I don’t see how he could have stayed on for five minutes and then have to implement a policy which he’d repeatedly said he doesn’t believe in and had repeatedly described as disastrous for the country.
Because he was responsible for the fact that the policy had to be implemented in the first place? If you set fire to an orphanage and then stand aside so that others can try and deal with the resulting problems, that’s not to your credit.
It gets worse.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has announced a new set of policies on asylum and refugees, to become law in this Parliament. They are draconian to the point of abusive and in her terms premised on the idea that immigration and immigrants are naturally divisive and thus the only way to stop far right thugs rioting is to give them what they want.
The proposals include: changing the timeframe for refugees receiving indefinite right to remain from five years to 20; re-assessing refugees claims every 30 months, with a view to forcibly returning people if we decide the country they fled from is now safe; “streamlining” the appeals process so there is only one chance to appeal, regardless of new evidence or change in circumstance; rewriting the law to narrow the application of the European Convention on Human Rights, specifically article 3 on torture and inhuman or degrading treatment, and article 8 on right to a family life; confiscation of wealth in the form of any assets refugees might earn while in the UK; enforced removal of any children of those whose claims fail at any point in the envisaged 20 years.
Alongside this, there is one good bit, which is the lifting on the ban on asylum seekers working or studying (although as mentioned, if they do earn anything the government reserves the right to appropriate it from them as it sees fit) through which refugees could earn earlier right to remain. That said, this also allows the government to lift the requirement on it to support asylum seekers, which will now only apply to those who are destitute - but not “those who become destitute by choice”. This is great news for exploitative employers obviously, because if you hire an asylum seeker you can treat them like dirt and rip them off, knowing that they know that if they quit they’ll be penniless. So maybe not all that good.
What is genuinely disturbing is the rhetoric, which absolutely buys into far-right ideology about the threat to British culture and society posed by immigration. That’s not me saying it, that’s noted criminal thug and fascist Tommy Robinson, who gleefully posted that “the Overton Window has been smashed” - i.e. the framing of the conversation is now entirely what the far-right want it to be. He’s not wrong. At any time in the last 70 years proposal like this would have been seen as the province of meatheaded fringe thugs and they’re now government policy.
The actual good news is that Labour MPs - even those generally considered moderate or on the right of the party, are up in arms and coming out to vocally condemn it. The bad news is Labour appears to be run by a bunch of clowns who have convinced themselves that pissing off their own voters and MPs means they are doing something right, and who are sure that this time, this time, telling everybody that their opponents are basically right will stop people voting for them.
Part of the pitch from Shabana Mahmood is that securing the borders is a moral necessity to fight racism. To emphasise this point, she quoted in Parliament some very unpleasant language she’s been subject to. Rhetorically, this is clearly an attempt to discombobulate those opposed to her proposals who don’t look like her and don’t get that kind of abuse. (Again, if you regard the anti-racists as opponents while being cheered on by the racists then: is it likely that what you are doing is going to lead to less racism.)
As Stephen Bush points out in the FT, this is selling the pass:
I would hope that the home secretary, and indeed every minister in any government, should take the view that racism is always wrong, and that no amount of public policy failures makes it acceptable for people to tell me to go home.
…
But zoom out and it is repeating the biggest and most catastrophic failure of the Starmer government, which is that its year in office has been an utter disaster for race relations in this country. No other government since 1970 would have suggested that such a direct linkage between “immigration policy” and “the safety of ethnic minorities in the UK” was something we should accept. The two are entirely orthogonal: the Labour government should pursue the border policies it thinks best, not suggest that somehow the failure of those policies creates conditions in which racism is acceptable or in any way explicable. … But to suggest that this is the case now reflects this government’s biggest failing, which is that it is essentially incapable of saying that racism is wrong, full stop. That is a far bigger contributor to emboldened racism in the UK than anything the previous Conservative government might have done, or failed to do, on immigration policy.
Just as a February update to this, nothing much to report. It’s been pretty much plain sailing for the Starmer government. It’s so nice to have adults back in charge, as the saying goes! The government remains broadly popular, with no hugely controversial issues to contend with.
Will report back in six months. If anything particular crops up in the meantime, I’m sure that this forum will be the first place you’ll hear about it!
His approval polling numbers are at 15-20 percent — with Nigel Farage more than twice that:
What metric shows he is broadly popular?
Whooosh!
I commend him for his strong stand against Trump’s idiotic craving for Greenland.
Nicely done.
Stings a little bit, only because just yesterday I started writing a post about the various trials and tribulations, got half way through my third “in order to understand this, here’s the background you need” paragraph and gave up on the grounds it would have to be an essay.
It boils down to: he’s a managerialist with a tin ear for political, as opposed to administrative, management - which probably accounts for the emotional force behind the virulent online hostility in the UK. On the other hand, internationally, his nature seems to work in his favour.
Isn’t Labour on borrowed time in any case? It seems like the current divisions between Tory voters and Reform voters are bound to be overcome, one way or another, before the next election.
Yeah, Labour and Starmer in particular are a) in trouble and b) benefitting from the current right wing schism.
(The fact that Britain’s mainstream right wing party is having its lunch eaten by the more extreme one-time"fringe" party is a major problem deserving its own attention, of course).
But what that article misses is that there is at least the potential for a similar agglomeration on the left - collectively the Lib Dems, the Greens, Labour and the centre-left independence parties of Wales and Scotland form a bloc at least equal to Tory/Reform. But that only works if they can co-operate.
Little incentive to do so now, with Starmer so weak. Recent events have emphatically given credence to the widely held view that Starmer - while a competent public servant - is out of his depth as PM, lacks vision or leadership skills and consequently is at the mercy of his advisors. Which was bad enough when we thought his main advisor was Morgan McSweeney, Chief of Staff and factional partisan, but it turns out that behind Sweeney was Peter Mandelson, long-time greasy eminence of the party.
Mandelson is known by the cheery sobriquet Prince of Darkness and has a long history of being fired from senior positions for things that look like corruption. Also more recently, was found to have been cheerily emailing Epstein - post paedophilia conviction - with messages of sympathy requests to stay in his NY apartment etc.
Despite this, he has not only qutie clearly been opearting as behind the scenes advisor to McSweeney and Starmer, he was appointed Ambassador to the US. Lots of people at the time thoughth this was a dumb hostage to fortune - see “fired twice for breaking the rules, friend of convicted paedophile” above.
And so the latest Epstein files release came and it turns out Mandelson in his last stint in government back in 2009 was rapidly forwarding on confidential emails to Epstein, telling US bankers how to threaten then Chancellor Alasdair Darling over his banking reforms and generally undermining the government of which he was supposedly part.
Cue big scandal, Mandelson resigning his seat in the House of Lords etc. But clearly someone has to resign over this, especially as it turns out the vetting of our new Ambassador included much of this detail and a big warning, which was over-ruled by Number 10. McSweeney is first in line but come off it, Starmer owns this decision, it flies in the face of all his claims to be the morally upright antidote to Boris Johnson, it’s also really fucking dumb in its own terms, just go buddy.
If all else were peachy it would still be a problem, with Labour cratering in the polls and an upcoming set of local elections leaving them exposed to a public kicking from the electorate…
From here
Burghart [Shadow Cabinert Office Minister]said a report in the New Statesman today says a due diligence report on Peter Mandelson before he was appointed ambassador highlighted various conflicts of interest.
He is referring to this story by Ailbhe Rea. She says:
The report on Mandelson warned of potential conflicts of interest surrounding Global Counsel, the lobbying company Mandelson co-founded, in which he had a 28 per cent stake (worth about £8.5m). It highlighted the company’s clients, in particular Russian and Chinese links, according to someone familiar with the report’s contents …
And then there was a section on Epstein. Sources familiar with the report confirm that it clearly stated that Mandelson’s relationship with the paedophile continued after his conviction for soliciting a minor for prostitution. It contained links to photographs of Mandelson with the paedophile, and drew particular attention to evidence that Mandelson had stayed at Epstein’s apartment while he was in prison. It was sent directly to the prime minister.
The cabinet secretary, Chris Wormald, was asked about the report in November and told MPs that it contained “a summary of reputational risks” associated with appointing Mandelson, including his “prior relationship with Jeffrey Epstein”.
Yet “Morgan [McSweeney, the PM’s chief of staff] was relaxed” when he saw the report, according to one person who observed him at the time, because the chief of staff said that Labour had already broached a conversation with Mandelson about these issues years before. (A No 10 source disputes this characterisation, emphasising that the prime minister and McSweeney followed up on details raised by the report.)
I mean…either Starmer really wanted to appoint Mandelson, or he was dogwalked into doing it against his better judgement. Either way…
The saga rumbles on. Police have been searching Mandelson’s home (giving rise to a classic Sun headline: POLICE RUMMAGE THROUGH MANDY’S DRAWERS).
Since he’s gay, it’s improbable that he’d have been involved with Epstein’s young women, although remarkably incurious at best - but the proximity of serious money blinds a lot of people. It’s another example of the old saying that Labour’s scandals tend to be about money, the Tories’ about sex.
That is to say, it’s about what the typical MP in each party isn’t getting enough of.
It’s so fascinating to me what does and does not engender discussion in this thread. I’ve watched on in puzzled bemusement as major events in British politics go totally uncommented on here.
We’ve probably gone through the most consequential 24 hours until the next (up to) 24 hour in the Starmer PMship and nary a peep on here.
Hard to know at what point to say anything worthwhile, until something decisive happens, and when it does, as in this case, can one say more than, as ever, if the satrap falls on his sword, is the emperor any safer? Starmer is due at a meeting of his party MPs, which may clarify the situation. Here’s a handy list of upcoming danger points/heffalump traps:
I’ve only lived in the UK for the last few years so take this with a grain of salt, but British politics is confusing as hell. In the States, if a President nominated an ambassador who turned out to be a sleazeball then the guy would be fired and that’d be the end of it. Yet people here and in the press are talking like this Mandelson thing is (and probably should be) the end of Starmer’s career. Why? Most of the noise around this is being astroturfed by disingenuous, impossible to please right-wing hacks. Starmer could turn water into wine and they’d just complain it was the wrong vintage. Who cares what these people think? I ask in all seriousness, what has he actually done that a normal person should be upset about? And if there is something and it is possible to make a reasoned case for his dismissal, who the hell should take his place? Angela Raynor? David Lammy? Those two could glum the sparkle off a diamond, and they’re not exactly known for their competence. If Starmer goes, what’s the contingency plan?
Even if one could argue that Starmer couldn’t have known about the Epstein connections, the fact that he placed this guy:
…into a major diplomatic role suggests that either his judgment is spectacularly poor or there are other hidden factors involved, and probably not nice ones. Or the list of available candidates is really poor.
It’s a combo of a couple of things, you can choose to personally assign different importances to each factor:
- If it was only revealed that Mendelson was a sleazeball after he was appointed, fair enough, but the complaint is that this was all revealed in the vetting process and Starmer chose to appoint him despite knowing his Epstein ties, drawing questions about his judgement.
- The latest revelations from the files wasn’t just that Mendelson was sexually entangled with Epstein, he was also passing along heavily confidential information regarding central bank decisions during the 08 financial crisis, potentially allowing American insider traders to make money off British citizens.
- There’s been a somewhat polite fiction of various degrees of truth amongst the British elite that McSweeney was the real power behind the throne and that Starmer was a largely ceremonial puppethead picked by McSweeney to be a punching bag. The compact to keep this secret from the public has lost most of it’s motivation so people are rushing ahead of it to claim they always knew this.
- Starmer’s popularity before this scandal was already deeply in the dumps, so people on his own side were already ready to knife him. It’s possible if he were more popular, the party would have closed ranks around him but instead, it becomes a game theory over who is the last rat to depart the sinking ship.