Good morning, I've written a piece about the prime minister. I spoke to several dozen sources, including government insiders, former legal colleagues and campaigners to ask: what happened to Keir Starmer the heroic human rights lawyer? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
ooft the anonymous 'anonymous briefing' quote
Looking forward to reading this! Hope you’re well.
OK I have read the whole of this, and he talks about opposition the HRA, ECHR and Article 8 rights and of course it must be because it's the Guardian that he doesn't mention the FULL SCALE WAR on trans rights including Falkner of the EHRC claiming that Article 8 rights don't apply to trans people.
A Guardian article bemoaning the lack of conviction towards ppl's human rights that willfully ignores a comprehensive domestic attack on a minority group's human rights, one the Guardian's been helping fuel for the last decade. I think "Orwellian" is the word that best describes this article...
📌
What Britain needed in Starmer was a new FDR, who cracked the heads of the right wing scourge on the alter of principles and decency. What you got is Woodrow Wilson who chose to appease the rising radical right wing forces that eventually cause the Great Depression and the first MAGA movement.
Before I read this, on a scale to 10 how bitchy is it? Critique is useful but given @theguardian.com lens these days I don't want to read something designed to irritate.
Insightful piece. One thought: I think Starmer's bureaucratic experience may be partly what has hindered him (or at least the principled, radical him) - he got too used to the swerves, dodges and short termism of the technocracy, without enough hard politics experience to guide him out of that mode.
📌
Attacks on trans ppl not mentioned - removal of our right of recognition, removal of YP's healthcare & Labour's new trans specifc section 28= the most comprehensive rollback of a minority group's rights in a generation What happened to journalists to make them blind to trans ppl's human rights?
Write a long read on that shit. It's more badly needed.
This was v good but fails to place sufficient emphasis on Starmer's character. In chambers, in court, in politics, his focus is the win, being on top. He has tunnel vision, he argues a position that is popular at that exact moment or says 'nowt'. He pirouettes on a 6pence, takes the gap, & moves on
Disappointing that the article didn't once mention the Starmer government's attacks on the human rights of trans people.
A good piece with that very conspicuous absence, yeah
Its irrational and immoral of course that a country has ‘the right to defend itself’ with no human rights restrictions on how it should do that, incl many forms of its own developed fascist large scale genocide. A mockery of human rights, rubber stamps genocide for any nation that wants to do it
Excellent stuff.
📌
It's an interesting read, but misses that a lot of Starmer's apparent 'legalistic' contradictions can be explained via his lust for personal power - which evidently supersedes any stated principles - underpinned by his subtle but demonstrable racism (Gaza, Forde report...) and brittle pettiness.
The simple answer is “why would we expect Keir Starmer to believe in human rights just because he made his living from it?” I make my living from financial services but I don’t believe in it !
“… he is committed to following the letter of the law, but unwilling to take the risk of arguing for the underlying principles…” also explains why Starmer was so quick to declare “clarity” on the SC ruling on the meaning of “woman”. Seven little letters signalling carte blanche for the anti-trans.
Surely what the law is in this case is a distraction. The question is what it should be and that is a question for Parliament, not the SC. My frustration was that Starmer seemed to imply that the SC had the final word, which is only true until the law is changed. Failure of leadership yet again.
It seems almost as though KS, being a lawyer, welcomed a legal ruling to the extent that it absolved him/his govt/Parliament from a bit of policy making. Legal ruling made—job done. The final word, as you said. KS seems spineless.