I'm not entirely sure why we bother, but it seems GE 2024 ('25?) has kicked off with Starmer's "6 first steps". Just for completeness:
- Deliver economic stability: empty. Only on the list - at the top - as some kind of pro forma finger-crossing anti-Truss-style-meltdown incantation.
- Cut NHS waiting times: they all say that, and always have done. Doubtless some number-juggling possibilities, otherwise it can't in practice be delivered by anything short of vast sums of money a la Blair government.
- Launch a new Border Security Command: empty. A trivial opportunity to give highly paid jobs to a handful of ex coppers etc. Will impress nobody, & certainly not the people-smugglers.
- Set up Great British Energy: empty. Is any Green even vaguely satisfied by this as a commitment to anything they really care about? Whatever happened to "the climate emergency is the #1 top priority for all of mankind, trumping all others" etc etc?
- Crack down on antisocial behaviour: empty. Can't be delivered.
- Recruit 6,500 new teachers: empty. There are 567,000 teachers in the UK. Assuming an average career of 25 years, that means approx 20,000 are recruited annually in any case. Tweak those assumptions as you like, but 6,500 is still an empty number.
Aside, then, from #1 (purely for the finance sector) the rest are empty words corresponding to polling data on popular priorities. NHS > immigration > climate > ASB > education.
* * * *
Anyhow, as literally everyone has spotted, Starmer has cheerfully reneged on everything he's ever said. His entire strategy rests on "looking the part" = sober white man in suit. (POCs in suits, clearly in vogue recently, don't really seem to have made much of a mark in any part of the UK, though I suppose Khan would beg to differ and he may have a point.) Starmer's reverse-ferret word-gaming is shameless enough to impress any spin doctor anywhere, and as a complete aside, I noticed a really cute one last week. One of his biggest faux-pas of recent times came last October when he very deliberately said Israel had the right to cut off food, water and electricity to Gaza. Last week he had this played back to him and he "welcomed" the opportunity to remind everyone that he'd immediately corrected the misunderstanding that he could ;possibly have meant what he said: he had of course meant the right to self defence, as he'd immediately made clear.
Except, we know that wasn't what happened. In fact, for several days afterwards, his people were instructed to hit the airwaves with highly equivocal explanations of what he'd said that didn't in any way represent an immediate and clear correction: and well to the fore in this sophistry was Emily Thornberry. And it was she, last week, who popped up with more of the same, because she now has a clever argument that he was right all along! It goes like this: he was speaking only a couple of days after 7 Oct. Israel had just commenced anti-Hamas operations, and as a purely temporary tactical military expedient, cutting off electricity etc to your enemy is perfectly OK. So what he said was OK, too!
Amazing. How long will these people get any benefit of the doubt whatsoever in government? The Left hates them deeply: the Greens soon will; and you can see why.
ND
15 comments:
"Anyhow, as literally everyone has spotted, Starmer has cheerfully reneged on everything he's ever said."
Having put on 5 to catch the sport and weather, I got a BBC bod interviewing someone representing Mr.Empty Space. To my astonishment, BBC bod pulled rep for Mr. Empty Space on the very same terms as you note.
Umming and aahing ensued.
I really can't see me voting in the GE. Reform would seem to be my home but Tice is another Empty Space, alongside Sunak, Starmer and Davy.
At 72 I now have huge sympathy with the Anarchists of my youth and their proclamation
"Don't vote. It only encourages them".
Quite. Indeed, the only appropriate way for the nation to deal with the GE whenever it is NOT to go to the polling station.
Nul points...
"Sixteen times Starmer relaunched his leadership"
Speccy
https://archive.ph/kKkYW#selection-1269.0-1269.47
I don't think they do get the benefit of the doubt, it's just the Tories have done so godawfully bad. Fourteen years, and the solution to - yet another crisis - the prison population problem is to, er, release criminals back into community.
If you ever watched Married... With Children, there was a episode where Al described marrying Peg was that instead of him stepping forward, everyone else took a step back.
That will be Labours election victory. They're just less despised that Team Blue.
And there's no sense of responsibility from the Tories, they just trot out Covid. Brexit. War. like a weird cult of retards.
You can forgive a few things, but pretty much everything is now falling apart, and you don't get to say "not us guv" when you've been running the shitshow this long.
Even the successes - *recorded* crime being down - comes with caveats that maybe people have stopped reporting low level crime because plod won't bother with them.
Will Labour be any better? Probably not, but it would be some kind of record to be worse.
Everything that are the usual Tory touchstones that resonate with the electorate they've royally ballsed up, and Briefcase Wanker from the Hindu version of the Inbetweeners does not inspire confidence that will change.
Thornberry is about the most obnoxious person to put on politics shows - that sneer, that tone of voice, she's the physical manifestation of Resting Bitch Face - yet even she can feel comfortable that her sparking persona is offset by the publics complete weariness with the Tories.
They need a spell out of government and come up with better offers than freeing prisoners and banning rainbow lanyards.
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The only person I'd vote for is Milei but I can't so I'll be a stay-at-home.
As George Galloway said: They are "two cheeks of the same ar**" and none of their policies are what the country needs.
And I see Hunt is going to attack Labour on tax.
Those dastardly socialists, printing money, raising taxes to eye-watering levels, and about to put business rates up 6% and put a load of businesses over the edge...
Oh wait. That wasn't Labour.
We're paying Bugatti level taxes for Trebant services, and surveys have repeatedly shown that people want the services functional before we start cutting taxes.
So I'm not sure this line of attack will work as they - think? desperately hope? - it will.
May I be utterly damning of "Sir" Kneel Starmer?
He is a Human Rights lawyer.
Jeremy Poynton - why not head for the polls and write in big letters "NONE OF THEM" on your ballot?
We need a massive "Spoiled Vote" campaign where it's made obvious that the spoiling is deliberate.
"We need a massive "Spoiled Vote" campaign where it's made obvious that the spoiling is deliberate."
Absolutely. in the longer term we need a mass campaign to get 'None of the Above' formally instituted as a voting option on every ballot.
"None of the above" was an option at my college.
Someone who was v. disliked stood pretty much unopposed and lost to "none of the above"
I will be voting for the local equivalent of count binface
"Anonymous said...
Jeremy Poynton - why not head for the polls and write in big letters "NONE OF THEM" on your ballot?
We need a massive "Spoiled Vote" campaign where it's made obvious that the spoiling is deliberate.
9:55 pm
-------------------------------------
Were there a "None of the above" option on the ballot paper, I'd be there. A no vote is it seems to me as powerful as spoiling your paper, the ultimate means of saying
"There is ABSOLUTELY no point in voting". Not to mention that the Tories stitched up, dumped and evicted our excellent Tory MP (David Warburton - trouble maker; Brexiteer and voted against lockdown) and now we have NO idea who the Tory candidate is for our newly formed Frome based constituency.
Meanwhile, the Lid Dem who replaced Warburton, the aptly named Sarah Dyke, has thrice refused to tell me whether she believes women can have penises.
So she can fuck off as well.
Voting 'none of the above' doesn't solve the issue in a democracy.
Generally we have a poor crop of people vying to run (or run down) the country. It's simply the result of our poor education system especially the universities. Sort education and you'll sort the issue.
Here is an example of the idiocy of our elected representative. The issue is how to manage the 15,000 (30K as it is 2 way) crossings of the Gibraltar / Spain border. It is not even a UK competency, yet there they are wittering on about 'sovereignty' rather than solutions.
They would rather bu**er up the economics of Gibraltar than abandon their so-called principles.
https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/14747/pdf/
And to think at one point, a quarter of the world was under our influence.
We really do have a problem with this cadre of politicians and their capacity to come up with day-to-day solutions.
Agree with none of these . I just spoiled my paper for police head.
"Voting 'none of the above' doesn't solve the issue in a democracy."
"Sort education and you'll sort the issue."
We need a coping mechanism slightly quicker than 'sorting the education system'. Which can only be sorted by firing just about everyone within it and starting again, so is extremely unlikely to happen anyway. NOTA would be a virtually instantaneous and non-violent way of telling the current political class to f*ck off. They might not take the hint, but ignoring it would make the next step (stringing them up from lamp posts) more justified.
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