Starmer is opening the gates to fascism just as predicted.

Right, so it’s taken Keir Starmer just 6 weeks for the gloss to come off and Labour’s polling begin to plummet, what else was going to happen when you promised change and are planning on delivering anything but? The warning signs about Starmer have been there for years, his going back on everything he ever stood for, his leadership of the Labour Party having been defined by pretending to be a socialist and Corbynite to become leader, whilst instead actually being so authoritarian and right wing he’s made Tony Blair blush.
He was the luckiest Labour leader alive though, people so desperate to be rid of the Tories after 14 years, he could do no wrong, he was the get the Tories out guy, so many voted for him specifically for that reason, it didn’t matter what he said or did, he promised change and people believed a switch from the Tories to Labour would bring that – they might have been similar in some ways previously, but they were always a bit different right? I’m afraid not. If you wanted genuine change, that was on offer before, sadly too many believed the establishment media lies about Corbyn to buy into that vision, instead a guy who was bland and boring and already disliked was seen as a safe option for change, when really he was never going to be change at all. Disillusionment has set in, set in more now than during the General Election itself, worst turnout for 100 hundred years and sadly everything is now in place to see the far right fill the void Starmer’s visionlessness and lack of change has left, exactly as so many of us predicted.
Right, so polls, this might just be a snapshot poll of voting intention that is gripping political commentators right now, but given the results are outside of margins of error, it’s worth discussing what they say, what that really means, and where as a nation we’re likely headed and why that is.
This latest poll that has got tongues wagging is from We Think Polling, not one of the better known ones, it’s certainly the one getting most talked about right now, with headline figures of Labour on 33% down 6 points and Reform UK Ltd, on 21% a point ahead of the Tories and in second place, gaining 5 points, so ostensibly that is easily read as Labour losing points and Reform UK Ltd gaining them, surely a bit of a stretch? Well polling of course doesn’t necessarily mean lots of people defecting from supporting one party for another, it could just mean abandonment of support for a given party directly benefitting another. In other words we can view this, as more likely to mean apathy is growing more than support for Nigel Farage’s limited company that masquerades as a political party, in case you wondered why I was adding the limited bit onto Reform UK. It isn’t a party, it’s a business and Farage is the majority shareholder, so what he says is what goes. It’s not a democratic body whatsoever and people should be more aware of that and conscious of it, because such a body being in a position to form a government and not be beholden to the trappings of a political party, to members, even donors when you consider the biggest one of those is Farage’s fellow Reform MP Richard Tice.
In fact on that point of apathy, if apathy had been a party, it would be in government given the results of the General Election. People registered to vote but not bothering, would have led to apathy winning 611 and the 650 seats up for grabs in this country and that is a situation, as bad as that is, that could actually now be worsening.
Perhaps you think I’m getting ahead of myself a bit though. It’s just one poll Damo, calm down a bit. And you’re right it is, I always advocate for looking at polling trends don’t I? Fortunately the We Think Polling poll, despite having generated all the excitement, actually isn’t the only one that has come out since the election or even in the last few days.
BMG Research has a poll out with Labour down 2 points and Reform up 3. Stonehaven, another less well known pollster, has Labour down 1 point and Reform up 2 and in all these polls the other parties are broadly flatlining across the board, the Tories sometimes a couple points down themselves. So the trend is Reform are on the up and Labour are coming down, therefore when so many of us were warning that Starmer is just a red Tory who won’t change anything, he will end up letting the far right fill the void that he leaves behind, we’re sadly right now being proven right.
It was so avoidable though! Starmer knew he was going to win the election ,there was no real doubt of that and with the majority he now has, the power is all his to do exactly what he wants to do. If he genuinely wanted to change the country, he could, if he wanted to bring in transformative change, he could, it is his choice fundamentally, to continue to serve the establishment, the warning signs of any politician also being a knight of the realm should have been there in flashing lights, that they would never be on the side of ordinary working class people who have it bad for so many years under the Tories, where it is in his power to change that, he has chosen to turn his back instead, make all the same excuses, and do the bidding of the rich and powerful donors those with influence, the billionaire media moguls and thinks he won’t get punished for that because the horrendously undemocratic First Past The Post voting system will protect him and it’s either him or the Tories.
What you get instead is anger, apathy, despair and that all plays into the hands of the far right. Theirs is the politics of despair and as more people feel put off by what Starmer has been doing, it is the far right that benefit.
In fact there’s one part to this that has seen Starmer act to all intents as a cheerleader for backing the likes of Reform UK Ltd and that’s his pathetic attempts to take votes from them, with his racist stances on immigration. His attacks on the far right, his echoing of Rishi Sunak’s rhetoric of stopping the boats, when that is still failing because until you introduce a legal route to asylum, you don’t actually stop boats from crossing. Provide people with an alternative route, would literally stop the boats overnight. Now this week we’ve seen Starmer sucking up to Italy’s fascist leader Georgia Meloni about getting the EU to toughen up it’s stance on immigration. All from a man who once promised to make the moral case for migration. He lied, like he does about everything.
Starmer has chosen to starve kids instead of tax the rich. He has chosen to freeze pensioners instead of tax the rich. He has chosen to continue arms sales to Israel despite their crimes against humanity in Gaza. He has chosen to keep funding Zelensky in Ukraine to the tune of billions because he can find money for that, but not for people here. All this and with a budget to come promising more Tory austerity as if it is George Osborne back in government and not Labour, expect that support to keep declining and expect Starmer to think it doesn’t matter, that he’s untouchable and will carry on regardless. That isn’t a government acting in the nations interest at all and as more people become more aware, thanks in no small part to alternative media and social media, expect those clampdowns on social media to come in a bid to blind and deafen us to that.
Why does this play into the far right necessarily though Damo? Where are the left? Why aren’t they speaking out? Well they are, they will, you’ll have to go looking for it though because no mainstream media are going to platform those views, those calls for a wealth tax to pay for all of these shortfalls we have in our every day lives and the services we all rely on.
Certainly the hard right aren’t making those calls either, but their condemnation, their frothing red faced fury at Labour, well that still plays well to the audience and unlike the left, they definitely do have an audience to play to.
Talk TV, Murdoch TV as it is, pretty much employs all manner of Reform UK Ltd people, not least Richard Tice himself, alongside his missus Isabel Oakeshott.
GB News, has Lee Anderson on, the Leeanderthal, and of course Nigel Farage as well and his show. Talk Radio, also Murdoch, will have Farage on all the time, the mainstream channels do as well, the BBC is regularly panned for how often Reform representatives show up and that’s not even getting onto the litany of right wing papers that do likewise as well. We have the politics of the far right shoved in our faces more now than at any time since our fathers and grandfathers fought to send them packing nearly 80 years ago.
Right now though, they’re acting as our friends. They are condemning what Labour are doing, copying the Tories and their economic agenda, attacking the cuts to the winter fuel allowance in the Daily Express because that is one paper that will obviously publish their narratives day after day. It’s so easy to forget that Brexit was driven by these same people and the economic damage that has done, 2 million fewer jobs now as a result, £140bn wiped off the value of the UK’s economy, but in no small part was that vote also seen to be a chance to give establishment voices a bloody nose and no matter how much damage and how awful the beliefs of Nigel Farage are, he still manages to position himself as being anti establishment when nothing could be further from the truth, the son of a stockbroker, who went to private school and became a commodities broker himself and was so far right by the time he formed UKIP he asked Enoch Powell for an endorsement for his party. Powell refused as it happens. The pint drinking, man of the people schtick works, but is a complete sham as is any claims that Reform UK Ltd are some kind of People’s Army, unless the people concerned are little more than modern day blackshirts.
That isn’t to say many are not onto Farage of course, the hashtag #FarageRiots still trends in light of the rioting we’ve seen in the UK because it has been driven by the language of the hard right, of the migrant bashers, even though that of course also includes Starmer, the political pygmy that he is, doing more harm than good, therefore even this is unlikely to do Farage much damage.
And if you still don’t think it is the far right getting excited and smelling opportunity over this poll, or these polls I should say and the trend they highlight, just look at who is laying into Labour over that We Think Polling poll on social media, the likes of Israel fan boy Tommy ten names, Sargon of Akkad, Laurence Fox, all wetting themselves over it and if that doesn’t tell you that this isn’t common sense politics
Fundamentally it is in Labour hands and in Labour’s best interests to shift away from this, to be more radical to actually help make people’s lives better, because this sneering condescension that they don’t think they have to, is going to continue to hurt them and I think autumns budget will be a massive reckoning if it truly ends up being a sham copy of a George Osborne Omnishambles.
Starmer I don’t believe is capable, or indeed trustworthy enough to believe he would change tack and would do so meaningfully. I honestly think it is too late for that. Maybe the budget will be the trigger, maybe it’ll take punishing local election results next year, but there is no way I can conceive Keir Starmer lasting a full term, in fact I would be genuinely surprised if he’s still in post, by the end of next year. He isn’t the man to put trust back in Labour, frankly given how he rigged selections for his new cohort of MPs, there may be nobody capable of making the necessary shift and Farage and Co are going to end up being the biggest beneficiaries of this, the Tories themselves in no way looking likely to recover anytime soon. If you won’t help people, they won’t put their faith in you, they won’t cast their vote for you. They’ll stay home, but the Faragists won’t and as much as more people may well be swayed by them, I firmly believe apathy will remain the biggest winner and frankly future polling should reflect as much – it shouldn’t be a novelty for a pollster to offer a none of the above option for clarity.
And if you still think Starmer isn’t enabling Farage, here’s a video recommendation demonstrating exactly how he did that in this General Election, it’s almost as if he thinks Farage isn’t a threat to him at all and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.