Keir Starmer

[Megadrive Man]

1 hour ago, TK421 said:

If you define "success" in absolute terms and solely with regard to the last general election then by that strict criteria Corbyn failed.  I'd say there's more to it than that.  He forced the Tories into an uncomfortable marriage of convenience with the DUP, inflicted a series of Commons defeats on Theresa May - eventually seeing her off - and was a catalyst for a surge in membership of the Labour Party.  They're all tangible measures of success, in my view.

 

I think i'm right in saying that Corbyn inflicted more defeats on the government that any opposition leader in recent history?

 

 

[Pureblood]

Just now, MegadriveMan said:

I think i'm right in saying that Corbyn inflicted more defeats on the government that any opposition leader in recent history?

 

 

I believe so.  

[Numero Veinticinco]

5 minutes ago, TK421 said:

There's more to politics than general elections.  I think he did well in opposition and holding the government to account during May's time as PM. The coronavirus crisis has shown he was correct to highlight social inequality and base his policies accordingly. 

There definitely is more to it than general elections, but winning general elections so you can achieve what you want rather than what you don’t want is vital. It feels like you’re downplaying it because of support for Corbyn. I don’t think I have to list the policies that happened during Labour’s time out of power to illustrate the importance of winning power, but it feels like you’re listing relatively minor things to illustrate the opposite. 

[Megadrive Man]

Less good news for Starmer and Labour

 

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/leaked-labour-report-sees-black-voters-quit-party-over-final-straw_uk_5ea70e55c5b6a30004e62cc0

[Numero Veinticinco]

6 minutes ago, MegadriveMan said:

I think i'm right in saying that Corbyn inflicted more defeats on the government that any opposition leader in recent history?

Oh, come on. A cabbage - or any leafy veg - could have done the same thing. It was brexit and Tory infighting that made that possible. Taking credit for that is like Everton crediting the manager for not losing in months but not mentioning the coronavirus. 

[Numero Veinticinco]

.

[Pureblood]

4 minutes ago, Numero Veinticinco said:

There definitely is more to it than general elections, but winning general elections so you can achieve what you want rather than what you don’t want is vital. It feels like you’re downplaying it because of support for Corbyn. I don’t think I have to list the policies that happened during Labour’s time out of power to illustrate the importance of winning power, but it feels like you’re listing relatively minor things to illustrate the opposite. 

I think it's difficult because it's not a level playing field.  The media stitch up and making the election a second Brexit referendum gave Corbyn no chance.  The election was a disaster but I do think he was a good Labour leader.

[Numero Veinticinco]

3 minutes ago, TK421 said:

I think it's difficult because it's not a level playing field.  The media stitch up and making the election a second Brexit referendum gave Corbyn no chance.  The election was a disaster but I do think he was a good Labour leader.

Definitely agree about the level playing field. The media were terrible for Corbyn. I do think it is up to the leader - and this applies to Starmer as much as anyone - to mitigate that factor as much as possible.

 

I don’t agree that he was a good leader though. 

[sir roger]

1 hour ago, Numero Veinticinco said:

Oh, come on. A cabbage - or any leafy veg - could have done the same thing. It was brexit and Tory infighting that made that possible. Taking credit for that is like Everton crediting the manager for not losing in months but not mentioning the coronavirus. 

I can't imagine you will be rushing to credit any Labour leader that is landing blows on the worst PM in history , who is in the process of abetting a virus to kill over 40,000 people then.

[Numero Veinticinco]

6 hours ago, sir roger said:

I can't imagine you will be rushing to credit any Labour leader that is landing blows on the worst PM in history , who is in the process of abetting a virus to kill over 40,000 people then.

What you’re calling me there is a hypocrite, but I think that’s unfair. If, at the end of Starmer’s time in power, it results in a massive loss, Labour heartlands lost, and a massive majority for the Tory enemy, then you can bet your life that I won’t be on here painting his time as a success because he had a few decent PMQs.
 

There’s a big difference between saying that there’s a long way to go but it’s good that he and Labour are becoming more popular (and, surely to God, nobody is denying that?) and bragging about the most defeats without mentioning that she didn’t have a majority and her stance on Brexit had her own MPs voting against her. Starmer, Blair, Brown, Miliband, or even the reincarnation of Tony Benn couldn’t cause this government the losses that the last government had. Not because the quality of leadership but because of the circumstances. 

[Jairzinho]

The Labour heartlands, and Scotland, being lost has been a process over several decades. It's unfair for it to be on Corbyn. Or infact Brown or Miliband. 

 

Blair took the support and good will of these areas and then spent the next decade shitting all over it which ensured future Labour leaders would have an immeasurably more difficult task than he did. He was the Mourinho. A fucking cunt that left a trail of destruction and an enormous rebuild job being required once he fucked off. 

 

The small sample size, and radically varying circumstances of every election, makes comparisons almost meaningless. This guy winner, this guy loser, etc. 

 

Starmer won't have necessarily done a bad job if he doesn't win the next election. Maybe the window lickers in the public will cherish their blue passports, maybe Scotland will clear off, maybe Boris will have a war over Gibraltar. 

 

Maybe it will be another election seemingly impossible to win.

[Anubis]

38 minutes ago, Jairzinho said:

A fucking cunt that left a trail of destruction and an enormous rebuild job being required once he fucked off to overpaid speaking gigs, ambassadorial roles for questionable Middle East powers, and to roll around the carpet among all the fucking freebies he and his wife collected during his tenure.

Forgive, but I felt this sentence required an expansion.

[Numero Veinticinco]

It’s not all on Corbyn, for sure. Totally agree, Jair. Over all, it is on ‘successive’ Labour leaders. That’s why I originally said that. Scotland definitely isn’t all on him, although recent losses in certain areas of the North are hard to look past him and his leadership team. 
 

What surely can’t be denied is that successive Labour leaders have failed to win enough support to lead the country or get their policies in place. The party Starmer has inherited, no matter who is to blame, is at the lowest point in my voting lifetime, and it’s not a close run thing. Labour have 208 seats. 208! For all Tony Blair’s slide - and I’m not going to defend that absolute shit bag - he left the party with 355 seats and a majority of around 150. The popular as pig shit campaign of Brown, who was the one to really show free the Blair backlash, still got 258. I can just about stomach the 2017 result, which only got four more seats than Brown’s 258, being called a relative success - even though it resulted in a Tory government - but I can’t with the 2019. 
 

But, of course, you’re right. All these results have to be looked at in the context of the election they took party in. Even then, 208 seat abomination aside, I think it’s a very hard argument to say that the Labour leadership group handled the key issues well under Corbyn. The more important point I was making is that he has inherited a party off the back of a, let’s be generous and say ‘turbulent’ period where the party is fractured beyond belief, where the seats he has are the smallest number since 1935 when Atlee increased Labour’s seats from 52 to 154. Labour are so unelectable since Blair that the feckless May and a hairy fucking smudge are seen as better bets by the electorate. 
 

Most of this is just obvious stuff, but I wasn’t just getting at Corbyn and I think I needed to clarify that. Though the fact I’m talking about successive campaigns doesn’t excuse the fact that the last one was utterly fucking shocking. That is the legacy that Starmer has to take on and turn around. If we lambast him every time he does something aimed at uniting the party rather than chopping it up, whoever takes on the job after him might be left with rubble and dust. 

[Numero Veinticinco]

In short... beat the Tories, you utter sacks of utter shit. Fuck Blair, Brown, Miliband, Corbyn, Starmer. I support not-Tory FC, not Labour Leader FC. 

[Numero Veinticinco]

24 minutes ago, Anubis said:

Forgive, but I felt this sentence required an expansion.

Sometimes life just throws you something so spectacularly perfect, and in this case it was Tony Blair being ‘Middle East Peace Envoy’. It could only be rivalled by Gengis Khan’s ascension to the head of an anti-rape charity or Harold Shipman’s stint as the chairman of the board of medical ethics. 

[A Red]

I think Starmer could be a game changer. He looks and sounds like a leader, is extremely intelligent and doesnt seem to have loads of baggage. In short hes quite different to Corbyn.

 

I wouldnt say he was particularly charismatic but neither were - Attlee, Macmillan, Wilson, Major, May etc. If I like his policies and he keeps a lid on any warring factions I think I could vote for him.

[Anubis]

39 minutes ago, Anubis said:

[Scooby Dudek]

No matter how much of a "success" 2017 was it needs the asterisk of senior members of the party staff, paid by the membership, actively working against a Labour victory.

I hope this has never happened before and will never happen again.

 

[Vincent Vega]

I thought this was an interesting read from some journalists who you wouldn’t describe as Labour or Corbyn friendly.
 

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/killing-jeremy-corbyn
 

The killing of Jeremy Corbyn

Peter Oborne and David Hearst

5 June 2020 08:58 UTC | Last update: 4 sec ago 

The former Labour leader was the victim of a carefully planned and brutally executed political assassination
 

Throughout his parliamentary career, the mild mannered, infuriatingly calm Jeremy Corbyn has never failed to excite strong emotions.

 

For his enemies, he will go down as one of Labour’s worst leaders. He failed to unite his party. He sent too many contradictory messages on Brexit, which was the greatest issue of his time. He never dealt with Labour’s antisemitism problem. And he ultimately went down to a catastrophic defeat in the 2019 general election.

For an equally vociferous and ardent army of his supporters, Corbyn tripled party membership, banished austerity, shifted the mainstream political discourse leftwards, and presented a genuinely radical alternative to the quagmire of post-industrial capitalism.   

Truthful journalism

We don’t hold a candle for Corbyn. Neither of us are Labour Party members, and indeed one of us has worked as a political correspondent and commentator for The Spectator, The Daily Telegraphand The Daily Mail, three stalwarts of Tory opinion-making. Both of us care greatly about accurate, truthful journalism. Both of us, as British citizens, cherish the tradition of fair play and decency.
 

That is why we believe everyone should be concerned about the picture painted of Corbyn by the British media for the four years he was leader. 

 

Corbyn was never the monstrous figure presented to the British people. He was never a Marxist. He was not hell-bent on the destruction of Western capitalism. He was a socialist. Nor was he an antisemite, and there is no serious evidence which suggests that he was, though we certainly do not absolve him of poor judgement, for instance  in joining various internet forums in his years on the backbenches. 

 

And he was not a divisive figure - the claim made against him by so many of his right-wing opponents.

Political assassination

Indeed, one of Corbyn’s problems was that he was too soft with his internal enemies as he tried to unite the Labour Party after his shock leadership victory in 2015. He was a flawed politician who made mistakes.

We wanted to give Corbyn a chance, which was largely denied him as Labour leader, to tell his side of the story

But he also possessed personal decency and authenticity, which has scarcely been acknowledged amidst the thousands of hatchet jobs conducted against him in the press and wider media. That is why we thought it was important to conduct the first major interview with Corbyn since he stepped down as Labour leader on 3 April this year. 

 

We wanted to give him a chance, which was largely denied him as Labour leader, to tell his side of the story. We also wanted to expose one sombre truth; Corbyn was the victim of a carefully planned and brutally executed political assassination.

He was never given a chance. Not by the bulk of Labour’s parliamentary party and many officials, some of whom (we are now learning) campaigned harder against their elected leader than they did against the Tory government. Not by senior figures connected to the British state, including former spy chiefs, military officers and civil servants, all of whom should have known much better.

Take the claim that Corbyn’s director of strategy Seumas Milne would not get security clearance at 10 Downing Street because he "hobnobbed" with Putin.
 

The former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, told the Mail on Sunday: "Anyone with his sort of background could not be let anywhere near classified information. It would be out of the question," Dearlove said.

 

"That means Corbyn could not make the judgments and decisions a PM has to make unless he stopped consulting him." Dearlove’s successor at MI6 and former chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Sir John Scarlett "hobnobbed" with Putin and took his hospitality at the Valdai Club the year before Milne went. 

One of us had a drink in a bar in Moscow with a supremely relaxed Scarlett who evidently enjoyed his time talking to Putin and his mates.

Falsehoods and misrepresentations

Lie after lie was told about Corbyn, day after day, month after month. For the last four years very few journalists have bothered to do their job to fact-check the claims and report fairly on him.

Jeremy Corbyn: British media waged campaign to destroy me

Read More »

In our review of Tom Bower’s book "A Dangerous Hero", we investigated and exposed a farrago of falsehoods and misrepresentations in what was presented as a major biography of the Labour leader published by Harper Collins, one of Britain’s most significant publishers. 

 

We showed how Bower misrepresented a meeting of the Palestinian Return Centre (PRC). Bower accused the PRC of being a group that blamed Jews for the Holocaust. Nobody affiliated with the PRC has ever expressed such views, as was accepted by an inquiry led by the Commissioner of Standards. 

 

Harper Collins and Bower agreed not to repeat the allegation. The Mail on Sunday, which lavishly serialised Bower’s book, withdrew the allegation and apologised. The point to note here is that when such claims face the prospect of being examined properly in a court of law by judges who are led by facts and evidence and who conduct their inquiry with due process, they tend to fall apart. 

Sir Keir Starmer, a barrister by training, please note: due process matters. It has been absent for the last four years in the party you now head. We showed how Bower misrepresented Corbyn’s dealings with the National Health Service (NHS). He reports that the junior doctor strikes organised by the British Medical Association (BMA) in 2016 were “under the control of Momentum”.

Both the BMA and Momentum denied this. The BMA said "there is no evidence to suggest this was the case.” Bower certainly didn’t provide any. We showed how Bower misrepresented a confrontation between Labour activist Marc Wadsworthand Labour MP Ruth Smeeth at the launch for Shami Chakrabarti’s report on antisemitism in June 2016.
 

This was another incident seized upon by the media to attack Corbyn. Bower writes that “Wadsworth snapped at her that not only was she ‘working hand-in-hand’ with the right-wing media by speaking to the journalist, but she was also a Jew”.

 

The brief incident is recorded on video. Nowhere in the footage does Wadsworth say that Smeeth is Jewish. MEE spoke to two eyewitnesses to this event, both of whom confirmed that at no point did Wadsworth say that Smeeth was Jewish.

Against all types of racism

As the election loomed, much of the press presented Boris Johnson, Corbyn’s Tory opponent, as a national figure and a saviour of the nation. 

Racism against any religious minority is unacceptable in our society and for that reason Islamophobia should just as ardently be hunted down and identified - wherever it appears

This – as the nation is learning the hard way – was as grievous a lie as anything told about Corbyn. By one of life’s strange ironies, Johnson, unlike Corbyn himself, has indeed been guilty of producing offensive antisemitic stereotypes.

 

A group of Jewish academics and campaigners pointed out that one of Johnson’s novels invoked one of the most pernicious antisemitic stereotypes when he describes "Jewish oligarchs" who, in the words of the academics, "run the media, and fiddle the figures to fix elections in their favour". 

 

As Corbyn told us, and we believe he is being sincere in this, antisemitism is an evil which has been tolerated and accepted for far too long in British society. It is, however, not the only form of racism tolerated in political circles. The fight against this scourge should not be party political, nor should the fight against racism be confined to racism against Jews. 

 

Racism against any religious minority is unacceptable in our society and for that reason Islamophobia should just as ardently be hunted down and identified - wherever it appears. The two campaigns should go hand in hand. They should be in lockstep.

But they aren’t. 

Lynch mob justice

By another irony, once he had won the election, Johnson adopted a number of Corbyn’s policies which he had previously denounced as unworkable. 

How top Labour officials plotted to bring down Jeremy Corbyn

Read More »

Since becoming prime minister, Johnson has abandoned planned cuts in corporation tax, announced plans to nationalise Northern Railand announced £100bn funding for infrastructure projects. 

The heritage of the British press means what appears in its columns carry a weight far greater than remarks made casually in a pub or a workplace. It’s very hard to see how any decent person reading much of the newspapers or absorbing the broadcasting coverage of the last few years could have possibly voted for Jeremy Corbyn. 

 

Indeed, Corbyn said as much in his interview with MEE, noting the coverage was so hostile that even he would “not want to live on the same street” as the man he read about in some British newspapers. The media abandoned any form of the objectivity or fact-checking they apply to almost everyone else.

 

Accusers became judge, jury and executioner. 

There was no due process, no independent inquiry after the facts,  no suspension of judgement until the facts were uncovered. Within seconds, the accusation became the new reality. This was lynch mob justice.

 

The mob have got their way. Corbyn is back to where he was at the start of this bizarre journey, an MP well respected locally in North Islington and on the back benches. His allies have been purged from the front benches. 
 

But this episode should concern all of us who believe in means as well as ends. The simple question that any MP of whatever political shade should ask themselves is what they would do, how they would feel, if the same tactics were used against them. They would scream foul. They would be right.

 

This kind of mob politics threatens democracy itself because without truthful and honest public discourse, dark forces make their presence felt. 

[Vincent Vega]

I think Labour’s loss of support in Scotland was partly down to Blair as the Scots felt their support had been taken for granted, but I think it was mostly due to the independence referendum. Milliband sharing a platform with Cameron meant pro-independence Scots were able to tag the party as Blue Labour. The SNP then cynically started to steal Labour’s clothes by becoming more progressive and adopting many of Labour’s policies so disgruntled Labour supporters had a new home to go to.

[Vincent Vega]

Labour were starting to haemorrhage votes under Blair before Brown took over. Blair lost 4m voters between 1997 and 2005. As bad as the last election was for Labour, Corbyn managed to get 10.3m votes to Blair’s 9.5m votes in 2005.
 

The Tories have benefited from the almost complete collapse in support for the Lib Dems, especially in the south. This along with the loss of Scotland makes Labour’s job much harder, and even a leader seen as more moderate like Starmer will find it difficult to win an election. The best we can probably hope for is Labour to be the largest party in a hung parliament.

 

UK General Election 1997^[12]

			Candidates						Votes
Party		Leader	Stood	Elected	Gained	Unseated	Net	% of total	%	No.	Net %
	Labour	Tony Blair	639	418	146	0	+146	63.4	43.2	13,518,167	+8.8
	Conservative	John Major	648	165	0	178	–178	25.0	30.7	9,600,943	–11.2
	Liberal Democrats	Paddy Ashdown	639	46	30	2	+28	7.0	16.8	5,242,947	–1.0
	Referendum	James Goldsmith	547	0	0	0	0		2.6	811,849	N/A
	SNP	Alex Salmond	72	6	3	0	+3	0.9	2.0	621,550	+0.1

 

UK General Election 2001^[20]

			Candidates						Votes
Party		Leader	Stood	Elected	Gained	Unseated	Net	% of total	%	No.	Net %
	Labour	Tony Blair	640	412	2	8	−6	62.5	40.7	10,724,953	−2.5
	Conservative	William Hague	643	166	9	8	+1	25.2	31.6	8,357,615	+1.0
	Liberal Democrats	Charles Kennedy	639	52	8	2	+6	7.9	18.3	4,814,321	+1.5
	SNP	John Swinney	72	5	0	1	−1	0.8	1.8	464,314	−0.2
	UKIP	Jeffrey Titford	428	0	0	0	0	0.0	1.5	390,563	1.2

 

Summary of the results of the 5 May 2005 United Kingdom general election to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom

Political party		Leader	Candidates	Elected	Seats gained	Seats lost	Net change in seats	% of seats	Number of votes	% of votes	Change in % of vote	Votes per seat won
	Labour	Tony Blair	627	355	0	47	–47	55.2	9,552,436	35.2	–5.5	26,908
	Conservative	Michael Howard	630	198	36	3	+33	30.7	8,784,915	32.4	+0.7	44,368
	Liberal Democrats	Charles Kennedy	626	62	16	5	+11	9.6	5,985,454	22.0	+3.8	96,540
	UKIP	Roger Knapman	496	0	0	0	0	0.0	605,973	2.2	+0.8	N/A
	SNP	Alex Salmond	59	6	2	0	+2	0.9	412,267	1.5	–0.2	68,711

[Numero Veinticinco]

6 minutes ago, Vincent Vega said:

Labour were starting to haemorrhage votes under Blair before Brown took over. Blair lost 4m voters between 1997 and 2005. As bad as the last election was for Labour, Corbyn managed to get 10.3m votes to Blair’s 9.5m votes in 2005.

Blair got 355 seats with a majority of 150ish in 2005. Down from something like 400 in 97. We can point to number of voters all we like, but Blair got more votes than the other party and many more seats. I’ll take that over fewer than the other party with a smaller number of seats than them. Call me a stickler. 

[Barrington Womble]

13 minutes ago, Vincent Vega said:

I think Labour’s loss of support in Scotland was partly down to Blair as the Scots felt their support had been taken for granted, but I think it was mostly due to the independence referendum. Milliband sharing a platform with Cameron meant pro-independence Scots were able to tag the party as Blue Labour. The SNP then cynically started to steal Labour’s clothes by becoming more progressive and adopting many of Labour’s policies so disgruntled Labour supporters had a new home to go to.

Personally, I thinks it's simpler than that. SNP are a credible alternative to any left of centre voter. If they'd have stood in Liverpool I'd have voted for them at the last election, as they ran the best campaign. 

 

There was a wind of change against labour after brown across the entire UK and labour lost voters then.  The SNP just haven't fucked up enough to make people want to move back to labour since. And with FPTP people also fear splitting any left vote and letting in the Tories or libs. So SNP is just a safe place for people to put their vote right now. I'm not sure how labour win that back under FPTP. 

[Section_31]

22 minutes ago, Vincent Vega said:

I think Labour’s loss of support in Scotland was partly down to Blair as the Scots felt their support had been taken for granted, but I think it was mostly due to the independence referendum. Milliband sharing a platform with Cameron meant pro-independence Scots were able to tag the party as Blue Labour. The SNP then cynically started to steal Labour’s clothes by becoming more progressive and adopting many of Labour’s policies so disgruntled Labour supporters had a new home to go to.

 

I think austerity played a huge part in Scotland going full SNP, it's human nature to look for alternatives and to an extent look inwards when times are tough. Ironic that the SNP slays bang the anti Brexit drum and they've relied on a lot of the same voter instincts to get the success they've had.

[Jairzinho]

57 minutes ago, Numero Veinticinco said:

It’s not all on Corbyn, for sure. Totally agree, Jair. Over all, it is on ‘successive’ Labour leaders. That’s why I originally said that. Scotland definitely isn’t all on him, although recent losses in certain areas of the North are hard to look past him and his leadership team. 
 

What surely can’t be denied is that successive Labour leaders have failed to win enough support to lead the country or get their policies in place. The party Starmer has inherited, no matter who is to blame, is at the lowest point in my voting lifetime, and it’s not a close run thing. Labour have 208 seats. 208! For all Tony Blair’s slide - and I’m not going to defend that absolute shit bag - he left the party with 355 seats and a majority of around 150. The popular as pig shit campaign of Brown, who was the one to really show free the Blair backlash, still got 258. I can just about stomach the 2017 result, which only got four more seats than Brown’s 258, being called a relative success - even though it resulted in a Tory government - but I can’t with the 2019. 
 

But, of course, you’re right. All these results have to be looked at in the context of the election they took party in. Even then, 208 seat abomination aside, I think it’s a very hard argument to say that the Labour leadership group handled the key issues well under Corbyn. The more important point I was making is that he has inherited a party off the back of a, let’s be generous and say ‘turbulent’ period where the party is fractured beyond belief, where the seats he has are the smallest number since 1935 when Atlee increased Labour’s seats from 52 to 154. Labour are so unelectable since Blair that the feckless May and a hairy fucking smudge are seen as better bets by the electorate. 
 

Most of this is just obvious stuff, but I wasn’t just getting at Corbyn and I think I needed to clarify that. Though the fact I’m talking about successive campaigns doesn’t excuse the fact that the last one was utterly fucking shocking. That is the legacy that Starmer has to take on and turn around. If we lambast him every time he does something aimed at uniting the party rather than chopping it up, whoever takes on the job after him might be left with rubble and dust. 

I wasn't really saying that you were getting at Corbyn, which is why I said what I did about Miliband and Brown as well. The rot had well and truly set in years ago. With each passing year more people have had enough of being ignored. This "he left the party with 355 seats and a majority of around 150" was achieved with 35% of the vote after all. The dynamic was completely different with a significantly less hateful Lib Dem party getting twenty odd percent of the vote and over 50 seats. They took seats off Tories in the South West and other rural areas, and tipped the balance to Labour in some marginal Tory/Lab seats.

 

Labour needed fewer votes to win a majority and, crucially, needed to attract the vote of fewer sections of society. He could take Scotland and the north for granted, and focus on attracting previous mentioned Volvo nonce. If Starmer goes completely down this route it'll fail miserably. Starmer has to square the circle of having a party that can attract middle class liberals and the working class that voted for Brexit. 

 

I sincerely hope he can, but for a number reasons I'm not overly confident. I keep wondering how fucking bad can it get before people stop voting for a bunch of ex Etonian sociopaths that wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire.