Starmer: Sinking Without Trace

I had to remind myself to breathe a couple of times during the following 2,000 word truth bomb. Lord only knows what it will read like.

Sometimes it feels like I write these things just to answer a load of people in one go. It can get quite tedious saying the same things over and over again, but I think repeating the things you believe in until you’re nearly blue in the face is part of what makes you an activist. 

Talking of blue, let’s get on with talking about the ongoing and worsening crisis surrounding the leadership of the enigma that is Keir Starmer. 

That’s why you are here, right? 

It didn’t take long for this week's first humiliation to arrive, in the shape of a brand new Survation poll. “A poll?”, you say. Yes, a poll. But not just any poll, this is Survation, and they’ve got a better track record than most, if not all of the other pollsters. 

Keir Starmer’s Labour Party sits on 34% - indeed, some polling companies have them even lower, but I’ll be generous and go with the Survation poll. 

•34% means Starmer’s Labour are 8% behind the worst government in living memory. 

•34% means Starmer’s Labour trail Corbyn’s Labour of December 2017 (pre-smear overdrive) by a massive 11%. 

•34% means Starmer’s Labour have made very little progress since he lied his way into the top job - in fact, it is little over 1% higher than the disastrous result of 2019 - which accounts for a few stray Lib Dems. 

34% means Starmer’s Labour are 6% behind the General Election result of 2017. 

This is a huge failure for Starmer. Eleven months into the job and just one poll reveals the truth about the dire state the once Democratic Socialist party finds itself in. 

I hate to say it, but your Sir is a duh. Your Knight of the realm is more of a night on the piss. Your forensic this and forensic that, is more of a failure to get to grips with the basic principle of holding power to account. And a leading Human Rights barrister, said absolutely nobody living on the Gaza Strip.

Before you get upset, start frothing at the mouth, and scream the golden password, “BUT COOOORRRRBBBBYYYNN”, take just one moment to consider the same set of Survation polling has put Keir Starmer’s own approval ratings in NEGATIVE territory. So so grab hold of your “I ❤️ Keir Starmer” £12 mugs, and firmly insert them where the sun isn’t known to shine, if you could be so kind. 

Imagine, for just one moment, if Starmer had to face the same hostile, vitriolic substandard media that Jeremy Corbyn used to wake up to on his doorstep every day. 

Do you think he would even manage to score a measly 34% against the worst government in living memory? Of course he wouldn’t, he would crumble like a HobNob on the receiving end of an elbow-drop from a sumo wrestler, and that criminal relic Blair - who appears to have decomposed a little more every time I see his haunted expression on my Telly - would be insisting anyone to the right of ‘the Starmer experiment’ would be twenty points ahead of Boris Johnson.

And why do they give Starmer such an easy ride? It’s quite obvious really. He poses no threat to the establishment way of doing things, because he is part of the very same British establishment that expects you to work yourself to death for a wage that barely covers the rent. 

I cannot believe anyone can honestly tell me how Starmer speaks for them, when he barely speaks for himself. Love him or not, at least you knew what Jeremy stood for. All you know about Starmer is the fact he will “support the government”, suggest “now isn’t the time” to ask any difficult questions of Johnson (or raise corporation tax) - and you know all about his blatantly obvious selective anti-racism, which is beginning to leave a filthy stain on the soul of the Labour Party.

Believe me, if Starmer adopted some genuine socialist policies he wouldn’t still be writing for Rupert Murdoch, behind a paywall, and he wouldn’t be a part-time columnist for the flag bearers of fascism, the Daily Mail. 

This is why he embraces the flag like it is his favourite cuddle blanket from when he was a little Keith. This is why the thought of a small hike in corporation tax had him sending out his shadow cabinet members to defend the abandonment of the first of his nonsense ten pledges. 

And most critically, this is why Keir Starmer has spent much of the last 12 months blowing smoke up Boris Johnson’s ample backside while raging an internal war with the left of the Labour Party.

When we needed true opposition to the delayed lockdowns, the criminal failure to provide adequate PPE to our first-class medical professionals, and the corporate cronyism welfare scheme, we got nothing more than a control-freak headline whore. 

Harsh? No. Starmer has demonstrably sought favourable headlines from the very media that hacked the voicemails of dead children, despicably lied about the Hillsborough tragedy, stood shoulder to shoulder with fascists, and demonised refugees, and any other minority that doesn’t fit in with the bullshit ‘British values’ you were taught at school - only for you to be very disappointed when you realised that no such thing ever existed. 

You have to form and nurture your own values. Starmer’s values are shared by the ruling class, not the working class. Starmer’s values are a commodity, not a judgement of the things in life that are important to him. Starmer’s values are the same values shared by the people that have always thought they are better than you, because they’ve never understood what it’s like to queue up at a Foodbank. These people judge you by wealth. They don’t believe your children have the same aspirations as their children - because your children don’t deserve to have the same aspirations as their children. While they’re playing ‘keeping up with the Jones’, you’re struggling to keep up with paying the extortionate electric bill. 

I don’t hate these people, I pity them. They have been spoon-fed neoliberalism from birth. Some of us are lucky enough to realise there is a better, fairer way of doing things, the socialist way of doing things. 

Starmer is a leader for these people. He is not a leader for the person sleeping rough in the doorway of a now-closed department store. He is not a leader for the single mum living in a grotty bed and breakfast, forgotten about like the other one million plus families in need of a council house or flat. He is not a leader for the tens-of-millions of workers that have been dragged through a decade of wage suppression. He is not a leader for the nurse, the cleaner, the call centre operative and the self-employed. He is not a leader for the caterers, the carers, the refuse collectors and the delivery drivers. He is not a leader for the disabled, the builder, the baker, and I don’t think he is even a leader for the candlestick maker. 

If a leader of the Labour Party isn’t facing a hostile and dishonest media, they’re simply not a Labour leader worth having. 

The only qualification I have for this is experience. I was a target for both the Mail and the S*n tabloids, harassed, upset, doorstepped - and my crime? Being a ‘Corbynista’ with a decent-sized following on Twitter.

If this broken, rancid media aren’t savaging you, as the leader of the former largest political movement in Europe, and your supporters, day in and day out, you’ve not really got much worth saying. You pose no threat to the status quo. You serve no purpose to me and tens of millions of others of us that have just been through the governments of Cameron, May, and this awful, negligent, and utterly corrupt government headed-up by the grotesquely inept elitist Johnson. 

Kick and scream as much as you wish. We will not support replacing one Tory government with a Labour government infiltrated by Tories. It’s a non-negotiable position. 

Finally, before you try telling me about the disaster of the 2019 election, and how it was all Jeremy’s fault, congratulations for getting this far, because the truth can often be an unpleasant experience. 

Most Starmer supporters fail to read the content - substance isn’t their thing - and they’re not particularly forensic when it comes to digesting the irrefutable evidence indicating their brilliant Brylcreemed Human Rights Barrister is nothing more than a Tory lickspittle with the charisma of a washing-up bowl, the likeability of a caesarean without an anaesthetic and the socialist credentials of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.

They see the headline criticising the dear leader and they are triggered. Perhaps a little more time reading the content can help with the tantrums. After the last paragraph, perhaps not. 

I ask you, Keith supporters, what is the point of having a mind if you are never willing to change it? 

What is the point in believing any Labour government is better than any Conservative government if you’re not willing to accept the possibility that you cannot achieve a Labour government until you have firmly rejected and ejected the Tories nestled within the Labour Party? 

That’s only a controversial position if you are willing to accept a way of doing things that ultimately keeps the rich dining at the top table while the rest of us fight for the crumbs. A way of doing things that somehow ended up with the poor, disabled and low-paid workers of Britain paying for the recklessness of the banking industry. A way of doing things that has normalised Food Banks and doubled rough sleeping. A way of doing things that has left more than 120,000 of our loved ones dying an unnecessary death, saying goodbye on fucking FaceTime, thanks to a bastard disease, a bastard government, egged-on by a bastard of an opposition. 

I won’t ever accept that way of doing things. Will you? Of course you won’t. 

I’m angry with the government, and I am angry with their supporters, whether that be the right-wing media, or the right-wing Labour Party, and if you’re not angry, it’s time to ask yourself why. Why are you willing to turn a blind eye to poverty, destitution, homelessness, privatisation, the climate emergency, the inequality, the injustices, oppression, disease, the devastation unleashed upon our industries, from the 1980’s through to today?

Why? 

I’m lucky, a vast majority of my friends - the folk I’m privileged to have follow me - they’re decent, kind-hearted, principled, truly lovable human beings. They don’t turn blind eyes, they help open other people's eyes to the realities that we face today. 

You can be part of the change that you want to see in society, the only ally you need is socialism. Solidarity is the attitude of resistance.

Keep on keeping on. 

Rachael x

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