Still reeling from the 'any other leader would be twenty points ahead' truism turning out to be untrue. That blew my mind. And the fact that it might take more than a nice haircut and an awkward photo op besides a St. George's flag to see the voters come rushing back.
He has successfully identified the main thing the public were calling out for of course, the return of Peter Mandelson. I know I myself have spent the intervening years thinking: "if only there were some kind of ghoulish and unlikeable relic of the victories of nearly a quarter of century ago lurking suspiciously in the background, plotting sinisterly". After years of the impassioned chants of 'give me Mandelson or give me death' we've all heard ringing out across the pubs, parks and public spaces of Britain, the Party have listened. Kudos Keir.
Once again, it's been a mindfuck to recently be alerted to the fact that after five years of brave and principled sabotage, mass resignations, breakaway parties and press tours urging voters not to vote Labour, working against the electoral chances of the Labour Party whilst actually in the Labour Party is actually a bad thing. You live and learn. Obviously I hope these disgusting trot, anti-semite crank scumbags calling Starmer 'Keith' on twitter will be as viciously dealt with as I'm going to presume the Labour candidates who spent five years working against his predecessor have or will be.
I think we call all agree the unity has never been greater and that Starmer has successfully brought together all sides of this fragile and fracturing coalition, we're all pulling in the same direction and that's great. That's super. Should Starmer & his team manage to cobble together enough policies together to form a manifesto before the next election given the slow rate of policy formation so far, then I can't wait to rush out and vote for it. I'm sure it will be as ambitious and dynamic as the man himself is.
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I'm being sarcastic of course, as others have said I don't see much talent lurking anywhere within the Party on either side so I'm not sure what good getting rid of him would have done.
Obviously the Starmer presented to members in his leadership bid as someone who might make an effort to bring the two sides of Labour together rather than driving even more of wedge between them would have been better (imo) than carrying on the endless factional warfare. The promise of a more respectable and less leaden with baggage version of the Corbyn era sounded perfectly fine (to me, I realise most people in these threads hated him) but y'know the Labour right are obviously on a mission to wipe out any dissention or challenge to their rule. Whatever.
Corbyn was flawed and made myriad mistakes, I'm not an idiot who's blind to that but neither should the Labour right be blind to the millions of votes they lost between 1997 and being booted out of office, or the loss of Scotland etc. But only one side are seemingly expected to learn, moderate themselves, taper expectations or adjust whilst the other just carry right on, forever blaring 'Now That's What I Call 1997!' from their CD Walkman's as the batteries finally run out and the era itself fades from memory, with the strategies they used back then becoming ever less applicable.
Obviously at some stage you presume the people of Britain will get bored of the Tories or simply wake up one day and look around at the ruins that surround them, ruins that once were a vaguely functioning country now gone up in smoke, and wonder: "what the fuck happened?!?" and decide a change might be in order, hard to see at this moment but you've got to hope it comes. Obviously internally lots of us will think: "well, what happened was that you allowed yourself to be conned by Brexit, culture war bullshit, austerity being necessary, flags, and the ludicrous idea that a country run for the benefit of a tiny percentage of a percent at the very top was going to be good for everyone" - but that probably wouldn't be helpful or useful.
I'd imagine Starmer will be the one before the one who can challenge for office, the people around him clearly want to sure things up to make sure those pesky members can't fuck up their path to electability.
I'm not trying to be divisive btw, just attempting to add an alternative view to what on here is often a load of people hurling abuse at lefties, blaming them for everything whilst refusing to accept their brand of Labour was tanking badly and demeaning and dehumanising them with a load of 'crank, trot scum - why won't they fuck off and die?' subtext.
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