King Street Cat wrote:
My guess is you won't read another word in the press about Antisemitism or Venezuela.
I think the right-wing media attack strategy on Starmer will be like this:
1) They know it is unlikely to stick if they try to make out that Starmer himself is a Britain-hating, terrorist-supporting antisemite. But they can probably find others in the Labour party (especially councillors) who have questionable stuff on their social media feeds, so will continue to research these so there can be a drip feed of them coming through. After 2 years or so, when they are still unearthing cases of "prospective Labour councillor in Barnsley said in a facebook group in 2013 that Palestine should be free from the river to the sea" they will have an argument to undermine Starmer's claims that he has got rid of antisemitism.
2) They will simultaneously try to undermine Starmer's support on the left by making him out to be not woke enough, attacking him for failing to do enough on transgender rights, bringing up things from his time as DPP when he "failed women who suffered from violence". The audience here isn't the core Tory voter who doesn't care, it's the disillusioned former Corbyn supporter who will say "Labour won't get my vote until they elect a proper leader again".
I have no doubt that Starmer will come under a lot of attack and also he is hardly a charismatic or media friendly performer. He comes across as dull and wooden.
However he does have some advantages that will make him a more difficult opponent for the Tories than Ed Miliband or Corbyn. He is very good on detail and will be better at forensically holding Johnson to account, and will expose the Tories when they are trying to blag things. He also will have a natural appeal to a broad spectrum of ex Blairites/Lib Dems and pro-EU Tories that are disillusioned with the current party, and if the Tories really mess things up with Brexit and effectively become an anti-business party (well anti small-business, they may well give favours to big business backers) then Starmer will have default appeal to the middle Englanders who voted for Blair. Corbyn was toxic to a large proportion of these groups because of antisemitism and also his Brexit policy. Starmer won't be.
There is a risk for the Tories that they focus on the ex Labour "red wall" heartlands and leach London, cities and middle England to Starmer. The red wall is most exposed to negative impacts from Brexit and from the coronavirus recession so there could be a lot of angry people there whose lives have got worse since Johnson came in, and that would put the Tories in trouble if their grip loosened there and they realised they'd been undermined in metropolitan areas and shires.
At the moment the Conservatives are still confident and crowing "Labour will never win again" but things can turn quickly in politics. I remember at the time when Cameron took the Tory leadership in 2005, people were writing the obituaries of the Conservative party saying after three election defeats the traditional Tory party could never find a route back to power unless it fundamentally reformed itself. Five years (and the aftermath of a recession) later Cameron was PM. There's a bigger recession coming this time.
