Analysis Breaking

‘Sleazy’, ‘untrustworthy’ Starmer lives by the focus group – and the focus group hates him

No conference bump and now focus group in typical Labour-turned-Tory-over-Brexit town Blyth thinks he’s no good

Keir Starmer is a Labour ‘leader’ who doesn’t really lead. As has been obvious from his terror of actually opposing, his 100% record of breaking the campaign pledges that got him into the job and especially his recent conference drear-fest and ‘essay’, he is led rather than leading, he and his advisers living by the ‘focus group’.

And boy is he in trouble, because the focus group despises him and perceives his lack of trustworthiness – especially in the working-class areas that turned their back on Labour in 2019 because of Starmer’s relentless betrayal of party and members in his unauthorised second-referendum sabotage.

In a focus group exercise released by Politico this morning, voters in the north-east town of Blyth considered him thoroughly dodgy: ‘sleazy’, ‘untrustworthy’, ‘something about him not right’. If that wasn’t enough, he’s ‘out of touch’, ‘smarmy’ and not for the working class:

Worse still, while the results of the discussions suggest that voters in places like Blyth have started to ‘suss’ Boris Johnson for the substance-free charlatan he is – and they still prefer him to Starmer and would give him the benefit of the doubt of Labour’s non-leader.

If Labour’s going to continue to exist in any form worth the name, Starmer has to go. Quickly.

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65 comments

  1. But, but, but….People voted toerag simply because they didn’t like Corbyn.

    Oh, lordy! People of Blyth… You’ve incurred the wrath of the wee fella now!! Expect some expletives and much grinding of teeth. 😲

  2. Whatever do they mean….They: “don’t know owt about him”??

    It’s ‘ought’. Harrumph!! 😒

    (Am I doing this right, wee man?)

    1. No that is NOT right toffee man!!

      It is “aught” – meaning “anything at all..”

      Haarrumph .. 😌

      But I agree with the sentiments of the Blyth folk ..

      Must says he had ME fooled – I actually
      believed he meant what he said 😠

      1. HolbyFan, “Must says he had ME fooled – I actually believed he meant what he said 😠”

        We’ve all been there, like many others, I was taken in by TWatson in 2015. Once bitten etc. Plus, I saw the warning signs in 2020 during the leadership campaign, from one of those that have been bitten by him before.

        Starmer loves a witchunt. So let’s give him what he deserves.

        https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/paul-gambaccini-threatens-to-run-against-keir-starmer-over-sex-abuse-witch-hunt-387468

  3. Quite simply Starmerfuhrer is an establishment plant. He is in Labour to ground it down into the gutter and flush it into the sewer.

  4. On the afternoon Starmer was elected leader, I had a text exchange with the wife of an MP. He had nominated both Starmer and Rayner. She was delighted at the result and told me, Corbyn lost because he was unelectable, but now the party had a credible leader.

    It was made clear to me that Corbyn supporters, hounded out or expelled on spurious grounds (like me) were not wanted. They were going to turn the party into a Social Democratic party (that’s not Tory!!!, her words) and the wider electorate would return to them.

    Not exactly going to plan is it?

    1. Not entirely, yet. Sorry you were expelled but look at it this way; would you be happy to be associated with this lot? You might thank them when their whole plan is exposed. Good luck.

      1. Thanks Wobbly. My sin was to help get that MP elected in 2017 (17th Tory marginal), an imposed candidate supposed to lose the election, but for Corbyn to form a government we had to win – and we did. That was my payback.

        Am I bovvered? I was. But not now.

        They can go rot.

    2. Nemtona
      It never did work, 5 million votes lost
      Seriously they think they are better Tories than the real nasty party
      Fuckwits of the worst kind

      1. Indeed.

        Blair was also helped by a series of appalling Tory leaders. In 2001’s GE he faced William ‘Billy Fizz’ Hague, widely derided as a joke. With his boasts about how he drank 14 pints a day between the ages of 15 and 21.

        The Tories then elected IDS, they had the good sense to dump him before an election (Labour MPs pls take note now). Then ‘Something of the night’ creepy Michael Howard led them for the 2005 election.

        Labour were already a spent force when Brown took over. To listen to the Blairites talk about that period, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was an unmitigated success.

  5. All the ‘my dad was a toymaker who fashioned me out of bits of wood’ was in vain. People saw right through it to the elite lawyer underneath. My God, they were bigging up his conference speech for months, can anyone remember what he said?
    “Something about him’s not right”. You’re telling me.

    1. The message was subliminal. We want your subs and unpaid labour because you and your children mean nothing to us.

  6. Trilateral commission’s poodle is not doing his tricks
    However the British establishment will see this as a result. no hope for changing of the guard.
    Meddlesom has stated the working class has nowhere else to go apart from… UKIP in EU elections and the Tories in GE19- I feel a “falling on your sword” moment arriving. Not able to persuade HIS Hartlepool electorate to vote Labour. How many times did he resign?.
    Starmer Faux sincerity and Exaggerated gesticulation -. Blairwitch Project 2 hopefully teetering on the brink.
    Community organisers versus focus groups

    1. To think people were voicing discontent with the choice between Corbyn & may…

      And I’m no fan of tess, but even she’s miles ahead of the current two shysters.

      It just shows how utterly shite keef is if he can’t even drum up enough mere public acceptance to put him ahead of any one of the two toerags.

  7. Nobody likes a back stabber or somebody whose word means nothing. Keir Starmer is both.

    1. And Corbyn was vilified by the media, slagged off in public by Right Wing Labour MPs for years plus apparently had senior staff working against him?
      Apart from being crap what’s Starmer’s excuse?

      1. How did those greedy, self serving tapeworms and their friends , the whores of Fleet Street, outflank the left? All those degrees, all that knowledge and self importance of some LW thinkers, outwitted by pv.

    2. And the next tweet down reads:

      Stats for Lefties
      @LeftieStats
      ·
      3h
      Replying to
      @LeftieStats
      Amongst 2019 Labour voters, the numbers are even more dramatic: 51% of Labour voters approve of Jeremy Corbyn, but just 34% approve of Keir Starmer

      You’ve been telling us fibs, wee fella. 😒

      1. I think that’s probably stunned SteveH into silence? He’s probably lying down in a dark room in Labour HQ trying to recover with Evans telling him everything will be just fine.

        Being a full time Starmer apologist must be exhausting. The toughest gig since William Joyce decided to become Lord Haw-Haw.

      2. Is it wrong to refer to the resident troll as Lord Whore-Whore?

        After all, he has sold himself for money…

    1. Only chance to respond to Andys post. Sorry Ben good post but the picture of Evans comforting SteveH was as truly revolting as picturing Rushi opening a baby sitting agency. Imagine that face looking down on some poor kid in a cot.

  8. Careful Skwawkie, you’ll be getting a literary prize for best-opening-line-ever if your not careful: “Keir Starmer is a Labour ‘leader’ who doesn’t really lead.”

    You’ve got to climb to the top of Mount Everest to reach the Valley of the Dolls.” “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity……”

    1. The dolls were barbiturates, widely abused by the glitterati. Politics needs uppers more than downers.

  9. Red Knight (unofficial biography) Michael Ashcroft

    This book suggests that Theresa Mays soft BREXIT was blocked by Starmer- negative briefings to the press and a stipulation that a second referendum was included in negotiations. Corbyn’s team were looking a deal. the result
    May’s resignation. Proroguing of Parliament.

    The Brexit debacle is not the Tories fault, the blame clearly lies at the foot of the shadow (forensic) Brexit secretary and not forgetting Jo Swinson.

      1. Hmm…wasn’t she the no-hoper who was claiming what a great Prime Minister she would be? Where is she now?…Ah, I hear she’s left politics and is selling dodgy stuff door-to-door.

        Dare we hope that Starmer will shortly follow in her footsteps?

    1. SteveH seems fixated on 2019’s GE. But 2019 was a really weird political year, completely dominated by Brexit. Look at the facts:

      We were supposed to leave the EU on 11pm on 29 March 2019 – roughly 3 months shy of 3 years after the June 2016 referendum.

      On 20 March 2019 the Prime Minister wrote to European Council President, asking to extend Article 50 until 30 June 2019. Brexit voters, sensing they were being betrayed by Westminster, were getting increasingly angry.

      On 2 April 2019, the Prime Minister announced she would seek a further extension to the Article 50 process and offered to meet the Leader of the Opposition to agree a deal that can win the support of MPs.

      In May, the Tories, then led by Theresa May, scored just 8% in the European elections, Labour fared little better with just 13% – the public were blaming both parties for the parliamentary deadlock & shilly-shallying. The Tories moved against Theresa May and replaced her with Boris Johnson, the Tories polling immediately started to recover.

      On 19 October 2019, the new PM Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal was lost on amendment in the Commons. In accordance with the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act 2019 – commonly known as the ‘Benn Act’ – the Prime Minister wrote to European Council president Donald Tusk, to request an extension to the Brexit process.

      On 28 October 2019, EU Ambassadors agreed a further Brexit extension to 31 January 2020.

      Johnson then got the December election he wanted, thanks largely to the SNP and delusional Swinson-led LDs. In the campaign, Johnson’s slogan, ‘Get Brexit Done’ was parroted by all major news outlets mantra-like. The Farage vehicle – the ‘Brexit Party’ urged its followers to vote Tory. Labour recovered to 32% by polling day but it wasn’t enough.

      SteveH’s dumb analysis : 2019 was all Corbyn’s fault…

      Yeah, sure it was.

      1. Andy, you have quite accurately documented the events that occurred which led us to where we are today, thank you for the summary.

      2. Richard – It looked at one point as though both parties could crash and possibly be replaced, there’s never been such political turmoil, certainly not in recent times.

        After Theresa May went the Tories and Johnson had the entire media to do the heavy lifting, digging them out of the hole created by Theresa May. Corbyn had constant attacks. Labour did remarkably well to get back into semi-contention with 32% at the GE. It could have been much, much worse.

        The way Blairites have reduced a very complex, messy political year into a simple public rejection of Corbyn and his manifesto is such a distortion of the truth. And I think they know it.

    2. Jo Swinson lost her seat by 149 votes at the last general election.

      During her leadership election, she had been asked if she would use nuclear weapons. She immediately replied in the affirmative.

      I think that a local anti-nuclear group campaigned against her. They reportedly delivered 10,000 leaflets.
      They probably did not cost her all that many votes but they did not need to to affect the outcome.

  10. The way a stony-faced Starmer ignored that young woman at conference , the one who tried, politely, to ask him about the GND, encapsulates a certain coldness, aloofness. If he can’t be civil and reasonable with someone like that, why is he even in politics?

    I dislike the Tories’ politics, but it’s coming to something when an old Etonian like Boris Johnson seems more down to earth and approachable than Labour’s leader. An election campaign, in which Johnson comes across as the more voter friendly, with more personal warmth, will be a nightmare for a party like Labour. A party whose whole pitch is they are the more caring party.

    Labour MPs need to seriously consider giving the much warmer, voter friendly Barry Gardiner. Starmer comes across as cold and uncaring, totally lacking in empathy..

  11. I did want to post earlier, but I just couldn’t stop laughing. (Cheers Skwawkie!)

    Starmer is about as welcome as a turd in a swimming pool PMSL!

    Still, for the benefit of our resident troll “It’s all to play for” isn’t it LOL!!

    1. I beg to differ.

      Starmer is about as welcome as diahorrea in a swimming pool.

      Sorry to lower the tone of the debate, but he really is that vile!

  12. The Tories elect a dud leader and the tabloids and broadsheets whip up their MPs and members to force that leader out. That same media are quite happy for Starmer to drive the Labour party off an electoral cliff.

    It has to come from members, CLPs and unions. Everyone is unhappy with the direction and leadership, clearly, but everyone is just sat around complaining, waiting for something to happen. Before you know where you are it’ll be 2023 and a GE will be around the corner. Rumours of a May 2023 GE emerging from the Tory conference, this, according to the Johnson’s previous employer, the Telegraph.

    What are the unions doing?

    Starmer has already betrayed members and if by some remote possibility he’s in with a shot of power, the corporate donors will move in. In that scenario, what’s to stop him, party funding guaranteed, then betraying the unions too? This is a guy advised by the Dark Lord himself, panto -like villain and lobbyist for union-busters, banks and oligarchs, Peter Mandelson.

    1. What are the unions doing. Brilliant question. Sorting out their pension plans can’t occupy their actions everyday. If you mean the members then that answer would be, their best in very uncertain conditions and getting shafted for it.

  13. ‘The lad has taken a beating.
    Smashed to smithereens!
    A consequence of being poorly read.
    And having bourgeois dreams.’
    Right now let’s crush the Right Wing Tory and right wing Labour B’stards!!

    1. We had been “cast out into the wilderness” nearly twenty miserable years.Along came a young lawyer who was tough on crime and the causes of crime “I was sent down to the aptly named “Gravesend” were a young leader tore through the left Hecklers and activists and said to the euro mps “we will beat the Torys and we will finaly tell the nation of small shopkeepers and business we wont nationalise you,comrades is a oudated yesterday’s Labour party..,” We are New Labour “.Later on we convinced Murdoch’s media empire to come on board and he did..We had a big celebration at Gatwick airport Hilton paid for by Richard Branson and Tony and Cherie arrived early and the coming together of “Business” with the Labour party was on.I chatted to Tony and Cherie and the next year Angie Hunter Blair’s life long friend and my neighbour in Newick Sussex nr Lewes moved into Drowning street with a landslide victory.Angie married Adam Bolton after a not so secret affair and the show carried on.We saw peirs Morgan return to the village of Newick were he was born and captain the village cricket team.Dennis “eyebrows” Healey the old Wilson Chancellor was brought into the village from next door Chailey and watched the 🌞 go down sipping pints whilst the celebrations carried on.We won and the Torys were gone.We might have made a few compromises but politics is the “art of compromise” and most of us were making good progress and big bucks with our businesses because New Labour were the party of Business.and we were good at it even being able to sell Labour to Surrey and Sussex and finaly move up the ladder into the Blue wall…One day I went back to Bolton Lancashire and stood outside my dads old shops that were derilict the former glory of a IRISH immigrant family who made good and lost everything in the crumbling Cotton town of Bolton…What would my dad and grandfather have thought about the compromises I made to join “New Labour” ?…WE WON..and lost our souls doing it.And so the lessons learned..You don’t win anything if you sell your souls to acheive it.

      1. A nice bit of name dropping there Joseph. I’m sure everyone will be suitably impressed.

      2. Joseph, who said “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his own soul” (or words to that effect)?

        Clue: his initials were JC and it wasn’t Jeremy Corbyn!

  14. Not name dropping just a snap of the politics of despair because we were once again on the edge being out in the wilderness when a young privately educated lawyer gave us hope.I was lucky or unlucky enough to be in the “right place” at the right time.I became sickened by the compromise I had made to win and like I say I sold my soul for nothing because I got were I wanted to we both did carol and me without New Labour “and the glitterati but for a time I sold my soul for the Labour party and it was all for nowt.Maybe Steve theres still a spark left of humanity in you somwhere and you can learn somthing off me.I have only given you a snapshot of the Blair years because as you know I was sickened by the compromise and hypocrisy and left the Labour party as a sitting Labour councillor in the blue wall of your warped leader Surrey.I always thought of the hypocrisy of myself and other hypocrites like jim Callaghan Dennis Healey who made a good living on the backs of the working-class people and chose to live amongst the Torys in their villages of Surrey and Sussex like me living the Tory dream of climbing the mountain and choking on the lack of oxygen when the veiw was worthless.

      1. We live in hope goldbach…and somtimes I feel sorry for him because he trys so much in many ways but meets a red wall.I now live in one of the poorest countries in the world were its cheap to live and the temps suits most of the time….except as now when its hot and sticky with the rainy season.I have assimilated but I still enjoy British comedy and thats why I occasionally feel sorry for Steve H Hall centrist Dad or whatever his name is.

  15. The comment of Captain Hooke to Mr Smee may be appropriate: Yo blundering, bungling, untrustworthy, incompent, crass, misguided, un reliable, barbarous, noisy numbskull

  16. Amusing watching the same people who took pleasure repeatedly telling everyone ‘Corbyn is UNELECTABLE!’, now demanding loyalty to the Blairite leader whose personal polling – both internal party and general population – is worse than that of his predecessor.

    1. Andy – Do you have any evidence to back up your statement about their respective personal polling. A quick look at the polling would seem to indicate that you are mistaken.

      1. SteveH – Corbyn was subjected to one of the most vicious character assassination campaigns in British history, by the MSM operating more like a tag team. The fact Starmer is polling so poorly despite what are basically friendly headlines and opinion pieces, plus the press turning a blind eye to the bullying at conference, blatant vote rigging and purges, speaks volumes, don’t you reckon?

        And another thing, “How can he be trusted not to bankrupt Britain when he’s bankrupted the Labour party? ” Starmer’s writing the Tory election campaign attack lines for them.

      2. Andy – Surely you are not gullible enough to swallow the bankruptcy nonsense.

      3. There you go again. You posted Andy a question, I answered it and you come back with polling from 2019. Do you see how weak you are and reliant on whataboutery?
        Forget the questions and format an honest comment about the article and why Starmer is doing so badly.

      4. “Surely you are not gullible enough to swallow the bankruptcy nonsense.”
        Er well yes actually. When Starmer was elected leader in 2020, the right wing were confidently predicting that replacing Corbyn would see a sharp rise in party membership. You are the only person still repeating that narrative, by November 2020, according to the party’s own electoral records, Labour had lost over 50,000 members. The mass expulsions that followed, along with suspensions and threats against any criticism have caused a yet unpublished number of members to leave. Even now, people are still leaving. Meanwhile, there is no obvious opposition and voters are leaching away to the Tories whose policies on the economy are to the left of Starmer’s. But that’s not the end of it. Starmer is recalibrating Labour’s relationship with the unions, so he’s losing finance from every area and looks set to hand the party over to corporates, lock stock and barrel.
        Everyone, even MSM can see this except you. And that’s an without figuring in the alleged court actions over supposed antisemitism.
        #ItWasaScam

      5. lundiel – Who are you accusing of telling lies and about what, or are you still working that one out? 🤔

      6. You are a liar. We’ve had the conversation about Mandleson’s people’s vote many times. Starmer stymied an agreement with May by demanding a people’s vote. That is established fact. Yet you still insist on blaming the resulting loss of members on Corbyn. You know it’s true and everyone who reads this blog knows it’s true. Therefore, you are a liar.
        I really am flabbergasted by your obsessive interference in this blog and this article. It’s about the lack of trust the electorate has with Starmer and yet, you in are still trying to relive events from 2018 in a wholly false light. I’ve told you before, you are a gaslighter. Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse where a person or group makes someone question their sanity, perception of reality, or memories. People experiencing gaslighting often feel confused, anxious, and unable to trust themselves. Stop your abusive behaviour…..and seriously, get help.

      7. lundiel – You can get your knickers in a twist all you like but it doesn’t alter the fact that Labour’s membership dropped by 15% during 2018/19.
        You can argue the toss all day long about why we lost members but that is just your opinion and opinions by their nature differ. The fact remains these losses occurred under Corbyn’s leadershp.

  17. Mr Corbyn is a fine fellow.
    “But Corbyn’s problem is the number of who people dislike him”
    Maybe SteveH is as fine fellow with a similar problem.

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