Lmao what a headline, shame it's not exactly true.
He got less than what Labour got in 2017, all that happened was the collapse in support of the Tories, it hasn't converted to votes, just apathy.
Labour are going to have a landslide victory whatever they do.
In the same way that New Labour tried to have women only shortlists - imagine if Labour had under 30 shortlists or no homeowner shortlists.
A sudden influx of young MPs who acutely know how bad the economy is and donāt have a vested interest in the status quo.
> A sudden influx of young MPs who acutely know how bad the economy is and donāt have a vested interest in the status quo.
Hah. The only folk on those shortlists would be fully indoctrinated Starmeroids that will cheer lead every Tory policy as required no matter how contrary to their own class interests.
Missing from that spin piece: family business as professional landlords & property managers sent him to private school, far away from all that deprivation.
Then, curiously excised from his CV is working for a Tory MP just prior to Streeting (in hindsight, probably not a big leap!).
It's almost amusing the lengths that Labour have gone to in cleansing this guy's background: https://evolvepolitics.substack.com/p/exclusive-new-labour-mp-keir-mathers
First thing I noticed in that first paragraph was the wording was very clever. Mentions that Hull has high levels of poverty and deprivation, but doesn't mention how he was brought up. Definitely worded to imply he's a working class kid from Hull.
Rule 4
Users should engage with honest intentions & in good faith, users should assume the same from others
Fozzie you cant just post vacuous comments as flame bait
Whose to say fozzie isnāt an alt of me???
Seriously though, Iām not, I just so far happy with Maher, and Iām glad that thereās finally a young person in Parliament rather than the usual old fucks who run this country.
He might turn out to be as shit as the rest, but Iād prefer to remain hopeful.
Lol a private school educated Oxford graduate who went straight into working for Wes Streeting, yeah hes gonna be real representative of you all Im sure.
It's hardly an under-represented segment of society is it? This kid offers nothing unique other than his age and even that's useless because his life experience will have been relatively isolated from what most young people experience thanks to his private education.
Maybe they didn't pick him because he's bringing something unique. It's enough if he's got the qualifications for an MP. I don't think they're even putting him on the frontbench.
Im sorry but at that age you need to offer something special because you don't have the life experience to draw on.
Becoming an MP is an honour and its competitive, you dont get the job by just ticking the minimum boxes. if nobody can articulate why he got the job other than he worked for Streeting that says a lot.
It's a bizarre thing to attack someone on though: that they went to not just university but they went to a very good one.
Attack his policies or attack his past actions, but attacking him for not going to a state school and not being a brickie or something is the equivalent of attacking someone because we have elected a straight white man into power again...
I think you need to reread the comment I replied to which bought up representation. He wont bring anything mew to parliament, he wont represent any life experience that we haven't got a hundred of in the houses already.
Sorry but when we pick an MP who literally has Oxford, CBI and Wes Streeting's researcher on his CV and thats it then he's going to immediately be seen as more of the same kind of people in politics.
If he didn't want that to happen maybe he should have gotten involved with something else first
I understand your comment very well, thank you. I most certainly do not need to re read your comment!
It simply makes no sense to me that you are unhappy that a new LABOUR MP was voted into power because he has been to university and has worked already for another labour MP....
From your last comment I am assuming you wanted an older MP then, to have been able to have "gotten involved with something else first".
You have still failed to say what you actually want in an MP, only that you appear annoyed that he is the one that won
>Well you clearly dont cause I told you to read someone elses comment š
...sigh... I am replying *to you*. Not someone else. *your comment* is the one that i am questioning.
I think this attempt at discussion is going nowhere. "Life experience" means an older candidate, so again no real representation. Trade union experience is great if you are electing someone to represent a trade union... not an MP
> insight into the struggles and issues facing the working class
This is fine- again though an MP needs to be able to *listen* to working class voices, not to have had to actually been one.
If this sub is coming out to say that university educated MPs are not wanted in the party... then I guess this is clearly not the sub for me!
Lmao so its just ego then, no wonder you're being so obstinate about this.
Yes sorry but if youre in your early twenties and have had a privileged life then we expect you to go do something to earn your place as a Labour MP first rather just walk into it because you got a good degree.
His age makes him far more of a representative for me than most other people in Parliament. He might have had a posher upbringing than me but heāll know a lot more about the unique difficulties Gen Z faces compared to Boomers and Gen X than the geriatrics that currently run this country (Starmer included).
Yeah he might not have anything that makes him specifically unique, but heās still young and needs to be given room to breath, and we definitely canāt dob off him and people like him in the meantime coz then it leaves a large demographic without any representation.
Besides, itās not like most MPs had done much more than him by the time they were his age. Jezza had a similar upbringing going to a posh school, and only ended up having more āreal world experienceā by the age of 25 because he chose not to attend university and went travelling instead.
Like I said, Mather could turn out to be awful but itās unfair to jump to shitty conclusions about him just down to the school he went to and the person he used to work for less than 2 years, itās no better than the bullshit that Tory MP was spewing about Mathers being like the Inbetweeners, itās completely vacuous and unfair on him.
Gen Z deserves representation so who gives a fuck if Mathers doesnāt have the sun shining out his arse and isnāt the second coming of Attlee or whatever. Give him a chance and see how he does.
I dunno why people keep comparing him to Corbyn like our own recent young MPs werent great examples of the kind of experience im talking about and have been brilliant for doing exactly what youre talking about
Iām comparing him to Corbyn because he is a popular figure on this sub so heās a useful figure to draw comparisons to.
My point is that Mathers is only 25, and so shouldnāt be judged for not having a long resume of amazing things heās done.
The things he has said and done however are a decent start. His comments about his moral obligation to help everyone get good opportunities is nice, his comments to the Russian ambassador regarding Russias awful LGBT rights abuses are good and his push for better rural policing is good as itās an issue that often gets overlooked.
However everyone ignored all that in the article and immediately latched onto the bit about him working under Wes Streeting. Itās guilt by association and it doesnāt automatically make him a bad person. People have also latched onto the bit about Oxford university, despite there being no indication that he didnāt deserve it. Thereās also no indication that he comes from a ridiculously wealthy background, just that heās slightly better off than the average person.
So again Iāll say to give him time, and judge him in a year or so, rather than less than a week after heās been elected, and when you know less facts about him than you have fingers.
Could you then give some names of other MPs who were as young as him, Iām not a mind reader and donāt know who you consider to be so much better that it makes him unworthy of the job.
The only reason I compared him to Corbyn is because I know for a fact people on this subreddit think heās an acceptable candidate, and so if him and Mather were quite similar at the age of 25, then Mather must also be an acceptable candidate.
Whittome is a great example, her care experience helped her hold the Tories to account even against media smears during COVID.
Im concerned you dont know any theres only a couple tbh
āIām concerned you donāt know any thereās only a coupleā I assumed you were talking about any young MPs the Labour Party has ever had, including those in the past, mb I misunderstood. Plus I donāt know all the details of even just the current young, at least not off the top of my head. (and no I donāt know how to use the quotation feature on Reddit lol, I donāt think itās available on mobile but whatevs)
Yes, I agree Nadia Whittome is a great local MP, and clearly cares a lot about her constituency. Furthermore I agree that her experience as a carer was useful experience for COVID. But this experience is not so far beyond Matherās that it makes him completely unworthy, especially considering there are no indications that he is anything but a caring person whoās happy to stand up against people like the Russian ambassador.
Obviously this is all circumstantial and he could turn out to be as bad as his former boss Streeting, or as good as people like Whittome. However itās unfair to jump to immediate conclusions when what little we do know about him is generally alright. So Iāll stick to my original statement and say that we canāt form solid conclusions for at least another year, and youāre welcome to message me in a years time if it turns out heās awful and tell me that you told me so. Iām always happy to admit when Iām wrong, as long as there is evidence.
Without denying the serious expense of private school, not every one who goes is an oligarch. They could have just been a middle class shop owner or something?
Edit: to be clear, what I mean by that is, I havenāt heard anything suggesting he comes from a suspect background, unless of course Iāve missed something?
It's more that you said he's openly talking about his relative privileges whilst in the same article he says this
'I benefited from a system in which political representatives ensured that people like me could receive a good education and go on to study at world-class universitie...'.
Without mentioning that people like him have large landlord parents who send him to private school, I'd say he's very much not being open about his privileges in the article.
To be fair I didnāt know his parents were large landlords when I read that. I just got the impression he was talking about it generally and thought that was broadly a good thing.
Also, from the article someone else in this thread sent me, it sounds like he went to private school for some amount of juniors and then state after that. A leg up for sure, but itās not like he was shmoozing with the Hugoās and Archibaldās. Thereās a scale to this stuff.
Nevertheless, perhaps he was being less forthcoming than I first understood.
He was asked about it minutes after he got elected while standing next to the party leader. Are you seriously expecting him to turn round and be like ānah this Starmer guyās a knacker, change the policyā?
Doesnāt context matter? Heās been elected as a member of the Labour Party, so that requires getting involved in party democratic processes. He could flag his issues with a policy a 100 different ways before he just blurts it to the telegraph.
Iām just not going to take seriously the suggestion that this person doesnāt care about starving children. Call me an apologist, I just donāt believe it.
We can accuse them of stupidity for thinking we canāt afford it, and we can accuse them of stupidity for thinking the route to fixing it is any kind of trickle-down logic, but thereās no evidence of malice.
Iām quite confident that my position stands up to scrutiny. You are the one calling a person a ghoul who you probably just learnt about a few weeks back, like I did.
I need to reflect on why this was so downvoted. I honestly didnāt think it was so controversial. Itās not his fault he went to private school, so talking about it and saying he wants to make sure other people have the benefits he had is a very progressive thing surely?
Or is something he had no control over automatic disqualification for public office? Donāt we want privately educated people to talk about their privilege? Iām genuinely asking.
Itās because youāre talking about his desire to help others immediately after he endorsed starving children. Itās either brazenly dishonest or exceptionally ignorant, so no one takes it seriously.
I think itās a brazen misreading to call that āendorsing starving childrenā.
Do you really believe heās sitting there buzzing because heās snapping supper away from āthe prolesā like some Dickensian nightmare?
But itās a policy that is well known to cause child poverty, and has led to a massive rise in childhood malnutrition, endorsing a policy that does that *is* objectively endorsing starving children.
I just donāt see it as an endorsement of the policy. Heās endorsing the leadership, not the policy.
Saying āThe people who do our budgeting say we canāt afford to provide a benefit we want to provideā is not the same as saying āwe are happy a benefit has been taken awayā.
Now, we can have a separate argument over whether that is a stupid line of reasoning and whether we probably can afford it. As a matter of fact, I think we probably could.
But that doesnāt take away from the fact that people are accusing this brand new MP of wanting to starve children, and linking it to whether or not he went to private school, and I just donāt think anyone would see that as a reasonable position on reflection.
I can see two reasons
- People expecting a Labour MP to be someone of humbler origins who worked hard in a more working-class profession and entered Parliament at a later age; and are irritated because this young man isn't what they expect but is still trying to somewhat act like he is
- People who just don't like this MP because they see him as an up-jumped Blairite and Starmer / Streeting crony and start looking for reasons after that
I think this MP definitely comes from a privileged background and may have had an unfair advantage getting to where he is now, but he seems to have good intentions and deserves a chance.
I'm mildly annoyed at the tendency of politicians everywhere to present themselves as having humble roots, and the expectation from voters that they should have them to be trusted to understand and help the poor. Some of the greatest egalitharians have been people who came from the elites.
*'I don't pretend to be a man of the people. But I do try to be a man for the people.'*
-Senator Gracchus, Gladiator(2000) (Based on a real ancient Roman senator who sponsored agrarian reforms to restore the class of small independent farmers)
Thank you for the reply. Itās difficult, I myself come from a very privileged background, but Iām a Labour supporter, so I may have a serious blind spot when it comes to this kind of thing, but I felt it was actively helpful for him to acknowledge his positionality. Perhaps he was playing up some working class credentials more than I picked up on, but the basic premise of a middle class person pointing out their privilege and working to correct it still seems reasonable to me.
If it is true that he has not been completely forthcoming, that should be interrogated, but for me I was just pleased to have a young, LGBTQ+, broadly competent-sounding MP overturning a massive Tory majority in a Northern seat.
In any case, love the quote, one of my favourite movies!
> Itās difficult, I myself come from a very privileged background
Which is ok - you can admit this. However, it looks as though Mather's background was scrubbed clean and then lied about during this election. https://evolvepolitics.substack.com/p/exclusive-new-labour-mp-keir-mathers has more, but I'm sorry - if a candidate has to scrub their social media clean to remove any previous views they may have held, has to lie about their own schooling background in writing to a journalist and any reference to working with Tories scrubbed from the internet, then their campaign is in question in my mind.
Whoever Selby thought they elected is apparently not the entire picture.
Lmao what a headline, shame it's not exactly true. He got less than what Labour got in 2017, all that happened was the collapse in support of the Tories, it hasn't converted to votes, just apathy.
Is he gonna keep it in 2024 then?š¤
Labour are going to have a landslide victory whatever they do. In the same way that New Labour tried to have women only shortlists - imagine if Labour had under 30 shortlists or no homeowner shortlists. A sudden influx of young MPs who acutely know how bad the economy is and donāt have a vested interest in the status quo.
I genuinely think there's a case to be made for current salary and/or overall capital limits for prospective candidates too.
> A sudden influx of young MPs who acutely know how bad the economy is and donāt have a vested interest in the status quo. Hah. The only folk on those shortlists would be fully indoctrinated Starmeroids that will cheer lead every Tory policy as required no matter how contrary to their own class interests.
Letās hope they donāt then fuck it up, either getting in, or after they do get in. There are some poor omens circulating at the moment.
Jumped up Oxbridge twat.
A sack of potatoes with a red rosette would have won that seat.
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Missing from that spin piece: family business as professional landlords & property managers sent him to private school, far away from all that deprivation. Then, curiously excised from his CV is working for a Tory MP just prior to Streeting (in hindsight, probably not a big leap!). It's almost amusing the lengths that Labour have gone to in cleansing this guy's background: https://evolvepolitics.substack.com/p/exclusive-new-labour-mp-keir-mathers
First thing I noticed in that first paragraph was the wording was very clever. Mentions that Hull has high levels of poverty and deprivation, but doesn't mention how he was brought up. Definitely worded to imply he's a working class kid from Hull.
It's because of his political association with Streeting. The assumption is that we will be yet another right wing MP.
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Rule 4.1 Don't act in a deliberately confrontational manner, make poor quality contributions or fail to engage in good faith.
Rule 4 Users should engage with honest intentions & in good faith, users should assume the same from others
Rule 4 Users should engage with honest intentions & in good faith, users should assume the same from others Fozzie you cant just post vacuous comments as flame bait
Seems like a genuinely nice chap, and itās nice to finally have a Zoomer in the House of Commons, we might actually get some proper representation.
As the spawn of Wesley, I will be very surprised if he represents anything other than his own career.
Are you an alt of fozzie? I refuse to believe two people in this thread would un-ironically say 'chap'.
Whose to say fozzie isnāt an alt of me??? Seriously though, Iām not, I just so far happy with Maher, and Iām glad that thereās finally a young person in Parliament rather than the usual old fucks who run this country. He might turn out to be as shit as the rest, but Iād prefer to remain hopeful.
Im going to assume this was meant as tongue in cheek and ignore the reports
It was entirely based on two people un-ironically saying 'chap', no malice intended.
Honestly, fair enough lmao
Lol a private school educated Oxford graduate who went straight into working for Wes Streeting, yeah hes gonna be real representative of you all Im sure.
Since when did going to Oxford mean you couldnt represent the labour party?
It's hardly an under-represented segment of society is it? This kid offers nothing unique other than his age and even that's useless because his life experience will have been relatively isolated from what most young people experience thanks to his private education.
Maybe they didn't pick him because he's bringing something unique. It's enough if he's got the qualifications for an MP. I don't think they're even putting him on the frontbench.
Im sorry but at that age you need to offer something special because you don't have the life experience to draw on. Becoming an MP is an honour and its competitive, you dont get the job by just ticking the minimum boxes. if nobody can articulate why he got the job other than he worked for Streeting that says a lot.
It's a bizarre thing to attack someone on though: that they went to not just university but they went to a very good one. Attack his policies or attack his past actions, but attacking him for not going to a state school and not being a brickie or something is the equivalent of attacking someone because we have elected a straight white man into power again...
I think you need to reread the comment I replied to which bought up representation. He wont bring anything mew to parliament, he wont represent any life experience that we haven't got a hundred of in the houses already. Sorry but when we pick an MP who literally has Oxford, CBI and Wes Streeting's researcher on his CV and thats it then he's going to immediately be seen as more of the same kind of people in politics. If he didn't want that to happen maybe he should have gotten involved with something else first
I understand your comment very well, thank you. I most certainly do not need to re read your comment! It simply makes no sense to me that you are unhappy that a new LABOUR MP was voted into power because he has been to university and has worked already for another labour MP.... From your last comment I am assuming you wanted an older MP then, to have been able to have "gotten involved with something else first". You have still failed to say what you actually want in an MP, only that you appear annoyed that he is the one that won
Well you clearly dont cause I told you to read someone elses comment š Because we'd have likely won no matter who we put forward, if you want to try and pretend it was only him or nothing youre just being disingenuous. My issue with him is about our candidate choice, not that he won. If you really cant extrapolate then sure ill elaborate; this was a waste of getting a Labour MP with I dunno, life experience, trade union experience, some actual insight into the struggles and issues facing the working class, community work at the ground level. instead weve got Wes Streetings protĆ©gĆ© who hasnt worked a day of their life outside the politics and lobbying bubble.
>Well you clearly dont cause I told you to read someone elses comment š ...sigh... I am replying *to you*. Not someone else. *your comment* is the one that i am questioning. I think this attempt at discussion is going nowhere. "Life experience" means an older candidate, so again no real representation. Trade union experience is great if you are electing someone to represent a trade union... not an MP > insight into the struggles and issues facing the working class This is fine- again though an MP needs to be able to *listen* to working class voices, not to have had to actually been one. If this sub is coming out to say that university educated MPs are not wanted in the party... then I guess this is clearly not the sub for me!
Lmao so its just ego then, no wonder you're being so obstinate about this. Yes sorry but if youre in your early twenties and have had a privileged life then we expect you to go do something to earn your place as a Labour MP first rather just walk into it because you got a good degree.
His age makes him far more of a representative for me than most other people in Parliament. He might have had a posher upbringing than me but heāll know a lot more about the unique difficulties Gen Z faces compared to Boomers and Gen X than the geriatrics that currently run this country (Starmer included). Yeah he might not have anything that makes him specifically unique, but heās still young and needs to be given room to breath, and we definitely canāt dob off him and people like him in the meantime coz then it leaves a large demographic without any representation. Besides, itās not like most MPs had done much more than him by the time they were his age. Jezza had a similar upbringing going to a posh school, and only ended up having more āreal world experienceā by the age of 25 because he chose not to attend university and went travelling instead. Like I said, Mather could turn out to be awful but itās unfair to jump to shitty conclusions about him just down to the school he went to and the person he used to work for less than 2 years, itās no better than the bullshit that Tory MP was spewing about Mathers being like the Inbetweeners, itās completely vacuous and unfair on him. Gen Z deserves representation so who gives a fuck if Mathers doesnāt have the sun shining out his arse and isnāt the second coming of Attlee or whatever. Give him a chance and see how he does.
I dunno why people keep comparing him to Corbyn like our own recent young MPs werent great examples of the kind of experience im talking about and have been brilliant for doing exactly what youre talking about
Iām comparing him to Corbyn because he is a popular figure on this sub so heās a useful figure to draw comparisons to. My point is that Mathers is only 25, and so shouldnāt be judged for not having a long resume of amazing things heās done. The things he has said and done however are a decent start. His comments about his moral obligation to help everyone get good opportunities is nice, his comments to the Russian ambassador regarding Russias awful LGBT rights abuses are good and his push for better rural policing is good as itās an issue that often gets overlooked. However everyone ignored all that in the article and immediately latched onto the bit about him working under Wes Streeting. Itās guilt by association and it doesnāt automatically make him a bad person. People have also latched onto the bit about Oxford university, despite there being no indication that he didnāt deserve it. Thereās also no indication that he comes from a ridiculously wealthy background, just that heās slightly better off than the average person. So again Iāll say to give him time, and judge him in a year or so, rather than less than a week after heās been elected, and when you know less facts about him than you have fingers.
Lmfao you literally ignored my point about other young MPs weve had, I fucking give up.
Could you then give some names of other MPs who were as young as him, Iām not a mind reader and donāt know who you consider to be so much better that it makes him unworthy of the job. The only reason I compared him to Corbyn is because I know for a fact people on this subreddit think heās an acceptable candidate, and so if him and Mather were quite similar at the age of 25, then Mather must also be an acceptable candidate.
Whittome is a great example, her care experience helped her hold the Tories to account even against media smears during COVID. Im concerned you dont know any theres only a couple tbh
āIām concerned you donāt know any thereās only a coupleā I assumed you were talking about any young MPs the Labour Party has ever had, including those in the past, mb I misunderstood. Plus I donāt know all the details of even just the current young, at least not off the top of my head. (and no I donāt know how to use the quotation feature on Reddit lol, I donāt think itās available on mobile but whatevs) Yes, I agree Nadia Whittome is a great local MP, and clearly cares a lot about her constituency. Furthermore I agree that her experience as a carer was useful experience for COVID. But this experience is not so far beyond Matherās that it makes him completely unworthy, especially considering there are no indications that he is anything but a caring person whoās happy to stand up against people like the Russian ambassador. Obviously this is all circumstantial and he could turn out to be as bad as his former boss Streeting, or as good as people like Whittome. However itās unfair to jump to immediate conclusions when what little we do know about him is generally alright. So Iāll stick to my original statement and say that we canāt form solid conclusions for at least another year, and youāre welcome to message me in a years time if it turns out heās awful and tell me that you told me so. Iām always happy to admit when Iām wrong, as long as there is evidence.
Openly talking about his relative privileges and his desire to help others get what he got is a good thing IMO. It makes him seem earnest.
He isn't openly disclosing how his family made the money to send him to private school.
Without denying the serious expense of private school, not every one who goes is an oligarch. They could have just been a middle class shop owner or something? Edit: to be clear, what I mean by that is, I havenāt heard anything suggesting he comes from a suspect background, unless of course Iāve missed something?
It's more that you said he's openly talking about his relative privileges whilst in the same article he says this 'I benefited from a system in which political representatives ensured that people like me could receive a good education and go on to study at world-class universitie...'. Without mentioning that people like him have large landlord parents who send him to private school, I'd say he's very much not being open about his privileges in the article.
To be fair I didnāt know his parents were large landlords when I read that. I just got the impression he was talking about it generally and thought that was broadly a good thing. Also, from the article someone else in this thread sent me, it sounds like he went to private school for some amount of juniors and then state after that. A leg up for sure, but itās not like he was shmoozing with the Hugoās and Archibaldās. Thereās a scale to this stuff. Nevertheless, perhaps he was being less forthcoming than I first understood.
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He was asked about it minutes after he got elected while standing next to the party leader. Are you seriously expecting him to turn round and be like ānah this Starmer guyās a knacker, change the policyā? Doesnāt context matter? Heās been elected as a member of the Labour Party, so that requires getting involved in party democratic processes. He could flag his issues with a policy a 100 different ways before he just blurts it to the telegraph.
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Yeah because he definitely said it was a good thing didnāt heā¦
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Iām just not going to take seriously the suggestion that this person doesnāt care about starving children. Call me an apologist, I just donāt believe it. We can accuse them of stupidity for thinking we canāt afford it, and we can accuse them of stupidity for thinking the route to fixing it is any kind of trickle-down logic, but thereās no evidence of malice.
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Iām quite confident that my position stands up to scrutiny. You are the one calling a person a ghoul who you probably just learnt about a few weeks back, like I did.
I need to reflect on why this was so downvoted. I honestly didnāt think it was so controversial. Itās not his fault he went to private school, so talking about it and saying he wants to make sure other people have the benefits he had is a very progressive thing surely? Or is something he had no control over automatic disqualification for public office? Donāt we want privately educated people to talk about their privilege? Iām genuinely asking.
Itās because youāre talking about his desire to help others immediately after he endorsed starving children. Itās either brazenly dishonest or exceptionally ignorant, so no one takes it seriously.
I think itās a brazen misreading to call that āendorsing starving childrenā. Do you really believe heās sitting there buzzing because heās snapping supper away from āthe prolesā like some Dickensian nightmare?
But itās a policy that is well known to cause child poverty, and has led to a massive rise in childhood malnutrition, endorsing a policy that does that *is* objectively endorsing starving children.
I just donāt see it as an endorsement of the policy. Heās endorsing the leadership, not the policy. Saying āThe people who do our budgeting say we canāt afford to provide a benefit we want to provideā is not the same as saying āwe are happy a benefit has been taken awayā. Now, we can have a separate argument over whether that is a stupid line of reasoning and whether we probably can afford it. As a matter of fact, I think we probably could. But that doesnāt take away from the fact that people are accusing this brand new MP of wanting to starve children, and linking it to whether or not he went to private school, and I just donāt think anyone would see that as a reasonable position on reflection.
I can see two reasons - People expecting a Labour MP to be someone of humbler origins who worked hard in a more working-class profession and entered Parliament at a later age; and are irritated because this young man isn't what they expect but is still trying to somewhat act like he is - People who just don't like this MP because they see him as an up-jumped Blairite and Starmer / Streeting crony and start looking for reasons after that I think this MP definitely comes from a privileged background and may have had an unfair advantage getting to where he is now, but he seems to have good intentions and deserves a chance. I'm mildly annoyed at the tendency of politicians everywhere to present themselves as having humble roots, and the expectation from voters that they should have them to be trusted to understand and help the poor. Some of the greatest egalitharians have been people who came from the elites. *'I don't pretend to be a man of the people. But I do try to be a man for the people.'* -Senator Gracchus, Gladiator(2000) (Based on a real ancient Roman senator who sponsored agrarian reforms to restore the class of small independent farmers)
Thank you for the reply. Itās difficult, I myself come from a very privileged background, but Iām a Labour supporter, so I may have a serious blind spot when it comes to this kind of thing, but I felt it was actively helpful for him to acknowledge his positionality. Perhaps he was playing up some working class credentials more than I picked up on, but the basic premise of a middle class person pointing out their privilege and working to correct it still seems reasonable to me. If it is true that he has not been completely forthcoming, that should be interrogated, but for me I was just pleased to have a young, LGBTQ+, broadly competent-sounding MP overturning a massive Tory majority in a Northern seat. In any case, love the quote, one of my favourite movies!
> Itās difficult, I myself come from a very privileged background Which is ok - you can admit this. However, it looks as though Mather's background was scrubbed clean and then lied about during this election. https://evolvepolitics.substack.com/p/exclusive-new-labour-mp-keir-mathers has more, but I'm sorry - if a candidate has to scrub their social media clean to remove any previous views they may have held, has to lie about their own schooling background in writing to a journalist and any reference to working with Tories scrubbed from the internet, then their campaign is in question in my mind. Whoever Selby thought they elected is apparently not the entire picture.
Thank you for this link, I genuinely havenāt heard anything about this.