Senior Labour figures are urging Keir Starmer to take a leaf out of Donald Trump’s book and make more frequent media appearances in an attempt to dominate the political agenda as the US president does.
MPs told the Guardian they want the prime minister to act more like Trump, who has upended political convention by televising large parts of his cabinet, holding long bilateral meetings on camera and calling in to live television shows.
One minister said: “Trump and [the vice-president] JD Vance have shown the advantage of getting out there and not worrying about making mistakes.
Yeah, they have a whole cult behind them that will interpret their every idiotic blunder as an inspired move. Starmer, not so much.
Not to mention, the Trump strategy is to flood the media by alternating between doing/saying stupid shit and dangerous shit. If you’re just doing media appearances or whatever you’re not going to see the same effect.
Have they forgotten that the Labour cabinet is a charisma black hole?
It just takes one media entity to be on your side for charisma to suddenly appear. With the exception of Boris, who’s charismatic sexual assault/prowess is unshakeable in the eyes of the public
It would be a good move. Labour need to win hearts and minds, and this is where they fall behind. When you have Farage gaining support every day by running on a populist agenda you need someone to counter him.
Gone are the days of our leaders leading behind closed doors. As much as I’d prefer to not hear from government and just have them do what they’re supposed to do, unfortunately in this day and age if you aren’t “seen” you are perceived as doing nothing by the vocal minority.
As much as I hate Trump and his clown car of a cabinet, this is something they excel at. And it is high time that the good guys use their tactics against them for the greater good. The good thing is you don’t even have to feel itchy about it as it’s just being seen and heard.
The one thing they do need to do is drown out the voices of our dumb right from Farages clown car.
Trump is certainly the wrong model, but they do need to communicate better. In particular I think they need to communicate the reasons behind their decisions.
- Why aren’t we standing with countries like Canada in response to Trump’s sabre rattling?
- Why haven’t they just told Trump to get fucked in trade talks when his administration is asking for changes in our laws?
- What are the cuts on winter fuels and disability benefits paying for?
- Why are we not looking to rejoin the customs union to remove barriers to trade with the EU?
Etc, etc, etc.
I find their attitude to the EU inexplicable. We all know Labour is overwhelmingly pro EU, and the voting public itself strongly regrets the vote. Unless they are lucky they are going to find the Lib Dems taking the former moderate Tory vote, Labours current centre vote and the normal disillusioned voter all governments generate and creating a pretty threatening new voter block.
Definitely, I agree wholeheartedly. But it is unfortunately a model that is working. The whole Simpson thing…was it “if poochie is not in an episode, people should ask where’s poochie”. Trump dominates every square inch of world wide media. Starmer in this instance would do right by emulating that.
And yes, be strong. We need at this moment in time an “Iron Sir” (in reference to thatchers Iron Lady) for all the reasons you said. He needs to be strong, give actual two fingers to trump and solidly lead Britain into the future. There’s a golden opportunity here to spearhead a new collation and get us back in with the EU on favourable terms with the populace by getting ahead of the right wing and pushing the narratives back left. Facts over Fiction needs to prevail and win the hearts and minds of the nation who so easily lap up misinformation.
“Iron Knight”?
Iron Bro would probably go down well with the kids haha
There’s probably a case for saying it doesn’t need specifically to be the PM. In principle Starmer could crack on with things behind closed doors as long as there’s somebody sharp, likeable and media-savvy to counter Farage every day. I guess the risk is you’d have to be a very self-confident PM, unafraid of leadership challenge, to go for that
Agreed however you very much run the risk then of the other parties claiming that this public figurehead is the real PM and getting all that dumb rhetoric around it.
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking of with that final sentence
When you have Farage gaining support every day by running on a populist agenda you need someone to counter him.
Note that he needs to be countered with an economic populist (read: at least center-left) agenda. They need to actually do things for the people first. Rightwing demagogues don’t have that problem because their followers axiomatically think bigotry is good, but you wanna replicate that on the left you’ll need the Bernie version, not the Trump version.
Jesus christ.
No. Keir Starmer.
Trump is even pissing off his own followers, so I am not sure acting like Trump will gain you much.
