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I think Starmer's had an easy ride of it until Beergate, frankly. Principally because he's presenting himself as no danger to the status quo and offering little if any meaningful alternative to the current government beyond perhaps being more professional and 'competent' in carrying out policy. How far that is a winning electoral strategy is anyone's guess; I'm not convinced and by the looks of it, not many of those the current leadership says he needs to win over are either.
That we'll see certain sections of the media engage in the kind of furious, all-guns-blazing front-page horseshit we saw in the previous two elections is, I'm cynical enough to believe, a question of when rather than if. Beergate proved that without a shadow of a doubt. No amount of mealy mouthed non-positions and columns in The Sun are going to change that, sadly. It doesn't follow the press is a hostile rump and the only good strategy is a defensive one. He can engage all he likes, but at some point he's going to have to tell those people who need to hear him what he's about. And so far, he's only succeeded in telling people what he's not.
Of course, his real issue in the coming months is surviving the rumblings and briefings being initiated by 'The Worst People In PoliticsTM'. They've undermined the last three Labour leaders and they're sharpening the knives again.
ketsbaia-
I think Starmer's had an easy ride of it until Beergate, frankly. Principally because he's presenting himself as no danger to the status quo and offering little if any meaningful alternative to the current government beyond perhaps being more professional and 'competent' in carrying out policy.
I think this is just warmed over 'they're all the same' cant but spoken eloquently and with a hint of 'the system always wins' 70s paranoia. The only people who benefit from such are genuinely unethical politicians like Johnson. There is a fundamental difference between politicians like Starmer and Rayner and Cooper, and politicians like Johnson and Raab and Patel. Competence is one of the metrics. But seriousness of purpose, ethics, and policy are equally important.
I think in the 90s it was a legitimate criticism to say that a politician stood for the status quo, because the status quo - by which I mean the rule of law, rational self-interest, an independent judiciary, a respect for the truth, a respect for our obligations on the world stage - was not under constant and fundamental attack by our government. I think now that kind of invective is pure self-indulgence.
ReekBlefs
If you genuinely believe that,, then it follows that the press is a hostile rump with whom there is no winning, and that therefore the only good strategy is a defensive one to minimise your interaction with them. And that was imo one of the key problems with the Corbyn administration. If you treat ALL the press as hostile you remove one of your key weapons in reaching people who might otherwise hear you. Moreover, it provides the opposition with the room they need to create an alternative narrative about you. It cedes the ground. It is a sure-fire way to lose an election.
Of course Labour will always have a harder time in the press than the Tories in the UK. That's an argument for us to be better with our engagement strategy, not one in favour of disconnecting altogether.