Keir Starmer is acting like a Tory superfan, robbing Britain of a real Opposition The Labour leader isn’t really against vaccine passports, in spite of the divisions they would impose on society FRASER NELSON1 April 2021 • 9:30pm please log in to view this image Early on in lockdown, No 10 officials began to notice something suspicious. Keir Starmer would start to call for minor changes in policy – which just happened to coincide with what ministers had already decided to do. If they agreed something on a Monday and planned to announce it on a Friday, Starmer would pop up to demand it on a Wednesday. He seemed to have an inside source, which is not unusual. But what was strange was to see how Starmer defines the job of Opposition. Rather than expose flaws in Government thinking, Starmer has behaved like a Tory superfan – trying to work out where Boris Johnson will go next, then rushing to get there before anyone else. On the big issues, he has been more factotum than foe. Does the Prime Minister want to extend his emergency powers for another six months? Even when there is no longer an emergency? Very good, sir. Count on my vote. Problems with rebellious Tory backbenchers? Don’t worry, Labour MPs are right behind you. If Starmer really were opposed to vaccine identity cards – or “passports”, to adopt the official euphemism – he could vote them down. There are enough Tory rebels to defeat the Government on this. But after telling this newspaper yesterday that vaccine passports were against “the British instinct”, his aides then rushed to explain that this didn’t mean he actually opposes them. His official position is that at some point, months down the road, when all adults have been vaccinated, health identity cards might seem like overkill. Now, as before, Starmer is placing his bets on what the Tories will end up doing. Now, as before, he’s probably right. Ministers are concerned about young people not getting the vaccine, given that they face a relatively low risk from the virus. So the idea is to sell vaccines as a “passport” to freedom. The new (unofficial) message will be that being vaccinated is not so much about the virus but whether you’d like to meet friends. Go on holiday. Watch a football match. Big events may soon be laid on exclusively for the vaccinated and Covid-secure, to reinforce this point. Even if this dystopia never comes to pass – would we really want to restrict access to basic liberty to those with a certain immunity status? – the controversy is useful for the Government. It associates the vaccine with freedom, which, ministers think, will encourage uptake. Michael Gove’s “consultation” on the digital identity cards is, now, no such thing. Officials working on the project have been told “the Prime Minister wants vaccine passports to happen” and that the debate is over. In his private Zoom calls with MPs, Gove talks like a man whose mind is made up. “He’s just scouting to find out arguments against, so he can defeat them,” says one he spoke to recently. Gove is also in charge of a review into the future of social distancing. Backbenchers who have asked about that have been told it’s the same as his “consultation” for vaccine passports. This is significant: it suggests that social-distancing diktats could stay for offices and pubs, to incentivise (or menace) employers or landlords who don’t want to ask colleagues and customers for their vaccine identity card. All this stems from David Cameron-era “nudge” theory: that, if you want people to do something, carrots and sticks will work better than legislation. You can reward good behaviour – or make life a little harder for the non-compliant. There’s no question of coercion. People are free: to choose the easy way or the hard way. It gets uglier if you think about where all this might lead and who might be excluded if vaccine passports are demanded for pubs and restaurants. The racial disparity remains huge. Among the over-60s, only 6 per cent of white people have not been vaccinated – but this is true for 34 per cent of black Brits. It’s not quite clear why there’s such a large gap, or how likely it is to narrow. But unless it does, vaccine passports would mean a disproportionate number of white faces in any establishment. Politically, and ethically, it is – to put it mildly – problematic. Voting without identity cards is allowed to protect an important principle: that citizens without photo-ID have as much right to civic life as those who do. Several million people, often with troubled lives, fall into this category. Any identity card scheme would be popular with the wealthy and the established if it speeds up the restoration of old privileges. But such a scheme would exclude from much of society an important chunk of the population to whom compassionate Conservatism is supposedly dedicated. Once, Labour was too. Vaccine passports are impractical until everyone has had the offer, which takes us to late July. Or, if it’s a second-dose requirement, much later. By which time Gove may announce that, because so many have been vaccinated, they won’t be needed for everyday life. This is certainly how many in Government imagine things will go: that the implications of segregating society along the lines of Covid status are too grim for it to actually happen. Starmer seems to be betting on this outcome too. Yet again, he’s calling for what he thinks the Tories will do. It’s all quite depressing. Starmer might think he’s rising above party political games but he does no one a service by refusing to scrutinise Government ideas or look at the bigger picture. He might ask whether lockdowns work (a recent study uses Britain as an example on why they don’t). He might ask whether Imperial College’s influential work on Covid is so addled with pro-lockdown bias that an investigation is needed (as a Stanford professor recently said). Such claims may stand or fall – but the point of Parliament is to debate and scrutinise. Decisions made now will shape society for years, perhaps decades to come. It’s hard to think of a time when there has been a greater need for rigorous Opposition. Tony Blair spoke of “triangulation” between Left and Right. Starmer’s triangulation seems to be between what the Tories are doing now and what he thinks they’ll do next. This doesn’t position him as having good judgment or a clear set of principles. Judging by the opinion polls, voters are beginning to notice.
Urge all to watch this. Our way of life is under attack from centralised globalists. https://download.wetransfer.com//eu...Q.1jzHm07nhme30btJCmMg6MTHr2GgDOffEjXR2t56ic8
I saw an advert with Lenny Henry about covid and I've decided to do the right thing and take the vaccine. I'm going to do my bit to get Britain back to normal
Disgusting man spits at bus driver . Labour MP calls for men to be banned from public transport https://www.mylondon.news/news/south-london-news/london-crime-video-shows-shocking-20307614
This piece originated in the Telegraph on April 1st and I did wonder whether it was supposed to be a joke. Starmer is perceived to be tanking in the opinion polls not because the hard Left Labour Party is falling much but because the Conservative Party has recovered its position as the successful vaccine rollout – compared to the total disaster in the E.S.S.R. – improves their polling numbers, which were falling at this time in 2020 because of the shambolic early pandemic handling. When Starmer took over the poisoned chalice, Labour were unelectable and that has not changed. The Metropolitan Elite have not yet realised that a coalition of minority causes does not make a majority when the same woke virtue signallers are in all the minorities.
The usual response is that they beat the virus because the CCP are a Communist country and nobody would dare going out , we should have treated lockdown rebels like Communist China. We still haven't closed the borders something China did to foreigners Coming In January 2019 .
