Starmer has destroyed Labour. The only question is was it incompetence or intent?
Keir Starmer has sunk Labour faster and deeper than any PM in history, suffering the worst defeat of any new PM in history, losing two thirds of the seats he was trying to defend and managing only a 14% share of the vote in last week’s local elections.
And the news has become even worse for Starmer and his drones this week, with the latest BMG poll of Westminster voting intention indicating that Labour will only hold 12% of its current seats at the next general election – losing 363 seats and holding onto only 48, below the awful LibDems and barely ahead of the Scotland-only SNP and handing most of its seats to the far-right Reform UK ‘party’:
Starmer was regarded by nine out of ten staff working under him at the Crown Prosecution Service to be an awful Director of Public Prosecutions. He is an even worse PM, lethal for the old, young, disabled and mentally ill in this country, completing the destruction of the NHS, whipping up racism and aiding Israel in the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, mostly children. He is more dishonest than serial liar Boris Johnson without even the personality to get away with it for a while. Labour’s electoral fortunes in opposition got worse the more voters saw of him and he has been well and truly found out in power.
Worst of all for the country, he is handing the UK over to the ludicrous fascist, or at least fascism-adjacent Farageists, who openly want to do to the poor and to our public services was Trump and Musk’s ‘DOGE’ criminality is doing to the US.
The only question remaining in the mind of many is whether this is only appalling incompetence, or was this his job all along for the oligarchs and elites, to ensure there will never be another Corbyn surge taking the left within reach of power?
Please remember to support Skwawkbox if you can, to help ensure it can keep running. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (Skwawkbox will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount as it has to be entered by us). Alternatively, if you prefer to make a one-off or recurring donation by simple card payment, please use the form below:
Make a one-time donation
Make a monthly donation
Make a yearly donation
Choose an amount
Or enter a custom amount
Your support is hugely appreciated.
Your support is hugely appreciated.
Your support is hugely appreciated.
DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearlyThanks for your solidarity so Skwawkbox can keep doing its job of inconveniencing the right and helping to build the left!
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so, but please include the donor information above – see here for more.
I committed myself to writing in public (in the Guardian) under the pseudonym The Great Ron Rafferty, the moment he became leader, what an awful choice he was for leader. I just KNEW what he would be like, and I didn’t want anyone thinking I was a Johnny-cum-lately when his incompetence and venality became obvious. Of course I was right, but that was easy when making a judgement about how awful he was! It is possible that he has been even worse than I expected, and I expected nothing! Of course such views soon got me banned from the Guardian which had thrown its weight behind him and “enthusiastically” against Corbyn. So there you go Guardian – I was right and you were wrong!
Oh my dog. You are TheGreatRonRafferty! I really enjoyed your comments in The Guardian. With a few honourable exceptions, what a terrible place it is now. That said there seems to be quite a lot of ‘buyer’s remorse’ brewing…
And yes, just like you I absolutely knew on the very day of his election he was going to be a bad bad choice, but I take no pleasure in being told by friends and acquaintances I was right (well perhaps a little bit!)
I thought New New Labour would be hated within a year of winning in 2024. I have effectively zero percent confidence they’re capable of changing their right wing drift.
Starmer is certainly incompetent, which is why he was chosen by the worst elements in society, to head off the threat that Corbyn and his millions of supporters posed to the status quo.
They knew that left to his own devices he would wreck the Labour Party, recreate the inequality and hunger that it had been founded to eliminate and usher in the last stage of capitalism which is the prison state of fascism.
The Labour Party has been betraying the working class since its foundation. Starmer is in the Great Tradition of Arthur Henderson, Ramsey Mac, Jimmy Thomas, Clement Attlee, Herbert Morrison, Gaitskell, Kinnock, Brown and Blair.
The silver lining to Starmer and company’s performances-from attacks on the poor to attacks on Gaza and Yemen- is that can no longer be any illusions.
Establishment needed to make sure that Corbyn type labour could never be allowed to take government.UK parties are all signed up to neo-liberalism ,the Overton window has swung to the right.
Starmer and Mandelson – Both members of USA’s Trilateral Commission …
…. The international political arm of US foreign policy for running the World Order.
Starmer has achieved everything he was put there to do.
No surprise !
All the parties are fascist. Especially viewed from Mussolini’s definition.
It is deliberate. But it’s not like it started just yesterday.
Skwawkie, Reform is a symptom, not the cause. Don’t be a doctor.
Quite. We have reached the (previously thought to be) bizarre position of a LABOUR Party sometimes being to the right of the fascist Reform, and frequently to the right of the further-right-than-Thatcher Tory Party, whilst at other times Labour is very slightly to the left of them both. An ideal country to be one of the ultra rich! We’re heading for the Indian scenario where the penthouses of the multi-billionaires tower over the shanty towns. No wonder Starmer could easily get a “trade” deal with India.
Good point nvla. Yes, voting and being sympathetic to Reform can only be a symptom (not a cause). Skwawkie know this. My 2d worth –
The cause(s) include
* deliberate stressing of the population by politicians increasing worry, anxiety, nervous dysfunction;
* systematic and relentless re-inforcement of that strress by the media and its determination to control ‘news’, never offering hope, balanced reporting or encouraging alternative diagnosis.
It IS deliberate/intentional. Six global corporations control the vast majority of private media in the West –
Time Warner,
Walt Disney,
NBC Universal,
CBS Corporation,
Viacom, and
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
The BBC is also player, but not a distinct corporate financial. incorporated entity.
TRANSCEND Media Service asserts that six media companies control 90% of what people read, watch, and hear.
That’s the ’cause’ of our political/democratic illness. Mainstream politicians are just specially-selected ‘frontsmen’ working for and approved by the same ‘Corporations’.
THEY’RE THE CAUSE!
The label Fascist (or Far-Right) is thrown around so mindlessly these days it becomes almost meaningless. It’s more likely to remind me of Rik Mayall in The Young Ones, for whom it was a favourite insult, than goose-stepping blackshirts!
Was it Incompetence or intent? Craig Murray is in no doubt.
“It remains my belief that Starmer has always been a deep-state operative and that he is deliberately driving the Labour Party to its own destruction.
Among the strongest evidence for this, in my view, is the fact that all of the documentation on his involvement in the Julian Assange press-freedom case — as well as high-level paedophile cases such as Jimmy Savile and Greville Janner — while he was director of public prosecutions was allegedly destroyed by the state while the Conservatives were in office and Starmer in opposition.
The Deep State was protecting him and preparing his way to power.
It is also interesting that the only time the mainstream media really turned on Boris Johnson during his premiership was in attacking Johnson for referencing Starmer’s involvement in the Savile case, which brought a torrent of media abuse of Johnson in defence of Starmer, even though it was one of the rare occasions where Johnson actually told the truth.
But even if you do not accept my theory that Starmer may be destroying the Labour Party on purpose, perhaps you might accept that Starmer would prefer to see the Labour Party destroyed than see it in power as a left-wing party.
The Thatcherite agenda of austerity, benefit cuts and attacks on the non-working and disabled, monetarism, militarism and jingoism, with anti-immigrant policies allied to unquestioning Zionism, is perhaps a true reflection of Starmer’s core beliefs; as these align precisely with the Deep State agenda, the question of whether Starmer is a true believer or a blank cipher for the Deep State is moot.
With Labour emphasising “stop the boats” and deportations, there simply is no left-wing party among the complex five-party pattern emerging in English politics. It is also worth noting that under John Swinney, the SNP [Scottish National Party] is firmly under control of its own neoliberal right wing in Scotland.
It is tempting to believe that a left-wing party must emerge to fill the gap in what is offered to the electorate, but that is not automatic. We may simply have a position where there is no left-wing choice of any stature”.
Perhaps if the left hadn’t wasted the last 5 years it would be them reaping the rewards now instead of Reform UK.
Farage has shown what can be achieved if you get organised and put the effort in, where is the alternative that the left are offering the electorate?
When will the left learn?
It’s less about ‘the left’ wasting the last 5 (starmer) years than its main enemy, the six corporations that are responsible for 90% of everything that is published by ‘the media’ in the West.
Covid, Gaza, Ukraine, etc. is happily changing that.
As always, the devil is in the detail:
You mean all those who are {checks notes]:
– hounded out of the Labour Party and every other political party (which are all funded to the hilt by private oligarch lobbying money) and who are portrayed in every corporate media outlet as;
– Hamas supporters
– anti-Semites
– Assad Apologists
– Putin Puppets
– Loony left
– Extremists
– Terrorists
– etc. etc. etc.
Who are harassed, arrested, and on occassions even jailed by every organ and part of the Security State along with being vilified and smeared by corporate sponsored politicians for organising formal political and other more active opposition to the policies you support, Billy.
Who, when [checks notes again]
– they are successful in standing as Independents in national and local elections etc on a shoestring budget, with every corporate controlled and owned media outfit from national to local level at best ignoring them;
– are dismissed by armchair hypocrites cowering from a safe distance behind a pseudonym such as yourself, Billy?
Tell us Mr Quisling Junior, how do you win national and local elections with no money and a political and media class which are financed and backed by billionaire sociopaths who also own the entire mediasphere misrepresenting you on a daily basis?
And how do you arrive at the conclusion you have about not being organised when the information you rely on to arrive at such a conclusion is made up entirely of wall-to-wall propaganda?
Do you really expect us to believe, as you clearly do, that the propaganda lies of commission and omission are limited to the Palestinians and their situation alone? That, like yourself, the majority of people are incapable of joining the dots?
You can be as organised as you like. However, with insufficient funding, a hostile media which would rather support convicted sex offenders (much like yourself) than anything which contradicts the unworkable and collapsing Official Narratives, and State lawfare, change will not happen in an instance overnight.
Reform, for example, far from being a political party, is a one-man band Corporate entity whose CEO worked in the City, is a CoL man, and backed by those with the serious money. Which is why Farage has the sixth most appearances on Question time in its history and is never out of the media.
It’s not like the managed collapse of so-called social democracy to hand over to a right wing authoritarian dictatorship rather than risk anything to the political left playbook has not occurred before.
Go figure.
It is also revealing that most of the votes going to Reform are from the Conservative party, rather than the vast majority of the voting public who have delivered the largest block of opinion in every General Election this century – none of the above (spoiled papers/not voting).
That will continue to be the case, with Reform and every other excuse of a choice under this dictatorship of the Oligarchy – which do not hesitate to delegitimise by every means available (banning political party’s; nullifying elections; smearing opposition to the extreme centre) – until a genuine opposition occurs following the inevitable collapse which Herr Starmer is trying to manage.
Meanwhile, hot off the press, a heads-up of a local Council by-election in the Stocksbridge and Upper Don Ward of Sheffield City Council in late June/early July.
https://www.thestar.co.uk/news/politics/sheffield-community-councillor-resigns-after-six-years-in-town-hall-5119605
Whilst the above local media article suggests a by-election is only pending a request from two local electors, the fact that the local LP Ward Branch have this afternoon sent requests to at least some local Ward members asking if anyone wishes to be considered for a hastily convened selection process, suggests this requirement has already been achieved and that the by-election is to take place.
The article is also misleading in what it omits.
Firstly, the reference to this Councillor (who was Deputy leader at the time), along with a number of others, resigning from Labour over the Local Plan fails to inform readers of both the context and the specifics.
Following the LA elections in 2023 the bureaucracy of the Labour Party in London took over the meeting of the Labour Group and dictated who would be standing as leader, deputy leader of the Labour Group and hence the City Council and who would fill the important positions from the Labour Group on the City Council.
The leader and deputy leader were effectively sacked from their positions not by a vote of the elected Labour Councillors but by a cabal of faceless men in London relayed via a plethora of TV screens erected around the room.
Moreover, all the Councillors were ordered, on pain of suspension and expulsion from the Party, to:
a) Sign up to a list of requirements dictated by London.
b) The senior Councillors who had been sacked were all ordered, again on pain of suspension and expulsion, to sign a mea culpa over the tree felling debacle.
Given that the Deputy leader – the Councillor who has resigned and forced this by-election – at the time had had no involvement whatsoever with that policy which pre-dated her election onto the city council that Councillor along with six others refused to sign and after passing at least one deadline (end July 2023) resigned from the LP and formed the Community Group.
Bear in mind the pertinent fact that these Councillors were all, let’s go with, old school Councillors from the political right of the Party (who were, apparently, affectionally known by some as “The fat blokes club”). The Councillor and former Deputy Council leader who has resigned was actually the local opo. of Angela Smith MP back in 2017.
It tells you a great deal about how authoritarian and far to the political right the Starmer entryists are when long standing right wing Councillors quit the party.
Despite that, this Councillor was one of the few who actually and regularly consistently put in a day’s graft day in and day out for the local community when she was elected as a City Councillor. She was and remains popular among the local electorate.
Given that the Brexit issue delivered a Blue Conservative MP in the constituency in which this Ward is a part at the 2019 GE, along with the age demographic of the Ward, it would seem a safe bet to anticipate either a Conservative or Reform win on a low turnout.
Dave – I’m surprised that you haven’t posted the above in the comments section of the article that you’ve linked to.
Apart from the local football, barely anyone under eighty reads the Star any more. It’s probably got a smaller readership than Skawkbox. I only went to the link to check the info. I was supplied with.