Columnist Translator: Keir Starmer's 'soft authoritarianism' and TikTok as the devil

The New Statesman's editor gives Keir Starmer a tongue bath and Camilla Long decides that social media -- newspapers' great nemesis -- is the true evil in this world.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy image by Binkley-Spacetrucker

Jason Cowley is the editor of The New Statesman, that ever-diminishing organ of the British ‘left’, a magazine that has been a rolling disappointment in one way or another for its entire existence.

Cowley came to the NS editor’s chair in 2008, as the Labour party was wheezing its way to the end of its time in power and has hung around long enough to hope that he’ll see another ‘Labour’ — quote marks definitely needed — Prime Minister shuffle into Downing Street next year.

He’s happy enough to bang the drum for Starmer’s Blairite covers band; in the modern reworking, Things Can Only Get Better has become Things Can Only Get Shitter (feat Fiscal Discipline) and Cowley is singing along with gusto.

Subbed in for talking egg Matthew Syed, who is either on holiday or producing yet another oleaginous Radio 4 documentary, Cowley reassures Sunday Times readers today that Keir Starmer has no intention of really changing anything.

In a column, headlined Starmer’s populist plan: shut up about green stuff, talk cost of living, he writes:

Starmer’s Labour is defined by its caution and absence of radical ambition. The aim is to do as little as possible to cause offence or unease among voters between now and the general election next year. “We must be steady, reassuring, pragmatic,” one senior aide told me. This “narrow, win-at-all-costs strategy”, as Neal Lawson, head of the Compass campaign group, calls it, infuriates the left, but even the most Starmersceptic Labour MP, after 13 years of futile opposition, is desperate for power.

For all his caution, Starmer is an astute observer of the national mood. He is a realist and adapts to the world as he finds it, not as he wishes it to be. His political instincts are those of a soft authoritarian. His youthful experiments with countercultural socialism have long since been abandoned, and he will do what he believes is necessary to win. This explains his reluctance to say anything positive about the EU. 

And this is where we need to fire up the columnist translator. Here’s the output:

Starme’s labour is defined by cowardice and the absence of ideas. The aim is to get into power by conceding to the worst instincts of the worst people and papers which generally despise any notion of social democracy and do as little as possible to upset the caricatures of working-class people that the smug coterie of non-entities in Starmer’s office have created in their heads. “We must be steady, reassuring, pragmatic,” one senior aide told me in between fantasising about a government salary and having lots of civil servants to shout at… even the most Starmersceptic Labour MP — yes, I’m trying to make Starmersceptic happen, just like ‘Fetch’ — after 13 years of futile opposition (and by futile I mean opposition that actually believed in something) is desperate for power and would murder their own granny to get it. 

For all his cowardice, Starmer is also a weathervane. He is terrified of what focus groups say and hopes that his tendency to be a rules-spouting, pettifogging bully with a hard-on for police action will endear him to the sociopaths who own and editor British newspapers. His youthful principles don’t matter to him now and if you don’t like his new principles different ones will be along shortly. He will do what he believes is necessary to win including pissing all over any notion of being remotely different from the Tory Party. His cowardice and morbid fear of the Daily Mail explain his reluctance to say anything positive about the EU. 

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Also in The Sunday Times, the reliably splenetic and crushingly stupid award-winning hack Camilla Long turns her gimlet-drunk eye towards social media (again). She says:

So when I hear Suella Braverman telling us that the police need to “hunt down” the TikTok rioters, I think, how will they do that? They can’t police an ordinary situation, let alone unearth anonymous posters on TikTok. And why isn’t Braverman addressing the real problem, which is bored young people polluted by social media? Shouldn’t we be controlling or choking the sites off more severely?

Elon Musk made Twitter boring and unusable within less than a year — can’t we do the same? Why can’t we put pressure on providers to clean up their controls? And more pressure on parents to be responsible for their children? I’m confused by why children are even allowed TikTok: social media offers zero benefit for kids. There’s nothing productive about it; it promotes antisocial behaviour.

Translation:

So when I, desperate for something to write and staring down a deadline, hear Suella Braverman — a woman who will say anything for attention, just like me — telling us that the police need to “hunt down” the so-called (by other hacks just like me) TikTok rioters, I think (which is a very loose use of the word ‘think’), how will they do that? They can’t police an ordinary situation, let alone unearth anonymous posters on TikTok (yes, I want to pretend that internet anonymity is ironclad even though I know full well that it is not). And why isn’t Braverman addressing the problem that I have decided is the ‘real’ problem, which is bored young people polluted by social media which we hate because it’s pollution we don’t produce? Shouldn’t we be controlling or choking the sites off more severely? I ask as if I have any idea of how that might happen or whether it’s remotely practical. 

Elon Musk made Twitter — a site I quit because I kept tweeting the most vapid and offensive shit — boring and unusable within less than a year — can’t we do the same? Why can’t we put pressure on providers to clean up their controls? (I have no idea what this means but I think I sound tough). And more pressure on parents to be responsible for their children? (Yes, I refuse to see the contradiction here). I’m confused by why children are even allowed TikTok (I know that they’re not really and that my own employer, News Corp, is responsible for all sorts of toxic shit); social media offers zero benefit for kids (this sounds good and I know it makes me sound like I think nuance is the darling little place we go to in the South of France, but I don’t care…). There’s nothing productive about it, I say without any sense of irony and genuinely believing that I’m a useful contributor to society; it promotes antisocial behaviour and I should know about promoting antisocial behaviour as I work for the same company that prints The Sun. 

Thanks for tuning in for this instalment of Columnist Translator a new semi-regular feature that I will probably revisit soon.

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