Watery response in tweet says he ‘reached out’ and triggers wave of derision
Keir Starmer has finally made a public comment on the Metropolitan Police’s ‘racial profiling’ traffic stop of black Labour MP Dawn Butler (video).
Butler was pulled over by police in London who subsequently claimed it was because they thought the car she was in was registered in London and not because both the driver and passenger were black.
The incident happened around noon on Sunday and quickly trended, driven by justifiable outrage – and not a few rest attempts to claim the driver was white so that made it all ok.
In spite of the extensive coverage on social and mainstream media, Starmer was publicly silent all day Sunday. He eventually commented around 26 hours after the incident, to say he had ‘reached out’ to Butler, whatever that means. It wad hardly worth the wait:
Shortly afterward, he added a further tweet about the importance of black people trusting the police and that the abuse Butler had received on social media – by that time 24 hours’ worth of racist abuse – was ‘wrong’.
Presumably, this is what ‘forensic’ looks like, but it was not well received, with hundreds of mostly negative responses condemning his weak and slow response – and pointing out the precedent and pattern it sets in the context of his failure to act on racism revealed in the leaked Labour report, his dismissive comments about the Black Lives Matter movement and his own treatment of Butler:
When it comes to racism, especially when Starmer has been so dire on anti-black racism so far, a late, watery response just won’t do – no matter how much it might upset the Establishment or how many of his defenders try to paint it as ‘forensic’ or some other euphemism for piss-weak.
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I’m surprised that he commented at all sure Black Lives Matter is only a “moment” after all.
Doesn’t even know the difference between ‘incidence’ and ‘incident’.
Starmer is fast disappearing into the realm of utter pointlessness!
His very political presence in our society highlights how far things have deteriorated, how hopeless the UK’s remnant ‘democracy ‘ has fallen!
Starmer is supposedly a human rights barrister. Yet, he takes over a day to respond in public to a racist incident by the Metropolitan Police. Mr establishment must have had to check with his advisers at the Tony Blair Foundation for their input before doing the decent thing in supporting Dawn Butler. Yes, he may have had a word in private with Dawn but what he should have said in public “I utterly and without hesitation condemn the treatment by Met’ Police of Dawn Butler yesterday. I have offered my full support to Dawn and have instructed our legal team to give Dawn the support she needs to deal with this disgraceful act. We will not stand for such treatment in a civilised society.” That is what Leadership looks like, Starmer is a joke. Unfortunately no one is laughing.
Fully agree. But he is after all the Labour leader who in answer to the question: ‘What would the Labour Party’s position be on the governments push for people to go back top work in potentially unsafe conditions?’ replied: ‘We’ll have to take a look at it.’ A man of principle he is not, but a personally ambitious player with no greater claim to integrity than Boris Johnson. He just hides it better. If he was a colour he’d be magnolia. As someone on Twitter said recently, Starmer doesn’t just sit on the fence, he IS the fence.
(My blog https://lovesexwomenmenpoliticspoetrylifedeath.wordpress.com/ )
Starmer did try the Tony Blair Foundation [available for birthday parties & bat mitzvahs] & was told “Can’t you see we’re busy”.
😀
Too little too late . . .
(To my fellow lefties,Tory haters and Skwawkers, please take a look at my blog:
https://lovesexwomenmenpoliticspoetrylifedeath.wordpress.com/ )
Sometimes, the pro-Starmer – Anti-Corbyn media are just hopeless.
Polly Toynbee today, says “Starmer has backed a constitutional convention and electoral reform, but will need to push it through some diehard dinosaur recalcitrants to get it into the Labour manifesto.”
It was in the 2017 manifesto (page 102), and the 2019 manifesto (Page 81).
Dearie me, Polly.
Toynbee is quite deluded I have to say. And she’s one of The Guardian’s main hand wringers about Johnson, constantly moaning about him and bewailing the fact that he’s PM and is such a nasty corrupt lying toad, without any self-awareness at all that she helped to put him there with her constant attacks on Jeremy Corbyn. She, sadly, like Starmer is one of the establishment elite, all snuffling in the same trough.
https://lovesexwomenmenpoliticspoetrylifedeath.wordpress.com/
Anyone who quotes Nick Cohen with approval is “quite deluded” too,don’t you think noelstevenson12
What aspects of Cohen’s article do you disagree with? It takes a particularly peevish kind of small-mindedness to stubbornly withhold giving credit when someone make an excellent analysis because of who they are.
I object to Cohen for what he is,an Israel loving Zionist,and deadly enemy of the left.I haven’t read anything he has written for several years,and I am quite certain I have not missed anything worth knowing.
Last thing of Cohen’s I read was “Former lefties can make a good living in the media by attacking their ex-comrades – I’d do it myself if the price was right.”
The right price was apparently thirty pieces of silver, which I’m told is the same price as a cheap whore.
Somewhat off the point (an excellent article about the abuse of prisoners which needed to be said) but there you go. And what an unfortunate closing phrase.
Toynbee is far too comfortable inside the Guardian’s increasingly duplicitous ‘pages.’ Very much less than she professes to be when it suits her sales pitch. Something has gone horribly wrong with the paper.
It also needs to be said that Toynbee is just a fucking TERRIBLE writer!
What do Tony Bliar, Keir Starmer, Polly Toynbee and others have in common?
The Fabian Society.
A very, very unpleasant group. Whilst they claim to support socialism, I’d describe them more as supporters of the oligarchy.
There’s also the issue of one of its creators, Webb. Who spoke about people having to justify their existence.
The society emblem is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Polly is far too preoccupied with having a dig at Corbyn and the left to do what she’s paid to do as a journalist. Investigative journalism is something she seems to have forgotten about
Toynbee’s writing has become tired. It’s as if she now writes in the full knowledge that she has seriously compromised her professed beliefs. She’s lied to us, we know she’s lied to us and she knows we know she’s lied to us!
” reached out ” reached out !!! …..utter and complete P.C non committal BS bollock speak from Sir Spanner Stammer utterly vacuous insincere crap , literally makes my skin crawl and WRT poor old Dawn I reckon she must be asking for someone to pass the sick bucket .
If it had been benny nuthinyoucando, stammer’d have reached around instead of reached out…
I see spitting image is being remade…
Any chance stammer can have the kenneth baker type send-up? Christ knows, it’d suit him to a tee…
https://editorial01.shutterstock.com/wm-preview-1500/742047du/ce7fd9c6/itv-archive-shutterstock-editorial-742047du.jpg
The Toffee
It would be a Starmer wet dream to be one of the ‘vegetables’
😂
Saves on special effects too, Starmer having his own slime trail.
Starmer would be David Steel puppet to Johnson’s David Owen puppet, that would make Johnson the slimy intellectual he really is but without Owen’s political brain. I’d still call the cabinet vegetables though, on reflection so the same with the Shadow Cabinet.
Temporary embarrassment
12 months max, 5/1 any takers
Depends if we can get the A/S case to court in time!
Loved the “vegetables” crack! Is Spitting Image 2.0 going to be free-to-air or has Murdoch got his grip of death on it?
It’s gon’ be on that sh*tbox thing AFAIK.
Spitting Image is on BritBox, so you’ll need to subscribe to it.
It’s an outrage! It ought to be a protected “crown jewels” event, every Briton’s birthright, like Wimbledon and the FA Cup final. I am bereft. It’d better not be any good…
Don’t worry timfrom, it’ll be on YouTube or one of the others in no time.
No a bad call Doug. D Miliband was sniffing around yesterday again. I have a feeling that he might be considering re-entering to UK politics . I fancy that Tony and the gang are just as unimpressed by Keir as we all and they are going to seek an opportunity to replace him with their “prince across the water”.
Starmer doesn’t look comfortable in the job at all and will probably be relieved to step aside if told to. He could have well taken the job on to be no more than a stop-gap. His “forensic” slow reaction to events seems to indicate that he simply has no appetite for politics at the sharp end where an instant sound bite is always required on every topic that might suddenly arise.
My take on it is that if the young prince turns up on these shores any time soon and is then planted in the first Labour seat that becomes available Keir’s days are numbered unless his rather poor showing against the idiot Johnson suddenly takes off big time.
On the central subject of racism in the police in general and the Met in particular
Bring in an employment equivalent of ‘joint enterprise’ so those not directly involved but close enough to do something about it can lose their jobs and careers as well
Should have the required effect
That’d be the effing lot of them sacked, then.
..At least, you’d hope so. Getting the old bill as much as charged is an event even rarer than a copper being killed on duty.
Joint enterprise wld be a MASSIVE step forward causing good officers to be more likely to apply their judgement and not turn blind eyes.
ALSO, remove Thatcher’s isolation of the police from the trade union movement/TUC – which, of course, she had to engineer in order to get the army able to don police uniforms to fight the peaceful miners and the wider working class.
At least Dawn can rely on Jeremy’s wholehearted and vocal support.
I take it that’s your way of saying JC hasn’t spoken out yet?
Had I been the target of as much invented vitriol as Corbyn I’d be wary of publicly supporting anyone without checking with them first, for fear of bringing the M*rdoch-fellating presstitutes down on their heads too.
Is course she can. Goes without saying.
I suspect Starmer’s initial “reaching out” to Dawn Butler may have been an attempt to get her to back down as he didn’t want Labour to be seen as anti-police.
Then he had to be persuaded that he needed to show some public support by others with more political nous.
I believe they call it “pragmatism”. It’s one of the pillars of their soul-less idoelogy!
Sir Keir shouldn’t have the need to announce or broadcast about ‘reaching out’ this is what he should have done as a caring leader of the Labour party. Just trying to cut favour with those he is rapidly disillusioning.
Taking a knee has meaning and not just symbolic(photoshoot) , unfortunately one does not appear authentic and true to the cause.
There’s very little about that man that is authentic or true. He makes Tony Blair seem trustworthy and sincere
I see you despise Starmer as much as I do qwertboi.I fear it is going to be like with T Watson,many regretting giving him their support after the damage is done.
Starmer needs to take a knee…to the bollocks! 😁
I wonder if der Starmpfer has ever been on a march or at a rally?
I don’t gamble but I’d bet not.
I do believe that I’m about to upset the bourgeois closet Guardian readers by criticising ‘Black Lives Matter’. ‘BLM’ is a constructed mainstream media event, much like anti-Semitism. The same journalists; the same institutions all in agreement. Media reports of a racist killing by police in USA becomes a signal for all comfortable reactionary journalists throughout the Western World (not just in America), to shine their neo-liberal credentials. “Look at how liberal we are”.This is not part of the class struggle, because if it were, it would be strangled @ birth………..Do I have your attention?
One example of hypocrisy…….in Britain, the great & the good show us how to bend the knee. High profile sports men & women; entertainers etc. have now ‘woke’ from their slumbers & removed their collective heads from the sand. Premier League Footballers ‘earn’ a great deal of money by exploiting this football market. Luxury property developer (& footballer) Raheem Stirling, demands that his chum, Sol Campbell, be given a Premier League Football Club to manage because he’s black & discrimination is rife quoting Lampard & Gerard as examples. Positive discrimination means that we need more black managers & not just more black footballers, who already dominate playing staff & the BBC now operate a racial/gender profiling quota system. It would be most interesting if the Premier League campaigned for equality of opportunity as part of the class struggle & to act in the best interests of people, rather than exploit them to maximise profit. There is only one show in town…..So bend the knee.
75% Premier League Players are imported from overseas, along with most Premier League Managers. The working class game is now the property of the ‘prawn sandwich brigade’. Young kids could once dream of playing for their local team & their country, but that is the exception rather than the rule. The family tradition of ‘going to the match’ on a Saturday is too expensive for many, who can only watch the game on Sky Murdoch TV. ‘Opportunity Does Not Knock’ in Premier League Football as clubs are owned by oligarchs & fair competition eliminated. The Premier League is like motor racing….a procession. So bend the knee.
If Black Lives Really Mattered perhaps the Premier League could take action against ‘Puma’ sponsoring Israeli Football in a country that practices apartheid. Puma sponsors many teams from ‘unlawfully occupied territories’ & most Premier League teams are sponsored by Puma.
BLM is divisive & exclusive. Freedom from Poverty & Equality of Opportunity is a basic human right for everyone & I will fight against social injustice wherever I find it. I find being on my knees most uncomfortable..
Helping the most deprived and most oppressed first isn’t virtue signalling by socialists, it’s what we’re here for.
When the establishment say they want to help the poor they’re virtue signalling because they don’t mean it – it’s for votes – and anything that gets those fuckers on the back foot is OK with me.
Next time you meet a BLM activist say “thank you” because he or she is working for the same cause as us – even if he is an overpaid footballer.
Indeed, it’s become an obligatory form of virtue-signalling, which I hope will be dropped by the start of next season. Don’t get me wrong, I used to love taking an E, but this sets off my bullshit detector in the same way as when the same people simultaneously also start taking a deep and passionate interest in the welfare of Uighur muslims as a way of attacking China.
You know it’s suspect when George Soros starts sticking his oar in!
He could not even say Police properly