The UK Thread, innit.

[pErvinalia]

[pErvinalia]

[pErvinalia]

Starmer dead in the water?

[pErvinalia]

Why is he so unpopular?

[Brian Peacock]

Why is he so unpopular?

There's a few reasons I think. First is that he's a bit of a personality vacuum in the age of showbiz politics. You've got to have a bit of zip, pzazz, spark, and he's just very dull - the perfect technocratic centrist, but dull. Dull, dull, dull. He's dull. Dull.

Second reason. Everyone knows the economy isn't working, that wages haven't grown since 2008, that jobs are more insecure than ever, that house prices and rents are far too high and rising, that school building are crumbling, that the NHS is being de-staffed, and even simple things aren't being done that everyone notices -- that the bins don't get emptied as often as they used to, that the pavements are a mess, the potholes in the roads never get fixed, the water is full of shit, etc. Before the election we all knew this was a result of George Osborne's austerity drive of the 2010 - which set the paradigm for govt taxation and spending policy through Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, and Sunak. Starmer promised change and a new way of doing things that focus on ordinary working people in contrast to the Tories basic policy perspective, which is to make sure the rich pay less tax and always end the week richer than they started it.

But literally the first thing he said to the nation after the election was that things were bad (yeah, right) and that they had to get worse before they could get better, and then straightaway he tried to balance the books by cutting the winter fuel payment to pensioners and change the rules and cut the money going to out-of-work disabled people. So rather than a message of hope and a vision of progress towards a better future he arrived in office with a story of despair and then said he'd freeze pensioners and starve the disabled. This just marked him out as an unethical, unscrupulous so-called 'pragmatist' - which is political speak for liar.

Also pivoting the party towards Farage's Racism UK party hasn't done him any favours with the grassroots. And then when people inside &/or associated with the party started challenging his essentially Tory approach he told them if they didn't like they knew where the door was - or as his spokesman put it, the mass exodus from the membership was just them, "Shaking off the fleas."

Basically. his govt doesn't have a coherent or discernable vision or policy perspective and he keeps brazenly promising stuff and then not just go back on it, but doing the exact opposite, and so nobody trusts him or believes anything that comes out of his mouth.

[Brian Peacock]

He'll be off soon - and then we'll be treated to a parade of chinless wonders seeking to replace him, to be decided on by the right-wing media of course.