Have Labour really got nothing else to rage about?

The government's own figures revealed a devastating rise in child poverty, videos of brazen Israeli war crimes are going viral, yet Labour is jumping on Joey Barton's culture war wagon!

A bunch of culture war grifters have kicked up a massive stink about a small multicoloured cross on the back of the new England football shirt, led by footballing thug turned extreme-right agitator Joey Barton.

It’s obviously the same kind of absurd moral panic as Peirs Morgan raging at vegan sausage rolls, or the perennial tabloid outrage that Christmas has been banned.

Despite having been told that "the grownups" are back in charge of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer and his mob have been enthusiastically engaging in this utter nonsense.

Instead of saying something along the lines of "politicians have more important things to worry about than the design of a football kit", Keir Starmer immediately jumped on board Joey Barton’s campaign to get this supposedly "woke, gay communist nonsense" off the England shirt.

Former England goalkeeper and public thick-wit Peter Shilton summed up the absolute stupidity of the whole thing by claiming St George’s cross must be "red, white, and blue", but Starmer is still happy to play along with this culture war drivel.

There are several reasons that Starmer has aligned himself with the racists, grifters, and idiots like this.

Back in 2020 Keir Starmer used Labour Party funds to pay a bunch of London-based advertising agency wonks to tell him what northern working class people like, and they came back with the fascist prescription of 'flags, family, and fatherlandism', rather than anything like … you know … actual policies to materially improve working class people’s communities and living conditions.

Flag-shagging is right up his street because it’s so effortless. It doesn’t require any effort, or planning, or budget allocation. You can just blurt out mind-farts about flags and nationalism, and in theory the hard-of-thinking will lift you on their shoulders and carry you through the streets as their new hero.

But then if you look at any of the real causes of concern that coincided with this ridiculous England shirt flag panic, it’s obvious why Starmer chooses to turn to vapid flag-shagging; Labour have no answers.

Diabolical DWP figures revealed that child poverty rates have soared to the worst levels since the dark days of Thatcherism, but Labour has no solutions, to the extent that they won’t even reverse the Tories’ depraved two child cap on social security.

We learned about an unprecedented 9% surge in private sector rents, but Labour has nothing to offer here either because they’re on the side of greedy landlords, and they’re opposed to protecting tenants through the policy of controlling the amount that exploitative slumlords can raise rents by (a policy that is commonplace across the developed world).

We saw absolutely shocking leaked videos of Israelis using drones to murder unarmed civilians (warning: do not click this link unless you’re prepared to watch unarmed civilians being literally blown to pieces), but once again Labour can’t and won’t condemn these sickening atrocities because of Starmer’s wilful complicity with Israeli genocide.

Labour can’t address any of these real life issues because they’ve got no solutions to offer, so the likes of Keir Starmer and Emily Thornberry choose to rabble-rouse about a small flag on the back of the England football kit instead.

Emily Thornberry even tried to claim that it was like changing the dragon on the Welsh flag to a pussycat, but we’ve actually got plenty of historical precedents that actually happened outside of Thornberry’s imagination.

Remember when Diadora changed the Scotland flag to pale blue and nobody lost their minds over it?

Remember when Umbro put little multi-coloured St. George’s crosses on the back of the 2011 England kit, and nobody cared?

Remember when Adidas messed with the colours of the union flag on the 2012 Olympic kit, and there was no frothing moral panic over it?

It’s saddening and frustrating that British political discourse has become so infested with stupid culture war grifters over the last decade or so, and that the so-called "grownups" who are in charge of the Labour Party these days are actively playing along and amplifying this absurd, vapid nonsense.

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