Why is Keir Starmer so disliked (before the Mandelson scandal?)

[JacquesHarlow]

AIBU to ask this? Why was he so vehemently, fundamentally disliked by the British public, even before the Mandelson saga and the (admittedly awful) lack of judgement?

I have seen worse PMs in the last decade alone. I have seen venal, self-serving, arrogant liars hold the office in that time. I have seen hapless, posh types. We’ve all seen the one who couldn’t outlast a lettuce.

So why does Keir Starmer get so much vitriolic hate in comments sections, despite having only held the office for such a short time?

Is it his perceived lack of communication skills? I’ve seen some people criticise him for not being strident, positive, energised, chummy or any of the things we often see in modern politics.

Is it his lack of identifiable policies or political strategy, where people find they can’t get behind him because they don’t know what he (personally) believes in?

Is it ageism (yep I said it!) in that he comes across as formal and correct, in a time where we’re used to seeing other personalities on the world stage?

Or is it that thing I long suspected, that the country is by default Tory in nature, and that despite a heavy frustration at the last five years of Tory incompetence, they can’t bring themselves to accept this party, and are keen to take him down any which way?

The recent saga of the last week is awful. As a woman I can’t stand to see people like the former US ambassador be enabled.

However the hate for Keir long pre dates this.

so why?? Why do people “hate” him?!

P.S I do not work for Ipsos MORI, or Labour HQ, I am not a bot or a troll or whatever people accuse others of when they don’t like the question.

We’ve all been gaslit to dislike him from the very off. He inherited an absolute catastroshambles from the tories and yet, from day 1, he’s been presented as a failure, weak and dishonest and even as a national traitor.
The BBC, the right wing press and social media have all been feeding this narrative and the government haven’t managed to secure the cohesion of their own party enough to mitigate it. It’s all a mess.

I didn't vote for him, but I believed that with all the pious hair-shirtery he displayed in opposition that he might at least prove to be a clean and honest PM.

Unfortunately, he has shown us from the start he is greedy, dishonest, has very poor judgement and little vision.

Many of the policies he has tried to introduce are spiteful and intended to punish people who don't support his politics.

He is arrogant and seems genuinely to believe he is always right and that people who disagree with him aren't just wrong, they are evil too.

If he hadn't been so holier-than-thou in opposition, we might have been more forgiving of his failures. However, if there is one thing more dislikeable than a greedy, spiteful liar, it's a hypocritical greedy, spiteful liar.

Why he is so disliked is no mystery to me. It's obvious.

Despite everything you say in your OP he won the last election.

People hated every other option more than they hated Starmer.

Lots of us still do.

Are you ever going to come back OP?

Yep this and the previous posts. It’s obvious.

I don't dislike him, but he is so "beige".

Lacks charisma. Lacks direction. Lacks a strong personality to lead a country. A leader needs to be believable, have ideas and have the determination to follow them through, to be consistent. I just don't get that with him. Labour need to find a much stronger leader.

Oddly, I quite liked Maggie Thatcher. I didn't so much like her policies, but I liked the fact she had a vision and delivered it with passion. You knew what you were getting, even if you didn't agree - there was no jumping ship with her. (Let's see how many how many Mumsnet people don't read further than the line "I quite liked Maggie Thatcher" and go off on one without reading the rest of this paragraph...).

If Labour want to make this work, they are going to need a much stronger team.

The media is majority owned by billionaires. They don't want a labour government. The Tories were utterly inept but got nowhere near the battering Labour are getting.

I always find that on any thread about why Labour are liked/disliked, a crop of people will always immediately and angrily tell us that they are "better than the Tories". This seems specific to Labour, doesn't really happen vice versa.

I want reasons to vote FOR a party, not just because they may be less worse than the other lot. Where are the positives? All I can see are endless u-turns and more of the "we're not as awful as the other guys" - and that's before the Rayner/Leadership/Mandelson stuff. Their utopian manifesto seems to have vanished.

He's the leader of the Labour Party and those on the right are furious we have a Labour government so are making a LOT of noise about him.
Some Labour voters would prefer a leader with a stronger traditional left image.
Some people are frustrated because they wanted revolution speed change from a Labour government. Starmer's slow, steady (dull?) demeanor is seen as symbolic of the lack of speedy progress they hoped for.

Exactly..and no one has answered this yet!
There includes lots of personal character assaults here. Nobody said you had to actually like him. (Oh the entitlement!).
Consider where we are headed (Farage et al) and losing much, if not all of that entitlement. And no one can say they were not warned...

To the women who have fought so incredibly hard on our behalf. Fkin awesome. Thank God for you all but shouldn't the fight continue from inside? They are all becoming swayed by popular opinion, which is what politicians all do. Can we chose the non fascists and work on them instead of losing everything else that women have worked so hard for in the last 50 years in the process?

"I always find that on any thread about why Labour are liked/disliked, a crop of people will always immediately and angrily tell us that they are "better than the Tories".

For a bit of balance.
I really like that Labour have reintroduced Sure Start in the form of Best Start.
I like what they're doing on animal welfare - banning puppy farms, smuggling etc.
Increasing the minimum wage.
NHS waiting times are down.

This opinion makes me laugh. Surely you realise there is just as much left wing media as there is right wing?

Because a very large number of people are completely incapable of criticising someone’s actions or policies respectfully. They aren’t sufficiently emotionally mature, so do so by characterising someone with whom they disagree as scum, or evil, or the subject of
vitriolic hate. It’s pathetic.

I don’t agree with some stuff he’s done, I agree with other bits of it. It’s been disappointing overall but I don’t expect them to turn it around within the time they’ve had. He’s preferable to all the alternatives, I just wish he had more
vision and ooomph.

I am convinced it’s because a normal person and normal people can’t do the top job. As far as the British people and establishment are concerned, It needs to be an elite.

and even he- highly educated, successful and influential-is pushing the bar of normal person somewhat

His failure to stand up for Rosie Duffield. DESPICABLE cowardice

Yes she’s pretty blunt on how he treats women in the Labour party and ride roughshod over anyone speaking up. She thinks he should go. Listening this morning I believe her.

Venal, self-serving, arrogant liar is excellent description of him.

There have been mistakes but Labour have taken a kicking from day dot. The British media scrutinise Labour more than they ever did the Tories.

I also think the media now push for the chaotic news cycles that we witnessed during the last Tory government. They want people sacked / leader challenges and Labour MPs are stupid enough to give them fodder for it. It is tedious and I think the media play a large part in what feels like chaotic governance.

Social media doesn’t help - misinformation is rife and reform make the most of it. Whichever Labour person became PM had no chance. Brexit has completely fucked the country up - its campaign was horribly divisive and the country hasn’t ever recovered from that vote or its consequences .

Could the same not be said of other recent PMs though?

Not defending Starmer btw.

I do think the advisers behind the screens - Macsweeny, the toxic Dominic Cummings and then Seumas Milne are also responsible for the demise of government. They have almost always been behind hideous mistakes and never get sacked.

"Of the eight national newspapers we asked about, five were seen to be predominantly right-wing, whilst two were seen as predominantly left-wing."

Three-quarters of national newspaper circulation is controlled by three major groups (Murdoch, Rothermere, and Barclay families), billionaires whose publications generally favour right-wing, pro-Conservative stances.

yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/17715-how-left-or-right-wing-are-uks-newspapers

It seems to me that whoever comes along gets a kicking. I didn’t actually think that Rishi Sunak was that bad but he was hounded out before he had a chance. Every PM gets this treatment. I don’t really understand why we have the system we do. I don’t think it works any more.

Intellectual arson by the media has lead a majority of people to engage with politics as if it is entertainment so their reactions to events are extreme- apathetic and Ostrich like or deeply cynical. I think Starmer is seemingly a victim of these times.

He is judged by his words and actions.

Off the top of my head.
He said some women have a penis.
He told farmers they mattered and then introduced an inheritance tax on farms.
He said he wouldn’t raise taxes and then promptly raised taxes
He ignored the grooming gang victims.

He is a bad man doing bad things.

It's it really relevant though, it's the profit margins that are important, what sells is entertainment.

He wasn't hounded out. He chose to call a general election.