Labour leader appears to think members and public have the memory span of a goldfish
Keir Starmer’s belated u-turn on his plan to abstain on the Tories’ policing bill, after the weekend’s shocking scenes at Clapham Common, extended today to a tweeted attack on Johnson and Patel’s plan to impose ridiculous sentences for merely causing ‘annoyance’ during a protest. But Starmer also pointed to the proposed ten-year sentence for attacking or defacing a statue.
Sadly for Starmer, the internet has remembered that only a few short ago he was promising to ‘work with’ the Tories and suport… ten-year sentences for attacking statues and memorials:
Starmer, of course, was perfectly prepared to tell Labour MPs to abstain and wave through the Tory policing bill when it ‘merely’ meant imprisonment for causing mere annoyance – and at the same time the criminalisation of the Gypsy-Roma-Traveller (GRT) nomadic lifestyle.
His u-turn is a damage-limitation exercise after the outrage at the Met’s violence to women on Clapham Common and not any genuine resistance to the totalitarianism that Johnson and Patel’s bill represents.
It has no more sincerity than his taking a knee last year while dismissing the Black Lives Matter movement as a ‘moment‘ and condemning protesters’ toppling of a slaver statue – protesters he would have happily seen sentenced to a decade in prison last year. And this year, until just a day ago.
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