Starmer The Tortoise.

[RealityFan]

Some months back, I read a really interesting piece on the Helen Lewis "Bluestocking" sub stack re Starmer.

That he drives everyone crazy in the Labour Party, moving at the speed of a tortoise, happy to pause, change direction, maybe go back the way he started, maybe keep up a new path.

But always at the pace of a tortoise, glacial progress to his desired destination.

It seems he has no ulterior principled policy positions other than the need to get Labour into power to rescue the country from what will have been 14 years of abject misrule (I'm a Tory voter and they deserve oblivion).

And he will make slow progress to this desired end.

But noone should mistake this for confusion or lack of ethics. Indeed, his fortitude is enormous, just conveyed as the opposite in public as Captain Hindsight and Sir Flip Flop.

He's absolutely zeroed in on power, the create stability and calm and professionalism in UK politics, and to work to meaningful change.

But he'll in his tortoise like way, endlessly triangulate. According to Helen, his will is iron to get Labour to steady the Good Ship Britain in 2024, and he'll irritate any number of people to get there.

And I think we're seeing it on the trans front. He was happy to piss off any number of women in the country, finally saw the righteous anger, and is now hacking off the Pink News contingent.

What he really believes here? Who knows.

But he's locking down the policy. Other politicians would have got that done two years ago. Tortoise Starmer just takes two years longer than everyone else.

I think this from Helen rings true. Unbelievable tardiness in setting out policy, not sure the best way to go, but now making sure his delayed policy will stick. And crawling over the line in 2024.

I suspect that isn't a million miles from the truth.

He's achieved an awful lot from very humble beginnings and repeatedly given up chances for wealth or power in exchange for public service.

There is just no way he's stupid or weak in the way he's portrayed. It's easy to dismiss all senior politicians as useless but such a consistent run of people who achieve nothing, then get made PM is unprecedented in UK history.

None of that is to say I trust him. I just think enough pressure will work.

I really would like to give him a chance. I rate his back story and ascent into the top of politics. There's a lot to be said for ultra pragamatism and slicing the onion thinly.

And his intray on Day One of the job will be daunting, only rivalled by Labour winning after WW2.

I think he is more of a political animal than it first appeared and is a bit Machiavellian.

I have been disappointed on him doing u-turns on a couple of things recently. He knows that the core Labour voters that might not be a 100% happy with this have no-where else to go. He is all about re-attracting the red wall. But I guess he has to be.

My guess is the new line on trans issues is closer to what Starmer really believes and will attract more people than it alienates.

Ultimately I still want him to be PM and am hopeful that he will be good. He is very switched on and always well prepared at PMQs.

I think he is more of a political animal than it first appeared and is a bit Machiavellian.

I don't think so at all. He's not risen through the party system- he spent most of his career in the law then got helicoptered in because they were desperate be for heavyweights. He's clever and he's learning but he's hardly done brilliantly considering the state the Tories are in.

Blair would have engineered a massive fight with the TRAs on day one and reaped the political benefits from it.

I don’t agree. Blair had a united Labour Party. Starmer has had a difficult job with a Labour Party in a bad place and felt it was risky to say anything that would offend not only TRAs but those who conflate trans rights with all LGBT rights.

I think he has changed his position now because the more moderate line he has taken is more likely to win over Tory voters. And those who don’t like the new line also probably want to keep the Tories out.

He has his eyes on the prize. He may not be winning over hearts and minds but he is steadily gaining votes all the same.

Rings true to me, as well. In many ways this is a judicious strategy: he was loathed by the Corbyn contingent, blamed for everything and accused of more. His party and the unions still contain a lot of these enemies, so he needs to play his cards carefully.

It's encouraging to hear he's laser-focused on winning the GE. The number of people in Labour who don't care about winning elections is mystifying! He's running out of time to convince the electorate, though. I keep thinking he needs better PR but, on reflection, so much of the mass media is pro-Tory that the world's best image conjuror probably couldn't do much. Steady, focused and ethical is what we need after the insane rollercoaster we've been riding.

I quite like Rishi Sunak 😂despite being strongly anti-Conservatives. If you could splice him & Starmer together, you might get something reminiscent of Blair and I'd be feeling a lot more confident about the future!

Blair had a united Labour Party. Starmer has had a difficult job with a Labour Party in a bad place and felt it was risky to say anything that would offend not only TRAs but those who conflate trans rights with all LGBT rights.

Blair took (most of) the party with him to achieve the changes he wanted. Starmer ran for the leadership on a promise to unite the party (and plenty of the same people voted for him who voted for Corbyn), then once elected, said "haha, fuck you . . . and proceeded to abandon almost every policy position he had pledged to maintain, avoiding the kinds of arguments and processes Blair had to go through by simply expelling anyone who disagreed with him.

If the party is not united, Starmer has only himself to blame.

How do you trust someone who promises one thing then does another?

How do you rely on a leader that failed to define a woman.

I don't think he's strong enough or clear enough.

He may not be stupid or weak, but he may not have what it takes to hold the LP together nonetheless. Maybe no one does.

I agree it will take a long time for the LP to be united regardless of the next GE results.

My overall thought is that this recently released position is close to the position Starmer has always wanted. Maybe he's been testing the water to see the temperature. Maybe he'd already in confidence declared his position to close aides but wanted to see the level of dissent and disagreement out there.
Maybe he absolutely is a "both sides" person, agonisingly trying to balance what I consider a zero sum game on the head of a pin.

If anyone has seen Goodfellas, Pauli the mob leader doesn't move. At all. Doesn't even have a phone. But when he does move, things get done. There's a fantastic scene in the film where he just slices garlic cloves as thin as thin can be with a razor.

Starmer is the Pauli of politics. No movement. Until he moves. Then the mob pulls in behind.

And happy to spend his days slicing garlic over and over as thin as possible.

I have a lot to think about here. As a Tory voter watching my country burn under the "supervision" of my party, the Tories need to be punished. But as a GC of at least a decades standing now, absolutely despairing of the leftist managerial elites and their groupthink succumbing to trans activism, having the mother of all cognitive dissonances looking fwds to voting in 2024 (highlighted even more with Liz Truss being my local MP).

Is Starmer's new pitch proof positive of Helen Lewis' "tortoise" theory? Ie Starmer taking forever to get to a policy position and then locking it down? If it is, I'm minded to take a punt in him, despite my anxieties about the wider Labour Party and movement.

My sense with Starmer has always been that until recently he just saw the whole issue as both a minor concern and very divisive, and so a distraction. He’s definitely hyper focussed on winning the next election and part of that strategy has been avoiding ‘culture war’ issues as much as possible and trying to steer a middle path.

So think he hadn’t really engaged with the detail of the issues until it all kicked off in Scotland with their attempted GRA reform, Isla Bryson etc. Which made it very clear how unpopular self ID actually is with the public. I doubt he will move on this again, as I don’t think he was ever personally committed to Self ID and wouldn’t jeopardise his overall credibility to pursue it now.

From what I can gather, Starmer is confronted with up to six colleagues at shadow cabinet meetings that have trans IDd children, the prevalence per capita even higher in the party at large and activist movement incl unions.

Trans has done such a number on otherwise rational people, that a luxury belief and system of magical thinking, has so ingrained itself, that even a GC Starmer would find it nigh on impossible to say "no comment", let alone disagree with the concept of a trans child with these individuals.

This is not like purging the party of anti semitism, where an enemy within could be focussed on and rooted out. This is literally the modern Left's whole modus operandi, holding up trans as the single most victimised group, expecting women to give up many of their freedoms and rights so that the whole of society is freer and one more prejudice and taboo is eliminated.

I genuinely think Starmer himself personally would not have given much thought to trans as he grew up, his early career at DPP, and his early time in politics. But of course he had to punt his progressive credentials to get the job.

And as each area has come up for him to UTurn on...the new green deal, the two child benefit cap, Rejoin EU, not quashing Tory anti demo laws...he's created enemies, in his tortoise-like journey to become electable, especially to the activists in his party. And this semi handbrake turn on TRA is totally consistent with this.