If Starmer is elected, smashing private schools is one promise that’ll he keep…even if it destroys state schools too
THE fiercest opposition that Sir Keir Starmer has faced in this General Election campaign has come from the left wing of his own party.
The Corbynista comrades are revolting for multiple reasons.
They detested the way Starmer marginalised Diane Abbott — Momentum’s sweetheart and an MP for 37 years.
They despise Starmer’s balanced view on the conflict in the Middle East.
They don’t like it that their former great leader himself, Jeremy Corbyn, is unwanted by Starmer’s fumigated Labour Party, and is standing as an Independent in the People’s Republic of Islington North.
And — guessing here — they are not too keen on all those Union Jacks fluttering around Keir’s campaign to be our next Prime Minister.
But Labour’s only path to power is from the Blairite centre.
At the last election, Labour were led by a defiantly proud lefty and suffered their worst defeat since 1935.
Starmer — once a Corbyn fan boy himself! — has dragged his party kicking and screaming to the centre ground.
And far-left fur is flying. Labour’s Lloyd Russell-Moyle, Corbynista MP for Brighton Kempton, has been suspended from the party pending an investigation into a “serious complaint”.
Fiery Faiza Shaheen has been blocked from standing as Labour’s candidate in Chingford, East London, after liking an anti-Semitic post on social media.
So Labour’s Corbynista left are feeling purged by their former comrade, Sir Keir Stalin. And their resentment is finding a focus in Diane Abbott.
Abbott, 70, has been brusquely shoved off Starmer’s stage since penning a totally bonkers letter to a newspaper ranting that Jewish, Irish and Traveller people do not experience racism — only prejudice.
Abbott’s eccentric views were “completely condemned” by Labour’s leadership and the whip was suspended following the inevitable investigation.
Abbott complained that she was banned from standing as a Labour MP as Starmer blustered that “no decision has been taken.”
Fearing mutiny, Sir Flip-Flop has now tearfully welcomed Diane back into Labour’s heaving bosom and she is on Labour’s approved list of candidates.
You can see why he needs to chuck the comrades some red meat.
You can understand why he wants to signal to the Labour left that — behind all those Union Jacks and behind all the cosy waffle about putting country before party — Labour is still the “progressive” party.
So we hear Starmer vowing to cancel all flights to Rwanda — even if Rishi Sunak’s deterrent to illegal immigration is working.
And we see Labour’s Deputy Leader Angela Rayner grovelling to an almost all-male Muslim audience in her Ashton-under-Lyne seat, backing the call to bang up Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu at the International Criminal Court for war crimes.
Bloody red meat thrown to Labour’s loony left invariably inflicts lasting damage on us all
Tony Parsons
And we hear Anneliese Dodds, Labour Party chair, announcing plans to make it easier for men to change gender, no matter what it costs the rights of women.
And we know that a newly elected Labour government will hammer private schools by making them add 20-per-cent VAT to their fees — even if it results in an unbearable pressure on state schools.
But bloody red meat thrown to Labour’s loony left invariably inflicts lasting damage on us all.
A new poll suggests that Labour’s plan to charge 20 per cent VAT to the fees of private schools will drive as many as 224,000 kids into the state sector.
Will the state sector cope with 224,000 extra pupils when classrooms are already full? No.
But destroying the private schools will keep Keir’s middle-class comrades happy for a while.
So if Labour are elected, smashing private schools is one campaign promise that will be kept.
Even if it does permanent damage to state schools, too.
Even if it destroys the education of countless children from all walks of life.
And even if that great left- wing hero, Diane Abbott, sent her own son to a private school.
LABOUR plan to give 16-year-olds the vote if they win the General Election.
But who is going to get them out of bed before the polls close?
US in sorry state
THE United States is an embarrassment to the free world.
Donald Trump, the first former US president to ever be convicted of a crime, insists the multiple legal cases against him are politically motivated.
He is probably right. But that doesn’t mean Trump isn’t a deeply unpleasant sleazeball, who should not be allowed to run a strip club.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden boasted last weekend that his administration was “cracking down on landlords who keep rents down”.
He meant exactly the opposite. The man needs help.
In the same speech, Biden crowed that his administration saved families $800,000 a year on insurance premiums. He meant $800.
And in the same catastrophic rant, Joe referred to “insurrection-ists” as “irrectionists” – which sounds like someone with a Viagra addiction.
American presidents are not always bastions of moral virtue. Thirteen of them were slave owners.
But Trump being found guilty of paying off a porn star to buy her silence represents some new sewer.
Vladimir Putin must be laughing all the way to the borders of Nato.
On the ropes
THE fight between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul in Texas is an accident waiting to happen.
Originally scheduled for next month, the Netflix bout will now take place later in the summer as Tyson, 57, has just had a flare-up of his ulcer. That should be a warning sign. It will be ignored.
Tyson is being paid too much – an estimated $20million – to call off the fight for health reasons.
The promoters are trying to reduce the danger with lighter gloves and shorter rounds.
But when an ageing former world champion and a social media star 30 years his junior hit each other in the head, then the danger will always remain.
One of these increasingly fashionable freak shows is going to end in tears. And tragedy.
Who would doubt Gareth? Knit-wits
STYLE icon and England manager Gareth Southgate is pictured in GQ magazine modelling a cream cashmere cardigan.
Three lions on the cardie! Eyebrows are being raised and the question asked – can a man in a cardie really help England win the Euros?
You should be believing by now. Nothing can stop England from winning the Euros.
LIZ HURLEY, that national treasure, adorns the cover of relaunched Loaded magazine, rebranded Loaded World and now appearing online rather than as the print version that bossed the Nineties.
This new Loaded is apparently aimed at the original readers – all those new lads at the end of the 20th century who have now grown into comfortable middle age.
And some commentators have bemoaned the return of Loaded because they see it as encouraging sexism. But I have to disagree.
I reckon the teenage boys of 2024 are going to find Loaded a bit on the tame side. The world has a real problem with boys growing up watching violent hardcore pornography, and men who have been consuming these toxic images for years. It poisons them.
But there is no violence in Loaded. There is no misogyny – literally, a hatred of women – in Loaded.
The magazine’s editor is Danni Levy – a woman.
In a world polluted by violent, hardcore porn, Loaded’s love of pretty women like Liz Hurley seems innocent, old-fashioned and even quaint.
No joy at the movies
FURIOSA: A Mad Max Saga has everything.
Exploding motorbikes. Stunning vistas of the Australian outback.
Anya Taylor-Joy at her fiercest. Chris Hemsworth camping it up as a messianic cult leader.
What more could any movie want? Possibly . . . an audience.
This week I sat in a cinema and watched Furiosa completely alone.
This has never happened to me before.
I had assumed Furiosa was a big hit. Because it is part of the Mad Max franchise.
Because many reviews were a five-star rave.
But don’t believe the critics or the hype.
Furiosa took just £25million over the US Memorial Day holiday, earning it genuine flop status.
Cinema ticket sales are way down on 2023, the year of Oppenheimer and Barbie.
We crave something special at the movies. We need it to be an event.
But sequels, prequels and flogging a dead franchise to death are no longer enough.
These days there is too much to watch on telly.
Royal duties
THOSE mocking Rishi Sunak’s plans to bring back a form of National Service for 18-year-olds enjoy pointing out that Prince George, ten, Princess Charlotte, nine, and Prince Louis, six, would “not be exempt”.
As if that was some argument against national service.
But their dad, Prince William, did almost eight years in full-time military service. Prince Harry completed two tours of Afghanistan.
Uncle Andrew flew helicopters in the Falklands War. King Charles was in the RAF and Royal Navy from 1971 to 1976.
Prince Philip was First Lieutenant on a destroyer in World War Two at the age of 21.
And of course, Queen Elizabeth II proudly wore the uniform of the Auxiliary Territorial Service in 1945.
So don’t fret about members of the Royal Family being asked to perform national service. They already do.