To like Keir Starmer?

[Emmanuelll]

Unlike Tony Blair, he comes from a working class background - his siblings would still call themselves working class.

As a very bright lawyer, he could have sought a path which made him rich quickly but instead chose human rights which isn’t an easy route to take and he’s defended ‘the little guy’ against corporations. He’s also anti-death penalty.

Ok, he’s a Sir, and I’ve heard people (perhaps not unreasonably) question why the leader of the Labour Party would have a title like that. But he earned it through work for the criminal justice system.

On the face of it, it seems as though he deserves a chance.

I would much rather have him as PM than a former Bullingdon club member who used to burn money in front of homeless people for the fun of it.

Starmer is competent.

Hallelujah, shout it in the streets, after the last decade and a half of bigoted moronic self-serving half wits, we have a competent if unexciting PM.

It feels like getting out of a car being driven by a drunken person.

You're making yourself look very silly here...

A general comment does not equal obsession. Are you always this dramatic?

Not very clever? How did he get to be a QC then?

Plus he just persuaded the whole country to vote him in... id say that's pretty persuasive!

He really isn’t. But we’ll see how good a PM he is.

I'm absolutely sick of the whining on that issue to be honest.

I was about to say the same thing. Private school parents up in arms that a policy might actually affect them for a change - cry me a river(!). I am getting fed up with them taking over every thread with that one issue - how crass when some people are in abject poverty thanks to the previous government. And I have a dd in a private school myself which is thanks to the Tories decimating state provision (she has SEN but appears NT to the untrained eye so she’ll fall through the cracks).

Don’t remember him saying this? Do you have a link?

Hear hear!

Ill drop this right here, Starmer 😬

I like him a lot. He seems to be what I want in a politician- someone with a spine but also morals and a desire to change the country for the better rather than line their own pockets and those of their mates. He's well educated, very intelligent and has experience of a more normal life than previous Prime Ministers. Talking about his "£8million fortune" is disingenuous when Boris Johnson earned £5m in the six months after leaving Downing Street alone and Rishi Sunak's family were richer than the King.

And anyone who thinks private school VAT is a divisive issue is living in a bubble. The 6% of families affected by it oppose it. The other 94% of the country either don't care either way or support it. That's not a divisive issue at all.

The U.K. obsession with class is just bizarre and not something you see in other cultures.

Lots of "working class" people can be rich, lots of "middle class" people can be poorer than the working class, so why the obsession with it.

Just because someone is working class or middle class does not make them a better or worse PM. Why don't we concentrate on execution and actual qualities than this ridiculous obsession with class!

I suspect he’ll fail because he’s actually not very clever, not very experienced and not very persuasive.
You what now, @FinalCeleryScheme ?
Not clever? A top barrister?
Not experienced? He ran the CPS - as a PM, fair enough, but nobody is experienced at that when they get the job.
Not persuasive? His strategy for campaigning (targeting places he needed to win) just got a huge majority.

What exactly are you looking for? And who exactly in the country do you think could provide it?

Buy a guinea pig or a golden retriever?

Agreed. I think he's fundamentally decent and I'm happy to see him as PM .

Just because someone is working class or middle class does not make them a better or worse PM.

That was clearly not my point. There have been a lot of discussions of late about how the Tory government was made up mainly of people who not only don’t care about ‘ordinary’ people, but who also are out of touch with reality of how most people live.

I like him more and more.

What this argument keeps missing is that it's quite a strong belief in many parts of the Labour Party that people opting out of state education harms, not benefits, the state sector and wider social mobility and cohesion, unless you are taking a purely fiscal view.

There are some credible arguments around that view - the idea that a cohort of children from disproportionately well off families with disproportionately engaged and supportive parents being missing from the state sector affects the state sector negatively. They do not see choosing private as neutral, let alone a public good.

Obviously many will also disagree with that position and in particular the ideological weight you put on the individual versus societal, and how much weight you put on different arguments in favour of and against private education. It's not a straightforward one but if you reflect on the beliefs underlying the policy position and the history of Labour policy on private education, this isn't random or illogical.

Double Down News? Ok...

@FinalCeleryScheme can you give examples of how Starmer is not very clever?

Grammar school educated, Oxbridge graduate, Director of Public Prosecutions, appointed QC…yes I can understand why some might think he’s not too clever. How on earth did we elect such an uneducated individual?

Hopefully the Tories can find a safe seat for Liz Truss in the next election so we can bring her back🙏🏾

I very much like him. I also feel I can trust him far more than any of the last few PMs and hope he doesn’t let me down!

He’s not Oxbridge. And I wouldn’t get too carried away with the QC and DPP qualifications.

But let’s see.

From his former DPP colleagues. Seems like a decent guy to work with.

Link

He is a nice good solid type who should be in charge of things generally, and there are far too few of them in the world to go round. I have more confidence in him than Blair, who is far more egotistical. But the country is in a right state so will take a lot of sorting out. I hope people have the patience. They have made a good start though.

@FinalCeleryScheme why are you posting things that aren't true? He did his postgrad at Oxford.

So what information in that video is factually incorrect? As your so clever you can at least enlighten us all 😙