I would say Sir Keir Starmer has gone from hero to zero in record time if he’d ever actually been seen as a hero.
But he was elected as a default position against an incompetent Conservative party which voters throughout the UK had grown to detest.
Starmer is now living up to his earlier billing, and proving to be an uncharismatic, out-of-touch prime minister.
His tone-deaf speech on Monday where he appeared to link those many folk who are horrified at the treatment of huge numbers of young girls who’ve been subjected to horrendous tales of rape in England, with the far right of politics, was a massive blunder.
Politicians with some honourable exceptions have traditionally been held in fairly low regard but this prime minister is looking increasingly like public enemy number one.
In appearing to use widespread and genuine concerns at the emerging industrial scale rape horror of young girls in England, as a tool to smear folk as right wingers, he’s demeaned the office of PM.
‘PM’s thin skin’
Starmer is among those grey politicians who have risen to the top without discernible talent, and crucially for a PM, lacking sureness of touch.
The question is this – were his asinine comments a PR gaff?
Or is he so aloof and distant from the feelings of ordinary folk that he thinks concern for young girls subjected to life-changing attacks by rapist gangs means those horrified by such behaviour are actually right wingers?
Elon Musk, who appears to have a personal vendetta against Starmer and some other European governments, has undoubtedly stirred the pot and got under the PM’s very thin skin.
The billionaire has launched some wild attacks on Starmer and the Labour government, on his own social media site X.
As I said here last week, social media is a Wild West.
Misinformation, half-truths and downright lies are halfway round the world before truth has its boots on.
But even with the many failings of such platforms, Musk’s intervention in this case has touched a raw public nerve.
His huge reach on the platform and his unfettered, and often unsubstantiated, views have brought to the fore grim tales of Pakistani grooming gangs, which threaten social cohesion in the many towns where these attacks have occurred.
If, and it’s a very contestable if, there has been any cosy consensus among the political classes and national media to underplay this story, Musk has blown that consensus out of the water.
‘Tough luck’
The political sensitivities that the billionaire threatens to upset by breenging into this tale with his enormous reach on his platform should be secondary.
The only sensitivities which are important are those of the young girls who have been subjected to brutal and degrading attacks in their own communities.
If Musk’s brash intervention upsets anyone who feels that their race, creed, colour, or beliefs have been singled out, that’s just tough luck.
Our failure to openly discuss and debate serious criminal activity for fear of causing offence to any of those characteristics is the real outrage here, not Musk raising the issue.
Starmer should rethink his refusal to have a public inquiry so that we can see whether the criminal justice system has acted properly.
As to the PM’s frankly unhinged hints that people concerned with this issue are right wing, many who have occupied the other side of that political divide are increasingly aghast at the reversal of the roles, where many of those on the left of politics seem to have abandoned all decent notions of justice and morality.
It’s almost as though left and right have completely reversed their old belief systems.
Starmer is trying to bluff this one out, but it’s not going away.
He’d win more respect if he admitted the situation is so grievous that it needs a proper inquiry but my suspicion is that he is an automaton with strong authoritarian tendencies, and unable to understand the anger which is growing.
That anger left unchecked will be potentially very dangerous.
‘Tory hypocrisy’
This story has been tackled before by brave journalists and newspapers, who covered the scandals in Rotherham, Oldham, Rochdale and Telford.
But it’s taken a maverick like Musk to really catapult it into the wider public consciousness.
The political classes on all sides have let these girls down in their desperate desire not to offend sections of communities.
Meanwhile, the hypocrisy of the Tories who were in power during much of this appalling criminal behaviour but are now trying to appear holier than thou is nauseating.
Starmer has already proven himself to be duplicitous with his treatment of Waspi women, and his withdrawal of the winter heating allowance.
He appears to be more worried about his own reputation and that of his party than those young girls who’ve been subjected to the most horrendous criminal behaviour imaginable.
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