Starmerism – Decoding The Man & The Manifesto
Illiberal Labour dystopia incoming
Starmerism. Many in the mainstream media have tried to define the philosophy of our future leader. Now we finally have both some scrutiny of the man and the manifesto, it is possible to come to some conclusions… and they are not pretty. As someone who flirted with Marxism for a total of 10 minutes as a youth, it is easy to decode the evidence of a man who WANTS you to think he’s a managerialist dullard.
Firstly, the manifesto (1). As detailed here Two Words That Sum Up the Absolute State of the Tories and Labour (substack.com) once you cut through the corporate language, the Cloward-Piven (2) strategy behind the ‘Tory chaos’ and the bland ‘turning the page’ call to action, there’s a manifesto that is a triumph of schizophrenic doublespeak. It features chicanery between a continuation of uninspiring Tory slow decline and radical, uncosted socialism, a complete lack of due diligence, and some straight-up attacks on liberal concepts. Like any Marxist document, what it isn’t is a straight-talking communication of policies and how to fund them - honesty would never deliver power, hence the ambiguity.
It's easy to laugh at the flip-flopping of Keir Starmer policies as beautifully lampooned by Dominic Frisby (3), the laughing will stop once people realise what they’ve signed up for. As we’re in a jovial mood, it would also be unfair not to point out the good things in the manifesto. Commitment to NATO, the nuclear deterrent is a must. Tackling migration criminal gangs, improving tech in the NHS, getting rid of leaseholds, tackling late payments of small businesses, and reducing business rates are all long overdue. The question here is why haven’t they been done before by either party? Labour was in power for 13 years; the fact that the NHS is still using faxes – according to the manifesto – is scandalous; 1970’s tech in 2005 is bad enough, let alone now. The example sheds light on how much ‘our’ NHS needs dragging into the 21st century.
With that extremely short interlude over, the disaster starts. These policies lead us to one of the central problems with Leftist ‘creative, progressive’ policy making – the lack of due diligence and cost/benefit and the law of unintended consequences that seems obvious - not least as many have been tried before with disastrous consequences. First the economics. The opening statement, ‘demands a final and total rejection of the toxic idea that economic growth is gifted from the few to the many.’ This statement sums up the fork-tonguery; it can mean a total rejection of socialist dogma as a model or a total rejection of trickle-down economics. It is of course the latter, which is a signal of a redistribution plan. There’s talk of wealth creation, Adam Smith would struggle to find it; on the contrary, Keir Starmer is a socialist (4) - when they tell you what they are, believe them. The manifesto talks of working in partnership with businesses on virtually everything to create ‘securanomics’, at the same time hinting at water, steel, trains, buses, and energy nationalisation. There are no details on how most of these huge pivots back to clause 4 politics will be paid for apart from energy. The ‘fully costed plan’ in the manifesto raises only £7.3 billion for the full parliament from tax increases, windfalls, borrowing and clamping down on tax evasion/avoidance, but this is all earmarked for other things. All of this ‘business friendliness’ is at the same time as making employers report more on green targets, more DEI on race and disability, day one employment rights making it expensive and difficult for companies to remove underperformers and an increase in the minimum wage to a ‘living wage’.
Applying some nuance to this, I’m no advocate of 100% neo-liberalism; it is something that has overreached. When you can’t protect our national infrastructure and have some resilience because you’ve sold the family silver, that is not a good place to be. BUT having protections for national infrastructure industries against potentially hostile foreign ownership is not the same as massive state intervention… especially in the name of ‘patriotism’ - that is pure leftist sophistry. The Left are internationalists; patriotism to them ironically, is a foreign country.
Back to the law of unintended consequences. Increasing our already generous minimum wage will drive lower skilled jobs abroad, to AI, reduce jobs, and drive-up inflation (5). Day one employment which in principle should close the admittedly silly gap between passing a probation period and 2-year rights (why not just extend probation and then have employment rights sooner, say 1 year?) will make businesses vet people harder (increasing inefficiency) or make jobs MORE insecure by replacing full-time jobs with contracts or AI. Likewise, the racial pay gap reporting will show white people are middle of the pack by such crude measures (6) with Indian and Chinese people outperforming; a classic example of the Left falling for their own intersectional dogma without due diligence.
Whilst there are supposedly no tax increases on ‘working people’ their definition of ‘working people’ is folk with savings of less than £1,000 (7). This is a lie by omission, so expect savings/asset taxes. Not least because there are massive funding black holes in the manifesto as stated above. Wealth/savings taxes will drive rich and middle-class people from the country which is the classic mistake the Left always makes as they once again fall for their own propaganda that rich people pay no tax; 28% of all income tax was paid by the top 1% in 2023 (8). This fallacy was bad enough in the past but with remote working post Covid now common, this will have the unintended consequence of driving wealth out of the UK.
On immigration and housing, topics intrinsically linked, Labour talk tough on illegal migration but only state they will ‘bring down’ net migration. This flies in the face of their flagship policy to build 1.5 million houses. Net migration in 2022 & 2023 was +600k each year (9) so 1.5 million divided by a parliament is only 300k a year. Labour’s devotion to open door migration will trump their best policy, a policy young people will punish them for at the next election when the promise of housing hasn’t been fulfilled.
On education, the flagship policy of VAT on private school fees will have unintended consequences; 38% of kids that attend fee-paying schools are from minority backgrounds (10) so the intersectional police won’t be happy when their white privilege dogma is upended by more expensive schooling for their kids. Others have already pointed out this policy will also add to class sizes in state schools and the 6,500 extra teachers barely scratch the surface of the current teacher gap.
More unintended consequences may come with the Hillsborough Law, designed to make public offices accountable, something laudable. Unfortunately, they seem more interested in listing ‘Tory’ scandals like Orgreave, missing that they will inevitably get hanged by their own petard when the full extent of Tavistock, vilification of NHS whistle-blowers, corrupt migration lawyers, and the full extent of the DEI protection racket are finally exploded by some decent journalism.
Enshrined illiberalism
If you think this diagnosis is a bit hyperbolic, there’s more to be concerned about outside bad economics and counterproductive policies. The manifesto contains some fundamental attacks on liberal principles. First, we have projects eroding democracy, all of which are dressed up as increased democracy; abolishing voter ID, continuing with postal votes, more English devolution, increasing the number of regulators and quangos (I listed 5 in the manifesto), abolishing the House of Lords (needs reform, not destruction). All these things take power away from Westminster and into the hands of cranks like Sadiq Khan and Mark Drakeford. Voter turnout for this tier of government is always much lower than Westminster. This is Gramsci-esque subversion of democracy. The unpicking of Brexit will be another, although this one can be easily filed under unintended consequences as the EU pivots right... Why Getting Closer to the EU Might Become a Right-wing Movement (substack.com)
The most chilling of all is the explicit blasphemy law around definitions of Islamophobia and Antisemitism – coming at a time when the critique of political Islam and the injection of moderate Islamic voices is needed, Labour is looking to shut the debate down due to pressure from an extreme portion of its voters. Furthermore, when you read between the lines of a man who ‘finds it easy to be ruthless’(11) and who has vowed ‘to end the culture war’ you can guarantee that isn’t going to be by winning debates around critiques of intersectionality and critical theory – the divisive ideologies at the heart of identity politics – he means he’ll suppress opposition. Expect extensions of the Scottish online hate crime law to the wider UK, ‘misinformation’ being used as a tool to shut down political opposition and free speech under the guise of counter-terrorism. The definitions of what is ‘far-right’, racist, misogyny, etc. will be an ever-decreasing circle, appeasing the most easily offended person in the room in the name of tolerance. This will lead to more asymmetric lawfare already in place because of another Blairite construct, The Sentencing Council as detailed here Anarchy in the UK - Asymmetric Lawfare is Here (substack.com).
Another illiberal characteristic is the lack of respect for the scientific method. The Cass Review should have been the end of the maximalist trans cult demands but the manifesto, whilst saying it will implement the Cass findings in full, will also ban trans conversion therapy. Bearing in mind the content of the Cass Review, this is an insane example of the doublespeak.
Likewise, on climate, the banning of future gas and oil contacts and fracking is unscientific – let’s not forget if the green lobby hadn’t been so devoted to its maximalist opposition to nuclear in the 90’s because of issues of cleanness, we’d be at net zero already with lots of nuclear power stations now!
To summarise, from a liberal perspective, we’re about to see attacks on the basic liberal principles of democracy, consent, the rule of equal law, scientific literacy and free speech.
Starmerism defined
Beyond the thinly telegraphed policies, what about the man? Beyond his advertised ruthless streak there’s also two other moments that get to what we should expect. During Covid restrictions, a pub landlord refused to let Keir into a pub, prompting our future leader to say to this member of the public that he ‘Wouldn’t be lectured from him’ (12) – a Labour voter simply talking facts about the pandemic. When a recent crowd laughed at him for using the tired line about his dad being a toolmaker, he took that personally too (13). Why does this matter? Because they are slips of the carefully managed ‘boring’ image; they show a man who has contempt for the public and is thin-skinned. His treatment of Rosie Duffield has been appalling. Mix these characteristics with a ruthless man, whose principles shift with the wind, who will say anything to get into power, whose counterproductive, unempirical, socialist policies are illiberalism dressed up as justice, coupled with a big majority, and we have the recipe for a paranoid, authoritarian, schizophrenic, principle-vacuum of a PM. This will be an elective dictatorship, unlike anything we’ve seen before in the UK if they do get a big majority.
The only thing that may be a brake to this is the chronically unstable make up of the Labour party. As detailed here, the identity monster created by the Left will be its demise in the end The Modern Left Has Created a Monster in Identity Politics. They Will Have to Kill it if They Want to Survive… (substack.com) , but in the meantime this will mean Labour’s main opposition will come from within. This will require Starmer to double down on his ruthlessness or be swept away by the factions and sectarianism he helped create. The former will mark Starmer, like previous dictators, as a man who’ll have to rule with an iron fist to stop the tribalism exploding, or a weak man blown around in the wind. Either way, Starmerism will be defined by this: unprincipled, power-crazed, schizophrenia.
Solutions
Turnout! Turnout! Turnout! Vote! Vote! Vote! Tactically if you have to. Reform has the momentum, the SDP are the adults in the room, the Tories are bust… but hold your nose and go with them if you’re in a strong safe seat. The Lid Dems, Greens, and SNP are the same as Labour. The most important thing now is Labour doesn’t have a rubber stamp parliament… Or we'll all pay the price of Starmerism.
References:
1) Labour Party Manifesto 2024: Our plan to change Britain – The Labour Party
2) Cloward–Piven strategy - Wikipedia
3) Dominic Frisby sings "Keir Starmer is Captain Flip Flop" (youtube.com)
5) Labour's plans to boost workers' pay risk pushing up mortgage bills, HSBC warns | This is Money
6) Ethnicity pay gaps, UK - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)
7) Sir Keir Starmer’s ‘working man’ definition means tax rises, say Tories (thetimes.com)
8) Wealth Tax - Hansard - UK Parliament
9) Long-term international migration, provisional - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)
10) Civitas: Institute for the Study of Civil Society Private schooling in Britain: a snapshot
11) Keir Starmer interview: 'I find it easy to be ruthless' (telegraph.co.uk)
12) Pub landlord clashes with Labour leader Keir Starmer (youtube.com)