The Rejection of Starmerism

Former Ambassador, Human Rights Activist

Millions fewer people turned out to make Keir Starmer Prime Minister than turned out to attempt the same for Jeremy Corbyn. That is the most important fact of this election, and the one the mainstream media works hardest to hide.

TOTAL LABOUR VOTE

Corbyn 2017: 12,877.918
Corbyn 2019: 10,269,213
Starmer 2024: 9,634,399

I don’t think any Prime Minister has ever come to power with less popular enthusiasm than Keir Starmer.

Here in Blackburn we had an astonishing result. I was working on projections which had the Labour vote falling from 29,000 to 15,000 which seemed amazing enough. Although on the doorstep the Labour vovte seemed extremely soft, I didn’t imagine it could fall from 29,000 to 10,000 in one election.

This is even more extraordinary because the sitting MP, Kate Hollern, was standing again and during the entire campaign I never heard a bad word against her.

The Labour vote collapsed for two reasons. Firstly because of Starmer’s ardent zionism and the genocide in Gaza. Secondly because Blackburn is a town with a strong socialist tradition, which held entirely firm for Corbyn when the red wall collapsed in 2019.

It is fair to say that Gaza caused the Labour vote to collapse in the Muslim areas and that Labour’s extreme switch to the Thatcherite right caused the Labour vote to collapse in the (there is no good way to say this) white areas. But it is important to realise that there is community crossover on both issues.

While there was concern that “vote-splitting” of the pro-Palestinian vote would let Labour back in. But in the end Labour just collapsed too far and in fact the mechanism was more complicated than that.

Very little of Adnan Hussein’s vote came from the “white” of areas. I personally witnessed the counting one ward in the south of the constituency where he only got 2 votes, but I got 120 in a ward normally entirely Labour. In fact my ability to take “white” socialist or protest votes from Labout allowed Adnan Hussein in.

I have published my doubts about some of the figures behind Adnan. I sincerely hope he will now prove me wrong and become a formidable opponent to Starmer, particularly over Palestine.

Allow me to say I thought we did brilliantly to get over 7,000 votes. Only 5 weeks ago we had only Naila, myself and one local man who wished to be anonymous. We had no office, no money except what you readers crowdfunded, no party members and no contacts.

From that standing start we wrote, designed, printed and delivered 170,000 leaflets – held five great public meetings and spoke to thousands of voters. We had 80 volunteers working really hard by the end. 30 came from Blackburn and others from 13 different countries!!

Our opponents had well established networks of supporters and activists. At times our campaign was enormously stressful, at times enormously fun. I must confess I found some of the personal and religious bigotry thrown at me hard to cope with at times.

Well, that is over. The voter turnout in Blackburn was a horribly low 53%. In an election where only 3 million people could bother to watch a Sunak/Starmer TV “debate” that was a race for the right wing ground, the foundations of Starmer’s apparently huge mandate are very shaky indeed.

Watch this space.

I am exhausted today – obviously more developed thoughts will follow.

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