UK General Discussion:The Rt. Hon Alex Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, Populist Hero

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Obviously BoJo doesn't deserve to die and I wish him a full recovery.

However, I do have to say this serves him well for his disastrous management of the outbreak thus far. Usually, it's only ever regular people who pay the price for the mistakes of the ruling elite. It is nice to see that for once, a politician is forced to bear personal consequences for their actions. If that happened more often, the world would be a better place.

It used to not be that rare for a monarch to die in battle. 7 Scottish monarchs did.

And in other cases like Napoleon III, they didn't die but suffered the consequences personally as well.

Anyone want to take odds on how far we are away from things getting so bad that that's how Elizabeth II's reign ends?

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And in considerably more chilling, if wholly unexpected news, the Tories' update to the Gender Recognition Act looks set to be despicable load of TERF nonsense

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But any left winger also has to be honest that *part* of the difference is that at least some of the media are ready to give Starmer the time of day - in obvious contrast to the blanket unreflective indeed unthinking hostility that Corbyn received from the outset. Hearing people in the "real world" repeat that stuff totally parrot fashion was one of the most depressing aspects of the 2015-20 period.

Indeed. We shouldn't be surprised about it, but the transparency of the double standard to which Corbyn was subjected by the chattering classes has been placed on immaculate display by Starmer's first two months. Starmer's doing fine. Not outstanding, not dire, and mercifully devoid of own goals or missteps, but nothing especially deserving of worship. Yet, the commentary about his performance at PMQs has been so breathless, one wonders if Starmer's stans will have any superlatives left when the time comes that he does something to actually earn them!

Coming back to the original comment: One of the more dim-witted (not to mention obnoxious) slogans-masquerading-as-argument used in British politics is about having/lacking a 'proper opposition'. Corbyn's supporters denounced the Milliband era and post-Milliband rightist opposition using variations on that theme. Lib Dems deluded themselves about their marginal influence by calling themselves the 'real' opposition. The counterpart to this is the equally asinine rhetoric about what a 'real/proper' Prime Minister looks like. You hear that a lot in the US regarding the Presidency as well, usually tinged with racism given the most recent occupants of the White House.

In every case it's nothing but an expression of superficial tribalism, devoid of meaningful comment on the people/party/incident involved, or reflective of any trace of an underlying rational thought process. Ironically, it's most often deployed by the sort of people who believe their political views to be logically superior simply by dint of their instinctual knee-jerk approval/dislike of something.

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The media was definitely out to get Corbyn, but he and others had an knack of handing them the ammunition to do it, as well as never managing to deal with it effectively.

They adopted a policy of 'ignore first' with any negative press, especially if it came from agitprop rightwing outlets. That probably wasn't the worst approach, especially when, as you rightly point out, they were never going to let him get a win no matter how he played it. Sadly, it also meant that legitimate criticism went unaddressed, to their immense detriment in the long run.

As for them giving ammunition, I think the point is that Corbyn's actions, no matter how banal, were treated as if they were potential ammunition. It's a category error to use the metaphor of ammunition/defense to understand the dynamic.

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Meanwhile the Business Secretary is self-isolating after displaying coronavirus symptoms at the dispatch box.

So does that mean that BoJo is gonna have to self-isolate for 2 weeks again? Because one can obviously still spread it through contact regardless of one's immunity.

Is that true? I'm not a medical doctor, but my best understanding of the literature on the matter is that it's still uncertain, mostly because COVID-19 is so new. I suppose anybody exposed to it could spread it via fomite transmission.

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https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/uk-foreign-secretary-fire-taking-knee-comments-71320239

Britain’s foreign secretary has drawn criticism after he suggested in an interview that taking a knee appeared to be from “Game of Thrones” and was a symbol of subjugation.

Dominic Raab told talkRADIO Thursday that he understood the frustration driving the Black Lives Matter movement, before adding: “I’ve got to say on this taking the knee thing - which I don’t know, maybe it’s got a broader history - but it seems to be taken from the ‘Game Of Thrones’.”


“It feels to me like a symbol of subjugation and subordination, rather than one of liberation and emancipation,” he said. "But I understand people feel differently about it, so it is a matter of personal choice.”

A lot of very, very stupid things have been said about the Black Lives Matter movement & such: from the racists who think that "Black Lives Matter" means that black lives matter more than white lives, to the racists who wanted to find a new brand of tea because Yorkshire Tea wasn't racist enough for them, but thinking that kneeling during the anthem &/or taking a knee comes from Game of Thrones may actually take 1st place for being the most stupid reaction of all.

It plays well to BoJo's base, though.

But perhaps not Raab's. There was a BLM protest in Cobham (deep Esher & Walton). It was reasonably well attended, especially given the profile of the area.

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The hard truth is that the left of the party are so unpopular with the general public that the more they attack Starmer the more his standing will improve with them.

The only Labour leader to gain the party seats in a post-1997 GE was one Jeremy Corbyn.

Or is it some other "hard truth" that you had in mind?

2017 is a political lifetime ago...

The hard left had their shot and blew it, unfortunately. Partly because of controversies like these.

Funny, I thought it had something to do with the Labour right deliberately sabotaging them, but w/e.



Getting back to the controversy at hand: as usual, most of this is hyperbolic kabuki nonsense in service of political score settling, utterly divorced from the facts of the matter.

Here's the offending quotation from the article:

“I don’t know how we escape that cycle that’s indoctrinated into us all,” continues the 45-year-old [Peake]. “Well, we get rid of it when we get rid of capitalism as far as I’m concerned. That’s what it’s all about. The establishment has got to go. We’ve got to change it.” Born in Bolton to a lorry driver father and care worker mother, Peake is strident and expressive; if religion wasn’t anathema to her, she’d be perfect in the pulpit. “Systemic racism is a global issue,” she adds. “The tactics used by the police in America, kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, that was learnt from seminars with Israeli secret services.” (A spokesperson for the Israeli police has denied this, stating that “there is no tactic or protocol that calls to put pressure on the neck or airway”.)

The astute will note the reference is not about Jewish people or Israel, but about Israeli secret service tactics, and is mentioned in the context of a sweeping statement about the global nature of racism, not as an accusation or calumny against Israel as a state.

I can see how this puts people on edge, of course. It can be read to suggest there's a Jewish/Israeli origin to the repressive racism that set off the most recent demonstrations in the US and elsewhere. However, as others in this thread have noted, Israel has a well developed security infrastructure whose tactics and training have been exported across the world, including to the US. To call making mention of that the way Peake did antisemitic, even if it's wrong on the specifics, stretches the definition of antisemitism beyond recognition.

My last point: the article criticised Keir Starmer, her leader.

I'd have to read it again, but I took the point of that part of the article to be "I don't like Starmer but just like I told people who didn't like Corbyn you have to vote Labour to get the Tories out". Okay, maybe not a full-throated endorsement but Starmer would surely be fine with RLB promoting it to her supporters.

Again, the record is rather different. Here's the relevant line:

"What does she think of the new Labour leader? “You know what, at the end of the day, all I want is the Tories out. I think people will get behind Starmer, won’t they? He’s a more acceptable face of the Labour Party for a lot of people who are not really left wing. But that’s fine. Whatever. As long as the Tories get out, I don’t care anymore. You can’t be sad, you’ve just got to get on and organise, without standing at the rooftops and going, ‘You reap what you sow!’ There were moments when I wanted to scream that,” she adds with a doleful laugh, “but no, we’ve got to keep moving forward.”

To paraphrase myself from earlier in this post: if that constitutes being unsupportive of the Labour leader, the term 'unsupportive' loses all meaning.

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Yeah, I was wondering when Labor would start shafting Momentum to the sidelines. Wouldn’t think they’d do it over this though, but I guess they needed to show that the era of international solidarity being apart of the Labour platform is over.

International solidarity against Jews isn't tolerated, yes.

The dismissals of this being an antisemitic theory are wholly unsurprising and frankly a bit funny- they sound exactly like the refusal of many on the left to accept that Corbyn and his thugs promoted antisemitism. The exact same rhetoric. If ya'll want to continue down that path, be my guests, but reality continues to contradict the apologists.

Except the story is true, there have been cases of Israeli and American police forces training together.

Indeed it is. The only points to quibble about are that Peake made specific reference to the neck kneeling maneuver, which is not specifically indicated as being taught, and that she attributed them to Israeli secret services, rather than any other component of Israel's security industrial complex. These are distinctions without meaningful difference. The larger point - that Israel's defense industry has exported training and procedures that are being used in service of systematic racism in other countries - Peake is correct about.

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Indeed it is. The only points to quibble about are that Peake made specific reference to the neck kneeling maneuver, which is not specifically indicated as being taught, and that she attributed them to Israeli secret services, rather than any other component of Israel's security industrial complex. These are distinctions without meaningful difference.

The neck-kneeling technique claim is why Peake linked Israel to George Floyd's killing. It's not a distinction without a difference but the substance of her point.

It's the example, not the substance of the point. The substance of the point is that militarized police forces are used to oppress racial minorities across the world. The fact that Israel is a chief exporter of the training and tactics for said militarized police forces is an uncomfortable, but not antisemitic, truth.

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Indeed it is. The only points to quibble about are that Peake made specific reference to the neck kneeling maneuver, which is not specifically indicated as being taught, and that she attributed them to Israeli secret services, rather than any other component of Israel's security industrial complex. These are distinctions without meaningful difference.

The neck-kneeling technique claim is why Peake linked Israel to George Floyd's killing. It's not a distinction without a difference but the substance of her point.

It's the example, not the substance of the point. The substance of the point is that militarized police forces are used to oppress racial minorities across the world. The fact that Israel is a chief exporter of the training and tactics for said militarized police forces is an uncomfortable, but not antisemitic, truth.

There's a way to say that without spreading conspiracy theories that Israel taught the Minneapolis police how to kill George Floyd.

And if she had said (or even implied) 'Israel taught the Minneapolis police how to kill George Floyd', then that would be heinous. But she didn't. To repeat, her words were:

“Systemic racism is a global issue,” she adds. “The tactics used by the police in America, kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, that was learnt from seminars with Israeli secret services.”

Her point is about systemic racism and the way states through their policing organs collaborate to enforce it on oppressed people. Her phrasing isn't as nuanced as one would hope, but it's disingenuous to impute an antisemitic conspiracy theory from it.

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And if she had said (or even implied) 'Israel taught the Minneapolis police how to kill George Floyd', then that would be heinous. But she didn't. To repeat, her words were:

“Systemic racism is a global issue,” she adds. “The tactics used by the police in America, kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, that was learnt from seminars with Israeli secret services.”

Her point is about systemic racism and the way states through their policing organs collaborate to enforce it on oppressed people. Her phrasing isn't as nuanced as one would hope, but it's disingenuous to impute an antisemitic conspiracy theory from it.

No, her point is Jews bad. If her point is about systemic racism, she'd talk about systemic racism rather than spew blood libel meant to incite black people against Jews. Randomly starting to talk about the Israeli secret service is not it.

Her quote literally began by framing the issue as one of systemic racism. She raised a point about Israel's security services inarticulately, but it's a disingenuous leap of hyperbole to frame that as propagating antisemitism.

Honestly disgusting. Again and again people proving they don't give two sh**ts about antisemitism when it involves their side.

FWIW, it is precisely because I care so deeply about extinguishing antisemitism that I despise seeing accusations of it deployed mendaciously or ignorantly, as they appear to have here.

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I think what she posted was ignorant (it's not like the entire article revolved around that one line) but not done with hateful or malicious intent. She should have just said sorry and moved on, she'd have probably kept her job.

Pulling us back a bit, thank you! That sums up my view on this quite nicely.

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I've thought for a few months that we appear to be in the early stages of a divorce between the Labour Party and 'Left Culture'. I suspect both parties will be better off apart, but it is going to be messy.

I think that would be a mistake for both parties. The 'left culture' (hate that term, but I'll go along for now) is closer to achieving systemic change than it has been for 75 years. It needs a party organization to consolidate and propagate itself. Meanwhile, the Labour Party would be worse than useless without the animating force of the 'left culture'. It would sink back into the baleful and despicable Blairism that is, unfortunately, its natural resting place for the time being.

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Saying it a lot though is problematic. Especially if you want to be Prime Minister.

The problem with that metric is that it opens up a debate about 'how much' bigotry is too much. Zero is, obviously, the ideal. But that's not how individual instances of bigoted speech are treated, even by savvy and intelligent commentators.

By any reasonable measurement, the level of Islamophobia, or homophobia, or transphobia, or xenophobia expressed by virtually every MP and prospective MP ought to be disqualifying. I couldn't begin to count the number of times I've heard politicians at every level spout hackneyed stereotypes about the French, or 'colonials' (Canadians, Australians), 'terrorists' who just happen to always be Muslim, or 'predatory' trans people. Hell, Boris Johnson wrote a book called 'Seventy Two Virgins' where Jewish characters were said to have rigged elections and were 'controlling the media'. Yet for him, obviously, it wasn't problematic. It seems the outrage about bigoted speech is selectively fastidious and demonizing, case in point: the Peake/RLB kerfuffle. Even when the details are more nuanced, people seem to take leave of their senses and follow a seemingly arbitrary adjudication. Whomever yells loudest and is the best organized and direct in their messaging wins out.

Regrettably, as a result, the resulting appearance of a double standard in how 'problematic' any given accusation of bigotry is treated fosters a great deal of rancour and cynicism on all sides.

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That clip for me is a reminder that most people do not know that Keir Starmer was the director of public prosecutions (and most people don't know what that role is) & the 2-3 years of being leader of the opposition is about defining & setting a public perception.

Given this interview happened the same day Starmer 'both sides'ed on trans rights, I'd say his efforts at defining and setting a public perception are pretty disappointing so far.

Honestly, how hard is it for the leader of a (supposedly) left wing party to not sound like he's reading off Tory talking points? Calling 'defund the police' nonsense is precisely the kind of un-nuanced, dim, cowardly posturing that got us Milliband's anti-immigrant mugs and a PLP too scared to vote against austerity (which helped precipitate Corbyn's election). 

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I mean T-May already defunded the police so I’m not sure where the meat and two veg of this argument lies?

The result of which has been, and this news may come as a surprise, a rise in crime.

Believing there's a direct cause and effect relationship between the rise or fall in police funding and the rise and fall in crime is as obtuse as believing Defund the Police is merely a movement about budgetary concerns. May's cuts to police budgets were just that - a blunt, across the board reduction designed to save money as part of a wider campaign of austerity. It wasn't aimed at systemic reform or based in a fundamental rethinking of the relationship between citizens and state authorities, especially the ones invested with the authority to do violence, which any halfway informed description of Defund the Police would know is the central point.

Also, to this idea that the UK's politics are being 'Americanized' because of Rose Twitter, and therefore its adopting of the Defund movement rhetoric is anachronistic or unhelpful, I can only say: careful. First off, there's a long history of British elites deflecting attention away from their own culpability in Britain's domestic problems by blaming 'fashionable' external causes or events (the Vietnam War, abolitionism). Second, it tacitly silences and denigrates BAME voices who have been calling for years for precisely the same rethink about state violence and social services as the Defund movement.

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Between him and JK Rowling, Scottish politics does seem especially cursed with despicable gadflies these days.

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Though nonetheless, I feel the need to repeat this for certain people:

RUSSIA DIDN'T ACTUALLY "DO" BREXIT. RUSSIA DIDN'T ACTUALLY "DO" TRUMP.

The continued pretence otherwise from centrists on both sides of the Atlantic (again clearly on display yesterday) deflects from a far more pertinent reason - their own cosseted complacency for years and years beforehand.

Yeah, I mean I think the key question is ‘is it worth investigating’? and I personally think the answer to that is, ‘no, it’s not’. We know the electoral system itself is pretty much completely safe from efforts at vote rigging by foreign actors (a good reason to keep pen and paper voting). It also seems pretty clear that the Russian government didn’t provide any significant funding to the Leave campaign. So, what is left? A few Russian state and semi-state actors whipping up fake news on social media? Organizations like RT and Sputnik (which have a small following in the UK) doing the same through slightly more conventional channels? Nothing done by either wasn’t already being done, on a much grander scale, by UK politicians and UK media outlets who, once they’d picked a side, began flinging questionable narratives and fake news at each other with abandon (and this very much includes the not-so-saintly Remain campaign).

The fact that is the internet gives foreign actors an easy tool with which to spread disinformation and the only way for the government to stop that is for it to adopt a Chinese style approach to internet regulation (since ‘Russian bots’, by nature of operating outside of HMG’s jurisdiction, cannot be cut off at source). Even if you believe that Russian interference made more than a minuscule difference to the outcome of the referendum, interference of that type isn’t going to go away unless the government adopts of that more authoritarian approach to regulating the internet. In so doing, a lot of domestic political commentary will likely also be caught up in the net, unless you believe that spreading fake news is only wrong when the Ruskies do it. So that will also be incredibly controversial.

I personally think the Russian ‘interference’, such as it was, amounted to little more than background noise on the sturm und drang of the referendum campaign, and that very, very few people are likely to have changed their minds as a result of it. Therefore, I don’t think it’s worth raking over the issue in more detail. Any investigation into the impact of ‘fake news’ on the referendum result would do far better to look into the activities of British politicians and media outlets during the campaign (and of course, that already has been done, in detail).

Has it? Most of the investigations of the criminal activities of the Leave campaign were curtailed or dismissed on technicalities.

More generally, this perspective adopts a stunningly naive view of political power. It elides the overlap between nefarious external elements and their domestic counterparts. Expecting a government seeking to subvert another country's democratic processes to operate in such a direct manner as you describe is laughably simplistic, particularly given the present day infrastructure of oblique and occluded international finance mechanisms that the rich and powerful - state and nonstate alike - have utilized to bend events to their will.

Personally, I don't think there was ever a chance of this sort of inquiry ever holding anyone to account. To do so would be to implicate an ecosystem of legal corruption that benefits far too much of the elite castes of the UK.

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Has there ever been a time that a Conservative government has said "there will be no U-turn under any circumstances" that wasn't immediately followed by a government U-turn within 48 hours?

The Tories have a remarkable habit of letting some terrible policy happen, get flak for it, say they're continuing said terrible policy, only to flip shortly thereafter.

It's bizarre; I understand plenty of Tories in government care a lot more about staying in power than anything else, but you'd think they would realize they shouldn't pursue unpopular policies in the first place

It's precisely because their objective is power - as opposed to sincerely held ideological beliefs or deeply held ethical principles - that they entertain and enact these disastrous policies in the first place.

These sorts of politicians shimmied up the greasy pole of elite mediated electoral politics by placating noisy, narrowly interested, tiny but well-heeled/connected (and often mutually contradictory) constituencies. That effort - not the corralling of votes in general election campaigns or building campaigns of genuine mass appeal - is how they obtained power. Consequently, their instinct once in office is to placate and hedge, defer toward the conventional wisdom of the narrow elite that empowered them, and generally ignore the wider public. The Tories aren't the only ones who behave like this, of course. See also: Labour, New.

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Actually, whilst poll internals are always *always* somewhat suspect there *is* some evidence that Labour under Starmer have retaken the most ground in the "red wall" seats they famously lost last year. To win an election their vote distribution will have to become better "balanced", so grounds for cautious optimism there.

Well, the question is, why is Starmer appealing to that kind of Labour voter who voted for Boris Johnson in 2019? Why is Starmer succeeding where Corbyn failed?

It's not like Starmer is any closer to that kind of voter than Corbyn?

Well I'd say he's closer to them; there's been a clear effort to appeal to these traditional Labour voters; the piece on D-Day about care homes, the active silence over the Channel crossings, attacking the appointment of Clare Fox over her past IRA support etc etc.

This is on top of the fact that any Labour leader, including RLB & even someone like Lavery) would start at a higher base than Corbyn was at in 2019.

By then he had the fatal combination of being seen as out of touch (on brexit), incompetent (on anti-semitism) & in some cases hated over various issues in his past.

If you want an explanation of the specific issues facing 2019 (which I define as Labour seats held under Thatcher being lost) then this article from Phil Wilson, who lost his seat, sums it up very well.

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/labour-leadership-race/2020/03/labours-mess-predictable-result-leader-and-philosophy-hated

Alternatively, if you want an analysis of the 2019 election that's not 5000 words of whiny self-pitying Blairite nonsense, this is an excellent take

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Actually, whilst poll internals are always *always* somewhat suspect there *is* some evidence that Labour under Starmer have retaken the most ground in the "red wall" seats they famously lost last year. To win an election their vote distribution will have to become better "balanced", so grounds for cautious optimism there.

Well, the question is, why is Starmer appealing to that kind of Labour voter who voted for Boris Johnson in 2019? Why is Starmer succeeding where Corbyn failed?

It's not like Starmer is any closer to that kind of voter than Corbyn?

Well I'd say he's closer to them; there's been a clear effort to appeal to these traditional Labour voters; the piece on D-Day about care homes, the active silence over the Channel crossings, attacking the appointment of Clare Fox over her past IRA support etc etc.

This is on top of the fact that any Labour leader, including RLB & even someone like Lavery) would start at a higher base than Corbyn was at in 2019.

By then he had the fatal combination of being seen as out of touch (on brexit), incompetent (on anti-semitism) & in some cases hated over various issues in his past.

If you want an explanation of the specific issues facing 2019 (which I define as Labour seats held under Thatcher being lost) then this article from Phil Wilson, who lost his seat, sums it up very well.

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/labour-leadership-race/2020/03/labours-mess-predictable-result-leader-and-philosophy-hated

Alternatively, if you want an analysis of the 2019 election that's not 5000 words of whiny self-pitying Blairite nonsense, this is an excellent take

Written by someone who no doubt knocked on hundreds of doors during the election!

Deleted half my post because frankly I don't want to argue about the 2019 election. Read both pieces and work out which one is more accurate!

Hint: it's not the one written by the gambling industry lobbyist.

Thing is, there are *so many* rigorous serious analyses of the 2019 Labour campaign that aren't sanctimonious contradictory claptrap, I'm frankly stunned anyone who has an honest interest in discussing the matter would even think to reference Wilson's aimless screed in the first place. Besides the obvious factional bias, it's so internally inconsistent that it barely qualifies as observation. He accuses Corbyn of lacking leadership on Brexit despite running on precisely the platform Wilson advocated himself all through 2018/19. He repeats every falsehood and exaggeration about Corbyn promulgated by the tabloid press, then has the gall to say a hostile media had 'never prevented a Labour win before'. (If that were the case, New Labour would not have had any reason to exist in the first place!)

Graeber's take has its own shortcomings, of course. It's a 10 000-foot view of the election that lacks the ground level information Wilson attempts, and Graeber gives more credit to the media for shaping public opinion than it probably deserves. But at least he offers a systematic rational analysis of the short and long term trends leading up to 2019. Wilson's account is just a litany of personal grievance and wounded ego. Not surprising, considering he's the perfect embodiment of jilted New Labour entitlement.

And for the record, I don't know if Graeber knocked on any doors in 2019. But even if he didn't, he still did more to try to elect a Labour government in the past 10 years than Wilson did (or most of the Labour right, apparently).

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I'm very sorry for posting my opinion on the Labour Party on the internet!

That's a lie and we both know it!

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I would honestly welcome & read a long piece from someone like Laura Pidcock or Dennis Skinner on why they thought they lost their seats in 2019!

I'd of course disagree with large parts of it but I think for these seats if you've not reguarly followled Labour or UK politics you need an on the grounds demonstration of what happened in these seats; I think 2019 was such a flash in the pan election that the much slower trends that have of course dominated these regions can't be seen as the sole reason- especially when these seats were returning relatively stable majorities even during the historic lows of 2010 & 2015.

EDIT: There is one from Pidcock! But she didn't mention the T-Shirts that had been allegedly printed for her deputy leadership campaign!

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2020/02/letter-to-the-movement

I must confess I was underwhelmed by that Pidcock piece. Wading through the pleasant sounding fluff and TERFy dogwhistling, the only real, on the ground insight she offered was that the Tories got out their message better, principally about Brexit, while Labour couldn't get shake the perception of fissiparousness long enough to have its ideas cohere. Hardly the stuff of revelations. Still better than Wilson's moralizing New Labour schtick, though.

To return to the originating comment, I don't think Starmer's done anything particularly effective to appeal to erstwhile Labour voters, nor is he preternaturally equipped to do so by his style, biography, or outlook. The improved standing he holds right now is, as has been pointed out, more a matter of him not being the guy on the receiving end of a concerted 4-year campaign of character assassination (yet).

Sadly, I highly doubt this alone will help Labour do much better in the next election. Starmer may be more capable of getting a hearing than a polarizing leader like Corbyn - the chattering classes won't look down their nose at him or his ideas nearly as much - but he's just as much a creature of distant, rarified, metropolitan professionalism as Corbyn is. That's to say, he's no more capable of affecting genuine empathy from Northern working class constituencies than Corbyn did (and Johnson does, preposterously). Unlike Corbyn, however, Starmer can't rely on the enthusiasm of a mass movement or the promise of genuine change to magnify his credibility. Far from it.

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Speaking of which why is it that transphobia seems to be such an issue specifically on the left in Britain?

Like, in most of the world it tends to fit fairly neatly into the "usual" left-right divide. Yet in the UK, it seems to be the Labour party that is tearing itself apart over trans rights; it is often nominally left-wing or feminist people making a fuss about their opposition to trans rihts; and it was Theresa May of all people's government that tried to bring in the new gender recognition act.

Yeah, it's baffling on the face of it, but fairly easy to explain. Basically, it boils down to class and race (and there isms thereof).

Like many UK political movements, women's liberation has been inordinately influenced by wealthy, well-connected folks whose primary goals were less about dismantling systems of oppression and more about achieving respectability. (This happens elsewhere, of course, but the UK's stuffy class system reinforces it). As a result, its leaders have been more resistant to embracing 'radical' policies (trans rights now; gay and lesbian rights in the 70s/80s; reproductive freedom in the 50s and 60s; women's suffrage before 1900) than their rhetoric of social change, or association with leftwing groups on other issues, might imply. Put more bluntly, a lot of upper middle class middle-aged British women don't want to let trans people into their special women's (liberation) club because ... well, it's just not done!

This same dynamic maps perfectly onto the category of race. Women's groups in the UK, putatively liberal or otherwise, are overwhelmingly white. Consequently, there's been less engagement with the intersectional feminism that's helped propel trans rights into the mainstream over the past 25ish years in the US or other countries where non-white non-elite women challenged feminists on their assumptions about what women's liberation really means.

May and the Tories' relative ease with this issue is more a function of apathy than broadmindedness. They'd never been very concerned about the 'liberation' elements of feminism in the first place, so they never perceived trans rights as a challenge to their hard fought triumphs over patriarchy (as TERFs tend to portray them). Meanwhile, the anti-LGBT hard right in the Tories has been in eclipse since at least 2010, so there's not much agitation to take up the cause.

Also, JK Rowling. Ugh.

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Sadly, I highly doubt this alone will help Labour do much better in the next election. Starmer may be more capable of getting a hearing than a polarizing leader like Corbyn - the chattering classes won't look down their nose at him or his ideas nearly as much - but he's just as much a creature of distant, rarified, metropolitan professionalism as Corbyn is. That's to say, he's no more capable of affecting genuine empathy from Northern working class constituencies than Corbyn did (and Johnson does, preposterously). Unlike Corbyn, however, Starmer can't rely on the enthusiasm of a mass movement or the promise of genuine change to magnify his credibility. Far from it.

If this was *all* there is to things, Biden wouldn't be well ahead of Trump in the US. But he is.

I think some of the anti-Starmer left genuinely overestimate how much his background puts swing voters - even in the fabled "red wall" - off. And its not just a minor detail that he won't get the full on media assault that Corbyn did (over a period of close to five years, don't forget)

Still, I agree with you about Phil Wilson. Ugh.

(did his lengthy screed even acknowledge that the stance he had taken on Brexit and tried to get the wider party to adopt - for almost wholly factional anti-Corbyn reasons, mind, not because he ever genuinely agreed with it - was utterly and profoundly toxic to so many voters in his own seat?)

Of course not. He did manage to find 400 words to expound on the 'chose the wrong brother' axiom. And people say it's Corbyn supporters who are stuck in the past!

For the record, I don't think Starmer, for his background or any other reason, puts off voters in the North. He doesn't put off anyone. How could he? He's a safe, inoffensive, milquetoast cipher; the perfect embodiment of people who think putting in charge 'grown ups' and 'a real leader' will return Labour to Portillo Moment glory. His strategy is to avoid saying, doing, or possibly even thinking anything that could possibly offend the thin skulled man-in-the-street his legal training no doubt conditioned him to fear. That's probably going to help him manage the reactionary press better than Corbyn did, but gods help him if he eats a bacon sandwich.