A Rant upon 'Starmer the Oppressor'

“Something was rotten in the state of Denmark...”

Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act I, Scene 4.

One could say something is rotten in the state of Britain. I think we’re in a bad way. I genuinely do. Much worse than I can remember in my lifetime. And it's a very complex situation. I only understand where I am when I look backwards, and I think the same applies to something as complex as civilisation. So why is something rotten in the state of Britain?

The two world wars exhausted and corrupted the nation. Christianity became an absurdity after two world wars and the Holocaust. The great country and townhouses fell. Our social classes evaporated. Our treasury was spent. Clement Attlee inherited a sticky situation in 1945. Yet Attlee’s reforms have been catastrophic in the long term. The notion that a war-ravaged nation could afford extensive, expensive and centralised social welfare programmes was ludicrous. His beloved NHS costs nearly 4 pence out of every 10 the entire country spends in 2025. We celebrate and protect an entirely failing behemoth like pagans wallowing around a fire, bashing pans to ‘thank the gods’ for protecting us, even when it often fails us.

Attlee is a wildly overrated PM who rebuilt Britain in the trashiest and shoddiest fashion imaginable. As quickly and cheaply as possible. We replaced the terraced slums the Nazis bombed with the new slums of council estates, community housing and tower blocks. Yet everyone important in Westminster and Whitehall agreed with Attlee’s reforms. Agreed to build the newtowns, motorways and shitholes they don’t live in. The political consensus of Butskellism was born. Coventry, Milton Keynes, Birmingham and Skelmersdale are its results. It continued right up to the election of Margaret Thatcher.

But make no mistake, I am no Thatcherite. Thatcher had her reasons, but her statement 'there is no such thing as society' had a pernicious impact beyond her years. She destroyed the communities of North England, Wales and Scotland by crushing the miners. A necessary evil some say... but at what price? It turned villages into ghost towns.; the industrial North into a wasteland. The mining unions had to be curtailed, but she could have done so more intelligently. She wanted vengeance and she got it. But there's something even bigger in its impact in Thatcher's legacy. She consciously nurtured a soulless, materialistic shift in our zeitgeist. She turned greed into a virtue (despite being Methodist, a contradiction I’ve never understood.) The fact she was an enormous fan of the American shopping mall speaks volumes to her worldview and impact.

Thatcher said in 1992 that ‘my greatest achievement was Tony Blair.’ I hate Blair. I despise Blair beyond description. Not so much because of mere politics, but because he corrupted us further along an already decaying path. He corrupted the Lords. Opened the borders to destructive levels. Destroyed the Middle East. Killed 600,000 Iraqis. Destabilised our balance of powers. Desecrated the unwritten constitution. Disenfranchised Parliament with bureaucracy, quangos and 'experts.' Moronically called England a ‘young country.' Unbound the union through a pathetic devolution program (I support devolution, but not New Labour's version.) Yet despite all this, Blair defends everything he's ever done. Such is human nature; that I am right and the world is wrong.

Cameron called himself ‘The Heir to Blair.’ Michael Gove called Blair’s memoirs ‘the new Machiavelli.’ Need I say more about the Conservative government of the past 14 years?

And Starmer seems to embody all these characters in one. He is the apotheosis of the decay of Britain in a single person. He embodies the 'central-planning' mindset of Attlee, the soulless rip-out-and-sell-off mindset of Thatcher, with the tackiness of Blairite 'reforms' (which are corruptions of the oldest system of continued governance on Earth.) Starmer preserves the inefficiency of Attlee’s socialism with the soullessness of Thatcher’s capitalism.

Starmer is something else I despise - a natural authoritarian. Starmer has no notion of English or British history, with its complex web of comings and goings, of King and Parliament, of republic and monarchy, of foreign and quaint, of the old adapting to the new. Everything has to be sleek, modern, shiny… started anew. Like his local government ‘streamlining’ programme, which will inevitably make the levels of British government more convoluted than ever. This contempt for existing institutions is a belief many authoritarians and totalitarians share - that the past doesn't matter.

Nor does he imbibe any notion of limited governance whatsoever. No belief that governments should intervene with as little force as necessary. No belief in that delicate act of weighing up differing points of view when making complex decisions. Only that everything should be controlled, and that he is right to control it. That he is right. Because he (and Blair in the background) are always right. That they know better than me. Or you. Or any plebeian. That the people who elected them are not to be trusted. There’s no belief in the social contract (if Starmer knows what that is.)

All this comes to mind with the 'BritCard' discussion. We have a potentially uncontrollable immigration issue that will be very complex to solve. It'll require much more than yet more laws, more bills, more surveillance, more control. We'll need to crackdown on organised crime in North Africa and the Middle East alongside foreign governments, Interpol, NGOs and so many others. Expand our foreign intel programs. Pay informants. Encourage (possibly bribe) Albania to crush the Albanian Mafia's trafficking networks. Organise the Navy to defend the Channel. Cooperate with France much more closely and firmly. Organise deportations for career criminals. Set up special tribunals. Depoliticise the entire court profession at every level. Prevent judges from having any political leanings. Fire those who lean left or right. And repealing a whole string of Blairite laws that entangle our legal and policing system at every level. This is scratching the iceberg of just one of the problems Starmer faces, and it would require everything of any Cabinet. Yet Starmer is precisely not the person to handle the situation. He is a man with no soft skills or political subtlety whatsoever. A man when asked what his favourite poem was replied, “I don’t have one.” A man who only understands what he calls 'the rules.' And any problem (no matter what kind of problem) has to be controlled by rules. His rules.

When Starmer was in deep water for accepting more gifts than all other members of Parliament combined, what was his response? "I followed the rules." Despite having a pension so enormous it had its own Act of Parliament passed through both Houses to legalise it, he still accepted more. No conception of right or wrong, of pure or defiled, of greed or restraint - just that I followed 'the rules.' 

I hate him. I hate every decision he's made so far. Taking funds from the vulnerable and the elderly. Housing people who break our laws in luxury hotels. Taxing farmers into oblivion so we have no stable food sources. Condemning the waving of the nation’s flag. Doing dodgy deals with dictators like Xi. Cosying up to cruel property firms. Destroying the English countryside with endless house building. Expanding national surveillance. To name a mere few. On top of it all, I detest how he's made a difficult situation of the post-pandemic world so much worse. I detest the timing of his ascendancy. I detest his lack of judgement - that his decision makes said issue worse. Taxation, immigration, national protests against government policy, any thorny issue that arises... his response is to crackdown. To silence. To repress. To oppress. Simply because he's right. Because it's about ‘the rules.’ That no matter how awful the results, we need to be controlled by the rules. His rules.

My therapist often says, the golden question to most problems is this: what do you do with it? Aren’t I just screaming into the wind? Potentially. Maybe most likely. I can’t change Starmer’s instincts, our nation’s stagnation or much else for that matter. And I apologise for my vitriol. So it’s important to remember that we can influence others by being who we want (or need) to be. We control only aspects of our behaviour and thoughts in life. Very little is in our immediate control. We don’t even control our immediate emotional reactions. And yet despite all this, I believe that consistent behaviour does influence those around us, whether for good or bad. And our conscious thoughts can gradually shape our behaviour.

For example, I can still have discussions with those I disagree with and have a pint afterwards. I can still live by moral standards I hold. I can still dress with a level of respect for others. I can still try and nurture my own civil society within my own life’s scope. I can remember the ideas of my ancestors and the ages they lived through, even if our political class have forgotten. That England and Britain at large can be adaptable, moral and decent enough with freedoms for everyone who believes in them. We will need a proper and genuine discussion about what British values are, because people will have to become British despite everything we’re experiencing now. If they really want to. Because I still believe in the values of my own country, even when others don’t. Because a life without a slither of faith against all odds is not much life at all.