He is attacking critics while rewarding loyalists
ADAM JAMES POLLOCK
“Honesty and integrity matter,” Keir Starmer said in the wake of being cleared of wrongdoing in the Beergate controversy. “You will always get that from me.” Unfortunately, Starmer’s approach to the House of Lords, and wider democratic processes, is increasingly difficult to reconcile with his promises of probity as Prime Minister.
Under the auspices of democratic reform, Starmer has overseen the removal of hereditary peers, many of whom recently precipitated the stalling of the Government’s Employment Rights Bill, from the House of Lords. To ensure his Bill passes, the Prime Minister has even been accused of offering peerages to Liberal Democrats if they promised to support his Bill.
In recent days, the elevation of Matthew Doyle, former director of communications at 10 Downing Street, has exacerbated the problem. The patronage system under Starmer is a graceless (get it?) ploy to ensure the survival of the Labour Government in the face of ever-increasing unpopularity.
Doyle’s ennoblement may have passed by quietly were it not for the uncomfortable fact that he previously campaigned for a councillor, Sean Morton, who had earlier been charged with child sexual offences. The Prime Minister, who said that Doyle was “by my side every day”, was satisfied after an internal inquiry that this past acquaintance of Doyle’s would not present a bar to his elevation to the Lords.
While there are no allegations against Doyle himself, the insistence on giving a peerage to a man who campaigned for the election of a known sex offender raises serious moral questions. Is the Prime Minister so desperate to pack the Upper House with loyalists that he would willingly subject himself to further controversy if it meant an additional vote on contentious legislation? Unfortunately, it seems the answer is yes.
The Doyle affair is not an isolated case. The parallel with Peter Mandelson is unavoidable. Mandelson’s long record of associations with unsavoury figures, in particular the convicted child sexual offender Jeffrey Epstein, has been exhaustively documented and repeatedly defended by Starmer himself. Despite longstanding knowledge of Mandelson’s relationships with Epstein and fellow convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell, the Prime Minister appointed Mandelson as the British Ambassador to the United States. Even after Starmer eventually conceded the public relations damage Mandelson caused, removing him from this role, he was permitted to retain his seat in the House of Lords and vote on legislation for years to come.
What is striking is not merely the toleration of such problematic figures, but the contrast with the treatment of some of Starmer’s internal critics. Recently, Markus Campbell-Savours, son of Labour life peer Dale Campbell-Savours, had the Government whip suspended for daring to vote against the Government’s proposals for inheritance tax on family farms. Despite the Government now U-turning on the policy, Campbell-Savours is yet to have the whip restored.
The Labour Government’s willingness to trade moral judgement for votes and punish those who disagree forms part of the Party’s broader pattern of democratic erosion. As Labour’s popularity has fallen off a cliff edge, the Party’s instinct has not been to attempt to re-engage with the electorate but to insulate itself from them entirely. Government Ministers have agreed to postpone local council elections, which would be due two years late in May 2027, once again, with critics arguing that this is being done to hinder the progress of Reform. In an extraordinary recent interview, Labour Party chairman Anna Turley MP even failed to rule out postponing the next general election.
Equally troubling is Labour’s increased reliance on procedural manipulation to advance contentious legislation. Private Members’ Bills, traditionally utilised as vehicles for modest, cross-party proposals, have recently been repurposed as legislative Trojan horses, sneaking through controversial policies using a method to avoid full parliamentary scrutiny. Through this, the Government — for it is the Government, despite all their cries of neutrality — are attempting to legalise assisted suicide, while the process has also been hijacked to decriminalise abortion up to birth.
These are not minor reforms. The tactic allows the Government to have it both ways: to benefit from the passage of controversial legislation while allowing them to maintain plausible deniability and keep the association at arm’s length.
As history has taught us, a nation can slowly sink into autocracy as a result of the banality of evil
What ties all this together is a Government that prioritises control over consent, one that cares not whether the public agrees with its policies, but rather wishes to impose its will on the population regardless of its wishes. At every turn, Starmer’s Government is treating the democratic process like an inconvenience — a bizarre volte face for a man whose entire career has been built on following the rules to the letter. But it seems that the democratic process can be viewed as an unnecessary obstacle in the path of the political process.
As history has taught us, a nation can slowly sink into autocracy as a result of the banality of evil, where pragmatism and utilitarianism become the ultimate methods of retaining power, rather than actual vote-winning policies. Removing political opponents from the House of Lords while simultaneously packing it with loyalists is yet another step down the slippery slope of authoritarianism that Starmer’s Labour Party seems increasingly willing to make.
This article (Keir Starmer is endangering democracy) was created and published by The Critic and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Adam James Pollock
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