Main Edition
US
FR
All at sea. (Credit: Benjamin Cremel - Pool/Getty)
There are periods in history when old certainties and settlements suddenly begin to fracture under the weight of their own contradictions. In the Thirties and Seventies the very nature of the system seemed to be collapsing in on itself. Yet our decline then was not, in the end, the result of some decadent failure, but of forces beyond our control: America’s successful coming of age.
Today, it is hard not to be spooked by the sense that once again we are entering one of these eras that will overwhelm our rotting old order. Waves of Chinese industrial might threaten to overwhelm the last of our competitive industry, while the alarming approach of AI and unpredictable rise of Donald Trump risk upending everything else. And as Keir Starmer prepares to set out his long-awaited “Programme for Change” even his close advisors sense the ground shifting beneath their feet. They have the feeling that they are representatives of both the emerging new world as well as place holders in an interregnum before something else entirely.
It is a striking image — of regents rather than monarchs — and surprisingly self-aware from a Government that in many other respects gives every indication of not appearing to understand the scale of the challenge it faces.
A sense of unease has settled over the country, too, barely five months into its new Government. The Prime Minister’s goal is to lift this ennui with the most important speech of his premiership. Yet he will almost certainly fail. Not because what he says will be unreasonable or the targets he sets wrong — they will be neither — but because we are entering one of those periods of change which requires a form of leadership that is beyond him. Perhaps even beyond any of our leading politicians today.
Charles de Gaulle governed France through two great moments of upheaval. Having created the “necessary myth” of a country united in resistance during the war, his second great achievement, according to his biographer Julian Jackson, was to turn France’s defeat in Algeria in 1962 into a sort of victory. He told the French that, “although militarily victorious, [they] had granted Algeria independence in accordance with her historic commitment to human rights”. The story was not true, of course, but after years of turmoil and shame, the French were happy to believe it. De Gaulle later reflected in his War Memoirs that however difficult the reality might have been during his time in power, he had always felt able to master it, “by leading the French there through dreams”.
It is this sort of leadership that is required in moments of great tumult, when a collapsing old order must be refashioned into a moral story of political will. It was, in essence, Margaret Thatcher’s greatest achievement, killing the failing post-war consensus and ushering in something new with a story of industrial revival that did not come to pass, but which nevertheless provided a sense of purpose.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeInteresting. I guess Labour need a new Blair. Whatever his later faults Blair could articulate “the third way” quite well in 1997 and for two elections thereafter. Looking at the current Labour/Tory/Reform crop I don’t see any new messiah with “the vision thing”. Therefore the next election (with unlimited digital spending) could well yield a shock result totally from left field. In effect whoever has the most money for online advertising. Might not be a bad thing..
Yeah, one of the best articles I’ve read in a while, and your comments quite interesting too. So many campaigns (poltical, NGOs & commercial) spending thousands per hour for online advertising, especially now in the run up to Christmas. They effectively fight each other, and you get a major diminishing returns the more you spend, as Kamila found out recently. Total worldwide energy consumption for all the AI possibly more than UK spends on everything else (Annoying how little effort goes in to optimising the IT for energy efficiency).
I’m a big TB fan too, but you’re always going to get massive downvotes for saying anything vaguely +ve about him round here. I went to an event @ the Unherd club in Westminster a while back, really fun & affable crowd, but OMG the intensity of the hate when someone mentioned Mr Blair.
Blair is the architect of virtually every problem (legal, cultural, constitutional) we face today, emulated as he was by the Notting Hill Tories. Not only did he start a war, he sauntered away rich, smug and influential.
That’s why so many people loathe the man.
Arguably Starmer, with his cry of Cooling Britannia, is already the Son of Blair. Unfortunately the charisma was not passed on.
The Grandson of Blair.
Don’t forget the Heir to Blair! 🙂
I fear you’re going to get the old one. He’s purportedly on manoeuvres pushing fir dugital ID again. A vrry dangerous war criminal.
I think that everyone on UnHerd would like Starmer to say, “I have a plan.” Something strong to follow, like de Gaulle’s interventions.
First the negatives:
1) de Gaulle’s successes were based around two wars when France would have followed any strong leader. On one occasion France had been occupied and the feminists (let’s say there were some) would not have said, “But how does this policy affect women’s rights?” War is war.
2) The country is so fragmented and its politicians are so extreme that nobody could agree on anything. If a strong plan came along, the Mayor of London would just scream, “Fas*ist Fas*ist,” because he can’t say anything else.
On the positive side it is quite clear. We need to 1) Stop illegal immigration, 2) Have cheaper energy by scrapping NetZero, 3) Grow as much of our own food as possible, 4) Break up the NHS which is too big to manage, 5) Make people go to work. No more working from home or claiming benefits for nothing. EASY!
Caradog Wiliams for PM anyone?!
So easy that we can be certain politicians will not do it.
The author doesn’t recognise the Winter of Discontent, 1978-79, as ‘decadent failure’ of the Public Sector in the Seventies, and de Gaulle’s creation of a myth as a lie. Most Westerners have had enough of both.
So what hope anything intelligible in the rest of the article, let alone anything other than total passiveness and hopelessness.
But that is just the thing required to ensure The Plan’s total success. 🙂 unheard doesn’t seem to have any idea what ‘political balance’ means.
6. De-centralised the education system.
It would be nice to have a leader who dreams of building a new empire rather than apologising for the old one.
Starmer is no bard, for sure. But neither is Farage. Latching onto obvious problems, but with no feasible solutions, he’s no de Gaulle. He’s a British Poujade.
Oh, once upon a time, Poujade seemed the coming man, winning 51 seats in the National Assembly in 1956. But he had no answers, just complaints. His star faded quickly.
We must look elsewhere for our bard.
What gives you the idea that Reform have no solutions, David? They have a long and exhaustive manifesto. You may not agree with any or all of it. I find some of it unrealistic or insufficiently detailed. But the solutions are there.
Making the work in our sclerotic bureaucracy is a whole different level of challenge of course…
There may be doubts about the quality of what Reform is offering, but I would say it is early days, with time to establish a solid base. What i have always had is an admiration for Farage – his conviction and consistency, so different to that of other politicians, and despite withering attacks on him from all sides of MSM. That last point tells me that the main parties regards him as a major threat – and rightly so.
To start with I though he got it, but the last half is delusional.
Net Zero: China, India, the US and the whole of what is now called the global south are do NOTHING about this. The standard measure of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere (a station on the lee slope of a mountain in Hawaii) is a straight line up. Nothing we have done has had any impact.
The world is burning just as much fossil fuels as it has ever done. There has been NO transition. We’ve added a bit of intermittent supply, at the cost of destroying our industrial base completely.
While UK/EU energy prices are the highest in the world, you can kiss the NHS/the Welfare State goodbye.
Sir K can’t answer the questions that arise from this because he’s not aware that they exist. I’m not sure the author does either.
You do the author a disservice. He’s not writing to pontificate on those elements of change to which you refer (and which we’re all aware of…) but to describe how Starmer will fail in his response.
In that respect, this is another fine article, which more than meets the requirements of Unherd in analysis which goes beyond what can be read in the msm.
Kier; you have been promoted above your abilities because of your loyalty to the party, but you have neither the ability nor the work ethic to succeed and all that lies ahead of you is a career as mediocre lawyer.
However your lack of ability, character or substance would make you our idea candidate for PM
Starmer very much reminds me of the Freak Bros cartoon when Phineas uses up all his welfare checks and has to seek employment. After a spell as a counterfeiter he ends up being selected as POTUS. “We haven’t had an honest one in a long time” says the lackey who inaugurates him.
More like Jim Hacker from Yes Prime Minister, promoted because he lacked any ideas of his own, so offended the fewest in his party.
And what I have found very puzzling about that straight line of CO2 is that it STILL went up in a straight line, with no noticeable variation, during the two years of the pandemic when much of man made CO2 by definition wasn’t being produced. I have asked the question in some quite learned quarters and have yet to receive a satisfactory answer.
Six months in and Starmer is seeking reset. He’s now decided they need a plan. Enough said.
Leadership 101:
1. Understand your purpose and set a clear vision.
2. Do what you say you’re going to do.
3. Execute your mission to achieve your vision via prioritisation, delegation, and supervision.
Leadership in its purest form boils down to someone being aware enough to be able to notice that it’s a bit rubbish here, and possess enough imagination to think that perhaps it might be a bit better over there. If they can then convince enough people that “over there” might be better – then hey presto – you’ve got yourself some followers and you’re a leader.
Our current group of politicians clearly lack both the awareness and imagination required to lead. This is in part due to the system which selects for such people not prioritising those traits that make for actual leaders. Instead it rewards and promotes those that adhere to the status quo, and prioritise their own needs and wellbeing above those of the nation and its people.
Britain has lost its way. We no longer know who we are or where we want to go. “Diversity is our strength” is a mantra that has only served to erode our sense of national identity and fracture our society to the point where we are unable to achieve any of our goals because too many people all want to many things. Therefore, in order to win votes, our politicians (incorrectly) think that they have to be everything to everyone – and as a result – end up being nothing to anyone.
The job of our leaders is to set the conditions where the people of the country can then work to make it succeed. We don’t want micromanagers telling us how to live our lives, we want leaders that set a vision that is inspiring enough to make us want to achieve great things. We want leaders that provide the basic materials – cheap energy, food, security etc. – so that we can build a nation.
The trouble is – turkeys don’t vote for Christmas – so despite being utterly unsuited for the current environment, our current lot will hang on, grabbing all the free suits and football tickets they can until, eventually, the whole thing falls over or blows up.
Only then will we be in a position for the type of leader we need to emerge.
“ The job of our leaders is to set the conditions where the people of the country can then work to make it succeed. We don’t want micromanagers telling us how to live our lives, we want leaders that set a vision that is inspiring enough to make us want to achieve great things. We want leaders that provide the basic materials – cheap energy, food, security etc. – so that we can build a nation.”
Well put, Sir. Make everything work and leave us alone.
I agreed with you until the very last sentence. When we are as low as can be, lower than is imaginable, people will still demand their rights as extreme feminists, dog owners, any minorities really. In fact, I would say that the population would have to decrease significantly as well. Allowing the NHS to continue as it is would help to reduce the population but too slowly. Stopping any immigration would help but that is impossible.
The way things are going with this Government immigrants (both legal and illegal) will soon stop coming. In fact I fully expect we will soon see our recent arrives crowding into small boats on the south coast trying to get back to France.
I am hoping to open a small shop selling boating equipment in Hastings
Second hand dinghies perhaps?
Even if Starmer had leadership qualities it would still be quite impossible for him to fix Britain because the measures needed to do that – scrapping net zero, decentralising the state, especially the NHS and education system, cutting taxes on business, seeking much closer economic ties with the US – all go directly against his most fundamental beliefs.
Starmer is the last gasp of the failed blairite state – he will preserve it at all costs even if that means trashing everything outside it.
Agree.
So Labour are finally realising it isn’t the late 90’s anymore? Will wonder never cease. You finally look up from your Islington dinner party and realise the world is completely different to how you’ve been pontificating for the last 15 years. The best thing to do is dig your heels in and plug your ears I reckon.
Starmer is a man of law. There, and only there, does he make sense as any kind of leader. The law has rules. Something is legal. Something is illegal. I suspect Starmer likes that world.
Talk of making a law to fight Islamophobia and he’s stately. Talk of punishing rioters and again he’s clear on his purpose. Of course he would be. It’s the world he knows. It’s the law he’s playing with.
Running a nation isn’t and shouldn’t be like that. It requires imagination. A vision. It’s like giving a Lego set to a chimp. He can make a go of it. But what you get at the end of it is a mish mash of bricks. Nothing of function or beauty to see for his efforts.
Maybe it’s unfair to compare Starmer to Farage. Starmer has to lead a disparate group of people with very different agendas.
Farage on the hand, is leading a much smaller group with a much clearer vision. And one that hasn’t ever been tested.
No. Starmer is a man of law. And a dull one at that. He inspires nothing.
Starmer is definitely not a man of the law. His career demonstrates that he places no value in, and has no respect for, the law as it is traditionally imagined and sees it as merely tool to impose left-wing political ideology through the backdoor in cahoots with a politicized judiciary
Exactly. He will use the law, like everything else, to further his ends.
Well put. I added my own reply that is along the same lines before reading yours.
I remember during the pandemic he was very clear regarding his generous offer to help the Tories draft legislation to force a vaccine mandate – for a still experimental therapy – on everyone. Helpful and selfless soul that he is.
Some might call that typical behaviour for a man of law and others typical behaviour of a blinkered authoritarian using the only well honed skill he has in order to enforce behaviours rather than inspire them.
It does not appear that he valued the law very much when bowing to the US government over Assange. Or doing nothing about grooming gangs or Jimmy Saville, or overturning habeas corpus when rape allegations were made (except when they were made against Muslim grooming gangs).
Dream I’ve got is that criminals do time and not keyboard warriors. Starsimer was dead before he got in the water…
Trouble is the British people no longer dream either. Blue light from screens and the dopamine economy did that.
You don’t know us, only what you read from the usual commentariat.
Think of how the US is now seeking to escape the fate of neoliberalism; there’s a huge swathe of citizens in the UK who seek the same, or perhaps something unique to the these islands.
Perhaps our ‘leading politicians’ are part of the problem since they have become habituated to the Old Order. Arguably a period of chaos marks the end of the Old Order and ushers in the New Order (currently dismissed as Populism).
Perhaps other politicians are available? It would seem so.
“Yet he will almost certainly fail. Not because what he says will be unreasonable or the targets he sets wrong — they will be neither”
I beg to disagree.
The fundamental problem with Starmer and Labour is not the lack of leadership and competence (chronic problems though these both are), but the basic misunderstanding of the problems and opportunities facing the country.
I’m not putting any money on him setting realistic targets for climate change goals, energy prices, reversing over-regulation, lowering house prices for ordinary people, reducing net migration or the size of the university sector in the UK. Let alone actually achieving anything on these.
The thinking is broken. Not just the implementation.
The NET Zero policies are a non-solution to a non-problem.
Therefore the policies need to be rejected, repealed, and the people that supported them need to be removed from any position of influence or decision making.
Into the fiery crucible of the 21st Century goes Starmer, a man made of straw. I’m not an accelerationist, but am tempted to buy popcorn.
I don’t think he will personally survive but his successor may well have to look for a parliamentary coalition with the Liberal Democrats after the next general election pitched to be in 2029.
But my feeling is that his government is such a disaster that an extraordinary British democratic event will take place long before that – one that could rewrite the UK constitution to the same extent as the exit from the EU.
1930s-1970s: The Progressive Era (New Deal, welfare, civil rights, nationalisation eventually degrading into malaise)
1980s-2020s: The Globalisation Era (economic and social liberalism eventually degrading into Globalism and wokery)
2020s-2060s: The Populist-Nationalist Era (aka the MAGA Era)
You bet your life that Farage is well placed to prosper in the MAGA era! I think it is now odds on that some sort of Tory/Reform pact with Farage at the top of the ticket will succeed 2TK in 2029.
Article good; headline poor. He does have a dream, but the problem with dreams is they are muddled. What he lacks is a vision (N.B. “a”: a single overarching picture of the end result) that includes both process and coherent achievement. A major problem for governments is that too often they focus more on ideology than on practical ideas and short-term voter popularity than on long-term national wellbeing.
To give a contrary view.
Starmer is quite happy with the way things are going. Remember his communist past. He is still in the breaking eggs stage.
Why is he going to stop breaking eggs now?
Or, to focus on what is important to Starmer and any good communist/socialist.
Does Starmer care that everyone is getting poorer and poorer?
Does he care that the old social order of UK is breaking?
A communist would welcome both.
Indeed, to collapse the old social order has been the raison d’être of committed communists/globalists for some time now. As Gramsci put it back in 1915:“Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity. … In the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches, and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.”
…changes are coming which threaten to overwhelm many of Labour’s most sacred shibboleths. “Something new is happening,” one aide told me, “and so many of the old beliefs are falling away.”…
I agree that Starmer is unimaginative, and he does not, it seems, buy into the mythos of Britain as a nation state (not least because he has demonstrably done everything in his power to undermine that mythos throughout his career), but he must believe in something, because it would not be possible for an individual to rise to the positions he has, without that. Starmer, as a person, clearly buys into several of the “sacred shibboleths” quoted in the article. What really interests me is how a nexus of beliefs builds, in both people individually, and in groups – and especially in those who manage to rise to the top. So let us examine the specific case of the beliefs around net-zero, and how they, um, “got into” someone like Starmer.
To declare my own stance upfront so it can be taken into account in the context of the argument I’m making, I am not a climate change denier, but I am very skeptical indeed around both the science and the politics of the debate as it stands. Nor do I buy any of the timelines so vehemently projected around impending environmental disaster. To my eyes, much of the quality of the science and maths around climate change is very poor and doesn’t stack, but the trouble is, the debate quickly gets heated, emotional, loud and very aggressive, every time. When anyone asks any questions, around for example the underlying assumptions of climate change, you are instantly categorised into a “camp”, because it is assumed that anyone asking any questions is doing so in bad faith, as a non-believer – whereas all I’m doing is trying to get someone, anyone, to address a bunch of points I have been asking for ages, which haven’t been satisfactorily answered. All the hallmarks are of an agnostic, arguing religion with the machinery of a state-backed church.
Anyway, enough of that and on to the point I want to make about Starmer. Starmer does not come from a STEM background, and so would have no means to even begin assessing the case for or against disastrous climate change for himself, but he clearly absolutely buys into the climate stuff, to the extent of employing Miliband, for gods sake, so he must be doing so on the basis of secondhand beliefs from people who purportedly know what they are talking about. Gove once said that the role of politicians is to ask “daft laddie” questions when technical experts spout opinions, so I’m asking here if Starmer ever did his own “daft laddie questions” type debates around climate change in his past, or if he just bought the majority line wholesale at some point and stuck with it, and go hang the consequences (um, penury, for um, Everyone) once the net-zero leviathan starts rolling. The problem is the climate change debate is not like someone for example, showing you a missile they have built, which by the proof of it’s existence asserts the truth of a bunch of underlying mathematical and scientific assumptions. It is more like the pseudo-science of economics, where there are lots of contradictory opinions flying around, and you don’t know if the data you are seeing is accurate, and if the assumptions you are making around data which may be inaccurate are themselves accurate, and if actions you take based on this data will have a positive or negative impact, a compounding cascade of errors producing an output of complete nonsense, around which you then make consequential policy affecting millions. What this boils down to regarding Starmer, is if he has sufficient independence of thought, or if he is just a committee man when it comes to areas outside his experience. The evidence clearly, is the latter.
The thing I’ve noticed is that only the bright people actually ask the “daft laddie questions”. First you have to understand enough to know the question might be considered daft. Then you need to be intellectually self-confident enough not to worry what people think about you. Then you need to be smart enough to detect the BS you usually get answered with.
I’m not sure there’s anyone bright enough on Starmer’s team to handle all of that.
Michael Gove, for all his many faults, certainly could. Not so sure about Cameron and most of the others.
Ed Miliband has no more STEM background than Starmer. And it shows. Preprogrammed PPE dross.
[added to the original comment after a bit more thought]
The other type of person to whom the “dumb question” comes naturally is someone with a lot of practical common sense who isn’t necessarily bright or very educated, but well capable of thinking on their feet and spotting bluffers. And who doesn’t feel restricted by “compelled speech” (an expression I picked up this morning which describes how we’re being coerced to say the “right” things).
In other words, a lot of traditional Labour voters.
Again, not sure if there are really any of those on Starmer’s team either.
Mostly 100% with you here but Gove represents the PPE “no such thing as experts” in the same way millipeed represents the PPE “no such thing as knoweldge” or “science is a white and/or Jewish conspiracy”. Both favour a closed society where enquiry and critical thinking is not accepted and as such can believe many impossible things before breakfast. There is a humanity to Gove which i often find lacking in Ossies – especially those broadly nostalgic about the USSR so i guess that covers 3-4 generations of miliband!
Lets remember that Milliband is a fan of Napalm Death who now style themselves as “Grindcore” but are pretty much low tech Death Metal. In their younger years true death metallers were completely misanthropic – Deicide, Cannibal Corpse & Morbid Angel are the benchmarks. Their anti-humanity message was probably more down to their disgust with their fellow humans than Millibands Benthamite hatred of one particluar group – the poor. Its worth noting that Napalm Death recently toured UK and i believe they covered Nazi Punks F*** O** by the Dead Kennedys – a band from the Hamas corner of geopolitics doing this song is beyond ironic, but i think they should’ve done “Kill the Poor”. Much more in line with the eco-loonies plus a good solid RocknRoll or Soul melody – imagine it covered by the Supremes, a- capella, c/w doo wap harmonies.
Does a climate change denier deny that the climate is changing, or that the concentration of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere controls the Earth’s average temperature and that mankind’s activities, increasing that CO2, is triggering ‘out of control’ temperature increases?
Without knowing which, it’s difficult to know what you mean.
I meant ‘climate denier’ in the sense of someone who says ‘I don’t believe any climate change is happening’. My stance is that climate change is happening and has happened throughout earth’s history. I am much more dubious about the extent to which humanity is responsible – because the volume of CO2 stored in the oceans is so vast as to render irrelevant anything humanity can affect, on the face of it at least, although I concede human activity may be having a small impact. I would want someone to demonstrate how humanity can possibly have much impact in that situation – but no one has put up a case I find convincing. I don’t for example buy any of the stuff about the greater culpability of the nations which industriaised first like Britain, because one look at the numbers shows that huge increases in CO2 emissions are all recent – last three decades. We don’t know if we are experiencing an ice age transition type scenario which would potentially be very quick (a few decades) but are drawing the wrong conclusions.
Alastair Campbell unwittingly put his nicotine-stained finger on the nub of it when he pointed out that the current cabinet is the first to be entirely state-educated – in schools, therefore, where any evidence of independent-mindedness is likely to result in a referral to Prevent.
I recommend Judith Curry’s book: “Climate Uncertainty and Risk”. She sets it all out very clearly, identifying what we know and why the models need to be treated with extreme caution.
Thanks for the book recommendation, I will check it out.
The problem with Starmer is that he thinks he is the smartest guy in the room; and that makes him think he can lead but he can’t.
He does not inspire nor bring people with him (quite the opposite). He is a middle-of-the-road manager at best.
Yet his biggest flaw is that he is a Statist, and therefore he cannot see that the biggest issue is the State itself.
Did people vote for a dream? I thought it was mostly to punish the Tories for being a marginally different version of Labor.
Think you’re right. I thought that only about 20% of registered voters voted Labour in the GE. Whatever it was it wasn’t a massive vote of confidence in Starmer and his team.
“[Starmer] needs to lead the British there through the dreams they already have, not by fiddling with taxes and targets.”
Mrs T at least had a plan and the cojones to carry it through. This shower (and I include the last 14 years of fake Tories in that) doesn’t have either. If you love your country Vote Reform whenever you can.
Just watched Starmer’s robotic attempt to reinvigorate his message. It was the most egregious example of political self-immolation I have ever seen. He really should have become a toolmaker.
See above re STEM training! – I wouldn’t trust him with a hand file or conventional mill or lathe, let alone a modern 6 axis machining centre
His parents certainly were tool makers..
Just don’t let cheap Chinese EV sweep across the country?
He is as out of is depth as Suanky, BJob etc ever were, but with the added danger of being a swivel eyed ideologue (who can change ideology the way most of us change our underwear). Because he can’t achieve the North Korea or USSR command economy he is sure will bring Utopia he is just lashing out like Gordon Brown trying to damage anything he can hit – like a wasp pursued by a rolled up copy of the Telegraph. Once his new boss starts work on Jan 20th he may adjust to economic reality – or worse he may not and double down. I have a kind of grudging admiration for national socialists like AMLO, Ramaphosa or even Kruschev (international socialist tbh) as there’s a pragmatism that comes from working for a living and relating to ordinary workers. They did a lot of harm but some good. Starmer and his cohort have more in common with the Romanovs and Louis XVI. They can only do harm because their wealth and status divorces them entirely from normal people who they see as “subjects” w/o realising we are just the same as them but less lucky in the financial status of our parents.
We are not “just the same as them”. We are a great deal better.
Starmer & co don’t need to solve every problem on their own, only selected “blocker” problems that prevent other problems being solved. One such is Blair’s Human Rights act and our consequent membership of the EHCR. Another of course is mass immigration.
In that film Titanic, as the ship was sinking the main problem for many was the locked gates that seemed to be everywhere. Once they were opened, the fleeing passengers could make their own way, hopefully to safety. But had Starmer been a keyholder guarding one, would he have opened any or stood aside as one was forced open? No, of course not. He would have stubbornly protested, saying “Oy, stop! That’s White Star Line property!”
Starmer “dreams” of abolishing this United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and making it a vassal of International Humanitarian Law and those who practice it…a universal “Tyranny of Clerks” pursuing some noble “dream” (or more probably, nightmare!) of borderless progressive universalism…
…but it is not a dream he is likely to share with the rest of us…because for the most part we are appalled by it…
…and furthermore, in a World where Czar Putin and the Celestial Emperor Xi, and any number of would-be Caliphs have a fervent belief in their values…and are perfectly content to impose them on the rest of us by the murderous application of force wherever and whenever they expect it to succeed…
…for us to follow his line would be for us to abolish ourselves as a people, and as a (potentially) great nation at the forefront of Western Civilization… and surrender ourselves to a world full of bad people who hate us and want to kill us.
Not a very hopeful prospect, all in all…
Lawyers – Starmer claims to be a lawyer – are notoriously bad at management.
It is in their nature to disagree with whatever is in front of them. They do not think positively they think negatively.
We see this every day. Many months have passed but still the labour refrain is it’s all the Tories ‘fault and they have just discovered this (No one challenges them with- why couldn’t they assess the situation from published data in opposition ?).
Starmer’s new “reset” is a dull list of metrics marginally improving the Status quo. While ignoring or avoiding real issues like population size and GDP per capita.It fatally assumes all other things will remain constant -and they will not.It is not a brief with a ribbon round it – it is a sea of swirling metrics interacting.
He is leading UK ltd to disaster by failing to lead the country on big issues while focussing on low level metrics he should leave to the civil service.
It’s an attempt to change the subject, every time he gets in trouble he resets, this much be his 4th governmental reset.
I wish Starmer was a dream, then we could all wake up, blinking, in the clean, pure light of a beautiful sunrise and declare, “I just had the most terrible nightmare…”
Simply put. Starker is useless and hasn’t got a clue
Simply put. Starmwr ain’t got what it takes and doesn’t understand what he’s dealing with
Long awaited speech, most important, looks more like a distraction from this weeks disaster. He resets every time he’s under pressure from a self inflicted wound, this is his 5th I believe ( could be 4 or 6, all the same in Reeves world.)
But, on that issue of ministerial position for a felon, how contemptuous is slippery’s excuse, how insulting to voters and the system to claim he didn’t understand.
Here it is again; the new legend that Mrs T “deindustrialised” the UK. No she didn’t; she knew that the old industries were dying or dead; she let them die and encouraged new ones; and pretty successfully too; she pushed for business where we had a natural advantage, and it worked. Where do you think all the wealth of the last 30 years came from?
The piece was incoherent, the ramblings of either an undergraduate overblown on the books they’ve read that lead them to believe they are a great mind or a rather pompous academic who believes they are uniquely observant. Quoting mates from Labour ain’t stuffin’ no puddings; their ideas have nothing to do with reality. WHICH IS EXACTLY THE PROBLEM. Repeating that one cabinet member said he doesn’t WANT the thing that’s going to happen exactly as a result of his party’s policies actually TO happen is meaningless. 2TK is always declaring in words the opposite of what he does in actions. This is just a really badly written piece. Sorry, Tom.
Reads like UK needs to become a republic, with the Liberty to foster bottom up decisions.
Leftist managerialists will always be non visionary.
Starmer can never recover from his handling of Southport. To single out far right thugs at a time when he needed to pull the nation together, compounded by imprisoning mal-tweeters, whilst releasing Lambo-driving drug dealers to TikTok acclaim remains in the consciousness of many Britons. When the Rudakubana court case starts next year, expect fireworks. There are rumblings in some parts of the media that the evidence brought will shatter Starmer’s narrative raising questions about sentences handed down. When the crushing of speech a vitesse was followed the deafening silence in the slow walk to the budget (via the removal of WFA, killing 4k people according to Labour’s own calculations), the Chancellor was toast. She became burned toast as she crushed GPs, hospitality, retail, farmers, and SMEs through her mind numbingly ignorant budget. Big Ange is just getting set to create more job takedowns with her Workers Rights bills, and her ambitious planning reforms will – short-term – be offset by a dearth of rental properties as her Renter reforms go through.
What Starmers lacks is less a dream than a coherent narrative. His cabinet should spend more time playing Consequences, folding the paper, passing it around, and seeing if they can produce a story for our age, and some joined-up thinking to accompany it. Not holding my breath …. Dominic Cummings isn’t to everyone’s taste, but he is right about politics only attracting 3rd class “Elites” (if that).
Starmer fails to inspire. The lack of charisma or warmth but ultimately the perception of being untrustworthy or transparent. He is simply not a leader.
From here in America, it is as if Starmer has Asperger’s or is autism spectrum. A very finite and inflexible mind, with little personality to make up for it.
Easily confused, and then angry, if someone moves his cheese.
On reading the balanced article the headline doesn’t appear to have been the Authors. One more for the Unherd base. Groan…I guess it is the weekend now.
I’d concur with much of what Author conveys, but I’d add question – did Atlee ever convey his vision with passion and vivid language? And yet his style of leadership delivered more than most. Furthermore Thatcher’s first few years were v traumatic and but for Falklands she’d likely have been turfed out. History can forget that similar criticism was voluminous for that doyen of the Right until events came to her rescue and bought her project more time
But hey to keep the Base happy a constant stream of Starmer is crap headlines and articles simply has to happen. You give your customer what it wants. It certainly doesn’t want a detailed analysis of what we might do as a nation about social care or such like. Yah-Boo stuff more entertaining.
spot on – people need stories not just powerpoints or pledge cards – UK needs a leader who gives a convincing vision on why? as well as how? Blair and Thatcher had overarching stories as well as specific deliverables – if you get the story right people will move heaven and earth to try to deliver for you, if not they will stand back and watch you fail
Asperger’s or autism spectrum?
Move his cheese and he gets confused, then angry.
The only possible defense of wide-open immigration is the increase of the labour force, thereby driving down its value. How and why a “Labour” party has ever supported increased immigration is a mystery, to me at least.
I have read a number of the comments below but no one seems to have mentioned this fact : When Keir Starmer became Leader of the Opposition in April 2020 and based on the December 2019 General Election result we were at the time looking at a possible two term Johnson Premiership. That the corona virus pandemic would shut the country down for two years and was followed by the spectacular disintegration of the Conservative government was unforeseen. Starmer was meant to be an interim Leader. Compared with the Wilson government of 1964-1970 (thirteen years to prepare ) , the Blair Government of 1997 (eighteen years to prepare and a rehearsal in the 1992 General Election) and after ten years of Miliband/Corbyn, the Labour Party with one or two exceptions had one of the least experienced front benches in modern times. Keir Starmer himself was 52 before becoming a Member of Parliament. Is it really surprising then that the present government has haemorrhaged support so quickly when only 34% (20% of the total electorate) voted for it on 4th July? Given a lack of clear policies should we have expected anything different in what can only be regarded as the ‘Any party but the Conservatives’ 2024 General Election ?
It is a good essay, but I am not convinced the problem is a lack of ability to articulate a vision. The reason Starmer speaks as he does is because he is working hard to suppress what he really thinks. He speaks in a carefully manufactured form of words, which he has to remember, and which is always calculated to deceive.
I agree. Government by Starmerlist has no dreamlike qualities.
Not terribly impressed by the article but kudos to whoever selected the photo at the top: it highlights the cold, vacant eyes of the Starmerdroid perfectly.
McSweeney has experience as a political thug but none at running the country, and if I were a Labour supporter I would be very worried that he has any influence over Starmer.