Keir Starmer, the Grounded Visionary

This is

@Keir_Starmer

speaking at a Labour leadership hustings in Cardiff in 2020. It epitomises who he is. All the candidates promoted themselves and there was quite a lot of ego on stage. But it was noticeably absent with Keir. He was last and ended his pitch by turning to all the other candidates and saying that each one would make an excellent Labour leader. None of the others did it, of course. As for the content of his speech, it showed him to be super-smart, a deep thinker used to dealing with complex situations, making difficult decisions & formulating workable strategies. A decent, powerful man in the best sense of the word, not driven by ego; a rarity in politics.

There was no 'persuasion' campaign amongst MPs, no offers of positions in his shadow cabinet if they supported him and he won. And he wanted members to choose freely. Which they did. He was elected as Labour leader with a resounding majority in the first round. The second of two Labour leaders to have achieved that in Labour's history.

Then Keir Starmer won that landslide, one of three Labour leaders ever to win a stonking majority.

None of it was luck. As Prime Minister' he strengthened the economy, stabilised the UK and led the push to unify and strengthen, also supporting Ukraine against Putin's war. Policies expected to bear fruit in four years were already doing so in two, despite having inherited a massively divided society, flailing economy, a £22 billion fiscal hole, whilst also dealing with the lunacy and instability of Trump and the impact of the Ukraine and Iran wars.

Importantly, members of his cabinet were chosen for their commitment, expertise and experience. There was no underhandedness, no dirty dealing, no offering powerful positions just for loyalty to himself.

In fact, as Labour leader he made Louise Haigh Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and then Transport and as Prime Minister he appointed her as Secretary of State for Transport. This despite that she had been Lisa Nandy's campaign manager in the Labour leadership contest.

Yet she, Burnham, Lucy Powell, Ed Miliband, Yvette Cooper, Angela Rayner and possibly even John Healey, were engineering a coup behind Keir Starmer's back for a full year before it burst into action. And now Haigh is pretty much running the show.

She, Burnham and his cohort of backstabbers - all MPs with powerful ambitions of their own who have no problem with backstabbing - have brought dishonour and shame on the Labour Party. The cynical betrayals and sheer, reckless waste of everything achieved by a formidably competent, decent, integrity-driven Prime Minister who always held himself accountable and made no excuses for himself is truly beyond belief.

Just as it's always been obvious that Nigel Farage would self destruct, which he is doing now, so is it clear that Andy Burnham's government - if you can call it that; it feels more like a club of school kids playing grown-ups - will fall apart, because it's founded on egotistic ambition, dishonesty and betrayal; MPs rewarded with cabinet posts for 'loyalty' to the dear leader, as opposed to suitability for the position. Rifts are already appearing; Labour is desperately trying to corral members and MPs into a show of unity but of course they're failing and flailing.

After Burnham made a big song and dance about not relying on discipline, but allowing everybody to have their say, Louise Haigh and Antonia Romeo have sent a letter out telling MPs that there will be consequences if they leak to the press, and if their staff do it, the MP will suffer. Which means dissent is rife enough within this allegedly wonderfully united, happy family to make Haigh and Burnham worried.

Keir Starmer walked away with his head held high, as he had every right to do. But a lot of Labour members went into shock and are still struggling to deal with it. This Labour member wants him back. Is that an impossible pipe dream? Every big idea is, until it happens.

Sloppy Journalism from The Guardian - or Deliberate Distortion?

There are a lot of rumblings and outright disgust at how British media that purports to be unbiased or even liberal, has chosen to savage Keir Starmer and the Labour Party at every opportunity. Is that accurate? Here's a case in point. It's not outright savaging; it's creating a distorted narrative about Labour that is distinctly false.

The headline of this Guardian article reads "Nearly twice as many men as women standing in May elections in UK", which implies that all parties are at fault. Which is confusing, because it's own table shows that Labour stands out as the only party with near equity (42%) in the local elections, and full equity (50%) in all the other elections.

All other parties have lower figures, some of them dramatically. For example, Reform's figures are slightly above half those of Labour and they have no representation at all in the Mayoral races. The Green Party has 60% women in the Scottish elections, but less than Labour in all the others.

Paragraph 1: Women will be massively underrepresented on ballot papers across the UK next week, campaigners say, with research revealing that almost twice as many men as women are standing as candidates across the local, mayoral and devolved elections.

Fact: It's not the truth about Labour, whose aggregate across all 4 elections is 48% female representation. How is that in any way reflective of 'massive under-representation'? How many women, I wonder, for whom gender equity is a burning issue, would read the headline and the first paragraph and think, "Labour's just as bad as the rest of them, despite all their promises. I'm not voting for them. Hypocrites!"? Or maybe they'd read on a bit. 

Paragraph 2: Democracy campaigners say men of all political stripes are likely to dominate local government, with women’s views on issues from social care to bin collections sidelined by the huge gap between the numbers of male and female candidates. 

Fact: Except in the Labour Party. Maybe that's in the next paragraph. 

Paragraph 3: Across all elections taking place on 7 May, a third of candidates are women and two-thirds are men, with no party achieving gender parity, according to analysis by 50:50 Parliament and Democracy Club shared exclusively with the Guardian. 

Fact: Labour has total parity in the Scottish, Mayoral and Senedd elections, and 42% in locals. That gives it an aggregate of 48%. Ever hopeful for a glimmer of truth and balance, let's keep going. 

Paragraph 4: In local elections in England, which account for the largest number of candidates out of all elections next Thursday, 34% of candidates are female and no party is fielding an equal number of men and women. In the six mayoral elections taking place, 18% of candidates are women; in the Senedd elections, the figure is 38%; and in the Scottish parliament elections it is 36%. 

Fact: As I've pointed out and as the article's own table shows after the above paragraph, Labour has 42% female candidates in the locals. 50% in the mayoral, 50% in the Senedd, 50% in the Scottish parliament. It's only in the fifth paragraph that we get some hard truth. 

Reform UK has the smallest proportion of women on ballot papers in the local elections in England, at 23%. Labour is the closest to achieving gender parity, with 42% of its candidates women, followed by the Green party (41%), the Liberal Democrats (33%) and the Conservatives. That's great, but what about the fact that Labour is the only with full equity in all the other elections? The rest of the article has quotes: 

Lyanne Nicholl, the CEO of 50:50 Parliament, said: “Women are massively underrepresented on our ballot papers." Except in the Labour Party.

"Penny East, the chief executive of the Fawcett Society, said the analysis showed democracy was not working for women." Except in the Labour Party. 

East said online abuse and threats dissuaded women from standing. Except in the Labour Party, where female candidates are willing to fight and push beyond the abuse. 

"Men continue to dominate both locally and nationally, and without proper representation women’s views and perspectives will once again be sidelined,” Nicholl said. Except within the Labour Party. And for the record, there are 190 female Labour MPs, which is 46% of the total. It's the largest female representation in Labour's history.

[Nicholl continued;] "This isn’t about political point scoring, this is about women’s representation and how that has benefits for everyone."  

Nicholl may not be trying to score political points. But she also didn't bother to be clear about where progress is being made, and the question is, why? Or maybe she was clear, but the Guardian piece deliberately left it out. In reality, the piece is blatantly biased, which is about political points for somebody. Reform, the Conservatives, the Greens, the Lib Dems? Who knows. It's clearly not for the Labour Party. 

The Guardian had a choice of headlines, one of which would have reflected the stats in their own table: "Labour Female Representation in Upcoming Elections Surpasses that of All Other Parties." Or something like that. You get the drift. My question for the Guardian editors and the author of the piece, Lexy Topping, is, why wait until paragraph 5 to establish the plain facts? What's in it for you? Or do you even realise that you set the stage with the headline and the first 4 paragraphs, so the 5th doesn't resonate?

Is it sloppy journalism or deliberate? Either way, it's unconscionable.

Keir Starmer Changes Our World for the Better

It's been an extraordinary few days, hard to take in. Since 2019 politics in the UK has become increasingly depressing, with arrogance, corruption and ineptitude mixed up in the ugliness of the far right. Social media was full of anger, some of it a fight for social justice, some of it with a sinister agenda, opposing social justice. With so many wars going on and the far right traction in Europe and the US, the world felt like a very unsafe place. 

When the election date was announced, the campaigning became almost unbearable as pundits and even the liberal media tore into Keir Starmer and the Labour manifesto. 

In the face of such negativity and relentless accusations of being boring, uninspiring, vapid, bereft of hope, Starmer could have resorted to playing the snake oil salesman, offering miracles he knew Labour couldn't deliver on. 

But he didn't do that. He and all the Shadow Cabinet stayed focused and never lost sight of their integrity. Starmer's former Chief of Staff Sam White likens Starmer's achievement to the Avengers' fight against Thanos. Dr. Strangelove sees a million possible futures. They win by taking "an incredibly narrow path full of self sacrifice and bravery. That's the path that we decided to take." 

                                        

Many didn't see it and, believing they were terribly clever, underestimated Starmer. That's an age-old story. People told Einstein he was stupid. They told Elvis he couldn't sing. Record labels rejected the Beatles. Publishers rejected J.K. Rowling. A black American President? Never! Keir Starmer revive Labour in one term? Absurd!  

But, like Sam White, millions of us believed in Starmer. On the 4th of July, we were vindicated. Britain regained its independence from the stranglehold of Conservativism. The ugly, egomaniac, divisive, racist element in government is gone. It was like a menacing dark cloud enveloping everything, creating so much anxiety. An anxiety that we all lived with without always perhaps realising how much it was affecting us.

It's gone. In its place a government filled with intelligent, capable, integrity-driven, hard-working MPs, many of them with a lot of experience, who have transitioned from their posts in the Shadow Cabinet. And we finally have a real statesman for a Prime Minister who we can be proud of, who's respected internationally.

Social media is alight with sheer joy and relief. As Gary Lineker said last night when England beat Switzerland in its nail-biting penalty shootout, "the world is a better place at the moment." I don't think he was referring just to football.

Boris Johnson Beware! The Knives are out for Dominic Cummings

The Prime Minister has treated the British people with contempt.
One rule for Dominic Cummings, another for everybody else. pic.twitter.com/XIFCztZnbu

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) May 24, 2020

It's pretty much universal: Boris Johnson's support of Dominic Cummings is a suicide move. A petition calling for a public vote of no confidence in the PM has 107,000 signatures so far and cross-party calls for Cummings to go are burgeoning out of control. Nineteen Conservative MPs have gone on record.  International press is scathing of Johnson. So is the Church of England. Thirteen bishops have publicly expressed their outrage.

Johnson is trying to brazen it out, unwilling to accept that what worked for him over Brexit and in the GE has turned into a minefield. Even going back to post election, he has cynically tapped into the heroism of the second world war and the spirit of unity, playing at Churchill, to get voters to like him, forgive him his incompetence and faults, and do what he wants. He was successful enough to win a giant majority and then to get most to accept lockdown when Covid-19 hit us between the eyes. But he made the rookie mistake of thinking the loyalty is to him and his government.

It isn't. It's to the principle of honour. Not difficult to rouse in a country that prides itself on exceptionalism – even though it faded away long ago – and where nationalism has been heavily exploited for political purposes for four years.

Honour is a fierce animal, though and once roused, it's not easily hoodwinked. So the government's constant lies, incompetence, cover-ups, and the suffering and lives lost as a consequence, have registered; slowly at first but with increasing rapidity. Especially since Keir Starmer took over as leader of the opposition, because he is a man of honour and easily recognizable as such, even to Conservatives.

The UK is often compared to the US. Now, in backing Dominic Cummings' inexcusable lockdown flout, flying in the face of significant rebellion in his own party and even the right wing press, and following close on the heels of the latest opinion poll that showed Starmer surging ahead in popularity and respect, Johnson is playing Trump's game. It's an unwise move. This isn't America, where Republicans have allowed Trump to reduce them to a pack of zombies. Some Conservatives do have independence of mind, or at least enough to make them see the dangers of siding with Johnson, and they're more open to facing the reality that the power they gained with the last election is disintegrating at the speed of light.

He also wrote a very punchy letter to Kent Tory councillors urging them to do all they could to stop Johnson winning the leadership 11 months ago... https://t.co/bdq41MEKOK

— Harry Cole (@MrHarryCole) May 24, 2020

No matter how much power you think you have, you can't survive in politics without friends. Dominic Cummings has made a lot of enemies in the Cabinet, MPs nursing their grudges secretively, craving an opportune moment. That moment is now.

I’m told there are only three Tory MPs defending the Government on their backbench WhatsApp group tonight, out of 200+. They are IDS, Sheryll Murray and Andrew Mitchell.

— Tom Newton Dunn (@tnewtondunn) May 24, 2020

And a petition calling for Cummings to be sacked has 419,000 signatures and counting fast. That damn hubris. It will take you down every time.

It's impossible yet to know why Boris Johnson is clinging onto his aide. Speculation is rife on social media that Cummings has something on him. Darker secrets and conspiracy theories aside, Cummings is a vindictive bully. It could be that Johnson doesn't want to get on the wrong side of him or that he's become so dependent he can't bear the idea of life without him. Hopefully his hand will be forced. To date nineteen Conservative MPs have gone on record calling for Cummings to be fired.

Dominic Cummings has a track record of believing that the rules don’t apply to him and treating the scrutiny that should come to anyone in a position of authority with contempt. The government would be better without him.

— Damian Collins (@DamianCollins) May 24, 2020

Meanwhile, Keir Starmer is being the leader the whole country is yearning for, so the longer Boris Johnson lets the wounds inflicted by Cummings fester, the better it is for Labour.

The question now is: do we accept being lied to, patronised and treated by a PM as mugs? The moral question is not for Cummings - it is for PM and ministers/MPs who find this behaviour acceptable. What are we to teach our children? (I ask as a responsible father.)

— Nick Baines (@nickbaines) May 24, 2020