Why the £2000 allegation won't go away

Yes, time will tell, I suppose.
I'll take your word for it regarding being a lawyer.
(Even if I don't believe it)

I think ‘time will tell’ is pretty factual! 😁

I, an erstwhile lifelong Labour Party voter, have no confidence in Starmer at all. You can’t put a piece of Bronco (younger grans may not understand 🤔) between him and Starmer. Same austerity agenda.

I prefer to listen to a barrister who spoke about Starmer’s tactics the morning after on the radio.

She described exactly what would happen and the way Starmer has used these tactics at other times in parliament. Most famously when Johnson got caught in his net.

The barrister said to look at the way the lawyers behave in the PO enquiry - exactly the same tactics as employed by Starmer.

Of course gsm will argue otherwise - but just because she has been a solicitor in the past does neither make her infallible or right.

Indeed my legal career doesn’t make me right, nor infallible - but I beg to disagree that Starmer has used tactics. All lawyers use tactics in negotiations. They are not the sole preserve of barristers in courtrooms. He is no match for the lawyers we have seen in the PO enquiry. He is weak. He was a human rights lawyer. What I saw in the debate was a man who was unprepared and had no answers, not someone using tactics. His rabbit caught in the headlights look was not the look of someone being clever.

With Sunak yelling over the facilitator and Starmer in that debate, and that it would have got lost in the noise, it was far better to let the media do the job the day afterwards.

Sunak was hoist by his own petard.

Germanshepherdsmum

Indeed my legal career doesn’t make me right, nor infallible - but I beg to disagree that Starmer has used tactics. All lawyers use tactics in negotiations. They are not the sole preserve of barristers in courtrooms. He is no match for the lawyers we have seen in the PO enquiry. He is weak. He was a human rights lawyer. What I saw in the debate was a man who was unprepared and had no answers, not someone using tactics. His rabbit caught in the headlights look was not the look of someone being clever.

I am glad to see your opinion.

It makes what the barrister said so much more believable as it was from what was clearly a very professional experienced and senior lawyer, who clearly knew exactly what she was talking about.

So I am not very professional , experienced and senior? Are you able to name this person? I have not seen her quoted elsewhere.

Today he’s having to stand up to the unions about the content of the manifesto

GSM how do you know he’s having to ‘stand up to the unions’? Do you have inside information about the agenda and tone of their meeting?

KS may be meeting with the unions but ‘standing up’ to them suggests confrontation. What’s your evidence for this suggestion?

Maybe I read more widely than you. I’m sure you can find, as I did, which of the unions’ demands are at odds with Labour’s plan. Just Google, as I did. Labour is controlled by the unions as that’s where so much of its money comes from - not to mention Rayner’s TU history. The left and the unions will run the country if Labour is in power. As in the past.

Whether you like him or not Sunak is a very agile (slippery) debater, Starmer is a considered thinker who delivers a prepared agenda well enough, Sunak caught him unprepared over spending.

Wether the £2000 is right or wrong, the next government is going to have to increase spending by much more over 4 yrs to improve anything.

Well, Tory chums, donors and various assorted bosses haven’t exactly improved our lives over the last 14 years.

WW I too heard the barrister on the radio giving her professional opinion of KS’s behaviour. I found her explanation extremely measured and knowledgeable. Unfortunately, I didn’t catch her name. It was on the James O’Brian show on LBC.

As GSM appears to want further evidence before she’ll accept that this barrister may be correct, I’ll try and find it on Catch-Up.

Who knows, GSM, your paths might have crossed in the law courts - or perhaps not!

I doubt it Lizzie, but I am always interested in the professional experience of a lawyer who offers a comment.

Germanshepherdsmum

Maybe I read more widely than you. I’m sure you can find, as I did, which of the unions’ demands are at odds with Labour’s plan. Just Google, as I did. Labour is controlled by the unions as that’s where so much of its money comes from - not to mention Rayner’s TU history. The left and the unions will run the country if Labour is in power. As in the past.

GSM, if you have a web address why not share it?

Maybe I read more widely than you

GSM maybe you do, but if your reading matter is The Telegraph and other right-wing, biased trash, one can only expect you to be ill-informed.

The unions and the far left did not run the country during
Blair and Brown’s premiership

Unite have refused to endorse the manifesto, until the whole thing is published next week, but their endorsement is not strictly necessary.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c722zkj9ly8o

Well there you are, without my having to go back to my googling. We know from experience what happens if the unions are unhappy.

Germanshepherdsmum

Well there you are, without my having to go back to my googling. We know from experience what happens if the unions are unhappy.

Well, the last experience was that Blair and Brown basically ignored them.

But, until the full manifesto is published next week, nothing has been decided.

If they won’t endorse it, then Labour will lose some funding.

Election day is all what the public think - no one else.

Labour rely on support from the unions. So will they carry on regardless with their manifesto or bow to the unions? Blair - for whom I voted - was a very different kettle of fish. Do we want the unions and the left running the country again?

Well, Unite was unhappy, but neither would it have been good for the L Party to endorse policies that while Starmer might like to see in the manifesto, he couldn't deliver as a promise.

Reading the article I think that he may well cover the points that Unison raised (they have almost half a million members working for the NHS across the UK)

Germanshepherdsmum

Well there you are, without my having to go back to my googling. We know from experience what happens if the unions are unhappy.

Oh gosh yes, who can forget Ted Heath?

Not going to happen, GSM. And the unions are not an "all in agreement" block, as the article makes clear.

Germanshepherdsmum

Being an effective lawyer is very different MissA. It was very clear to me that he was ill prepared and didn’t know what to say - and the last thing he would say is what his plan would cost. We shall see when the manifestos are published and costed.

I’m holding out giving an opinion until after all manifestos are published and each side has something to both “market” and “critique”. The debates up to this time seem a little pointless