Like a bad dream, Jeremy Corbyn continues to bring nightmares to the Labour Paty. Poor old Keir Starmer showed his true lack of CEO metal today.
In any corporate business, the boss going is a big deal, especially if they are a wrong 'un. New management is always quick to blame ("Kitchen Sink" is the preferred business term) the past "loser" whoever he or she was, take a huge write-off and fix some big issues in the company. All the better to start the new term with some heavy-lifting done for no political capital expended.
In politics, life is not so easy. Your predecessor can hang around making trouble, like Theresa May, or leave the scence like Cameron (and Blair for a while). It is not up to you, unless you foolishly promote them to the Lords too soon. Occasionally, in business you have the old boss continue on, like Stelios who of course stills owns huge parts of easyjet and can make mischief at will, but in the round, once out the door they are done for in terms of influence.
With the horrifying anti-semitism case in the news today, the left has managed to gorge itself on its own righteousness around political correctness. If it was for the nastiness of the beliefs behind it, it would be very funny. Starmer could at last takehis chance for a clearout. Yet with this open goal to boot Saint Jez out, he pulled his punches, defending him this morning in a typically studioulsy lawyerly way. Only when the Sainted one refused to repent his sins, word for word rejecting Starmer's defence, has he suddenly found the courage to suspend him.
A real leader would have used this opportunity to not only kick-out St Jez, but to make sure a few other reprobates went with him. Alas, Starmer has proved only a bit part player and with it shown he lacks the true metal of leadership. if there is one thing May and Covid have shown us, it is that strong leadership qaulities are needed in a Prime Minister and hard decisions must be made and acted on.
28 comments:
Rather looks as though Starmer agrees Jezza has trashed the entire brand
http://www.cityunslicker.co.uk/2020/10/tories-persistent-poll-lead-two-theses.html
some (but only some) on the hard left have been in agonies over whether to form a new party - this must give them a bit more impetus
(but the Parliamentary Roader / Two-Fronts / Please Please Stay And Fight tendency has prevailed comfortably thus far)
Not sure you are being fair.
Starmer cannot cancel JC's membership of Lab, there are rules.
He also cannot turn the spirit of the Lab party around in a few high profile suspensions.
It took years for Lab to go wrong and it will take years to make it go right.
On is he much of a leader - I do not think so either but the Lab (or any other) party is not a business you can 'pivot'
According to Guido, Ed Balls said (this morning) of Corbyn, "He’s not a racist man, but he undoubtedly not only stood with antisemitic people, but said things which were antisemitic."
Not a racist, but said antisemitic things! What is Ed Balls smoking? And can he give some to David Lammy?
With a Jewish wife & kids being brought up in the Faith, must be quite difficult for Starmer to forensically tap dance around the possibility of being shown to be enacting a reverse pogrom
Corbyn is a horror show. But I have one little bit of sympathy for him - I think Labour had every right to decline to have some other buggers' definition of anti-semitism foisted on it.
Now as for Sir Keir:
(i) Did it occur to anyone that he vamoosed from the scene of his crash so he could go home and breathalyse himself, just to ensure he was OK to visit a cop shop?
(ii) Under which PM was he knighted? If it was the jackanapes then surely the Sir should always bear inverted commas?
The more I see of Starmer the more I see the Blair II lurking under that lawyerly skin. A sure fire vote winner as we are all lefties now. He just has to show that he's a bland, well educated lefty and the Blue Wall will vaporise.
He just needs an Al Campbell to terrorise the media and he's home and dry.
Like @andrew said, he can't just kick out the troublemakers, but he can make them feel profoundly unwelcome.
He probably didn't want today to go the way it did, too confrontational, too direct - he strikes me as someone who prefers to come at you sideways.
I think he wants the far left to conclude they need to leave, rather than be pushed, he can do his best po-faced look then, mutter some niceties about Labour being a wide church, sorry to see them go, always be a place... and wave them goodbye without a civil war or a second thought.
Looking at some of his actions - letting the veterans bill pass with minimal comment - it could be seen as a passive aggressive move. Wind up the Corbynistas until they flounce off.
Let them appear to be the unreasonable ones.
Corbyn in one on his own though, overly proud, pig-headed and arrogant - his outsized ego wasn't going to allow something as mundane as the ECHR cast any dirt on his self-image, I think he'd rather see the world scorched down to its fundament than accept any wrongness on his part.
"Rather looks as though Starmer agrees Jezza has trashed the entire brand"
Well he would, wouldn't he? Starmer is from the Continuity Blair wing of the party. The last thing they wanted was for Labour to win the election, and they succeeded.
Corbyn may be a cretin, but he's in no way, shape of form an anti-semite. He's just a guy who thinks the Palestinians have had a pretty rough deal, and is prepared to speak, write (and given power try to act, something which just getting elected doesn't guarantee you'll be successful at - see Trump for details) on that belief. This, for some people, is an unthinkable eventuality - and they also act on that belief, pretty effectively too.
What's happening to Corbyn bodes very ill for Trump if he loses (or enough votes are manufactured to 'defeat' him) the Presidency. "Lock her up! was never a serious policy position, but "Lock him up!" stands a good chance of being implemented. Our ruling globalist elites were horribly shocked by Trump, Corbyn and Brexit, and they've done a lot of work to try and ensure such shocks can't reoccur, deplatforming people on social media and sometimes even arranging for them to lose their access to banking services or internet hosting.
Part of this process is to make examples of people, so that no one dares to try a repeat.
"Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason"
All this sort of thing, or its equivalent, happened to the NF and BNP in times past, with BBC "comedians" opining on air that their supporters should be shot or kicked in the head, to official indifference and zero career repercussion. Someone saying that about a 'protected group' would be lucky to avoid jail.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=anarcho-tyranny
Now, as the Overton Window moves, it's going to be happening to people like Trump, who would have been a far left-wing Democrat president fifty years ago, with exactly the same policies.
Eighty six years ago Churchill said in the Commons - "Politics in Germany are not as they are over here. There, you do not leave office to go into Opposition. You do not leave the Front Bench to sit below the Gangway. You may well leave your high office at a quarter of an hour’s notice to drive to the police station, and you may be conducted thereafter very rapidly to an even graver ordeal."
We've not started executing people for the wrong opinions, but the drive to the police station is becoming more and more common for dissident politicians - and several have died violently - Pim Fortuyn and Jorg Haider come to mind.
Corbyn and his allies, who were all shouting "No platform for fascists!" in 1978, are discovering that they're the fascists now.
PS - is Biden America's Hindenburg?
Yay !
Blue Team wins.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/13058395/dan-wootton-sweden-covid-success/
Why are the Tories ignoring Sweden ?
The worst Government and Prime Minister in British history.
Italy, UK and Germany's CV-19 death rates UP by several hundred percent.
Sweden's DOWN by 16%
Way to go Blues !
I've just checked WKPD: both Corbyn and Starmer are vegetarians. So they're both mad.
From The Times:
' It reported alleged comments such as “every Jew is a Zio-fascist if they support Israel’s existence” and “Israel is funded by America at the behest of the Jewish lobby”.'
This seems to me to muddle together the first statement - which sounds anti-semitic to me - and the second, which doesn't.
The second is in the category of a factual statement - the question is whether the speaker has got his facts right or wrong.
The first has no factual content, right or wrong. I don't know what a Zio-fascist might be, but it sounds to me to be simply a racist insult.
It's rather wonderful, I must admit, to see the sort of dingbats who can find "racism" everywhere they look, charged with it themselves.
@E-K
Comparing the UK to Sweden. Deluded.
Referencing the Sun to support your delusion. Wow
Sweden. 25 people per km2
UK. 270 people per km2
I’ll let you look up total population and major conurbation statistics.
Please keep up
@ Anon
25 people per km2 in Stockholm? Pull the other one, it has bells on it.
Large country by area vs small population give low density of people. But the majority live in cities.
@matt
Well done for pointing out the bleeding obvious.
Now run along and get some statistics for any metropolitan or urban area in UK and Sweden.
I’ll wait.
Interesting to see where this goes next. Even to a leftie Jezza always looked a liability, little more than a town council bod. Best got rid of. The unions too look a liability, off-putting whenever they appear on telly.
But where is the money for a party going to come from? Obvious with the Tories, their USP is selfishness. Might not want to admit it openly but that is the reality, NIMBYism etc sells. The Liberals fail because they offer dishwater platitudes - not worth funding. Labour at least in history offered some sort of opposition and the unions had the cash.
No-one gives a s^&t for Corbyn and few care about Starmer. The unions have the money but no-one wants it. Best to let the Tories stew in their own juice for a bit and discover 2+2 does not equal 9. Both parties look to be a poisoned chalice. How exciting.
dustybloke said...
The more I see of Starmer the more I see the Blair II lurking under that lawyerly skin. A sure fire vote winner as we are all lefties now. He just has to show that he's a bland, well educated lefty and the Blue Wall will vaporise.
He just needs an Al Campbell to terrorise the media and he's home and dry.
8:50 pm
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In Starmer's dreams. He has a charisma bypass, unlike St. Tony of the Dead Babies, who saw himself and paraded himself as the Mick Jagger of GeoPolitics. Starmer has as much attraction as a wet flannel. And that is probably pretty wetflannelist.
Man's a hole in space with no personality. Good luck with that.
Anonymous said... 9:45
Corbyn may be a cretin, but he's in no way, shape of form an anti-semite.
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Let;s forget about the mural shall we?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/mar/23/corbyn-criticised-after-backing-artist-behind-antisemitic-mural
Not to mention irony...
Scum is I think the word. Yes, I know it is in vogue, but at 69 I know scum when I see scum.
Anon (9:45pm): "Corbyn may be a cretin, but he's in no way, shape of form an anti-semite." Not sure about that. He may well believe that "some of my best friends are..." but he seems have some pretty deep-seated prejudices. Otherwise, I agree with your excellent post and your warning about the danger of travel with current politics.
@ Even to a leftie Jezza always looked a liability, little more than a town council bod. Best got rid of
Here's where it gets messy. The personal loyalty to / worship of JC is little short of religious (even a pretty tough nut like Aaron Bastani loses his marbles at this point) - they don't see Liability, they see Saint
Nick Drew said...
@ Even to a leftie Jezza always looked a liability, little more than a town council bod. Best got rid of
Here's where it gets messy. The personal loyalty to / worship of JC is little short of religious (even a pretty tough nut like Aaron Bastani loses his marbles at this point) - they don't see Liability, they see Saint
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But no surprise as the Hard Left always have to have a Great Leader. The old Soviet style framed photos of Corbyn that his acolytes often put up on trestle tables when out campaigning say it all. And of course, for a screaming (clinical) Narcissist, to be the Great Leader is as good as it gets. I do not say Narcissist lightly, having had a truly nasty tangle with a clinical one a way back - you will note that JC NEVER apologises. Not because he won't - but because as far as he is concerned, he has done no wrong - and indeed, can do no wrong. Witness also the epic lying about the wreath laying ceremony - Narcissists never lie, as everything they say is true. Or, to make it brief, as my old man would have said - Corbyn is an utter shit.
It was Cameron who got Starmer the knighthood. Is it customary to knight the DPP?
The chap who knew how to treat leading lawyers in the public realm was Henry VIII.
ND - I don't think you have to see Corbyn as a saint (I think he's an identikit 70s leftie).
But it's his support for the Palestinians (which IMHO is more like a call for even-handedness rather than Blair/May/Cameron 110% support for Israel) that's made him a target for allegations. On the other side, Mossad actually had a guy from the Israeli Embassy conspiring against Alan Duncan (another guy I have little time for) with one of Robert Halfon's aides - because he visits the West Bank. But apparently it's Russia interfering with UK politics.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4098082/Astonishing-undercover-video-captures-diplomat-conspiring-rival-MP-s-aide-smear-Deputy-Foreign-Secretary.html
"It was Cameron who got Starmer the knighthood"
That doesn't surprise me at all. They are two cheeks of the same posterior.
@ Anon
Clearly I'm missing something, so I'll wait for the obvious to be pointed out.
Anyway, as per your request:
Manchester - 4,716 people per km^2
Stockholm - 4,279 per square km^2
"support for the Palestinians (which IMHO is more like a call for even-handedness": the wreath-laying in the ceremony for the terrorist who had murdered the Israeli athletes at the Olympics - was that even-handed?
Re Sweden - beloved stepdaughter, who lived in Gothenberg for 6 months, reported back then that social distancing is the norm for Swedes, finding them deeply anti-social, so much so that if a neighbour from a flat on her floor left the flat at the same time as beloved SD, neighbour (whichever it was) would immediately retreat back into their flat. Similarly, no eye contact or cheerie hellos if met outside.
Not to mention their bizarre and extreme conformity, eugenics toll the mid 70s and their non-neutrality during the war, it's not an example I'd hold up for anything....
Or, as Talking Heads sang .... "I wouldn't live there if you paid me to"
dearieme - like so many things, this isn't true. JC laid a wreath at the memorial to those killed in an attack on PLO headquarters in Tunis in 1985. Nearby were the graves of the alleged Olympic attackers (to be exact, people "accused of links" to the attack) and he was snapped with the graves in the same shot.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-45196409
Mr Corbyn has confirmed he did lay a wreath, saying this was for those who died in the 1985 bombing. But critics have pointed out that a photograph from the event appears to show him standing opposite the graves of Atef Bseiso and Salah Khalaf, two senior PLO officers who were accused of links to the Munich attack and were assassinated.
The Daily Mail, which first published the image, quoted Ilana Romano, the widow of weightlifter Yossef who was killed at Munich, saying: "To go to the grave of a person behind the killing of 11 athletes, he should be ashamed and apologise." There is no photograph of Mr Corbyn laying the wreath at this spot. A memorial for the 1985 air strike is feet away.
The BBC's Rana Jawad, who has visited the cemetery, said she understood the area next to the pair's graves to be the spot where dignitaries and diplomats gather every year to remember victims of the 1985 bombing, as well as senior PLO members. The cemetery signs, and markings on the graves and memorial, are in Arabic.
It's always fun to see a political enemy brought down (and I'm sure if this kind of thing brought down Farage or Cummings in 2017 Corby would have been delighted) but not by lies and slander. Those are weapons which can be pointed in any direction.
"Live not by lies"
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