No fine for Keir Starmer or Angela Rayner

I cannot imagine the effort that has been put into trying to find some dirt or scandal on Starmer and the best they can come up with is that he bought his mum a field for her donkeys.

RichmondPark

I cannot imagine the effort that has been put into trying to find some dirt or scandal on Starmer and the best they can come up with is that he bought his mum a field for her donkeys.

I have a very simplistic - and possibly a tad naïve - outlook.

At the very top of the pyramid are the exclusively, atrociously wealthy, elite and further down, on a sliding scale, are the Corporates, billionaires, Venture Capitalists, etc, etc - not forgetting the exclusive accountants that manage the money, until we get to the bottom where exist the wealthy 'shire and South, traditional Tory voters.

All have something to protect, all have vested interests. All have power - which is invested in a Tory government, the interface between 'them' and 'us'.

So any opposing party that wants a more equitable, more equal, egalitarian, society is s threat - whether they call themselves Labour, New Labour, Social Democrats, whatever, and the leader will always come under fire from the right wing press. If the leader is intelligent and articulate and lives in a modestly wealthy neighbourhood, he will be denigrated as a champagne socialist. If he lives in a council estate - they will find a way of disparaging his background (or her). It really doesn't matter who the leader is, dirt will be found and shovelled.

Money is power. That's it!

“Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes the laws” — Mayer Amschel Rothschild

Or as Dennis Healey said World events do not occur by accident. They are made to happen, whether it is to do with national issues or commerce; and most of them are staged and managed by those who hold the purse strings.

It never was a real allegation, just a means of getting the press of their back. Even the tories knew it was false, but it did the job of tory press being about to say 'it's labour too,' which of course it wasn't. Its wicked, cheating, tactics dreamt up by their publicity team

I’m watching The Undeclared War. Makes me find it all to easy to believe that Durham/beer/curry was as spabby suggests a wicked, cheating, tactics dreamt up by the tories publicity team

Elegran I'm glad you found the interview interesting. I heard about it some time ago but only just bothered to listen. I suppose I expected it to be somehow very different and felt disinclined to give it the time.
I think it does show the kind of person he is - one we don't really see.

I think it being only on sound means that you don't have the distraction of watching the interviewee, but can listen to what he actually says, and the tone in which it is said.

James O'Brien had to push him to talk about his achievements and why he went into politics and ended the interview advising him to blow his own trumpet more.

Imagine Johnson on the same subject - all hot air and boasts and how his role model was Churchill. Starmer spoke about going into law to get things done for people who had consulted him, and finding that there were things he couldn't have any influence on without being right there with the lawmakers, and how once into Parliament he ended up as party leader.

Johnson would have blagged an instant answer to every question, and thrown in a (faulty) Latin quote or two while he thrashed around claiming he had achieved miracles, and finding someone to blame for his faults and abject failures, and waffled on as though he was in the school debating society getting a point for each time he mentioned how wonderful he was or denigrated an opponent. Starmer paused for a second to think about his answer before replying, but didn't waffle once, and talked common sense and idealism. He wasn't spiteful about anyone.

On performance in this video, I would say that Starmer showed the nearest thing to a statesman that this Parliament has so far produced. He would get my vote for PM. He just needs to market himself a bit more strongly, and be a bit more assertive. That was O'Brien's advice too!

Elegran, that's exactly how I felt about it.

So many unsung achievements and obviously his career was driven by his need to help other people.
On a family level I also loved how he was so pleased to have made his family proud, and the little anecdotes about his parent's trip to the Palace.

I thought it was a terrific interview, and yes, he would have my vote too.

He does need to shout about it more - maybe taking lessons from O'brien isn't as ridiculous as it sounds!

Dickens I think you need to add another group, which is made up of cultural Conservatives. The traditional Conservatives need their vote-power, which is they invented "anti-woke" and culture wars.