Consider The Political Fate

Lisa McKenzie writes:

Britain’s struggling prime minister, Keir Starmer, should consider the political fate of Margaret Thatcher. In 1990, she resigned as prime minister before leaving No10 in tears, having united not just her own party, but also large parts of the country against her.

Indeed, through Thatcher’s struggle against the organised working class, especially during the Miners’ Strike, she made enemies of many families like mine. In doing so, she prompted many of us to find solidarity and commonality with sections of society we might not have otherwise met, from inner-city working-class black communities, gay and lesbian groups in London and even middle-class lefties working in publishing and studying at Oxbridge. She brought all these people together in the name of one cause: the struggle against Margaret Thatcher and her government.

Four decades on, and Starmer appears to be doing something similar. The PM is bringing disparate groups of people together in opposition to his increasingly hated government.

Starmer has zero rapport with the electorate. He lacks any sort of political personality. Since winning the General Election in July, he has failed to articulate Labour’s vision for the nation. Instead, we have been drip-fed half-baked policy announcements and robotic soundbites about 14 years of Tory misrule and the need for ‘difficult decisions’. No wonder Labour’s poll ratings have plummeted. The party never enjoyed that much support anyway, but now large swathes of the UK actively detest Starmer and his cronies.

Labour demonstrated how woeful it is within weeks of its election victory. The horrific murder of three young girls in Southport in late July shocked the nation. Misleading social-media rumours quickly started circulating, falsely claiming that the perpetrator was an asylum seeker. These were enough to spark large-scale disorder. But Starmer’s response made a terrible situation worse.

After the initial disturbances, Starmer could have spoken to the nation – condemning the riots while also trying to address what caused them. While the vast majority were appalled by the rioting, they were also appalled by the Southport stabbings, and felt their concerns about immigration and a lack of housing had been ignored for far too long. But he has ignored the underlying causes. What’s more, on top of punishing the rioters, he went after those engaged in unpleasant social-media activity. He barked about ‘far-right thugs’ and ‘hooligans’, but said nothing about the challenges facing working-class communities. The message this sent to millions was that Starmer’s government is not listening. Or worse, that his government sees you as no better than the thugs.

In August, Starmer quickly followed up his post-riots crackdown by cutting many pensioners’ winter fuel allowance. Trade unions and charities protested, claiming that thousands of elderly people would be plunged into poverty and some would die. But Starmer and his ministers ignored their concerns and pushed the changes to the winter fuel allowance through parliament.

At the same time as Labour ministers have been immiserating the elderly, work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall’s talk of cutting spending on disability benefits has caused concern and anger among disabled people and disability-rights campaigners.

It has looked, at points, as if this Labour government has been trying to turn people against it. On top of its attacks on working-class communities, pensioners and disabled people, it has been busily rushing through the legalisation of assisted dying, via Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s private members’ bill. ‘I think they want to finish us off’, said one elderly ex-miner who lives in my village in Nottinghamshire.

Labour’s long-awaited budget, finally delivered last month, only stirred up further animosity – this time from farmers about to be hit by inheritance tax. It’s not unreasonable to want to close some of the loopholes in inheritance tax, but the government’s dismissive attitude towards farmers, as if they’re all super-rich chancers buying up property for a tax dodge, angers many beyond rural communities. After all, there are many who see farmers as representative of small-c conservative values of family and hard work – values that Labour seems to be waging war against.

In the 1980s, Thatcher’s government brought people together in opposition to it. It politicised a generation. This Starmer government seems to be doing something similar, forging unity among ostensibly strange bedfellows, from pensioners and disabled people to farmers and working-class people across Britain’s post-industrial landscape. Like Thatcher’s government, Starmer’s also seems intent on stigmatising and demonising its opponents rather than listening to their concerns. It stereotypes its opponents as the greedy landowning farmer, the rich pensioner, the workshy disability-benefits claimant and the racist white working-class thug.

Many now can’t wait to see Starmer and his sidekicks gone. It took 11 years for those of us on the wrong side of Thatcher’s Britain to finally see her crying outside No10. I hope Starmer doesn’t last 11 months.