Smearing Keir Starmer
Obviously, this says everything about Johnson. There are no boundaries, no constitutional nicety he'll respect if it stands between him and staying in office. The allegation, which originated on the far right and normally finds itself propagated by people who have more Union Jacks on their Twitter profile than followers, cynically taps into the never-far-from-the-surface panic about paedophiles and the whiff of establishment collusion in shielding powerful men. Funny how these same rightwingers aren't fussed about the carte blanche Margaret Thatcher gave Jimmy Savile to run around London hospitals, nor how she lobbied for him to receive a knighthood - which was finally awarded shortly after her party turfed her from office. The Tories aren't exactly well placed to give lectures about enabling Savile and laundering his reputation. Photos like the one above is how Savile's relationship to politics should be remembered.
But what of the allegation? It's thoroughly false. In fact, it is interesting watching prominent jockeys on the hack circuit come to Starmer's defence. Such as the BBC's Ross Atkins, for example. A sense Johnson is on borrowed time and if they can hasten his departure while blandly claiming to report the news, why not? He's already convinced enough of the people who matter that a Starmer-led Labour government is a serious and safer proposition. The longer Johnson holds out, the greater the risk of popular anger seasoning into something too spicy for their tastes.
The truth doesn't matter for Johnson. It's a case of any old rope. As Richard astutely observes, this is part of a Tory pattern of traducing Starmer's character, of what might be seen as a in mainstream politics finds congenial - DPP, prosecuting criminals and terrorists - and turning it into a negative. Johnson has frequently and ham-fistedly claimed Starmer was a lefty lawyer, a past life long buried by his murky record as the establishment's chief prosecutor. Recalling the foul 2004 US presidential campaign, decorated Vietnam "war hero" John Kerry found his record picked over in minute detail and utterly rubbished by astroturf outfits (Swiftboat Veterans for Truth), rightwing shock jocks, and Fox News. At the end, you'd think his medals were won for playing tiddly winks at home in the Texas National Guard. Which is what George W Bush did. Just putting the guilt-by-association out there between Starmer and Savile serves Johnson's purposes nicely, while damning the consequences: a further coarsening of public discourse, no comeback for peddling disgusting lies, and in extreme cases, priming vulnerable and unstable people for acts of violence. It's not as if a Tory MP was recently murdered or anything.
This is why some on the left gleefully clinging on to Johnson's coattails shouldn't. That Starmer should have taken more of an interest in this case at the time is fair enough. He did so in plenty of other, less high profile cases, but there is something deeply unpleasant about nodding along to Johnson's smears and agreeing the man has a point. That Starmer systematically undermined the previous leader, lied about his policies to become Labour leader, and turned on the left doesn't matter in this instance. He might be a man without morals, honour, and qualities, but the left is not. The labour movement is not. It's high time some comrades started thinking about their responsibilities to the interests, the ideas, and the class they affect to serve, because none of this is helped by giving Johnson's carefully contrived outburst any kind of left cover.
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