Just in case anyone had any lingering doubts about how much a figure of the Establishment Labour’s notional leader Keir Starmer is, Starmer had armed anti-terror police positioned at the end of rows in the much-reduced conference hall during his speech, to intimidate delegates and visitors out of protesting – and if necessary to take out any who did mount a protest, in unprecedented scenes for a Labour conference, at least one without a serving Prime Minister:
Worse, those police had behaved in a blatantly intimidatory fashion before the speech, too, to ensure no one missed their presence or intent, as Socialist Telly’s Bonnie Craven, who was in the hall, tweeted:
The officers were wearing the black baseball caps typical of the Met’s SCO-19 armed unit and wear at the least armed with pepper sprays and potentially with firearms.
Starmer’s speech was entirely of the Establishment, too, with countless references to the working hard, playing by the rules and being ‘patriotic’, with the clear implication that changing the status quo isn’t. One wag summed it up accurately as:
Spend your first 17 years getting ready to work and learn to play by the rules.Spend the rest of your life working and following the rules.
If Starmer is like this as a (non-)opposition ‘leader’, the prospect of a country run by this creature of the powers-that-be is terrifying.
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