In recent weeks there has been a number of protests outside hotels housing asylum seekers. Some of those protests have been organised by far-right groups. All of them are anti-immigrant and against the Labour government.
But in a curious twist, the prime minister announced on Monday that he is “at one” with people who want the asylum seekers out.
Keir Starmer enthusiastically threw his rhetorical support behind the views of the protesters. “I completely get it,” he insisted passionately. "Local people by and large do not want these hotels in their towns, in their place, and nor do I.
“I’m completely at one with them on that,” he said, and vowed to close “every single asylum hotel”.
Before he was elected, I think we all thought Keir was going to be “a bit too right wing” - however, I was under the impression, that like the majority of governments from the mid 1990s to the late 2010s this would be economically right wing, whilst being socially centre or slightly left.
As it stands, his economic policies are actually quite a bit further left than I was expecting, but what I absolutely was not expecting for a minute was that his social policies would be so far to the right I can barely tell them apart from Nigel Fucking Farage’s.
If you have a local Labour MP, write to them and tell them what you think of Keir Starmer. It might not achieve anything of note, but it’s worth a go. At least they can’t pretend to themselves that he has everyone’s approval.
Is Starmer economically left? I thought he was big on austerity.
In the larger scale of things, not really - but more left than most were expecting, and arguably has drifted leftwards from where it was under the Tories. Leanings towards possible nationalisation of (aspects of?) rail travel and production of renewable power, and had made quite a few pro-employees-rights policies around wages, terms and conditions etc (in favour of the worker, not the company owner).
Obviously moving leftwards from “very right” is still “right”.
I hope Corbyn can pull the UK up from the course of doom it is on.
I hope so too, though I’m not going to let myself get my hopes up too much.
I have a lot of time for Jezza, but he’s really piss-poor at handling manufactured media pile-ons, such as the false accusations of antisemitism that were directed at him and other Labour socialists. A more street-smart leader would have been better able to counter the lies, and to remove the disloyal party apparatchiks and Blairite weasels who facilitated them.
He’s also let himelf be suckered by Putin. He seens to think it’s still the jolly old USSR and not a security-mafia fascist state.
Even so, unlike Starmer, at least he’s not an appeaser of racist cunts.