Wes Streeting was always meant to be their Labour prime minister. The plan, hatched by a tiny clique of rightwing faction fighters, was this: find a candidate on whom they could fake a continuation Corbynism project to win the leadership. Then kick the ladder away from the people who backed them and the promises they made. At the next general election, given the scale of the Tory majority after 2019, get Labour back in the ring with more MPs and then hand over to Streeting. The real grownups would then be in charge and the subsequent election would be secured.
Given that this is the level of his thinking not all that surprising either.
‘But no one reckoned with Covid, Tory turmoil and the collapse of the SNP.’
Yes, it was ‘events, dear boy, events’ that doomed their cunning plan…
Starmer was always the First Choice. He had all the right credentials : human rights lawyer and could point at having had a job ( ie DPP ), devoid of beliefs or convictions, slavish acolyte of Blair. He has been groomed for this over the years.
The fact that he is utterly incompetent is beside the point, he was not supposed to be making actual decisions.
I think Streeting is only in the game, because Burnham, who is the anointed successor, won’t be able to find a safe seat.
The question that I cannot answer, though, is whether he surrounds himself with cretins like Lammy or Rayner to make him look better, or there really isn’t talent in the Labour Party.
“whether he surrounds himself with cretins like Lammy or Rayner to make him look better, or there really isn’t talent in the Labour Party”
There isn’t the talent in Parliament any more, not just in the Labour Party.
Can any Person of Pallor find a safe Labour seat for the next election?
Streeting’s old English teacher lives in my apartment block and observes that he always was a preening poof. She loved him, mind, being a commie herself.
It would be interesting to see Streeting’s attitude to Muslims and whether he would replace Starmer in Lord Alli’s inner circle…
He’ll have to bend over for the ones in his constituency, if he wants to keep his seat with a 500 vote majority over the gaza party.
Depends whether he’s a dominant top or a submissive bottom, craving a muslim cum dump…
That smooth, boyish face was just made to take it.
Inner circle as in ‘ring’?
Fag hag?
Just progressive. Half-Spanish; proud of family’s Spanish Civil War history. Typical well-off retired State teacher. Obviously proud that one of her daughters has married a nice, middle-class black man. Nice woman if you ignore all that.
Why would she be proud that her daughter has been blacked? Unconcerned, I could understand; but proud?
Because it’s so civilised and multicultural. An inner-city family: definitively metro-lefty. No idea what happened to her husband, or for what reasons: one doesn’t ask.
proud of family’s Spanish Civil War history.
Which side? 😉
Commies, natch.
“proud of family’s Spanish Civil War history.”
Proud of having fought for Stalin? The Stalin who became Hitler’s ally? That Stalin?
He’s doing more to privatise the NHS than anyone since Alan Milburn 20-odd years ago. While I would rather rapidly destroy the whole thing, he is in the “least bad” camp, better than any of the Tories.
Curiously, thanks to Labours dire state of the polls, Starmer is pretty secure. As PM he can call a General Election which would result in most of the people around him also losing their jobs. The survivors would be in a much reduced position, and possibly not even members of the opposition.
He is effectively playing out a scene from a film where he is in a room surrounded by people pointing guns at him, but is holding a hand grenade with the pin removed. “Take me out and you all go with me.”
Now you’ve got me imagining half of Labour being blown to tiny pieces. Hang on a min while I imagine it again …
They’re in a mess, which is only going to get worse. They’re ideologically opposed to anything that could get them out of the mess. Things could get very nasty after the budget and local elections. I don’t think they’ll push Starmer before that but with this lot I’m not making bets.
I’m not sure that, in practice, the PM can call an election against the wishes of the Commons, and turkeys don’t generally vote for Xmas.
It’s his call and not subject to a vote in the commons. The Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022 repealed the FTPA and restored the PM’s power to request the Monarch to dissolve Parliament and call a general election at any time, up until the five-year maximum limit
The monarch can ask someone else to try to form a government. Obviously that would require Labour to evict Starmer and elect another leader. If he’s gone to the King over the party’s heads that would happen very quickly.
Rishi Sunak did just this last year?
With the support of his party, because they were approaching the end of their 5 years, and it looked like the least bad time to call one.
In June 2024 Lawson was talking about a strategy that would get Starmer to power and keep him there. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/23/strategy-keir-starmer-no-10-labour
Shame it’s taken a year for him to wake up to the right wing conspiracy to install Streeting. Buyer’s regret?
I heard someone in Streeting’s camp claim that, should our Wes become PM, he would be the UK’s first gay Prime Minister. Evidence of a poor grasp of history; not only ignoring Teddy Teeth but the handful since then who were not brave enough to step out of the closet.
Yeah, doesn’t that go against the claim that nearly every* historical figure was gay?
*(except the slave owners of course)
for example:
https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/historian-discounts-claim-that-churchill-and-other
And (according to the BBC) of a dusky hue.
‘The next few months will make or break Labour. In people such as Ed Miliband, Angela Rayner and Andy Burnham there is a combination of skills and talents that could begin to get the party out of this existential mess’
Funniest comment I have ever seen,. The talent pool within Labour is sufficiently shallow that not a single MP on their benches would get a first round job interview in the City – I’m talking in a branch of Pret a Manger, not in an actual bank.
Not true. They have the talent to get where they are. You’re confusing this with the talent not only to be of value to society, but not to be catastrophically deleterious to it.
Fair – I don’t usually refer to having a propensity for evil without end as ‘having talent’ but I suppose it could be an asset of sorts depending on your politics.
Hanlon’s Razor:
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
But in reality, it’s a cripple fight. The people who get to be Labour MPs are stooges for the unions or the Co-op. The best person they can get. Which really isn’t a wide talent pool. They pick someone who will vote for more union jobs, more supermarket sites for the co-op. You don’t need to be that talented for it.
In truth, MPs winning a seat has almost fuck all to do with who they are. 75% of people can’t even name their local MP, let alone what they have done. If you ever canvass people you’ll meet the odd person who will vote for the MP because he helped their mum out. But most people are party. So you can put anyone you like in a seat and they’ll win.
And the other thing is, being an MP is a pretty shit job. You put in a ton of work for a party for free. Which might never lead to you being selected. And then, you have to fight an unwinnable seat. Then you fight a winnable seat, but maybe the party is out of favour so you fight 3 elections before winning. Then you win and you get a pretty good salary, but not great. Your personal life is put under the microscope. You have to live away from your family. And you might only get a few years of it before you’re back out into trying to re-establish your career.
You’re a smart, hard-working bloke, you can be senior manager in an engineering company and earn more, have a more stable career, probably do more interesting things. No-one cares if you shag your secretary. No-one stops you in Sainsburys as you’re doing your shopping to ask you what you’re going to do to sort out the price of football shirts or the trains. You get time with family.
Someone (maybe Cummings) described MPs as being selected from thick-skinned egotists. That’s the primary section criteria. But it’s also about doing what the unions tell you, or in the case of most Conservatives, just having a rich enough wife or family to pay for it.
I’m disappointed that more people haven’t joined me in calling him Stress Wetting.
He looks like the sort of soft boy who would be bullied in an ill-run school. Mind you, Dreary Kiery looks like a mummy’s boy too.
I would have thought Streeting’s maternal grandfather’s influence and maybe his maternal grandmother too, would have excluded him from those sort of problems.
Who dat?
Ah, I see – the descendant of gangsters. WKPD also reveals that the fucker has never had a proper job. Surprise, surprise.
The number of people in Parliament who’ve had a proper job can be counted on the fingers of one badly mutilated hand.