- cross-posted to:
- lefty_news@ibbit.at
- cross-posted to:
- lefty_news@ibbit.at
cross-posted from: https://ibbit.at/post/112057
Keir Starmer took to Facebook to claim that he had a hard upbringing. And, the majority couldnāt help but laugh. The prime minister said:
Growing up, we didnāt have much. I remember our landline being cut off because we couldnāt pay the bill. I know what itās like to sit around your kitchen table worrying about the cost of living. People want more money in their pocket to do the things that matter to them; give the kids a treat, go out for a meal, have a holiday. Thatās why the upcoming Budget will be a Labour Budget, with Labour values running right through it; focused on protecting our public services and improving the cost of living. Thatās what Iām focused on. Thatās what this government is all about.
Starmer: not the best approach
Respondents quickly ratioed the post with 26,000 laugh emojis and 24,000 comments compared to 2,700 likes at the time of writing. And a number of users pointed out a flaw in his story of early woes:
You must have had a few quid to have a landline most of us used a phone box then.
In 1970, when Starmer was growing up, only 35% of households had a landline.
Another user commented:
Had your land line cut off ; your dad owned a factory !!
Whether Starmerās dad owned a factory is unclear, but he did own Oxted Tool Company. Besides, the idea that a personās background means they cannot join the elite through protecting them in parliament is questionable. Margaret Thatcher was born into a lower middle class family with a grocer for a father and she conducted far-reaching class war in favour of elites, privatising public assets, deregulating the financial sector, and crushing unions.
On the flipside, Friedrich Engels was born into an upper class German family and he went on to co-author the Communist Manifesto with Karl Marx. These examples show why Starmerās āmy childhood was toughā mantra falls flat, on top of the fact heās lying: he was clearly reasonably well-off.
Starmer publicly mentioned his fatherās job as a ātoolmakerā at least 29 times from 2020-2024.
Starmerās government
Whatās more, itās clear that this Labour government is not āprotecting our public servicesā nor āimproving the cost of livingā. Since Starmer came to power, NHS privatisation has increased by up to 71% in some areas and at an average of 10% in just one year. This means private corporations leeching more money from public healthcare budgets.
And Labour is doing nothing to address the root causes of the manufactured cost of living crisis. In the past five years, UK food prices have gone up by 37% under the neoliberal system Starmer is protecting. Over the same period, Tescoās operating profit has skyrocketed from Ā£1.8bn in 2020/21 to Ā£3.1bn in 2024/25, an increase of 72%.
And, as of 2023, the super rich extracted a whopping 45% of the UKās entire national income in profiteering rent, meaning everyone could almost be twice as well off. On the flipside, only 55% of national income went to working people.
While thereās a role for the free market with small and medium size enterprises (SMEs), itās clear that capitalist extraction shouldnāt serve as a blueprint of the whole of society. Nonetheless, Starmer ditched his pledges to bring key utilities back into public ownership, which would reduce costs for every household and business.
No oneās bothered about Starmer 50 years ago ā whatās important is what heās doing now. As he descends further in the polls, itās time for him to pack it in.
Featured image via the Canary
By James Wright
From Canary via this RSS feed
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I think Frankie Boyle said it best that the guy looks like a Thunderbird puppet whose strings are pulled too tight
Utterly ratiod? What does that mean? Slammed? Haha
I think it refers to the ratio of ālikesā to ādislikesā. Like, when YouTube still showed a dislike count, it meant a video had significantly more dislikes than likes.
In this case I guess it got more āšā and āš”ā reacts than āšā and āā¤ļøā?
So technically it could go either way. Iām so happy I never used twitter or YouTube (comment section)
Blasted, but Gen Z.
It means someone replies or quote post has more likes than OPās post.
Zoomer talk for when a reply gets more likes than the original post. It happens all the time with politicians on social media. Iād be shocked if there were many posts from PMs that donāt get āutterly ratioādā.
Disclaimer: none of what I am about to say about the Canaryās false reporting is a defence of Starmer.
The comments quoted above in reply to Starmerās post are just false and the fact that the Canary canāt say so shows exactly why itās not a reliable news source. Right from the headline, this story is filled with plain lies.
First, the headline says that Starmer claimed to be working class. But, as the quotation shows, he didnāt. Next:
Whether Starmerās dad owned a factory is unclear
No, it isnāt. He didnāt own a factory. Itās not unclear at all.
In 1970, when Starmer was growing up, only 35% of households had a landline.
Thatās one year. He āwas growing upā in more than one year. Why use these weasel words if they have a real point to make? In any case, that is just the point Starmer is making: he was, on and off, the kind of person who could afford a landline and the kind who had it cut off for not paying the bills, which Iām sure was worrying. Thatās the entirety of the point he was making.
Not mentioned here is that Starmerās mum had a long term illness and his brother had severe learning difficulties. Thereās very little doubt that things were often tough for his family. This doesnāt at all absolve him from any kind of accurate criticism, but this āstoryā as told by the Canary is nonsense. You donāt beat the capitalist-owned press by just repeating their dishonest tactics.
He literally by definition is though?
Class is something youāre born and brought up in.
Starmer had a dad who worked in a factory, his mother was a nurse until she became too sick to work (at which point Starmer took over a lot of her care), and his brother is heavily disabled.
People say his school was private, but thatās a bit of a lie, it only became private after he went there.
If you look at his childhood house, it isnāt a good one. At one point they had to live for a while with one of their windows broken and boarded up.
I have criticisms of Starmer, but he does come from the working class in a way that other PMs havenāt.
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