Oh dear. Keir Starmer has launched a campaign full of let-downs as we approach the Independents’ Day election.

He started as, presumably, he means to go on, with a campaign slogan that is even weaker than his watered-down Tory polices:

Starmer has laughably chosen the word “change” as his campaign slogan while offering more austerity and more of the same Thatcherite shite that has f*cked up this country for the last 45 years.

The only thing Starmer is trying to “change” is the definition of the word “change”. pic.twitter.com/7Dletk2n47

— Frank Owen’s Legendary Paintbrush🥀🇵🇸🇾🇪 (@OwenPaintbrush) May 24, 2024

Can anyone argue with that?

This morning (May 24, 2024), he appeared on the BBC’s Breakfast News, where he was asked about his immediate forerunner as Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn – minutes after Mr Corbyn announced that he will run for election as an Independent candidate in Islington North.

Keir Starmer is asked about Jeremy Corbyn standing as an independent in the constituency hes served since 1983

The interviewer mentions the fact that this might mean the Lib Dems win the seat. She doesn’t admit the possibility that Corbyn might win, though! pic.twitter.com/nGDTRyeXN4

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) May 24, 2024

The interviewer’s belief that Mr Corbyn will split the left-wing vote, allowing the Liberal Democrats to get in, is unfounded in reality as the incumbent’s popularity is huge. Islington North will return Jeremy Corbyn for an 11th consecutive term, whether as a Labour MP or not.

Starmer was just as weak on policy. Consider this:

Starmer says that because of the damage done to the economy he can’t cut NHS waiting lists and scrap tuition fees, so he has to choose which to do. He’s then asked, long term [when the economy improves], will he therefore return to his pledge to scrap tuition fees. He says no. pic.twitter.com/5U1GOWd9T8

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) May 24, 2024

People are fed up with being promised the Earth and then seeing politicians row back on those promises when elected. But Starmer is already guilty of doing this, with one policy pledge after another being broken in the years since his April 2020 election to lead the Labour Party.

Why has he done this? Was he trying to gradually erode our expectations until we reached the point we’re at today, when we doubt Starmer will change a single thing?

On policy, Starmer seems clearly closer to Toryism than to anything approaching traditional Labour ideas:

🟥Labour Policies

• NHS privatisation
• Keep two child cap
• keep Right to Buy
• Keep Tuition Fees
• Keep privatised water
• Oppose IndyRef2
• Halt more safe routes
• Keep Bedroom Tax
• Keep Tory fiscal drag

Vote for other options, not Labour.

— Tory Fibs (@ToryFibs) May 24, 2024

Labour Policies

• Refuse to say if they’ll implement arrest warrant against Netanyahu
• Say they won’t cut tuition fees.
• Say NHS privatisation will continue.
• Won’t abolish all Zero Hours Jobs
• Oppose safe routes for refugees.
• Won’t nationalise water corps.

— Eóin Clarke (@DrEoinOCleirigh) May 24, 2024

And Starmer was asked about the fate of Diane Abbott, the former Corbyn lieutenant whose membership of the Parliamentary Labour Party has been suspended for more than a year. She will also want to seek re-election, so what it the party machine doing about it? Here’s his answer:

Starmer is asked if DIane Abbott will be allowed to run a a Lab candidate & he says the NEC will decide on that shortly.

erm, for the last year you’ve been telling us there’s an ‘independent process’ that will decide the issue. Turns out you were lying all along. I’m shocked! pic.twitter.com/SAesmd4WGZ

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) May 24, 2024

Saul Staniforth, who posted the clip, is right: Labour is supposed to have put in place an independent system to scrutinise cases like Ms Abbott’s. This seems to have been a lie. If we can’t trust Labour politicians to run their own party properly, how are we supposed to trust them to run the country?

Starmer is pushing a tepid, substitute-Tory policy platform because he has systematically ditched everything that made Labour unique.

He needs to worry less about Jeremy Corbyn’s Parliamentary seat and more about his own, where former South African Parliamentarian Andrew Feinstein is campaigning to unseat him. And it couldn’t come too soon.

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