Vain Starmer gives Nigel Farage a free run at Clacton.

Right, so as if Keir Starmer could not possibly get any worse, from all of the lies, the policy shifts, the broken promises and pledges, the gambling and parliamentary seats for sale allegations, his Tory lite manifesto and of course the endemic hierarchy of racism still very much on display, notably against Bengali people in the last few days, but now it is his ego and his vanity that has created the latest scandal, or what should be a scandal, resulting in an act so perversely ridiculous and utterly beyond logic as to beggar belief. Keir Starmer has effectively removed his candidate standing in Clacton, giving Nigel Farage of all people a clear run and it seems the only reason for Starmer to have done this, is because he is jealous of his Clacton candidates popularity and presence on social media!
Right, so Keir Starmer has removed his candidate from Clacton, a seat it is fair to say Labour had little chance of winning, a staunch Tory area historically, it is where UKIP won a seat at one point, and that is precisely why former stokebroker and public schoolboy Nigel Farage is choosing to stand there, because it’s right wing enough that his brand of snake oil stands a chance of finally getting him elected, 8th attempt at doing so. I would sorely hope the people there don’t want to be the ones to finally let Farage in, he certainly doesn’t give a stuff about you, this all about him getting the chance to grandstand in parliament, but who’d have thought of all the seats in the country where Keir Starmer might pull his candidate out and give other candidates from other parties or independents a free pass, a free run at a seat without him opposing them, that it would be this one?
The Labour candidate for Clacton was a chap called Jovan Owusu-Nepaul, a young black guy in his 20’s, quite the fashion guru to the point GQ magazine did an article on his fondness for knitwear and Windrush blazers whilst on the campaign trail. He’s been a Labour member since he was a teenager and currently works in their equalities department. And even better, the guy was popular. Clacton is considered to be unwinnable by Labour, yet having this up and coming young black man standing against somebody like Nigel Farage, with his flatcap and that awful stripy blazer he always wears, I’d almost be tempted to give whoever it was in Labour HQ who gave Jovan the nod last month props for cleverness, if not for the small fact that nobody knew Farage was making yet another unwelcome return to frontline politics until after Jovan was selected.
But now he’s not as such been de-selected, it’s too late for that, he’s on the ballot now, but his campaigning has been brought to an abrupt halt and the reason for that as alleged by the Guardian is because Keir Starmer is frankly jealous of him.
Keir Starmer, a man with all the charisma of a plasterboard off-cut, the son of a toolmaker, though unlike most tools, he’s no use to anyone and as this move in Clacton proves, if political acumen were lard, he wouldn’t have enough to grease a pan.
Things fell apart for Jovan when a chance meeting, confrontation perhaps with Nigel Farage happened at the opening of a new food truck in Frinton and they went viral, the colourfully dressed young black Labour candidate Jovan confronting racist Farage dressed as a Hugh Hefner knock-off and the contrast really struck a chord with the general public. And Starmer hated it. Starmer hated it apparently, because Jovan was stealing his thunder on social media. At one point Jovan’s encounter with Farage was getting more retweets than Starmer was getting that day and Team Keith couldn’t stand it, one quote saying:
‘At one point [Jovan] was getting more retweets than Keir Starmer. The officials were furious with him and said he was distracting [from] Starmer’s campaign’
I fail to see how photos taken of Jovan and getting shared on social media, bringing attention to what was not a strong local Labour campaign, not much chance of winning it, did to harm the chances of Labour electorally, they are on course to win, probably with a large majority alas, but any attention taken of Starmer and it’s incandescent rage from HQ. It buys into this belief amongst many political commentators that the Labour campaign is all about trying to sell Keir Starmer to the public, when frankly the more we see of him, the more people get turned off by him. Every time he’s on a TV election debate, he fails to land hits on Sunak and more than Sunak lands them on him, both of them terrible public debators and speakers, and every time a member of the audience challenges him or puts an awkward response to him, it’s incredible how quickly he gets angry about it, how short Starmer’s fuse is even in the face of quite mild pressure. So it’s isn’t hard to imagine how this young upstart, broadly speaking paper candidate as far as Labour HQ were concerned perhaps, given how remote Jovan’s chances of wining were, that they’ve acted to remove him, seemingly because social media took to the guy and Starmer and Co couldn’t stand that. Not allowed to question the exalted leader, not allowed to be more popular than him? Well frankly that’s such a low bar, if every Labour candidate more popular than Starmer were dropped, you’d barely have any left. Even people prepared to vote Labour are not convinced by Starmer and that view will only drop.
Here's an excerpt from the Guardian coverage of this story detailing the response from Jovan’s team, to him effectively being told by his own party, to get out of Clacton:
‘In a letter to Labour’s general secretary, David Evans, seen by the Guardian, Martin Suker, Owusu-Nepaul’s election agent said: “Reform UK stands for everything we the Labour party stand against … and I’m struggling to come to terms that it appears the party doesn’t even want to be seen to be putting up a fight.
“Jovan was told [by an official] to never come back to Clacton, and yesterday, was instructed to move to the West Midlands region.
“I’m concerned there will be follow-on questions: members, supporters and more worryingly donators will be both angry and upset that it appears like the party that they have a great hope in isn’t doing anything to show a battle front to what many see as a catastrophe not only for Clacton, but for the parliamentary system entirely.”
Suker said the local party had requests for new leaflets turned down and access to the canvassing system removed. “Now I have no candidate to put in front of the people for them to see us at least trying to ‘Save Clacton’,” he added. “This could be very damaging to the party’s image.”’
Keir Starmer in a speech a couple weeks ago, said that if you want politics as pantomime, I hear Clacton is nice this time of year. He was of course responding to Farage’s announcement he was standing there, but the bigger circus is now Labour, giving Farage a free run, unopposed by them, their campaign having grown beyond expectation there, low as that was and now killed off because Starmer was effectively jealous of his own candidate. In what way is that putting country before party? How many more people might get on the wrong side of Starmer’s vanity and ego going forward, what kind of leader of the country will that be? How will he respond to being held to account if he’s the sort of person to do this?
Jovan has been packed off to the West Midlands out of sight out of mind, and told never to come back to Clacton. Whether you support Labour or not, this is no democracy, it was bad enough Jovan wasn’t locally selected as barely any Labour candidates were, but he still managed to ingratiate himself locally, did a better job of that than most parachuted in Labour candidates have and yet he’s been punished for it.
The optics, are insanely bad.
As that Guardian piece brought up, concerns by Jovan’s election agent about he damage to the party’s image, because they’ve basically walked away from allowing someone as hard right as Nigel Farage to now effectively walk it in Clacton. Labour the party that abandons people if someone locally bruises Keir Starmer’s precious ego.
Worse than that, all of this happened within a day of Keir Starmer and Jonathan Ashworth’s awful racist comments denigrating the Bengali community in this country and scapegoating them as the sort of migrants that should be sent back to where they come from, despite Bangladesh having known climate and human rights issues, giving asylum seekers from there potentially perfectly valid claims. Labour’s hierarchy of racism once again on show there, but now following right on from that, they’ve just packed off a promising, clearly talented young Labour prospect, who happens to be black and with the amount of documented anti-black and Islamophobic abuses detailed in the Forde Report into Labour racism and abuses, compiled as that was by himself a black man, Martin Forde KC, all of a sudden Farage isn’t the only racist in the picture, all of a sudden, he might not be the worst one in the picture either.
From a political perspective the optics for Labour are dire as well. Keir Starmer has basically declared Nigel Farage as the only candidate in the country, his Labour won’t oppose, His reason for doing that is that his candidate against Farage was too popular.
Now contrast that with other seats around the country, other candidates that now appear to be more offensive to Keir Starmer than Nigel Farage. The classic example I’m sure everyone might think of right now is Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn is running as an Independent after Starmer made sure he couldn’t run under Labour again, and has put up against Corbyn a multimillionaire private healthcare CEO, who embraces the private health sector being more involved in the NHS, Praful Nargund, a guy I understand to currently be under investigation for not declaring various financial interests in his role as a Councillor on Islington Borough Council, but he’s proving so unpopular, he’s now turned off all his replies on Twitter as people pick him up on his business interests and his alleged frauds. I’m guessing being even less popular than Starmer is a bonus for Team Keith though and it’s not as if Starmer would willingly pull Nargund, not unless he was forced to due to poor conduct, we’ll see if that day still comes.
Equally you can argue Starmer standing against the Greens, the most progressive party in my view, I am biased here of course, but Starmer is now basically putting more effort into opposing them, than opposing Nigel Farage and that is a damaging narrative, that Starmer in effect aligns himself more with the likes of Farage and his beliefs and his views than more progressive views and oddly enough, isn’t that a really believable thing to think? All this damage and all because he got jealous?
Of course social media being what it is has passed comment on this as well.
Jennie Formby, Jeremy Corbyn’s General Secretary of the Labour Party and the woman who commissioned the Labour Leaks report, the leaking of which triggered the Forde Report inquiry, tweeted out:
‘Appalling optics from all angles to give Farage a free pass by removing a young black candidate. Someone needs to re-read the Forde report… “Labour officials said to be upset that Jovan Owusu-Nepaul was gaining traction for viral social media posts”’
Julian Power wrote:
‘The Labour Party ought to consider it a moral duty to offer the people of Clacton an alternative to fascism, but Starmer’s ego and autocracy cannot abide someone else getting some limelight. Jovan Owusu-Nepaul deserved better.’
And Martin Oswick wrote:
‘So disappointing. Sent to an 'unwinnable' seat and then punished for getting too much attention. He may not have won against Farage but felt like Jovan was building a good campaign. I feel for him and the volunteers and staff who have worked hard only to get undercut by party HQ’
For the sake of Starmer’s fragile ego and vanity, a Labour candidate has been punished. Starmer might view this unwinnable seat as no great loss, but it makes his party look even more petty, racist and right wing and that really ought to resonate elsewhere and have people questioning if voting Labour in their area, a consequence of which will be putting Starmer into Number 10, will be worth it, something more and more ethnic minorities are questioning, and are already ahead of this petty move furious with Labour, a party many of them have backed for years, as they are used as scapegoats to push Labour’s very Nigel Farage talk of deportations, especially against Bengali’s as this video recommendation will tell you all about, Labour are in real trouble amongst this demographic once again and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.