Keir Starmer's centrist posturing is all an act - this is what he's really like
Like Tony Blair, Sir Keir has also engaged in a well-orchestrated propaganda exercise to conceal his radicalism, writes Leo McKinstry.
Facing a landslide defeat in the 1997 General Election, Conservative strategists resorted to a highly risky tactic. They launched a personal attack on Tony Blair through a campaign poster that featured a photo of a grinning Blair against a black background, with a strip of paper torn away across his face to reveal a pair of red, demonic eyes. Below this striking image was the slogan, ‘New Labour, New Danger’.
The poster did nothing to prevent Labour’s biggest ever victory but attracted a flood of criticism, while the Advertising Standards Authority demanded its withdrawal on the grounds that it depicted Blair as ‘dishonest and sinister’.
Yet the ‘Demon Eyes’ image provoked such anger precisely because it contained an element of truth. Beneath the veneer of Blair’s pose as a moderate lurked an eager revolutionary who was determined to transform the fabric over our country.
During his decade in power, he fulfilled this destructive mission, opening the floodgates to mass immigration, imposing diversity as the official creed of the state, massively expanding public bureaucracy, and refashioning the constitution through devolution and the elevation of judicial power.
Today there is the same sense of hidden perils with Sir Keir Starmer. Like Blair, who was also a north London lawyer before he entered Parliament, Sir Keir has engaged in a well-orchestrated propaganda exercise to conceal his radicalism. So he continually boasts about how he has changed his party, a process epitomised by the expulsion of his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn. He also presents himself as champion of fiscal rectitude, just as he trumpets his patriotic devotion to strong borders and defences.
But this act is not convincing. Beyond all the centrist posturing, Sir Keir and his party remain wedded to the cause of socialism. Only this week he told the BBC: “I would describe myself as a socialist.” In one sense, it was a remarkable comment, given this ideology’s shameful record wherever it has been tried.
Socialism is always a wrecker of freedom, jobs and democracy because it can only be implemented through heavy state control, which is why every single Labour Government since 1924 has ended in failure and near bankruptcy.
The same fate is likely under Sir Keir. When he ran for the Labour leadership in 2020, he did so on a left-wing platform, proclaiming his belief in “common ownership” and his “burning desire to tackle inequality”. Labour’s commitment to socialism can still be seen in their dogmatic attack on private education, their attachment to identity politics, their plans for a vast extension of officialdom, and their new powers for the trade unions.
Margaret Thatcher once said that ‘there is no such thing as “safe socialism”. “If it’s safe, it’s not socialism. And if it’s socialism, it’s not safe”. Britain could soon be learning that lesson again. A Starmer government will inevitably mean more woke indoctrination in our civic culture, mounting industrial action, ever more bloated diversity empires, and another leap in immigration.
