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Video: excruciating car-crash interview as Starmer refuses to say what he stands for or will do

Labour insiders have said Starmer was desperate not to say anything or he’d have to rewrite his Blairite-written conference speech. It showed

Earlier today, Labour insiders told Skwawkbox that Keir Starmer was letting the Tories ‘have a field day’ on the NHS and social care, because he is prioritising protecting his speech to the party’s conference later this month over the needs of the country for an opposition.

Starmer then appeared on Sky News – and ducked and dived in a desperate attempt to avoid saying anything about what he stands for or will do on the NHS and social care or how to increase funding. It would have been an excruciating, embarrassing performance in a school debate, let alone from the leader of a political party who never misses an opportunity to remind us of his legal background and whose supporters once unfeasibly tried to make the label ‘forensic’ stick:

Based on this performance, it’s not clear that Starmer’s conference speech is even worth the trouble of protecting. He may not have an interviewer pressing him to say what he actually means, but with an address cobbled together from old Blairite nothingness by former Blair speechwriters, his lack of substance is still going to be agonisingly laid bare, no matter how hard his die-hard supporters try to spin it.

And that lack of substance and political courage spells disaster for a nation collapsing under the straing of Tory predations and mismanagement.

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79 comments

  1. Maybe he could try looking somewhere for a policy, say, oh I don’t know, how about the Labour Party manifesto 2019 that he was returned on as an MP? Just a thought ……

    1. Perhaps instead of bringing back war criminal protectors, Starmer should bring back Chris Williamson and ask him to speak on everything. We would then get true Socialist answers.

      By the way, Chris Williamson will be in Liverpool on Saturday to support the march against the Arms Fair. Let’s hope he gets the chance to speak.

      1. Jack T
        that’s good news I hope Chris gets a chance to speak as well.
        Read earlier Liverpool City Council and ACC have threatened to serve an injunction against the official protest ending outside the exhibition centre where the arms fair is being held.

    2. Burnham putting pressure on DipStick Starmer … SIR Dipstick starmer (apologies SIR, u said u r PROUD of that bauble)… ANYWAY Burnham circling telling Keith he must present something of substance against Johnson’s Social Care car crash. (kicking the can down the road to continue enriching privatisation vultures).

      Johnson & Sunak r abysmal as we expect so expect some nasty responses from their selfish greedy BLUE wall. BLUE wall Tories have TONS of money yet can’t stand paying their share. Ask Joseph, he knows the type. Socially often pleasant. Politically & Financially (culturing) they r devils incarnate.
      🟥🔉🟥🔉🟥🔉

    3. Streakers job is gatekeeper so policy isn’t on his job description just like David Richard Evans is actually a bouncer. New management will be revealed later. no rush.

  2. People r saying: the more they see SIR starmer, the more they r disgusted. A few who want to support him, say: “i don’t know what he stands 4, i’m very disappointed.”☢️

    Consensus today (except DAME margaret beckett EXTREMELY prickly about Beth Rigby questioning her SIR starmer) – “MR REMAIN” possible spinner of that gem “CONSTRUCTIVE AMBIGUITY”☢️

    “Starmer doesn’t know what he stands 4 either.”❓❓❓ The horror is, that would b less dreadful than harsh reality. SIR starmer KNOWS 4 what he stands. NOTHING any decent person would support☢️

    STOP☢️ SIR starmer has ALWAYS been, and remains bad, Bad, BAD news. Ask DAME cressida dick’s victims. “JOINT ENTERPRISE” – SAME victims. (DAME Dick’s r some of SIR starmer’s).
    📜🌧⚖️📜🌧⚖️🌧📜⚖️

  3. Good to see someone on a major network exposing the vacuous twaddle. “We should look at it.” repeated ad nauseam. You’ve had getting on for two years to “look at it” and have no idea what to do. Will he procrastinate for ever? I expect he’s not sure about that.

    1. “The video” I don’t get any pleasure in watching a greasy bottom feeder wasting members money when you cant believe a word he says.I Ts a very poor amateur production and god knows what this lawyers going to dribble out at the Conference but again it will be just a windbags empty promises and a pathological liars last gasp..

      1. Labour ahead in the latest YouGov poll

        Con: 33% (-5 from 2-3 Sep)
        Lab: 35% (+1)
        Lib Dem: 10% (+2)
        Green: 9% (-1)
        SNP: 5% (n/c)
        Reform UK: 5% (+2)

      2. First time in fifteen months. Doesn’t vindicate his persecution of the Left in the slightest.

      3. 15 months ?

        26–27 Jan 2021 YouGov The Times GB
        Tory 37%
        Labour 41%
        Lib Dem 6%
        SNP 5%
        Green 4%

  4. Perhaps he’s spent so much time focused on attacking and purging the party’s left, he hasn’t had time to do any homework on basic economics? Of that which he did mention, he sounded completely out of his depth. He’s fortunate it was Beth Rigby and not Andrew Neil, who would’ve ripped him a new one.

    There was nothing wrong with Labour’s 2019 manifesto proposal taxing capital gains. But since that’s associated with Corbyn, it seems like Starmer, instinctively, wants to run a mile from it.

  5. Seems like Starmer was having trouble making eye contact with Beth Rigby. I also did wonder whether he was reading from an auto cue held up by Mandelson.

      1. He looked a lot more comfortable in the HoC shouting about how the “Tories were no longer the party of low tax.”

        The fact is, he’s clearly more comfortable attacking the Tories from the right than he is the left. He gives himself away.

    1. Back of beyond Starmer having trouble making eye contact with Beth Rigby?Well hes either got a dirty mind or as I expect hes got no cojones.?as demonstrated by his lack of Opposition when its laid on a plate by the worst conservative government in living memory.

  6. Steve H, you mean a full 60 minutes? From the clip seen, it was bad enough, but an hour of ‘ forensic wheedling about’ is torture to watch, never mind a full hour.

    1. Sabine – Don’t worry too much, I made a mistake (corrected above) it is only 23 minutes long. Do you think you’ll be able to cope. 🤔

      1. Steve H Hall centrist Dad youve managed to dig a hole for yourself on “bot sentinel centrist Dad by supporting the massive tax burden on the backs of ordinary people and the stealing of ordinary elderly peoples legacy in their propertys whilst coming on here dumping more bilge and lies from HQ and having the brass neck to whinge when they dont like your lots propoganda.Now some people may say ignore you but I say mr H has every right to show us just what a dogs dinner the knight and his misfits are getting up to “Spaffing away members money on second rate tory tribute act lies and propaganda from Fawlty towers hq..Carry on posting your bottom feeders “Words of wisdom” because members of the Labour party alarmingly still havnt got the message that feeding the knights Labour party with hard earned cash only perpetuates the most anti working-class movement in Britain today.

      2. Joseph – You appear to be a little confused, did you get out of the wrong side of the bed this morning.

      3. Steve H, i do not wanna cope with it for any length of time. All Keith has shown again is that he does not really care about anyone who earns their income by having to sell their labour.

      4. Sabine – Don’t be silly, he’s done nothing of the sort.

  7. It’s absolutely incredible. They’ve spun this speech out of all proportion, he’d have to announce something on the lines of “I’d like to announce my engagement to her majesty the Queen and we will rule by decree from now on” otherwise people are just going to laugh at him. All these promises that he’s got something wonderful to say while he’s using Blairite speechwriters and desperately trying to rehabilitate Blair and Kinnock, I think he’s gone mad. The country detests Blair and always saw Kinnock as a joke. I can hardly believe what’s happening because the man’s not a fool, but he’s sure acting like one.

    1. alright alright alright…The Sheffield meltdown of the Labour leader Kinnock in front of a audience of millions on tv was the signal for not only a live broadcast of why the Labour party was in the political wilderness for nearly two decades but the insane ideology of a leader that started a witchunt against the left and was so self obsessed that he didn’t realise that the country didnt want more of the same.old right wing Labour..Sounds familiar doesn’t it only this time Labour will not come back.Attend the wake and enjoy the last performances before the curtain goes down on the discredited and treacherous Labour party.A working-class movement recruitment exclusively from the working-class is the only solution for the country to throw off the shackles…once and for all and by any means necessary.

      1. Joseph – The current proportion of ABC1 to C2DE is 57 to 43%. The working class is diminishing as is the proportion of them voting Labour. I think you may need to have a rethink on your working class only policy, at the last GE only 33% of them voted Labour but 48% of them voted Tory.

      2. Stuff your ABCs “we are not a number we are real people the working class and proud of it” ..so go crawl back into your hole youve done your comments for today scab.

      3. Joseph – But are you really what most people would regard as working class. You’ve said yourself in the past that you’ve been fortunate with your investments (how many working class people have any savings never mind investments) and your parents at one time had 3 shops and a cafe (Maggie’s dad only had one shop). Many of the working class might legitimately label you as a middle class ‘activist’ indulging himself in a bit of cultural appropriation.
        You may be find that you’ve excluded yourself from your ‘new party’.

      4. Steve H – The Working Class are being supplanted by The Food Bank Class. 40% of Food Bank users are in full-time – paid – occupation.

      5. Steve H Hall I am definitely working-class and of that there should be no doubt .My family have money,but by working side by side with ordinary people even in the days when some people viewed us the Irish as the enemy within.We went to ordinary schools not private and worked in ordinary jobs without any form of higher education other than Techs college and a Plumbing indentured Appenticship with Leigh corporation Lancashire.I don’t need to justify my parents shops or my money made through initially hard physical work and even a labourers job in the evening so I could buy my first home for 2995pounds with a nintey percentage mortage .From theron both my wife and myself still teenagers worked hard and earned good money.ITs not Rocket science we didn’t turn on our own working class like many of you.do.We didnt copy our so called betters and we always strived to help others through our church.Sneer if you like but theres nothing wrong with money provided you are willing to share and help others who havnt been lucky as us but not for one minute will I take a lecture from scum like you who abandoned their own class for a handful of silver…

      6. Joseph – I see no reason at all for me to be ashamed of being classified as middle class because of my profession and income.

        Quoting you from above.
        “Sneer if you like but there’s nothing wrong with money provided you are willing to share and help others who haven’t been lucky as us but not for one minute will I take a lecture from scum like you who abandoned their own class for a handful of silver…”

        I agree with you about money and wealth but nobody is sneering. Surely you must appreciate that you are a long way from being unique in ‘giving back’ so why do you seek to denigrate the contributions that others make to their communities and society. You really should dump your ‘I’m holier than thou’ reverse snobbery rubbish.
        Do you really think that you being a ‘salt of the earth’ working class plumber make your contributions any more virtues than mine or anybody else’s?

      7. Ah! Bless! The return of the Experian Model of social pigeon holing as a political tool. A theory based construct which artificially categorises people into convenient groups and sub groups which amazingly, quelle suprise, fits the pre-assumed economic assumptions upon which it is based.

        A typical managerialist approach which gives people no agency because they are not supposed to have any in a model built on assuming what it aims to deduce. ‘Get back into the the little atomised silo we have created for you’ is such a nilihistic political philosophy and approach.

        But what else can one expect from snake oil salesmen and their lacking in gorm forelock tugging cheerleaders.

      8. Dave Hansell – Was the “Oh dear” to forewarn us of the drivel that followed.

      9. So finally we get the useless job centre advisor SH now let go admit that he sees himself as middle class because of his profession and me pigeon holed as a mere plumber.and dezignated in his tiny little helper mind.Well mr Hall middle class man youve shot your bolt now and youve come clean with your sarcastic comments in snobbery and bigotry…Lifes not like that you clown and its not were we start its were we finish and what we are.You fail in all classification as a human being and thats what is important.

      10. Joseph – I didn’t say anything to denigrate your profession. You are the one who pigeon holed yourself as a proud working class man. Despite my working class roots It would be disingenuous of me to claim to be working class myself. I also don’t have your hang-ups about reverse snobbery.
        Who is this Hall guy that you keep obsessing about?
        Where did you get this silly idea that I have ever worked for the DWP in any capacity,?
        I am beginning to feel a bit sorry for you.

      11. Do pay attention at the back. It was Ah! Bless!

        But I can see why it is you are always in need other people to do your homework for you given your abysmal attention span.

        In fact steveH, that was almost funny. Have you considered employing an agent rather than sitting there in the dark handling yourself?

  8. He looks terribly uncomfortable, painful to watch. He’s not a socialist, clearly.

    He can’t make a convincing case, because he doesn’t believe what he’s saying based on this evidence. Many already knew this, apart from those in denial, it’s been obvious for 17 months he isn’t a Labour man.

    I honestly wonder whether he was asked to become a Labour MP to help try to lead the party away from its leftist trajectory? He became an MP in 2015, when Ed Miliband was leader, the establishment were probably already thinking Labour needed a ‘course correction’ under his leadership.

  9. I watched it all.
    I’m not sure who was worse – The interviewer or the Knight Commander.
    A “wind-and-piss” performance from our Dear Leader !

  10. To be fair TE was only saying what every toilet paper including those on the supposed left has said, it’s a regressive tax
    This is more to do with scumbag MSM going for a GOTCHA
    Change the terms of engagement, they want you to say something to entrap you, you get them to say what you want to go out to public
    In this instance, get Beth Rigby to answer ‘is this a regressive tax’ drive home with its cheap and nasties looking after their own again, so much for the Red Wall and levelling up, finish her off with ‘are we all in this together or not’

  11. Spin it as much as you want but this guy has been at it for 18 months. He isn’t going to get any better nor is Joe Public suddenly going to take him to their hearts. Conference will be completly stage managed but it will have a zero impact on the polls for Labour . For the very few who do bother to take any interest in it it will simply reinforce their view that Labour is led by a non entity with absouletly nothing that to say.
    The worst led most incompetent and corrupt Tory Government in history and we have a Labour opposition that can barely lay a glove on it

      1. Starmer enjoys a supportive MSM, that hates misogynist Boris, but even they find it difficult to find praise for ‘The Leader of the Opposition’..

      2. Steve Richards – That’s the answer to a different question.

      3. Well Steve H Hall we were definitely better and myself younger.I watched all of the video with my wife soon after watching on my own and was bored after five minutes.We watched again and didn’t see the end because my wife kept pointing out the defects in the layout of the interview.Cruella in the big chair across the desk naughty schoolboy in a small kids chair facing Beth Rigby(headmistress)The wandering eyes of the naughty child was uncontrolled and betrayed his lack of knowledge or confidence.Now at one stage we both fell over on the floor laughing and considering that we are both elderly now that is some feat and a sign of the superb abilities the knight has for comedy and the rejuvenation of watching the knights face up close is staggering.We felt like teenagers again and thats down to the knights persona and natural slap stick comedy routine..Now whilst I am on do you have any of the Norman wisdom videos or Frankie Howard videos with Lurkio .or even mr bean?

      4. Well I don’t have the brain capacity being a working class plumber,but if I did I would have thought that our Stevie Hall centrist Dad was on the run with his support for the knight..OF course it was better in 2019 under Corbyn.in fact any of the loosers would have been better than a knight of the realm.in 2021when most working-class people would have thought this titled elitism and Lords and Ladys had no longer any place in a working class movement.What do you think mr middle class professional.I do hope that you can lower yourself to answer to a shithouse plumber from Bowton mi lod….regards Stevie H Hall centrist Dad.?

      5. Joseph – My dad was quietly proud of what he achieved in life through his City & Guilds qualifications which he studied for at evening classes after leaving school at 14.
        I would have thought that you would have been proud of your skilled profession. Why would you pretend otherwise.

  12. Interviewer doesn’t seem to be trying at all, looks almost bored. The forensic babbling replies provoke a withering look “I know what you’re against”

    There was talk here yesterday about if Starmer is clever (acting the fool) or simply a tool. This video is your answer. After all, you only get to the top by being cream (rises) or shit (floats).

    1. He definitely floats, and certain people are furiously trying to polish him. Especially on here with his stupid alphabet soup classifications…

      Starmer’s a Turd and Labour’s the cesspit.

      1. baz2001 – How come you are still obsessing about toilet humour at your age,

  13. SteveH failed Sociology student? Thinking in crass generalisations & then projecting a flawed analysis may provide you with your personal definition of working class but occupation is only one criteria, although you demonstrate a fondness for quoting continually vague occupational classifications. Ever since Thatcher & her offspring war criminal Blair obliterated manufacturing in Britain in order to destroy any working class power base, casualisation of labour has brought a great deal of uncertainty to any ‘official’ figures. As manufacturing has been replaced by service industries (keyboard technology) & the introduction of a ‘cheap female’ labour force, definitions of occupation have become more fluid. perhaps the BBC could help? When they say people can work from home, they are addressing their preferred target audience the Guardian reading bourgeois elites, everybody else is working class.

    1. Steve Richards – Yes jobs have changed and I share many of your views about Thatcher but did you bother to look at the what the classifications represent.before you commented.

      1. No SteveH I didn’t, bother to look, but then I used to use them in my lectures about identifying target audiences in MSM.. They were & still are, just one criteria & now well out of date.

  14. Haven’t watched it; don’t intend to watch it.

    Perhaps keef’d have been better off remaining silent – just like on that toerag video they made a while back.

    FFS even the rags were doing the nation a favour by making that clip.

  15. I have just done a penance and watched the clip again. Amidst all the inept bumbling there is one thing that stands out revealing Starmer’s lack of understanding of how the economic structures in society operate.. He refers to “People who EARN their income other than through work”, “People who EARN their money from property, dividends, stocks, shares”, “the way people earn their money, whether it’s from earned wages or whether it’s from rents and stocks and dividends”, blah, blah, blah.
    He clearly fails to grasp the fact that dividends, shares, stocks, rents, bonds, property value rises etc. are UNEARNED income.
    Needs to go away and learn about economics. A 20 year course would be a good start.

    1. Invest in real people and the Skilled and the investment will pay real dividends not confetti money..That was always my belief passed on from my immigrant father and immigrant Grandfather.and that company still flourishes today Passive income can be nice but it is only ever short term spiv fiat money..Britain needs a skilled manufacturing base and the City is not the answer.A Socialist Labour party would believe in the people and invest in the future unfortunately the knights Labour party have no longer any interest in the people or the future being a fiat Labour party.

  16. Earned income (wages, salaries or fees) you obtain by working.
    Income from dividends, shares, stocks, rents, bonds, property value rises. etc., is part of the ongoing process of capital accumulation enabled by the work of others:
    – – – Not to mention the exploitative nature of the emloyment relationship.
    These components of surplus value are creamed-off on a daily basis using the above mechanisms.
    If you have any doubts about this – Just watch the daily (sometimes hourly) operation of the stock market.
    The whole focus of politics in the neo-liberal model is to enable, maintain and protect the continuing process of capital accumulation on the part of the rich and powerful.
    That’s why Starmer’s No.1 mission is to destroy the Labour Party as a force “For the many – Not the few”
    How else can you explain the massive disparity in income and wealth that is there for all to see.

  17. Goldbach hits the nail on the head. Any Labour Leader should know the immense difference between earned and unearned income. Starmer is probably a good honest lawyer but as an economist he is useless. He says he is going to take a look at a wealth tax when he should be saying “I will intoduce a wealth tax.” I am glad he is not a penalty taker!

    1. Sorry Bill, but that’s one big contradiction………….a good honest lawyer, but then you have to become a solicitor B4 you can become a Labour MP.

    2. He’s nothing of the sort Bill. He banged up Assange knowing full well there was no case and no evidence. He also made sure as DPP nobody from the Establishment got charged for raping little 5yr old orphan boys. He’s an Establishment lackey who works for the Zionist State of Israel.

  18. Remember what we had with Bliar –
    A public-school educated barrister ….. married to another public-school educated barrister.
    Just the ideal people to represent the interests of working class people.
    ( NOT )

    1. johnsco1 – The weird thing with Blair is how he became an MP at the height of left-winger Michael Foot’s era in 1983, a man who Blair couldn’t have proved to be more dissimilar from politically. Blair marched in support of the miners and wore CND badges. Blair’s father, Leo,was chair the Durham Conservative Association.

      It all suggests does it not, the establishment is seasoned at this recruit and infiltrate the only left-wing party game. Right-wing Labour leaders don’t appear from the ether, Labour and the unions should stop being so trusting and naive about these possibilities.

  19. You’re right there Andy.
    When the left has the advantage, we should drive it home with equal ruthlessness.
    That’s how I worked as a shop steward.
    Always build your base well.
    Always try to ensure that you negotiate from a position of strength.
    Never forget where you came from and whose side you’re on.

    1. You only have to look how all those who undermined Corbyn have fallen upwards, landing cushy jobs they’re on thye face of it, unqualified for. Tom Watson’s appointment as chair of UK Music was controversial, and opposed by many in the music industry – £60,000 for 40 days’ work a year! There are many others. The only plausible explanation is there has to be some sort of network operating. This undermines democracy.

    2. johnsco1 – A lesson that Corbyn either forgot or failed to learn when he was a trade union negotiator for the National Union of Public Employees and the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union,

  20. Been out again today supporting my unions Cancel the £20 Universal Credit Cut Campaign, we were handing in hundreds of cards signed by constituents to Tory MPs in our areas.
    In most of these areas the numbers on UC was actually higher than the Tory MPs majority and it would mean millions cut from the local pound as UC claimants spend in the local shops.
    Not Levelling Up, Grinding People Down!
    But interestingly only 2 out of 4 of the Tory MPs actually had constituency offices (they happened to be male) so it was a case of to quote The Kinks: “They seek him here, they seek him there!”
    And equally this applies to Starmer.
    “They seek his policy here, they seek it there, they seek his policy everywhere.
    Eagerly pursing the latest Right Wing fad and trend. But he’s a dedicated follower of Thatcher!”
    And the Neo-Liberal promoting Trilateral Commission.
    The Tories are currently imploding because of the Social Care NI Tax Bomb and Poll Tax on home owners.
    So it’s Breaking News: PUTRID TORIES FALL JUST BEHIND STAGNANT LABOUR!
    Perhaps it’s time for a Left Wing Democratic Socialist Party to rise.
    Solidarity to Socialists!

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