"we'll change the things that need changing and that's all we'll change": the paSUKification of post-brexit politics 2021

It is funny how Boris manages to tie Saville, a prominent Tory celebrity and advisor to Thatcher to the Labour leader though. If anyone deserves that it's Starmer tbf

it tickles me a lot because it's funny and lots of idiots believe it and fuck Starmer!

I wonder if Gaz knows about Saville's Christmas dinners with QEII and yes his close association with many members of parliament, maybe some of them still standing MPs.

anyway Boris has to tread carefully highlighting Starmer's DPP record because it will just make him more popular with Tory voters.

Critic of the PM sums up his address to 1922:

“It’s all a joke & brazenly defiant, saying its the civil servants, it’s the advisers…And apparently any new exposes are ‘irrelevant’ & ‘we got through it’. Smattered with Chocolate orange jokes, Shakespeare & some French bluffing.”

— Paul Brand (@PaulBrandITV) January 31, 2022

which apparently "charmed the birds out of the trees" and "there's no chance they get 54 now"

oh well.. we've been deprived of the third Tory leadership election since 2016. I can live with that. Until they decide to kill me next ..lol

There’s no way this is the worst dirt they have on him. If whoever is orchestrating it decides they still want him out, expect to hear a lot more about his redecorating, I guess.

Johnson just accused Starmer of failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile, it has begun

just wondering - is this something that starmer could successfully sue johnson for if he ever resorts to using it outside of parliament?

https://cdni.rbth.com/rbthmedia/images/2017.12/original/5a2fef0385600a6111428510.jpg

Liz Truss has tested positive for covid. She attended the packed meeting of Tory MPs and ministers in Portcullis House this evening, leaving before it finished. She was not wearing a mask.

— Kate McCann (@KateEMcCann) January 31, 2022

just wondering - is this something that starmer could successfully sue johnson for if he ever resorts to using it outside of parliament?

I would say not, tbh. I don’t think it falls into the category of defamation, even if untrue, though that would be for a judge and jury to determine and you can never tell.

and because it's true!

Getting this shit tested in court would be hilarious tbh!

It's been used.

Both Priti Patel and Sajid Javid used the Savile gotcha against Starmer during the general election campaign in 2019, and on TV too, but as with a lot of that campaign no sooner had it been reported than a blanket decision was taken not to bring it up again. pic.twitter.com/QOpUTrO5bs

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) February 1, 2022

he apologised for the CPS failure to do their job properly under his watch, as the head of the department at the time he does bear some accountability for its failure to prosecute Savile. The Q anon comparison is way off the mark even if it is being shared alongside it on dodgy right-wing FB groups.

offensive gambits and untruthful slurs.. goodness me when did this start happening in UK politics!

Is that Helen Lewis complaining about people picking up far right talking points

lol, the ironing of it

me to cartoonist james gillray in 1783 (prissily): "sir i think you'll faind that the politicians lord north (on the left) and fox (on the right) never both shit into the same pot bearing the royal coat of arms whilst the devil stirred the stinky contents! this goes beyond the mocking cut and thrust of debate!"

I’m not even sure the CPS did mess up that badly but I guess the lesson of apologising for things that aren’t really your fault and having that apology used as a stick to beat you with forever more didn’t really take with him.

would you say the Tory AG from that period was more at fault here than Kieth? Not that that I'm too bothered about the truth in this case, but it's fair to say someone fucked up. Admittedly I don't know shit about the process of how a CPS prosecution might be pursued/or not pursued tbh!

The police more than anything else, I think. When they took the info to the CPS, the position was that none of the victims were willing to cooperate with a prosecution. Where the CPS failed was not pushing the police on the details of why.

aiui, the police were more sceptical than they should have been and didn’t tell any of the complainants that other people had made similar allegations, which led to a situation where they thought they’d be the sole focus of action taken against Savile and, consequently get a lot more pressure and scrutiny than they would have as a group.

oh god yeah Savile and his network of police friends

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/04/12/01/27086356-0-image-a-99_1586649921101.jpg

that old lil Kieth pic with the barrister wig kills me, he looks a child going to a fancy dress birthday party

Seeing Clive Lewis's comments on structural problems with democracy, police, etc, I reflect on how he never made it past the first round of leadership contest early 2020. Not because unpopular with members but with MPs.

He would have been better than anyone except quite possibly RLB.

As poster Calzino has said before: it is a fact that Labour socialists at that time complacently or wearily let KS take it, thinking this would be vaguely OK, rather than realise that this needed to be a fight to the death, and their own political expulsion was imminent if they failed. Which we did.

I think there were other problems with Lewis, specifically his behaviour around women and I think some complaints were made against him. Although I forget the details.

Literally almost exactly what I was going to say. There were loads of other issues with him.

he also seemed to have retained a lot of the loud boorish ways that men pick up when they take the queen's shilling and barrack up together. I know he apparently suffered from PTDS from his combat time or whatever, but that doesn't excuse acting like a dickhead.

and now he's in the melt wing of the SCG

good thread

Keir Starmer was head of CPS when the 2009 ruling not to prosecute Jimmy Savile was made, but most likely wasn't directly involved in that decision. Make of that what you like.

HOWEVER. Here's a handy list of things you 100% CAN criticise him for while he was DPP... (🧵1/8)

— Joseph Attard (@josephattard02) February 1, 2022

“…Starmer’s approach as DPP…might raise worries that he would not give a principled defence of the victims but would tell the press whatever it wanted to hear."

well colour me surprised

Yes, I think that summary of his character is more useful than reference to any particular (inevitably complex) case.

think there's prob a reason why Johnson didn't bring up the wrongdoings in that thread

Regret to inform you that Stella Creasy is good now

Just Stella Creasy putting Glinner back in his box 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/eCw0voRu4w

— Banquo's Ghost (@_banquos_ghost_) February 1, 2022

The problem with Savile is that he remains a mystery. How did he manage to so successfully penetrate public life, to an administrative level, then linger there so long? Nobody knows, exactly. We have a vague narrative, but there are clearly rocks which will never be turned over.

— barney farmer (@barneyfarmer) February 1, 2022

Savile is like a skeleton key to a whole underbelly of establishment politics from the 1970s to the early 200s, I encourage Boris Johnson to keep bringing him up and getting us to pick at this wound. Like Trump in the USA he will expose a lot of aspects of politics that the establishment on all sides would prefer to vanish into historical memory

Oh wow, them's the rules

xp

oof

🚨 NOT GOOD 🚨 pic.twitter.com/BnZI81F8MD

— w//m (@willuminare) February 1, 2022

it seems they were trying to highlight how misinformation is shared on social media but didn't label it lol! It's like what someone posted earlier "when you squeeze that toothpaste out it's hard to put it back into the tube again".

apparently its a screengrab of a meme that originates from a far-right facebook group who are peddling a conspiracy theory allegding that labour councillors are protecting grooming gangs

jfc alleging obv

lots of people up in arms about this didn't care when that bullshit about Corbyn being a Czech spy was doing the rounds

oh for sure

even OJ has been otm on this: melts that encouraged the smear machine when it was shitting on Corbyn can't complain when it turns on their boy

The BBC seems intent on repeating the libellous thing that Johnson did not say (that Starmer protected Savile) rather than the misleading thing he did. Not sure who wins here.

Democracy.

OS will be rethinking how these segments can be screenshotted but in context this made sense - they were demonstrating how johnson’s statement was contiguous with toxic internet lies

it seems the BBC got twitter to take it down. But I still know what Kieth didn't do that summer!

Used to see Jimmy Savile at the Flying Pizza on Street Lane, Roundhay. Always in good spirits. RIP

— Liz Truss (@trussliz) October 29, 2011

Gotcha!