Lammy supports Starmer until he doesn't support Starmer

David Lammy defends Keir Starmer after Andy Burnham vows leadership challenge

Sir Keir Starmer will stand up to attempts to oust him, David Lammy has said, after Andy Burnham became the latest rival to publicly confirm he would challenge the Prime Minister in any leadership contest.

The Prime Minister’s deputy was the latest among Sir Keir’s senior allies to row behind him, as he faces increasing pressure from influential figures within Labour seeking to replace him...

“I’ve supported every leader of the Labour Party. They’ve had my full loyalty.

“Keir Starmer has got my loyalty, full loyalty, until the day he no longer wishes to serve.”

We may translate until the day he no longer wishes to serve as until he is ousted, but what the blue blazes does a chap say about UK politics? Should we be grateful that there are no more motorhome rascalities?

No, I'm not betting on it either.

Well, then, do not be angry with them; for are they not as good as a play, trying their hand at paltry reforms such as I was describing; they are always fancying that by legislation they will make an end of frauds in contracts, and the other rascalities which I was mentioning, not knowing that they are in reality cutting off the heads of a hydra?

Plato quoting Socrates in Republic (about 375 BC)

Ignorance of the disgraceful sort

  

SOCRATES: I suppose that we begin to act when we think that we know what we are doing?

ALCIBIADES: Yes.

SOCRATES: But when people think that they do not know, they entrust their business to others?

ALCIBIADES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And so there is a class of ignorant persons who do not make mistakes in life, because they trust others about things of which they are ignorant?

ALCIBIADES: True.

SOCRATES: Who, then, are the persons who make mistakes? They cannot, of course, be those who know?

ALCIBIADES: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: But if neither those who know, nor those who know that they do not know, make mistakes, there remain those only who do not know and think that they know.

ALCIBIADES: Yes, only those.

SOCRATES: Then this is ignorance of the disgraceful sort which is mischievous?

ALCIBIADES: Yes.


Ascribed to Plato - Alcibiades I (Possibly 390s BC)