All Starmer’s failures play into Farage’s hands – PM is the gift that keeps on giving Aditya Chakraborty
WAlthough this section’s esteemed editor and I don’t always agree, he concedes that Christmas is approaching – and that’s all the excuse I need to take a test. So let’s play What did Nigel say? Read these articles from the biggest names in Westminster, and take a guess: which one is from Nigel Farage?
1) Rishi Sunak was “the most liberal prime minister ever on immigration”.
2) The mass migration “happened on purpose, not by accident.”
3) The British government is “broken.”
4) The UK is an “experiment of one country with open borders”.
5) The British state is floundering in a “tepid bath of directed decline.”
We’ll get to the answers in a moment, but first some context. Because in this season of long nights and tall tales, Westminster is telling itself a story. Here’s how it goes: The leader of the Reform Party is the antithesis of mainstream politics. If Sir Keir Starmer KC embodies the SW1 establishment, he and Farage are diametrically opposed, genetically and vitriolic. A leftist on his knees versus a rightist worshiping Enoch Powell, a leading Remainer against the founding father of Leave, and a hard-line technocrat against a prime-time populist. So, as the year winds down and with it the first few months of a Labor government, the fact that Starmer is sinking while Farage is rising should ring alarm bells about how dark forces may soon sweep across our country.
This yarn offers a lot to please its readers and writers. It features a bumbling hero and a charismatic con man, a battle between good and evil, and a real sense of danger. However, it is a profound mistake. These narrators are so focused on personalities, that they change the face of politics. Not only is Starmer losing ground, he is handing it to Farage.
Through his speeches, how he frames debates, and most of all in his nonchalant acceptance of how limited and slow his political powers are, the Labor leader repeatedly makes Farage’s case for himself.
Want an example? Refer to the five statements above. A bunch of bad guys, I’m sure you agree. How much came from Nigel Farage?
no one. It’s also not the work of Kemi Badenoch, Liz Truss, or any other horror movie you care to think of. Keir Starmer has said all these words, most of them over the past few days. Progressives in Britain claim that politicians and civil servants have deliberately allowed immigration to spread, and that the country has “open borders” to the rest of the world. He did so in a speech at the end of last month, in which not once did he make a positive reference to immigrants or immigration. During the election campaign, he accused Britain’s first Asian prime minister of being “the most liberal” on immigration, and blew a whistle that could be heard by any Farage follower. As far as I can see, almost no commentator has criticized him for using such rhetoric — but talking about immigrants as merely a burden on this country, here in a scam, is the kind of language that people like me are used to picking up on. After the last orders the streets suddenly did not feel safe. Hearing these statements from our Prime Minister should shame him and his party.
I honestly cannot imagine a former human rights lawyer feeling comfortable expressing such intolerance, let alone giving it the Downing Street stamp of approval. He has no doubt been urged to do so by Labour’s strategists, whose main interest is to attract “hero voters”, those who were once in the red team but have long since left to support Brexit, Boris Johnson or Farage. . In order to gain half an extra point in the polls, Starmer’s team is only too happy to sacrifice basic decency.
Another question: Since Farage returned to Westminster this summer, how many times have Starmer been rebuked for his incitement to racism, or his virulent behavior during the summer pogroms, or how his party has become a beacon for itinerant BNP activists?
The answer: Nothing, of course. In this way, mainstream politics is increasingly focused towards the right.
Regular readers may know that I have long been warning about the threat that Farage and the far right pose to British politics. When others treated him as a joke, I saw a threat. And when I covered the protests against asylum seekers from South Wales, I saw Farage’s spirit rising. When Mr Brexit threw his hat into the ring during the summer election, I wrote that this was the return of a dangerous virus.
For the virus to spread widely, mainstream policy must be seen as failing. Starmer’s economics is almost ideal for Farage’s movement to flourish. That is why it was so dangerous for Labor to bet on growth, which would neither achieve ministerial goals nor see its benefits shared widely enough. Now that pledge has been replaced by one about how household incomes will rise, although what really matters is how well households are protected against rising food, energy and housing costs. This is also why it is short-sighted for the government to allow Royal Mail to fall into the hands of a Czech billionaire, and to allow failing water companies to run up bills by huge amounts.
Behind all this lies an old theme, the same one that helped drive Gordon Brown from power in 2010. It is the idea that Britain’s main left-wing party, headed by a self-described socialist, will not use its full powers. The state is for the people on their side. Brown used the state to bail out the bankers. Starmer will use it for developers and major infrastructure companies. And every time, Farage and his donors can point out that the Left Party will not support ordinary people, workers and hard-pressed people. Look at this lot, they’ll say, filling themselves with suits and specs and free tickets to see Taylor Swift. Just wait until they hand over contracts to their colleagues to build expensive towers and apartments.
Carry on like this and Starmer, our supposed last defense against Farage, will highlight every complaint in the saloon bar about how politics is failing and they are all doing the best they can for themselves. How does evil truth triumph? When facing many opponents, but no real alternative.