Starmer’s “small s stonewallism” is symptomatic of the broader, decaying, political class which he represents. A weak leader, with little political initiative of his own, he’s advised and supported by ideologues not living in the real world.

That was why, when presented last April with facts (by a former Labour voter; there are lots like him) about the gross harms caused by the lockdown policies that he had repeatedly goaded the government into imposing, he could only respond with the non-sequiturs that he “disagreed” with the facts, that his wife is an NHS worker, and that “the vast majority recognise that the lockdown is necessary”. Let us never, ever forget what he did to people over those two years.

This is a man who, if he thinks at all, he thinks in slogans, painted in bright primary colours. A man with little curiosity about the world around him, a man trapped in a groupthinking bubble of activists and policy advisors, a man who accepts what he’s told at face value or rejects it in its entirety. A man who lacks the moral courage and strength to try and understand and engage with what those with different perspectives actually have to say, and to grapple with complex, emotionally and intellectually demanding problems to which there is no single right answer. A man who is ripe for manipulation by clever little devils in Beijing and Geneva. A man whose mind is made up. A man utterly unfit to fill office to which he aspires.

In his defence, many of his ostensible political opponents, and potential leadership candidates on his own side of the increasingly irrelevant party political divide, are almost just as bad. But it is in Starmer that the cold inauthenticity, the lack of human connection, the ideological capture, and the hubris is the most pronounced and so clearly dominant.

Our politics is crying out for someone to come in and fill the enormous void created by the flight to the extremes by reality-denying ideologues of the market and woke varieties. As we face what could be for many a very painful period of economic hardship, the big question is will this void be filled by an angry, nationalistic, reactionary populist, or by a radical, dissident, tenacious, liberal? After this useless set of plastic leaders get washed away, will we get an Enoch Powell, or a Barbara Castle?

Thank you Joan. It is very disturbing. So many in the Labour Party are turning a blind eye it is unbelievable. How can they think women’s right to defend and protect the very real vulnerabilities of their biological sex is of so little importance? I can no longer vote for them.

I would like to make it clear that, despite being a “man”, I am not a fan of the modern Labour Party.

One word for “Sir” Starmer – Rotherham.

It’s the same here in the U.S.. Title IX which was hard won is being dismantled by the Biden administration. Anyone even remotely questioning trans ideology is deemed a “right wing, fascist, bigoted zealot.” The “vote blue no matter who” crowd is screaming about voting the republicans out because they hate women. After all they are anti choice, but no one is talking about the fact that Title IX is destroyed. Nor are they talking about the fact that Joe Biden’s historical record is anti-choice or the reality that the democrats have had decades to codify abortion rights into law and haven’t done so. This is not an oversight on their part. The most insidious gaslighting is being played out with virtue signaling and identity politics which not only obscures economic inequality in favor of inclusion but is setting women back decades.