I am not voting Labour

On Friday, Labour will win Great Britain’s general election, and a horde of milquetoast liberals will whoop and hurrah at the victory. They will proclaim that with it comes the arrival of change; they will pat themselves on the back for apparently voting in the lesser of two evils; and convince themselves that, magically, Keir Starmer will become attentive to their needs as Prime Minister (despite having actively resisted doing so for the past 4 years).

Conversely, I will be the Grinch, souring the centrist mood with snarky quips about the current feebleness of British democracy and dysfunctionality of British policy. It is my right to complain after all, as I not only pay the taxes from which government ministers derive their salary, but I also pay a Labour party membership fee. Thus, the next Prime Minister of His Majesty’s government is doubly indebted to me- and I fear that he’s not going to give me my money’s worth, so I must complain.

I joined the Labour party in 2020 because I believed that they were the best hope we had for a brighter future outside of grassroots mobilisation (despite dubious scepticism in Britain’s ability to realise effective radical change). Keir Starmer had spent years prior campaigning with unionised industrial workers to secure better rights from miscreant capitalist CEOs. I believe that one of the first steps to building a better world is through interrogating the relationships between workers and labour, because it is through labour (and the taxes paid on wages) that individuals contribute to our society. They should be treated and compensated fairly considering that. Advocacy on behalf of Britain’s workforce is beneficial because it encourages productivity, boosts morale and ensures that individuals have more in their pocket to spend, increasing GDP1. It’s also morally essential to ensure that work is safe for all. Thus, I was initially enthralled by Keir Starmer’s tirade against exploitation because it made me hopeful that he understood part of what it took to make Britain fairer and economically stronger. His years as Corbyn’s third in command made me hopeful too because that era of Labour was principled on investing in public infrastructure and committing the state to adhere to its citizen’s needs.

Very quickly after he was elected Labour leader, he forsook these great qualities, but not only that, it seems he forsook his humanity and his morals with them. He quickly began parroting Conservative talking points on immigration, policing and race, as if in a baffling mating game with fascism itself. And he began to mercilessly cull his party of any intellectual diversity, persecuting those who dared to advocate for a robust NHS, respectable public housing and benefits, despite having stood on some of these principles himself in a past life. Facetiously, he claimed that this was all in the name of squashing anti-Semitism and returning his party into one that won elections. The Forde report, a 2020 inquiry into divisions within the party, contradicted this. The real reason for the party’s crusade against its left-wing members was that the centrist faction of the party had colluded with Labour’s HQ in a Machiavellian coup against its Left-wing leadership. They syphoned funds out of Corbyn’s campaign during the 2019 election depleting his resources and opportunity to maintain a public presence. These centrist Labour members (also known as Blairites, after their worshipful loyalty to the policies of Tony Blair) bullied members like Dianne Abbott too: in one incident, they referred to her as a b*tch in group chat messages causing her to break out into tears in the Labour HQ toilets. The Labour Files, a documentary by Aljazeera which used whistleblower testimonies to expand upon the findings of the Forde report, showed how malicious this feud was. Blairites went to obscene lengths to co-opt the very real scourge of Antisemitism nationally in order to demonise party members who stood in their way. They also stalked Muslim members and racially profiled them. It was essentially a gang war.

I still remained in the party long after hearing all of this despite being absolutely disgusted by these testimonies. I am not squeamish when it comes to betrayal and corruption in politics. It would be vulgar for me to say something like ‘all is fair in love and war’ because I don’t think this level of racism and corruption is a joke, but as far as I understood, Blairites were passionate about making our country stronger by investing in its public services and pragmatically innovating solutions to infrastructural concerns. Blair was famous for ingeniously quelling the tensions between the interests of the private sector and the public sector; and for generally being uber-attentive to concerns within domestic policy. So I was naïvely ambivalent to much of the feuding because I trusted that these policies were the core concern of Blairites rather than political careerism. I only cared about the racism and bullying that its members had faced in the process and trusted that some remedy would come to this in due course.

It’s been four years since the Forde Report and the Labour Files were unearthed and Keir Starmer’s Labour party have done everything in their power to shun it. I don’t know how complicit Keir Starmer himself was in the scandalous behaviour mentioned in those reports, but I do know that he has actively chosen to ignore their implications. Numerous thoroughly documented instances of aggression against black and brown folk and women were not enough for him to see a problem with his party. Ludicrously, many black and brown folk and women will urge us to vote Labour because it’ll apparently listen to the public more than the Tories will, but the party’s internal conduct shows that to be diabolically untrue.

My biggest gripe with Keir Starmer though is how void of ambition he is. The man is politically dead, and the maggots of Conservatism are sprouting deplorably in his tomb. He has been given the opportunity time and time again to propose promising solutions to key infrastructural problems and he has failed to say anything worthwhile each time! All he has done is refuse to challenge the Conservatives on their insidious authoritarianism. When it’s time to speak, his party is as loud as a graveyard in the dead of night. Even when it’s safe to speak and carve out his own voice, he’s still mute. 

The UK is in a constitutional crisis at the moment: all of the devolved regions (Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales) are facing growing independent movements and the Good Friday agreement, which was put in place to create peace in Ireland, is under threat as a result of Brexit. It would have been of no harm for Keir Starmer to have publicly proposed a solution to this problem when it arose. It would have shown dynamism and proactiveness. The issue of policing and women’s safety are key concerns too: the policy approach of over-policing marginalised groups has been tried and tried again to no success and negative perceptions towards the police have made it insurmountably unpopular. However, in Scotland, the public health approach which uses a cohesive management of public services like schools, hospitals, and third spaces to mitigate crime was effective in addressing their murder rates2. Thus, he has a case study to build upon and adapt to our current context.

Politicians are our employees and all good employees work dynamically to please their bosses. Tony Blair was one of the best British politicians of all time (until he went to Iraq) because he understood this in some way: his 1997 manifesto was a bold attack on convention and a resounding statement of optimism that aimed to please citizens of all backgrounds. Keir Starmer is a lazy employee who has failed to take from that example. Despite having called upon Tony Blair for advice a magnanimous number of times, he still doesn’t seem to understand what it is that made him so successful. He hasn’t risen up to be the voice of the people, he hasn’t even risen up to provide himself a voice. He has been slow and ineffective on every major issue of our time, and has shown no sign of developing a sense of dynamism any time soon.

Admittedly, there have been some instances where he has shown promise. For example, he commissioned a list of constitutional reforms from ex-Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2022, which included increasing the power of local mayors and councillors to enable effective change on a regional level, and of the different countries in the United Kingdom. That would have remedied the constitutional crisis left in the wake of Brexit and it could potentially give local councils more funding for third spaces/cultural centres, health services, schools etc. Those policies, though, have been left out of Labour’s 2024 manifesto. Keir Starmer also pledged £28bn a year on climate policy if he was elected Prime Minister but he did a U-turn on that two months ago. He’s announced reforms to the UK’s housing system but all he’s stated is that he wants to introduce a Renter’s Charter, which sounds like a vague imitation of the Conservative’s proposed Renter’s Reform Bill. He’s also stated that he’s going to attack the supply-side of housing, which could mean a number of effective things (i.e. he’s going to build more houses, he’s going to make house prices more affordable, he’s going to reduce regulation on house building), but he hasn’t actually specified what he means when he says this so it’s still unclear and it also means that he hasn’t committed to anything we can hold him accountable to. Almost every move he’s made from a policy perspective has been lacklustre and pussyfooted. If I was a teacher and he was my student, I would give him a D for failing to answer the questions on his exam. I would also give him a detention for being annoying. But I’m not his teacher, I’m his boss (as all of us taxpayers are), so I’m giving him a sanction by not voting for the Labour Party tomorrow.

Deplorably, his track record on recent social issues has been poor too. His role in manufacturing consent from the British public for the genocide in Gaza is shocking. A man who comfortably insists that it would be permissible for innocent families to be deprived of water and electricity as they’re bombed and tortured en masse is a psychopath; and a politician who coerces the members of his party to abstain on preventing a genocide is a murderer. 

The notion that Keir Starmer is the lesser of two evils or that his party is capable of listening to the Great British public is ludicrous. For us to exorcise the demons of genocidal complicity that possess this monster, we would need to pin him down and contend ceaselessly with God to bring light to his soul. 

The Labour party relies heavily on its diverse voters to win elections and it is shameful that it has spat in their faces time and time again with actions like this. Labour has been elected to represent countless diverse voters who feel some regional, religious or other affinity to the Palestinian plight and it has paid no care to their pleas to advocate for a ceasefire and stop the UK from supporting Israel’s genocide. It is no longer a representative democracy when democratically elected leaders do not represent their constituents. It is even less of a democracy when you have Keir Starmer threatening to fire MPs from their job if they vote for what’s right.

Outside of this though, Starmer’s approach to Gaza represents a competency issue as well as a moral one. What I look for in any politician is a keen sense of diplomacy. The West hails itself as a beacon of peace and morality. Whilst it fails to attain this standard regularly, its rare moments of diplomacy, are where it shows its flair and politicians who enact effective diplomacy effectively are memorialised as heroes by history. Diplomacy requires politicians to be eloquent speakers, effective written communicators, creative problem-solvers, patient thinkers, meticulous workers, knowledgeable students of history, astute geographers and determined rationalists. The delivery of the Good Friday agreement in Ireland was a triumph for this reason and the situation in Gaza poses the opportunity for another victory of liberal diplomacy. Since the 1948 invasion of Palestine by the British, the West have been instrumental in causing havoc in that region. Rulings of injustice from the UN, the ICJ and other international bodies over recent years have given them ample incentive to clean up their mess but they’ve flagrantly disregarded any of this. Israel-Gaza needs diplomacy because it is sucking up vital resources from the UK’s public spending and the death toll is indefensible now. Starmer’s inability to step in where Sunak has failed on international policy is so underwhelming. His blind devotion to Israel lacks nuance and tactfulness. He should be developing a route to peace from the opposition bench to reveal the weaknesses in the Conservative’s approach, but it seems that he is incapable of opposing Conservatism. Thus, he is incapable of opposing its incompetence, corruption and deceit too. 

Ukraine is another cause for diplomacy, and the UK has spent £7.6bn of its taxpayers money on military assistance there despite it being clear that Ukraine was losing from the beginning. That’s why Starmer and Sunak’s international policy approaches are so frightening to me: if they can’t look for diplomacy in Gaza where the side of the aggressor is indebted to us, they probably won’t be able to enact diplomacy in Russia where the losing side is the one side we have stakes in. If they don’t end the war in Ukraine soon, Russia will probably launch an attack on Poland and other neighbouring countries that are allied with the West in some way. The weaker the West’s influence in Eastern Europe, the more the global power rankings shift out of our favour. In both Gaza and Ukraine, searching for a solution is the smartest and cheapest thing to do, but Starmer doesn’t seem to care about making intelligent choices.

It is very likely that it is bribery that has bought Starmer’s wits. His health minister, Wes Streeting, has accepted numerous donations from private insurance companies. Many of Labour’s members have accepted donations from Israeli lobby groups. Starmer himself has enjoyed a fancifully cordial relationship with Rupert Murdoch, who’s press business has been known to operate much like a think-tank organisation that opposes pro-climate and pro-immigration policies as well as others.

I originally had hope in Starmer as the perfect opposition to the establishment and a voice for the people. His early façade concealed his woeful spinelessness but his true colours quickly emerged. He has been a terrible leader of the opposition and he will be an even worse Prime Minister judging by his track record. The UK has been riddled with calamitous austerity, a cost-of-living crisis and numerous other crises. The Conservatives may have caused it but Labour are adamant on not solving it. An election result where Labour wins, but haemorrhages many of its vote to apathetic citizens who have lost faith in the establishment would be a great outcome. Thus, voting independent or green or spoiling your ballot sends the right message that we have taken note of its failings and have autonomy in the face of a failed democracy.

Autonomy is vital in this time of tragedy. Resilience and dynamism will be necessary in the years to come. We have the God-given powers of free speech, a conscience, bodies to move with and intellects to solve problems with. Keir Starmer, the disobedient employee we will be charged with managing over the next 5 years, will leave us a mountain of tasks to complete ourselves. We should take up our powers and communally enact solutions to these as best we can (you can find a list of ways to do this here). An attentiveness to politics both at home and abroad will also be key because this is one of the most pivotal moments in history and we have an incompetent scoundrel in office who has allowed this nation to backslide into autocracy. God save our souls.