Very true, you can’t appease the right because they’ll never give you credit for anything… why would they??
> And yet almost nowhere is any of this mentioned in the media pontificating about Starmer's ouster. The right has not given Labour credit. Why would they? Camilla Long, writing in The Times, bemoaned that voters were concerned about immigration, but “the party doesn’t want to listen.” As if falling migration wasn’t falling massively, with net migration at 171,000, less than half last year’s figure. As if this wasn’t doing massive harm to our economy, as if legal migrants weren't having their lives made much worse, all to appease people like her. Instead, per Long, Starmer’s successor needs to focus on policies that “will make most of his party—especially the blue-haired city-dwelling Green-adjacent trans lovers who may fill his cabinet—squirm.”
I'm just an Irish person who observes from the outside. What the UK needed was political stability for 3 years, but Starmer has been attacked by the media from Day 1 (worst first 100 days etc) when, compared to the Conservatives before him, very little was going wrong. Every cabinet resignation was treated like a salacious scandal.
There's no infallible white knight coming. The next PM will be attacked just the same. This "resignation" (sacking) is the equivalent of the football club that sacks their manager 6 weeks into a new season after spending 300 million pounds on that Manager's signings. There's a greater chance that things will get worse now, rather than better.
The media are allowed to criticise politicians, democracy can't function otherwise. Even successful politicians receive constant criticism. Starmer's problem is that he had no base of supporters to counter it.
This piece has a very similar vibe to the endless hand-wringing analyses convinced that Kamala Harris lost the election because of Gaza. Left-of-centre people seem unable to look outside of their own ideological bubble and see that others are not interested in or motivated by the same concerns they are. Where they do reluctantly notice this, it's to pearl-clutch and have meltdowns over how their opponants are stupid, evil and vile. Moral outrage is not a strategy.
And no, Starmer did not implode because he 'appeased' right-wing populism. He imploded in part because he's a particularly incompetent politician, and in part because the media and social media environment today are extraordinarily hostile. It was more to do with blunders like the winter fuel payments fiasco than anything regarding trans rights.
Starmer actively purged the Corbynite wing if his party for being too left. Whatever the effects of his policies on general public opinion, letting a large percentage if your voters know you don't want their support is probably not going to pay off at the voting booth.
You're response is exactly the point that's being made, you're the person they are talking about. A 50% drop in immigration gets absolutely zero credit while you contend that what they really want to focus on is trans rights, even though that is a right-wing Boogeyman. That's the point, you'd be focused on those wedge issues no matter what happens.
On Kamala, objectively you're wrong too. If you have no understanding of the EC system you might be able to maintain this fantasy, but Gaza absolutely cost them Michigan.
I’ll say it. His legacy will be giving material support to a genocide and trampling on citizens rights who protested that. He deserves to be in The Hague
Saying a man like him should be in The Hague rather shits on the people affected by the countries actually committing said genocide, I couldn't even make a legitimate argument for Trump to be tried there currently and he's demonstrably worse.
Like go watch the Nuremberg Trials or something then come back and say that again with a straight face.
Complicity in genocide IS participation and illegal as per of the Genocide Convention. Its explicit in Article III.
Under Article I, nations have an absolute "obligation to prevent" genocide. If a third-party state continues to provide significant material aid (like arms exports) after it becomes aware of a serious risk of genocide, it can be held legally responsible for failing to prevent it; they are directly complicit in the crime. https://www.academia.edu/28689648/State_Responsibility_for_Complicity_in_Genocide
Under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) individual public officials, military commanders, or private actors can be prosecuted for aiding and abetting genocide. If a person knowingly provides the tools, funding, or resources that substantially contribute to genocidal acts, they face prosecution regardless of their official government status.
To suggest Starmer or Trump are somehow not guilty or responsible given their unwavering material support or legal cover for Tel Aviv's laundry list of war crimes is being willfully blind. Just because they'll probably never be charged doesn't absolve them. Bush and Blair also should have been brought to the Hague but nobody is surprised they weren't. Legal double standards don't mean the laws aren't clear or on the books, they only mean there is no stomach or mechanism to enforce them.
I think people in your replies have too high a bar for trail at the Hague. Not only did he allow British aircraft to fly reconisece for bombing raids that killed thousands of civilians, he defended the rights of companies in this country to build drones that do some of the bombing. They should do Tony Blair first, but in just world, he'd be going too
I'll say it. Those protesting civilians are supporting an organisation that went after essential military equipment at a moment Europe is threatened by Russia. These fifth columnists damaged the turbines of two RAF refueling aircraft and in an earlier incident fractured the spine of a female police officer that attempted to stop them from destroying other military equipment.
I would not be surprised if this was one of the many Russia funded sabotage attempts that have seen all over Europe the past few years. These Palestine motherfuckers went after Norwegian F-35s as well, despite Norway not being involved with the Israeli-Palestinian-Iranian conflict.
Governments are also hiding the degree of damage they really cause. Journalists in Norway recently published articles about how the damage caused was classified and that these activists really did cause irreparable (though replaceable) damage on F-35 parts.
Jail them and toss the keys away. These unemployed radicals can fuck off. There should be no tolerance for delusional tankies in a time of war.
The article's merits aside, this is a peculiar misfire that comes very close to self-awareness but avoids it:
> One of the many failings of reactionary centrism is its utter unfalsifiability: if you lose an election you have to move to the right on social issues to win next time. If you win an election you have to move to the right to govern. If things are going well politically it means it’s working. If they’re not, you need to give more ground. Appeasement, for them, is something reasoned from, not reasoned to. Reactionary centrism cannot fail, it can only be failed.
You could replace reactionary centrism with rally-the-base politics and several genera of extremism. The Americans have seen this from the Tea Party and Bernie Sanders types for close to two decades.
It is also notable that governance was not the first or only institution in British society in the last few years that succumbed to a wave of positions unfavorable to transgender people. "TERF Island" became an accurate description for the UK (well, minus geographic nitpicks like NI) some time ago. Putting Starmer at the pinnacle of that calls into question the article's thesis and rigor.
The point I think the article was trying to make with the commentary about trans rights is less that this is solely or even mainly Starmer's fault, but rather that, as the head of Labour, there was a hope he'd do better. It's one thing for Tories to do this - the expectation was that Labour would start reinstating LGBTQ+ rights. He didn't. He presided over the opposite, and it is absolutely valid to call him and his government out on that.
xbhaskarx | 12 hours ago
Very true, you can’t appease the right because they’ll never give you credit for anything… why would they??
> And yet almost nowhere is any of this mentioned in the media pontificating about Starmer's ouster. The right has not given Labour credit. Why would they? Camilla Long, writing in The Times, bemoaned that voters were concerned about immigration, but “the party doesn’t want to listen.” As if falling migration wasn’t falling massively, with net migration at 171,000, less than half last year’s figure. As if this wasn’t doing massive harm to our economy, as if legal migrants weren't having their lives made much worse, all to appease people like her. Instead, per Long, Starmer’s successor needs to focus on policies that “will make most of his party—especially the blue-haired city-dwelling Green-adjacent trans lovers who may fill his cabinet—squirm.”
Fearless-Feature-830 | 12 hours ago
What does the last sentence have to do with anything?
CassandraTruth | 10 hours ago
That's how hateful people talk.
Fearless-Feature-830 | 9 hours ago
I don’t get it
CursedNobleman | 8 hours ago
The UK has a vendetta against transgender people.
Fearless-Feature-830 | 5 hours ago
So who is being mocked? Thats the part I don’t get
Amethyst-Flare | 7 hours ago
It means that Camilla Long is a hateful bigot.
Replace "trans" in "trans lover" with any other minority group to see it.
xbhaskarx | 32 minutes ago
After the > is me quoting that article, so that's apparently Camilla Long writing in The Times. That's what conservatives think all liberals are like.
Aggressive_Chuck | 6 hours ago
> As if falling migration wasn’t falling massively, with net migration at 171,000
To the right, that's just more immigrants. And the whole two tier justice perception which he did nothing but inflame.
m50d | 11 hours ago
Bad as the right may be at giving politicians credit, the left is worse - the very existence of this piece is proof of that.
5x0uf5o | 9 hours ago
I'm just an Irish person who observes from the outside. What the UK needed was political stability for 3 years, but Starmer has been attacked by the media from Day 1 (worst first 100 days etc) when, compared to the Conservatives before him, very little was going wrong. Every cabinet resignation was treated like a salacious scandal.
There's no infallible white knight coming. The next PM will be attacked just the same. This "resignation" (sacking) is the equivalent of the football club that sacks their manager 6 weeks into a new season after spending 300 million pounds on that Manager's signings. There's a greater chance that things will get worse now, rather than better.
Just my two cents
Aggressive_Chuck | 6 hours ago
The media are allowed to criticise politicians, democracy can't function otherwise. Even successful politicians receive constant criticism. Starmer's problem is that he had no base of supporters to counter it.
5x0uf5o | 2 hours ago
Not disagreeing with your point about his support base, but I felt he got very unfair treatment in the media.
sennalvera | 14 hours ago
This piece has a very similar vibe to the endless hand-wringing analyses convinced that Kamala Harris lost the election because of Gaza. Left-of-centre people seem unable to look outside of their own ideological bubble and see that others are not interested in or motivated by the same concerns they are. Where they do reluctantly notice this, it's to pearl-clutch and have meltdowns over how their opponants are stupid, evil and vile. Moral outrage is not a strategy.
And no, Starmer did not implode because he 'appeased' right-wing populism. He imploded in part because he's a particularly incompetent politician, and in part because the media and social media environment today are extraordinarily hostile. It was more to do with blunders like the winter fuel payments fiasco than anything regarding trans rights.
pustak | 12 hours ago
Starmer actively purged the Corbynite wing if his party for being too left. Whatever the effects of his policies on general public opinion, letting a large percentage if your voters know you don't want their support is probably not going to pay off at the voting booth.
petertompolicy | 12 hours ago
You're response is exactly the point that's being made, you're the person they are talking about. A 50% drop in immigration gets absolutely zero credit while you contend that what they really want to focus on is trans rights, even though that is a right-wing Boogeyman. That's the point, you'd be focused on those wedge issues no matter what happens.
On Kamala, objectively you're wrong too. If you have no understanding of the EC system you might be able to maintain this fantasy, but Gaza absolutely cost them Michigan.
Fearless-Feature-830 | 12 hours ago
Harris didn’t lose because of Gaza, she lost because she was not a good candidate
butter_milk | 11 hours ago
And because Biden decided to run and no mainstream democrat challenged him in the primary.
Fearless-Feature-830 | 9 hours ago
Also that
pomod | 19 hours ago
I’ll say it. His legacy will be giving material support to a genocide and trampling on citizens rights who protested that. He deserves to be in The Hague
jahathebrn | 19 hours ago
Saying a man like him should be in The Hague rather shits on the people affected by the countries actually committing said genocide, I couldn't even make a legitimate argument for Trump to be tried there currently and he's demonstrably worse.
Like go watch the Nuremberg Trials or something then come back and say that again with a straight face.
Korrocks | 19 hours ago
A lot of people don’t really study history too closely which sort of tracks with the somewhat flimsy and casual arguments that people like to make.
pomod | 6 hours ago
Complicity in genocide IS participation and illegal as per of the Genocide Convention. Its explicit in Article III.
Under Article I, nations have an absolute "obligation to prevent" genocide. If a third-party state continues to provide significant material aid (like arms exports) after it becomes aware of a serious risk of genocide, it can be held legally responsible for failing to prevent it; they are directly complicit in the crime. https://www.academia.edu/28689648/State_Responsibility_for_Complicity_in_Genocide
Under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) individual public officials, military commanders, or private actors can be prosecuted for aiding and abetting genocide. If a person knowingly provides the tools, funding, or resources that substantially contribute to genocidal acts, they face prosecution regardless of their official government status.
To suggest Starmer or Trump are somehow not guilty or responsible given their unwavering material support or legal cover for Tel Aviv's laundry list of war crimes is being willfully blind. Just because they'll probably never be charged doesn't absolve them. Bush and Blair also should have been brought to the Hague but nobody is surprised they weren't. Legal double standards don't mean the laws aren't clear or on the books, they only mean there is no stomach or mechanism to enforce them.
AnIdentifier | 17 hours ago
I think people in your replies have too high a bar for trail at the Hague. Not only did he allow British aircraft to fly reconisece for bombing raids that killed thousands of civilians, he defended the rights of companies in this country to build drones that do some of the bombing. They should do Tony Blair first, but in just world, he'd be going too
PMmeplumprumps | 12 hours ago
>reconisece
Lol, reconnaissance
AnIdentifier | 11 hours ago
Haha - thanks - my autocorrect couldn't even work it out
varateshh | 17 hours ago
I'll say it. Those protesting civilians are supporting an organisation that went after essential military equipment at a moment Europe is threatened by Russia. These fifth columnists damaged the turbines of two RAF refueling aircraft and in an earlier incident fractured the spine of a female police officer that attempted to stop them from destroying other military equipment.
I would not be surprised if this was one of the many Russia funded sabotage attempts that have seen all over Europe the past few years. These Palestine motherfuckers went after Norwegian F-35s as well, despite Norway not being involved with the Israeli-Palestinian-Iranian conflict.
Governments are also hiding the degree of damage they really cause. Journalists in Norway recently published articles about how the damage caused was classified and that these activists really did cause irreparable (though replaceable) damage on F-35 parts.
Jail them and toss the keys away. These unemployed radicals can fuck off. There should be no tolerance for delusional tankies in a time of war.
No_Macaroon_9752 | 7 hours ago
When has it not been a time of war? This is just an excuse. If not Russia, the threat would be China or climate refugees or Iran.
dancingatdiscos | 15 hours ago
Zionist
varateshh | 13 hours ago
Israel has nothing to do with this. If tankies like you can't get that into your head then you will keep being the useful puppet of Russia.
PMmeplumprumps | 12 hours ago
Yes
Yrths | 18 hours ago
The article's merits aside, this is a peculiar misfire that comes very close to self-awareness but avoids it:
> One of the many failings of reactionary centrism is its utter unfalsifiability: if you lose an election you have to move to the right on social issues to win next time. If you win an election you have to move to the right to govern. If things are going well politically it means it’s working. If they’re not, you need to give more ground. Appeasement, for them, is something reasoned from, not reasoned to. Reactionary centrism cannot fail, it can only be failed.
You could replace reactionary centrism with rally-the-base politics and several genera of extremism. The Americans have seen this from the Tea Party and Bernie Sanders types for close to two decades.
It is also notable that governance was not the first or only institution in British society in the last few years that succumbed to a wave of positions unfavorable to transgender people. "TERF Island" became an accurate description for the UK (well, minus geographic nitpicks like NI) some time ago. Putting Starmer at the pinnacle of that calls into question the article's thesis and rigor.
[OP] Quouar | 16 hours ago
The point I think the article was trying to make with the commentary about trans rights is less that this is solely or even mainly Starmer's fault, but rather that, as the head of Labour, there was a hope he'd do better. It's one thing for Tories to do this - the expectation was that Labour would start reinstating LGBTQ+ rights. He didn't. He presided over the opposite, and it is absolutely valid to call him and his government out on that.
Historical-Cup218 | 17 hours ago
Do you even realize that you're proving the point you're trying to argue against?