Analysis comment

Starmer campaign image lists places Labour needs to win – no mention of NE, NW, Mids or Yorkshire

Official campaign graphic – promoted by former NE MP Jenny Chapman – ignores areas of greatest Labour losses in GE19

An official campaign graphic for Keir Starmer’s bid for the Labour leadership suggests that the party doesn’t need to win back the more than fifty leave-voting seats it lost in the general election.

The image shows Starmer above bold, capitalised text listing the areas ‘we’ need to win. Scotland, Wales, the south-east and south-west all get a mention:

But the north-east, north-west, Yorkshire and the Midlands – in which the vast majority of Labour’s lost seats are situated – are not mentioned.

The graphic is authentic and not a spoof – it was tweeted earlier this month by, among others, Starmer’s campaign chair Jenny Chapman, whose name appears as promoter at the foot of the image:

Ironically, the parliamentary seat Chapman lost in December is Darlington – a leave seat in the north-east of England. Neither Ms Chapman nor the Starmer campaign appear to have put out an alternative version mentioning the omitted areas.

Many Labour supporters have expressed concerns that any road back to power for the party runs through the leave areas that it lost because of its Brexit position – and that the architect of Labour’s referendum-and-remain swerve cannot win them back:

But Starmer’s campaign graphic, proudly shared by his supporters, suggests that he is ignoring the lost leave towns and the reality they represent.

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44 comments

  1. The North will not be to the forfront of the privately educated Reigate grammar school in Surrey thoughts will it.Life outside of the narrow minded Westminster cliques doesnt exist for Sir knightly Starmer and his right wing moderates.

    1. Joseph – Haven’t we had a similar conversation quite recently I’m fairly sure that I’ve pointed this out to you before. Keir Starmer started at RGS when it was a grant maintained Grammar School (not a private fee paying school). When it converted to a private school interim arrangements were put in place by the government so that all existing pupils would have their fees paid until they had completed their education at the school. Keir’s parents would not have had to pay any fees.

      At the time I posted this before I quoted the proof from Hansard, I will dig this out again for you if you need reminding.

      Keir came from solid working class roots. Admittedly he now enjoys a middle class lifestyle but so does Rebecca Long Bailey

      1. Steve H. I was a Labour councillor for many years in reigate and had to deal with many applications on planning at the school.I pointed out that the school became a fee paying private grammer at the time our young man Starmer attended.Starmer pays good money for removal of his history on the Net ,but he can’t hide or remove everything.Who are you looks like SH,his uncle or just another of his paid lakeys.?Double barrell Bailey has used poetic justice on Starmer and turned both barrells on him after his dirty tricks have backfired.against him Yes the Irish lass with no bottle has shown him a few tricks of her own and “kneecaped” him.

  2. Starmer will be toxic in the midlands and the north in any event!

    This merely confirms that Blairite-Starmerite intention is to consolidate Labour into a small party of the liberal metropolitan middle class which presents no threat to the social and economic status quo, and which would probably fuse with the Lib Dems before too long.

    1. Oh shit, wait until Allan sees Danny & jpenney posted at exactly the same time – his head’s going to explode.

    2. There’s no ‘Will be’ about it, Danny. At least not in the north. i.e. everywhere north of a line from The Wash to the Mersey. Establishment MP’s are persona non grata, by & large.

      And midlands labour isn’t worth a carrot anyway when you look at the supposed ‘quality’ of MP they go/ have gone for, bar one or two exceptions no longer returned (Denis, for example).

      But of course, reading further in in the thread, we see the professor emeritus of social strata (AKA rh) has decided to turn it into a parody of people’s perceptions of their geographical and class status.

      He KNOWS*, you see.

      *Fuck-all about anything, and not enough about that.

      1. Hiya, Toffee. Still being a TT? (Total Twat), I see, with the pretend ‘man of the people’ schtick (‘working class’ means ‘thick and sweary’).

        Of course ‘they’ (that blanket, dismissive typecasting generalisation) – will reject Starmer – despite the luv-in with Johnson.

        You do need to get out more, Toff.

        Meanwhile … back on Planet Earth …..

  3. Starmer’s hopeless campaign team are beyond satire ! I suspect these middle class Starmer fans simply can’t bear the idea of trying to win back what they see as a bunch of coarse, thick, xenophobic, working class yobbos in the North and Midlands, and having to mix on the door step with such ungrateful louts – after everything Labour has done for them ! That is, gifts from Labour like the craven implementation of austerity for the Tories by all Labour councils from 2010 in our ex-heartlands, to the longer term continued deindustrialisation of these regions by the toxic combination of neoliberal Blairite/Thatcherism’s free market doctrines, and the transformation, outside the financial sector, of the service sector dominated UK into a low wage – low skill economy, and unlimited labour supply from the EU, a key unstated policy of the Blair/Brown government, which has crushed wages and job opportunities particularly for the unskilled and semiskilled in this de-industrialised job market.

    Why the globalist pro capitalist Trilateral Commission’s man ,Starmer, and his feckless team think they have viable , believable, new thinking-based, policies to win back Scotland or Wales is a complete mystery ! All they have is the same old failed and discredited Tory-lite neoliberal bromides from the Blair/Brown/Miliband era ! As attractive to those areas we have lost as a bucket of cold sick !

    1. “…craven implementation of austerity for the Tories by all Labour councils…”
      Surely councils had no choice?
      Parliament is necessarily the final authority – and don’t I remember councillors being threatened with civil and criminal financial liability if they failed to set a ‘lawful’ budget?

      1. I’m afraid Ha’Penny and Co. are political lice on the body politic – not people serious about real politics and its effects on real people.

      2. A pathetic argument, David McNiven. That is the excuse always put forward by collaborator Right Wing Labour Councilors. Labour councillors have always had a political choice whether to implement Tory cuts – but with the exception of some few Left councils in the 1930’s, and Clay Cross in the 1970’s, and Liverpool in the 1980’s , they always choose to keep taking their generous allowances and perform as the local collaborators they are. Labour’s too often deeply corrupt, almost always nepotistic and cronyist local councillors are the very historic bedrock of the Labour old Right – even more so than the equally corrupt Right in the PLP.

        The last ten years of Labour councils cravenly implementing Austerity will cost us swathes of lost councils in the May elections across our old heartlands . Labour is simply no longer the party of the working class, either in membership, or voting base, or policies.

        One or two Labour councils refusing to set ‘legal’ budgets will result in that council being stomped on, as Poplar, Clay Cross , and Liverpool, were in their times. A hundred revolting Labour councils would not be so easy to tackle ! But Labour is never going to be a radical Left party resisting capitalism in any way, as the pathetic demise of the ‘Corbynist Left bubble’ has clearly shown, and with , as the regular Right Wing trolls on here gleefully saying , even Jeremy’s CLP now backing the utterly right wing Starmer for Leader !

    2. Danny and Ha’Penny piling into Starmer in the usual robotic fashion.

      That should boost his credibility.

      1. Oh, you mean like starmer getting you your 2nd ref with remain option ‘boosted’ yours & his ‘credibility’??

        ‘Course it did, dicky – boosted your credibility by at least a million times

        1,000,000 x 0 = ZERO.

        You’ve some brass neck on you. Try polishing that instead of the turds you generally push out.

  4. I can tell all connected with the 3 Backstabbers Starmer Nandy and Thornberry you can forget getting Scotland back New Labour turned us into a waste ground You 3 will never be welcome or forgiven, This is to every true Socialist a Vote for any of these Judases is wasted only one MP deserves your vote Rebecca Long Bailey and a pick of 1 from 2 for the Deputy job both are equally worth the position Dawn Butler or Richard Burgon

      1. I think I am right in saying that many of those Scottish CLPs have extremely low membership.

    1. Well – be clear – as a statement of fact Corbyn made no impact on Scotland, either. So your simplicities don’t work. Get real. And the damage that was done was not just about nuliarbore – it was about old right-wing Labour machine politics.

      As to RLB – no-one with sound judgment and real radical pretensions would cuddle up to Lansman.

    1. What the f. are ‘Northerners’?

      Sounds like a London Tory spokesperson’s blundering generalisation.

      1. RH what are northerners….sounds like you have been burying your head in the sand since you were transplanted from the sticks comrade.Northerners are the heart and soul of the Labour party.comrade!..don’t you know?

      2. As usual, you miss the glaring point, Joseph … which is that there is no such unified entity as ‘Northerners’ or *The* North as gleaned from Hovis advertisments. It’s a sloppy, unthinking generalised term that, like other such, misses out on the variety of people and opinion – and, indeed – of the geography.

        Its a slogan, not a description.

        For your information (and I know actual information and facts are not your scene), I’m a ‘northerner’ in the geographic sense. living in a *northern* constituency (which actually did elect a Labour MP – against the odds).. I’ve lived and worked in Yorkshire since time immoral.

        Yes – there’s a lot of anger across the board around these regions about the starvation of funds in favour of the South East, and the decline of traditional industries. But that is also true of other regions. There has also been the general tendency of the Labour Party to float in Islington tourists as MPs – but again that’s a widespread tendency, and the decay of local Labour salience has a long history.

        Beyond that, there are strong Tory traditions as well. There are LibDem voters, Green voters – and duggie UKIP/Brexit voters. Of all classes. And they often vote – as we see – for the metropolitan-generated images of the con industry.

        The ‘Dark Satanic Mills’ image of industrial decline is part of the picture. But it doesn’t define ‘THE NORTH’, or the nature of its people and the inevitability of their antagonism to the Tories – as we now know. People read the bog paper press here as much as in leafy Kent or Sussex – the main home of Brexit.

        Nor does it define its landscape – which is incredibly varied and mainly rural. Barnsley, for instance, covers a mainly rural area whilst reflecting the split nature of British socially.

        So that’s why I pick up on such simplicities – they are essentially fictions – often coming from received false images (indeed generated in London and the Home Counties) which turn a large and varied (and contradictory) set of regions into a cartoon.

        Do try to stop picking up the wrong end of the stick and poking yourself in the eye.

      3. What the f. are ‘Northerners’?

        According to the ‘erudite’ rh, there is NO class structure or any issues regards social class whatsoever, in this country. Eveyone is on a level playing surface.

        And with the above question, the terminally bog-standard dullard will no doubt deny there’s a North/South divide next.

      4. Are you really as totally dense as your schtick indicates, Toffee? – or is it just a pose?

      5. rh asking if I’M totally dense…This is the great sage that told us working class thickos we were wrong to oppose watson & slimy starmer’s grand scheme to bring about a 2nd ref with a remain option inserted by any means…That it’d lose labour the election

        Remind us all again how THAT one went, dicky?

        But then, you’re too dense to know the concept of shame or hypocrisy. Look in the mirror if you want to find the definition of those words.

      6. Thought that’d bring you out of your duvet burrow, Toff.

        Thing is – if you think my comments imply not acknowledging social divisions, you are indeed pretty thick. Or you can’t read. Or you don’t want to read. Or think.

        None of which are great assets in terms of political insight.

        Of course – you could just be a Tory shill. But let’s pretend not – I’ll credit you with just terminal dimness.

        So to help you on your way, here’s The News :

        Socialism is more than tossing yourself off to a recording of ‘The Red Flag’, with same flag stuck somewhere intimate, and a pristine, unread ( and cerainly not understood) copy of ‘Das Kapital’ on the bookshelf whilst also indulging in Tourette’s – and acting insultingly dumb as an emulation of an imaginary ‘working class’.

        Now then, Toff. What was your contribution to the magnificent December victory of Labour? In this consituency, a Labour MP was elected, instead of a festival of self-indulgence about purity and unreality being staged.

      7. ” In this consituency, a Labour MP was elected, instead of a festival of self-indulgence about purity and unreality being staged.”

        Well, fuck me! If that isn’t THE most braindead, maggotish, david brent style answer you’ll EVER see.

        https://youtu.be/vsLH70BrnnM?t=53

        Bully for you and your labour mp, dickhead. Are they as self-indulged and toerag as you?

  5. Torybrexit has to prove itself of benefit to the people who voted for it for the Tories to secure the next election I think.
    Few are predicting a Great British Renaissance or a Second Industrial Revolution – but doesn’t life after brexit have to get at least a little bit better in ‘the heartlands’ for them to vote Tory again?
    Does anyone here think the average brexit voter will make gains this parliament?
    This Tory win might well turn out to be a poisoned chalice.

    1. The cheap and nasty Tory party now have complete ownership of what is about to hit this country
      They are left holding their own explosive device,
      Except written on the side is not the word ‘bomb’ but the word ‘debt’
      If you sell your soul to Trumpton then you lose trade with the EU and China, wheres the money coming from then
      Green light for HS2 keeps Andy Street in power, then they cannot finance HS3
      Trident would scupper the Aircraft Carriers that already have no aircraft
      Hinckley wipes out Green Industrial Revolution
      £50 billion deficit, £2 trillion debt, negative interest rates, record productivity gap, record number of folk in poverty in work,
      The GE has not changed anything

      1. Defence of Britain does not, for very obvious reasons, require aircraft carriers. Their sole purpose is to facilitate foreign intervention.

  6. Some on here have no shame in backing the corrupt knight Starmer who is probably worse than Blair and hes a war criminal and should answer at the haig.

    1. Mr Okeefe I generally agree wit most of what you say but take issue with your previous comment that northeners are the heart and soul of the Labour Party. I would say the working class are the heart and soul of the party regardless of geography. I would say those that are passionate about social justice and giving everyone a fair chance are the heart and soul of the party regardless of where they live. This constant regional factionalism that seems so prominent in the leadership debate can only be divisive.

      1. Jim – The fact is that Labour hasn’t been simply the ‘Party of the working class’ (marginally more working class voters are Tories) for a long time. It depends on an alliance of working class and middle class voters. Both are essential to success.

        As you rightly diagnose, the overwhelming key feature of the election was the susceptibility of voters to the media assault – thus the antagonism towards a totally fictional image of Corbyn.

  7. Jim you are correct my political leanings were developed in the leafy lanes of Surrey were I developed a more radical approach to politics after travelling the country.and living in different locations…around Britain and Ireland ….regional or national factionalism is not me .

    1. Sorry about the rather abrasive manner of my riposte. My wife and I have just returned from a trip home to the north east and are somewhat dispirited by the nature of the political conversations we had with friends and family. So many seem to have swallowed the media attack lines on Mr Corbyn and I despair at the number of times I heard him described as “friend of the terrorist” ,”Traitor” and particularly “IRA lover”. Sadly many in the region,people who I previously thought more discerning,have bought into the whole nationalist/Brexit thing in a big way.

      1. Sorry Jim
        But that’s the top and bottom of it, our ancestors are spinning in their graves,
        ‘Cant vote for Corbyn’ who did you vote for in 2017 ‘Labour, I always vote Labour’
        You couldn’t make it up
        Only a matter of time before shit hits the fan and buyers remorse kicks in
        Does open selection get rid of the Pantomime Dame
        Regards

  8. Well jim its shameful the way propoganda sticks when Corbyn has only wanted peace.Unfortunately Corbyns nature of cooperation and debate has been used against him and the Socialist Labour party to infiltrate and destroy.If Corbyn had been more of a firebrand old fashioned left wing bruiser he would be in Downing street now.Still that’s in the past and we have tried the kinder gentler politics.Good news in Ireland sinn Fein look to form a government having run just half the seats of the other partys.Varadakar and neo liberal ideology has been rejected for a left wing party,the first ever breakthrough for a left wing party in Ireland.Macron has no chance of surviving in France.The tide has turned and we will never be sure of how we managed to give away government to the Torys.We had it in the bag and let the traitors survive and ditched our loyal socialist comrades for a lie.that cost us and the public our country as we know it.

    1. The BBC usually describes the Scots Nats. as a ‘left-wing’ Party. Today, I heard BBC describe Sinn Fein as a ‘left-wing’ Party, for the first time. As a geriatric, catholic whose father was Irish, as is my wife Colleen’s family (Evertonian), I have a problem with any form of Nationalism as a ‘right-wing’ ideology, especially English Nationalism & Sinn Fein wants to be a part of the European Union.

      I was born in England, but a quick ancestry search would show that most of my immediate family were Irish or Welsh, although I identify as being European & British. The British Isles are geographically part of Europe but I voted to leave the political Neo-Liberal, globalist club.

      Britain is in danger of disintegrating as the bourgeois elite of each region of these islands struggle for power. The people of Britain share the same integrated blood lines; the same culture & activities. Whether I go to Edinburgh; Cardiff; London or Dublin. the conversations; the arguments; the music the television & the Football/Rugby, there is little or no difference.

      National boundaries are an artificial construct, designed to keep people apart. They are the main cause of wars & their consequences often disastrous…………if Ireland; Scotland Wales leave Britain, the rest of us may be doomed to have a perpetual Tory government.

      Thanks a lot, Joseph.

      1. Steve Richards…I agree that nationalism will often be used as the “last refuge of a scoundrel” just look at the Tory party.But nationalism in Ireland as always been the refuge of an endangered population crushed by the imperialist elite.And what Sinn fein want is what the vast majority of Ireland want is to be part of the European union.and at the same time dump the muppets and puppets that have ruled since independence.

  9. Tory Brexit……bad idea. Jeremy’s Brexit……..? Starmer ensured that could never happen, which is why we lost the last election & today,Labour PLP support the ‘dark knight. If Labour turns its back on the social class it was set up to serve there will be consequences. ……… oblivion!

      1. Thats right knobhead.

        Your persistent shithousery lost you your remain campaign as well as fucked up any chance of a labour Govt

        But it got you a labour MP in your constituency.

        https://skwawkbox.org/2020/02/09/starmer-campaign-image-lists-places-labour-needs-to-win-no-mention-of-ne-nw-mids-or-yorkshire/#comment-136298

        ”Now then, Toff. What was your contribution to the magnificent December victory of Labour? In this consituency, a Labour MP was elected, instead of a festival of self-indulgence about purity and unreality being staged.”

        I’m gonna haunt you with this post for eternity, maggot. This is GOLD and sums you up to a tee.

        Even better than steve’s claim that the people who gave us the NHS & welfare state were remainers.

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