[kreuzberger]

Gifting an Arsenal shirt to Macron in exchange for what are probably exquisite cufflinks? That does seem rather coarse and somewhat out-of-step with attempts at repairing the Island's brutish reputation.

Also, does the jersey sport the Visit Rwanda sleeve advert?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Might have been aimed at a domestic political audience rather than Macron....

[Yug]

Keir Starmer is currently visiting world leaders abroad - Macron, Trudeau, the EU- in his role as the UK’s next Prime Minister.

Oddly, I cannot recall Jeremy Corbyn ever doing anything similar.

Did Jeremy Corbyn ever have the role of the UK's next Prime Minister?

Asking for a friend.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Jez did meet EU leaders about Brexit, quite rightly. It set the frothing Europhobes off.

[Youngian]

Jez did meet EU leaders about Brexit, quite rightly. It set the frothing Europhobes off.

Corbyn sat in the corner glassy eyed and silent while Starmer did the talking. Jez was just as clueless as Theresa May as to how the EU functioned.

Keir Starmer is currently visiting world leaders abroad - Macron, Trudeau, the EU- in his role as the UK’s next Prime Minister.

Oddly, I cannot recall Jeremy Corbyn ever doing anything similar.

He met Hugo Chavez but most leaders are neoliberal globalists who feared Jeremy coming to power.

[mattomac]

I have a feeling it’s what led to Sunak doing that today

[Youngian]

Starmer’s u-turns are just like Johnson’s lies and honest Harold Wilson didn’t say slippery stuff to win GEs. Blair invaded Iraq and he’s a bit like Keir Starmer. Don’t know why Oborne pronounces Starmer’s name in a German accent or is it Yiddish? As well as in the pockets of Murdoch and the spooks is Keir a puppet of the ‘globalists?’

[Andy McDandy]

Starmer - Sturmer - Nazi paper - Fenton's creepy stalker fan.

[Boiler]

I still think Fenton's 'fan' is Fenton.

[Tubby Isaacs]

If this true, good. I'm usually the sort that says phase things like this in. But if schools are worried, they can make cuts now, in their time, not Labour's. Salaries must be the biggest regular cost. I wonder if there'll be cross the board reductions at some schools.

[kreuzberger]

"Salaries must be the biggest regular cost."

Flogging off a cricket pitch or three for building posh, zeckative homes might do the trick.

Father Leo at Ampleforth drew a short, theatrically-shocked breath and eyed me up as a wrong 'un when I asked how far the school's grounds extended from his study window.

Sir? To the horizon, of course...

[Tubby Isaacs]

Facilities are a big draw for these schools, so they'd have to be careful.

But it's their problem. And other schools have more urgent ones.

[mattomac]

They should just take on more international students, it’s effectively what they’ve done in increasing numbers for ages and yet no one mentions it.

And unlike with Universities there is no public good coming from it.

[Tubby Isaacs]

They should just take on more international students, it’s effectively what they’ve done in increasing numbers for ages and yet no one mentions it.

And unlike with Universities there is no public good coming from it.

Yep, that would seem to be a pretty painless way of doing it. I think you can argue there's some soft power too. Win win.

[Abernathy]

Just been thinking about Keir Starmer, and where he has brought the Labour Party since he won the leadership in early 2020. Labour is now poised to return to government, 18 long years since it last won an election. It’s a remarkable achievement, on any assessment. Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership had left the party, having suffered its worst defeat since 1935, requiring a larger swing than that achieved by Blair in 1997 to achieve a single seat majority, and mired in multiple instances of shocking anti-semitism. Starmer was facing a massive task on at least two different levels. He had first, urgently to transform his party from the corrupted nest of Trots and Tankies of various stripes, who had been emboldened by Corbyn’s leadership to colonise every level of its structure. These were people obsessed, among various other things, with the Israel/Palestine issue, who had been accustomed to the adoption of a hostile attitude towards the state of Israel that extended easily and porously into vehement and virulent hostility towards Jewish people generally. Which might have been acceptable in the SWP (or whichever sect they had migrated from), but was emphatically unacceptable in the mainstream Labour Party.

So Starmer simply had to transform his party, as a matter of priority. Furthermore, he had to be *seen* by the electorate to have transformed the Labour Party. To have made it once again an acceptable, natural, electable, and alternative party of government.
To his lasting credit, Starmer set about his task ruthlessly and without compunction. In retrospect, the only way to approach the task. It put the backs up of the Trot die-hards who remained, notably the Momentum Corbynist faction, but arguably, the party is rather better off without such individuals - including Corbyn himself.

This - the transformation and reform of the party, was Phase One of Starmer’s plan to get Labour back to government. It is all but complete, though still requires attention. Phase Two of the plan was about public perception. The need to change the public’s perception of what Labour was. More difficult, but crucial, and clearly contingent on the success of Phase One. There was, of course, a concomitant requirement for Labour to be an effective opposition, to expose the many shortcomings, failures, and downright incompetence of the Tories in government. It can be argued that the Tories were doing a good enough job of this themselves, but this ignores the reality that Starmer still had to do a ruthlessly effective job as leader of the opposition, which he did, and which would still have been required however poorly the Tories conducted themselves. But the public perception of the Labour Party *has* now changed. Labour is now *the* alternative government in waiting.

So, Phase One and Phase Two of the Starmer plan are now complete. Phase Three is the final phase, and quite simply consists of developing an offer or manifesto which voters will actively want to vote for. This phase is of course ongoing, and is possibly the trickiest phase to pull off. It’s Roy Jenkins’ long walk along a corridor with a highly polished floor carrying a priceless porcelain vase (yeah, that again).

Four years after the Labour Party was left teetering on the brink of electoral extinction, Starmer has now brought it back to an imminent return to government. In my view, I think that is an astonishing feat, given where we were.

I just really don’t think that Keir Starmer gets the recognition that he deserves for this.

[Youngian]

First thing I’d wish PM Starmer to do is appoint a special prosecutor like in Palermo or New York to go after every state capture crook with their fingers in the till under the Tories. Not just the Covid scammers but those chisellers ripping off benefit claimants with measly food parcels, Johnson’s pals in the London trough, Teeside, Post Office bosses whose actions sent innocent post masters to prison, Tory donors recipient of closed contracts. And throw a few Labour councils to the wolves as well if they’ve been at it. The stables stink and need a thorough steam clean.

[Andy McDandy]

Brexit truth and reconciliation committee too.

[Youngian]

Not sure how the reconciliation bit will work. Can’t think of a single charlatan or nutter from the Leave campaign that will budge or accept any fault or admit they got it wrong.

[Oboogie]

Necklace the lot of 'em.

[Dalem Lake]

I'd like Starmer to set up something like a Royal Commission to look at a proper constitution for the running of the country because the last decade has shown that the use of conventions in governing just aren't worth shit anymore.