Mass ‘ratio-ing’ and blistering responses to yet another ‘relaunch’ (with an eye on billionaire donations)
Keir Starmer has received a massive roasting after yet another ‘relaunch’ – this one a business-toadying interview in the Financial Times in which he tugs a forelock to Tony Blair and tries to assure billionaires and big business that he’s a worthwhile recipient of their donations.
Starmer’s interview, published under the title “Starmer urges Labour to embrace Blair’s legacy as he vows to win the next election“, is subtitled “The leader of the opposition tells the FT he is ‘acutely aware’ he has to rebuild the party’s relationship with business” – but it went down like a cup of cold sick with those who want an actual opposition, one that will fight for the interests of working people and not for exploitative employers and their rich shareholders.
The ‘ratio’ of the FT’s twitter announcement of its article – a measure of how popular or unpopular a tweet is – looks bad but not abysmal, on the face of it. But a closer inspection shows it is disastrous for the Labour ‘leader’.
A ‘ratioed’, unpopular tweet is one that has more comments than shares (retweets) or ‘likes’ and the numbers initially look narrowly in Starmer’s favour:
But a closer look shows that the retweets are all – except for just twenty-two – ‘quote tweets’ in which someone retweeted an article rather than replying to make sure their comments are seen. And those ‘quote-tweet’ comments, like the simple replies, overwhelmingly consist of blistering put-downs, as even just the small sample set below amply demonstrates:
It was in February that Starmer promised a ‘policy blitz’ to win over the country. Six months later, those policies have been conspicuous by their absence. Instead, a country desperate for a genuine alternative to the Tories gets a continuous stream of meaningless ‘relaunches’.
The latest one appears to be a signal to the billionaires and corporations – whom Starmer has been begging for cash, unsuccessfully given the near-bankruptcy to which he has hurtled the party – that he’s a safe bet to look afer their interests if they relent and back him, with a promise thrown in that he won’t increase spending in a country starved for more than a decade of the investment in public services that it needs and deserves.
The roasting Starmer received in response was more than deserved. His attempt to mask his political bankruptcy, by cosying up to big business, rather than get out of the way to let someone with an actual vision take over is a betrayal of the country and the millions of poor, vulnerable and desperate people that are groaning under the disaster of Tory government and dying under Johnson’s appalling handling of the pandemic.
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