Fake Labour: Starmer should know obsequious flag-waving and a haircut won’t fool voters
Fake: Jeremy Corbyn had authentic Labour policies; Keir Starmer has a flag, a haircut, and a face that looks more like Frank Spencer than Gavin Williamson’s.
A leaked internal strategy presentation suggests Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is hoping to win back voters with exaggerated patriotism, smart suits (and haircuts), and the exploitation of veterans.
There seems to be no suggestion that Starmer should try to present his hollowed-out sub-Tory party as actually standing for anything. “Labour” seems to be be nothing more than an old title that no longer has any significance at all.
The presentation itself is based on the findings of focus groups, showing that the general public no longer has any idea what – or who – Labour is supposed to represent and thinks that Starmer’s position on any subject is to sit on the fence.
And he’s considered to be the party’s “biggest positive driver”!
It seems Starmer is trying to find a way to present himself and his fake Labour as “authentic”. In short: it’s a blueprint for lying to the nation.
Obsequious flag-waving nationalism isn’t going to cut any mustard with Labour’s core voters, though – for reasons that Clive Lewis, an MP who served with the armed forces in Afghanistan, has made clear:
“It’s not patriotism; it’s Fatherland-ism. There’s a better way to build social cohesion than moving down the track of the nativist right.
“The Tory party has absorbed Ukip and now Labour appears to be absorbing the language and symbols of the Tory party.”
His critique is mild. Here are a few more:
I just love that a brand consultancy used the words “authentic values alignment” in a presentation on how the Labour leadership can fake it.
— Alex Nunns (@alexnunns) February 2, 2021
Labour Party Update:
Keir sleeps nude in an Union flag, which he believes gives him patriotic powers. pic.twitter.com/s6gQWkZkuU— Pesky Splinter (@PeskySplinter) February 3, 2021
And here’s an answer to the whole sorry mess:
You know what's patriotic? Loving your country enough to care for its poor, fund its institutions, unite its communities, educate its children, restore its environment, plan for its future, build its alliances, and tell it the truth.
You know what's not patriotic? Flags.
— Russ Jones (@RussInCheshire) February 3, 2021
Source: Leak reveals Labour plan to focus on flag and patriotism to win back voters | Labour | The Guardian
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STARMER NEEDS A LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE FROM A COHERENT SOCIAL DEMOCRAT
By Shaun Peacock
Flags and more nationalism is not the way to unite a country. Unite the country with hope and new ideas, now that’s a concept. At best Starmer looks like a temporary quazi right winger, they will never fall for it.
People only went fully right wing because they were desperate for a Brexit and that national mantra was pounced upon by desperate scum bag career politicians who with designs for the neo liberal end game, in their own mind believed that the moderate voters had run a mile from politics and all that was left was the knuckle draggers and by appealing to these peoples nasty selfish tabloid reader sides they would get a crowd sufficient enough so the movement would look mainstream enough to win the elusive politically homeless moderates over too, get power and dominate the Brexit process. The nastier and the more divisive they were the quicker the path to the goody room.
What Starmer and his team do not see though is the fact that the country do not want this shit for years on end, once Brexit is signed and sealed people will be looking for change. So for Starmer to go fully right wing UKIP at this time just shows he’s an idiot with zero political instincts and lacks his own ideas and all those members who advised him to go this way need dropping. I’m guessing they come from the right of the party…typical Mr and Mrs Buckets who are tory but don’t have the balls to go the whole hog probably cause they were raised in Labour households.
to make Brexit and rebuilding of the economy work you need a united country, Brexit festival, flag waving campaigns, all this comes AFTER you’ve united everyone with an exiting new political new deal. All he looks like right now is Mr neo liberal status quo.
Truth is he shouldn’t be waging war on the left he should be uniting the party under a ‘New Deal’ program. ‘Socialism’ in the UK needs to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century, we need to go much further than Jeremy Corbyn in this endeavour.
Personally i’m waiting for left wing Labour voters to wake up to the fact that Britain was never a Socialist state, we were always a mixed keynesian economy that adopted socialist policies, basically a social democracy of sorts, before Thatcher anyway, and we can do this again but better if we stopped spouting socialism everywhere and putting half our potential voters off. Its been demonised now so it needs repackaging. We need to modernise.
What Labour needs is a leadership challenge from a man or woman who can first design a social contract that will protect our rights as we go into the 4th industrial revolution and included protections from the restrictions imposed on us through things like the great reset and agenda 21/30, one that is set in stone that is protected from the capitalist taliban and also lays out an exiting socially democratic manifesto that wets the appetites of every member of society uniting it and bringing back that spirit of 1945 we need post covid / brexit.
This is why you wont see me in Labour for dust. But if they dropped the mc carthyist neo liberal crap and sorted a left leaning socially democratic manifesto that unites lib dems, greens and labour im all behind it. Just not officially cause i’m barred for being anti apartheid…..but i will write in support of them and campaign like a mofo.
We need to speak a new language drop the old buzz words, that now repel the mainstream and sell something new and take it off the Capitalist Taliban.
Personally i think Ian Lavery MP is a good runner for this….seeing as he’s got socialist roots, respects the fact we need a FTSE and he’s can kick some ass too, he’s got that great powerful union speaking style, we need that kind of nitro and passion right now. If you don’t agree, name anyone else who got the form to lead the charge in the political come back of the century?
Billy Bragg said at one of his gigs “the real enemy change is not the Tories or far right loons, its our own cynicism…that feeling that nothing will ever change” Guys you really need to stay on your horses, there’s been bigger political upsets in history, we just need to bide our time and wait for a gap to jump in.
Progressive voters exist in every constituency.
Labour alienates them at its peril. It would not take many of them to switch to other parties to stop Labour gaining a seat. It may even lose seats that it already holds.
The problem that the Labour Party has is that, when in office, it spent money on the wrong things such as wars and maintaining a ridiculously high level of military spending, one of the highest in the world.
And so many people did not see the benefits of supporting Labour. This helped to create the housing shortage. This means that Labour became vulnerable to the idea that it spent too much or that it spent the money ineffectively. As a result, confidence in Labour to run the economy well is undermined.
That is why Labour is doing badly.
So you’re saying Centrist Labour now is doing badly because of Centrist Labour in the Blair/Brown years?
Poetic justice, I’d say.
The problem is that we had a chance to have Socialist Labour in the Corbyn years, but that was torpedoed by people’s recollection of those Centrist (by which I mean right-wing, let’s not forget) Labour mistakes while in government, and also by centrists in the party machinery who backstabbed Jeremy Corbyn for years.
Starmer should drape himself in the flag of Israel,after all he puts the interests of that fascist apartheid Israeli regime’s interests over and above that of Britain and the British people.
Brace yourself for all the anti-Semitism accusations!
They’re looking specifically, and only, at the lost Red Wall in England. Anti-immigrant, royalist and right wing but too working class to admit they’re actually Tories. The article in The Guardian states that most people don’t know what Labour stand for. I think that’s entirely the point.
Labour have, and continue, to ignore Scotland but many lessons on how to reconstruct can be found here. Look, for example, at the grass roots campaigning by SNP and others around the time of the referendum. Support was brought from under 30% to 50% by town hall meetings and people on the ground. They didn’t focus group their position, they had a position and took the time to put it across to the populous and take questions on it. The SNP has been in power either as a majority (which should be impossible given the voting system) or with the greens for years now. They now completely dominate Westminster for Scotland too. It’s as big a sea change in Scottish politics as it was when Labour began to dominate in the 50s. To return to power Labour needs to remember its roots as an organisation that sides with the working class and those who are trying to be socially mobile then get out and make its case to those who could be voting for them. They won’t though, they’ve already focus grouped this and are shifting ever rightward to repeat the mistakes of the past when people, rightly, said that you ‘couldn’t get a fag paper between em’ of Labour and Tories.
The past 40 years of Labour has seen entryism from the right after having left to form the SDP, failed and joined with the Liberals. It’s more like a battle for the name of the party than its soul. The votes they get are because there’s no one else to vote for (who might win) who will represent any of the working class’s needs. As with Scotland, if a party appears that will do so – Labour will be finished on a permanent basis.