Keir Starmer is infamous for dropping pledges. While it’s common that politicians don’t follow through, Starmer is noteworthy for abandoning his pledges before taking power. This has given rise to the opinion that Starmer is untrustworthy (or a liar, if you prefer), as this poll from YouGov demonstrates:
What’s the situation here?
Did Starmer deceptively present himself as a progressive politician to become Labour leader, or is he simply a bit wishy washy?
By suggesting the latter without entertaining the former, the BBC‘s Laura Kuenssberg is doing Starmer a massive favour.
Starmer hasn't "changed his mind" about his leadership "pledges".
He lied.
Because he knew if he told the truth, he'd lose.#StarmerOut https://t.co/LghnPDXCDN
— Frank Owen's Legendary Paintbrush🥀🇵🇸🇾🇪 (@OwenPaintbrush) January 28, 2024
Trust in Keir
Kuenssberg was interviewing Labour shadow minister Jonathan Reynolds. If you’re unfamiliar with this absolute ghoul, we last covered him in a story with the following headline:
Labour use crumbling schools to promote austerity as Reynolds smirks like a demon’s possessed him
Here’s some text from that article to give you an idea of what sort of person we’re dealing with:
For context, this is what Reynolds looked like when he was introduced as the returning shadow secretary for business (following this week’s reshuffle). Imaging being this smug when your job is to tell an audience of millions that their kids can get fucked:
It would be hyperbolic to suggest that actual demons have infested this man; it would also be naïve, as Satan would at least have the sense not to smirk.
How does a person turn into this? Maybe Reynolds has an awareness of all the freebies that Keir Starmer has accepted from wealthy interests – more than every Labour leader since 1997 combined according to openDemocracy – and he knows he’s on the same gravy train? Maybe he just hates young people because of their flagrant hairlines?
Even after looking at the decades of evidence we have on austerity not working, some people will still be squealing that tired refrain: ‘but there’s no money‘. As people have pointed out, however, there’s loads of money – it’s just concentrated in the hands of the few:
The man is an absolute toerag, which is fitting, because he literally looks like a toe.
Lying = changing your mind, apparently
With that context given, we’ll get into what Kuenssberg asked him – specifically:
Keir Starmer has also dropped a whole host of pledges that he made in his leadership campaign; we’ve discussed them in this studio lots of times, and he’s changed his mind on how fast he would bring in that £28bn a year of [green] investment.
Now whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing for him to change his mind, do you accept that it has created that perception – for some people – that he doesn’t quite know what he’s about; that he changes his mind all the time, and therefore they’re not quite sure.
Some people might think that. Others are of the opinion that he’s a liar who told lies to attain power.
Case in point for the latter, before Starmer became Labour leader, he wasn’t openly taking advice from Peter Mandelson – an arch-Blairite, neoliberal monster, who was also an associate of deceased international paedophile Jeffrey Epstein (more on that latter link here).
What do you think is more likely – that post-leadership election, Starmer looked at a country blighted by neoliberalism and thought ‘what this country needs is more paedo-adjacent neoliberalism’, or that he actually held those opinions all along, and he simply lied through his teeth?
Propaganda
Indecisiveness is not something you could level against Starmer.
What you can say is that Starmer in the leadership election had a very clear political stance, and Starmer after the leadership election had a very clear political stance. These two stances are a million miles away from one another, but each is internally cohesive, and any journalist with integrity would point these things out.
Featured image via BBC
