Keir Starmer just kicked Liverpool in the teeth

Liverpool City Centre and Keir Starmer
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Keir Starmer is looking like he’s about to trash decades of proud history between the Labour Party and Liverpool. Not that his move should surprise anyone.

Liverpool: the eye of a storm

The Times has reported on Starmer. It says that he’s going to back the Tory government on their planned takeover of Liverpool. This comes amid an ongoing criminal investigation into members of the Labour-run council. As The Canary previously reported:

Liverpool mayor Joe Anderson has been released on bail after being arrested by detectives investigating allegations of bribery and witness intimidation. The allegations are linked to building deals in the city. Anderson was arrested with four other people.

The London Economic also wrote:

Anderson has not been charged and has consistently denied wrongdoing – but resigned his post, with a successor to be elected in May.

Although Anderson is no longer on police bail, the case remains under investigation. But, as the Liverpool Echo reported, the Tories have done a report on the council, which:

has looked specifically at the council’s regeneration, property management, highways and planning departments.

Read on...

Let the Tory takeover commence

Then, on Wednesday 24 March local government secretary Robert Jenrick revealed what the Tories were doing about Liverpool. As the Echo reported, he:

stopped short of ordering a full takeover of the council, with commissioners instead being sent to oversee specific functions within the planning, highways and regeneration directorate.

Mr Jenrick spoke on the findings of a government inspection report into the council’s operations that was damming in its assessment of aspects of the council’s operations.

He said the report, by Max Caller, illustrated that there was a “pervasive and rotten culture” within the council and a “culture of intimidation” among some teams of staff there.

Commissioners will likely be sent to work at the council for a maximum of three years in an attempt to improve the governance of the city.

Starmer: clusterfucking to the max

So, apparently Starmer backs all this:

Then, Jenrick’s shadow in Labour. Steve Reed, said in parliament the party would be investigating its Liverpool council.

The SKWAWKBOX called Starmer’s move a “low and craven betrayal”. He left people on social media furious:

Shambolic doesn’t cover it

Meanwhile, the recently formed Northern Independence Party (NIP) is already making moves. It said in a statement:

Starmer has refused to oppose the Tory takeover of Liverpool.

The Northern Independence Party believes that the people of Liverpool should be the ones to hold corrupt politicians to account…

Instead, it seems that both Westminster parties want to impose the rule of Tory minister Robert Jenrick, who has faced corruption allegations himself.

We believe the Labour Party is not fit to represent Liverpool

What a mess. And the situation is even more of one when viewed in a fuller context: from the ongoing ‘Labour purge’ to the party’s barring of left-wing candidates in the Liverpool Mayor election. If Starmer was hoping to annihilate the party at local level – then he’s going the right way about it. And he’s playing directly into the Tories’ hands, with one of the ‘reddest’ cities in the UK. Shambolic doesn’t cover it.

Featured image via Sky News – YouTube and pauldaley1977 – pixabay

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  • Show Comments
    1. Curiously, I thought the remarks by Jenrick were the description of the ethos of a UK Party. I forget their name , think it rhymes with ‘jackanory’.
      These were Jenricks remarks.
      what Jenrick describes as the “awarding of dubious contracts”; retrospective documentation (or its location in skips); an overall environment of intimidation; a pervasive culture of “rule avoidance” and the absence of ethics. The report is as bad as it gets.
      Which reminds me of another saying ‘people in glass houses’.
      Just a thought, wonder what Starmer’s reaction would be if the tories were taking over a city with a mayor/council run by a Stramer loyalist. Answers on a postcard to…………………………………………………..

    2. Evidence, once again, that Starm-Trooper has been put there to destroy the Labour Party – Not to lead us to any kind of victory for working class people.
      Liverpool’s support for Labour has always gone hand-in-hand with the strong trade union base.in the city.
      That’s how it should be.
      That’s the essence of the Labour Party.
      It is the last thing that Starmer’s backers want to see.
      Keep up the fight for the Many and not for the few.

        1. It is clear to me that Starm-trooper has his orders …

          ……… “We’ve seen how close J.C. got to being PM.
          And the direction in which the LP was going.
          Fix it so that can NEVER NEVER happen again …
          Whatever it takes.”

          It doesn’t take a genius to see that he’s been put there to finish us.
          Check out the Register of Members’ Interests to see the details of the funding he received for his campaign for the Labour Leadership.
          It tells you all you need to know.

        2. ‘Sleeper agent’ might seem to some a fanciful almost sci-fi term, and I think I first heard the term in Captain America annuals I read as a kid. The sleeper agent is everywhere though, I don’t doubt it at all now. The councillor for my ward is one, the Labour leader for my borough is one. The former led me to take a problem to the Local Government Ombudsman which acted in a transparently biased fashion, and said he’d resume helping me if that didn’t work out. He then went silent and wouldn’t acknowledge me having achieved his aim of getting a decision that protects his employer, and when I made a complaint to The Labour Party I was stonewalled, unsurprisingly, by the new regime. The Labour leader of my local council (I don’t know if I can name it and am refraining from doing so for The Canary’s benefit) sided with several senior council staff, very well-paid Directors and the crooked Chief Executive, without even being willing to listen to me. You’d expect – we should be able ot expect – that a Labour figure would not just side automatically with a bunch of amoral accountants but they’re all Starmerites now.

          The details at this local level are – as you’ll probably just have been thinking – so boring that Ken Loach couldn’t hope to make a watchable film of it all, and this is how the sleeper agent aspect is kept hidden from us – the banality of evil. “Can’t be anytihng amiss, it’s all so grey and blah.” But sleeper agents are what they are, practically with the consent of our own sleepy selves.

    3. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing when I saw Jenrick at the Dispatch Box decrying ‘corruption’ and moralising about it. He was caught red-handed doing exactly what he accuses THEM of. The difference here is that there’s no proof against the Labour council. It’s a blatant piece of electioneering for the May elections.

      Speaking of which, the ‘brainwave’ to force councils to fly union flags is another piece of electioneering in regards to the Scottish Parliamentary elections. This ‘genius idea’ from the defunct ‘union unit’ was thought to have been binned as obviously stupid but here it is, right on time. Apparently this will make all Scots love Boris and suddenly decide they don’t want independence at all. Or, bear with me on this, having union jacks shoved down their collective throats at election time MIGHT just make them more determined than ever?

      I genuinely despair for our country. I always knew the Tories secretly wanted to run a far right dictatorship and have the press in their pockets but now it’s REALLY happening..

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