Keir Starmer and his inner circle have created a bubble of delusion
The Labour leadership's responses to Labour's record-breaking electoral thumping demonstrate that they're living in a sealed bubble of delusion
Keir Starmer and the right-wing goons he’s surrounded himself with are beyond delusional.
Labour got absolutely walloped at the local elections, losing 65% of the council seats they were defending, which is the worst local election performance by a new government in history.
Keir Starmer’s first response to this massacre of Labour councillors was to insist that snatching pensioners’ Winter Fuel Allowance was the right thing to do, even though polls showed that Labour’s policy of mugging pensioners was the number one reason given by former Labour voters for abandoning the party.
Starmer then bafflingly claimed that he "gets it", and that he now understands that people want Labour to go "futher and faster" on delivering the same policy agenda that the public just rejected in record-breaking fashion!
One Labour MP was anonymously quoted as saying "it’s all very well for Number 10 to say 'we’ve got to keep delivering'. The problem is that it’s the stuff we’ve been delivering that people hate".
Starmer’s next step was to rush out an announcement that the government is going to go after foreign students.
It absolutely reeks of desperation to announce an immigration crackdown on Britain’s highly lucrative overseas student sector immediately after Reform made gains at the local elections.
The evidence is absolutely clear that traditional Labour voters and the general public alike want Starmer to reverse his economic sanctions on pensioners; stop lying and breaking promises all the time; and do something to actually help ordinary people.
And even if they do want something done about immigration, it seems highly likely that they’re more concerned about migrants crossing the Channel in small boats, and the hundreds of thousands per year using family connections to come to Britain, rather than the overseas students who pay fortunes to study here.
Imitating Reform’s anti-immigration agenda instead of implementing policies to improve ordinary people’s lives is a fool’s errand. It’s highly unlikely to attract any right-wingers to the Labour Party cause, but it’s certain to turn even more traditional Labour voters away from a party that’s intent on veering off to the political right.
It’s remarkable that Starmer has made no effort to reach out to the millions of traditional Labour voters who are abandoning the party in droves, nor apologised to the hundreds of Labour councillors who lost their seats as a result of his toxic and almost universally unpopular economic policies.
A number of anonymous quotes given to hacks at the Guardian demonstrate that the delusion is even more palpable amongst the right-wing freaks Starmer has surrounded himself with, than in the man himself.
One of them insisted that the cuts were the right thing to do, but the problem was that "we didn’t go big enough the first time round". As if inflicting even harsher economic sanctions on pensioners, disabled people, and families would have improved Labour’s position!
Another anonymous source said "we should’ve done it all in one hit – we didn’t go far enough. We’ve had all the political pain for very little fiscal gain".
Yet another anonymous source stated that Labour are unwilling to countenance any kind of mitigation of the deeply unpopular Winter Fuel Allowance cut, because any tweak to the policy could be damaging for Rachel Reeves.
Imagine being more concerned about potential damage to Rachel Reeves (already shattered) reputation, than the welfare of millions of pensioners, many of whom are living on less than £1,000 per month!
Other anonymous sources from within Starmer’s inner circle have told their mates at the Guardian that Starmer is planning a cabinet reshuffle. Not to get rid of Rachel Reeves and her disastrously unpopular agenda, but to hand a massive promotion to her deputy Darren Jones!
What level of delusion does it require to imagine that a record-breaking electoral thumping warrants a promotion for one of the chief architects of the toxic economic agenda that caused it?
One of Starmer’s cabinet ministers even told the Guardian that the government is still planning another massive round of economic sanctions on vulnerable people, and that this "second tranche will be even more painful".
This is a "punishment beatings will continue until morale improves" scale of delusion.
One of the most infuriating things about this situation is that Labour is sitting on an absolutely massive parliamentary majority. They could be doing all kinds of things to reverse austerity ruination; invest in Britain; and make life better for ordinary people.
But instead, most of these hundreds of Labour MPs sit on their hands and do nothing as Starmer and his deluded inner circle continue Tory austerity; repeatedly lie and break promises; make life worse for ordinary people; and pat themselves on the backs about what an amazing job they’re doing!
The Labour Party has been taken over by a bunch of hopelessly deluded lunatics, and nobody within the ranks seems willing to do anything to stop them as these insane freaks steer the party towards electoral oblivion.