It’s worth at this point reminding ourselves what Starmerism is. Those getting wrapped up in the rigmarole of bond markets and gilt yields, Rachel Reeves crying, and fiscal headroom miss the point. Keir Starmer has no real interest in the economy as a domain of production and trade, consumption of goods and services. The closest he comes to an interest in markets is likely that “the economy should provide for everyone”. Instead, as the devout Starmerologist J. Sorel puts it: “everything about Keir Starmer’s life so far has taught him that his project — the defence of British society as it existed from 1997-2016 — can be achieved by simply illegalising all opposition. He openly avows this idea, and has never strayed from it.” Everything that Keir Starmer has remained devoted to has been the rejection of grubby, noisy, and messy politics, and the pursuit of constitutional reforms that would make it difficult for his foes to come back from.
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Samizdata quote of the day – We must hold Starmerism to accountSeptember 20th, 2025 |
 12 comments to Samizdata quote of the day – We must hold Starmerism to accountLeave a Reply |
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It was Professor Harold Laski, Chairman of the Labour Party in the 1940s, who argued that other political parties should only be “allowed” to be in government – if they agreed to NOT reverse “Progressive Reforms”.
When questioned about this – Prime Minister Clement Atlee (the leader of the Labour Party – a different position from Chairman) implied that Professor Laski had gone mad – but Professor Laski’s view was not uncommon in “intellectual” circles – with ideas of the “scientifically correct” level of “Progressive” taxation being fairly common – with demands that no one be allowed to oppose (let alone roll back) such taxation, and regulation, and so on.
However, I fundamentally disagree with Craig Drake’s idea that Prime Minister Starmer wants to go back to society as it was from 1997 to 2016.
Firstly, as Mr Drake knows, that period was one of deliberately planed transformation – and 2010 (2016?) was not intended to be the end state.
The objective of generation of Labour politicians led by “Tony” Blair was the utter destruction of British society, of the British nation – and that obective has not, yet, been fully achieved.
Prime Minister Starmer clearly shares this objective.
Someone like Prime Minister Atlee wanted the British nation to have a socialist economy – modern socialists do not wish the British nation to exist at all, and scream “racist”, “Islamophobe” (and so on) at anyone who wishes the British (especially the English) nation to continue to exist.
Many of these people who are hostile to the nation do not call themselves socialists – they, bizarrely, call themselves “liberals”.
This has led to many British patriots being hostile to “liberals” and “liberalism” – because they associate these words with someone like Sir “Ed” Davy, rather than people like Gladstone or John Bright – who today would be called “Nationalists”, “racists”, “Islamophobes” and-so-on.
As for the legal “constitutional” changes in Britain – they, again, were really the project of “Tony” Blair – although fully approved of by Sir Keir Starmer.
The idea being to destroy what is left of democratic control of government (in decline for a very long time – see, for example, “The New Despotism”, the rule by unelected officials, written by Lord Chief Justice Hewart in 1929).
I can remember one of the election slogans of 1979 – there was to be a “bonfire of the Quangos” (Quangos being unelected bodies) – this slogan was rather like Winston Churchill’s slogan of 1951 – a “bonfire of controls” (rationing and so on).
Both Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill made some effort to live up to their promises on this matter.
No other Prime Ministers in the last 100 years (or more) have made any real effort to reduce the power of officials and “experts”.
Even back when he was “on the left” (the early 1900s) Winston Churchill had a deep dislike of bureaucracy – arguing, for example, that the “reforms” of British government in India, adding more lawyers of government and officials, would reduce (not increase) efficiency – and this proved to be so.
Professor Pigou (Cambridge – early to mid 20th century) of the modern sort of “liberal” – he was obsessed with new taxes (for example largely ignoring Frank Fetter’s work which refutes Henry George on “Land Value Tax” – but Professor Pigou wanted lots of other taxes as well) and subsidies – his “welfare economics” is best described as endless “if it moves – tax it, if it does not move – subsidize it, and whether it moves or not – add more regulations”.
Although someone who refused to serve in the First World War, because he said he was against violence, Professor Pigou at least toyed with the idea of using state violence against people who opposed “scientifically correct” taxation and so on.
In his “General Theory….” (1936) J.M. Keynes presented Professor Pigou (of all people) as a free market economist – the sort of person that he (Keynes) was supposedly rebelling against it.
However, this may have been an “in-joke” – rather than a deliberate deception by J.M. Keynes.
As for UNEMPLOYMENT – it was caused by government-backed “Collective Bargaining” (see W.H. Hutt “The Strike Threat System”), government backed by the Acts of 1875 and 1906 – which neither Pigou and Keynes seemed to want to repeal.
Starmer – a not very effective Son of Blair.
Keir Cnut cannot or will not turn back the tide of illegal immigrants. The economy is not under control. Class war is picking off easy targets. Just think how things might be if Starmer was effective.
Discovered Joys – I am forced to disagree with you.
Sir Keir Starmer is a very effective “son of Blair”.
The destruction of Britain is intentional (planned – on purpose) and is proceeding well.
What you see as bugs, Sir Keir would see as features.
And is now clear that Sir “Ed” Davy, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, is also a “son of Blair” who shares the intention of destroying this nation – as part (only part) of the agenda of the international establishment (“international community”), which has a fanatical hatred of independent nations.
There’s nothing particularly new or revolutionary about Starmer – or Blair for that matter. They were and are nothing more than the Progressive Party with a new coat of paint. International rather than Nativist or National-Theocratic Fascists.
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/progressive-party-platform-1948
BlindIo
Yes indeed – and the dishonesty of the 1948 platform, which pretends that the United States (then prosperous) was a land of grinding poverty, and claims to support “freedom” – when the Progressives really wanted to enslave the population, is sickening.
And it did not start in 1948 – even in 1912 then Progressive Party whilst NOT being socialist, still talks about how the resources of American (the farm land, the raw materials and so on) belong to “the people” meaning the GOVERNMENT – with people such as Theodore Roosevelt believing that the government (meaning himself) had the right to intervene to tell people how to use their own property, whenever he thought they were not using their own property correctly.
Again 1912 was a time of prosperity – but the 1912 Progressive Party Platform (again with sickening dishonesty) pretended that people were being driven into grinding poverty – and openly incited envy and hatred of “the rich” (with the exception of the “Progressive” rich).
It is worth noting that it was not just Franklin Roosevelt who admired his cousin’s political principles (although Franklin Roosevelt stayed with the Democrat faction of President Woodrow Wilson – who were also a vile group, inspired by Richard Ely, just as Theodore Roosevelt was inspired by Richard Ely), the 1912 Platform was admired by HERBERT HOOVER and “ALF” LANDON.
The idea that the Republican candidates for President in 1928, 1932 and 1936 were pro free enterprise people is an error – they were not pro free enterprise people, both Hoover and Landon were ardent economic interventionists.
This is not what he history books say – because the truth does not fit the Collectivist narrative.
For example, in 1936 there was mass unemployment because of government backed “Collective Bargaining” – and “Alf” Landon would not have rolled that back, because he SUPPORTED (he agreed with) Collective Bargaining,
So a “President Landon” would not have been really different from President Franklin Roosevelt – thus making the 1936 election almost pointless.
If Starmer was actually trying to revert back to how Britain was circa 1997-2016, I may actually support him. While things were in decline in that era and very bad choices made, that era seems almost halcyon days compared to now. Even 2019 in the days before COVID seem almost like utopia compared to what happened since.
Almost everything is worse now.
Martin – quite so.
Yes things are worse now – intentionally so.
1997 to 2010 (not “2016” – although Mr Cameron did nothing to reverse what Blair and Brown had done, let alone what Wilson and Heath had done) was a process – designed to undermine British society. Indeed the process goes back DECADES before – a cultural attack that really got underway in the 1960s (although the Fabians and Bloomsbury group were around many decades before then – it was the 1960s when the “anti culture” started to become mainstream).
Sir Keir Starmer is merely continuing the process of destruction – everything is indeed getting worse, because it is meant to get worse.
The end objective is not really even power – the end objective is destruction.
The Collectivists may tell themselves that they are destroying the old society (or what is left of it) so that a wonderful new society may be built upon the ashes – but I think they know there will only be ashes, blood soaked ashes.
Prime Minister Atlee quite liked British society – he just thought that a socialist economy would work better (he was utterly wrong about that) – later socialists have tried to undermine society, the culture, itself. With “Conservatives” often offering no real resistance at all – think of such figures as Prime Minister Heath.
I view a lot of the high profile conservatives of the 2010-24 era as Blairites that were just more incompetent than Blair – Cameron, Osborne, Hunt, and especially Gove (who was an unabashed admirer of Blair).
I’m not sure if Boris Johnson was fundamentally a Blairite. I do know that what he delivered was like some turbocharged crazed version of Blairism, with runaway borrowing and spending during COVID, and Boriswave making Blair look almost like Enoch Powell.
Martin.
I do not believe that David Cameron and co really understood what the objective of someone like “Tony” Blair was-and-is.
Eton-Oxford-very-wealthy (if I had 1% of the money of Mr Cameron I would not go to bed each evening hoping not to awaken in the morning) – but….. also deeply ignorant.
I found this even among people on our side in the Conservative Party – people who sincerely wanted to roll back the state and restore traditional society. They would say, for example, that they believed in “Social Justice” – but when questioned it became clear they had no idea what the term means (which is just as well – because if they DID know what “Social Justice” means and were in favour of it, that would mean they were deeply evil).
Even libertarians in the party had this “knowledge problem” – for example Steve Baker (a very good person) coming out in support of “The Squad” in the United States – it turned out that he did not know of the deep evil they supported, and just thought President Trump was being “racist” in attacking them.
Why did he think that? Because the media said so – and the good man (and Steve Baker is a good man) had no other frame of reference or source of information.
Perhaps so, but they seemed awfully mesmerised by Blair.
It wasn’t even just the ‘Cameroon’ Tories who didn’t seem to understand Blair. Margaret Thatcher is supposed to have said as late as 2002 that Blair and New Labour were her greatest achievements, which certainly makes me think somewhat differently of Thatcherism if true. Supposedly Thatcherite leaning intellectuals like Paul Johnson and Andrew Roberts seemed to admire Blair as well. Admittedly I think this was at least partly as they approved of his foreign policy, although I think Blair’s foreign policy was un-conservative, reckless, and never served British interests (I did initially support Britain helping the US in Afghanistan after 9/11 but in hindsight I think that was all in error as sadly I don’t think Britain achieved anything tangible and the NATO intervention in the country was a fiasco).
Some conservatives never seemed taken in by Blair. Peter Hitchens deserves praise as he seemed to ascertain quite early that Blair was a revolutionist, perhaps a more effective one because Blair didn’t look or sound like a bolshie Trotskyist. Enoch Powell supposedly said the day after Blair became PM that the dissolution of Britain had been voted for, which seems to have been slowly occurring since.