Sir Keir basks in the Sun
‘The whole city will now be very disappointed that he has broken his promise to boycott’
Dear readers — we hope you had a restful weekend in preparation for a rather hectic one on the horizon. While we may only just have recovered from Sefton Park’s Disco Festival, the return of Africa Oye this coming weekend has us positively fizzing with excitement. Catch Abi’s top picks for the festival in today’s edition…
He’s back: After a few months away, David Lloyd returned to these pages over the weekend with a brilliant piece about Everton and his changing relationship with football. “Brilliant, funny, perfectly structured, beautifully written,” as one of you put it in the comments. It’s had a lovely reception so far, so make sure you catch up below if you’re yet to dig in. Though maybe not one to read over a late lunch.
In case you missed it: last week our members received an extra two pieces — a gorgeous interview with Liverpool poetry icon Levi Tafari, and an investigation into Wirral community interest company The Spider Project after concerns were raised about how it treats people with mental health issues.
Editor’s note: To read those stories in full, you’ll need to be a paying member of The Post. It costs just £7 a month — which is less than a boozy slushie at the Baltic Market — and gives you access to our entire back catalogue of investigations, features and opinion pieces. We’re also about to announce our next event for Post members, and this time round we’ll have a very special guest joining us. Click the button below to make sure you’re the first to find out who that is…
The Big Story: Sir Keir basks in the Sun
Top line: Those of you who paid a visit to the Sun’s website last week (anyone?) will have been greeted by a smartly-dressed bloke against a sea of red and the block capital words: ‘ON THURSDAY 4 JULY VOTE FOR CHANGE’.
The man staring back at you would have been the likely next Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, whose Labour Party flooded The Sun newspaper’s website with adverts. According to The Guardian, “industry sources” predicted the cost of the ads would run into the tens of thousands.
Sunburn: Riverside MP Kim Johnson wasn’t happy with Starmer at all. “When he was seeking support to be the leader of the Labour party, Keir stood in my constituency and pledged that he would not write in the Scum newspaper,” she said. It isn’t Johnson’s first swipe at Starmer either. Back in 2022 the Labour leader’s refusal to join picket lines of striking workers led to Johnson’s declaration that he had “no balls”.
A place in The Sun: Johnson is correct that Starmer’s stance on the Sun has drifted enormously from when he was bidding to become Labour leader. “I certainly won’t be giving an interview to the Sun during the course of this campaign,” he said at the time, recognising the pain that had been caused by the paper’s inaccurate coverage of Hillsborough in 1989. Since then, Starmer has written editorials and given interviews to The Sun, clarifying his stance in 2023:
"I have to make sure that what we have to say is communicated to as many people as possible in the time that we've got available and that is why I am very happy to work with The Sun, to write for The Sun, to do interviews with The Sun."
Throwing shade: While Johnson appears to have been most vocal in her criticism of her party’s leader (the only MP thus far to have accused Sir Keir of being ball-less) Starmer’s relationship with the Sun has been a constant source of unhappiness among Merseyside MPs. Two years ago, at the Labour conference in Liverpool, metro mayor Steve Rotheram said he believed Starmer “regrets” writing in the Sun, while West Derby MP Ian Byrne told us he had felt “betrayed” at the time and told the leader personally. “There’s never any excuse for anyone in our party to be going near that rag,” he told The Post.
Bill Esterson, now the Shadow Minister for Roads, also told us he spent “a long train journey” with Starmer after he had written a Sun piece and shared Rotheram’s view that perhaps Starmer knew he had made a mistake. The reason he was such an effective Director of Public Prosecutions, Esterson told us, was his ability to “[recognise] when he might’ve made a mistake”.
Coveted endorsement: Clearly Starmer’s penance was pretty short-lived. But beyond the obvious (trying to reach a section of the electorate who wouldn’t usually vote Labour) could the reason Starmer is unwilling to boycott the paper be because he is expecting its endorsement? That would certainly keep to the Tony Blair playbook — The Sun famously backed Blair in 1997. Its editor at the time, Stuart Higgins, told the BBC over the weekend he predicted it would lend Starmer a “subtle, caveated support”, without “great fanfare” before the election.
According to Higgins “significant discussions” have been taking place, but others think Starmer’s primary concern is avoiding the kind of onslaught the Sun directed at Gordon Brown, Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn. Starmer’s biographer Tom Baldwin told the BBC:
“If Starmer can get an endorsement that would be a bonus. But, unlike Tony Blair 30 years ago, he hasn’t flown halfway across the world to bend his knee to Rupert for an endorsement.”
Bottom line: Starmer’s view appears to be that in order to effect change that will actually benefit people in areas like Merseyside, you need to win first. That’s what matters most — if that means engaging with The Sun, so be it. But to the likes of Kim Johnson (and no doubt many others) it’s a line that shouldn’t be crossed. The fact that Starmer appears to have duped the Liverpool public with his original stance only rubs salt in the wound.
Your Post briefing
American businessman Dan Friedkin is poised to take over Everton after agreeing a deal in principle with owner Farhad Moshiri. Friedkin has muscled ahead of fellow bidders, including a consortium involving a Saudi royal, and will now enter into a period of exclusivity. Alongside his primary ventures (as CEO of The Friedkin Group and its subsidiary Gulf States Toyota) Friedkin also owns Italian football club AS Romas and has produced a number of films, including 2017’s All the Money in the World (which hopefully also applies to the man himself). Is this a new dawn after a tumultuous few years for the Toffees then? Perhaps, although one toffee who won’t be popping the champagne is Post writer David Lloyd. If any Blues want the smiles wiped from their faces on a Monday afternoon, revisit his weekend read on his loss of faith in football. That’s here.
The Echo have investigated a group of schools across Merseyside, run by the Dixons Academies Trust, where stringent, “cult-like” rules have caused significant concern among parents. Several parents have removed their children from Dixons’ schools over mental health concerns, with one telling the paper “she had to pay for a taxi to bring her daughter home from school after she was suffering with heavy period bleeding but was not allowed to go to the toilet for four hours.” Other claims made include bizarrely excessive punishment for misbehaviour. Dixons told the Echo “fair and reasonable” sanctions were utilised.
The culinary dominance of Aughton, a tiny village of 8,000 people just beyond the borders of Merseyside, goes on. Two of its restaurants, both Michelin star holders, have made the top 100 at the National Restaurant Awards, with Moor Hall winning a podium spot in third. The only actual Merseyside restaurant on the list (if we aren’t allowed to claim the Aughton stable) is Manifest in the Baltic. That said, the buzz for Manifest’s Paul Durand surely won’t compare to the day he received a glowing review in these pages (“Manifest is a place for people who love food — a subset smaller than those who love taking pictures of food”). This is good too though, we guess.
And finally, with the world’s biggest pop star having waved her goodbyes to Liverpool, we’ll leave you with this touching footage as a way of marking the memory. We hope you too were able to experience the joy this man experienced, when he opened his front door late at night to find two borderline paralytic Swifties collapsed in a heap against his front gate. Enjoy!
Home of the week
This double fronted three bedroom home in Southport is on the market for £410,000. It has a gorgeous back garden and loose stone driveway, with a separate side garden, timber garden shed and greenhouse thrown in for good measure. Take a tour here.
Post Picks
🎸One of the best weekends of the year, free festival Africa Oye returns to Sefton Park this Saturday with an all star line-up and plenty of incredible after parties to look forward to. Our recommendations? We’ll be front and centre for Les Amazones D'Afrique on Saturday night — if you haven’t listened to their 2020 album Amazones Power, it’s well worth a listen beforehand.
🎧When it comes to after parties, our top pick also comes on Saturday night. As is Africa Oye tradition, Liverpool DJ duo Dharma Collective will be playing at the Handyman Supermarket for the official Disco Africa after party from 6pm onwards. See you there…
📚If literature is more your thing, best selling author Julia Armfield heads to the West Kirkby Bookshop this Thursday in support of her latest book Private Rites — the story of three sisters navigating queer love and faith as the world comes to an end. The event starts at 7pm — buy a ticket here.
🎨Or why not enjoy an evening of painting at The Abbey in St Helens? This session is also on Thursday and is hosted by Paint and Party UK. The theme of the event is Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. Find out more here.
Our favourite reads
This piece from The Double Negative examines how working class cultures — including that of Liverpool — are portrayed on TV. “This is something my native Merseyside suffers from,” Kenn Taylor writes. “Used as the setting for an endless slew of crime dramas of varying quality, with the better ones inevitably those with more local control in production.”
“If you grew up in a certain time, it was the internalised misogyny of not liking pop.” The Guardian’s Robyn Vinter headed to the University of Liverpool last week for ‘Tay Day’ — an entire day of lectures, films and activities held at the university in tribute to Taylor Swift. Read her take on it here.
Apart from his link with that newspaper there are a lot more reasons to distrust him. From his shelving of practically every promise he made when he became Labour leader to his shameful acceptance that Israel had the right to cut off power and water in Gaza, then having the brass neck to try to gaslight the public into thinking that he hadn't said that at all. He is a snake. Somebody said when he became leader of the party that he is an establishment stooge. He is certainly doing a very good impression of one.
Kim Johnson will not be boycotting the party that handed over money to the Sun newspaper - her bread is well buttered - if she stood as independent - she would lose that £91K a year plus all the other tasty bits of money offered to these Judas figures.
If Angela Rayner appeared topless in the Sun - people would still vote Labour here.
When the city of Liverpool returns Labour once again - let's remember it was Labour who killed off the chances of Justice for the 97. They put the last few nails in the coffin even though Blair had a vast majority to make sure a public inquiry took place with legal punishment for those found to be negligent. The cover up could have been exposed - and that cover up went deep. Establishment does not infiltrate campaigns for justice - it leads them from the top. We got blindsided. We got played.
No justice for the 97 or survivors - Labour went to war with Iraq instead and people here are still dumb enough to continue voting for them.
Not being a politician - I can say that.