Sunak lies, but Starmer’s failure to correct him is worse
JVL Introduction
Many people have almost lost the ability to be shocked by the behaviour of our leading politicians. Fortunately, Peter Oborne has not.
Here he takes Rishi Sunak to task for telling blatant lies about Jeremy Corbyn and Labour’s 2019 manifesto, lies which Penny Mordaunt was unwilling to disown.
And, in yet another illustration of Starmer’s lack of fibre, he too failed utterly to call out Sunak’s deliberate lies.
Why? To have done so would have been seen as a defence of Jeremy Corbyn. Does Starmer hate Corbyn more than he likes telling the truth?
Thanks to Middle East Eye for permission to repost.
This article was originally published by Middle East Eye on Tue 8 Nov 2022. Read the original here.
The conspiracy of lies about Corbyn that unites Sunak and Starmer
The prime minister’s abuse of his high office to smear Corbyn proves that he means to employ the same deceitful methods as his disgraced predecessor, Boris Johnson
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I assume that the ministerial code and the rules of the House are not self-enforcing. In other words, presumably there is a mechanism whereby Corbyn can complain about being misrepresented both by Sunak and Mordaunt and demand correction of the record. If I am right, I hope he does. As for Starmer’s silence, well, who would have thunk it?
Ed Balls criticised Sunak for his reliance on using
Labours previous leaders as weapons to beat the current Labour
Party. .. Said it was “unstatesmanlike” or similar. He even used
Corbyn as an example of one of them .. (Shock-Horror!)
Incidentally Corbyn answered Mordaunt – with words to the effect
that .. there would have been less poverty, food banks etc if Labour
had been elected in 2019.
Tony Benn used to dine (reportedly)regularly with Enoch Powell. Jeremy should invite Sir Keir to tea…unless Evans would not allow this event??
Frankly, I remain in despair at the LP machinations.
Great expectatations of the Daily Mirror? Why so shocked?
Sunak and Mordaunt were of course entirely correct to point out that Starmer (and the rest of the shadow cabinet) stood on the 2019 Labour manifesto. Starmer should either have defended it or repudiated it. By simply keeping his head down he gave the impression that Corbyn was still Leader of the Opposition.
By this stage even the most violent critics of Corbyn must be suspecting that if Labour had won the 2019 election we would be in a better state now than we actually are. Starmer cannot bring himself to say even this.
Perhaps Sunak would care to comment on this:
“(Liz) Truss worked for Reform in 2008-09 before she became a Tory MP. In the Back to Black: Budget 2009 paper, the Tory and her co-authors also called for a review of the Trident nuclear deterrent (sic).
“The future of Trident should also be considered,” they wrote, on account of its £15-£20bn price tag. Truss recently committed to renewing Trident at a hustings in Scotland.
The report also called for the abolition of universal child benefit, and the axing of several major military procurement projects including the Royal Navy’s planned aircraft carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, which were described as “inappropriate defence projects.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/19/revealed-liz-truss-supported-cuts-to-nhs-and-doctors-pay-in-thinktank-report?amp;amp
Starmer and his racist, fake labour , tory party are a total disgrace! Starmer and his fake Labour party do not represent the people of Britain! The best thing that the spineless tory, Starmer can do, is resign!
Well said. I was shocked by those comments about the manifesto. Sunak made them seem true. That’s almost the worst part of it. He’s a much better liar than Johnson which makes him far and away more dangerous. As for Starmer he’s done himself no favours.
The perception amongst a very large number of people, who have been paying attention, from quite diverse backgrounds is that Starmer’s purpose is to silence critics of neoliberalism and Zionism. This does give him some powerful, but not all powerful, allies. But they are short sighted. Bereft of representation, those whom the Labour Party was supposed to fight their corner, have started turning to the far right. Courtesy of Rupert, currently, their Islamophobia utterly eclipses their anti-Semitism, and as this website has described, their racist applause for Israel’s mistreatment of Arabs can be easily twisted into some heroic Churchillian crusade against anti-Semitism. Anti racism for racists. Nice work Bibi. But at the end of the day this retreat into nationalism all over Europe is a tiger that Netenyahu may be able to ride for the course of his career, but it is a tiger and a very dangerous one. Starmer has lost much of the working class to the far right, and we’re being told we should be more concerned about Dave Chappelle. Stupid doesn’t even start to describe it.