just how disgraceful and ludicrous some of the shite Corbyn had to deal with was.
Guessing you mean Ian Austin there
I think you can also be fairly sure that if the leader was a figure from the right of the party, the leftwing MPs would be critics (as Corbyn and McDonnell were to Blair, and even spoke of bringing a Miliband-led government down if it did things they didn't agree with). Starmer is soft left so will naturally attract less ire from all round, but it'll be interesting to see the shadow cabinet and the corresponding reaction. Anneliese Dodds is currently being rumoured as shadow chancellor, which probably won't get much blowback (aside from "who?"). If it's Reeves there'll be more.
That’s because nobody thinks Starmer is shite and out of his depth. Amazing what happens when you put up a candidate who has broad rather than sectional appeal and has the confidence of his party.
I wouldn't write Starmer off completely in 2024.
I'm centrist to center-right, I've floated between the Tories and Liberal Democrats most of my adult life. I'd never have voted for Corbyn primarily because I'm not a socialist, but also I didn't buy into him being a social democrat - or anything remotely like center left. He just struck me as the decidedly hard left hero of the student-union common room; little credibility or pragmatism. Starmer is different, he's gone to great lengths to say he's a socialist but I think his definition of that term will vary from what we've seen under Corbyn and despite all the rhetoric during his campaign, I doubt he'll be as radical as his predecessor. He certainly isn't a republican or staunch anti-capitalist, and it gets me (as a liberal) wondering just how far off the center can Starmer really be? I've no objection to nationalising certain key industries, and if he doesn't feck with the city and market too much, I think he'd be mostly inoffensive and even tempting to some Lib Dems and moderate Tories. I'm not saying I'd vote for him - but I might be tempted down the line, it depends chiefly on policy but also who he surrounds himself with in his shadow cabinet, if he brings in the likes of Burgon and RLB, Labour are in for another five years of opposition.
I'm centrist to center-right, I've floated between the Tories and Liberal Democrats most of my adult life. I'd never have voted for Corbyn primarily because I'm not a socialist, but also I didn't buy into him being a social democrat - or anything remotely like center left. He just struck me as the decidedly hard left hero of the student-union common room; little credibility or pragmatism. Starmer is different, he's gone to great lengths to say he's a socialist but I think his definition of that term will vary from what we've seen under Corbyn and despite all the rhetoric during his campaign, I doubt he'll be as radical as his predecessor. He certainly isn't a republican or staunch anti-capitalist, and it gets me (as a liberal) wondering just how far off the center can Starmer really be? I've no objection to nationalising certain key industries, and if he doesn't feck with the city and market too much, I think he'd be mostly inoffensive and even tempting to some Lib Dems and moderate Tories. I'm not saying I'd vote for him - but I might be tempted down the line, it depends chiefly on policy but also who he surrounds himself with in his shadow cabinet, if he brings in the likes of Burgon and RLB, Labour are in for another five years of opposition.
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I predict that centrists will be disappointed with how left wing Starmer is and the left will be disappointed that centrists seem to like him anyway.
New Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer slams PM Boris Johnson’s ‘serious mistakes’
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...-pm-boris-johnsons-serious-mistakes-htkh96z38
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...-pm-boris-johnsons-serious-mistakes-htkh96z38
You can't judge it based on how they treat Starmer because he's still left wing. The question would be, if a rampant Blairite had just won control of the party who idolised Blair and New Labour and publicly drew a line under the era of Corbyn as a never to be repeated failure, would they still publicly back him/her for the sake of party unity? I very much doubt it.
I think its very much open now. The Covid 19 outbreak is just the kind of event that can overturn Governments who otherwise seem set for success. A vast number of deaths followed by a massive and potentially prolonged recession is on the horizon. Plus, while the Tories won the argument for austerity in 2010 and the following Parliament was played on their turf, this time austerity seems to be out and Government intervention seems to be in for both parties, so its being played on Labour territory this time. Not easy by any means. After all, when Labour forged the post-war consensus people still preferred the Tories to actually run it. But its more achievable than it seemed just three months ago.
Starmer on antisemitism:
Purgetastic... When's the ehrc report due
Purgetastic... When's the ehrc report due
He won't have to do much. The enemy which was Corbyn as gone now. All this antisemitism talk will fade away.
And by the PM's mistakes it turns out he meant the public's. Today he's saying he'd support a ban on outside exercise and will wait for the Tories to decide whether non essential workplaces should close to protect staff, rather than call for it himself. #RealOpposition
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Btw Starmer is a former Trotskyist(Pretty sure he edited a Trot magazine in his student days)and thus at one stage was further left than anything Corbyn has been(Corbyn politics are based on a humanitarian/christian socialism) . This is the first time Labour have a ex marxist as party leader. It's funny what difference a well tailored suit and decent hair cut makes in people impressions.
idk, the current leader of the labour party has very close ties to people who pose an existential threat to british jewry
People change, they grow up. Peter Hitchens was a Trotskyist too. Best not to judge people in their 60s by what they were like aged 18.
it's not socialism unless you have a moustache, that's just science
@Sweet Square you’ll enjoy this from Hitchens
Look at the people. We now know from Blair himself , in a BBC interview with Peter Hennessy in August 2017, that he was a Trotskyist at Oxford. This revelation, which would have been a ten-megaton Fleet Street explosion at any point before 1997, passed almost entirely without notice. Did he join a Trotskyist grouplet? We don't know. But one of his biographers, John Rentoul, records that his close friend Geoff Gallop was at the time a member of the International Marxist Group. IMG members, to my knowledge, chanted "Victory to the IRA!" during 1970s demonstrations, and were encouraged to join the Labour Party as entryists (It's actually quite hard to see why else anyone under 60 would have joined it in the mid 1970s). Who can now know, if those involved do not choose to tell us? But when Blair wrote a long sycophantic letter to Michael Foot in June 1982 - which came to light in 2006, too late to matter - he himself said "I came to Socialism through Marxism (to be more specific through Deutscher's biography of Trotsky)". Then look at his Cabinet members. Peter Mandelson was beyond doubt a member of the Young Communist League. (Lord) John Reid was an adult member of the Communist Party. Alan Milburn, Stephen Byers, Alisstair Darling and Bob Ainsworth also had revolutionary connections. These are just the ones we know about, though we do not know much because none of them has ever been forthcoming about it. In this they are utterly unlike me. I am completely open about my own Trotskyist past. One other thing. You also jeered at me for pointing out that the Tory Party copied New Labour. Why? David Cameron described himself as "the Heir to Blair" and George Osborne referred to Blair as "The Master". It was by accepting New Labour's historic victory as irreversible that the Tories came back into office in 2010.
Look at the people. We now know from Blair himself , in a BBC interview with Peter Hennessy in August 2017, that he was a Trotskyist at Oxford. This revelation, which would have been a ten-megaton Fleet Street explosion at any point before 1997, passed almost entirely without notice. Did he join a Trotskyist grouplet? We don't know. But one of his biographers, John Rentoul, records that his close friend Geoff Gallop was at the time a member of the International Marxist Group. IMG members, to my knowledge, chanted "Victory to the IRA!" during 1970s demonstrations, and were encouraged to join the Labour Party as entryists (It's actually quite hard to see why else anyone under 60 would have joined it in the mid 1970s). Who can now know, if those involved do not choose to tell us? But when Blair wrote a long sycophantic letter to Michael Foot in June 1982 - which came to light in 2006, too late to matter - he himself said "I came to Socialism through Marxism (to be more specific through Deutscher's biography of Trotsky)". Then look at his Cabinet members. Peter Mandelson was beyond doubt a member of the Young Communist League. (Lord) John Reid was an adult member of the Communist Party. Alan Milburn, Stephen Byers, Alisstair Darling and Bob Ainsworth also had revolutionary connections. These are just the ones we know about, though we do not know much because none of them has ever been forthcoming about it. In this they are utterly unlike me. I am completely open about my own Trotskyist past. One other thing. You also jeered at me for pointing out that the Tory Party copied New Labour. Why? David Cameron described himself as "the Heir to Blair" and George Osborne referred to Blair as "The Master". It was by accepting New Labour's historic victory as irreversible that the Tories came back into office in 2010.
I knew that, but he's evidently rather establishment now - with the whole knighthood thing, also everything he had to say in his role as shadow Brexit secretary was sensible rather than reactionary. His pledges yesterday seemed modest rather than radical. I'm not bothered how he looks, but I will concede his demeanour is more professional yes.
holy shit that's the most wankery thing i've read my life
*tories scrape a coalition in the middle of a financial crash*
"nice, they like me"
Might not be the best example to use.
The most suspect thing about him is his inability to grow any sort of facial hair. If Frida can then there's no excuse for Keir
Yes she was still incredibly good looking even with a unibrow and moustache.
Cultural Marxism, baby!
But no you're right he's actually become rather dull
Agree but this isn't a good thing, Labour Brexit policy helped killed the party at the last election. Although all of this is a bit pointless because it's looking ever more likely that we are possibly heading into a deeper depression then one in the 1930's so all of this ''sensible' politics schtick will need to go out window or become completely useless. Even the FT is basically saying Starmer is going to have keep the policies of Corbyn,
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Or the ability to open his mouth without sounding like a complete wanker.
Marr asked him this morning what would be the test for the success of his attempt to reassure jewish people and he said it would be a success if the people who had left the Labour party came back to it. Seems fair on the face of it.
I'm pretty sure the ehrc won't see it that way and the report will be published soon exactly in the format it would have been if Corbyn was still leader
Exactly right.
I can never understand the way some people take so much notice of the past, often decades in the past.
You cannot change the past but that is exactly where it should stay; in the past.
Far more important is to look to the future.
That is what can be changed and Labour certainly need to change to become a viable and realistic future government of the UK.
I just find him a bit dull rather than annoying. I'm not sure who Starmer appeals to other than the pro remain liberals, which isn't enough to win any election.
To me least Starmer is banking on the public voting him in with the goal of bringing normality back to politics but with forecasts of employment in America potentially being at around 30% and the EU now having it's first all but in name dictatorship state(Hungary) there's no going back to ''normal''.
Yeah thats why I said it helped kill the party at the election and not that it was the sole reason why Labour lost.
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I was national front at 15, actually got the newspaper, spearhead, and communist at 16. This geezer reckons you're only an adult at 30:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-47622059
To be honest I was trying to find a study which concluded males reached adulthood at something like 28 and females at 25, but I couldn't find it.
Struck the right tone on Marr, I thought, balancing specific criticisms of the response with a clear willingness to work constructively.