Starmer has lost the 'centrist dads'

Keir Starmer has lost the centrist dad types who hang out in the Guardian comments section, and the only thing the tiny minority of Starmer acolytes have got left is desperate Farage fear-mongering

Appointing a figure like Peter Mandelson as ambassador the the US was always a huge risk, but Starmer chose to do it out of hubris.

People old enough to remember the Blair years will remember Mandelson’s corruption scandals over his undeclared loans and his dodgy dealings, and pretty much everyone had already seen the pictures of Mandelson palling around with Jeffrey Epstein, long before his appointment, right?

Then there’s Mandelson’s post-politics dodgy dealings with Russian oligarchs, and his public bragging about how he had such influence with Vlad Putin that he got him to intervene in one of his Russian business deals!

Remember how they photoshopped a Russian hat onto Corbyn over a load of nonsense? Somehow Starmer thought he was so untouchable that he could appoint a Putin-crony like Mandelson and get away with it, even years into the Ukraine war and Russian sanctions situation.

Mandelson should obviously never have been appointed, but the decision to stick with him when the gross "yum yum" and "my best pal" birthday messages were released by US lawmakers was even worse.

Even after Mandelson’s nauseating birthday messages had been released, Starmer stood up in parliament to declare "full confidence" in his pal at PMQs, and sent various government ministers out to defend the indefensible too.

Then just one day later he caved in to the pressure after the release of Mandelson’s emails to Epstein, in which he portrayed Epstein’s child-sex convictions as some kind of terrible miscarriage of justice.

This decision made no sense whatever in light of what was already known, because Mandelson stayed at Epstein’s apartment after he was convicted of child-sex crimes.

Sacking him for making out the conviction was unfair implies that it was fine for him to maintain his relationship with Epstein as long as he thought he was guilty, but it’s now unacceptable because he claimed that he was wrongly convicted!

This Mandelson scandal is yet another self-inflicted wound, and it didn’t go unnoticed that Starmer hid away and let the junior minister Stephen Doughty take the parliamentary flak for the U-turn.

Regular readers of the Guardian comments section will be familiar with the obnoxious "centrist dad" types that infested the place when Corbyn was Labour leader, and who gushed about how "forensic" and "grown-up" Starmer was after he lied his way into the Labour leadership.

They’ve all but disappeared now. It’s pretty much wall-to-wall disappointment and condemnation, and the only thing the last tiny minority of Starmer acolytes seem to have left is fear-mongering about Farage becoming PM.

There’s no attempt to defend Starmer’s decision to appoint such a toxic figure as US ambassador; no attempt to defend the shambolic handling of his sacking; and no attempt to defend any of Starmer’s many other own-goals and screw ups either.

They’ve retreated to the trenches, and the only weapon they’ve got left is to pretend that anyone who dares to criticise their beloved leader is secretly wanting Farage to win the next election.

If Labour do end up handing the keys to 10 Downing Street over to Farage, the only ones to blame will be Starmer and his acolytes.

They’re the ones who tore up up all of their pledges and promises; mugged pensioners; took huge dodgy donations from their mega-rich donors; spouted ridiculous economic baby talk to defend their continuation of Tory austerity; refused to renationalise England’s water system despite the case being utterly overwhelming; focused on economically sanctioning disabled people rather than combatting the avarice of corporations and the mega-rich; channelled Enoch Powell to pander to xenophobes; armed and supported a genocide whilst criminalising non-violent anti-genocide protesters as terrorists; and told millions of traditional Labour voters to leave if they don’t like the party’s wild lurch to the political right.

But in the warped minds of Starmer’s last few loyalists, the looming electoral disaster won’t be their beloved leader’s fault for doing such an abysmal job, it’ll be the fault of those who dared to point out any of his failings.

It’s an emperor’s new clothes situation.

They expect us to pretend that Starmer is actually doing a wonderful job, and if we dare to point out the observable reality that he isn’t, they’re going to blame us if/when his failings elevate the extreme-right into power.

But it’s such an absurd and desperate propaganda strategy that not even the "centrist dad" types in the Guardian comments section seem to be buying it now.

Labour must change course and begin working to improve living standards for ordinary people before it’s too late, and it’s beyond obvious that Starmer has neither the will, nor the ability to even try it.

And if he’s already lost most of the "centrist dad" types already, Labour are set to take an almighty kicking from the public at the next general election.