Starmer insults women’s intelligence to blame Sunak for judicial failures when it was Starmer’s CPS that failed to prosecute rapists

[IwantToRetire]

I am so fed up with politicians and their seedy bully boy tactics.

So Starmer having failed to get personal approval from voters who rate Sunak higher than him, doesn't think maybe I should try harder to be more relevant to voters.

No he decides to roll in the gutter and use personal attacks. https://www.jackfm.co.uk/news/politics/labour-takes-inspiration-from-australia-with-sunak-attack-ads-but-they-need-more-to-pull-off-a-proper-ousting/

I'm not saying the Tories are blameless, but lets face it, it was/is the CPS who continued/s to fail to prosecute rapists even when the police present evidence, because the CPS only want to take on sure fire winning court cases to up their stats.

So not only has Labour tried to make out Sunak (who became as MP the same year as Starmer) personally doesn't want child abusers to go to prison, but now has plagerised women campaign's slogan about how rape has been decriminalised. https://rapecrisis.org.uk/get-informed/the-decriminalisation-of-rape/

And yet Labour still doesn't know what a woman is, nor have they re-admitted women expelled from Labour for saying women are biological females. But think our tiny emotional brains will be overwhelmed by their crass statements about women's issues.

Labour seem to think that because this sort of politcal sloganeering used by the vote leave party were sucessful during the Brexit campaign, that this is how they will win the next election.

Which is worse? That our politicians think voters are such dimwits. Or that they might be right. https://labourlist.org/2023/04/labour-attack-ad-rishi-sunak-crime-twitter-controversial-advert/

I agree and I think part of the problem is that Starmer's position on self-ID is less clear than it used to be. It used to be in favour of self-ID but now it seems to be something different every day depending on who he's talking to. It's uncomfortably reminisent of his stance on Brexit in 2019 which, whether rightly or wrongly, was seen as unclear and flip floppy.

Thing about Blair is arguably the best thing he ever did (from an election-winning perspective, if not from an ideological one) was abolish Clause IV. I remember my step-dad going mad with rage about it at the time. But rightly or wrongly it was a very clear line in the sand that took Labour from a socialist party to a socially democratic one. Starmer's verion of the Clause IV moment is kicking Corbyn out of the party. Which is probably not enough to show that Labour has moved on.

Until now I thought that Starmer was an untrustworthy weasel on self ID but otherwise a decent person who wanted to make people’s lives better. It sounds contradictory but that’s what I thought. Now he’s doubling down on the smearing of political opponents and basically lying about them I can’t convince myself he’s fundamentally decent anymore. As a pp pointed out, people aren’t surprised when the Tories do this but they feel let down when Labour do it, especially whilst still claiming the moral high ground.

Except none of the shadow cabinet seems to have been consulted, and the person who is responsible for the adverts didn't realise that the very next day, Keir Starmer would look like a right twat as it was him not Sunak who was on the committee for sentencing.

There may be merit in building up a campaign of doubt over one of the Tories' policies, like crime, but this seems to have been drawn on the back of a fag packet and implemented without anyone else knowing.

And this is after an initial reaction of many thinking that these sort of tactics are just unworthy, cheap shots.

@Datun - you are correct on those points but the purpose is to set a general narrative- that is usually much more successful in terms of communicating messages. Both parties use this tactic, and while you may be engaged, I'm willing to bet that this does land in the way it is intended.

Not including colleagues... well, par for the course. Johnson did the same on Savile. Did that finish him off or was it a much bigger perception that he was a liar?

Perception is everything- people forget the detail.

‘Perception is everything’

Sure and if people are talking about how crap they are, and Starmer is - which is the case not just on mn FWR - that’ll be what sticks.

@MarshaBradyo come on that may be true but unlikely. What I actually see, even from this thread, is that it's policy that people care about.

Labour will keep playing this card. In the battle of the technocrats, I don't see either major party candidate's personality being decisive. What will matter is perception of the party itself. Kier has to make Labour credible, Sunak has to say that the Conservatives have have more in the tank.

When you look at the polls, Labour have had the best of it. These attack ads are designed to develop against Sunak and his competence. Given the engagement on them, I think it's done well. It's attacked here because of inconsistency and flip flopping which I think is fair. But does that mean ineffective? No.

The polls suggest the lead is narrowing though. And the perception here is that the ads are a mess, and have been hidden from anyone who'd be likely to speak against them. Hardly any of the shadow cabinet has even retweeted or endorsed them

www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/04/11/joe-biden-ireland-rishi-sunak-news-latest-stormont-starmer/

www.politico.eu/newsletter/london-playbook/96-hour-doctors-strike-bidens-bumpy-landing-starmer-sticks-to-his-guns/

People post on here you’re not who Labour is aiming at

Ok so where are they trying to connect. A quick google shows Starmer has written an article for the DM so that’s probably where

The comments make mn FWR look like a tea party. Not sure what his aim is but if it’s for every bad aspect of Labour to be mentioned it has achieved that at least.

It's a very small narrowing and it's one set of ads. I don't think you can say cause and effect.

Labour are ahead of the Conservatives in every single area of policy, including the economy and crime. Now that should be worked on, maintained, by any means towards the election. That is what any political party would do.

Give it a month. If the Labour lead on crime drops, you will have been right. Perception adjusted. If it goes up, then Labour will know they've hit the mark, Daily Mail notwithstanding

I think for me the main danger is that the attack ads will alienate the Labour IDPOL-Left (who tend to see crime in terms of structural oppression rather than strictly personal responsibility) whilst not convincing the Red Wall voters who have for many years regarding Labour as being soft on crime.

So they are aiming to triangulate the two voter blocs but end up alienating both blocs - as happened with Labour's position on Brexit in 2019.

Well that’s where he’s writing so someone must have advised these ads and follow up in DM as target audience

Maybe they’re solely focussed on the Brexit crowd as they were with the silly re-hashing of Take Back Control

Even the wife one went down like a lead balloon and I’d say that story got traction a while ago when it surfaced

Hard to predict the polls. Whether they continue to slip we’ll see but if it has been an own goal as many outlets from Guardian to Telegraph say then it’ll be fairly amusing.

People being pissed off with Tories gave them that lead, if people are just feeling the same re Starmer instead it won’t be great for Labour

@potniatheron as a leftie I see the point but as an old leftie I also see something else. There is always this contingent in the Labour Party who insist that structural iniquity is the root of all oppression and thus that must be tackled and acknowledged first before any other measure is considered.

That sometimes includes measures to actually win elections. Labour tend to do rather better when they sit firmly on that section of the party and get super practical.

Red Wall voters are interesting - Labour won't get them all back. It will get some as is evident from the polling. There's not much point trying to outcompete Braverman on small boats for example. You would wait and then say, as is inevitable given the timings of her announcements, you've done nothing. The competence card.

Self ID was a Tory policy, introduced in 2017 by Tory Prime Minister Theresa May. And passed into policies and legistlation by the TWAW Tory government.

@TooBigForMyBoots - quite right. It's been a Conservative government that put men in women's prisons and allowed sexual assault and rape to occur. That is on them. Changing guidelines in the last six months, asserting zip all authority over the criminal justice system when it had the power to do so but didn't is weak and disengenuous.

Yes, absolutely that contingent exists, and they're just as childish and silly now as they were when Orwell savaged them in Road to Wigan Pier.

Labour will only win a majority when they show by words and deeds that they want power more than they want ideological purity. Starmer has shown that very well. But the rest of his front bench are still not wholly convincing I think.

Self ID was a Tory policy, introduced in 2017 by Tory Prime Minister Theresa May

Incorrect. They proposed it, had a consultation and responded to it by announcing they were not moving forward with it. Women here responded to that consultation. As we also know, some institutions, sports and public spaces misread the Equality act and were given false information by groups like Stonewall, and implemented self ID in practice. That does not make it Tory policy and they did not pass it into law. The tories now, belatedly, are correcting this kind of misunderstanding of the law in various departments. They haven’t been great on this at all, but self ID is not a Tory policy. It is a Labour policy.

Self-ID has not been passed into legislation by the Tories. They've demonstrably rowed back from it.

That is wrong. Self ID was allowed and implemented as part of Tory criminal Justice policy. That was introduced under a Conservative government.

The left has shown across many countries which way they’re headed and Labour is no exception

It doesn't have to be written into law. All it needed was a succession of splineless politicians who signed off on self ID being implemented in women's prisons, and the Ministry of Justice litigating to defend that policy. That did not happen without a Justice Secretary agreeing to it. A Conservative one.

So the thread is at the stage where rewriting history about self-ID in political parties is being trotted out.

Everyone here is well aware and has tirelessly worked hard to get the tories to listen and then enforce single sex spaces and single sex sports. Labour are not listening, they don’t care snd they haven’t changed their position. Which is to introduce self ID into law. So yes both are crap, one is quite clearly listening and the other refuses to.

Many of the people posting on here are exactly who labour should be aiming at: people like me who are centrist swing voters.

You can look this up as a matter of public record. It's in the case law. Self ID ended up in women's prisons and was defended by a Conservative government as a lawful policy.

They won. So perhaps they changed their mind now, but they put it into effect, spent money defending it in the courts.

Case law would be the FWS case where it was determined that those without a GRC remain male in law.