Excellent article by Martin Kettle

N.B. Not a thread intended to debate Keir's merits or de-merits. We've kicked that one around and we all know where we stand.

I think I've stated before my opinion that Keir comes to politics as a lawyer rather than a politician. Martin Kettle sets that out very well here:

Does Starmer believe in anything, people ask, and now I can answer: his credo is the rule of law | Martin Kettle | The Guardian

 

Fair report.
Tbh I've allus thought positions in government (regardless of party) require the best people for the job. I realise mps are just figureheads as ministers of depts. and have influence. But they look to advisors. MP's main role is to represent their constituents.
As for the role of attorney general. I dont see the issue. Experience is the key.
Shadow positions are just that. With little or no influence. And the reason she was overlooked imo.

 

Cart before the horse (kaht before the orse?). Seems to me to be justifying political decisions based on a fundamentally political interpretation of the current law, and then flipping that the other way to say "orrr, it's just the rule of law and therefore it's a legal decision not a political one".

Plus it's written by someone with the surname Kettle who is most likely, therefore, to be a div.

 

Pot, kettle ;-)

 

Re your first point TM, he was a lawyer long before he was a politician.

Re your second, it took me a while to make the link with Trevor!

 

Its a well-argued article. However, as an analysis of what Starmer believes in it offers nothing to those who want to know where Starmer stands on specific policies. If Kettle is correct, that Starmer's fall-back position is to simply identify with the rule of law, then it exposes weakness in Starmer as much as it portrays that as a strength. For all his law background Starmer is a politician now and its up to him and his team not only to uphold laws (domestic and international) but also to make them. If Kettle is making an attempt to defend Starmer here, which it looks like he's doing, it's a weak attempt in spite of it being well written.

 

Agree , Kettle is a new Labour Blairite ,if all you can say is that Starmer believes in the rule of law , which should be a starting point for any politician even if it hasn’t been , it doesn’t say much for him.

 

I knew two people (both lawyers) who knew him, one through work, one through university. The old acquaintance suggested he always had an interest in politics and some pretty strident views (mind you we've all been like that if we've been to Uni) and that he had taken him to task slightly over the evaporation of any kind of views on anything. To be fair to Starmer, all he had to do was not say anything wrong and he'd have got elected. It really remains to be seen what kind of PM he is gong to be. I don't personally think he's got off to a very good start. The winter fuel, the freebies, early prison releases and caving in to the train drivers and the doom mongering about the budget (where at the very least they haven't managed the press well) etc aren't great optics and easy to criticise. There is still time but as that goes on, blaming the tories gets a little old quickly and some of more principled ideas could flounder or worst still backfire.