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1/ This article is everything wrong with @BBCNews and shows why much of its output is propaganda, not journalism. Awful. Going to use this thread to pick it apart piece by piece. It will take a while, so sorry for the gap between posts https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-55989411 #JeremyCorbyn.
2/ The article - as is usual for the BBC - centres entirely around opinion in the "Westminster village", assuming what a small circle of MPs think is representative of the party and country as a whole. It's the world according to whoever @bbclaurak chose to have coffee with.
3/ This statement goes uncontested: "We're now getting to a position where on the polls we're about even, so that's a step in the right direction." This is false. In the past months, Labour had at points been level with the Tories but it is now consistently 3-4pts behind
4/ the false statement is then reinforced by @bbclaurak herself: "Now regularly, Labour is level pegging with the Tories." it seems she has simply taken what she's been told and regurgitated without any independent analysis.
5/she then moves on to an entirely dubious assertion that: Tories. "Sir Keir's personal ratings as a potential prime minister make good reading for his allies too", ignoring the fact that these are on the slide too...
6/ while also ignoring that #starmer regularly polls behind Boris Johnson as "best PM". This is not a sign that he is doing well. Despite puff pieces like this from client "journalists". He is doing poorly.
7/ as @LeftieStats has kindly pointed out, there is also this: https://twitter.com/LeftieStats/status/1359188103215341576?s=20
8/ Anybody who understands polling (perhaps @bbclaurak doesn't??) knows that 1. Polling 3 yrs prior to an election is basically meaningless in terms of percentage vote share. 2. Right now it's the direction of travel that shows how well they're doing: Labour is going backwards.
9/ The article relies entirely on selective polling analysis for its representation of public opinion, not results in actual general election vote share, which paints a slightly different story, which brings me to my next point...
10/ "Sir Keir's leadership team hadn't just been preoccupied by fixing immediate problems they found on arrival, but they have suffered from a lack of political inheritance." This is again unchallenged...
11/ but a halfway balanced analysis might at least acknowledge that increasing Labour's percentage vote share in actual general elections above what both his more centrist predecessors achieved IS an inheritance...
12/... And that's before we get to the broad span of fully worked out practical progressive policies that had been scrutised by the civil service. These were - and still are- ready to implement...
13/ and the small matter of a solvent party funded by a mass membership that #starmer basically flushed down the toilet. Not the inheritance, Starmer wanted perhaps but not to be discounted.
14/ Now for the 1 bit of insight in the entire piece: "Kinnock passed project to Smith, Blair picked that up from him," [...] and there is, they suggested, "no line of succession" this time." it's not that there is no inheritance, but just not one that shifted Labour rightwards.
15/ it's worth dwelling on this point for 1 moment longer, just to give @paulmasonnews time to catch up and take some notes. The purpose of #starmer's leadership is to return Labour to the trajectory of Kinnock/Blair. This is a reactionary project & won't advance social justice
16/ Hopefully this will disabuse any lingering believers (looking at you @OwenJones84) realise that there is no chance whatsoever of #starmer delivering on his 10 pledges. And thinking about them...
17/ @bbclaurak says:
"When we sat down to talk to Sir Keir when he was pitching for the leader's job , it wasn't crystal clear, beyond a commitment to "moral socialism", what he really wanted to do with the power he sought." This is yet again false...
"When we sat down to talk to Sir Keir when he was pitching for the leader's job , it wasn't crystal clear, beyond a commitment to "moral socialism", what he really wanted to do with the power he sought." This is yet again false...
18/ if @bbclaurak were a proper journalist, she might have noticed 10 commitments: https://keirstarmer.com/plans/10-pledges/ but I guess she wasn't told to look for it by one of Keir's staff and she usually gets away with lazy, sloppy and inaccurate work, so why bother, right?
19/ there is so much more to unpack here but a 20 tweet thread is already too long, so I'll finish up with this unchallenged assertion: Asked about concerns over his leadership, Sir Keir said: "The vast majority of our party and our movement are behind what we're doing."
20/20 in last year's leadership election 490,731 returned ballots, from a total of 784,181. That means nearly 300,000 eligible people did not vote. #KeirStarmer came second to apathy. He has never had the support of a majority of the party and movement.
