Keir Starmer's time is up

[The39thStep]

The anti-gang strategies of today will be the anti-political activist strategies of tomorrow

Not entirely sure that the latter is seen as the same threat in communities tbh

 

[Gramsci]

I think its healthy to be critical of both Prevent and The Gangs Matrix but I've never seen anyone propose an alternative to either.

The other view in my area is for example from a youth worker who runs a charity. Her view is the one of getting police to do their job properly in conjunction with local people. Work and support local projects that work with young people. Which she is good at btw. So I would say she is not about defunding police but getting money spent on community policing.

 

[Raheem]

Not sure if it's his belief in the police as an institution or just the chance to talk about his CV for a bit, but it is weird how Starmer's characteristic lifelessness briefly lifts in the clip.

 

[Gramsci]

Depends if you or any others you know want to prevent the radicalisation of young people into flirting with terrorism or their recruitment into gangs I suppose.

Funnily enough my local youth centre does a lot of work with youth in danger of ending up in gangs.The youth workers are the ones most critical of police and how they treat young people in the area.

The youth centre is desparate for funds. It hasnt been able to provide all the services it wants.

 

[The39thStep]

Funnily enough my local youth centre does a lot of work with youth in danger of ending up in gangs.The youth workers are the ones most critical of police and how they treat young people in the area.

The youth centre is desparate for funds. It hasnt been able to provide all the services it wants.

I'm sure they do and I'm equally sure they should be funded and their views should be represented in any anti gang strategy. My original question was about what an alternative to the gang matrix should look like

 

[Humberto]

We have to look after the young better. Young people are 'written off' at a young age in many cases. We need a better balance where law enforcement and the appointed officers are concerned with duty and reluctant to use force. Some of the things people are othered for by law are inevitable from their circumstances. Even the ones who resist still face limited options and are sneered at. And when it proves impossible for many, they get a poke in the ribs from self-congratulatory gentry and spivs.

 

[Pickman's model]

Not entirely sure that the latter is seen as the same threat in communities tbh

of course they're not. But from the pov of cops ..

 

[agricola]

The other view in my area is for example from a youth worker who runs a charity. Her view is the one of getting police to do their job properly in conjunction with local people. Work and support local projects that work with young people. Which she is good at btw. So I would say she is not about defunding police but getting money spent on community policing.

Which of course is precisely the bit that got cut the most between 2010 and now.

 

[Pickman's model]

I’ve had more newsletters and emails about community involvement from the Cooperative Party than the Labour Party in the last six months.
I know two sides of the same coin, but one seems more interested in local people than going on tv and spouting sound bites.

if sound bites need to be spouted they ought to be ones which get people behind you and not ones which make you look a pompous arse

 

[ska invita]

theres a lot of this kind of thing out there today....

 

[Pickman's model]

theres a lot of this kind of thing out there today....

perhaps there was a typo in his briefing notes and the simple omission of a v and an e changed the meaning of his comments entirely

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Not sure if it's his belief in the police as an institution or just the chance to talk about his CV for a bit, but it is weird how Starmer's characteristic lifelessness briefly lifts in the clip.

Wow. Just wow.

The arrogance of standing there saying what BLM is and ought to be about. It's not about him.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

He is just fucking Blair, isn't he. So desperate to show that he's not a threat, to show that he's just like the tories really.

 

[19force8]

theres a lot of this kind of thing out there today....

2,400+ replies on that Warwick Labour tweet.

The centrist dads are back.

 

[treelover]

theres a lot of this kind of thing out there today....

its not nonsense, but it is not Starmers main task, when many milllions inc lots of youth and bame are going to be unemployed, some for a very long time.

 

[teqniq]

Pretty much on the money imo:

Jude Wanga | Labour’s Short-Term Thinking

On Friday – when the Conservative government was attempting to shrug off another day of scandal focused on the housing...

www.lrb.co.uk

 

[treelover]

Do you have a subscription for LRB? they seem to have some great articles

 

[teqniq]

no

 

[killer b]

its not nonsense, but it is not Starmers main task, when many milllions inc lots of youth and bame are going to be unemployed, some for a very long time.

Just bookmarking this for next time you complain about disability stuff being overlooked.

 

[Gramsci]

I'm sure they do and I'm equally sure they should be funded and their views should be represented in any anti gang strategy. My original question was about what an alternative to the gang matrix should look like

Been reading about this today. Amnesty have taken this this up. A lot of articles.

Trapped in the Gangs Matrix

We are Amnesty International UK. We are ordinary people from across the world standing up for humanity and human rights.

www.amnesty.org.uk

For starters black youth are over represented in the Gang Matrix. A lot of violent incidents are unrelated to gangs.

Worse the Police are working with , for example , housing associations and Councils to threaten families who have son who is alleged to be involved in gangs with eviction from their homes.

This I find , as someone who is involved in local community over the years as Tenants rep and local Neighbourhood forums, increases me not trusting those in authority.

This kind of working of police with other local state officials to control young people who arent convicted of anything but come under the cops radar I find deeply troubling.

That is what the Gangs Matrix has done.

So I would abolish it. Police have loads of powers. They can get up off their arses and do proper policing Gather evidence and put someone on trial in front of jury.
Police sending letters saying they will work with housing officials to evict on suspicion of gang membership is not justice.

Having had enough of having to deal with Council recently ( stand up row with local Labour Clllrs last week) Im totally pissed off with well paid officials and Cllrs on big allowances running my community.

Reading up about how Gang Matrix works and it just proves my experience of those in authority over me.

 

[Gramsci]

Pretty much on the money imo:

Jude Wanga | Labour’s Short-Term Thinking

On Friday – when the Conservative government was attempting to shrug off another day of scandal focused on the housing...

www.lrb.co.uk

I found Starmers dismissal of BLM as a "moment" infuriating.

Inner city BAME voter as in my patch Brixton stuck to Labour at last election.

During the BLM demos I saw lot of local Black youth going to the demos from my area.


Its as the article says:

It seems that the party’s plan for the next general election is to fight the battles it lost in 2019, in the hope of recovering ‘red wall’ seats and ‘shy Tory’ voters, even if it means sacrificing ethnic minority votes. Either that, or they are hoping those ethnic minority voters will have nowhere else to go (as Peter Mandelson once said of the voters Labour is now trying to woo back)

 

[Shechemite]

the moment comment was daft. dafter still to defund the police

 

[19force8]

I never thought I'd be grateful to live in a stone cold Tory town, but then:

I'm afraid it's a thread.

The TLDR is another Blairite was thrust upon them despite pleas to the leftist leaders

 

[teqniq]

.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

5 degrees of separation.

 

[Steel Icarus]

Starmer calls Black Lives Matter a "moment" and suggests their proposals to defund the police are nonsense. Fuck me this guy is useless and surely this puts the nail in the coffin of any remaining claims he may have had to be an anti-racist.

What on earth is that sudden movement at 0.20 about?

 

[Raheem]

What on earth is that sudden movement at 0.20 about?

Was it your gag reflex?

 

[two sheds]

I think you'll find it was a moment rather than a movement.

 

[vanya]

The Weakness of Starmerism

I almost added it as a foot note to the piece about Tory short-termism . Asked about the loosening of lock down measures this weekend and,...

averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com

I almost added it as a foot note to the piece about Tory short-termism. Asked about the loosening of lock down measures this weekend and, above all, opening the pubs up again, in line with his stance on schools Keir Starmer supports these too. Speaking to ITV earlier, shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds said the same thing and urged people to go out, spend money and otherwise partake. As Labour's leader isn't driven by a whack-a-mole approach to politics nor has to hold together a declining electoral coalition glued together by nationalist delusion, bloody mindedness, and fear, why is Labour going along with a strategy that, to put it mildly, is borderline sociopathic?

There are two things worth recalling here: one is about the everyday aspect of mainstream politics, and another that reaches into the core of Labourism. All politicians look for an easy life, and the easy life is where (they think) most voters are, and the best indicator of this - from within the point of view of bourgeois politics - is what the press say. After all, they sell papers and so have to reflect the opinion of readers out there otherwise no one would buy them, right? Hence there's never been a time when Tory MPs have worried about a Morning Star editorial. Leaving aside their dwindling circulations, politicians want to inhabit what former Brown aide Mike Jacobs called a 'normal operating sphere' of non-punishment. This normally comes into play for governments, but given Keir's studied statesmanly gait he shares a similar concern. Because Corbyn was bad, he has to be good, and this means over-emphasising conventional notions of electability and game playing. And so accepting Tory plans for schools, for pubs, their whole framing of the coronavirus crisis in fact, means Boris Johnson would be hard-pressed to lump Labour in with "the ditherers", therefore shutting down one line of attack that might resonate with the Tory faithful and their new periphery of Brexity vote-lenders. This in turn means Keir can play politics to his strengths, which is contrasting his shovel-ready leadership qualities versus the bumbling incompetence of Johnson.

The second? The tension in Labourism between what is and what might be. Having its origins in a historic alliance between a movement fighting for incremental workplace improvements and privileged professional layers, Labourism was born for the compromises, Byzantine procedures, and plodding constitutionalism of the House of Commons. To channel jolly old Lenin, if trade unionism is the bourgeois politics of the working class, i.e. seeking improvement for their lot within the confines of capitalism, Labourism is its expression writ large. Yet our class, broadly defined as everyone who has to sell their labour power in return for a wage, has a trajectory that tends to negate capitalism. The right to a decent standard of living, a home, freedom from work, a liveable environment, these are fundamentally at odds with a mode of production for whom the bottom line is the bottom line. Profit is the be-all and end-all. This was the case when Labourism was born, and is even more so now.

In the history of Labourism, the tussle between what is and what might be maps on to the eternal struggle of right versus left. The empiricism of appearance, the institutional weight of trade unionism and Labourist thought, not to mention the considerable rewards of office and the flows of money has seen Labour dominated by a concern to adapt to supporters and would-be supporters as they are, and keep them as they are: atomised workers, and therefore atomised voting fodder. What Corbynism represented was an attempt to break out of this straitjacket, hence it had to be destroyed. Contrary to the bullshit you find peddled everywhere, Labour under Corbyn was about building broad coalitions of voters and meeting them where they are, but with a programme that tried transforming them from objects into subjects. Even the Tories these days like to talk about empowerment, but Corbynism actually attempted it. Corbynism, like its Bennite forebear, was a movement from within Labourism that pushed it to its limits, And from there, perhaps a post-capitalist anywhere?

Starmerism, if we can speak of such a thing, is getting that genie back into the bottle. It does so by ostentatiously - not a word one normally associates with Keir Starmer - gripping Tory framing without contesting it, offering weak sauce managerial criticisms where it can muster a word against the government, stamping on anything one might construe as radical or, shudder, socialist, and evacuating anything resembling hope from the Labour Party's platform - something even Tony Blair recognised the importance of and was keen to cultivate. While it pretends itself pragmatic, it is the most dogmatic form of Labourism. It claims to be oriented to the challenges of the present, but wants to forever impose the past on the politics of the future. Sure, the party is improving in the polls. It might win an election on its present course (we'll see), but going by what Keir says and does all we can look forward is the status quo under more competent management. Therefore anyone thinking what we're seeing now is "caution" so Keir, as the new leader, can get a hearing are kidding themselves. What you see now is what we're getting, assuming he continues to get his own way. Coronavirus plus economic crisis plus Brexit equals a perfect storm for political polarisation, and inevitably demands a response equal to the moment. If Keir Starmer isn't forthcoming then his careful project will come to naught.

 

[Raheem]

Apparently Starmer has volunteered to do unconscious racial bias training. Anyone got a baseball bat?