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Re: Starmer

Post by Bird on a Fire » Mon Jul 06, 2020 4:04 pm

El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Sun Jul 05, 2020 8:07 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sat Jul 04, 2020 3:27 pm
Yes, definitely. I don't think calling BLM a 'moment' and diverting funding to social programs 'nonsense' was a very good way of doing that. People from communities targetted by police racism are already suspicious of Starmer due to his previous role as a prosecutor.
He didn't say that diverting funding to social programs was nonsense. He said defunding the police was nonsense. The former may be the aim but the latter is an utterly godawful way to express it. It also makes no sense. We do not need to take funding away from the police to fund those social programs. Any major party leader suggesting we reduce the police budget is going to be on ice.

It's a slogan that comes from the US, where police budgets are so extravagant and social programs so woeful that it carries a lot of weight. There is nowhere near the same disparity here. The slogan doesn't work here. At all.

If people want to talk about more funding for good things then do that, but don't label it with a cartload of shite in the process.
I agree that 'defund the police' is not a great slogan in the UK context, but actually I'm not sure that the intention behind it is nonsense/shite (note: this is separate from whether or not it's politically palatable).

If we want to fund social programs more, we either have to cut existing programs or raise taxes.

Currently, the UK police budget is around £18 billion (source - a better one might be available), plus a further £3 billion for prisons. The £21b total is very similar to the budget for adult social care, which is £22 billion.

In other words, as a society we currently spend about as much money on caring for people as on policing them. Social care may not be the best metric, of course. Unemployment benefits cost £2bn. Adult education £1.3bn. Pick your favourite program that could help address racial inequality, and compare its budget to the program that exacerbates it.

Part of the argument made by BLM is not only that social programs are desirable, but that policing of minority communities is excessive. Black people in the UK are more disproportionately incarcerated than in the USA, leaving aside the stop-and-searches and intrusive surveillance and other forms of harassment.

Releasing non-violent criminals and stopping spending police hours harassing black and brown people would save money that could be reallocated, either within the police or to other programs that keep society safe.

In other words, the "defund the police" slogan reflects taking money from something bad, and putting it into something good. That's hardly 'nonsense', even if he has other options that he'd prefer or that play better with voters/newspapers.

Starmer could simply have used the opportunity to explain his plan to fund social programs without cutting the police - for example, by cutting something else, or raising taxes. He could show that he understands the criticisms of UK policing and its racial biases, and explain his plan to address those systemic issues without cutting the budget. Instead he insulted people who already don't trust him, which seems an unlikely way to 'build a broad coalition'.

It shows a lack of respect for the issues and people affected by them, and suggests that he's not actually interested in helping them.
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Re: Starmer

Post by Bird on a Fire » Mon Jul 06, 2020 4:21 pm

snoozeofreason wrote:
Mon Jul 06, 2020 2:15 pm
El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Sun Jul 05, 2020 8:07 pm
It's a slogan that comes from the US, where police budgets are so extravagant and social programs so woeful that it carries a lot of weight. There is nowhere near the same disparity here. The slogan doesn't work here. At all.
And also ignores the fact that, under the past 10 years of Conservative administration, central government funding for the police has been significantly reduced and, as the Institute for Government point out, the results have not been great.
When it comes to policing in England and Wales, there are a number of warning signs emerging. Victims are becoming less satisfied and fewer offences are resulting in charges. This is, perhaps, unsurprising given the fall in police spending, staff and officer numbers since 2009/10.

At the same time, complex crimes requiring more police resources – such as child exploitation and abuse – are on the rise. With reduced resources, the police have had to adapt to growing demand, and are increasingly prioritising responding to more violent or easier-to-solve crimes. They are also taking longer to investigate and charge crimes, but this could partly be due to the growth in the use of digital evidence.
Image
Exactly. The Conservatives have been defunding the police for a long time, prioritising the remaining resources as they see fit. So the argument that these ideas are politically unpalatable or intrinsically far-left clearly hold no water.

The case has been successfully made to defund the police in order to balance the budget. It should not, therefore, be difficult or controversial to argue for defunding them to address systemic racism. If Starmer thinks that maintaining or increasing police budgets is important I'm open to those arguments too, but I would disagree strongly with the suggestion that there's no problem to be addressed with policing, or that stopping spending on damaging practices couldn't address those problems.

And to be honest, even if it were nonsense, now is probably not the right time to be saying so in as many words.
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Re: Starmer

Post by monkey » Mon Jul 06, 2020 4:26 pm

Starmer does seem to have spent the weekend explaining what he meant was what several are saying here: cutting Police funding isn't right for the UK but social services still need more money. Don't know why he couldn't do that the first time.

Example: clicky

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Re: Starmer

Post by FlammableFlower » Mon Jul 06, 2020 5:23 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Mon Jul 06, 2020 4:21 pm
snoozeofreason wrote:
Mon Jul 06, 2020 2:15 pm
El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Sun Jul 05, 2020 8:07 pm
It's a slogan that comes from the US, where police budgets are so extravagant and social programs so woeful that it carries a lot of weight. There is nowhere near the same disparity here. The slogan doesn't work here. At all.
And also ignores the fact that, under the past 10 years of Conservative administration, central government funding for the police has been significantly reduced and, as the Institute for Government point out, the results have not been great.
When it comes to policing in England and Wales, there are a number of warning signs emerging. Victims are becoming less satisfied and fewer offences are resulting in charges. This is, perhaps, unsurprising given the fall in police spending, staff and officer numbers since 2009/10.

At the same time, complex crimes requiring more police resources – such as child exploitation and abuse – are on the rise. With reduced resources, the police have had to adapt to growing demand, and are increasingly prioritising responding to more violent or easier-to-solve crimes. They are also taking longer to investigate and charge crimes, but this could partly be due to the growth in the use of digital evidence.
Image
Exactly. The Conservatives have been defunding the police for a long time, prioritising the remaining resources as they see fit. So the argument that these ideas are politically unpalatable or intrinsically far-left clearly hold no water.

The case has been successfully made to defund the police in order to balance the budget. It should not, therefore, be difficult or controversial to argue for defunding them to address systemic racism. If Starmer thinks that maintaining or increasing police budgets is important I'm open to those arguments too, but I would disagree strongly with the suggestion that there's no problem to be addressed with policing, or that stopping spending on damaging practices couldn't address those problems.

And to be honest, even if it were nonsense, now is probably not the right time to be saying so in as many words.
Except I'd say that whilst the Conservatives have been reducing spending they certainly haven't done it from the point of view of re-balancing how to address certain issues. It's been purely a reduction in spending whilst claiming to be heavily pro-law & order and hence expecting the police to do more with less.

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Re: Starmer

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Mon Jul 06, 2020 5:35 pm

discovolante wrote:
Mon Jul 06, 2020 3:21 pm
I haven't said that Starmer should associate himself with 'Corbynite politics'. Sure he was asked questions specifically about defunding the police, but that's in part because the media just likes to ask provocative questions and politicians should be able to deal with that.
He did deal with it. He said it was nonsense. Which it is.
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Re: Starmer

Post by snoozeofreason » Mon Jul 06, 2020 6:37 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Mon Jul 06, 2020 4:21 pm
Exactly. The Conservatives have been defunding the police for a long time, prioritising the remaining resources as they see fit. So the argument that these ideas are politically unpalatable or intrinsically far-left clearly hold no water.

The case has been successfully made to defund the police in order to balance the budget...
I don't think you could say it was successfully made unless you had a relaxed definition of success. The Tory cuts to policing were part of a sustained assault on the criminal justice system that was always a weak point in the party's position, and proved unpopular even with naturally Conservative commentators. Had Johnson not promised to reverse the cuts in police numbers he would have risked the embarrassing spectacle of being out-manouevered on law and order by a Labour party led by Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour party manifesto, under which Starmer campaigned, promised that a Labour government would "Invest in policing to prevent crime and make our communities safer," that it would "Rebuild the whole police workforce, recruiting more police officers, police community support officers and police staff," and contrasted those policies with a Conservative approach they described as "Policing on the cheap." It's hard to see how he could then turn around and support anything that would be describable as defunding the police.
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Re: Starmer

Post by Woodchopper » Mon Jul 06, 2020 8:52 pm

Of course the Tories cut police funding. Its a Tory move. Yet another assault on government services which benefit the poor. The cuts in police funding occurred at the same time as the cuts in legal aid. They had the same motivation.

Via Full Fact here's the long term trend in police numbers.
Police numbers.png
Police numbers.png (30.86 KiB) Viewed 4515 times
A slight increase in the Tory years over the 1980s and early 90s, but that may well have kept in line the population increase. Then a big increase under Labour, which was reversed under the Tories.

Who was most affected by those changes in numbers?

The people who are more likely to be victims of crime live in areas with high levels of deprivation, and the least with lower deprivation. People who are unemployed are more likely to be victims than people who are employed. People who are disabled are more likely to be victims than people who are not. People who live in flats or terraced houses are more likely to be victims than suburbanites living in detached houses. Social renters are more likely to be victims than home owners.

All data from the British Crime Survey.

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Re: Starmer

Post by Woodchopper » Tue Jul 07, 2020 8:19 am

monkey wrote:
Mon Jul 06, 2020 4:26 pm
Starmer does seem to have spent the weekend explaining what he meant was what several are saying here: cutting Police funding isn't right for the UK but social services still need more money. Don't know why he couldn't do that the first time.

Example: clicky
He didn't first time because he f.cked up. This was a predictable question and he and his team should have worked out a response in advance. Having seen the interview he looks surprised by the question. Which for an issue that has been on the headlines for weeks is a serious lapse.

What Starmer needs to do is to develop a message which reassures people that Labour will try to protect them from crime, promotes police reform and also argues for increased social spending. Back in the day 'Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime' worked as a way to talk both about policing and about social programmes. Starmer can't recycle that, but hopefully he can come up with a modern equivalent.

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Re: Starmer

Post by discovolante » Tue Jul 07, 2020 9:26 am

I'm not entirely sure which bits of the police need money taken off them to go elsewhere but if there are specific arguments I'd like to hear them and will try and have a look around later to see if there is anything more. Anecdotally, in my very brief stint working in criminal defence, my recollection of the police was grotty police stations, people being on bail for ridiculously long periods pending 'investigations', and a complete inability to physically obtain evidence and comply with court orders. Also tech problems across forces (I had one experience of incompatible technology meaning a VIPER parade was incompatible with the Police and Criminal Evidence Act Code requirements and therefore potentially inadmissible as evidence in court). None of which points to an organisation swimming in cash in places where it's needed.

I also remember being involved in some stop and search 'know your rights' thing and teenagers (like 13/14 year old girls) talking about their experiences of it in school, they were already fairly unimpressed - as teenagers often are to be fair - but if that's their experience from childhood then it's hardly surprising if people grow up skeptical. I'm aware that the BLM org that Starmer is referring to in the interview may well have motives of its own and may or may not be entirely representative but I think it's worth trying to understand where people are coming from and why before writing things off as 'nonsense'. And sorry I know I sound a bit like David 'I met a black man once' Cameron in all of this.

I'm reading The End of Policing by Alex Vitale (cos it was free) and while it is very much focused on America one thread that runs through it is that, according to him, training to improve police attitudes and approaches, to improve diversity in police forces and so on, hasn't worked as far as racism in the police is concerned. So he then goes on to discuss various areas where the police should be taken out of the picture as much as possible - e.g. sex work, drug use and so on, but also those issues are going to remain in areas where the police are inevitably going to have to stay involved. So assuming he is right and also assuming that some of the problems are echoed in the UK (even if not all), I'm not sure how you address that.
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Re: Starmer

Post by discovolante » Sun Jul 12, 2020 12:40 pm

I know Dawn Butler is associated with Jeremy Corbyn but this seems to be a fairly reasonable set of comments from her on what's been going on recently, both in relation to Starmer and what she's been dealing with generally: https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... ssion=true
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Re: Starmer

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sun Jul 12, 2020 2:55 pm

Thanks disco. That seems to be an even-handed set of remarks from Butler.

I was pretty shocked by this:
Butler has faced humiliation at work too. She was once escorted out from a members room in the Houses of Parliament by a police officer who didn’t believe she was an MP, despite being vouched for by her colleagues.
I mean, FFS.

I was disheartened by:
Despite having served as shadow minister for women and equalities in the last cabinet, Butler was not involved in helping shape the party’s new racial equality strategy. “I wasn’t aware of it…I haven’t read it,” she said. She grimaced when asked if unconscious bias training worked.

“Learning is always a good thing, so you should never dismiss anything that educates. Keir is going on a bit of journey at the moment with regards to Black Lives Matter,” she said.
The strategy is here. It's more about cataloguing what diversity currently exists within the Labour party, plus announcing the intention to create other strategies in future to improve the Party's diversity, along with a 'fully integrated race equality strategy that spans across all government department' which I assume is where their actual policy positions will be developed.

I won't jump the gun about those forthcoming strategies, but I'm not impressed that Black Labour MPs weren't consulted in developing the Party's internal strategy - there's only a dozen of them so it's not like it would have been prohibitively difficult to email them a draft and say "what do you think folks?"
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Re: Starmer

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Mon Jul 13, 2020 10:14 am

Well, one MP has apparently not been consulted, but that doesn't mean all of them weren't. Marsha de Cordova is mentioned in the article you linked to, and is the shadow equalities secretary, so one assumes she's had some input, for example. It's also plausible that David Lammy will also have had some involvement, being the shadow justice secretary.

Also, the link doesn't go to the strategy, the link goes to an article where the strategy is announced, as the following paragraph gets at:
Starmer also plans to create a “fully integrated race equality strategy that spans across all government departments”, which will be developed alongside Labour’s race relations adviser Doreen Lawrence.
The measures there appear to be initial steps, which will be followed by a further, fuller strategy at a later date, once it's been developed. Doreen Lawrence may not be an MP but she is a particularly notable black woman, so there is prominent involvement from black people in the strategy, from the sound of it.
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Re: Starmer

Post by Bird on a Fire » Wed Jul 15, 2020 3:58 am

discovolante wrote:
Sun Jul 05, 2020 2:32 pm
Grumble wrote:
Sat Jul 04, 2020 2:58 pm
discovolante wrote:
Sat Jul 04, 2020 12:57 pm


So the issue should be dropped to keep these people happy, or worked on over the next 3 years, 9 months, and 28 days which at the moment is when the next GE is going to be? Why are their votes more important? Just because there presumably aren't many black people in swing seats?
If Labour is to be a broad coalition it must find ways of bringing along people with very different views on some things.
What BOAF said. But even if the only way for Labour to win a GE is to desperately avoid offending the sensibilities of slightly racist middle aged white men by demonstrating a modicum of concern for people who aren't them, when *do* Labour get to address this? Immediately after winning? Or should they ignore it until after they've got other policies in first? Should they only do it if they win a landslide so they can be sure it won't lose them too many votes at the next GE? Should they wait until winning a second GE so there is enough time for the policies they'd already started to implement to bed in properly if it did cost them a third GE? At what point do these people's needs and dignity matter enough to become enough of a priority for Labour to act on them?
I just quoted MLK in another thread, but it reminded me of this post.
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I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice;...who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
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Re: Starmer

Post by discovolante » Wed Jul 15, 2020 6:28 am

Heh yeah, that quote had been flying around in my head quite a lot too but I felt like what with me quoting Toni Morrison, calling up MLK as well might have been a step too far. But you are most welcome to :) MLK is a lot more eloquent than me anyway.
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Re: Starmer

Post by discovolante » Wed Jul 15, 2020 8:26 pm

El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Mon Jul 13, 2020 10:14 am
Well, one MP has apparently not been consulted, but that doesn't mean all of them weren't. Marsha de Cordova is mentioned in the article you linked to, and is the shadow equalities secretary, so one assumes she's had some input, for example. It's also plausible that David Lammy will also have had some involvement, being the shadow justice secretary.

Also, the link doesn't go to the strategy, the link goes to an article where the strategy is announced, as the following paragraph gets at:
Starmer also plans to create a “fully integrated race equality strategy that spans across all government departments”, which will be developed alongside Labour’s race relations adviser Doreen Lawrence.
The measures there appear to be initial steps, which will be followed by a further, fuller strategy at a later date, once it's been developed. Doreen Lawrence may not be an MP but she is a particularly notable black woman, so there is prominent involvement from black people in the strategy, from the sound of it.
I don't quite understand why all of them could not have been asked if they wanted to have input in some way. But yes it's not as if all of them were ignored and I hope it is successful. The focus seems to be on level of representation i.e. numbers rather than actual culture within the party. I appreciate there is an internal investigation underway though which I hope investigates all issues of discriminatory culture. But in terms of the strategy I'm a bit put off by the announcement of a 'training module' - I hope that following the investigation it goes further than that. I mean we've all done 'equality and diversity' training modules at work (one of the ones I did misgendered a trans person, ffs) and how they all seem to magically make people suddenly not be bigots any more.

Going back to the 'defunding the police is nonsense' interview, the perception I have of it now a couple of weeks later is that, as Woodchopper pointed out, he seemed caught off guard and hadn't expected the question, which is pretty poor. And even if he had no reason to expect the question in *that* interview, it seemed to be a topic he hadn't previously really been required to give much thought to in terms of the various issues it throws up and where people with differing perspectives might be coming from. As he has subsequently said he will undertake 'unconscious bias' training and has backtracked a bit in interviews, he seems to have acknowledged that. So it really doesn't seem like it was a position he deliberately chose to take to avoid upsetting newspapers. All of which seems quite weird for an experienced politician and former DPP. Either way you look at it it doesn't reflect hugely well in my opinion, but if the way I've interpreted it is correct (which it might not be, wtf do I know about the inner workings of the Labour party), he does seem to be genuine about trying to work on that even if he has been trying to cover his track a bit in the media, so all credit to him for that.

Well all that sounded very pompous so I apologise for the tone.
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Re: Starmer

Post by dyqik » Wed Jul 15, 2020 8:55 pm

discovolante wrote:
Wed Jul 15, 2020 8:26 pm
El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Mon Jul 13, 2020 10:14 am
Well, one MP has apparently not been consulted, but that doesn't mean all of them weren't. Marsha de Cordova is mentioned in the article you linked to, and is the shadow equalities secretary, so one assumes she's had some input, for example. It's also plausible that David Lammy will also have had some involvement, being the shadow justice secretary.

Also, the link doesn't go to the strategy, the link goes to an article where the strategy is announced, as the following paragraph gets at:
Starmer also plans to create a “fully integrated race equality strategy that spans across all government departments”, which will be developed alongside Labour’s race relations adviser Doreen Lawrence.
The measures there appear to be initial steps, which will be followed by a further, fuller strategy at a later date, once it's been developed. Doreen Lawrence may not be an MP but she is a particularly notable black woman, so there is prominent involvement from black people in the strategy, from the sound of it.
I don't quite understand why all of them could not have been asked if they wanted to have input in some way. But yes it's not as if all of them were ignored and I hope it is successful. The focus seems to be on level of representation i.e. numbers rather than actual culture within the party. I appreciate there is an internal investigation underway though which I hope investigates all issues of discriminatory culture. But in terms of the strategy I'm a bit put off by the announcement of a 'training module' - I hope that following the investigation it goes further than that. I mean we've all done 'equality and diversity' training modules at work (one of the ones I did misgendered a trans person, ffs) and how they all seem to magically make people suddenly not be bigots any more.

Going back to the 'defunding the police is nonsense' interview, the perception I have of it now a couple of weeks later is that, as Woodchopper pointed out, he seemed caught off guard and hadn't expected the question, which is pretty poor. And even if he had no reason to expect the question in *that* interview, it seemed to be a topic he hadn't previously really been required to give much thought to in terms of the various issues it throws up and where people with differing perspectives might be coming from. As he has subsequently said he will undertake 'unconscious bias' training and has backtracked a bit in interviews, he seems to have acknowledged that. So it really doesn't seem like it was a position he deliberately chose to take to avoid upsetting newspapers. All of which seems quite weird for an experienced politician and former DPP. Either way you look at it it doesn't reflect hugely well in my opinion, but if the way I've interpreted it is correct (which it might not be, wtf do I know about the inner workings of the Labour party), he does seem to be genuine about trying to work on that even if he has been trying to cover his track a bit in the media, so all credit to him for that.

This pretty much agrees with my perceptions of all this.
discovolante wrote:
Wed Jul 15, 2020 8:26 pm
Well all that sounded very pompous so I apologise for the tone.
Defund the Tone Police!

I don't think it sounds pompous, btw.

(also, is it OK to punch a grammar Nazi?)

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Re: Starmer

Post by jimbob » Wed Jul 15, 2020 9:44 pm

dyqik wrote:
Wed Jul 15, 2020 8:55 pm
discovolante wrote:
Wed Jul 15, 2020 8:26 pm
El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Mon Jul 13, 2020 10:14 am
Well, one MP has apparently not been consulted, but that doesn't mean all of them weren't. Marsha de Cordova is mentioned in the article you linked to, and is the shadow equalities secretary, so one assumes she's had some input, for example. It's also plausible that David Lammy will also have had some involvement, being the shadow justice secretary.

Also, the link doesn't go to the strategy, the link goes to an article where the strategy is announced, as the following paragraph gets at:



The measures there appear to be initial steps, which will be followed by a further, fuller strategy at a later date, once it's been developed. Doreen Lawrence may not be an MP but she is a particularly notable black woman, so there is prominent involvement from black people in the strategy, from the sound of it.
I don't quite understand why all of them could not have been asked if they wanted to have input in some way. But yes it's not as if all of them were ignored and I hope it is successful. The focus seems to be on level of representation i.e. numbers rather than actual culture within the party. I appreciate there is an internal investigation underway though which I hope investigates all issues of discriminatory culture. But in terms of the strategy I'm a bit put off by the announcement of a 'training module' - I hope that following the investigation it goes further than that. I mean we've all done 'equality and diversity' training modules at work (one of the ones I did misgendered a trans person, ffs) and how they all seem to magically make people suddenly not be bigots any more.

Going back to the 'defunding the police is nonsense' interview, the perception I have of it now a couple of weeks later is that, as Woodchopper pointed out, he seemed caught off guard and hadn't expected the question, which is pretty poor. And even if he had no reason to expect the question in *that* interview, it seemed to be a topic he hadn't previously really been required to give much thought to in terms of the various issues it throws up and where people with differing perspectives might be coming from. As he has subsequently said he will undertake 'unconscious bias' training and has backtracked a bit in interviews, he seems to have acknowledged that. So it really doesn't seem like it was a position he deliberately chose to take to avoid upsetting newspapers. All of which seems quite weird for an experienced politician and former DPP. Either way you look at it it doesn't reflect hugely well in my opinion, but if the way I've interpreted it is correct (which it might not be, wtf do I know about the inner workings of the Labour party), he does seem to be genuine about trying to work on that even if he has been trying to cover his track a bit in the media, so all credit to him for that.

This pretty much agrees with my perceptions of all this.
discovolante wrote:
Wed Jul 15, 2020 8:26 pm
Well all that sounded very pompous so I apologise for the tone.
Defund the Tone Police!

I don't think it sounds pompous, btw.

(also, is it OK to punch a grammar Nazi?)
If it's the person behind the Daily Stormer, then yes

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Re: Starmer

Post by discovolante » Fri Jul 24, 2020 10:35 am

Sorry this has been bugging me even though it is basically just business as usual for Boris.

I saw a clip of this week's PMQs where Keir Starmer asked him a question about the Russia Report, and he responded with a load of waffle about Starmer trying to underline the will of the British people blah blah.

But sorry, if he actually believed what he is saying, it seems he thinks Keir Starmer genuinely believes that despite the fact that we have left the EU and the deadline for getting an extension to negotiate the final deal further has long passed, the Russia Report - which I admittedly haven't read but from what I gather doesn't actually produce evidence of Russian interference due to the gov turning a blind eye - will somehow manage to 'stop Brexit'? Is that it? Does he think Starmer is some kind of fantasist?

I KNOW it was all just bluster for the Commons and the press and I shouldn't take it literally, but really?
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Re: Starmer

Post by jimbob » Fri Jul 24, 2020 11:31 am

discovolante wrote:
Fri Jul 24, 2020 10:35 am
Sorry this has been bugging me even though it is basically just business as usual for Boris.

I saw a clip of this week's PMQs where Keir Starmer asked him a question about the Russia Report, and he responded with a load of waffle about Starmer trying to underline the will of the British people blah blah.

But sorry, if he actually believed what he is saying, it seems he thinks Keir Starmer genuinely believes that despite the fact that we have left the EU and the deadline for getting an extension to negotiate the final deal further has long passed, the Russia Report - which I admittedly haven't read but from what I gather doesn't actually produce evidence of Russian interference due to the gov turning a blind eye - will somehow manage to 'stop Brexit'? Is that it? Does he think Starmer is some kind of fantasist?

I KNOW it was all just bluster for the Commons and the press and I shouldn't take it literally, but really?
Exactly. He's trying to pin things on Labour and so far failing.

His preprepared flip-flop gag was interesting. Someone posted on Twitter - I can't recall who, and the Tory MPs looked to enjoy Starmer's response, where he basically shredded Johnson.

If I was Johnson, I'd be worried about a 1922 Committee leadership challenge.

here:

https://twitter.com/EmmaKennedy/status/ ... 7881520132
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Re: Starmer

Post by Bird on a Fire » Fri Jul 24, 2020 1:23 pm

I haven't watched a clip of Johnson for ages, probably since I was last in the UK at Christmas.

God that was sh.t. He's massively out of his depth, isn't he? What a c.nt. Starmer's delivery there was almost exactly what Johnson was aiming for and fell short.
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Re: Starmer

Post by Grumble » Fri Jul 24, 2020 6:27 pm

Doesn’t Boris try and get the flip-flop joke in every week? Keir has had plenty of time to work up a good response.
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Re: Starmer

Post by jimbob » Fri Jul 24, 2020 6:53 pm

Grumble wrote:
Fri Jul 24, 2020 6:27 pm
Doesn’t Boris try and get the flip-flop joke in every week? Keir has had plenty of time to work up a good response.
I think so. And it's a very dangerous line of attack as Johnson is far more vulnerable
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Re: Starmer

Post by Little waster » Fri Jul 24, 2020 7:18 pm

jimbob wrote:
Fri Jul 24, 2020 6:53 pm
Grumble wrote:
Fri Jul 24, 2020 6:27 pm
Doesn’t Boris try and get the flip-flop joke in every week? Keir has had plenty of time to work up a good response.
I think so. And it's a very dangerous line of attack as Johnson is far more vulnerable
It doesn’t even work as an attack line; essentially Johnson is accusing him of supporting Remain but then accepteding the will of the people and resigning himself to Brexit, exactly as the Brexiteers have been demanding all along.

I didn’t catch it myself but that twitter feed is claiming the BBC news only showed Johnson’s failed gag and not Starmer’s zinger of a retort so all the casual viewer would take home is Johnson “won” and Starmer is a flip-flopper. :|
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Re: Starmer

Post by discovolante » Fri Jul 24, 2020 7:32 pm

Last week it was a 'briefs' joke as in Keir Starmer has more briefs than Calvin Klein; ITV only showed that gag and not the question which was about bereaved families. Ladies and gents, the mainstream British press. I don't think it actually matters if Johnson is sh.t at PMQs. sh.t delivery doesn't show in a written headline and the TV news just edits to show what it wants.
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Re: Starmer

Post by Bird on a Fire » Fri Jul 24, 2020 8:56 pm

Prediction: people who mocked Corbyn supporters (and putting-up-with-ers) for lamenting the role of the mainstream media in undermining the Labour leader will suddenly now notice it happening to their spick-and-span media-friendly guy.
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