With the new British Government now firmly occupying the corridors of Whitehall, the population is now waking up to the reality of their electoral decision in July 2024. That reality is not socialism in ‘name only’ as many British political commentators have said, but rather a highly dogmatic, well-organized socialist Government driven by a firmly held Leftist ideology.
Fundamentally, there has been a consistent failure within British political discourse to fully reckon with the centrist-presenting but ultimately hard-left ideology of ‘New Labour.’
During the 2017 and 2019 elections, British conservatives could easily recognize Jeremy Corbyn as a politician honest about his far-left commitments. In contrast, Sir Starmer, like Sir Tony Blair, was able to camouflage his dogmatism by presenting himself, through his appearance and diction, as a resemblance of a senior consultant at McKinsey. Mirroring the CV of Blair, Starmer’s CV boasts time at the Bar and Oxford University; traditional career avenues for those on the Conservative benches of the House of Commons.
Despite appearances, none of the above-mentioned characteristics are relevant to the ideological heart of Tony Blair, or the new Labour Party prodigy, Sir Kier Starmer. To the Corbynists of the Labour Party, Starmer is viewed as a ‘Tory’, but this has much more to do with his appearance and cultural allegiances than the socialist attitudes of Sir Kier.
The very same mistake made in 1997 with the election of Tony Blair has been made again in 2024. Swing voters in the 90s saw Blair, in his Canary Wharf style suit and media-savvy communication style, as a man very much unlike his Labour predecessors Neil Kinnock and Michael Foot. Voters were ultimately duped into not reading between the lines. Reflecting on his political awakening in an interview on Radio 4, Sir Blair noted the following:
“Here’s this guy Trotsky who was so inspired by all of this that he went out to create a Russian revolution and changed the world. I think it’s a very odd thing – just literally it was like a light going on. And even though, you know, over time I left that side of politics behind, the notion of having a cause and a purpose and one bigger than yourself or your own ambition – and I think probably allied at the same time to coming to religious faith – that changed my life in that period.”
Despite theoretically leaving Trotsky behind, the afterglow of that ideological influence was still apparent while in office; 11 years of Blair’s leadership show him to still be a socialist revolutionary, just of a different sort. As a reward, the British people saw their education system revolutionized – removing conservative attitudes and producing excessive university graduates molded in the image of Blairism – reminiscent of Barack Obama’s ‘college for all’ model across the Atlantic. The House of Lords was decimated, the national debt spiraled from heavy public spending, and Britain’s place in the European Union was firmly cemented. Only thanks to his political accompaniment, Gordon Brown, was Britain saved from Blair’s desire for the country to ditch the British pound for the Euro as its currency. Blair’s commitment to rejecting Margaret Thatcher’s notion of ‘’there is no such thing as society’’ was exactly the motivation he needed to destroy Britain’s global reputation. Military intervention, successful in Kosovo and Sierra Leone, though tragically much less so in Iraq, was partly caused by Blair’s view that there are causes and purposes ‘’bigger than yourself’’ and that someone, like Trotsky, and himself, could ‘save the world’.
Blair’s greatest success, however, was his ability to entirely shift the frame of acceptable political discourse in Britain. The New Labour approach to the environment, immigration, the National Health Service, and increased cradle-to-grave government reliance all became accepted ideas within British politics; this being demonstrated by Conservative PM David Cameron continuing these policies. After Blair, it became unimaginable to champion ideas such as ending the 2030 Zero emissions target, privatizing healthcare, reducing university numbers, re-invigorating the importance of the family, drastic reductions in taxation, relaxations on planning laws, ending the acceleration of devolution, and taking a tough approach to the drug epidemic.
British political observers have continued to demonstrate their misunderstanding of Starmer by portraying him as a centrist simply because he fits the now inescapable Blairite mold. Matt Andersen’s latest article published in Providence Magazine demonstrates this misunderstanding of the left is and the failure within Britain to properly imagine an alternative mode of politics. In his article, Andersen states that Starmer’s five missions to kickstart the United Kingdom ‘’undoubtedly address’’ Britain’s key socio-economic problems. The five missions include making Britain a clean energy superpower by accelerating the Net Zero target, building the NHS, and breaking down barriers to opportunity.
The third of these seems particularly uncontroversial. Unfortunately, as enacted by New Labour, this means class-based conflict. Starmer’s pledge to break down barriers is simply a continuation of Blair’s desire for social re-structuring and is heavily focused on areas such as education. For example, Starmer has promised to remove charitable status on private schools. This envious move is motivated by Starmer’s dogmatic socialist ideology, rather than rationalist thought or the Rooseveltian ‘Do what’s right’ mindset that voters wrongly think Starmer embodies. Instead, this policy is an attack on the middle class, whereby many will now have to rely on the public purse for their children’s education as private schools increase tuition to fund taxes they will now have to pay.
Likewise, Starmer is a zealot for the national religion of the National Health Service. His vague mission to build the NHS essentially means accepting the existing system but with further investment. During the election, Sir Kier gave away his deeply dogmatic mindset when he said he would not use private healthcare even if his children were ill. Logically, any millionaire like Starmer would naturally wish to use private healthcare if needed. It would even be fiscally responsible by not burdening the NHS so that public resources could be used for those who dearly need them. Starmer, however, was for once being honest; he does not believe in private healthcare because the idea of a big state structure and total equality is essential to his ideology.
Furthermore, Andersen’s acceptance that making Britain a green superpower would ‘’undoubtedly address Britain’s current needs’’ is the most obvious indication of Britain’s failure to understand what the left is. In addition to describing himself as a ‘’progressive’ Starmer most vehemently described himself as a ‘red-green’. While it would be rash to naively ignore climate concerns, one could suggest that there are much more vital matters that should be the center of a government’s concerns. For Starmer however, there is nothing more important. This explains Starmer’s goal to spend £500 billion to reach his Net Zero goals, with pledges to ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars announced.
Starmer, who served gleefully in the shadow cabinet of Jeremy Corbyn, has a deep-rooted history within socialist circles. As an adult, he wrote for Socialist Alternative and the Socialist Lawyer whereby he stated that ‘’Karl Marx was, of course, right.’’ Since arriving in office, Starmer has already moved the country to the Left. The Foreign Office is now referring to the Golan Heights, Gaza and the West Bank as ‘’occupied Palestinian territory’, Foreign Secretary David Lammy has pledged to ‘re-set’ EU-UK ties with further integration, and the justice system has been liberalized, with prisoners set to be released early.
If this start to Government is not socialist, then what is? The real question, however, is if Starmer has done this in one month, what is to come in the next five years?
