
Saving politics from Starmerism
Beware the managerialists who think that all important political questions have been solved
TOM JONES
Which of Labour’s policies, so far, offers the best window into Starmerism?
At first, I thought it was the continuation of the proposed smoking ban. Initially proposed by the Tories, it was a product as much of their inability to deliver anything bigger than anything else; conservatism as the result of inertia. But Starmer’s decision to continue on the grounds of “protecting our NHS” actually marked a radical change; a subtle yet perilous shift from valuing human life above all to prioritising an institution instead, to propping up the crumbling institutions of the state by prioritising the responsibility of the person to the state over their rights.
Then, I suspected it might be the increasingly baffling Chagos “deal”. That Mauritius managed to jury-rig international procedures enough to not only engineer, but to resurrect the deal — after being comprehensively canned by David Cameron as Foreign Secretary — showed his procedural tendencies, his willingness to surrender power to processes.
But a new contender has appeared. Following the Southport riots in August, Yvette Cooper commissioned a “rapid analytical sprint” review of extremism policy, which has now been leaked to the think tank Policy Exchange. According to the Home Office’s findings:
- Concerns about “two-tier policing” are considered a “Right-wing extremist narrative” that is “leaking into mainstream debates.”
- The previous Conservative policy restricting police from recording non-crime hate incidents unless there was a serious risk of harm should be reversed.
- The scope of non-crime hate incident recording should be expanded to include Islamophobia and antisemitism.
- Grooming gangs are described as an “alleged” issue that the far-right “frequently exploit[s]” to fuel anti-Muslim sentiment, as well as anti-government and anti-“political correctness” rhetoric.
- Extremism policy should shift from targeting specific “ideologies of concern” to focusing on “behaviours and activity,” which would encompass involvement in “online subcultures called the manosphere.”
- The definition of extremism should be broadened to cover extreme misogyny, pro-Khalistan extremism, Hindu nationalist extremism, environmental extremism, left-wing, anarchist, and single-issue extremism (LASI), as well as a fascination with violence and conspiracy theories.
- A new offence should be introduced for “harmful communications” that are likely to cause “psychological harm.”
Almost every one of these is an absolutely egregious suggestion, the result of almost deliberately avoiding the obvious issue at every point in order to solve the problems the government wants to have, rather than the ones it actually does. But, as an insight into Starmerism, I cannot possibly think of a better example than the very first. The most Starmerite policy I can possibly think of is to criminalise criticism from your political opponents. Here, grey in hair and language, is politics done by a Director of Public Prosecutions.
Starmer holds little truck with the political means of politics. In a recent speech to the Fabian Society, Wes Streeting told Lewis Goodall that Starmer’s superpower was “he doesn’t have a great deal of patience for political game playing, for pointless political theatre; he holds some of the way politics is conducted in contempt because he sees it as an obstacle to delivering real change for people.” Similarly, in the fallout from his “tepid bath of decline” comments, Starmer wrote a supine apology letter to civil servants that promised “An end to the chopping and changing of political priorities”.
What these both highlight is, in essence, a repudiation of the idea that democratically elected governments should be responsive to either political events or the shifting interests of the electorate. As I have already written, Starmerism is an attempt to reduce politics to a process which can then be controlled or managed, rather than allowing it to exist in a state of nature as something which — deriving authority from the people — is as alive, unpredictable, unruly, troublesome, demanding and wayward as they are.
Ultimately, Starmer is a creature of the Blob who, like the Blob, thinks policy is best made in a protected sphere
This is the ultimate form of Blairism; as promised in their 1997 manifesto, “what matters is what works”. Blair’s governing strategy was what Peter Burnham called “the politics of depoliticisation”, a process that distances decision-making from its inherently political nature, allowing state managers to maintain indirect control over key economic and social processes while benefiting from the illusion of depoliticization. It involved a huge rise in the number of Quangos, which served to isolate political decision making away from political realities. To facilitate this, “democracy” was subtly redefined as a system centred on institutional accountability, process, and the rule of law, downplaying the role of popular sovereignty and direct public participation.
Ultimately, Starmer is a creature of the Blob who, like the Blob, thinks policy is best made in a protected sphere in which policy-making can evade the constraints imposed by representative democracy. But Starmer has now taken this further. It is not just representative democracy that is the problem, but popular sovereignty —i.e., the will of the people. And it has become more than an inconvenience but a problem, because criticism of the rule of law — in this case, allegations of two-tier policing — is a fundamental threat to democracy, as defined by the Blob.
What Starmer is dealing with is not a “threat to democracy”. It is a threat to the governing structure that has removed democratic policy making from the democratically accountable, which therefore no longer has any vested interest in delivering on democratic mandates. What has happened is that this governing method is, thanks to its wilful disregard of democratic sovereignty — losing legitimacy in the eyes of those it has withdrawn from, which has challenged the new notions of democracy it invented in order to justify its withdrawal of democratic decision making from the democratically accountable.
This has combined with Starmer’s experiences in Northern Ireland which, if they taught him anything, taught him that the law can be used to reduce politics to a state of managed control. Jailing obstreperous political opponents can be easily justified if you redefine them as a threat to the rule of law.
It may be an inconvenient truth, but two-tier policing does exist. Britain is rapidly developing a system of anarcho-tyranny, in which the governable are governed increasingly harder and the ungovernable are increasingly ungoverned. Starmer may be about to ban smoking, but the drifting, thick smell of marijuana is commonplace almost everywhere. Buying knives on Amazon will now require two forms of ID, yet despite zombie knives being banned multiple times over the last few years, knife crime remains an awful problem. During the Southport riots, the disparate standing of different groups in the multicultural model of “a community of communities” was laid bare; whilst some communities were vigorously policed, others were left to self-police on the recommendation of “community leaders”.
As elites have withdrawn from the idea of representative democracy, they have abandoned the idea that delivering on democratic promises is necessary. The more they do this, the more unhappiness with democratic systems will increase. It is a vicious circle, and criminalising political opponents making justifiable and evidenced criticism will only speed up the decline. The only way to restore faith is roll back the Blob and restore democratic decision making where it belongs; to democratically accountable politicians.
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