Starmer and the rest of Labour besides a few good eggs deserve no respect.
Obviously this doesn’t mean the press don’t have a distorted way of presenting Labour relative to how they presented the Tory govs failings.
I’d rather the British public lose all hope in a future with any of the current political offerings than hold out hope for a neoliberal Labour party that are out of their depth. The sooner the farce and sham bourgeois democracy is realised for what it is by the masses the better. No more managed decline.
Zero possibility that this friend lied?
Some people love to lie especially if it gets a rise out of people. “Defectors” including the likes of Yeonmi Park from the DPRK also are financially incentivised to lie. I know people that lie about shit in the UK to make things sound worse than it is, and they will swear up and down it’s true after being called out on it.