In just 20 seconds, BBC Newsnight exposed Keir Starmer for the manipulative charlatan he actually is – without even realising it. The revelation compounds the notion that the Labour Party leader cannot be trusted – and shows he has been willing to do anything to get into and then maintain power.
Newsnight: sorry, what did you just say?
On Newsnight on Monday 17 June, Victoria Derbyshire asked Nicholas Watt about what Tory MPs would be left after the general election and how that would influence what the party would look like. However, Watt didn’t answer this question immediately. He instead used Starmer as a comparison. Watt said:
When Keir Starmer was very carefully laying his plans to become leader of the Labour Party in the summer of 2019…
Hang on, what?
When Keir Starmer was very carefully laying his plans to become leader of the Labour Party in the summer of 2019…
OK, we did hear you right.
Carry on.
When Keir Starmer was very carefully laying his plans to become leader of the Labour Party in the summer of 2019, i.e. before the general election, his team were working out various scenarios of how badly Labour was going to do under Jeremy Corbyn and what sort of Labour MPs there would be, because that was going to be the initial stage of the electorate.
Let’s be clear. The fact Starmer had already started forming his leadership campaign six months before the 2019 general election is not new news.
Starmer: slithering his way through 2019
As the Guardian wrote in February:
Keir Starmer had assembled a leadership team about six months before the December 2019 general election that led to Jeremy Corbyn’s resignation as Labour leader.
The team, codenamed the “Arlington Group”, began planning in earnest how Starmer could capture the leadership from June of that year – including a detailed breakdown of how Labour’s membership could be convinced to support him.
The Guardian detailed how Starmer and his cabal were adamant that the plan was never to topple Jeremy Corbyn. It was just that ‘well, we knew he was going to lose, so we were preparing for the inevitable leadership competition’.
Of course, it would have been more palatable if Starmer HAD been planning to challenge Corbyn before the election.
Instead, he blatantly worked against the then-Labour leader – specifically around the idea of a second Brexit referendum – to help obliterate any chance of victory. As the Canary’s James Wright previously wrote, Starmer undermined Corbyn through pushing a second referendum while shadow Brexit secretary. He said in June 2019:
There are many in the Labour party who feel we need to be very clear about a second referendum and about making the case for Remain.
That’s certainly what I’m advocating, discussions are going on at the moment, I hope we can resolve it pretty soon, and that will be a material step in the right direction as far as I’m concerned
Then in the 2019 election, almost all the seats Labour lost in England and Wales were Brexit voting seats. A party of government cannot ignore the result of a referendum. A majority of people wanted the result respected at the time. Labour’s position handed Boris Johnson the argument he needed to win the election – incredibly it painted Johnson as the one protecting democracy.
Starmer of course also played into the antisemitism ‘crisis’ – which finished Corbyn off.
You cannot trust Keir Starmer
Saying that him and his team did not actively work against Corbyn is demonstrable nonsense. They may not have openly challenged his leadership. But Starmer and his cabal caused enough chaos to secure Corbyn’s defeat.
Fast-forward to this general election campaign, and Starmer has been exposed already for mocking Corbyn’s manifestos now, after openly supporting them at the time.
The fact that at the time of one now-infamous video where he advocated the 2019 manifesto he had already been plotting his leadership bid for around four months is damning. It shows Starmer for the dishonest charlatan he is; that he would say whatever is needed to get into power. Newsnight’s accidental bomb-drop just cemented this damning fact.
Featured image via the Canary
