John Crace, The Guardian's parliamentary sketch writer, made an important point in his column yesterday. He suggested, when discussing yesterday's Prime Minister's Question Time:
But both leaders appeared to have sated their blood lust for the time being.
Maybe it's the weather. A sense of it being too nice to be bothered. Or maybe it's battle fatigue. It's just too hard to keep on caring when every day is a new shitshow. Or maybe it's that Keir has finally given up on Kemi. Has stopped treating her and the Tories as serious opposition.
The Tories have given up on Badenoch.
Starmer has given up on Badenoch.
I suspect Badenoch has given up on Badenoch.
It's only because there is nothing noticeable for the Leader of the Opposition to do after a massive loss in a general election that, I suspect, explains why Badenoch is still in office. Her performance rivals that of Liz Truss, and certainly makes the dire performance of Iain Duncan-Smith in that role (for those old enough, and awake enough, to remember it) look like a stellar performance.
The trouble is, this matters now. It's not Ed Davey who is seeking to lead the Opposition in her absence. It is Farage.
Starmer is already letting him run the government.
Now Badenoch is letting him run the Opposition.
If fascism is to be beaten in the UK - and beaten it must be - then we need to have politicians able to challenge rather than embrace and enable it.
Starmer is not that politician.
Nor is Badenoch.
And that's what really worries me about where we are. Two utterly incompetent people are making life so very easy for Farage. That should be worrying everyone.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
In the case of LINO, in terms of policy outside of finance (& perhaps Ukraine), it is McSweeney that is calling the shots. As discussed previously, Starmer is a-political and weak – a puppet.
Agreed. However – “…outside of finance (& perhaps Ukraine), it is McSweeney that is calling the shots”
I think McSweeney has his hand in ‘advising’ with Ukraine as well. I very much think it is McSweeney telling Starmer to appear with lots of military people in uniform – surrounded by as many union jack flags as well.
I sometimes think, the seemingly countless times Starmer has appeared flanked by people in military uniform, he (or more likely McSweeney make his decision for him, as that’s the way it seems to work) should perhaps next think he could dress up himself – like a South American military junta leader from the 1970s!
What baffles me somewhat is that McSweeney is reportedly running an operation which is, if you’ll forgive me for being crude, shitting the bed week after week with one bad and poorly-received policy after the next. Under the current ‘plans’, the LINO operation has completely destroyed the reputation of the Labour Party, something which could take decades to recover, they’ve alienated almost all of the electorate, including dyed-in-the-wool social democrats such as myself, the Reform-ists hate them even more than ever, even though they are advocating policies trumpeted by Farage and an electoral drubbing in 2029 looks almost certain even at this remove.
Just why is McSweeney’s role apparently so secure? Surely the LINO leadership doesn’t seriously think that things will somehow turn around with their current direction, or are they really that hard of thinking? The way the major political parties operate really does baffle me at times. I’m not enough of a conspiracy theorist to think that McSweeney/Labour Together have kompromat on Starmer and co, but you don’t need to be a political genius to notice that things aren’t going very well at the moment and yet they are still full steam ahead on the current course.
In my opinion it is because he is fulfilling the only objective the Starmerite wing actually has, which is strengthening the right wing’s control over the Labour party. Elections and governance are secondary to maintaining institutional control.
One lesson the left really needs to learn from Farage is that those Labour supporters that keep saying you have to win elections to get anything done are dead wrong.
What Farage has done is move the overton window his way, so that eventually some spineless centrist implements his ideas for him. That happened with the Tories over brexit, and now with Labour over immigration.
Yes, but Farage has one thing going for him that the Left do not have; a media that has essentially given him the freedom to preach without responsibility. I doubt there is any potential leader of the left who would get the same free ride. In fact, the opposite would happen, just look at Foot and Corbyn, or even softer left options like Kinnock and Miliband.
Farage could not have done anything without a media that helped create the monster.
Which poses the question, why has the UK media done that? The answer for some is obvious, they want his right wing agenda to prevail. For others, they probably like the confrontation, because bad news sells — at least that is what they believe.
Thank you.
Let’s go back to the mid-1990s when Major sought Blair’s help to reform the media.
Murdoch thought he needed his own party to head off such risks. Therefore, a young firebrand called Farage was helped to oust Alan Sked, an academic and former Liberal candidate, as leader of UKIP. UKIP was encouraged to broaden its policy offering from the EU and become a threat to the Tories and Labour.
Farage and Murdoch go back decades. Farage admitted that he obtained Murdoch’s permission to appear in a BBC documentary series about Murdoch.
Blair refused to help Major, flew to Australia and kissed Murdoch’s ring.
I believe you are being far too generous in describing Starmer and Badenoch as being incompetent, which they are undoubtably are, but both are much, much worse.
@ Alex Beveridge and Richard
Richard, How I agree with your strictures about Starmer the clueless misogynist bully, to which I add overgrown schoolboy.
His response, that caused sociopathic Rachel from accounts to burst out laughing was undiluted schoolboy playground “Yah, boo sucks”! Maybe he’ll turn up in short trousers at the next PMQ’s.
And Alex, I agree. Starmer has certainly sold any soul he may once have had to a corporatist and Zionist Devil, by whom he is operated like some marionette.
As to Badenoch, I’m not sure who pulls her strings, but am not impressed, noting all Richard’s criticisms of her performance, and am equally sure you’re right that she and Starmer are worse than incompetent, and may be the (willing? Or just the useful idiots?) Fascist-enablers that I think you probably believe they are.
Don’t drop to their level Alex. We go higher remember.
There is, essentialy, one acceptable viewpoint in the overton window now, as a result of those muppets; migration is bad, we must ‘talk about it’ (even though this has been the main talking point for the last 20 years), and we can only fix the UK through reducing our population.
On the ‘left’ you have people who think we should tighten up visa and citizenship rules and kick migrants out through proper legal procedure.
and on the ‘right’ you have people who openly call for the abolishment of human rights, and for varying ‘solutions’ that can be pursued once human rights are no longer an issue.
It is utterly sickening.
I didn’t expect much from Starmer, but I honestly did not expect this.
Me neither
As much as I know some feel Ed Davey is still tainted by association with the coalition government, presumably his personal understanding of the challenges of dealing with disability, and his unwillingness to lean to the right in response to Reform, means that the left is better off looking towards Davey and. the Lib Dems to provide opposition to Reform and it’s race-baiting deflection from the real causes of our economic struggles.
Certainly Starmer is not managing to provide that voice of the left, and Reeves et al even less so. There are some on the labour backbenches that seem to have the right principles, but given they have failed to get their party to shift, maybe it’s time for them to shift party.
John Crace’s latest sketch in The Guardian wasn’t just witty—it was a warning.
When even he says Starmer and Badenoch have given up, we should pay attention. Because while the official Opposition sleeps, Farage is stepping into the role—unchecked, unelected, and emboldened.
This isn’t just about poor leadership. It’s about a vacuum being filled by someone whose politics are regressive, dangerous, and divisive. If neither Starmer nor Badenoch are willing—or able—to challenge him, then who will?
This isn’t the time for political passivity. It’s the time to speak up, show up, and push back. Fascism thrives when people stop paying attention. Let’s not make that mistake again.
And now comes today’s news that Starmer’s puppet-master McSweeney has revived the idea of a Rwanda-type deportation scheme for “failed” (sic) asylum seekers.
Apart from the moral repugnance this generates in anyone half-decent, do they actually think this is going to win them back Labour voters?
I wonder if there’s ever been a decline as swift as this after a landslide victory? Electoral Calculus currently has Labour on 177 seats if there was an election tomorrow, a drop of a mere 235 seats from their total last July. They are jaw-droppingly incompetent as well as morally repellent.
We’ve seen it in the Netherlands.
The last 2 PMs (Balkenende and Rutte, good for 7 parliaments) came from centre-right parties, traditionally parties that always had a place in the coalition formed and parties that benefitted enormously by having a far-right idiot on the periphery. Wilders has been used as the motivation to push these traditional parties further to the right until… the electorate realise that the far-right isn’t so far, and the guy shouting “they’ve failed you, give me a chance” gets in…
More dismay.
I knew we were in for trouble when Sir Kermit confirmed he had no plans to revive the second stage of Leveson inquiry.
We dont have left/right any more. Just groutesque management teams, outdoing each other in cruel decisions.
I just do not understand these people at all.
The bad sleep well.
Ive been reading “Crack up capitalism” by slobodian . He describes very well thé slide of the powers of the nation state, and the withering away of the welfare state as the tax base is stolen into tax havens.
All political parties are either blind or complicit in this. Farage and Reform are being financed by the forces behind this drift.
Labour appears as trying to stay in power while it appears as powerless to do anything with it.
But they in turn are being funded and advised by the same forces that regards the welfare state as unsustainable, that all hope for the future rests on the initiative of the private sector , and that anyone who says otherwise is out of touch with the modern world.
Tax havens are now literally a diversion – not nearly the threat they were.
What is preventing a Labour Government increasing taxation on rich people then?
Can you explain why tax evasion and Tax havens are a diversion.?
I presume it is because there are ample sources of income and capital that a Government could tax anyway.
But if that happens will it not increase the incentive for tax evasion?
I am not saying that they are not an issue: I am saying that they are not as big an issue as they were, and that the problem is probbaly diminishing. The data shows HMRC are collecting more tax from the wealthy now beacuse they can find their abuse because of automatic information exchange – which I helped deliver.
After over half a century I have dropped out of the Labour Party. No point. Useless. I agree with all of the comments above. Where the LP went wrong for me was in not having a set of core principles and objectives that all potential leadership candidates would swear allegiance to. If they did anything as leader that was contrary to these principles and objectives they would face a confidence motion snd be forced to resign. The NEC would facilitate a ballot of all members.
But it is too late. Kinnock, Blair and Starmer have killed what should have been a radical alternative party. I can almost hear the knives being sharpened for Zack Polanski.