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| Not as much fun as you thought? |
Having long suggested that Team Starmer fully intends to tough it out - and they had plenty of advanced notice and planning time [1] for this crisis, at least - that's how it still seems, & strongly so, at the time of writing. There's only one oven-ready candidate in the wings, with no "anyone but [Wes]" votes against him: our old pick Ed Miliband.
Team S is pursuing what I call the Sierra Strategy when I'm strategising in business. Recall the Ford jallopy of that name? Having had many years of consummate success with its predecessor, the smart rust-bucket Cortina line[2], Marks 1-4, Ford went for a fairly 'bold' new look. The 'jelly-mould' hatchback found immediate disfavour, and despite the usual launch promotions sales were not good.
Ford had a massive call to make: re-skin and rebrand it fairly promptly with as much commercial dignity as possible, or double down. They doubled down with massive corporate determination. Advertising, deep discounts, promotions of all kinds, a smarter Ghia variant that was half-decent - everything in the marketing man's book of tricks. For several years! Dunno what this campaign cost, or how the counterfactual might have played out: but in terms of sheer brute force to get the Sierra into the top 3 or 4 UK best-sellers, they succeeded. And that's Starmer now.
PS, Miliband is sitting there trying to figure his optimum positioning for picking up the crown when it falls. And a coronation is what he wants: no knife-job. My guess? At the critical moment, he offers Starmer Foreign Secretary and a big Euro-push mandate. Kier, we can both make history together ...
PPS If you think Starmer is stonewalling impressively, just watch Trump between now and the mid-terms. He'll be looking at everything from conjuring a genuine crisis in order to call them off, to calling the results void - and calling out the National Guard in every state that returns a Dem.
ND
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[1] E.g. the timing of the King's Speech
[2] The Mk 1 started life as just the plain 'Consul'. Didn't play ideally, so they changed it to 'Consul Cortina' (as opposed to its predecessor the 'Consul Classic'. See, these Ford guys were always sharp with marketing-based solutions.
I'm not seeing him going. Streeting is a Temu Mandelson, Big Ange isn't very popular as a leadership choice, and everyone is hoping for Burnham.
ReplyDeleteIf Miliband finagles himself in as leader, I can see that crashing down before Christmas. He suffers from the leadership equivalent of dysmorphia - dysarchia?
Disasteria?
DeleteWhat is his aim?
ReplyDeleteWhy hang on at all?
He is far too far gone to have some miracle breakthrough save his disastership.
His successes can be countered on the fingers of one finger.
He has been doing it wrong from day one. Annoying every possible cohort of voters. Including his own unions of teachers and doctors.
His instincts are wrong.
His performance is sub par.
His charisma, non existent.
His policies, self defeating.
His methods, unremarkable.
His ideas, unformed.
What does he think will happen if he survives this close call?
When another disaster, of his own, and his chancellor’s own making, occurs,
in 3 months time. When the ‘events, dear boy,’ events continue piling up.
This isn’t a good epoch for this A.I. Persona.
He is a leader who wishes he may live in uninteresting times.
Well, tough luck Kryten. Trump and Xi and Putin and Farage and Polanski are all here today. All happening now.
Like that fool Brown who used all his political favours early on. When the next coup came, he had no more to give.
What does Starmer think will happen? The EU will save him? And Reform voters won’t mind?
He will get all tough and stop the boats. And the greens and the left-left will be pleased?
Just go, you bloody idiot. Once it’s gotten to cabinet ministers resigning, it’s over. If you don’t go on your own date of choice now. It will be on someone else’s a little later. Once they have their tanks fuelled and map of the lawns distributed.
He saw what happened to Boris.
He orchestrated some of it.
So he knows what inevitably happens next.
Even his great Saint Tony Blair could not completely escape it.
Why does Sir TTK not quit while, if he’s not ahead, he’s at least able to leave before the bouncers cut his credit and kick him out the casino.
The simplest explanation is that Starmer has a completely closed mind. He acts as though he cannot imagine that he could ever be wrong about anything, and seems completely oblivious to the mood of the country and his party alike.
DeleteSome politicians can instantly read the room and adjust their tone accordingly. Starmer reads the room like it's written in Babylonian cuneiform.
The Consul Capri Classic was a great looking car.
ReplyDelete@BQ - he's stubborn, prideful, and arrogant.
ReplyDeleteThree things that amplify faults, and Starmer comes with more faults than a geologist's wet dream.
You couldn’t find a more typical example than this which was just in the Telegraph (from an account of the last cabinet meeting):
Delete“A senior government source told The Telegraph: “Keir said in Cabinet that he wouldn’t discuss the elections or his leadership, and that he will only speak to cabinet ministers about that individually. Then after the meeting he refused to see Cabinet ministers individually.” “
Lawyerly proceduralism isn’t going to fix things for him, but what else can he do?
Now Jess Phillips has gone - truly the medium beasts are falling.
ReplyDeleteA strange thing to say, but I think he might just be even more shameless than Boris
ReplyDeleteAt least Boris didn't whip his MPs on the fatal Privileges Committee vote - that famous "it's a stunt when the Tories call one, but not when I called one" affair
There's someone in that building saying "just hang on, you can see them off, these things always go away if you just KBO". Sometimes it's the Lady Macbeth wife but in this case I rather doubt it
Maybe an outlandish parallel, but I am reminded of Stalin after Barbarossa was launched: lethal situation; in a state of total shock; but no, keep head down, stay calm, re-emerge a few days later and KBO
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!' ...
Admirable? No, just animal instincts, the Will to Power. I still despise the man.
Should I be surprised that no details of the supposed Superinjunction have been leaked by interested parties? Nor more about the Ukrainian alleged arsonists or arsenists?
ReplyDeleteIs his personal life really as seedy as his public life? I don't know but I think we should be told. Conceivably his private life is pure as the driven snow. Conceivably.
My understanding is that when his senior underlings approached an almost catatonic Stalin he assumed they'd come to do to him what he'd done to so many others. But they came to tell him he was indispensable and only he could lead the nation in its time of trial by fire.
ReplyDelete