The caricature of David Cameron was that he only ran to be PM because he had enough ego to think he’d be good at it, but in fact he had a significant ideological project which reshaped the country (for the worse!). Starmer seems more and more to fit that caricature of Cameron.
I think a bunch of people now in government basically thought the Tories were so useless that merely by changing personnel they’d have lots of success, and now they’re floundering.
The thing is that Labour *doesn’t* agree with that Farage speech. They’re not doing the things in it. Their actual approach to asylum is to try and clear the backlog faster and open up a one in one out safe route with France. So where is the political leadership that would let a spokesman respond?
I didn’t vote for him for leader, left the Labour Party under his watch and voted not for Labour in GE for the first time in 2024. And his capacity to disappoint *even me* continues to astonish.
I did vote Labour, with some significant reservations, but it has been so much worse than I thought it would be
Yeah I’m in safe seat in London with Greens at 2, if I’d been in a marginal I probably still would have… don’t think I could bring myself to full stop now tbh (for a few reasons)
I’ve just moved to a seat where they got 15% last year (and that was an improvement on the last few) so that makes the decision of whether to vote for them next time pretty straightforward!
His comms office need a severe talking to. The reason for this wimpy shit today is poor holiday cover bod didn't have authorisation to say anything. Parliament is in recess and everybody is away on holiday. It's pathetic and unprofessional.
yes - I think the fundamental problem is that without a clear ideological project driven from the leader, everything needs to be run past him or his closest aides, people don’t feel empowered to make decisions on his behalf
I'd like to say I didn't steal this tweet from Stephen, and I hadn't seen his most recent one when I sent it, but I think I've basically stolen the point from earlier newsletters / tweets bsky.app/profile/step...
Seems there were no adults in number 10 today wise enough to pick up a phone and make a call, to get a take. There ought to have been. Whatever happened is a comms fail, not entirely a Starmer fail, though of course bucks stops with him on who he employs.
well sure, but I also think it's a problem if he needs to be phoned to be able to respond to a pretty unsurprising opposition press conference, and that does come back to his leadership
I think I'm sorta not agreeing, this was fiery stuff today, it did need a response and it wasn't necessarily Starmer who ought to have been called by a comms junior bod. He really doesn't need what you're suggesting to run better comms. You simply need people to be picking up phones.