Keir Starmer: a damning appraisal
JVL Introduction
Tom Blackburn reviews Oliver Eagleton’s important book, The Starmer Project: A Journey to the Right, Verso 2022, in the latest issue of Jacobin.
Eagleton, sees Starmer’s time as head of the Crown Prosecution Service as a turning point in his personal and political trajectory – from a dedicated human rights’ lawyer/campaigner to an ambitious careerist and servant of the British security state.
Lest we forget the scale of the deception involved in what Blackburn calls “one of the most brazen swindles in recent British political history” you can always revisit the Keir Starmer Labour leadership launch video.
And read this review and Eagleton’s book.
This article was originally published by Jacobin on Thu 19 May 2022. Read the original here.
Keir Starmer Is a Political Chameleon Whose Main Loyalty Is to His Own Advancement
Keir Starmer’s political career shows him to be an opportunist with a sycophantic attitude toward those in power. Since becoming Labour leader, his main priority has been to expunge left-wing ideas and influence, not to defeat the Conservative Party.
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I think this excellent review should be read alongside the other blog article from Skwawkbox rewriting the history of the Corbyn period.
Was it so difficult for Corbyn to figure out that Starmer was a deeply reactionary individual who had presided over all manner of injustices and reactionary decisions at DPP?
He should never have gone near Starmer especially after Starmer supported the chicken coup. Corbyn was basically a fool in his choice of who to trust
Of course they are all careerists. Politics is a career. Thankfully there are a few that carry a modicum of principle along their often tricky career route. Starmer was never one of those. His parents deciding calling him Keir doesn’t make him a principled socialist. Just like me calling my cat Keegan didn’t make him a good footballer.
In my observation, Keir Starmer is wholly despicable, without any good points. Starmer combines self-serving and nastiness with profound incompetence.
Where are there any references to his funding by Trevor Chinn which was held back way beyond the cut off date as it would have raised more than eyebrows to see such committed financial support from a known supporter of the Zionist Cause.
Similarly no mention of the Forde Report, the proscription of groups associated with the Party on spurious grounds which other groups shared but escaped the banning order and the retrospective expulsions for being a member of those organisations when they were not deemed to be operating counter to the interests of the Starmer Party
Perhaps a suitable addendum might be added as soon as possible.
Nominative determinism has served Starmer well. He has traded on the name Keir with great success. Imagine if he had launched his career under the name Rodney. In much the same way he has traded on his early activities as a defender of human rights – a stance that was unfortunately not carried over into his term as DPP, when the true Starmer began to swim up into the light of day: slippery, dishonest, a proponent of enhanced police powers and the immunity of the state from judicial scrutiny. This unpleasant creature is now fully visible to any but the more fervent Corbyn haters. His generally maladroit performance at PMQs has rendered unworkable the media’s initial depiction of him as a stereotypical lawyer of ‘forensic’ skills; their latest con is to keep repeating the word ‘integrity’, when his behavior as Labour leader has in fact demonstrated the opposite of that quality. He is a media construct, a man of principle from a badly acted BBC drama. Fortunately the British public has largely refused to buy. Come the next election I will be unable to help wishing him to go down to a historic defeat. The chief upside will be if Jeremy Corbyn’s North London constituency returns him to Parliament as an Independent.
Starmer and his nest of self serving, traitorous, backstabbing snakes condemned us all to the continuation of the tory criminal cartel…..Starmer and his whole front bench must resign!
I never want to see Starmer anywhere near power.
His campaign for the leadership, as the book ‘Left Out’ shows, actually began in early 2019. This gave him a tremendous advantage.
His attack on any Labour MP that criticises NATO puts all our lives at risk.
Yes Starmer was a big disappointment. I never voted for him but expected that he would at least carry out Corbyn’s 10 pledges and at least make a attempt to unify the party. He has done the total opposite. Promoting some very nasty people on to his front bench. The book exposes the real Starmer for what he is, devious untrustworthy establishment figure who lacks any form inspiration.
He may well become PM by default. But anybody could or should against bojo and his bunch of immoral incompetent’s.
what a depressing situation we are all in.
If Seumas Milne was characterized/cariacatured as “Lenin” then KS’s actions more than merit his being labelled “Sir Keir Stalin”.
An eye-opening catalogue of failures and duplicity, but it needs a rewrite to tidy up several distracting cases of the same phrase being repeated.
After reading this and, having watched the Eagleton interview on Novara Media, I’m wondering if it is possible that Starmer went as far as colluding with Farage to remove Brexit party candidates from contesting some seats in 2019 in order to give Brexit voters the Tories as their only option. This makes sense if, as seems clear, the pro-Remain stance was mainly a way of disenfranchising the red wall voters.
Here is yet another example of Starmer’s mendaciousness and deceit, this time in a piece he wrote for the Guardian in February, and in which – referring to the Stop the War Coalition – he stated the following falsehood:
“At best they are naive, at worst they actively give succour to authoritarian leaders who directly threaten democracies. There is nothing progressive in showing solidarity with the aggressor when our allies need our solidarity and – crucially – our practical assistance now more than ever.”
Needless to say, he doesn’t elaborate as to what this ‘solidarity’ amounted to, and the reason he doesn’t of course is because it’s pure fiction, concocted and designed to smear STW. And neither does he explain why he says that STW are ‘at best naive’ and ‘at worst’ actively give succour to authoritarian leaders who directly threaten democracies.
Yes, well he knows all about authoritarian leaders, being one himself in relation to left-wingers in the Party! As for his concern about democracy…..
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/10/keir-starmer-says-stop-the-war-coalition-gives-help-to-authoritarians-like-putin
And this is STWs response to Starmer:
https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/keir-starmers-cynical-embrace-of-nato-is-a-sad-sight-indeed/
Starmer knew he could say whatever he liked in his leadership campaign to get elected as, once elected, only the PLP can hold him to account. The fact that the PLP seem to be happy with his actions since tells me that the whole parliamentary party is corrupt.
I find it astonishing that anyone can gain a position of influence by telling blatant lies and not then be immediately sacked from that position.