I posted this thread in Twitter last night:
I then followed up with this:
I am not sure that there is much to add barring these observations.
Sunak will not call out Braverman's racism.
Or Anderson's Islamophobia.
He won't even describe Islamophobia as such, but will use the term anti-Semitism at any moment, often inappropriately.
He still claims the public wants his Rwanda policy which will punish people guilty of nothing except having fled other countries in fear.
His rhetoric on small boats is intended to create division, mistrust and fear in society, and is succeeding in doing so.
He will not condemn Netanyahu for genocide, which British policy is supporting.
And he is the person whose laws are already denying the right to protest whilst also denying the right to justify protest by stating the reason for it when being tried for the crime of, for example, waking slowly.
This is not a man who can talk about unity, reconciliation or common values when his modus operandi is to create ‘others' to vilify.
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Not that I ever watch or listen to Sunak, but I heard this ridiculous tripe being reported on the news. What a grotesque little man he is. The UK being threatened by extremism?
All he has to do is look in the mirror. I can’t add anything to the points you make above Richard, of course. as you are 100% correct.
It seems pretty obvious to me that the odd timing of the ‘speech’ was produced to align with a concerted effort from the right-wing media to stoke up the culture wars further. The broadcast media are, of course, complicit and will be breathlessly discussing it last night and this morning (without much sensible analysis, of course) as the newspapers are delivered through the letterboxes around the country. I suspect that the front page copy for the likes of the Mail, Telegraph and Express was already written before Sunak took to the podium.
I tend to think that Sunak is simply too stupid in political terms to see where this is inevitably leading. No doubt he is intelligent in his own way (perhaps as a tech bro doing business stuff effectively) but he doesn’t strike me as a great thinker in any other regard and he has the political instincts of a cucumber. And that’s being harsh on cucumbers.
It has got to the stage that he just wants to do anything he can to stay in power (probably thinking about his CV), so anything goes. He can’t think in longer timescales.
I also suspect that those around him, his advisors, know exactly what is going on here and are somewhat more malevolent in their plans to steer the country in a certain direction.
If I was to say the bastards ought to be strung up, it would be taken as another example of the ‘hate’ they are trying to claim is prevalent in our society, so I won’t say it.
Unfortunately, wishing any ill on them wouldn’t have any point either because, when their plans hopefully fail (if Starmer gets into power and actually shows some backbone for a change), the people planning to curtail our democracy piece by piece will be rewarded for their efforts regardless. Lucrative jobs in the media, that Tufton Street ‘thinktanks’, all the usual sinecures as the wealthy people funding them continue to get richer and richer and the rest of the country gets poorer and poorer.
Bevan was entirely right about the Tories and nothing ever changes.
Sunak evil? Aye. Starmer backbone? Naw.
As one who has problems with the concept of evil, much because of religious associations, I’d prefer to see Sunak, like Johnson, as firmly positioned on the pyschopathic spectrum.
Sunak evidently lacks empathy, as does Johnson, and also lacks any apparent conscience or understanding of honesty, let alone its importance in public life.
Lying and dissimulation is a large tick in the Sunak character assessment.
As for Starmer, he appears to have the essential quality of a weak man in a leadership position, he is a bully. He has lost the power of rational argument for bluster.
I very much doubt his integrity, discarding values as a cynical election strategy, but I suspect he does have a conscience buried somewhere.
The usual right wing tactic of using a trumped up threat on democracy as a reason to curtail democracy. And Starmer agrees that Sunak is correct to do this. Dangerous times indeed.
I am no fan of George Galloway but he is completely correct in his condemnation of US/UK support of Israeli genocide in Gaza as he was for condemning US/UK illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003.. The voters of Rochdale are no fools and have seen through the criminality of Tory/Labour complicity in this genocide..
The Conservative Friends of Israel -or , for that matter, Labour Friends or Lib Dem friends, do not criticise Netanyahu but label pro-Palestinian marches as ‘marches of hate’ and indicate the violence only arises from their supporters. They are trying to suppress pro-Palestinian support. They are reluctant to recognise and admit collective punishment is being meted on Gaza -and the West Bank.
The unavoidable inference is that enormous pressure is being wielded behind the scenes. We can only speculate WHY that is. We don’t have a large Evangelical vote to placate and Liberal/Reform Jews’ organisations have called for a ceasefire and a two state solution.
If one said follow the money, one could be accused of using anti-Semitic cliches. The demands of the US State Department are probably part of the answer but not all.
Having foreign policy on such an important issue being written elsewhere is an encroachment on our freedom.
Sunak will not allow discussion on the influences being exercised behind the scenes.
Actually, things do change – and have done. Even the hapless May never delivered such a fork-tongued homily as this one. She was brazen. Remember the spiteful scorm of “citizens of nowhere” speech? Or the trumpeting of the “hostile environment”. This was a quantum leap in hypocrisy and timed with truely shameless cynicism. The carnivorous instincts of the city ‘tech bro’ were never more to the fore. This particular timing sequence runs, I would suggest, thus…..
Starmer leans upon a feeble Speaker to dish the SNP’s motion on Gaza, which happens to be articulating (again) what every poll shows most people across the ‘U’K think about the slaughter in Gaza – real people being really killed. The resulting scandal of parliamentary manipulation, which tarnishes both ‘main’ parties, gets the ‘cover’ of blaming threats to MPs. Sunak’s past-appointed right wing demagogic attack dogs Braverman and Anderson launch hysterical over-the-top smears on Labour’s London Mayor, protesters (yet again) and the state of the general body politic – attacks so grotesque Anderson looses the whip. And the Prime Ministerial solution? He use the faux ‘issues’ raised to go on a BBC, round the country interview blitz (free party publicity and for the ‘issue’). Badly handled – again. Next solution? A rare solemn pontification from outside No 10 which wraps his attempted strong arming of police chiefs and implied threats to public protest in piety and bogus historical claims of tolerance and moderation.
I suspect he and his ‘comms team’ – where did such a constipated euphemism for organised lying first come from? – think they did a very clever job. You could see that he thought so as he couldn’t quite disguise the imminent smirk as he reached his ‘solemn’ conclusion.
What Sunak said is worrying enough, but why suddenly throw this dead cat on the table on a Friday evening? Am I too suspicious to wonder what else he is trying to keep out of the news agenda?
It is only a few days until the Budget will attempt to bribe voters with small amounts of jam today or tomorrow. Is relaunching a culture war Sunak’s penultimate throw of the dice before he calls a Spring general election?
Like others here, I strongly suspect this is the start of what will be the most unpleasant, dishonest and stupid GE campaign mounted by a desperate, totally cynical and dishonest government in UK history. As an attempt to divide society even more than before it really is utterly shameless. Calling for unity when it’s his party that’s spent 14 years attacking nearly every group I can think of is something else. And trying to say that he is defending democracy and then attack the Rochdale voters for electing Galloway is ludicrous.
Nice to see the LDs call this shit out. Shame Starmer is so weak he wouldn’t do it.
Starmer has agrees with Sunak
Despair
He came up with some anodyne phrase about agreeing with the Prime Ministers call for “national unity”.
Ridiculous, he should have joined the LD’s in pointing out the truth, which is that Sunak’s party has spent all its time in power seeking division and disunity.
We have the worst government for decades, certainly of the modern era. And the worst official opposition.
I read this call for ‘unity’ as Starmer simply following Murdoch’s orders. If so it indicates that Murdoch feels his decades long Media Circus, cynically cajoling the British electorate to vote Left to Right and back again whilst his ruling establishment stays in place, is slipping away from him and he is trying to rein in the febrile political populism he and his cartel have unleashed.
The UK’s system of Parliamentary democracy is based on a thoroughly bogus interpretation of the UK’s true constitutional basis; its most egregious failing being the deliberate undermining and dismissal of the sovereignty and constitution of the Scottish half of the Union, formally represented by Scotland’s MPs in the Union’s shared parliament.
Under the true basis, England’s MPs have no formal authority over Scotland or her MPs, and are therefore not entitled to outvote or overrule the majority decisions of the Scots MPs.
This is because the two kingdoms of the Union are equally sovereign, and neither of them agreed to be governed by the other, and nothing in the Treaty nor Acts of Union mandates otherwise. The Treaty also imposed a guarantee of the permanence of Scotland’s constitution as cited in Scotland’s Claim of Right of 1689. The acceptance of that imposition was a formal condition of the Treaty’s ratification, and as those ratifications both went through with that condition intact, the guarantee came into effect. Note that no such guarantee applies to England’s constitution, yet somehow England’s constitution has become the Union’s sole constitution.
Fundamentally, England’s MPs can only provide an English Yes or No in any vote, and never a Union Yes or No. The same limitation applies to the Scots MPs. The two bodies formally represent completely different but equally sovereign foreign kingdoms and cannot seriously be deemed to be a single body for the purposes of a simple flat majority vote, especially where one body permanently outnumbers the other ten times over! Not only is that a democratic atrocity by itself, it greatly stifles the ability of the Scots MPs to carry out their function as formal representatives of their sovereign half of the Union, which is to promote and defend the interests of Scotland, the job they were put into the parliament to do by the Treaty itself. ‘Stifled’ because the Scots MPs cannot realistically fight that ten-fold majority in a flat vote, thus imposing a major and unwarranted constraint on Scots MPs that England’s MPs never suffer.
Thus England’s ‘democratic freedoms’ have been crushing Scotland’s ‘democratic freedoms’ for more than 316 years, yet Sunak wants national unity? Whose, exactly?
I love this argument
But I do nit think it sustainable in any meaningful way
https://labourhub.org.uk/2024/03/02/what-will-labour-do-for-rochdale/
I keep reading that Sunak is setting a trap for Starmer in next week’s budget. If it’s bringing in all of the party promises like non-dom status and taking charity status away from private schools, it’s a trap I’m looking forward to.
Won’t help Rochdale, though, or Sunak.