Keir Starmer says he ‘deeply regrets’ island of strangers speech

20 comments

1. Who even needs Tories when your Labour prime minister, who calls himself a human rights (sic) lawyer is a neocon ghoul perfectly ready to aid and abet the ongoing genocide in Gaza?

2. I find it difficult to believe that he, an adult and the prime minister of a country, has grown significantly as a person in *one month* and that his regret could possibly excuse spewing such frankly xenophobic garbage.

3. I don’t know what’s going to come first labour eating eating themselves from the inside…again. 

   Or the right-wing conceding fully to reform and going full trumpification of everything 

   The problem with starmer and what always been his problem is that he’s a great diplomat and deal maker an absolute lousy administrator and orator. 

4. He’s being kicked out a year in, the media are suddenly going hostile on him when they were bigg8ng him up the last year even though he was similarly shit.

   He was only ever a puppet of various interests with no personality, goals or politics of his own, so they’re going to look for another.

5. Keir starmer would probably be a good foreign minister or something equivalent to that, outside of Britain he does seem to be agreeable and likable aswell as getting some deals done. Domestically he’s atrocious. Waffling flip flopping, fuelling racial sentiment, cutting the social state worse than the Tories. What a mess

6. The reality is starmer thought he had the support of the left by default and could hoover up the right with a stronger line on immigration.

   In reality, starmer started to lose the leftist vote, and the right vote went to reform.

   So now this is starmer lurching back towards the left go desperately hold onto his vote coalition.

   I think u could put starmer in any party. I don’t think he has any strongly held beleives except in the law.

7. I do wonder if labour don’t have one person that’s sole purpose in life

   Is to have everything ran through them as their job is to spin it into “how will the right wing attack this”

   Soon as I heard it I knew the intention was to convey understanding, but it took my brain about 2 seconds before I started seeing all the attack angles he’d just laid out for his opposition by saying it

8. Kier Stamer doesn’t regret it, he regrets that it alienated his core following while the opposition didn’t really care. I have no clue what this man even stands for, he’s just reactionary and the moment anything is slightly unpopular he switches his tune. I knew it was going to go this way when he threw strikers, trans people and the disabled under the bus to make sure he got elected.

9. ..oh so he had no idea what it was, I dunno, I guess I would’ve thought he’d come across it at some point, did he just not run the speech by anyone beforehand?

10. The Guardian: “Starmer regrets entire speech”

    Starmer: “I regret a specific phrase in the speech”

    I’m so tired of such deliberate headline spins.

    Full quote:
    > “I wouldn’t have used those words if I had known they were, or even would be, interpreted as an echo of Powell. I had no idea – and my speechwriters didn’t know either. But that particular phrase – no, it wasn’t right. I’ll give you the honest truth: I deeply regret using it.”

11. Don’t waste my time with criticisms of rhetoric. All this talk about phrasing is utterly stupid. The exact words are irrelevant. Policy and action are what matter. Concrete changes to improve the life of the average Brit. That’s what they should be concerned about.

    This is typical of UK journalism, focus on the importance of inconsequential nothingness.

12. >He said it was the case that Labour had
    “become too distant from working-class people on things like immigration”

    But how though? Because Gordon Brown called one woman a bigot behind her back 15 years ago?

    I guess it shows the power of messaging, because despite how much worse immigration numbers got under Tory rule, no one complained nearly as much because of their increasingly xenophobic PR lines courtesy of people like Braverman.

    Still, no one expected that shit to come out of Starmer’s mouth, which is partly why the intended audience of Reform voters didn’t take it seriously anyway.

13. But you said it, so yes you are part of the problem.
    Should have read it more closely? FFS you are the PM. If you cant give it a bit of thought before opening your mouth then you are not the person for the job.

14. Is this the guy who is unapologetically and shamelessly facilitating the mass slaughter of tens of thousands of children? And arresting any who oppose his complicity in this butchery?

15. >mass immigration had done “incalculable damage” to the British economy.

    Mass immigration had done “incalculable damage” to the entire Europe, not just the UK.
    Just look at what became of Paris.

    At some point, politicians really have to stop pretending there is no problem and start addressing the issues, or we will end up with something worse than a failed Austrian artist.

16. Starmer is a such a limp dick PM. Even after taking 3 blue pills he wouldnt be able to salute the troops.

    Labour had a historic opportunity riding in on a wave of anti tory sentiment across the country and they chose to go with this fraud, of all people.

    Like, leftist parties across the continent, world even, have so many talking points going for them right now: cost of living crisis, rent prices, immigration and clinate change.
    So campaigning on industrial policy that puts money into the pockets of the average people and doesnt enrich the wealthy fucks, pushes for controlling rents, transforms cities in a sustainable way (eg paris) and cracks down on immigration would sweep to near 50% in elections. Yet for some reason the left is just so damn adamant on fumbling every opportunity they get, its puzzling.

17. Translation: I cynically used anti-immigrant rhetoric as a ploy to take votes from Nigel Farage by trying to outflank him from the right. It didn’t work, and now I want to say I’m sorry so the people who are fleeing to the Lib Dems and Greens vote for me again.

18. Oh no! He said this while speaking to his biographer. So this correction is so that in future people don’t see him as racist. Though he knows that they’ll see him as a spineless buffoon he is. Didn’t stand for Canada and capitulated to Trump.

19. Labour gets a bit too racist for its own base but not racist enough to actually attract Tories, so it has to partially walk back its statements.

    Admittedly, this is better than the democrat tactic of getting incredibly racist and when called out on it, pretend you said something else and hope people don’t dig in too deep.

20. Suuuuuuuure buddy. You not only prepared that speech but also read out the entire thing and only *now* regret it? Not once did it cross your mind that you might not agree with what’s in the speech and would come to regret saying it? People don’t change their fundamental beliefs on a whim like that, doing so takes a lot of time and t, I do not for a second believe he actually deeply regrets it this soon after making it. The only thing he “deeply regrets” is his constituents not responding the way he wanted them to.

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