Keir Starmer - FoM now a red-line

bumface said:
My point was that Starmer would have had the same treatment if the establishment didn't see him as 'their man'. Starmer is more of the same. Slightly less evil than the current Tory lot but still not a bloke who will rock the boat. A bloke who will change pretty much nothing if he gets elected. The press are fine with that. Corbyn offered real change. That's why he had to be destroyed with lies and smears.
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Well we agree then, apart from I don’t think it’s because Starmer is the establishment, more so that Corbyn was the anti-establishment. And there is nothing wrong with being anti-establishment (y)
 
MolteniArcore said:
I remember big deals being made about the first 3.
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Agree to disagree then I suppose. I don't think any of them were reported much.

I mean look at this thread. You've got confused guys rambling on about Corbyn wearing IRA tshirts. Thats when a news story has been hammered home - when it reaches a point people are making up their own exaggerated versions and steadfastly believing them. The same folk, 5 years from now, won't be saying Starmer deliberately swiped cyclists in a monster truck. It was slipped under the rug and it's generally forgotten.
 
SuperStu said:
Agree to disagree then I suppose. I don't think any of them were reported much.
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I‘m weird as I’m a homeworker and obsessed with current affairs and politics and watch it ALL THE TIME. So I see this stuff when it happens. It might get 15 mins on Politics Live or appear in a HoC debate for example, but not make the news at 10 or on the Mail’s front page.

So for me it has made quite big waves as prominent politicians are discussing it on the BBC for 15 mins, but for others they might not even notice it.

Thats just me though, your examples are probably very valid to someone who has a proper job and doesn’t pay as much attention. And people like that were certainly bombarded with anti JC stuff.
 
SuperStu said:
Agree to disagree then I suppose. I don't think any of them were reported much.

I mean look at this thread. You've got confused guys rambling on about Corbyn wearing IRA tshirts. Thats when a news story has been hammered home - when it reaches a point people are making up their own exaggerated versions and steadfastly believing them. The same folk, 5 years from now, won't be saying Starmer deliberately swiped cyclists in a monster truck. It was slipped under the rug and it's generally forgotten.
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I don't think that BoroFur was being serious about the IRA t-shirt thing. He was just responding in kind to my post about marrows and jam. I'd like to think that he meant it as a joke.
 
bumface said:
I don't think that BoroFur was being serious about the IRA t-shirt thing. He was just responding in kind to my post about marrows and jam. I'd like to think that he meant it as a joke.
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Oh for God's sake. Did I really need to put a winky emoji after that joke?
SuperStu said:
You've got confused guys rambling on about Corbyn wearing IRA tshirts.
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@SuperStu I think you need to take a break fella.
 
BoroFur said:
I don't know how many times I've said on here I'm just Labour. I've supported every leader since 1983. Centre, Centre Left, Centre Right means nothing to me they're just 'labels'. Perhaps I'm not sufficiently intellectual or sophisticated enough to notice any discernible difference but I'll tell you that 90% of the electorate will be exactly the same as me. So giving Starmer an opportunity is an absolute no-brainer for me.
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My question is really whether Keir Starmer is a real Labour leader or not I suppose. To my mind, I’ve seen him break every promise he made during the leadership election. I’ve heard him say there are too many foreigners in the NHS. I’ve heard him speak out against climate activists and anti-racism campaigners. I’ve heard him say he wants to be tougher than the Tories on crime and immigration. I’ve not really heard him support striking workers, for example, but I have seen him accept an award from the Spectator as well as attend an awards ceremony and write for The Sun.

I’ve heard him parrot the government, Tory party and right-wing media guff about Brexit. It looks and feels like he’ll engage with the right but not with the left. Either because he doesn’t feel like he has to because we’ll vote Labour anyway, or because he actually believes the stuff he’s saying. Neither of things are good, let’s be honest.

You and others may have no issue with him saying the sort of stuff listed above, hoping he’ll deliver something different if and when he’s Prime Minister. People seem to think he has to do the stuff listed above to try and appeal to those ‘floating voters’ and there is some truth in that. But I don’t really have that sort of faith in him. I have to be honest.

To my mind there was absolutely huge movement under the last leader. Starmer and his team, rather than tapping into it - to the youth engagement, to the organisation of the left, the huge membership - have set about dismantling it.

What I can’t support or understand is a leader who would rather p*ss of a load of Labour activists, supporters, members, campaigners, just to try and appeal to some old Tories who might be thinking of switching their vote. To me this looks like exactly what Starmer is doing. Why would I back that sort of rubbish?

Aiming for a tiny pocket of people instead of tapping into this absolutely huge number of people who really need his support, who don’t vote and need to be brought back into the fold. He should be on the TV and the radio every single day speaking of corruption, sleaze, law-breaking, fraud, the climate, jobs, the NHS, austerity. He isn’t doing this.

You might think him writing for The Sun or trying not to upset the Mail is part of a longer game, but I’m not sure that’s what’s happening. There’s a reason Tories support him, are switching parties. There’s a reason he picks up awards from the Spectator.

To me it just looks like he’s playing the game. I personally feel after his comments on NHS workers, I’d find it very, very hard to vote for someone who speaks like that. I expect better from a Labour leader.

I’m very angry and frustrated with politics and politicians but being made to feel like I have no choice but to vote for Starmer and his pledge-breaking, his duplicity, his dog-whistling to appeal to casual racists and xenophobes… I’m not sure I can get onboard with that. That he behaves like this is part of the problem IMO. He’s seemingly happy to sink to their level. Well I’m not sure I am.
 
I’ve never liked Starmer but ever since he got in as Labour leader I always thought I’d vote for him just to get rid of the Tories. Over the last few months I think I’ve changed my mind, he’s not even close to what I stand for.
 
MolteniArcore said:
Your point had nothing to do with Corbyn so why would be compare them?

You said Starmer is ‘their man’ and that is why he’s got an easy ride in the press. That is not true. Starmer was attacked in the Mail for something like 14 days in a row, all front pages, about a party that wasn’t a party. It was so bad the Police buckled and opened an investigation.

If you want to compare to Corbyn please direct me to where the press has hounded him to the extent that the a police opened an investigation on him.
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That was just the DM doing their thing, trying to get Johnson off the hook or at least mitigate his actions. It wasn't a personal or sustained attack on Starmer, his character, his politics or his beliefs.
 
gregorgregorovich said:
I think I'm misunderstanding when people misunderstand me, misunderstanding them. If that's confusing, I'm sorry for misunderstanding everyone, including myself.
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When I made that joke I did not expect it to be taken seriously by SuperStu. He launched a tirade off the back of it and said I and the rest of the country were basically confused and gullible. Now that I've made it clear it was a joke (in response to a Bumface joke) SuperStu looks really silly doesn't he?
 
BlindBoyGrunt said:
That was just the DM doing their thing, trying to get Johnson off the hook or at least mitigate his actions. It wasn't a personal or sustained attack on Starmer, his character, his politics or his beliefs.
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I look at the DM web site every day, there is always something anti Labour or anti Starmer - usually based on the themes of kneeling, immigration, race, unions and industrial action, law and order, NHS being rubbish, Brexit and Corbyn/Abbot.

Starmer is not getting a free ride in any shape or form and they will turn the screw as the election approaches.
 
BoroFur said:
When I made that joke I did not expect it to be taken seriously by SuperStu. He launched a tirade off the back of it and said I and the rest of the country were basically confused and gullible. Now that I've made it clear it was a joke (in response to a Bumface joke) SuperStu looks really silly doesn't he?
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Me too. I'm going to get ready now after I've found my I love BoroFur tee shirt.
 
viv_andersons_nana said:
My question is really whether Keir Starmer is a real Labour leader or not I suppose. To my mind, I’ve seen him break every promise he made during the leadership election. I’ve heard him say there are too many foreigners in the NHS. I’ve heard him speak out against climate activists and anti-racism campaigners. I’ve heard him say he wants to be tougher than the Tories on crime and immigration. I’ve not really heard him support striking workers, for example, but I have seen him accept an award from the Spectator as well as attend an awards ceremony and write for The Sun.

I’ve heard him parrot the government, Tory party and right-wing media guff about Brexit. It looks and feels like he’ll engage with the right but not with the left. Either because he doesn’t feel like he has to because we’ll vote Labour anyway, or because he actually believes the stuff he’s saying. Neither of things are good, let’s be honest.

You and others may have no issue with him saying the sort of stuff listed above, hoping he’ll deliver something different if and when he’s Prime Minister. People seem to think he has to do the stuff listed above to try and appeal to those ‘floating voters’ and there is some truth in that. But I don’t really have that sort of faith in him. I have to be honest.

To my mind there was absolutely huge movement under the last leader. Starmer and his team, rather than tapping into it - to the youth engagement, to the organisation of the left, the huge membership - have set about dismantling it.
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A massive amount has changed since the GE and leadership election. Pandemic, war, energy crisis, massive inflation, trade down, GDP not recovering, three Tory PM's 2.5 years, strikes, NHS wrecked (even more), the exit of labour/ workers etc etc. Priorities or headlines after or during that lot have to change, and change by an extremely large amount otherwise you look far too rigid and not prioritising the biggest problems we have at the minute. Let's see what the manifesto says, what the priorities are then, and let's see what he does in relation to the manifesto before we decide what promises he has broken. He's not been in power for 1 second yet, all his job is at the moment is to provide a viable alternative to this current **** show, which he is seemingly doing very well (as the polls say).

When did he say "there are too many foreigners in the NHS"?
I've never heard him say that, and certainly don't expect him to have said it in isolation (the same way the far right or Tories do, and how they mean it), and every time he speaks there's a reason or some context.

Any time I've heard him talking he's been saying we should be training up more of our own nurses and paying them better, and there's nothing wrong with either of those statements, and a large majority of people (and people in red wall seats) would agree with those statements. If we recruit and train the max we can, and still have gaps, then yes of course bring foreign nurses in. The big problem is this major reliance on overseas recruitment of a specialist job should not be the default or a high percentage, we need to fix the problem of what is leading to that requirement. It's not like this is a temporary job either, we have always needed nurses, and we will always need them.

We need to make being a nurse (or working in any sort of care) much more appealing, so we can drive up recruitment here. All we've seen over the last 12 years is the Tories taking the **** out of them, taking advantage of their good nature. Then to cap this off-handed them a mess of a pandemic to deal with, and a clap wasn't going to fix it. No matter what anyone thought about Blair (the last Labour leader to win in nearly 50 years), the NHS was in a much better position when he left, than what it is now.

There were big moments under the last leader, but not big enough, which is why he lost
by 55 seats. Then he lost the next one by 163 seats, which is a massive move away.
The current guy has the biggest movement to labour that I've probably ever seen, and I don't see many going the other way.

Think about anyone who has voted Labour in the last 30 years. The problem with moving to a left version of labour, is you run out of voters to the left, and inevitably lose voters on the right of Labour, who have voted labour in the last 30 years. It's not possible to win if you lose the voters on the right of where labour have been in the last 30 years. This is even harder after a far-right movement like brexit, and it's far too soon to be even thinking about reversing that massive **** up.

Labour could of course narrow the band of the political compass they cover, to be less central but all this does is give up seats, and would miss out on the opportunity to get rid of some absolute Tory/ Tory Right clowns, and it will make it harder for them to come back. These seats would likely get filled by more moderate people, and if they didn't they would lose again and again.

We (Labour) need to give them an absolute kicking of monumental proportions, so they don't try this crap again. Brexit let a load of further right Tory MP's (tossers) come to the forte, and we need to put them back in their box. We need clowns like BJ, JRM, Dorries etc out of their seats, so even when labour do lose in the future, its losing to a less far-right party.
If Labour hold power for two terms we could see the centre moving further to the left, and could end up with a situation where they hold power for a long time, like under Blair, which anyone should happily take after what we would have had from 2010-2025. Yes, that might not be ideal, but ideal doesn't exist, not now.
 
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