It seemed as certain as no afterlife that there would be no Tory government after the elections were over. Toasted Tory seemed to be the main dish on the menu, and when the electorate served it up it made sure it was well burnt.
Now the British establishment knight, Sir Keir Starmer, is facing his first political crisis as Prime Minister with the widespread racist rioting throughout England. His instinctive response is true Tory fare - law and order rather than investment in public services and utilities. Probably as much as can be expected from a politician who was previously the Director of Public Prosecutions. Every problem is a nail to be hit with a hammer.
Not that the fascists should be allowed to remain on the streets, brutalising, burning, beating. Yet a public policy that keeps them off the streets when the hi-octane fuel of disadvantage and deprivation that their toxic ideology copiously siphons into its engine, is highly unlikely to come from the Starmer government. The Tories might have gone but Tory policies have been left in situ regarding:
He will most certainly never entertain the notion of turning off the water and electricity supply to fascist homes. Only the type of threat posed by the infants of Gaza merits that response.
taxing the well-to-do, public investment, public ownership, tuition fees, child poverty and the climate emergency.
That is one reason why the the democratic socialist writer Owen Jones vacated the Labour ranks and advised that: "those who believe in real change from the Tories' bankrupt model should vote for Green or independent candidates". Jones had earlier called Starmer:
I was not so pleased to see a Labour victory as I was to see the Tories shown the red card, even if it was replaced by a strand of Labour that is actually devoid of red itself. Under Keir Starmer Labour has moved further to the right in the mould of Blairism. It is effectively a career cartel where the most aggressive careerists smear and marginalise their way to the top. Starmer has struck me as someone who could easily have won the Tory leadership contest had he run against Rishi Sunak. His colour combined with his neoliberal economic stance would have given him a serious advantage in that party.
Even with that, my major antipathy towards Starmer is down to his support for Israeli war crimes against the civilian population of Gaza when he boldly stated that the Kapo state had the right to block supplies of electricity and water to the population besieged there. He has lied about it since, pretending that neither he nor Despicable Dave Lammy endorsed any such thing.
a professional political conman . . . not someone anyone can trust . . . brazenly overtly delivered the exact opposite of what he said he would be as Labour leader.
I was not so pleased to see a Labour victory as I was to see the Tories shown the red card, even if it was replaced by a strand of Labour that is actually devoid of red itself. Under Keir Starmer Labour has moved further to the right in the mould of Blairism. It is effectively a career cartel where the most aggressive careerists smear and marginalise their way to the top. Starmer has struck me as someone who could easily have won the Tory leadership contest had he run against Rishi Sunak. His colour combined with his neoliberal economic stance would have given him a serious advantage in that party.
Even with that, my major antipathy towards Starmer is down to his support for Israeli war crimes against the civilian population of Gaza when he boldly stated that the Kapo state had the right to block supplies of electricity and water to the population besieged there. He has lied about it since, pretending that neither he nor Despicable Dave Lammy endorsed any such thing.
Labour is simply not to be trusted under Starmer to tackle the far right surge in Britain when all he has to offer was summed up by Labour Heartlands:
The irony, of course, is that while Starmer postures and preens about clamping down on social media misinformation, he’s busy peddling his own brand of comforting lies. The notion that we can legislate away social unrest, that we can solve deep-seated societal issues with a bit of authoritarian flexing, is perhaps the most dangerous misinformation of all.
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