"This kind of tone-deaf approach to a nation’s priorities is telling."
It's difficult to make Starmer out. I don't know whether this tone-deafness is a personality trait (some sort of mild autism, or an over-reliance on the rehearsal of ideas meaning he lacks the bandwidth to pick up nuance) or whether it is a deliberate strategy. Act dumb, and you don't waste time engaging with the awkward issues that people want to trip you up with.
Do people remember his interview in front of a live audience before the election, the one when the audience laughed when he repeated the line about his dad being a tool maker? The laughter was because:
a) He had kept repeating this line so often that it was being widely parodied across the internet.
b) It's known that dad owned the factory, rather than slaved as a proletarian for someone else's profit.
c) If dad was a tool maker, then he's made this tool in front of you.
All of that is obvious to any person with a normal mentality, and must be obvious to a candidate for the premiership. I would assume a team of younger media-savvy advisors will let him know how he is perceived by the public.
Nevertheless, he chose to misconstrue this as middle-class ridicule of his humble origins. ("It's true! We had difficulty paying the bills!") They were, he thought - or pretended to think - laughing at his dad for being poor, or doubting his proliness.
So maybe he genuinely can't see the world with any degree of nuance or empathy. If he thinks something is the case, then he honestly struggles to understand how other people could think otherwise. "Immigration? It doesn't bother me, so there can't be any problems with it!" Or maybe his lawyer's brain can indeed see all the angles, and it's a rhetorical tactic to just ignore the objections people raise. "We need population growth to boost uncapitated GDP, and I'm not pausing to argue with anyone who has other priorities ".
The first option would mean we have got ourselves a rigid blinkered ideologue in number 10. The second is that we have a scheming tactician prepared to rig the agenda and ignore the country. I'll be looking for further evidence either way....
Starmer the undertaker, doing his funeral advert - probably our funeral. Totally devoid of humanity and definitely not reading the mood of the country. His pomposity and false morality is a sight to behold. Not aware of the joke he is. Accusing the Tories of sleaze while shooing in civil servants from his donors. Totally needs investigated. He then gets huffy and ignores criticism. Seems to believe he should not be criticized. We are all laughing at him and he will hate that.
Fundamentally, Starmer simply doesn't understand vast swathes of the population outside of London. He is part of that tedious metropolitan elite who impose their narrow views on everyone without the slightest consideration of the desires and aspirations of those who bear the brunt of their impositions. You can get a good sense of which direction he is taking the country by observing the educated middle classes. Whatever their latest fad, hobby-horse or pass-time quickly gets imposed on everyone, whether it is recycling, healthy eating, cycling or environmentalism. They simply can't conceive that not everyone shares their latest obsession and has not interest in it; any whiff of push-back and they just wrap their obsession in some ersatz moral cause before forcing it down everyone else's throat. Cigarette smoking was unfinished business for them, hence the latest god-awful policy to ban it outdoors at pubs and music venues. Brexit is most definitely also unfinished business and that will be reversed sooner than most people think - it will be done in this parliament where they can use their large majority to force it through. The issues that really matter to people aren't going to get a look-in, are they? Democracy my eye!
One way to judge the calibre of a leader is to judge the calibre of the immediate team he choses to report directly to him.
Now form a view on Rayner, on Reeves, on Cooper and on Lammy - in terms of their knowledge, their problem solving ability, their accountability to the electorate, and their personal leadership talents; and now do the same for their boss.
Corporates with such a dearth of talent rarely, if ever, survive for five years. If only …
"This kind of tone-deaf approach to a nation’s priorities is telling."
It's difficult to make Starmer out. I don't know whether this tone-deafness is a personality trait (some sort of mild autism, or an over-reliance on the rehearsal of ideas meaning he lacks the bandwidth to pick up nuance) or whether it is a deliberate strategy. Act dumb, and you don't waste time engaging with the awkward issues that people want to trip you up with.
Do people remember his interview in front of a live audience before the election, the one when the audience laughed when he repeated the line about his dad being a tool maker? The laughter was because:
a) He had kept repeating this line so often that it was being widely parodied across the internet.
b) It's known that dad owned the factory, rather than slaved as a proletarian for someone else's profit.
c) If dad was a tool maker, then he's made this tool in front of you.
All of that is obvious to any person with a normal mentality, and must be obvious to a candidate for the premiership. I would assume a team of younger media-savvy advisors will let him know how he is perceived by the public.
Nevertheless, he chose to misconstrue this as middle-class ridicule of his humble origins. ("It's true! We had difficulty paying the bills!") They were, he thought - or pretended to think - laughing at his dad for being poor, or doubting his proliness.
So maybe he genuinely can't see the world with any degree of nuance or empathy. If he thinks something is the case, then he honestly struggles to understand how other people could think otherwise. "Immigration? It doesn't bother me, so there can't be any problems with it!" Or maybe his lawyer's brain can indeed see all the angles, and it's a rhetorical tactic to just ignore the objections people raise. "We need population growth to boost uncapitated GDP, and I'm not pausing to argue with anyone who has other priorities ".
The first option would mean we have got ourselves a rigid blinkered ideologue in number 10. The second is that we have a scheming tactician prepared to rig the agenda and ignore the country. I'll be looking for further evidence either way....
Starmer the undertaker, doing his funeral advert - probably our funeral. Totally devoid of humanity and definitely not reading the mood of the country. His pomposity and false morality is a sight to behold. Not aware of the joke he is. Accusing the Tories of sleaze while shooing in civil servants from his donors. Totally needs investigated. He then gets huffy and ignores criticism. Seems to believe he should not be criticized. We are all laughing at him and he will hate that.
Fundamentally, Starmer simply doesn't understand vast swathes of the population outside of London. He is part of that tedious metropolitan elite who impose their narrow views on everyone without the slightest consideration of the desires and aspirations of those who bear the brunt of their impositions. You can get a good sense of which direction he is taking the country by observing the educated middle classes. Whatever their latest fad, hobby-horse or pass-time quickly gets imposed on everyone, whether it is recycling, healthy eating, cycling or environmentalism. They simply can't conceive that not everyone shares their latest obsession and has not interest in it; any whiff of push-back and they just wrap their obsession in some ersatz moral cause before forcing it down everyone else's throat. Cigarette smoking was unfinished business for them, hence the latest god-awful policy to ban it outdoors at pubs and music venues. Brexit is most definitely also unfinished business and that will be reversed sooner than most people think - it will be done in this parliament where they can use their large majority to force it through. The issues that really matter to people aren't going to get a look-in, are they? Democracy my eye!
One way to judge the calibre of a leader is to judge the calibre of the immediate team he choses to report directly to him.
Now form a view on Rayner, on Reeves, on Cooper and on Lammy - in terms of their knowledge, their problem solving ability, their accountability to the electorate, and their personal leadership talents; and now do the same for their boss.
Corporates with such a dearth of talent rarely, if ever, survive for five years. If only …
Sterility. He’s no leader. Just a bully.
Every time I watch/hear Starmer I just think…..’How’?
Good stuff
A friend and I would love to attend but neither can make this date. Can we be alerted to future dates?
It says he wants to destroy the UK
Thanks for shining a light on the threat to free speech from this government, Claire.
Have cross posted
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/cool-hand-luke
Dusty