Fringe interests

What links Keir Starmer to Allison Pearson? Dangerous and deceitful rhetoric.

Previously: The excuses

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An entry in The Times ‘on-this-day’ column today (February 15 2023) reads:

In 1906, the name the Labour Party was formally adopted at a meeting of the Labour Representation Committee after 29 of its members were elected as MPs. Keir Hardie became chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party. 

In the same edition, 117 years after his namesake became Labour’s first leader, Keir Starmer contributed a full-page editorial headlined:

My Labour is patriotic, a party of equality not protest

The bulk of the piece is about antisemitism — its publication is timed to coincide with the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) announcement that it no longer considers the Labour Party to be “under special measures” — and continues the general trend of damping down/entirely ignoring the inconvenient conclusions of the Forde Report.

Since Starmer became leader, there’s been a string of expulsions targeting older leftwing Jews, which Jewish Currents described as:

[Starmer] increasingly [referring] to the values of patriotism and pragmatism, rhetorical gestures to the more conservative Labour voters who Corbyn is said to have lost. Meanwhile, he has instituted a “zero-tolerance” policy—in keeping with the recommendations put forth by the 2020 Equality and Human Rights Commission inquiry into antisemitism in the party—under which any member, Jewish or not, who disputes, questions, or minimizes the extent of antisemitism in Labour’s ranks risks potential disciplinary consequences

There were antisemites among Labour Party members before Jeremy Corbyn became leader and there are still antisemites among them under Keir Starmer. The same can be said for Rishi Sunak’s Tory Party — Boris Johnson wrote an antisemitic novel — and about British society generally. Antisemitism should be taken seriously but Starmer isn’t doing that and neither are his front bench or the backbenchers sent out to do media rounds.

This exchange between Dame Margaret Hodge and Nick Robinson on Today this morning was instructive:

Nick Robinson: To spell out what is being hinted at by Sir Keir this morning — you think even Jews, who agree with Corbyn, who are arch critics of Israel and Zionism, you don’t want them in the Labour Party any more.

Margaret Hodge: They have got to think again. It’s not just the anti-Zionism, Nick, if I can say that; the party is fundamentally transformed. Our attitude to business has changed, our attitude to globalisation, our attitude to Nato has changed… 

Robinson: You don’t normally invite people to leave the party who you disagree with... 

Hodge: I’m inviting them… if they feel uncomfortable in a party that will not tolerate Jew hate, that supports businesses in the economy, that will support Nato in the international arena, this is not the party for them.  

Hodge, who is Jewish and the daughter of refugees, repeated the conflation of Jews with business, globalisation and Nato on several occasions this morning. Were she not a Starmer ally, she might herself be looking at a suspension.

The Jewish journalist Rivkah Brown tweeted a punchy summary of the state of affairs this morning:

We have a Labour party today that is more anti-semitic than ever. A party that wants to whip Jews into line on Israel; that has expelled more Jews than in any period of its history; and that (quoting Forde) has created a "hierarchy of racism" that pits Jews against others.

In his Times editorial, Starmer writes:

Antisemitism is an evil. It is a very specific type of racism, one that festers and spreads like an infection. Its conspiratorial nature attracts those who would have no truck with any other form of prejudice. Indeed, it can be those who call themselves “anti-racist” who are most blind to it. The reason the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) opened their investigation into the Labour Party was because it had become an incubator for this poison. We needed to change. That’s why my first act as leader was to commit to tearing antisemitism out by the roots, without fear or favour.

He’s right about the nature of antisemitism; it is evil, it is a very specific type of racism and it is fed and driven by a conspiratorial mindset. But it’s just not true that Labour “[became] an incubator for [antisemitism]” with the election of Jeremy Corbyn; it started to be written about following Corbyn’s election, by papers which revelled in antisemitic tropes when Ed Miliband was party leader (bacon sandwich, anyone?)

In 2005, posters of then-Tory leader, Michael Howard, and his Shadow Chancellor Oliver Letwin — who are both Jewish — mocked up as flying pigs, as well as another showing Howard swinging a pocket watch and saying, “I can spend the same money twice!” were devised by Alastair Campbell during the general election. At the time, The Jewish Chronicle said the latter resembled fictional Jewish criminal characters such as Shylock and Fagin. The posters were withdrawn and Campbell denied they were antisemitic.

Miliband became Labour’s first-ever Jewish leader in 2010. When he described Israel’s actions in the 2014 Gaza War as “wrong and unjustifiable”, his stance led to punishment via donations. Per a report in The Independent at the time:

The Labour party is facing desertion by Jewish donors and supporters because of Ed Mili-band's "toxic" anti-Israeli stance over Gaza and Palestine. In a fresh headache for the Labour leader, it is understood that Mr Miliband has been warned that Jewish backers are deserting the party in droves over what community leaders perceive to be a new, aggressive pro-Palestine policy at the expense of Israeli interests.

One prominent Jewish financial backer, a lifelong Labour supporter, said he no longer wanted to "see Mr Miliband in Downing Street or Douglas Alexander as Foreign Secretary".

A senior Labour MP warned that Mr Miliband now had a "huge if not insurmountable challenge" to maintain support from parts of the Jewish community that had both backed and helped fund Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's election campaigns.

In the 2015 general election, Jewish support for Labour fell to 15% compared to 65% for the Conservatives, at least according to a Survation/Jewish Chronicle May 2016 survey of 1,008 British Jews.

Starmer’s editorial continues:

… my first act as leader was to commit to tearing antisemitism out by the roots, without fear or favour. The first step meant accepting the EHRC’s report in full. That investigation was a humbling and painful experience for a party that has always prided itself on equality and tackling racism. But it was completely necessary. We also had to be clear that anyone who did not accept those findings had no place in the party.

The EHRC’s investigation began in May 2015 and reported in October 2020. In August 2021, a former EHRC employee accused the regulator of “colluding in denial of institutional racism”; in the years leading up to that claim, a string of figures linked to the Conservative Party were appointed to the EHRC board.

Starmer continues:

Before now, there were two moments when I knew we were getting it right. Firstly, when Louise Ellman, a Jewish former Labour MP who under the previous leadership had suffered appalling abuse, came to Labour Party conference in 2021. Then, when I spoke with Jewish voters returning to Labour in Barnet during last year’s local elections.

When Margaret Hodge was interviewed by Kay Burley this morning, she claimed Starmer had fought “privately” against Corbyn. Here’s what Starmer said during a BBC interview with Andrew Marr on 20 October 2019:

Andrew Marr: You’re loyal to Jeremy Corbyn and you’ve spoken in his defence just now, but Louise Ellman says that he is a danger not just to the Labour Party but to the entire British Jewish community. 

Keir Starmer: I don’t accept that. I don’t accept that. I do accept that as a Labour Party we have to root out anti-Semitism and we have to demonstrate to people like Louise that this is a party that she can return to

These clips will reemerge during the general election campaign.

The Starmer Labour strategy is to totally agree with the media that Labour between the years of 2016 and 2019 was a disgusting worm that had to be crushed under a boot, its entrails burned, and the ashes scattered in a faraway place with no marker left to commemorate it.

It also requires the Leader and his MPs to pretend they weren’t there and that anyone who voted for “Corbyn’s Labour” (cue thunder clap) should hate themselves but also vote for Starmer despite his regular reminders of what disgusting pieces of shit they are. The conclusion of his editorial — which was mirrored in the speech he gave today — pushed that line:

The changes we have made aren’t just fiddling around the edges or temporary fixes. They are permanent, fundamental, irrevocable. The Labour Party I lead today is unrecognisable from 2019. There are those who don’t like that change, who still refuse to see the reality of what had gone on under the previous leadership. To them I say in all candour: we are never going back. If you don’t like it, nobody is forcing you to stay. But to those who are reassured by what we have done, who think we are going in the right direction, who want to see more, I say: I share your hunger. We need you. Let’s keep changing Labour. Then, let’s change the country.  

The Labour Party I lead is patriotic. It is a party of public service, not protest. It is a party of equality, justice and fairness; one that proudly puts the needs of working people above any fringe interest. It is a party that doesn’t just talk about change – it delivers it. The hard work we have done over the past three years is what allows us to confidently say all those things again. But there is not a hint of complacency in that confidence. I know there is still much to do. That’s why my third promise to you is that we will keep grafting, keep working, keep delivering. We will not rest for a moment until not only have we changed the Labour Party for the better, but our country, too.

No form of equality in British history has been achieved without protest. On the anniversary of the Labour Party’s formation, it’s a mirthless joke for Starmer to pretend otherwise. He’s not blowing a noisemaker at this celebration but a dog whistle. MPs are only paid as a result of agitation by the Chartists to ensure that representatives of working people could run for election; before 1911, only those with “independent means” could sit in Parliament.

A man who now refuses to support strikes, having once cosplayed on picket lines, and who dismisses protests because he suspects focus groups and talk radio hosts will prefer it, claims to “proudly put the needs of working people above any fringe interest”. Whenever a politician honks about “working people”, you have to think hard about those they are deliberately excluding — the unemployed, the poor, the sick, the disabled — and why.

Starmer chose to place his editorial in The Times in the same week that the newspaper deadnamed a murdered 16-year-old girl, who was trans. He has not said a word about the killing of Brianna Ghey; he previously said he believes 16-year-olds are too young to change their legally recognised gender. The same silence fell when it came to the case of protestors attacking hotels where asylum seekers are being housed.

Starmer is not “above any fringe interest”; it’s simply that the fringe interests that obsess him are those of national newspaper columnists, lobby correspondents, and their bosses, the proprietors (Murdoch, Rothermere, Lebedev and the Barclay brother).

With the help of a government staggering around in a daze, Starmer has a large poll lead and a persistent panic that it will evaporate, so he’s doing everything he can to show the press it has nothing to fear from him, that “the change” he promises is built in the interests of capital and not of all those carping, inconvenient workers.

Read The Times leader column and you’ll find sweeping assertions without evidence — “[Starmer] promises that there will be no return to the barely concealed bigotry that characterised the Corbyn years.” — combined with glee at the left being booted (“[a] suicidal brand of leftism”) and hungry demands:

Sir Keir’s tendency for fence-straddling is most in evidence in his failure to commit to hard figures on public sector pay. He condemns the government for failing to negotiate with nurses and teachers but offers little guidance on what constitutes a set of reasonable pay offers. The same is true for the more arcane but nevertheless incendiary issue of trans rights. Sir Keir has failed to say if he would, as prime minister, block the Scottish government’s gender recognition bill.

Field-strip away the ‘politeness’ from that paragraph and you’re left with pointed requests for more anti-union action and a crackdown on trans rights.

In January, Starmer tossed bloody meat to the Daily Telegraph’s demon dogs with an op-ed on the need for “unsentimental reform” in the NHS. Previous contributions to that newspaper include his slobbering Platinium Jubilee tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and a flag frottaging VE day article in 2020.

The comment pages of the Telegraph today offered a prime example of “fringe interests” that Starmer is pandering to as the paper’s low-rent Leni Riefenstahl, Allison Pearson, filed a column that ran beneath the headline:

I’m sick of people with an ounce of common sense being labelled ‘far-Right’

Justifiable annoyance is stigmatised by a sanctimonious class that largely escapes the consequences of its own idealistic opinions

Those who rioted outside the hotel housing asylum seekers in Knowsley were “mainly local mums and dads concerned about the safety of their kids after scores of undocumented young male migrants were billeted without consultation in their area,” she writes.

Later in the piece, she covers her arse by saying that “violence is never justified under any circumstances and asylum seekers in the [hotel]… were very very scared as fireworks were thrown”, after several hundred words designed to paint immigrants as monsters (“our country continues to provide refuge for fundamentalist nutters and people who want us dead”).

Pearson goes on to claim: “…although the far-right didn’t lead the protest, a group called Patriotic Alternative had delivered leaflets in the area with the slogan, ‘5 Star Hotels for Migrants While Brits Freeze’ and some of their members were spotted at the demo”. That headline could have appeared in any national paper (and variants of it often have).

Here are some recent examples from the Telegraph:

Illegal immigrants are not entitled to luxury hotels (by immigration minister, Robert Jenrick)

Albanian migrants among dozens of refugees housed in luxury hotel

The luxury living I saw migrants getting on arrival shows the scale of the scandal (by Nigel Farage)

Pearson is engaged in stochastic violence; she pretends to be outraged by the events while pumping out the very rhetoric that inspires them. In September 2022, she wrote in a column headlined Giorgia Meloni isn’t far-Right – she just says what we all think:

Here is a politician who speaks up for the family and the nation. She opposes globalisation which turns men and women into faceless units of consumption. She says yes to secure borders and no to mass migration, yes to sexual identity and no to the alphabetti spaghetti of gender politics.

In her column today, Pearson claimed:

Unlike other European nations, the United Kingdom has not seen the rise of a far-Right or neo-Nazi party. That happy state is now in jeopardy as justifiable public annoyance is stigmatised as racist hatred by a sanctimonious class that largely escapes the consequences of its own idealistic opinions. 

There’s a reason for that: British ‘mainstream’ parties are all too willing to deliver authoritarian cruelty without the branding; they’re convinced by columnists and the need to get newspaper owners on side but it’s also just what they believe.

Beneath rhetoric that barely flapped, let alone soared, Keir Starmer’s ‘promise’ today was to not make things difficult for those who already have it easy. I know this edition will prompt people to scream: “Do you just want the Tories then?” I don’t. I want something better. And I’m not willing to gobble up half-baked editorials made with dangerous ingredients and pretend that I don’t feel sick.

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Thanks to DKD for reading the draft today.

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