[davidjay]

I really don't understand the hatred for Starmer, every other Labour leader I can see how they could rub some people up the wrong way either through policy or personality.
But Starmer?
I keep seeing vox pops of people calling him the worst PM ever but then, when invited to elaborate, they just come out with platitudes like, "everything" or "he's destroyed this country" and details there are none.

Because that's what they're told.

[Boiler]

These cretins seriously think he's worse than Liz Truss?

FMR...

[Abernathy]

I really don't understand the hatred for Starmer, every other Labour leader I can see how they could rub some people up the wrong way either through policy or personality.
But Starmer?
I keep seeing vox pops of people calling him the worst PM ever but then, when invited to elaborate, they just come out with platitudes like, "everything" or "he's destroyed this country" and details there are none.

It’s a negative feedback loop. People, particularly people who don’t generally pay much attention to matters political, are fed a constant, relentless diet of news and comment by multiple hostile right-wing news media outlets telling them that Keir Starmer is the worst PM ever (which he just isn’t) so that it takes on in their minds the status of accepted, unchallenged fact. Then a vox pop interviewer comes along. …..

[Tubby Isaacs]

Not just rightwing media. The Guardian frames everything that they can find a campaigner against as being the worst ever.

[Andy McDandy]

Because they know that drama sells. "Government doing OK considering the circumstances" isn't news, at least not in the sense of selling "Jones dead" to people who have no idea who Jones was, or the Murdochian "anything that makes you go gee whiz".

[Youngian]

I really don't understand the hatred for Starmer, every other Labour leader I can see how they could rub some people up the wrong way either through policy or personality.
But Starmer?
I keep seeing vox pops of people calling him the worst PM ever but then, when invited to elaborate, they just come out with platitudes like, "everything" or "he's destroyed this country" and details there are none.

Because that's what they're told.

Theresa May attracted a similar level of hatred I found hard to fathom as did Gordon Brown of course. Lewis Goodall made an observation that these are confident characters who don't do small talk or put people at their ease. That's what I like in authority not cheeky chappy mavericks who are transparently full of shit.
I wonder if the Starmer, Brown or May haters are the same people completely baffled as to why I found Funtime Boris a repellent piece of shit of immeasurable magnitude.

[davidjay]

I really don't understand the hatred for Starmer, every other Labour leader I can see how they could rub some people up the wrong way either through policy or personality.
But Starmer?
I keep seeing vox pops of people calling him the worst PM ever but then, when invited to elaborate, they just come out with platitudes like, "everything" or "he's destroyed this country" and details there are none.

Because that's what they're told.

Theresa May attracted a similar level of hatred I found hard to fathom as did Gordon Brown of course. Lewis Goodall made an observation that these are confident characters who don't do small talk or put people at their ease. That's what I like in authority not cheeky chappy mavericks who are transparently full of shit.
I wonder if the Starmer, Brown or May haters are the same people completely baffled as to why I found Funtime Boris a repellent piece of shit of immeasurable magnitude.

It's because you're a self-loathing elitist who thinks they're all stupid.*





* One part of this may be true.

[Andy McDandy]

Never bought into Funtime Boris. From the first time I saw him on TV I thought he was an oaf who got by on being loud and making himself the centre of attention, all to disguise the fact there's nothing else there.

[Oboogie]

Never bought into Funtime Boris. From the first time I saw him on TV I thought he was an oaf who got by on being loud and making himself the centre of attention, all to disguise the fact there's nothing else there.

I didn't think he was funtime or an oaf, I realised very early on that he was a ruthless thorough going cunt.
I think the first time I properly took notice of him was his first appearance on HIGNFY in which they played the phone call of him facilitating an assault on a fellow journalist. Ian Hislop marked my card that day and continued to do so in the ensuing years via Private Eye.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Theresa May attracted a similar level of hatred I found hard to fathom as did Gordon Brown of course. Lewis Goodall made an observation that these are confident characters who don't do small talk or put people at their ease. That's what I like in authority not cheeky chappy mavericks who are transparently full of shit.
I wonder if the Starmer, Brown or May haters are the same people completely baffled as to why I found Funtime Boris a repellent piece of shit of immeasurable magnitude.

As I always say, see also John Major. He's had a reappraisal since, despite lots of people (on his own side, supposedly) reckoning he was the worst ever.

[Boiler]

Never bought into Funtime Boris. From the first time I saw him on TV I thought he was an oaf who got by on being loud and making himself the centre of attention, all to disguise the fact there's nothing else there.

I didn't think he was funtime or an oaf, I realised very early on that he was a ruthless thorough going cunt.
I think the first time I properly took notice of him was his first appearance on HIGNFY in which they played the phone call of him facilitating an assault on a fellow journalist. Ian Hislop marked my card that day and continued to do so in the ensuing years via Private Eye.

[mattomac]

Johnson, Truss and May were never even close to being Primeministral.

Thatcher is the worst for the damage done. You could accuse Brown of doing damage as chancellor though the entire financial world seemed at fault for that and his actions helped.

Johnson caused lives, jobs and livelihoods due to Covid and quite possibly Grenfell. Truss didn’t do much as she wasn’t around to compound it. Major does have the Northern Irish peace process kickstart in his back pocket.

I’m not sure I can point to anything in the Thatcher column, Sunak well he was a bit of a nobody but his bribes and traps for Labour have led to hard decisions being made, just totally unsuitable.

[Oboogie]

I’m not sure I can point to anything in the Thatcher column,

Thatcher's greatest trick was fooling aspirational working class people that she was making them middle class. Most obviously through right-to-buy, of course we're middle class, we're homeowners. But also the privatisations and suddenly the talk amongst Sun readers switches from Sam Fox's tits and football to how many BT shares they own...and only posh people play the stock-market, eh readers?
There was also support for small business start-ups - you can be your own boss and put MD in your passport like a proper toff - never mind that you're working twice the hours for less money and 80% of those start-ups went bust in 18 months.
I could go on, but you take my point, it was a con but it fooled millions of people.

[Tubby Isaacs]

It wasn't really a trick. People who got to by their council houses cheap got were getting a massively good deal. And wages generally did well in the 80s, not just in the UK. The workforce was expanding, with women entering it. It was a good time for lots of families.

[Youngian]

Never bought into Funtime Boris. From the first time I saw him on TV I thought he was an oaf who got by on being loud and making himself the centre of attention, all to disguise the fact there's nothing else there.

At the time I didn't know the Groucho Marx quote; "He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don't be fooled- he is an idiot."
Nice of him to admit on the BBC's Brexit documentary that he had no plan although that was obvious to a halfwit even.
Die hard Leave voters will still tell you Boris and Nigel didn't influence their vote, they did their own research.

[davidjay]

It wasn't really a trick. People who got to by their council houses cheap got were getting a massively good deal. And wages generally did well in the 80s, not just in the UK. The workforce was expanding, with women entering it. It was a good time for lots of families.

Then the kids grew up and had nowhere to live.

[Yug]

It wasn't really a trick. People who got to by their council houses cheap got were getting a massively good deal. And wages generally did well in the 80s, not just in the UK. The workforce was expanding, with women entering it. It was a good time for lots of families.

It was a con trick designed to appeal to selfishness and greed. Individually, people did get great deals, but collectively the entire country suffered. And the country is still suffering from it.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

It wasn't really a trick. People who got to by their council houses cheap got were getting a massively good deal. And wages generally did well in the 80s, not just in the UK. The workforce was expanding, with women entering it. It was a good time for lots of families.

Not for teachers it wasn't...

[The Weeping Angel]

Pretty depressing reading.

https://labourlist.org/2026/06/makerfie ... g-through/

The very first person I approached in the very first place I visited in Makerfield set the tone for the rest of my time talking to voters throughout the constituency. The scene was a proper greasy spoon café, the man was a railway worker eating an extremely good-looking fry-up.

Did he know much about the by-election? “Don’t really know what that is.” Did he have an opinion about Andy Burnham? “Not really.” At this point I started to talk to his friend, sitting opposite: she was a little more engaged. But then he piped up again. “I know about Rupert Lowe. He wants to send all the immigrants home.”

I am a seasoned political researcher, but my jaw very nearly landed in the brown sauce on the table.

The rest of the project followed much the same pattern, with the Public First research team becoming less and less surprised by Restore’s cut-through. In every town we visited across the constituency we found people who had not only heard of Restore, but who also referred to its leader by his Christian name and who could parrot his signature policy.

It will not come as much of a surprise that my main take-away from Makerfield was that the polling is not over-stating what is happening: support for Rupert Lowe is strong and his political strategy is evidently working.

All of which begs several questions. How has this come about? And why? Will it be replicated nationally? And what does it mean for Labour?

There are clearly several, broadly unrelated, factors that have come together to allow this to happen. Most obviously, there is some very clever social media targeting going on. Restore strategists have identified exactly who their target voters in Makerfield are and have scientifically targeted them on Facebook and Instagram – not that hard in a place that overwhelmingly voted for Brexit in 2016. Mainstream parties and mainstream media were weeks or months behind spotting this trend.

[Tubby Isaacs]

It was a con trick designed to appeal to selfishness and greed. Individually, people did get great deals, but collectively the entire country suffered. And the country is still suffering from it.

Lots of people bought their own council houses/flats but nonetheless thought that the stock should be replaced. It wasn't their fault that this didn't happen, and I don't think you can call the people who did buy "greedy" or "selfish". Lots of them would have had no chance of owning property otherwise.