""It's the world darts championships on the first day of the year, and a well-lubricated early-afternoon audience at London's Alexandra Palace is belting out one of the more recent additions to its songbook. Up on the stage, the then world No 20, Ryan Searle, briefly extracts himself from his quarter-final match to encourage the crowd, conducting it with his hands and briefly joining in a chorus of Keir Starmer's a wanker.""
"And the surreal part of all this is that from Searle's gesture alone, you could scarcely guess what his own politics might be. Was he condemning Starmer from the nativist right or from the progressive left? Pro-farmer or pro-Palestine? Does he think the government's reforms on workers' rights go too far or not far enough? Perhaps Searle's protest might even have come from the Burnhamite centre, less an ideological objection and more an implicit criticism of messaging and delivery."
A crowd at London's Alexandra Palace chanted "Keir Starmer's a wanker" during the world darts championships while Ryan Searle joined and conducted the chorus. The chant's political origin remains ambiguous, spanning possibilities from the nativist right to the progressive left, pro‑farmer or pro‑Palestine, or a centrist Burnhamite critique of messaging. Starmer campaigned to heal divisions yet approval ratings have plunged below 20%. A YouGov poll found him more disliked than Benjamin Netanyahu or Hamas. A far-right march in Bristol provoked a leftwing counter-protest with the slogan "We hate Keir Starmer more than you". The chant now appears widely at sporting and music events.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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