His relationship with Starmer is much the same as Rod Hull enjoyed with Emu.
Labour’s paedophile Twitter post
- Thread starter sherlock
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BoroMart
Well-known member
Domestically a return to Blairite policies would be an enormous improvement
Scrote
Well-known member
I didn't say that. One bad thing is a bad thing. Trying to excuse wrongdoing because someone else did the same thing more often just proves that there is a massive moral vacuum at the heart of Labour.
You said that the Tories had normalised lying. You said we (Labour?) were going to aim to be better.
How is normalising Labour as a party of lies in any way better - never mind perfect?
The fact they've just started to do it in this way (with the posters) means we can't yet quantify how often Labour might lie in the future. What we do know is that Starmer, with his reneging on pledges, is a habitual liar. He has now pushed the party as a whole down the 'lets lie to the electorate' route. There is no going back.
You're welcome to whatever the future holds. I'm done with it. I'll look after me and my own and you can accuse me of being a Tory enabler despite you accepting Tory values for the sake of power.
Scrote
Well-known member
Just want to add that I don't hold any animosity to you, personally, or anyone that is trying to GTTO.
I genuinely feel we're back at the Blair 1997 moment when we could have gone so far left the Commies would be worried but we sacked it all off for the safety of power for powers sake and a comfortable bunk up with Murdoch et al.
We are where we are because Blair and Brown bottled it, in my opinion (and that's nothing to do with what followed re Iraq etc.).
These opportunities don't come along often and every time they do the party is hijacked by those who would have been Liberals in another age.
We need to be braver.
HolgateCorner
Well-known member
To get into power though you have to give enough of the electorate enough of what they want to get them to vote for you.
You can’t just assume it’s Labour’s turn so they will get 40% of the vote and into government just like that.
Those millions of cap doffers out there will soon run back to the Tories if the media can portray Labour as a bunch of dangerous lefty subversives who will have the last shilling out of your pocket, oh and let the boats in as well…
Okay well I disagree. To me the names/faces/personalities involved is a bit of a triviality.
here we go again. Double standards and hypocrisy. Don't mention the 1m dead cause Blair personally isn't on the benches but do mention the modest domestic successes.
Scrote
Well-known member
If you can't win those voters over with good policy and reasoned debate then it's a pyrrhic victory anyway.
If Labour get into power on the back of "We're going to starve more poor people than the Tories" then they either have to follow that through or they lose those votes forever - not just the next election.
Look at the Lib Dems. Utterly destroyed by going into a coalition with the Tories. Would you say that any of it was worth it?
Austerity, Brexit, Corruption - the ABC of Tory Britain - all the direct result of that decision.
If Labour get this wrong then the consequences will be disastrous.
BoroMart
Well-known member
How is that double standards, I specifically stated the domestic economic policy which is nothing to do with Iraq. It also wasn’t “modest economic success”, it was the longest run of growth on record.Okay well I disagree. To me the names/faces/personalities involved is a bit of a triviality.
As for the “1m dead trope”, it really isn’t that simple, are you suggesting that Saddam Hussain was a benevolent leader who didn’t murder his own people en mass and Stoke war at every opportunity. How many people died under his regime be it Iraqis or neighbours he invaded or warred with? History tells us he would be responsible for untold deaths if he had remained in power too. Because that’s what the murderous old b****d did. It’s far too simplistic to say “1m” people died so that was the cost of the war, when there was also a cost to not invading.
As for this current Labour Party the politicians are not responsible for Blair’s words or actions, just like the Tories are not responsible for thatchers. They are responsible for the last 13 years though
I don't care about the history of the parties or what they might have said and done in the past. I know for a fact that the leaders of the Tories are contemptible liars and I also know that Starmer is a liar. I don't need historic lies, successes or failures from either party to make that decision. Starmer has/had the opportunity not to be a liar, to morally come out on top. He could have held up a mirror to the Tories and insisted on being better than them but instead he's decided to become their reflection.
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BoroMart
Well-known member
Agreed but did that stance get Corbyn into power or did the Tories double down and vilify him.
Is Starmer more honest and adult than the head Tories, yes. Better might not be perfect, but it’s better
This is a completely disingenuous argument to make. Corbyn didn't lose because he was honest. He wouldn't have won if he told a load of lies. He lost for a multitude of reasons. Some of the biggest reasons being that he was unable to come up with a position on Brexit that satisfied anyone, he was attacked by his own party as much as the Tories, he had a very long career which included things like meeting with terrorists which was easy to attack even though there was no ill intention on his part, he was accused of being a racist eve though he has been arrested for anti-racism protests etc.
Sick of reading that Corbyn lost so we have to change Labour to be different than every single thing he did, said or stood for. It is nonsense. He lost for two specific reasons, his Brexit strategy and because he was Jeremy Corbyn. Brexit is gone so that's no longer relevant and Corbyn has gone so that is no longer relevant. Jeremy Corbyn in disguise in a Keir Starmer body suit would absolutely walk an election today. He never lost because of his honesty, integrity or his policies.
BoroMart
Well-known member
One of those reasons being that his honesty was weaponised against him. It made him a really easy target for the press who did the biggest ever hatchet job of an opposition leader I’ve ever seen and I remember the Kinnock years.
Politics is unfortunately a dirty business, and nice guys usually come last in that environment I’m afraid
Scrote
Well-known member
It wasn't just the Tories vilifying him. The people you want us all to trust played a large and telling part in the destruction of Corbynism.
No. Honesty is binary. You're either honest or you're not.
And "perfect is the enemy of good" doesn't translate to "don't be good if you can get away with bad".
BoroMart
Well-known member
True some of the current Labour leaders didn’t back Corbyn and they absolutely should have.
If honesty is binary give me an example of a honest person, just one person who has never told a lie…
Scrote
Well-known member
Why? What purpose would that serve?
As I said much earlier there are lies that serve a higher purpose so lying, in and of itself, doesn't imply dishonesty in the form of duplicitous deceitfulness.
BoroMart
Well-known member
Good way to admit that your binary view of honesty is complete folly because reading between the lines everyone is dishonest
Scrote
Well-known member
Fair enough. Literalism and semantic gymnastics prove that I should have been more explicit in my earlier post.
As such, please accept the following as an amendment:
No. Honesty in politics is binary. You're either honest or you're not.
Which is why politicians hide behind statistics rather than raw data. Spin can be dishonest without being unequivocally untrue.
Saying that Rishi Sunak doesn't want sex offenders to go to prison is a lie.
Telling fewer lies doesn't make you more honest.
BoroMart
Well-known member
Then there are no honest politicians and expecting to find one is going to lead to no improvement for anyone, ever.
Statistics are an interpretation of raw data.
Raw data is not useful in and of itself. Presenting that to the public or even experts is pointless. There is a common process for turning data into improvement, DIKW.
1 - We need to turn data into information, by giving it suitable context. Some dishonesty slips in here, for example grouping information by key categories that misinterpret the real world.
2 - Then that information into knowledge, i.e. tells a useful story, this is where the deception largely occurs. I.e. adding a flag that says "internet fraud activity" as a boolean value that allows you to filter out those records for reporting purposes.
3. Finally we turn that knowledge into wisdom that can be acted on. Of course if you've been dishonest in the first two transformations then what you do in 3 sounds plausible but creates no value or hides failure. Again that example where the tories pat themselves ont eh back for being the party that reduces crime (but only if you cut a massive subset of data out earlier in the process).
Saying Rishi Sunak doesn't want sex offenders to go to prison is almost certainly a lie, but so is the continued rhetoric that Kier Starmer hasn't wanted them punished, or allowed Jimmy Saville to avoid justice. I hope, and you hope that labour don't do this kind of thing as standard, they haven't and we don't want them to fall into that same repeated behaviour that we have seen from the tories over the last decade.
If everyone tells lies, which they do, and honesty is binary(your assertion), then everyone on the planet is dishonest to the same level and dishonesty is a term that is irrelevant because it's just part of the human condition. I don't see the difference between honesty in politics and everyday life, honesty is not a specific characteristic of politics that is absent everywhere else. This would of course mean that you and I are as dishonest as Saddam Hussein, Waldimir Putin, Boris Johnson, Rupert Murdoch, Harold Shipman and a whole host of other unsavory characters, but I'm sure you don't think we are.
Scrote
Well-known member
When was Saddam Hussein dishonest?
I don't remember him lying about WMD.
Dishonesty is a part of the human condition but there is a big difference between telling your child not to worry about their tooth falling out because the tooth fairy exists and a political party making a concious decision to actively deceive the public.
It's a step-change. Labour cannot now claim to be a party that can be trusted.
In my opinion it served no real purpose. The press are going to continue attacking Starmer & Labour but now they have some real ammunition when it comes to 'trust' at election time.
Utter stupidity of the shooting-oneself-in-the-foot variety.
I fully accept that you, and others, think it was worth it but I've yet to see a convincing argument as to why. If it's already backfired what was the point in crossing that rubicon.
BoroMart
Well-known member
He was dishonest about lots of things, like murdering his citizens, gassing the kurds, and tall tales of his physical prowess. WMDs, he said he was fully complying with the UN weapons inspectors, but he didn't comply, mainly because he wanted a game of brinkmanship with the west. Did he lie that he didn't have them? No, but some of his senior people lied that they existed.
and there are a million other examples of lies that are harmful to people. Everyone lies and most people have told harmful lies int heir life.
Although I agree, the dirt had been thrown already to question their trust, claims about curry and beer parties, and saville for example.
I think ultimately that's true, but I kind of understand the motivation for it, when the wave of nonsense from teh right wing gutter press has been tsunamistic in nature prior to this event, eventually it's human nature to think give them a taste of their own medicine.
But we all know the press don't need or care if the ammunition is real or imagined. Were the lights going to be turned out on the country if Kinnock won, no, not at all, it would have been a boon for most of us. Would Corbyn have seen us under the control of an IRA loving russian stooge with major national security issues....no it wouldn't. Would the country have choked on Bacon Sandwiches if Ed Milliband had won, also no. But none of that stopped those stories. The right wing press care not for truth, only for leverage and they can make up far more nonsense than oh he accused Sunak of protecting pedos. Instead they'll repeat the saville nonsense.
The only way it will be worth it is if it stops the press lies against Labour, I doubt it will, which means it probably was pointless, but I don't think it's particularly damaging either. It'll be fish and chip wrapper and dwarfed by the litany of tory failures and corruption that will be part of the Labour campaign.