Keir Starmer has wantonly wasted his first Labour Conference as party leader.
Instead of taking the fight to the Tories, he waged factional war on his own party with new rules to rig the nomination process for his successor.
Instead of creating the "unity" that he promised during the Labour leadership election, he delivered division, discord, and disillusionment.
Instead of taking the opportunity to reach out and engage the public with bold policies aimed at improving the lives and communities of ordinary people across Britain, he dropped an absurd 14,000 word essay and delivered an interminable bore-fest of a conference speech that was only enlivened by the heckling.
Instead of offering people anything inspiring to actually vote for, he's given existing Labour voters reason to doubt they'd even bother with him in charge.
Boris Johnson may be a bone-idle, lying philanderer, but he's no fool.
His conference isn't going to focus on petty and divisive score-settling against rivals within the Tory ranks.
He's not going to write ludicrously long essays that nobody but the most hardcore of political nerds is ever going to read, nor deliver an absolute policy-vacuum of a conference speech.
He'll focus on a few touchstone issues like "jobs", "wages", and "the economy".
Yes, of course virtually everything he says about these subjects will be lies, but it's only the political nerds who will know it.
The majority, who only pay passing attention to party politics outside of general elections, will hear Johnson and the Tories talking about "jobs", "wages", and "the economy", when all they heard of Starmer's conference, if they heard anything at all, was how he stitched up the nomination process to decide his successor, and then got heckled throughout his speech.
In fact Johnson's lies on these issues won't do him any harm at all, because he provokes his critics into critiquing his lies.
He's more than happy with the attention because he's comfortable in the knowledge that his target audience of low-information voters won't even follow the details of the debate, they'll just see all the clips of him talking about the things they care about, like "jobs", "wages", and "the economy", without registering or remember all the complicated facts and evidence demonstrating that he's lying again.
They'll associate him with the subjects he wants them to associate him with, and if that means telling lies, doing something ridiculous, or saying something utterly egregious for attention, that's exactly what he'll do.
It worked for Trump, and it's working for him too.
Johnson is a politically experienced showman who's figured out how to game the system to his advantage, and Starmer just keeps on proving what a politically naïve and uninspiring figure he is, who has surrounded himself with the worst kind of strategically incompetent fools.
Labour should have learned from 2015 that it's impossible to win voters off the Tories by pathetically imitating them, refusing to oppose them, and deliberately abstaining on all their malicious legislation.
I mean, who on earth wants watered-down ersatz Toryism, when they can have the real undiluted Toryism just by voting Tory?
And even if this uninspiring Tory-lite agenda does end up attracting a few "soft Tories", they're massively outnumbered by Labour's existing supporters abandoning the party in frustration.
Starmer and his mob have been actively driving away Labour's own supporters in the vain hope of attracting these largely mythical "soft Tories", and this strategic idiocy plays right into Johnson's hands.
He's going to talk about issues that ordinary people are actually bothered about rather than fulminating against sections of his own party, and then he'll announce a couple of new policies designed to position the Tory party to the left of Starmer's tepid and unadventurous fare on a couple of headline issues.
He'll probably even end up promising one of the things that Starmer's just sternly lectured the public that they're stupid and unrealistic for even wanting.
It's been painful watching Starmer walk himself into this trap, not so much because it's so obviously going to happen, but because his deluded supporters in the corporate media hack pack have tried so hard to portray Starmer's strategic ineptitude as some kind of 'brilliant new dawn', and because of the absolute torrents of vitriol and venom spat by the Starmtrooper online bully boys at literally anyone who's tried to warn them about the trap they're actively cheering Starmer into.
To walk into a trap like this shows strategic ineptitude of such magnitude, it's no wonder that more and more people are coming to suspect that Starmer's advisers are deliberately giving him duff advice because they're once again conducting internal sabotage like they did with the 2017 general election.
Whether you believe Starmer's advisers have led him into this trap through malice or incompetence doesn't really matter at this stage. He's already put his foot in the Tory bear trap now, and it's going to crunch agonisingly closed on his leg over the next few days.
Instead of taking the fight to the Tories, he waged factional war on his own party with new rules to rig the nomination process for his successor.
Instead of creating the "unity" that he promised during the Labour leadership election, he delivered division, discord, and disillusionment.
Instead of taking the opportunity to reach out and engage the public with bold policies aimed at improving the lives and communities of ordinary people across Britain, he dropped an absurd 14,000 word essay and delivered an interminable bore-fest of a conference speech that was only enlivened by the heckling.
Instead of offering people anything inspiring to actually vote for, he's given existing Labour voters reason to doubt they'd even bother with him in charge.
Boris Johnson may be a bone-idle, lying philanderer, but he's no fool.
His conference isn't going to focus on petty and divisive score-settling against rivals within the Tory ranks.
He's not going to write ludicrously long essays that nobody but the most hardcore of political nerds is ever going to read, nor deliver an absolute policy-vacuum of a conference speech.
He'll focus on a few touchstone issues like "jobs", "wages", and "the economy".
Yes, of course virtually everything he says about these subjects will be lies, but it's only the political nerds who will know it.
The majority, who only pay passing attention to party politics outside of general elections, will hear Johnson and the Tories talking about "jobs", "wages", and "the economy", when all they heard of Starmer's conference, if they heard anything at all, was how he stitched up the nomination process to decide his successor, and then got heckled throughout his speech.
In fact Johnson's lies on these issues won't do him any harm at all, because he provokes his critics into critiquing his lies.
He's more than happy with the attention because he's comfortable in the knowledge that his target audience of low-information voters won't even follow the details of the debate, they'll just see all the clips of him talking about the things they care about, like "jobs", "wages", and "the economy", without registering or remember all the complicated facts and evidence demonstrating that he's lying again.
They'll associate him with the subjects he wants them to associate him with, and if that means telling lies, doing something ridiculous, or saying something utterly egregious for attention, that's exactly what he'll do.
It worked for Trump, and it's working for him too.
Johnson is a politically experienced showman who's figured out how to game the system to his advantage, and Starmer just keeps on proving what a politically naïve and uninspiring figure he is, who has surrounded himself with the worst kind of strategically incompetent fools.
Labour should have learned from 2015 that it's impossible to win voters off the Tories by pathetically imitating them, refusing to oppose them, and deliberately abstaining on all their malicious legislation.
I mean, who on earth wants watered-down ersatz Toryism, when they can have the real undiluted Toryism just by voting Tory?
And even if this uninspiring Tory-lite agenda does end up attracting a few "soft Tories", they're massively outnumbered by Labour's existing supporters abandoning the party in frustration.
Starmer and his mob have been actively driving away Labour's own supporters in the vain hope of attracting these largely mythical "soft Tories", and this strategic idiocy plays right into Johnson's hands.
He's going to talk about issues that ordinary people are actually bothered about rather than fulminating against sections of his own party, and then he'll announce a couple of new policies designed to position the Tory party to the left of Starmer's tepid and unadventurous fare on a couple of headline issues.
He'll probably even end up promising one of the things that Starmer's just sternly lectured the public that they're stupid and unrealistic for even wanting.
It's been painful watching Starmer walk himself into this trap, not so much because it's so obviously going to happen, but because his deluded supporters in the corporate media hack pack have tried so hard to portray Starmer's strategic ineptitude as some kind of 'brilliant new dawn', and because of the absolute torrents of vitriol and venom spat by the Starmtrooper online bully boys at literally anyone who's tried to warn them about the trap they're actively cheering Starmer into.
To walk into a trap like this shows strategic ineptitude of such magnitude, it's no wonder that more and more people are coming to suspect that Starmer's advisers are deliberately giving him duff advice because they're once again conducting internal sabotage like they did with the 2017 general election.
Whether you believe Starmer's advisers have led him into this trap through malice or incompetence doesn't really matter at this stage. He's already put his foot in the Tory bear trap now, and it's going to crunch agonisingly closed on his leg over the next few days.
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Anyone else see the chap at the conference demand that no white men hold up their hands? Cor blimey, I imagine that'll go over really well with the Northern voters ...
ReplyDeleteTony Benn, in a candid confession to the Independent (17 May 1989), wrote: "Past Labour governments have always worked within the limits set by market forces (as when the cabinet capitulated to the International Monetary Fund in 1976); have always supported nuclear weapons (as when Callaghan authorised the Chevaline without telling parliament); and have regularly confronted trade unionism (as with rigid wage policies)… We must add[did Mr. Benn just use the royal 'we'?]… a clear recognition that the Labour Party is not — and probably never was — a socialist party, and its individual members do not decide its policy, nor are its election pledges apparently meant to be taken seriously".
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ReplyDeleteThe Conservatives are masters at setting traps. The 2019 election was a good example of what Blair called an 'elephant trap'. Just think how different things might have been if Corbyn had resisted an election then. The thing is much as people might despise or dislike the Conservative party they have lots of advantages against Labour. a) loads more money b) a compliant press which can amplify and mute in sympathy with them and out of phase with Labour c) influence in digital media d) homogeneous party e) insidious trap creators etc. Johnson is everywhere and any rubbish he generates is still more beneficial than Starmer's damped out contribution. Politics is quite interesting now to watch how the MSM have to frame all the negatives of Conservative policy and Brexit without treading on the toes of their beloved party and by making the contortions seem plausible. If a winter of discontent arrives (that is only possible under left wing government) well the 'Silent Knight' and his Starmtroopers are the Conservatives insurance policy.
ReplyDelete