Keir Starmer is gaslighting us about his father and the 2019 general election
His dishonesty seems to know no bounds: Keir Starmer is gaslighting us about his father and the 2019 general election.
After he trotted out that tired line about his dad being a toolmaker, in another TV debate, Starmer got uptight in a GB News interview:
Keir Starmer knows the audience were laughing at the constant repetition of being the son of a tool maker.
They weren’t laughing at the fact he was a tool maker.
This is an example of his dishonesty over petty things as well as major things.
— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) June 13, 2024
Owen Jones, on X, had it right when he posted: “Keir Starmer knows the audience were laughing at the constant repetition of being the son of a tool maker. They weren’t laughing at the fact he was a tool maker. This is an example of his dishonesty over petty things as well as major things.”
It’s actually an attempt at gaslighting – persuading us not to believe the evidence of our own ears. The audience laughed because they had heard him lay out that line about his father too many times. Nobody was disrespecting the man because of what he did. But Starmer deliberately misrepresented it – or so it seems to Owen Jones (and to me).
Gaslighting is a particularly nasty form of psychological abuse that suggests a pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour.
That pattern seems to have been repeated when Starmer discussed his participation in Labour’s 2019 general election loss.
According to the BBC, he said: “I was certain that we would lose the 2019 election” even though he campaigned for Labour.
Fortunately, former party leader Jeremy Corbyn was ready to set the record straight. He told the BBC: “I just think rewriting history is no help. It shows double standards, shall we say, that he now says he always thought that but he never said it at the time or anything about it.
“He was part of the campaign. He and I spoke together at events and I find it actually quite sad.”
He added that his message to the current Labour leader was to “own” his involvement with the 2019 campaign.
That’s two attempts at gaslighting uncovered in a single day.
They suggest that Starmer is completely untrustworthy. He’ll say anything to gain power, and will use psychological abuse if it helps him get his way.
We don’t need that. We need honest politics. He’s just more of the same crass corruption we’ve had for far too long already.
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Starmer was certain that Corbyn would lose in 2019 presumably because he had worked to achieve that end. (So the campaign for a second referendum is seen as a vehicle to defeat the Corbyn project, and Starmer’s unexpected announcement of Labour including an option to remain in the EU was him putting the final boot in to any possible Labour victory.)
He cannot admit why he was certain because it was all planned to happen that way. .
I wonder, was Starmer in fact originally an establishment operative, recruited in his student days perhaps? The end of the cold war would have interrupted that career line of course. But his political shifts over the years are reminiscent of security operatives which once were (and maybe still are) common on the left. Just speculating, of course.
I would agree. But why do we just call it gaslighting? For me, it’s deception pure and simple, by a man acting a part. He’s trying to fake integrity when he has none, and when his defences fail he just talks nonsense.
Gaslighting is the accurate description of what Starmer was trying to do, for the reasons stated in the article.
So, if Sir Keir wishes to insist his father was a tool maker, he’s not lying. His father made at least one tool – and he named it Keir!