WHY DID ANYONE THINK STARMER MIGHT BE ANY GOOD?

 

                                          "I'm looking at your job mate"

WHILE more and more people are unhappy at the ‘leadership’ of the Labour Party I have to ask myself why so many thought he might be a decent leader. A cursory glance at his background, not to mention his title, should have told everyone that he is an establishment figure.

Much was made of him as a ‘human rights lawyer’ and indeed, before becoming Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) he had represented us: poll tax protestors, strikers, unions, and standing against the Tories in their attempts to destroy the Human Rights Act. So why would a person like that become the head of the Crown Prosecution Service, which is the body that decides whether or not to prosecute someone accused of a crime?

Did he perhaps think he could do some good in that role? Personally I don’t think so, I think it was all about having a more public profile, and his time in that office would appear to bear this out.

If we look back to his time as DPP we can see the reasoning behind Starmer’s talking to media outlets such as The S*n. Starmer seems to have enjoyed briefing the media to ‘big up’ himself during his time as DPP and this most likely gave rise to some of the accusations made against him. 

So let’s take a look at just a few of the more high-profile decisions he made in that role.

One of the DPP’s tasks is to issue guidance to prosecutors which just reminds prosecutors of the powers already available to them. But it is just that, guidance. Starmer has also been accused of drawing up rules that gave police officers more powers, especially for policing protests, but it is senior police officers, not the DPP who decide how these are policed.

People also accuse him of, as DPP, extending the jail term for benefits crimes, but the CPS does not draw up sentencing guidelines. The DPP’s guidance only binds prosecutors: it determines what they ask, not what the court gives them.

Yet here is where Starmer’s relationship with the media comes into play and shows him to be, if not naive ,then seeking attention. For example, the guidance on protests: in interviews given Starmer said:  “There’s a potential for a number of protests over the coming years that may be quite large … If someone has brought along a weapon or means of concealing their identity that’s likely to be evidence that they were anticipating trouble or disorder.”

And with his ‘guidance’ on benefit fraud cases which mainly concern minor infractions by people who fail to declare a piece of information. for example, when part-time workers on housing benefit fail to tell the authorities that their hours at work have increased. Starmer said of his guidance to prosecutors in benefits cases: “It is a myth that ‘getting one over on the system’ is a victimless crime: the truth is we all pay the price”; and “It is vital that we take a tough stance on this type of fraud and I am determined to see a clampdown on those who flout the system.”

Giving the media statements such as these made it appear that Starmer was not only denigrating those on benefits, but ready to clamp down on them in the harshest manner possible. In her run for the Labour leadership Rebecca Long-Bailey pointed out that the party had been “too close to the establishment we are meant to be taking on”, and although she was not speaking about Starmer she very well could have been.

As when he recently spoke to The S*n, a rag no Labour leader should have any time for, Starmer, as DPP, seemed to tell the media what they wanted to hear, and this should have been a huge red flag to anyone supporting him.

Much talk has been made by his critics of his refusal to prosecute certain cases, one of the most prominent being the killing of Ian Tomlinson by police officer Simon Harwood in 2009. Starmer told the press that the CPS wouldn’t prosecute citing the report of Dr Freddy Patel, the pathologist appointed by the state, who found the death had been caused by natural causes. 

Other pathologists disagreed with Patel however, and even when, in October 2010, Dr Patel was suspended from practice as a result of allegations concerning the way he undertook autopsies the CPS again announced that Harwood would not be prosecuted. It was only in May 2011, after an inquest jury had found that Tomlinson had been unlawfully killed, did the CPS agree to charge Harwood with manslaughter. For those unfamiliar with the case Harwood was acquitted.

Then of course there is the case of Jean Charles de Menezes.  Menezes was a Brazilian electrician living in south London and was shot and killed at Stockwell tube station on the London Underground in 2005 by unnamed Metropolitan Police officers in what they later called a case of mistaken identity. No policemen has been charged with this unlawful killing.

Officers followed him from his address to a bus stop, then followed him onto the bus and then to Stockwell tube station to where the police had already dispatched firearms officers. Menezes bought a newspaper, walked at normal pace down the stairs and then boarded the train and sat down. The police shot him seven times in the head despite him apparently being restrained.

Although Starmer was not DPP at the time of the shooting and so cannot be held accountable for the initial lack of  prosecutions, he was in 2009 when he decided, after almost four years of campaigning by the innocent Brazilian’s family, not to prosecute any police over the killing.

Yet our esteemed LOTO went full steam ahead with Julian Assange. Julian Assange is best known for establishing WikiLeaks along with others but when he published documents supplied by US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, WikiLeaks and Assange became household names.  And Assange a target of the US.

He famously took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy as a result of charges brought against him by Sweden.  Assange had visited Sweden in 2010 and during his visit, he became the subject of sexual assault allegations from two women. Assange denied the allegations and said he was happy to face questions in Britain. He stated that he believed these allegations were designed to discredit him and were a pretext for his extradition from Sweden to the United States.

And here’s where the great ‘human rights’ lawyer steps in. 

As DPP, Sir Keir Starmer tried to fast-track Assange’s extradition by ignoring legal precedents and advising Swedish lawyers not to question Assange in Britain: a decision that prolonged Assange’s legal purgatory and denied closure to his accusers in Sweden (the charges were later dropped) and sealed his fate re the US. Leaked emails from August 2012 show that when the Swedish legal team expressed hesitancy about keeping Assange’s case open, Starmer’s office replied: ‘Don’t you dare get cold feet’.

So, not prosecuting police where they clearly should have been, yet persecuting a journalist who is still being held in Belmarsh Prison.

I left the Labour Party when he was elected leader. Rebecca Long-Bailey had been my choice, though I didn’t find her an ideal candidate, especially as she, along with the others, signed up to the Board of Deputies’ demands. I like her but find her lacking in the strength a leader needs, just as Starmer lacks that strength.

We’ve seen Labour haemorrhaging members under his leadership, not to mention – though I will – his backtracking on the ten pledges he made during his leadership campaign, his purge of socialists from the party, silencing of CLPs, agreeing with the government on some of their worst decisions during this pandemic, abstaining on the absolutely horrific CHIS bill which allows undercover police to commit criminal acts without fear of repercussion, the withdrawal of the whip from Jeremy Corbyn, and more.

The man has only been in the Party since 2015 and his naiveté shows more with each passing week.

If you haven’t already left the Labour Party, you really need to be asking yourself why not.

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