For once, I have to agree with The Telegraph. They have said this in an email this morning:
The Green Party has swept to victory in the Gorton and Denton by-election and plunged Sir Keir Starmer's leadership into further crisis.
Anyone seeking to deny that is fooling themselves.
Just look at the stats, again:
This is what rejection looks like. This was not just a mid-term swing. This indicates a reappraisal when people have realised a party has failed.
Only one person can own that failure. That is Starmer. How can he survive this? I do not think he can. I also suspect no one will want to replace him until the scale of the total humiliation in the English local election results, plus in those for the Senedd and Holyrood, is recorded in May.
Then, no doubt, he will be off to join Palantir or some other board that will welcome him with open arms and where he will feel very at home.
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Evil, evil man.
Part of me wishes that Starmer stays on for a bit so that the Green Party can continue to consolidate its position on the back of his, er, lacklustre performance. But on the other hand, maybe the Greens have actually now broken through, so he can clear off. Dare we believe it’s the latter?
He can’t go soon enough for my liking, but must take with him his Neoliberal, Zionist,1%-worshipping Cabinet of Keystone Kops 4th-raters, & all the 6th-raters he parachuted into the Likud-Labour Party – a Party with the likes of Luke Akeshurst and Ruth Smeeth in it has questions hanging over it.
Maybe in the above, highly unlikely, circumstance, Labour might then recover its integrity and raison d’être, but I believe Starmer has broken it beyond repair as a vehicle of government, and that its future is now that of the post-Asquith Liberal Party, of only ever being a junior member of a Coalition, and never a sole administration.
Perhaps these two articles by Peter Oborne, who sussed Stsrmer our back in 2023, when they were published, may help explain.
On Starmer’s untrustworthiness
https://www.doubledown.news/watch/2023/september/25/exposed-keir-starmer-liar-murdochs-man-candidate-mi5-peter-oborne
On his authoritarian instincts, this:
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/uk-labour-starmer-authoritarianism-alarm-bells-ringing
Both are now to the front and fore of his public persona, in addition to his spectacular incompetence, as being, according to a description I used to apply to him, a non-strategic unpolitician, blundering his way to his Non-Socialist Nirvana in the Land of BoD.
Those who promoted him for their own dark ends, such as McSweeney and those behind him, really chose a 100% lemon.
Alas, they also damaged the UK in the process, lumbering us with easily the worst PM in living memory – even than Liz “lettuce” Truss, though given time, I suspect she’d have given Starmer a challenge in a race to the bottom.
Starmer and cabinet colleagues will continue to insist that they need to “improve messaging”.They are deaf to the unrelenting evidence that voters do like the message and the policies that they articulate. The Green party will need manage the increasing number of self serving opportunist who will join.
Bad night for the Conservatives as well. I also see signs the billionaire owned press is switching allegiance from the Tories to Far Right.
“off to join Palantir”? Let’s imagine that it is Rayner who becomes leader. If I were her, I’d want to “clear the board” in a way that prevents the possibility of “shouting from stage left”. Starmer and his crew facilitated genocide. There is only one place for him (& the others): The Hague. Send the whole pack of em there. Such an action would probably result in some deeply unpleasant characters leaving the UK, quickly.
The only hope for Labour to have any significant presence after the next election is to get rid of First Past The Post. In my own constituency – Ken Clarke’s old seat – which elected a Labour MP in 2024, I will vote Green, even though the risk is that we will get a Reform MP. Under PR, I would happily vote for our current MP as one of my choices but not under FPTP.
Long before he result was announced Labour were getting their defence in – the Greens have put a huge effort into getting their support out – an effort they could not replicate in a general election!
No one would go out for Labour
Starmer/Labour is ideologically holed below the water – I’ve realised this by watching the Tony Blair documentary on Channel 4.
Blair says at the end that to do anything, to get anything done you need money. He does not qualify where that money comes from, and that – in line with what Steve Keen talks about Neo-liberalism – he does not care, and therefore sees money as having no inherent properties other than its spending power. Neo-liberals have the same view – they ignore where the money comes from and in doing so, ignore the political power and leverage that comes with it issuance (debt, credit, laundered money, campaign contributions, personal agendas etc).
Starmer and Labour share these views – and as we know, along with the other great lie we live with – that there is no such thing as government money – you have a perfect storm of incompetence and ignorance.
The thing is, as that as Richard has pointed out, money is not neutral the way Neo-Knobs think it is. This helps negate government power to print money (apparently its a waste of time) and help people as much as it allows billionaires to buy everything – even our so-called democracy.
Stepping back from it all, I can only describe it as ‘the’ philosophical tragedy and the key to the growth of death in the form of fascism.
A few days ago Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of “My Party”. In addition to the Greens, this gives another possible home for left wing Labour MPs still clinging on. With some of the McSweeney/Steve Reed faction joining Reform, the Labour Party is now facing a slow decline, just as the Conservative Party is now experiencing.
Let’s be realistic.
No one is taking Your Party seriously.
Sorry – but they have blown their own chances of that happening.
I did not mean to imply that the electorate would take “My Party” seriously, I was just suggesting possible homes for Labour MPs abandoning the slowly sinking ship.
Richard, don’t write off Your Party so glibly with so much time before the next GE. Yes, they have f**kd up big time for sure and lost a massive amount of support. But that lost cohort is left wing – and it remains to be seen if the Greens can carry a left wing agenda.
Oh come on. The Greens are carrying a left wing agenda. Let’s not pretend otherwise.
Heidi Alexander’s choice of words this morning on the Today programme displayed, without her being aware of it, two of the flaws in Labour’s thinking. “I spend every weekend knocking on doors speaking to people.” Perhaps you could try listening to them instead? And “We’ve got to get better at telling our story.” It’s not your ‘story’ that’s the problem, lass, it’s your policies.