Sir! Keir! Starmer!

For me, the big issue is that the conservatives, and those even more nasty, are testing the boundaries of what the public will accept.

That shouldn't be what being a public servant is about...it's not what it's about, IMO.

But people do buy into pop culture. And they can vote.

So there is that.

If Farage gets to number 10 Scotland will be offski.   He seen so poorly that ir would put the independence vote over 60%

https://www.itv.com/news/2025-02-03/starmer-denies-voice-coach-visit-during-lockdown-broke-covid-rules

Who knew that teaching a top barrister how to speak in public is the job of a "key worker"?

Excerpts of the book published in the Sunday Times said she qualified for “key worker” status and visited Labour Party headquarters wearing a face mask in December 2020, to advise Sir Keir on how to publicly respond to the Brexit deal.

And imagine lacking so much confidence in yourself as a politician that you need to pay a classically trained dramatist to tell you what your speaking style you should be using when talking about Brexit. Quite amazing!

But best of all is this :

Mr McSweeney is claimed to have voiced fears in private that the prime minister “might be too timid”, but also described Sir Keir as “very bright” and “not completely unpolitical”.

So it turns out that Keir Starmer is "not completely unpolitical”,  what a remarkable way to describe the leader of the Labour Party. I wonder if Morgan McSweeney started to have doubts that Starmer was the right man to front his project when he realised that Starmer wasn't completely unpolitical?

I won’t link to Twitter but here is Zoe Gardner’s response to someone stating that it’s the fault of the BBC why reform are popular

Reform are where they are because both Labour & the Tories are truly, utterly, disastrously shit.

Because “centrist” politics has no answer to the fact that our economic system simply doesn’t work for anyone but the richest & the left is nowhere.

Quite true ?

Middles classes do pretty well although public servants have done poorly

If Farage gets to number 10 Scotland will be offski. He seen so poorly that ir would put the independence vote over 60%

I don't think that prime minister Farage would allow an independence vote.

If he gets in i suspect that would be enough to trigger a civil disobedience campaign that would nake nake Scotland ungovernable from Westminster.   Its been bad enough having Tory givernments imposed on us but reform?  The outrage and abhorrence would be immense

Farage is viscerally loathed by the vast majority in Scotland

Thatch got in 3 times as she was hated by one half and loved by the other.

A nake nake givernment would get my vote.

Thatcher got in 3 times because the SDP split the anti tory vote

Whatever the reasons Thatcher won three general elections and despite being deeply unpopular in Scotland there was no choice but to accept the election results.

Throughout Thatcher's term as prime minister Scotland swung away from the Tories. In fact she made anti-Tory feelings in Scotland a permanent thing, a far cry from the days when the Tories enjoyed more than 50% of the vote in Scotland.

Much to agree with.

Labour’s (and the rest of the liberal west’s) problems summed up in 10 tweets.

https://twitter.com/labourlewis/status/1886885789142749254?s=46&t=LtLH_brmYFWrcPalxgEeWA

It's totally bizarre why this isn't so obvious to more people.

You fix 'stuff' and you give people a reason to vote for them - Labour are doing the exact opposite of fixing stuff, and the panic for growth via the Heathrow project somewhere in the distant future - was the best example yet of ignoring doorstep problems.

What an appalling failure.

And imagine lacking so much confidence in yourself as a politician that you need to pay a classically trained dramatist to tell you what your speaking style you should be using when talking about Brexit.

Seemed to work for one Margaret Hilda Thatcher! Though over-weening self-confidence did for her, maybe Sir Kier has taken note and is being a tad more humble.

Seemed to work for one Margaret Hilda Thatcher!

And Starmer has publicly expressed his admiration for Thatcher so a fair point. Although I wouldn't be surprised if it hadn't been Starmer's idea to seek professional help with public speaking and he simply did what Morgan McSweeney told him to do, I think he usually does.

Plus in the case of Thatcher firstly, she wasn't a renowned barrister with the same level of experience in public speaking, and secondly there is a noticeable difference between the irritating grinding tone of early Thatcher and the later somewhat softer tone.

Has anyone one noticed the difference between pre-pandemic and post-pandemic Starmer speech delivery? Was it money well spent and did it provide reasonable justification for a "key worker" to leave their home?

But more interesting of all is what would have been STW's reaction to this story if the person involved had been a Tory like perhaps Liz Truss instead of Keir Starmer, one can only imagine.

Thatcher got in 3 times because the SDP split the anti tory vote

Are you serious!? The SDP were a bloody joke at the time!

Spitting Image used two different tones for their Maggie puppet; a louder, deeper voice in Cabinet and a softer, higher tone in interviews

The SDP were a bloody joke at the time!

The Alliance, as the Liberal-SDP electoral pack was called, took approximately 25% of the national vote which obviously massively helped Thatcher win two general elections.

The first general election that Thatcher won was bit of a more of a struggle for her as the Labour centrists hadn't at that point broken away to form a separate party.

Labour party centrists/moderates/right-wingers, whatever you want to call them, along with the LibDems,. have a long history in enabling the Tories to government stretching back decades.

The Alliance, as the Liberal-SDP electoral pack was called, took approximately 25% of the national vote which obviously massively helped Thatcher win two general elections.

Didn't equal many seats though.

But unless we go to a two party system like the US then someone will always be accused of skewing the results. Reform essentially let Labour win this election.

Didn’t equal many seats though.

It certainly resulted in many seats for the Tories. With the Alliance standing candidates in all the UK marginal seats it certainly gave a massive boost to the Tories.

If your point is that the damage inflicted by the SDP was disproportionate to the level of support they enjoyed then I couldn't agree more. But I wouldn't describe them as a bloody joke unless it was for the purpose of irony.

Seeing that YouGov poll, I'd consider if Reform would still be a party in 4 years or even one party that hasn't fragmented into different groups.

I'd also ask if the Conservatives can do something to get some of the vote share back else they could finish 5th if you consider the greens and lib dems!

I would put the rise of Reform on the press, why is Reform given so much press over other parties who did better or the same at the last election?

Didn’t equal many seats though.

And Reform won very few seats last year, yet helped Labour a great deal by splitting the Tory vote.

Blimey, and I thought I was cynical about Starmer!

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/09/keir-starmer-politics-labour-growth-reform-uk

It's hard to argue with any of that. 

This made me chuckle :

"The tone suggests one of Stalin’s five-year plans being fronted by Alan Partridge."

We voted for a technocrat and that's exactly what we got!

What Starmer seems to have missed is that people didn't vote for him so he could tell them that nothing can be fixed because it's either too expensive or too difficult, they voted for him to ignore all that and get on with it.

What's even worse is that while he's explaining to everyone why they can't have what they want, he does so in the manner of an upper class schoolmaster delivering a dressing down at a school assembly. WTF were his vocal 'coaches' thinking?! 

He was better off with the football hooligan persona. Maybe call Farage a 'cant' at the next PMQs in an exaggerated cockney accent followed by a rendition of no surrender???

We voted for a technocrat and that's exactly what we got!

Voters really didn't which is actually part of the problem, and why Labour appear to have had the shortest honeymoon period of a new government in modern UK history.

What people did was to vote the Tories out of office and as a consequence Keir Starmer became Prime Minister by default. It was never a sign of support for Starmer and much more a sign of how unpopular Rishi Sunak was.

Although I believe that Keir Starmer is now even less popular than Rishi Sunak was at his least popular. Which is quite an achievement!

Voters really didn't

No I know that. My comment was more a statement of fact. Starmer was voted in as PM, and my god is he performing the role a lot of us suspected he would.

I suppose it just shows that despite all that professional experience and competence between him and his advisors they have still managed to balls it all up. I almost feel sorry for McSweeney. All that effort to regain power and they chose the wrong man to be the figurehead. 🤦‍♂️

Starmer was voted in as PM, and my god is he performing the role a lot of us suspected he would.

Well, what are you talking about specifically? the plan to increase spending on legal aid fund? Increasing council spending by £69Billion? Perhaps the renationalisation of military housing after the shambles of Tory outsourcing, or the compensation for LGBT+ veterans dismissed because  of discrimination? (pot of £75 million for that) Or the he extra £100 million announced for hospice funding? I know, the the commitment to remove dangerous cladding by 2029? Maybe the reversal of the Tory policy to exclude unions from school pay negotiations? The 1400 new prisons places to avoid the "letting prisoners out early" shit-show that they inherited from the tories? The cut to high street rates for small businesses?

I mean, you be a bit more specific, no?

The cut to high street rates for small businesses?

You'd have to be more specific on that too.

Because there's been BR discounts in place for ages. Labour extended and promised to do something and as far as I know that hasn't happened. I could have missed something on that.

Other than the 69bn (6% lift) everything else you mentioned ain't going to fix much on the grand-scale that is needed.

Point is we all recognised they might tinker at the seems but the scale of their failure dwarfs the things mentioned here.

Perhaps the renationalisation of military housing after the shambles of Tory outsourcing

You really picked issues that are foremost on people's minds didn't you Nick?!

And we have had more than 13 years of Labour government since that particular Tory outsourcing shambles was introduced.

The only reason that Starmer's government are renationalising military housing is firstly because it will save the Chancellor £millions every year, and secondly because it is a continuation of Rishi Sunak's government policy!

Three years ago :

https://tlio.org.uk/military-homes-re-nationalisation-row-heads-to-court/

"I GUY HANDS’ housing firm has launched legal proceedings against the Government to block the renationalisation of its portfolio of thousands of military homes."

Duplicate deleted

"Any person applying for citizenship from 10 February 2025, who previously entered the UK illegally will normally be refused, regardless of the time that has passed since the illegal entry took place."

https://freemovement.org.uk/good-character-guidance-amended-to-block-refugees-from-naturalisation/#:~:text=A%20person%20who%20applies%20for,will%20normally%20be%20refused%20citizenship.

(sorry couldn't get it to work)

Even Starmer's most blatant Centrist fan club have shit themselves today.

Ian Dunt in a constant state of surprise at his regular bad calls.

 Keir Starmer's most consistent and welcome message is that people should be treated with dignity. How does stripping refugees of the right to citizenship square with that?

— Ian Dunt (@iandunt.bsky.social) February 11, 2025 at 3:25 PM

From the link above:

No idea why Labour have done this - it makes no sense either as a deterrent or a signal of enforcement/control.

It might look as if it makes no sense but I am sure that Donald Trump, for example, would understand 

Well a YouGov poll taken this weekend suggests that Labour's dog-whistling might be starting to have an effect..... they are up 1% !

https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/51560-voting-intention-lab-25-ref-26-con-21-9-10-feb-2025

Obviously Reform UK are still in the lead but it is starting to look like a two horse race between Reform UK and Labour with the Tories trailing. The question is which party will Britain's bigots eventually embrace?

I think the Tories should perhaps consider replacing their leader with a white man, like Labour and Reform. They can't be doing themselves any favours.

But unless we go to a two party system like the US

we're not a million miles off but the main reason the US is so utterly, utterly ****ed is that there is no central ground. they just shout at each other. now look and and see how the president's BFF is disabling the state at pretty much every level. i wish we would watch and learn but we're never very far behind the US in a lot of things. buckle up Dorothy cos things are going to get bumpy unless someone in labour wakes TF up and starts turning the boat. i am not hopeful.

If you successfully claim asylum here, and make your life here, there should be a route to becoming a UK citizen if you want to. This new rule makes no sense, and needs to be reversed.  

It makes perfect sense if you want to distract from the problems of austerity and neoliberalism by scapegoating refugees and immigrants instead. Just another demonstration of SKS's leaderships moral vacuum and chasing reform and the tories to right wing populism, we are following the same path as the US, and SKS is rolling out the red carpet for the oligarchs and their racist propaganda.

Well it is what we voted for - it was plain to see.  I am sure he will change soon though into something progressive just as we were told by many on this very forum he would after pretending to be a **** just to win the election.

I mean, you be a bit more specific, no?

Ok, what I'm talking about is that we all knew he would govern in the style of a technocratic centre right tory, and that's exactly what he's doing. The last PM we had like him was either May or Major, and to be honest I think they were probably more left wing than Starmer. You didn't see Major slashing pubic spending to in response to bond market movements. 

Also your 69 billion for local authorities is the total settlement, not extra cash. It's only a 6.8% increase in spending terms, and yet there were recent reports that the labour govt is preparing to remove the 5% cap on council tax increases with some councils increasing council tax by 10-25% to avoid going bankrupt. I'm sure council tax payers will welcome another labour tax rise on top of the 2% NI rise that will filter through to them in April. 

Labour were voted in to fix all the problems the tories caused. Their response has been to tell voters it's too expensive and too difficult, but they're still going to have to pay higher taxes to keep the bond markets happy. And they wonder why Reform are leading the polls! 

The whole bond market thing has become the new stick to hammer everyone over spending.

It's toss, but the predecent was set by the poorly educated to repeat this from Truss onwards.

Bond markets are an epiphenomenon of government. In fact bond markets can only exist becasue of prior goverment spending that made its way into the private sector - to sit in ultra safe assets protected by the government. Aka gilts.

You could remove them tomorrow and spending would simply carry on.

https://new-wayland.com/blog/euthanise-the-bond-market/

I am sure he will change soon though into something progressive just as we were told by many on this very forum he would after pretending to be a **** just to win the election.

Ah but now he is planning for the next election. So we just need to go along with it until then and then he will switch.

Labour are going to lose the next general election so the progressive plan will have to be put on hold until 2034.

We're past the event horizon. Ian managed to turn a blind eye to everything else Labour have messed up on and is now blocking the *hard-left* - such as Zack Polanski for pointing this out.

https://twitter.com/Kathleen_Tyson_/status/1888892239838957665

Not really a fan of his but Adrian Chiles is spot on. Back in the day when Starmer didn't sound like a cross between Captain Mainwaring and Jacob Rees Mogg. 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/13/why-did-keir-starmer-have-his-voice-fixed-he-sounded-much-better-before

From that clip in the link I can't notice any difference between Starmer's voice in 2017 and his voice now, so the coaching was a waste of time imo, and hardly justified unnecessary close contact with someone outside your bubble during lockdown.

Still I guess it was probably Morgan McSweeney's idea and as a good lawyer Starmer probably just goes along with whatever his client wants.

So Catherine Bennett in the Observer wrote a sharp column about how Starmer is becoming a Cameron-copy-PM. Bennett did the work to prove the point, especially with this paragraph: “Since it can’t be plagiarism, only shared passion can explain why Starmer and David Cameron have phrased their ambitions in identical terms, in wanting, say, a “bonfire of red tape” (Starmer 2024; Cameron 2014). Starmer thinks regulations are “suffocating” (likewise Cameron); Starmer says “we are the builders” (ditto George Osborne); Starmer wants to end “dithering” (Cameron, “cut through the dither”); Starmer declares Britain “open for business” (Cameron, same, 2012); Starmer confronts those “talking our country down” (so did Cameron, 2011).”

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/starmer-dud-now-they-tell-us

Starmer declares Britain “open for business”

Heaven forefend!

Starmer confronts those “talking our country down”

He’s also using “carping from the sidelines” a lot when talking directly to anyone who was in the last government at PMQs. A good technique for belittling their concerns using the same words they used repeatedly against Labour when they were in opposition. Not going to work with Reform of course.

Heaven forefend!

I get the feeling that you might have missed the point Catherine Bennett in the Observer was making, ie, not only is Starmer following very similar policies to David Cameron but he is also using very similar terminology :

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-cameron-s-message-to-india-we-re-open-for-business-8497375.html

And saying that Britain is “open for business” is obviously silly because no one has ever claimed that Britain is "closed for business".

Btw spell check doesn't recognise "forefend", I had to Google it, so top marks for using an archaic word 🙂

Bennet missed 'change' (plus the hands), nicked from Cameron who'd nicked it from Blair.

How long will it before Reeves 'decides' to step aside for not wanting, despite being most unfairly accused of having her nose in the trough twice, to be a distraction from a brilliant government?