[Youngian]

Fair comment

[Tubby Isaacs]

There's a whole host of people on Bluesky who have built profiles bashing Labour on Brexit so they're going to pivot and attack Labour over this.

Naomi Smith and Best For Britain are pretty standard campaigners who mostly push their point in the way campaign groups normally do. We can agree or disagree about youth visas or whatever. But occasionally they get sucked in- just because an agri deal is mentioned, apparently nearly done a month out, why does that mean nothing else will be discussed?

As I said before, I've been more frustrated with some academics who you see steaming in "just do this", and you look and they're not experts on trade.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Yep. Seems like the Guardian is particularly pushing this stuff. If 2 anonymous people mention it, and it never happens, to what extent was it real? I know political journalists have space to fill, but really, the approach should be "thanks, that's interesting, but I'm going to write about (eg) the benefit cuts now". The Guardian has leveraged this stuff to "Get Starmer", which is a point of view, but a baffling one given they were "Get Corbyn" a few years ago (I say that as no fan, obviously).

[The Weeping Angel]

Jason Cowley in The Times wrote the Hard Labour piece. The Guardian article, which got everyone frothing at the mouth on blue sky, said Starmer should do more media, of course, it mentioned Trump, so everyone went wild.


https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... a-strategy

Senior Labour figures are urging Keir Starmer to take a leaf out of Donald Trump’s book and make more frequent media appearances in an attempt to dominate the political agenda as the US president does.

MPs told the Guardian they want the prime minister to act more like Trump, who has upended political convention by televising large parts of his cabinet, holding long bilateral meetings on camera and calling in to live television shows.

The strategy is very different from that employed by the prime minister, who has said he wants politics to intrude less in people’s lives, and sometimes goes several days without doing a public appearance.

Some in his party believe that Starmer’s safety-first approach to media is ill-suited to modern politics, where the news agenda moves rapidly and traditional outlets have less power than ever.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The strategy is very different from that employed by the prime minister, who has said he wants politics to intrude less in people’s lives, and sometimes goes several days without doing a public appearance.

Is that really true? I glance at the Live Politics most days and seems like Starmer's out there doing something a lot of the time, not least meeting other European leaders (not that the BTL goons seem to notice).

The "Trump" comparison seems like a fairly throwaway line about the need for a more direct style, as they see it. Nobody is on the record supporting Trump policies on trade, tax, climate or anything else. But when you want to make a point, you use examples that people know about and assume they're bright enough to see which part of the comparison you're actually talking about.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I've heard it all now. Labour are "Reform-lite" on trade?! Assuming Bloomberg and David Henig have good sources, Reform are going to go apeshit about the European Court of Justice role on agriculture trade. Just like they don't like alignment because it isn't proper Brexit freedom.

If he's distinguishing between issue and image, then you might say they're Reform lite in the image they present, not on the issue.

[The Weeping Angel]

The strategy is very different from that employed by the prime minister, who has said he wants politics to intrude less in people’s lives, and sometimes goes several days without doing a public appearance.

Is that really true? I glance at the Live Politics most days and seems like Starmer's out there doing something a lot of the time, not least meeting other European leaders (not that the BTL goons seem to notice).

The "Trump" comparison seems like a fairly throwaway line about the need for a more direct style, as they see it. Nobody is on the record supporting Trump policies on trade, tax, climate or anything else. But when you want to make a point, you use examples that people know about and assume they're bright enough to see which part of the comparison you're actually talking about.

Unfortunately, they didn't count on people on Bluesky. By doing more media, they mean more podcasts like Trump did, of course, here the most popular podcast is The Rest is History. Which is as far away from the Joe Rogan as you can imagine.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I think”podcasts” are going to end badly for Starmer. Might as well stick with Radio 4.

[Youngian]

Wouldn't News Agents or Campbell and Stewart's audience be roughly the same as R4's news output?
I guess Russell Brand was the UK Joe Rogan.

[The Weeping Angel]

Brother came around for Easter Sunday, he thinks that Labour needs to put the country on a war footing, oh, and they should renationalise water. He also feels Labour should have planned ahead for office and done things instead of doing what Labour did, which he thinks is fighting amongst themselves.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I've heard it all now. Labour are "Reform-lite" on trade?! Assuming Bloomberg and David Henig have good sources, Reform are going to go apeshit about the European Court of Justice role on agriculture trade. Just like they don't like alignment because it isn't proper Brexit freedom.

If he's distinguishing between issue and image, then you might say they're Reform lite in the image they present, not on the issue.

Well, I should say I had a very nice discussion with Mr Painter. His point was that Labour are still doing what we used to call Hard Brexit. And fair point.

We agreed that there's scope with alignment and being sensible about the ECJ to do a lot better than we have done so far on EU trade. Nice bloke.

[The Weeping Angel]

I find point 2 a bit odd since people do have a negative view of Putin, so yeah, pointing out that Farage is pro-Putin makes sense to me.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I think Labour are mistaken if they think they can shift many votes with that. Lots of people who like Farage don't see him sitting opposite Putin at the negotiating table. They just see Farage pissing our ambassadors about, with their superior education and experience.