Thread 8 Starmer : Cat fur on new clothes

[DuncinToffee]

Previous thread

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5157500-thread-7-starmer-cats-and-conferences?page=40&reply=138415767

This is where I'm at.

It's beyond a matter of right and wrong.

But more about knowing what will be perceived as wrong and avoid doing it.

They won't have a chance to be a great government of all the headlines are trashing their personal decisions. Which considering most of our press seems to be RW nowadays - they (rightly or wrongly) will.

There is a short opinion piece in the Times suggesting that Reeves is too enthusiastic about her job - she gave an interview where she said she got stuck into work the moment she was appointed and worked through the weekend. Apparently she needs to understand its not the 80's anymore.
Its meaningless stuff obviously - a couple of hundred words to fill a column.
I don't believe they'd actually have preferred it if she had taken the weekend off.
But no she can't win.

Okay. Well perhaps this Labour government had better realise that power is substantially different from campaigning. That was Johnson’s flaw too. I appreciate it is early days but;

get a comms strategy. The right wing press will always hate you. That doesn’t mean you don’t cultivate them

Don’t source designer clothes from donors - these are things that the general public expect you to source for yourself.

Do not deliver messages where people who are perceived to have very little get even less; ie pensioners

Pay off potentially hostile Cabinet Secretaries with a nice job. You want to govern for a decade, remember

You have strategic missions. Very good. You need quite urgently to have some eye catching promotions on them - see comms strategy

Starmer is now less popular than Sunak. In two months.

Rachel Reeves is ordering an investigation in £600m of Covid contracts

but did she pay for her own suit

I agree with everything you all just said!

I really hope the budget is not all doom and gloom. There needs to be a sweetener somewhere for everyone. Doing something about the ridiculous standing charges for gas and electricity would be a good one.

I hate to say it, but Starmer needs a Mandelson or a Campbell. Someone wily and ruthless to manage the comms.

@Piggywaspushed hope you feel a bit better soon.

I completely agree too. And yes, they desperately need a comms director at the top of their game who writes a coherent narrative about the direction of travel and is able to spot the potential land mines and avoid them. They’re already using the expertise of Blair’s government in health, perhaps it’s time they did the same with comms.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/sep/22/rachel-reeves-orders-investigations-into-600m-of-covid-contracts?

There might be a few squeaky tory bums

God, there is an absolutely horrible thread about the rent reforms. Full of pretend? landlords gleefully talking about evicting their tenants.

Step away Pandora

Not going near it.😇 It is only really the benefit bashing one I find hard to steer clear of!

Where is it?

Money Matters, so thankfully not getting too much attention!

The chief victim is Keir Starmer on all this. Not much known about him before winning and now he is well within the designer glasses narrative. He got it with both barrels from the Observer yesterday which is not exactly a right wing paper.

He will find himself replaced if he makes his party unpopular

Eh? I feel like not two minutes ago there was lots of Starmer criticism for having a holiday (that he didn't actually have).

The press do really think we have the attention span of gnats

The press do really think we have the attention span of gnats

Some people do. I’ve just had to remind someone accusing Starmer of weak leadership about his handling of the riots.

I thought the handling of the riots made him a dictator

And then there was the Friday family time and the handholding

Never mind that they solved the strikes, stopped the riots, binned Rwanda

It's gone loo lah again. I feel some regrouping has happened.

All the threads are blending into one, but on one someone suggested Starmer would go soon as he's now less popular than sunak (hopefully not this thread).

I really hope not. The last thing the UK needs is more leadership ping pong. Its almost like we've got addicted to the psychodrama

Starmer wasn't popular for most of the time he has been Labour leader

For a popularity contest, there is the Tory conference

Went in M and S yesterday. They’ve got a newspaper stand as you leave the food bit (which tbh is the busiest area). Only sells the Mail and Express. As you leave you see the huge headlines slating Labour and Starmer. Those are the things that the non politically engaged see as they leave and that form opinion. It’s so infuriating. Added to the fact that the vast majority of M and S food hall customers are relatively well off pensioners who won’t see the irony.

It is anti-Labour froth central out there, for sure, Cassie. Not sure how much it matters, though?

In the real world people are pissed off about donations and the WFA, but know that there is a long way to go yet and that we need to give Labour a chance.

The problem is all the frothing makes me less sympathetic. I had to turn the radio off this morning because Rachel Burden was giving Rachel Reeves a hard time about the WFA. All I could think about was the extra £600 A MONTH I was expected to magic up to pay for Truss's impact on my mortgage. £200 seems very small beer in comparison, especially when the triple lock means the pensioners will benefit from Trussmageddon.

I know some pensioners are going to suffer and hate it that the debate is so divisive because it means its not possible to have a constructive conversation about how to support them.

Rachel Reeves did well this morning, the first female chancellor is giving a conference speech at 12pm

As a not Starmer supporter, I am mildly amused by the firestorm of bad publicity that is engulfing the Labour Party.

It's what we've been used to for many years in Scotland where the establishment/MSM is wired to promulgate the message that "SNP bad" - some justified, some not, and to ignore/not report "good" news (or to present it as negatively as possible)

That is very true Prettybird. Same to a lesser extent here in Wales for Welsh Labour. The flak Drakeford suffered was unreal.

Wonder what the public response would be if RR decided to cut schools budget or whatever to fund the WFA ? And I find it ironic that the DM didn’t create the same fuss when the uplift was withdrawn from UC after the pandemic.