Dave Coull Democracy Elections General Election 2024 General Election 2024 Labour Poverty Scotland Scottish Independence Ungagged Writing Writers

Built to last? Dave Coull doesn’t think so…

“It’s nice, isn’t it? The quiet.” These words, written by a Starmer fan in mid-July, sound delusional now. But as Owen Jones says, they were what Starmer himself and his colleagues expected. “The Starmerite theory of power went like this: Britain’s problems were largely explained by a lack of leadership qualities at the top. Sir Keir and his team were the antidote to this failing. Starmer was a man of moderation, who, as the former head of the Crown Proseciution Service, had experience in running a large public body. Flanked by Rachel Reeves, whose career began at the Bank of England, Starmerism would sweep away the Tory psychodrama and replace it with a new age of stability”.
However, “The theory underpinning Starmerism was always a fantasy. That the Tory leadership was low grade is without question “ but “The real villain was an economic model established in the 1980s, which, in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash and the ideologically driven austerity which followed, became incapable of meeting the needs of the country or its citizens”.
“There was never any enthusiasm for Starmerisn – its victory was entirely driven by Tory self-destruction”. But they “won” election with just one third of the votes in the lowest turnout ever seen since most folk could vote.
The way Starmer and co showed “the grownups are in charge” was by not only continuing with policies which had been failing since Maggie Thatcher, they even robbed old age pensioners Winter heating funds they’d had under Labour, Tory, and Tory-LibDem coalition governments for 27 years. And the clueless eejits actually seemed surprised, shocked at the reaction they got.
Starmer and co combined an attack on pensioners (and also on children in poverty, don’t forget!!!) with accepting loads of personal “gifts” for themselves from wealthy “donors”. That was corrupt and downright incompetent. “Change”? What change? NOTHING has changed. Starmer saying he personally will repay a small part of what he had been “gifted” makes it worse. The only sensible thing would have been to say we were wrong, return it all, and swear on a stack of Bibles never to sin again. Thinking they could get away with not doing anything like that is further evidence of sheer incompetence.
“Here is a classic Greek tragedy, of Hubris meeting Nemesis. Starmer’s clique clearly believed that having hammered the left with media approval, while the Tories imploded on their own account, they could continue to play politics on easy mode. Inflated egos, an absence of vision and principle, a dearth of integrity, and, yes, of competence, all brutally collided with reality.”
As Owen Jones says, “You cannot rule out this government disintegrating completely in office”.
He thinks Nigel Farage and co could be amongst the beneficiaries. Maybe they could be, in England. However, we shouldn’t hang about waiting to find out. Here in Scotland we can challenge the corrupt UK ruling class, moving urgently to break with them and all of their failed Thatcherite ways.

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