Labour’s controversial “attack ad” accusing Rishi Sunak of failing to put paedophiles in prison has caused more voters to think negatively of Keir Starmer’s party than a Conservative poster that accused the Labour leader of being soft on crime, according to an Opinium poll for the Observer.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/apr/16/labour-rishi-sunak-attack-ad
I am hoping that the attack ad was a kite flying exercise to see if it worked and that labour will take note of this poll.
I think Labour's trajectory is pretty well defined now.
... says number one privateer Streeting.
The ads were terrible but standing by them its the right thing to do politically. Apologising would come across as weak.
This article in the Daily Telegraph is actually very good. It is surprisingly honest and I find it hard to disagree with its conclusions.
For the Conservatives, this is heaven-sent. They need politics to get dirty. When you are up to 20 points behind in the polls, no number of policy announcements will cut the mustard with voters. They need to tear the other guy down.
Why does all this necessarily favour the Conservatives? Labour have given the Tories the excuse to go negative much earlier than they expected.
Starmer should have claimed the moral high ground for as long as possible. He might even have proposed a pact to agree positive-only campaigning, which politicians who are miles ahead occasionally do. It would have made it uncomfortable for Sunak had Starmer claimed he would only “play the ball, not the man”.
It is hard to imagine the Conservatives turning around a 15- or 20-point lead. But it is possible to imagine how a competent negative campaign will close the gap – maybe to about 10 points. If they can do this with nine months to spare, who knows what will happen in a general election.
Starmer has shot himself in the foot.
Labour have given the Tories the excuse to go negative much earlier than they expected.
When did they stop?
You even pasted the word "earlier".
But they have been doing it for years, before any of these Labour ads. There’s no going earlier, they’ve already been at it for years. These Labour ads only stand out because they are reminiscent of pre-existing Tory attack ads on Labour leaders, including on Starmer.
They usually occur after the election campaigns kick off, or at least nearer the GE. I am aware of past Tory negative ads but I am not aware of any current ones.
Yeah it is an example of the Tories attacking Labour, it's the sort of thing that happens in a parliamentary democracy. Labour also attack the Tories. So not exactly surprising or unique.
However you are obviously suggesting that it is comparable to a highly personal attack on the leader of a party which claims that he doesn't think nonces should go to prison.
If the two were in anyway comparable Labour's highly personal attacks on the Tory leader would clearly not have created the furore that they have.
Even senior Labour politicians have expressed their disgust at the campaign. And it is obvious not because it is negatively criticising the Tories.
Impressive barrel scraping btw.
If the two were in anyway comparable Labour’s highly personal attacks on the Tory leader would clearly not have created the furore that they have.
The “furore” is because Labour have shown they are prepared to sink to the level of the Tories when it comes to negative campaigning. They (the Tories) have been pushing hard on Starmer being soft on crime, being a lefty lawyer and all that, and the push back was not expected to be equally dirty. It was expected that Labour would “keep the gloves on” no matter how many bare knuckle punches they have to take. I wish they had… and “gone high”… but the idea that the Tories weren’t already negatively campaigning, and in a personal way against Starmer, is just laughable.
Impressive barrel scraping btw.
Just picked the first one I found scrolling down the @Conservatives Twitter feed. End of March this year.
but the idea that the Tories weren’t already negatively campaigning
Yeah you obviously want to pretend that what is being discussed here is one political party criticising another political party, and nothing more than that.
There's no point pursuing this any further. Back to my original point, a surprisingly good and honest article here:
Starmer has shot himself in the foot.
He's doing that on a number of fronts. Claiming to be a transformative leader and then announcing a policy to ban auto-renewing internet subscriptions. What does he really think the response of voters to that will be?
even the colours match, are Labour about to do an Arsenal?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/16/keir-starmer-polls-tightening-labour-tories
I thought Brexit couldn't happen. I thought Trump couldn't happen. I'm wondering is it 'third time lucky' or 'these things come in threes' - they couldn't blow it now, could they?
Oh they certainly could. Starmer has already ruined their chances in Scotland. they will make a few gains at the tories expense I am sure but a recent article in the guardian showed just by how much he has missed the mark up here.
That recent attack ad has worked against labour. Its totally disgusting
they couldn’t blow it now, could they?
Of course they can. Starmer doesn't know how to deal with Sunak. He's spent 3 years selling himself as the only competent grownup who can be PM and now Sunak is stealing his thunder. And his response is to call Sunak a paedophile sympathiser. Who looks like the grownup now?
https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1647993437726072836?t=-b4Whj7SQ-SeFn795BmJhg&s=19
Labour lead 12 now on RW.
"The gloves are off." According to Streeting.
Trouble is the gloves don't come off on issues that count.
Labour lead 12 now on RW.
That is a huge improvement for the Tories. Less than a month ago RW were giving Labour a 21% lead. And there are quite a few months to go before the next general election.
If Streeting is claiming that the gloves are off he is obviously referring to dirty gutter politics, such as accusing Sunak of personally wanting to keep paedophiles out of prison.
It might not have given Labour the boost they were hoping for but on the real issues which will decide the next general election, the economy and funding services, there simply isn't enough difference between Labour and the Tories for Labour to go bareknuckle.
The kid gloves will remain on for that.
I reckon we're getting into difficult to call territory.
I still think recession is likely. That will shift stuff around.
It would certainly shift stuff around. The only way the Tories stand any chance next general election is if the economy isn't performing too badly and Labour don't offer an inspiring or credible alternative.
If a recession occurs and Starmer has nothing to offer apart from 'difficult decisions' (ie austerity and privatisation) and 'growth' (ie trickle down) with nothing about redistribution, pay, rents etc then he could easily find himself coming second. When asked if he was a socialist he squirmed and the only principle he's announced and stuck to is an unqualified support for Israel. Doesn't seem to me to be very powerful stuff with which to get elected. As that (very good) Telegraph argued if it's a gloves off culture war about hang 'em and flog 'em he'll be slaughtered. To get elected the LP need some contrasting policies to the Tories but he has none.
The junior doctors and nurses'strikes have public support. By undermining their campaigns people will just think 'what's the effing point?'
Yes this is all demonstrating the lead might be big but it's weak and doesn't take much to topple it.
The Starmer approach to politics has been dreadful, and deserves any kicking he might get going forward.
https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1648435879537680384?t=97ND-4JqY7i6iXyuWwiY3Q&s=19
But we can't afford to fund it and the necessary wages.
Apparently.
The NHS is "broken" and trade unions are greedy?
And due to the government's incompetence the NHS is wasting hundred of millions of pounds?
It would appear that 30p Lee and Sir Keir Starmer are both singing from the same hymn sheet.
Tory MP Lee Anderson labels NHS 'BROKEN' as he rages at union demands for more money - 'Wasting hundred of millions of pounds!'
Perhaps 30p Lee should have ridden out that aberration when the Labour was led by a leftie and remained in the Labour Party?
Nice to see Diane Sodding Abbott jamming her mismatched size 9s in her mouth again. A comment piece appears in the Guardian describing the uneven experience of racism across various groups in the UK. It is sensible and nuanced, and concludes "Morally speaking, racism is a black and white issue. But when it comes to how it manifests itself, it is multidimensional. The most comprehensive survey on racial inequality for nearly 30 years needs to be examined comprehensively." Hardly provocative.
And then a few days later, Abbot writes in to say being a Traveller is a bit like having red hair,
and they don't experience racism. 🙄 Then she has the whip withdrawn. Then she apologises, and says an early draft of her thoughts was accidentally sent in. 🙄🙄🙄 Imagine being one of the best known MPs in the country, and your first reaction to a newspaper article about a detailed and comprehensive study of racism in the UK, is "well, actually..." like some sort of reply guy on STW.
Between dinosaurs like Abbot and Starmer's Paedogeddon ads, Sunak might for the first time be thinking "Christ, I might actually be able to pull this one off". Labour never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. If they keep this up and the Tories win again, we are dooooooomed.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/15/racism-in-britain-is-not-a-black-and-white-issue-it-is-far-more-complicated
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/apr/23/diane-abbott-suspended-by-labour-after-saying-jewish-people-not-subject-to-racism
I reckon Diane must surely have earned her place in the Lords by now, for services to the Conservative party.
Thicker than a boxing day turd
Mind boggling that she wrote that, did she really believe what she was saying?
I think this presents Starmer with the opportunity to ditch further association with corbyn era, Im sure Momentum etc will be angry, but Abbot did this herself
Just what are Labour doing? did they see thier large poll lead and think, right, we can't be having that!
What's the saying? better to let people think you are stupid than open your mouth and confirm it.
I'm almost certain Abbott did it deliberately knowing it would open up the AS issue again. The likes of Abbott won't want Starmer to be PM any more than Starmer et al wanted Corbyn as PM so they'll do whatever they can to make that happen. I wouldn't even be surprised if this is the first stages of the Corbynites trying to force a split. Instead of having to persuade people to leave, they just get Starmer to kick them all out.
I think the mistake you're making there is assigning a coordinated piece of Machiavellian scheming to a group of people who'd struggle to find their own arses using both hands.
How stupid do you have to be that your defence for the antisemitic article you wrote, then emailed to a national newspaper to publish is "oops, sorry... did I send you the wrong antisemitic article? I meant to send this slightly less antisemitic article, rather than the really, really antisemitic article I'd penned earlier"
As thick as mince
to a group of people who’d struggle to find their own arses using both hands
Seems the labour party displays incompetence wherever you look. On one side you have the likes of Abbott, on the other a bunch of blairite tory clones throwing away a 20 point poll lead against a party which has crashed the economy and had 3 leaders in the past year. Funny though how Abbott is a racist for stupidly comparing her own treatment to that of Jewish people, yet Starmer get a free pass for saying that Sunak is soft on peadophiles. 🤷♂️
A free pass? Theres been bloody uproar! Did you miss that bit?
Abbot is too busy drinking alcopops to wear matching shoes. It's not a dastardly scheme. She's just doing exactly what she has always done inside the looney left reality distortion bubble for the last 40 years.
I think this presents Starmer with the opportunity to ditch further association with corbyn era
Unfortunately I think it will be quite the opposite. The Labour Party's unbelievable proceduralism and the bloody-mindedness of the Corbyn clan will drag this out for ages. It's not like Starmer can just boot the lot out overnight...rightly or wrongly...
Anyway, Starmer and his corporate clones will be very happy that they have another opportunity to focus their efforts on the real enemy rather than doing anything that might help working people. I'm sure that single mothers and minimum wage families struggling to pay their gas bills and rents will be pleased he's focusing so much of his energy on the definition of racism. 🙄
The idea that someone such as Rachel Riley experiences the same level of racism in society as a black person such Diane Abbott would be laughable if it wasn't so tragic.
And to claim that black people suffer no worse racism in the UK than Jewish people do is not only mind boggling daft but imo also deeply insulting as it very obviously falsely minimises what black people are subjected to.
For intents and purposes Rachel Riley, to take her again as an example, would be seen as a white European woman as she goes about her day to day living, there is no way that someone such as Diane Abbott, who has faced appalling levels of racism in her life, would be seen as no different to any other white European woman.
Obviously all of this fuss has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Diane Abbott alledgedly being racist, you would need to be spectacularly naive and gullible to believe that.
Everyone knows that it is purely because she is on the left of the Labour Party and as such poses a real problem for Keir Starmer, as he tries to move the Labour Party much closer to the Tory Party.
This is how much Keir Starmer really cares:
Labour has been accused of still not fully engaging with claims that anti-black racism and Islamophobia were not taken as seriously as antisemitism by the senior lawyer who carried out a report into the party’s culture.
I did see this story over the weekend and my first thought was that Starmer must just be like "are you f__king kidding me?!"
There's no conflict between Labour sticking up for single mums/workers, and sticking up for victims of bigotry. It's just annoying that Labour has to defend them against its own MPs so often!
It’s just annoying that Labour has to defend them against its own MPs so often!
Are you seriously suggesting that Diane Abbott is a bigot?
She's worse than Hitler!
She’s just doing exactly what she has always done inside the looney left reality distortion bubble for the last 40 years.
Yup, that's what it is really about.
35 years ago Diane Abbott took a Labour seat with a majority of just 8k and turned it into one of the safest Labour seats in the UK with a Labour majority of 33k
My undying image of Diane Abbott, whenever she is discussed, is of seeing her unaccompanied in deep conversation on her mobile phone among hundreds of thousands of anti-war protesters in the run-up to Tony Blair's illegal war based on lies.
I don't know what Keir Starmer was doing at that time but I do know that Diane Abbott, the first black female member of the UK parliament, is a politician driven by conviction, and I know Kier Starmer isn't.
Have you actually read her comments ernie?
or indeed the orginal article
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/15/racism-in-britain-is-not-a-black-and-white-issue-it-is-far-more-complicated
No one was comparing Abbot's experiences to Rachel Riley's
They undoubtedly experience prejudice. This is similar to racism and the two words are often used as if they are interchangeable.
It is true that many types of white people with points of difference, such as redheads, can experience this prejudice. But they are not all their lives subject to racism. In pre-civil rights America, Irish people, Jewish people and Travellers were not required to sit at the back of the bus. In apartheid South Africa, these groups were allowed to vote. And at the height of slavery, there were no white-seeming people manacled on the slave ships."
Having worked with Traveller kids as a cub leader I can assure you that the racism they experience is very real and in many ways more tolerated than racism against black people
Ive literally no idea why Abbot would deny that , even her point about slavery is daft (if you want abhorrent historical examples of racism then I can think of another more recent one involving jewish & romany peoples).
Her excuse of sending out a draft were about as lame as you can get too.
FWIW, I don't think Abbott's response/letter was anti-semitic, or anti-ginger or anti-traveller for that matter. And I don't doubt that is a conviction politician, and I have a lot of respect for her for that.
It was just pretty dumb, both factually in terms of what she was trying to argue and politically in the fact that she actually wrote it, knowing that the Labour Party's relationship with Judaism has been a teensy-weensy bit sensitive in the past couple of years
It looks like The Guardian was unable to find an organisation to speak on behalf of the gypsy and traeller communities. Odd that I was able to find two such organisations with a simple google search. Poor work from The Guardian