Maite

Still think there's hope

[Sam @SamCKx]

The replies to this post have put absolutely beyond doubt that the hatred for Keir Starmer is 99% based on misinformation. Just read through them, people spouting the same misinformation they have been repeatedly fed over the last year or so, disproven countless times, but still believed and amplified by so many. This is how easy it is to brainwash millions of people if you have the resources. This is how societies are destroyed.

[SubRosa )✿( Magick @subrosamagick.bsky.social @SubRosaMagick]

She was 57 years old.
White hair. No carefully managed image. No media training designed to make her more palatable. Just thirty years of accumulated knowledge and the calm, unhurried authority of a woman who had spent her life mastering her subject.
She sat on a BBC panel, answered questions about immigration and politics, cited evidence, made arguments — and then went home.
The next morning, her inbox looked like a crime scene.
Her name is Mary Beard — Cambridge professor, classicist, one of the most respected scholars of ancient Rome and Western civilisation alive. And the internet had decided that a woman speaking with quiet authority on television needed to be punished for it.
The messages were not criticism. They were not debate. They were rape threats. Death threats. Coordinated campaigns of personal destruction targeting her appearance, her age, her voice — anything that could be used to remind her that spaces like the one she had just occupied were not meant for her.
Most people would have gone quiet.
Mary Beard went further in.
She did what scholars do when they find a pattern that disturbs them: she followed it backward. Through decades. Through centuries. Through millennia. All the way back to some of the oldest texts in Western civilisation.
And she found it had always been there.
In Homer's Odyssey — one of the foundational works of Western literature, nearly three thousand years old — there is a scene that most readers pass over without registering its quiet violence. Penelope comes downstairs and asks the poet to sing a different song. Her own son, Telemachus, cuts her off. He orders her back to her room and tells her plainly: speech is the business of men.
She goes.
Mary Beard read that scene and recognized it immediately.
Not as ancient history. As a pattern.
In ancient Rome, women who dared to speak in public were not described as orators or thinkers. They were described as noise — disorderly sound, something that did not deserve to be called language or argument. Their voices were not speech. Their thoughts were not thoughts.
In the medieval world, women who claimed public authority were labeled as witches.
Elizabeth I — Queen of England, ruler of a nation — had to rhetorically reshape herself into something masculine just to be taken seriously as the leader of her own country.
The silencing of women who speak with authority was not invented by social media. It was not a modern pathology or a cultural accident. It was built deliberately, over centuries, into the very foundations of how Western civilisation defined who gets to speak, what authority sounds like, and who is allowed to take up space in public life.
Mary Beard had found something important.
In 2017, she published Women & Power: A Manifesto — short enough to read in an afternoon, substantial enough to reframe everything you thought you understood about why this keeps happening.
Her argument was precise and devastating.
The problem is not that women lack the ability to lead. The problem is that the model of leadership itself — the template for what public authority looks, sounds, and feels like — was built by men over centuries and has never been redesigned. When a woman enters public life and doesn't fit that template, she is not failing. The template was never built for her. It was built specifically to exclude her, and it has been doing exactly that, efficiently and continuously, for three thousand years.
The solution, Beard argued, is not to teach women to perform power the way men have always performed it. The solution is to dismantle and rebuild the very concept of what power is allowed to look like.
She kept teaching. She kept writing. She kept appearing on television — white-haired, unhurried, carrying her decades of authority without performing it, without packaging it for comfort, without apologizing for it.
The threats continued.
But other messages began arriving too. Letters from women and girls who had spent their entire lives feeling that every door was slightly too narrow, every table slightly too high, every room slightly reluctant to make space for them. Women who had spent years wondering what was wrong with them — why they couldn't quite fit, couldn't quite belong, couldn't quite be taken seriously no matter how much they knew or how hard they worked.
They read the book and understood, perhaps for the first time, that nothing had ever been wrong with them.
The room had been designed without them in mind.
That is not a personal failing.
That is a three-thousand-year-old architectural decision.
And one Cambridge professor with white hair and a calm voice — who refused to go quiet when the internet told her to — spent her career documenting it, naming it, and handing that knowledge to everyone who needed to hear it.
Telemachus told Penelope that speech was the business of men.
He was wrong then.
He is still wrong now.
And Mary Beard has three thousand years of evidence to prove it.
via The Inspireist

#FeministFriday #HERstory

[SK 💃🏾🕺 @Rimmesfk]

A few days after Idris Elba was knighted by the King, his wife was racially profiled following a car accident incident.

What makes me even more furious is listening to his recent comments about not making Bond "woke." It leaves me baffled and only confirms, in my view, that some successful Black British celebrities get confused by their proximity to power and will say almost anything to maintain it.

The level of racism that still exists in the UK is very real. With the platform Idris has, he shouldn't be using language that is so often weaponised to minimise discussions about racism and discrimination.

I'm genuinely disappointed in him.

I do wonder whether his perspective changed after seeing his wife, a woman of colour who isn't famous in her own right, experience the kind of treatment many ordinary Black people face every day.

Fame doesn't protect you from racism. It just delays the moment you realise it.

[Steffi Ede @MumofFatCassie]

Having put out a tweet that was supportive of Starmer, I have been deluged with abuse and vitriol (not a problem, I'm a big girl). But the tactics are interesting, and centre around belittling, attacks on intellect, and the age old 'shut up love/sweetheart/dear'. #bbcpm #c4news

[Cherry @Cherryopenmind]

When I was a nine-year-old schoolgirl, my teacher asked us to write a news article.

She told me, 'All I want to know is Who, What, Where, When, and Why.'

It took me two attempts, but I finally produced a piece that she said satisfied exactly what a reader needs to know.

So, let us play teacher with Chris Mason today.

Let us look at how he manipulates and manufactures drama for the BBC, a service we pay for.

Who: He cites 'friends and allies' of Wes Streeting, using anonymous whispers instead of a single official statement from a man who has neither resigned nor told the media he is standing.

What: He describes 'jostling on the start line' of a race that does not officially exist, masquerading speculation as a foregone conclusion.

Where: He sets the scene in a fictionalised 'expected race for leader', ignoring the reality that governance happens in departments, not in a journalist’s imagination.

When: He claims a challenge is 'imminent' to create a false sense of urgency, despite no confirmation of any such move.

Why: He does it to feed the 'anger factory' and secure clicks, knowingly trading national stability for media ratings.

Journalism is supposed to inform citizens, not project chaos.

@ChrisMasonBBC has failed my teacher’s test.

He is not reporting the news, he is attempting to invent it.

Do we pay the BBC so that journalists can play soap opera directors with our future?

#BBC #ChrisMason #Journalism #UKPolitics #Starmer #WesStreeting #Truth #Accountability

[Marina Purkiss @MarinaPurkiss]

Angela Rayner was dragged through every front page for weeks...

HMRC's verdict: NOT deliberate. NOT even careless.

Farage pockets £5 million and chooses not to declare it

So where's the wall-to-wall coverage?

Tell me this isn't a rigged game.

[Faisal Islam @faisalislam]

Whatever happens with leadership there is some important legislation announced here…

What was going to be the Dynamic alignment Bill is now the European Partnership Bill - will provide the legal mechanism for alignment of existing Brexit reset negotiation over food, electricty and emissions trading deals, but also provide a mechanism for any future alignment with Single Market that has been heavily signalled by PM and Chancellor.

Upside is sectoral frictionless trade in these areas, at the cost of regulatory autonomy in these sectors. Will be significant political fault line… Would expect direction of travel in any leadership contest, appealing to MPs and membership to go towards even further alignment.

[Chris S @chris_spencer04]

Fararge inherented Boris Johnson's sugar daddy, and then inherited half of Johnson's old cabinet. This seems like quite a coincidence. Who is really running the show?

https://t.co/ezyUhQjzou

[Tony Kerridge @KerridgeTony]

How media covers left and right wing news:

Polanski's failure to pay council tax on a houseboat was 2nd item on BBC lunchtime news, after Starmer

These allegations from insider Ben Habib alleging serious criminal election fraud by Farage, Boris Johnson & Harbonne - not a whiff.

[RS Archer @archer_rs]

The British mainstream media has worked as a group to undermine and destabilise Keir Starmer ever since his election because the people who fund the media feared and hated him.

This is not random but a coordinated, well funded coup d'état in plain sight.

The media is a disgrace

[Peter Jukes @peterjukes]

Let’s just accept Brexit and move on… for the sake of stability.

That was the motto of much of the British establishment for the last decade, and see how well it’s worked out.

[Aeron Laffere @aeronlaffere]

Finally, after exhausting every other option, Britain is ready for chaos with Ed Miliband.

[Clare Hepworth OBE @Hepworthclare]

PM Starmer has made mistakes.
But the media has to accept some responsibility for what is claimed to be the public's extreme dislike towards him.
From the very start the media hounded him.
All coverage was negative.
The media is a powerful influencer.
Sometimes irresponsibly so.

[Maite @MTAVfromM]

@dr72w_david @SkyNews He did sound quite unhinged

[Ben Judah @b_judah]

Starmer's authority is now crumbling. But even those most committed to a new Prime Minister should pause for thought about what it means for Britain in the world. For all his many, many domestic missteps, Keir Starmer has genuinely led on Ukraine, make tough calls with Trump and rebuilt relations with Europe by working intensely with President Macron and Chancellor Merz.

Labour in government was shocked at how quickly it was swamped by foreign affairs from Gaza and Ukraine, to Trump and Iran. This isn't going to change. However Starmer's challengers have no foreign policy experience, no geopolitical worldviews, no foreign affairs teams and no experience in explaining our place in the world and its tumult to the public. But if they succeed that will be half their job.

What's the plan for a geopolitical pivot to Europe? What's the strategy to deal with Trump and our fragmenting Western alliance as China's Axis of Authoritarians deepens? What's next for Britain's extensive diplomatic and security role when it comes to Ukraine? Who will be maintaining key connections to the White House?

Changes at the top are often necessary. But they are delicate and not cost free internationally. In diplomacy so much is bound up in personal connections and trust built up over time. Building since 2016, these musical chairs at the top have now become so intense, with Prime Ministers lasting roughly two years and Foreign Secretaries now annuals, our allies and partners are frustrated. I've heard from European and Gulf leaderships first hand it is hardly worth investing diplomatically in a counterpart who's suddenly gone and thus hardly worth investing in Britain.

[Mike Holden @MikeHolden42]

If a decent party leader is removed from office and a bribe-taking grifter stays put, our politics is not fit for purpose.

[Cherry @Cherryopenmind]

Although no PM has ever resigned due to local election results, although he still holds a huge majority of councillors, and although 70% of the manifesto has already been achieved which the media persistently ignore they have exploited all of this regardless of how it will affect the stock market and the cost of living.

Tomorrow, feel free to hold them accountable because THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE MEDIA IS HUGE.

We are witnessing a manufactured crisis where 80% of our media is in foreign ownership, serving agendas that have nothing to do with the stability of the UK.
If you want proof of how this machinery operates, look at Patrick Hurleys experience. He was ready to speak about stability, yet he was cancelled because the national broadcasters were explicitly looking for someone to demand the Prime Ministers resignation.

This is not journalism. It is an active intervention by those who find Starmer a threat to their plans.

The playbook is identical to the one used against Theresa May. This investigative piece by @BylineTimes reveals how external figures like Bannon and Epstein were pulling the strings then, and the same dark money and media manipulation are at work now:

https://t.co/SMkuxPjh3w

Democracy is a delicate creature, but a living one. If we do not feed it with its own rules and instead allow the media to manufacture coups, it slowly dies.

Loyalty and honour are for the rare few, and it is time we demand them back in our politics.

#UKPolitics #LabourParty #KeirStarmer #MediaBias #Journalism #TheresaMay #PoliticalStability #BylineTimes #Democracy #SteveBannon #BiteBack #IntegrityInPolitics #NationalInterest #ManifestoAchievement #BBC #SkyNews #Channel4 #BBCPolitics #SkyPolitics #C4News

[Alex Taylor @AlexTaylorNews]

FWIW I've been following the politics of my home country for some years (Harold Wilson was my first PM 🤡) but honestly can say I'm actually at a loss to understand it atm👇

And also ! (somewhat untypically for someone who comments on X on UK politics 🤡) I also follow closely politics in a few other places. It's striking to see how, in the age of X and media frenzies, 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 political leader is at the moment "the most unpopular ever" in their respective homelands. Trump, Macron, Merz etc to name but a few

Starmer is clearly not the best PM, but the "worst of all time" ? Worse than Truss ? Johnson ? Even May ? Really ? People think Andy Burnham will magically transform Labour and the UK. He may have a touch more charisma, but does anyone actually know the first thing about what he really believes in ? What happens when people start not liking something he does ? Calls for him to be replaced because he's suddenly "the worst UK PM ever ?" I dunno ...

[Patrick Hurley @patrick_hurley]

For those who don't know the ins and outs of the media, I have been approached by two national outlets today to ask me to go on their programmes to talk about the @UKLabour government.

To both of them, I said I'd go on in order to make the case for stability and order.

[Peter Jukes @peterjukes]

There’s something rotten in the state of the BBC’s political reporting. And unless it’s fixed soon, they will bring the catastrophe of Trump to the UK.