Sir Keir claims the right to govern based on a freak electoral result but since then has repeatedly shown his contempt for democratic accountability, not least at PMQs. This week after another Starmer peroration on Tory past history Speaker Hoyle was driven to tell him “Prime Minister, it is Prime Minister’s questions. We have got to concentrate.”
Some may think that Sir Lindsay’s intervention was partly a response to recent public comment on his own seeming reluctance to hold the PM’s feet to the fire but even so the latter had angry words for Hoyle, stomping off and furiously clouting the Speaker’s chair on his way out.
I suspect that Starmer’s question-dodging and tetchiness are because like other fanatics he has delegated his identity to an ideology, in this case a simplistic political one. To question his belief, his mission, is to threaten his sense of himself and it triggers aggression.
Leaders who are sure they are right are a danger to others. “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken,” wrote Oliver Cromwell to the Church of Scotland just before slaughtering hundreds in the Battle of Dunbar.
Cromwell himself had no doubt that he was God’s instrument. So having fought the King as a Parliamentarian he ended by turning on Parliament, becoming as great a tyrant as Charles I had ever been. He dismissed the House of Commons, made himself Lord Protector and for a time split Britain into ten regions, each governed by an appointed Major-General.
This suppression of the people’s national voice is echoed in Sir Keir’s strategy. He is proposing to use “Henry VIII powers” in a new UK-EU trade bill to enable “dynamic alignment” with European regulations, so bypassing the Commons as was the practice when we were in the EU.
Just as power is deliberately leached away from Westminster, so also is it being sucked from the people all around England. Each of the several planned “unitary councils” is intended to rule a population of about 500,000 - seven times the size of an average Parliamentary constituency! The 2024 White Paper calls it “devolution” but as far as the individual voter is concerned it looks more like a system of Ottoman governors.
What will be the chances of “throwing the rascals out”? Come Christmas 2017 the current Mayor of London will have held office longer than Margaret Thatcher’s record tenure as Prime Minister, yet he was last elected on a turnout of only 40.5% in 2024. We think we are a democracy but our universal adult franchise is less than a century old and the habit can easily wither away. We are subjects not citizens.
As to justice, Magna Carta (1215) was originally not for our sakes but for King John’s barons: serfs and commoners were not “free men” entitled to trial by jury! That extended interpretation came much later, under Edward III.
Like Cromwell, socialists are sure they know what is right. They are the modern version of “the godly” but they serve History instead of God. As with religious fanatics, for them all opposition comes of the Devil and there is no debating with him. If for example, someone dares to raise the issue of organised mass violation of women and girls, that must be dismissed as a “dog-whistle” to the supporters of evil. And if the Speaker of the House of Commons offers even a mild criticism to the righteous he must be attacked; there is no compromise to be had between Right and Wrong.
On the contrary: our liberty, peace and prosperity depend on not resolving many issues and agreeing to disagree. Starmer and his lethal absolutist certainty are a grave danger to the common weal. He has described himself as a “hard bastard” and our hope lies in his being only half right; else we should be headed for another civil war.
