The greatest threat to Keir Starmer’s leadership is Keir Starmer. It’s not the Tories. It is not Farage. The Lib Dems are as threatening to the Labour prime minister as a hungry vegan is to a bowl of pan-fried offal.
Starmer — delivered to power on the crest of a wave of apathy and a deep, burning hatred for the Tories — is set to make exactly the same catastrophic mistakes that the Tories made for the last fourteen miserable years.
I say “mistakes”, but let us be absolutely crystal clear. Austerity isn’t a mistake. It is a political decision, not an economic necessity.
Austerity is neoliberal policy agenda designed to rapidly enhance the growth of capitalism while reallocating the burden of the failures of capitalism onto an overwhelming majority of the population. This is just so 2010.
Austerity was the greatest success story of the 21st century – just not for you and me
What did austerity ever give to us?
Increased child poverty, homelessness, and rough sleeping.
But what else did austerity deliver?
Increased racial inequality and the social murder of hundreds of thousands of disabled people.
Maybe austerity did have its good points?
If you consider an unprecedented decay in public services and a staggering decline in life expectancy to be a good thing, then yes – mission accomplished.
I am absolutely sick of being told by bought-and-paid-for multi-millionaires that we need to tighten our belts. Haven’t you had enough yet? Is this what you were hoping for when you voted for Labour, just so you could get rid of the Tories?
I can remember this new Labour government pledging to halve spending on external consultants during this parliament amid warranted criticism that Whitehall has grown overly reliant on ludicrously expensive advisers.
Yet less than two months into the age of beige, external consultants KPMG have seen a contract worth an eye-watering £223 million to train civil servants signed off by Labour.
So let me get this right. Another round of cuts for pensioners and disabled people, regardless of the human cost, but there’s plenty in the British kitty for proxy-wars and nearly a quarter-of-a-billion quid for exactly the type of contract that Labour promised to cut back on?
Stagnant Starmer’s own personal approval ratings are tanking for a very good reason.
David Cameron-impersonator Starmer is stagnating
Starmer has never been particularly likeable. It’s very easy to mistake a whopping parliamentary majority achieved through an archaic and undemocratic voting system with personal popularity.
His best hope of building on the general election victory was to deliver the change that he promised, speech after speech, throughout the general election campaign.
But Starmer has typically betrayed the electorate, because he has got himself into power and planted himself to the right of where David Cameron was when he came into office in 2010. Nobody voted for this.
Keir Starmer has promised you ‘misery now’ for long-term gain. What next? Hug-a-hoodie? Cut the green crap? The big society? We’re all in this together? Nobody voted for this.
Kid Starver and Rachel Thieves are the David Cameron and Gideon Osborne of 2024. Pensioners, children, disabled people, those without a home, and some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in society were promised a better tomorrow, but now their futures have never looked so fucking bleak. Nobody voted for this.
Cast your minds back to 2020. I wonder how many of you centrist dads (and mums) that promised us “another future is possible”, in exchange for a promise to vote for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party at the following general election, only to now realise you have conned the electorate into voting for a full-blown police state to provide a safe space for Israel’s ongoing genocide?
The virulent police state
Sarah Wilkinson, a respected left-wing journalist and human rights activist, was arrested by “9 or 10” police officers following her online posts that routinely expose the brutality and criminality of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Sarah, someone who I have admired and been inspired by for the last ten years, isn’t the first left-leaning pro-Palestine journalist to feel the full force of the law, simply for exposing the atrocities that are being committed by the genocidal state of Israel.
Just last week, journalist and activist Richard Medhurst was arrested on board his plane at Heathrow. Medhurst was charged with supporting a proscribed organisation and was bailed for three months for his reporting on Gaza and the Palestinian resistance.
Isn’t it quite incredible how the BBC still refer to Keir Starmer’s Labour Party as “centre-left”? I don’t know of any apparent centre-left outfit that would commit such a blatant assault on press freedom.
‘Leveson Two’ has never been such a remote possibility.
Once more for everyone at the back…
We shouldn’t be surprised by authoritarian Starmer’s intensifying attacks on our freedom. After all, the ex-Trilateral Commission member is an asset of the British security state.
But we cannot accept left-wing journalists being locked up for their part in exposing the genocide of Gaza, simply to protect the deranged, racist state of Israel, can we?
Here’s the thing. We might not agree with people from the centre and the right when it comes to war, public services and austerity, but we and they have liberties that must be protected in order to maintain a healthy, functioning democracy.
Starmer’s rapid lunge towards an oppressive police state is undoubtedly designed to crack down on what he believes is anti-Israel sentiment, both online and on the streets.
Being vigorously opposed to the current genocide in Gaza doesn’t make you anti-Israel, or even the old favourite, virulently antisemitic. But it does make you pro-humanity, and that is something to be proud of.
Starmer: hand me a lettuce, quickly
So, what have we learned since Keir Starmer was gifted the keys to the front door of Number 10, Downing Street?
Ideological austerity, war, and an assault on our press freedom and civil liberties is equally as wrong, no matter who is in power, and no matter the colour of the rosette that is pinned to their chests.
Without some remarkable, screeching U-turns, Keir Starmer’s popularity will continue to decline, and the vultures from the hard-right of the Labour Party will swoop.
Has anyone got a spare lettuce?
Featured image via Rachael Swindon
