Sir Keir Starmer’s Barmy Army

Discussion in 'Politics 2.0' started by Moose, Sep 29, 2021.

  1. sydney_horn

    sydney_horn Squad Player

    Yes, the Labour party was far more split over the war than the Tories and that is why Blair is still a marmite figure amongst their supporters.

    I just checked the numbers. 84 Labour members voted no to the invasion whereas only 2 Tories voted against. All Liberal democrats voted no.

    It's amazing spin for the Tories to claim the high ground now.
     
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  2. Lloyd

    Lloyd Squad Player

    You're right, like countless others I was misled by Blair's lies. Which is the point.
    And by the way, for the record, I voted Labour in 97 and 2001. In fact, I think I've probably voted for a party other than the Tories more often than I've voted Tory. Labour, Greens, Natural Law, UKIP, Monster Raving Looney ... I've supported them all at various times (except the LibDems, obviously)
     
  3. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    Blimey, you’ve voted for some mad parties in that list as well as the actual Loonies.
     
  4. Not a bad comeback. I'll give you that one.
     
  5. reg_varney

    reg_varney Squad Player

    As seen on BBC Look East lunchtime news. Sir Keir has a new look.
    KeirStarmerNewLook.jpg
     
  6. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    Is he getting thrown out of a pub?
     
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  7. Arakel

    Arakel First Team

    Going for the Farage man-in-the-pub look eh?

    Next up: Harry Starmer to give interviews leaning out of the window of his car.
     
    Moose likes this.
  8. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    It’s his little known and controversial brother Piers Starmer.
     
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  9. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

  10. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

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  11. sydney_horn

    sydney_horn Squad Player

    This is what happens when MPs and political parties rely on donations. Political campaign funding is well overdue for reform.

    I've always thought Gardiner was an arse. This just confirms it.

    Nice timing for Johnson and the Government. Just a coincidence I'm sure.
     
  12. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    Well it doesn’t become public knowledge unless the Home Secretary authorises it. But I’m sure Priti Patel wouldn’t do anything as cynical as to ask her officials to find something, anything, to get out there to try and shove Boris’ booze up off the front pages.
     
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  13. HenryHooter

    HenryHooter Reservist

    Yes, of course.

    To suggest otherwise would be a bit like me suggesting the Labour Party dragged up all these Boris Bashes because they knew this story was going to come out.
     
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  14. HenryHooter

    HenryHooter Reservist

    Really. An MP receives hundreds of thousands from a Chinese spy, and you think it is such an insignificant issue in the public interest that it should only be used for political capital?

    Why should she protect any individual by white washing such an outrageous situation? Imagine what would be said if she had presented the same courtesy to a Conservative MP. People would be righteously outraged.

    I believe MI5 sent the Speaker the email, informing him of the situation, on Monday, so I think you may also be wrong about Patel being a gate keeper. The speaker was informed, he informed the Leader of the House, the Leader informed Parliament, as you might expect.
     
    Last edited: Jan 14, 2022
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  15. sydney_horn

    sydney_horn Squad Player

    It's interesting that MI5 decided now was a good time to make this "warning" when the story has been doing the rounds since 2017:

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/china-cash-link-to-top-labour-mp-65d3c92j8

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...er-women-influencing-heart-Establishment.html

    It doesn't make the donation and link between Gardiner and the Chinese state right but I'm pretty sure I heard the death throes of a cat as this "news" broke yesterday.
     
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  16. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

    **fixed**

    Bit of a non-story because Gardiner has been declaring the Chinese donations (it wasn't a one-off payment of £400K) to the security services since he started receiving them.
     
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  17. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    Imagine spending 400k and end up with the influence of…Barry Gardiner.
     
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  18. HenryHooter

    HenryHooter Reservist

    The donations are not the story. They are only the route to the story. The concerns raised in the Commons stated there was an agent operating within Parliament, not dodgy funding.

    The fact that Lee's son, who got a job in Parliament through Gardiners office, after her donations were made (some might say because of those donations) may point to the source of infiltration.

    Lee herself has been seen in a good and very positive light for fifteen years by successive governments, even being greeted at Downing Street by May in 2019.

    It seems pretty certain that the espionage element is something that has come to light more recently, certainly than the stories you allude to in 2017.

    It is not, I believe, the donations that are the issue, or even the favours received because of them; it is the behaviour of those whom the favours were bestowed upon.
     
    Last edited: Jan 14, 2022
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  19. HenryHooter

    HenryHooter Reservist

    Access, via Lee's Gardiner employed son, to the internal workings of Parliament, the briefings received by a shadow cabinet minister for energy (a prime Chinese industrial interest) and access behind the internal Parliamentary IT network firewall?

    Very trivial.

    I mean, the Chinese have never been renowned for cyber-espionage have they? They don't even know what computers are, surely?

    This is potentially a far more serious issue to the country than COVID misdemeanors.
     
    Last edited: Jan 14, 2022
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  20. sydney_horn

    sydney_horn Squad Player

    This is a cross party problem as regards foreign interference through campaign funding and party donations:

    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tory-mps-300000-link-china-25453267

    I think the government would have more credibility if it were to publish report on the Russian donations.

    It should be a non-parity issue. Nobody can think it's right for foreign powers to have direct access to parliamentary representatives, let alone the government, through donations. Such donations and influence should be banned, it's as simple as that.
     
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  21. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

    Doesn't need to be investigated as they're Full British Citizens. OK. It's kosher. Nothing to see here.
     
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  22. [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
     
  23. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

    Ah yes those great patriots the Tories - the same patriots who were going have China supply our entire 5G infrastructure.
     
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  24. HenryHooter

    HenryHooter Reservist

    It is you guys who put this in a partisan manner. Lee is not the one being accused of spying, but more likely it is her son, given, once again, that the concern expressed in Parliament was not the funding, but the presence of a Chinese spy operating within Parliament. Any criticism of the funding is simply that it facilitated the breach.

    She became involved with the Government under Tony Blair. The issue here is not party failings, unless that is what you wish it to be. Saying it is more serious than COVID misdemeaners is not partisan. It is simply a fact.

    Seems the left wing forum members have been hypnotised by the media yet again. There seems to be a propensity for such things on here.

    This waffle about funding is simply a distraction from the potentially greater threat to our industrial security.
     
    Last edited: Jan 14, 2022
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  25. HenryHooter

    HenryHooter Reservist

    So when did Labour and/or the Lib Dems step in to bring an end to that? Oh no. It was the Conservatives that put an end to that particular initiative, which, if I remember correctly, was also sanctioned by those great patriots, your beloved Lib Dems.
     
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  26. No fan at all of Barry Gardiner who I ridiculed when he was one of the Corbyn gang, but he acquits himself quite well here.
     
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  27. HenryHooter

    HenryHooter Reservist

    Good for him facing up to the questions, but he comes across incredibly naive. His comments on his advice regarding Chinese involvement in Hinkley Point could have come straight out of the mouth of Xi Xing Ping; his steadfast resillience to possible influences the day after Lee's behaviour was revealed are admirable, until you accept that up until yesterday he was was not on guard to what she was doing, considering her a friend (Spy 101) whilst accepting her money and employing her son within Parliament.

    Best point to be made in the video is that he has no idea if her funding of him had anything to do with MI5's notification. I suspect it plays a minor part in the story.
     
  28. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    Blistering response to the levelling up plan from Gove by Lisa Nandy:

     
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  29. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    It’s not that Levelling Up is a bad idea, after all it was one of John McDonnell’s that the Tories successfully adopted.

    The thing is it requires enormous shifts of capital from rich to poor. The Tories aren’t going to do that. There will be nothing like the shift of money that has gone to the other way to the rich in the last decade. Hence the recycled pledges and slight of hand.

    I applaud raising the expectation and for thoroughly outlining the utter disgrace of the last decade of their rule. I hope, if they get in, Labour take it on and run with it and the right of the party doesn’t convince the Country it can’t be done.
     
  30. HenryHooter

    HenryHooter Reservist

    ??

    All she does is stand up and say “this is rubbish” and criticises the tories without addressing anything that is policy in the document. She doesn’t talk about it, and therefore is not responding to it, and all she says is that Labour can do it better, without any hint as to how they will do so.

    It is a totally hollow, even if passionate, little speech with no substance what so ever.

    The most splendid irony of it is that most of the failings to the areas which levelling up is intended to affect, came under local Labour rule, and are exactly the reason why the Conservatives won the seats in the first place.

    It may sound good to detached southerners, but up north, where the failings she speaks of, under Labour, were actually felt, it will just sound like the empty rhetoric it was.
     
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  31. HenryHooter

    HenryHooter Reservist

    Not his biggest fan, but he seems to agree with me in this "blistering respone" to Nandi's totally hollow, but very passionate, response in which she appears to have rather misguided the house as to who did what good things...



    Only just seen this (not in the habit of searching out Commons Youtubes), so we came to our similar conclusions seperately.

    It isn't advisable these days to link a video without analysing its contents first.

    Nandi said nothing, and ended up highlighting tori successes. Describing it as a blistering response is a most peculiar thing to do. Particularly when local northern Labour officials have praised the policies in part.

    As I say, her hollow words are impressive to detached southern Labour supporters, but mean less up north.
     
  32. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

  33. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    This morning's Sun editorial says about the Post Office scandal:
    I'm told an audience member on Question Time on Thursday also pointed a finger at the CPS.

    Yet I'm 99% sure these were all private prosecutions brought by the Post Office's own investigations branch under ancient powers. Meaning the CPS (and Starmer) were not involved.

    Maybe I'm wrong but unsurprisingly social media accounts with flags next to their username are amplifying this line.
     
  34. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    I imagine this won’t stop Bunter hurling it at Starmer during the next PMQs.

    From Hansard. The House of Lords debated the Post Office’s prosecution powers in Feb 2020.

    ‘Baroness Burt of Solihull
    My Lords, this is far more than “unfortunate”; it is a shocking story of obfuscation, cover-ups and downright abuse of sub-postmasters—the face of arguably the most trusted brand in this country—by the most senior people running it, yet they were able to do this because they had the power to conduct their own prosecutions with no independent assessment of the case for the defence or the prosecution.’

    https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords...A6BD-8BEA22B6A782/PostOfficeProsecutionPowers
     
  35. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    No sooner had @Arakel demanded (on another thread) that Labour throw the white working class a bone, Angela Rayner pops up to demand the Police ‘shoot first and ask questions later’ when dealing with terrorism. Corbyn faced similar questions and responded in a less inflammatory way, but essentially the same, that the Police may have to take a life when no other choice presents.

    The reactions to her words demonstrate the difficulties for Labour in trying to play a populist card. From her own side people asked r u ok hun? From the Lib Dems see, we are the only liberals here and from the right oh yes very nice, we’ll believe it when we see it, she’d probably just give the terrorist a council house etc.

    There was one way in which Labour was going to convince nationalists and that was to honour the Brexit vote. Most of those left or remain (with exceptions) decided that we couldn’t do that, that it’s simply not possible to agree on everything.

    Being a rational, modern, competent and fair alternative has to be the Labour way and if people want that, they will choose it. But you can’t generally convince people you are something you are not. You have to find the things in common. Maybe this is one of them, maybe not.
     

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