Is Keir Starmer a Secret Anarchist?

A plausible explanation of the conduct of the would-be Prime Minister

Could Keir Starmer be a secret anarchist? (for non-Brits, our likely next Prime Minister¹)

I have been pondering the evidence of his political conduct over the last few months and years. Consider this:

• He has expelled from the Labour Party the man he once loyally served as leader and campaigned for at the last General Election in 2019, Jeremy Corbyn

• In recent days, he has publicly insulted Corbyn by denouncing the Conservative election manifesto as ‘Corbynite’ in its unfunded promises of extra public spending

• He has abandoned almost all the policies he once supported at the last election, chief among them significant expansions in spending to fund public services, such as healthcare, funded by higher taxes. During his campaign for the leadership of the Labour Party, Starmer claimed that Corbyn had been ‘right’ to pursue anti-austerity policies i.e. to increase public spending. Now he claims that Corbyn’s policies, which in 2019 he enthusiastically campaigned for, rendered him unelectable. As I have mentioned before, the Financial Times now judges that Labour and the Conservatives’ economic policies are almost identical.

• In 2022, on the basis of a report he had commissioned, Starmer promised comprehensive reform of Parliament including abolition of the House of Lords. Labour now proposes only to reform the House of Lords by setting an age limit of 80 years old and removing hereditary peers. This is, apparently, not a joke. Starmer also promised to scrap university tuition fees. This is no longer Labour policy. In another blow to young people, he once supported free movement within the EU. A few months ago, the European Commission proposed this for young people. Along with the government, Labour rejected this sensible proposal. Likewise, Starmer once promised public ownership of mail, energy and water companies. Guess what happened to that policy?

• In healthcare, perhaps the public service most salient in voters’ minds, he promised to reverse outsourcing of services in the National Health Service. Labour now says that the private sector should play a significant role in providing health services, denigrating those who oppose this U-turn as ‘middle-class lefties’.

• In foreign policy, the Labour Party claims to stand for a ‘rules-based’ international order i.e. respect for international law. Instead, in Israel’s bloody assault on Gaza, Starmer infamously defended Israel’s right to deny power and water to Gaza’s population. The UN Commission of Inquiry recently described this collective punishment of the Palestinian people as a war crime, as did the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (Aryeh Neier, the Holocaust survivor and founder of Human Rights Watch, recently stated that this crime amounted to genocide). Labour barely mentions that the basis for British foreign policy on Israel/Palestine is - or rather, was - the fulfilment of the UN resolutions demanding that Israel end its occupation of the Palestinian territories i.e. international law. It’s in the Labour manifesto but I have yet to hear Starmer mention it. Under Starmer, Labour refused to endorse a permanent ceasefire in Gaza for many months as the death toll racked up to the tens of thousands. Only in February did Starmer support a ‘lasting ceasefire’. Last November, Starmer vowed to fire any member of the shadow cabinet who voted for a ceasefire in parliament.

This isn’t even a complete list of the evidence, but it’s becoming repetitive.

There are two possible explanations for this farrago of policy reversals, betrayals of principle and public denunciations of positions he once energetically supported.

The first is that Starmer is an out-and-out cynic who will say anything to be appointed to the shadow cabinet (under Corbyn), win the leadership of the Labour Party or be elected Prime Minister. That he has no core political beliefs or principles. That he is willing to stab in the back the people he once loyally supported in order to win power for himself.

The second explanation is that Starmer is deliberately feeding the already-blazing fires of political disillusionment in Britain today. According to the polling expert, John Curtice, ‘Trust and confidence in Britain’s electoral system has never been worse.’ 58% of voters ‘almost never’ trust politicians to tell the truth. Curtice’s survey came out a few days ago. It attracted brief media attention and was ignored by the main political parties. While door-knocking for the Green Party in north London last weekend, I heard almost universal disenchantment with ‘politics’ and ‘politicians’. ‘They never listen’ as one 89-year old woman, hardly a radical, told me. While there was disgust with the current government, there was also distrust of Labour, and this even before they’ve become the next government - and in a Labour stronghold to boot.

Is it plausible that Starmer is playing to this choir in the hope that the country will soon reach a tipping point where the population will demand wholesale political change? If so, is he positioning himself as the avatar of that bottom-up revolution, that might at last get rid of politics-as-usual and give the British people some real say in the decisions that affect them? I have always said that great rewards will come to the politician who finally ‘gets it’ and paves the way for the return of agency to the population.

There is further evidence for this conclusion in the way that the Labour leadership conducts ‘democracy’ in its own party. Candidates for parliament who have been chosen by local parties have been ruthlessly de-selected without explanation, but obviously on the grounds that their views (i.e. left wing) don’t tally with those of the leadership. Meanwhile, approved candidates, invariably right-thinking apparatchiks from the central party HQ in London, have been ‘parachuted in’ to safe constituencies, sometimes against the wishes of the local parties. Could it be that this Stalinist behaviour is designed covertly to make the point that Britain is not democratic, but is instead dominated by a tiny Westminster elite? Labour has also refused to commit to reversing the Conservatives’ Public Order bill which severely restricts the right to protest.

It would be surely too cynical to believe the the first explanation, that Starmer represents the worst of calculating machine politics, where self-interest trumps integrity and indeed telling the truth. So there’s a case for believing the second, that Starmer is in fact a secret anarchist whose artfully camouflaged project is to bring forth the overthrow of the system by demonstrating its abundant and blatant flaws.

If so, I say welcome brother. You are now one of us.

1. For non-British readers, Keir Starmer is the leader of the Labour party which, according to current polls, is likely to be the next government after the General Election on 4 July. He is also a knight - thus, Sir Kier Starmer - but I despise the honours system and thus refuse to use its nomenclature.