My weekly Comment Column in the daily Plymouth Herald (23.6.26), glad to see the back of Starmer! One thing at a time…he’s a neoliberal free market bureaucrat for the Capitalist Class, championing Israel’s genocide and Trump’s imperialism, and smashing into working class living standards and worker’s rights to accumulate more wealth and power at the top. There’s more, far more, but, in short, good riddance to the slimeball.

Burnham is quite probably to the Right of him, so there really is no alternative to collective class struggle on the streets and workplaces.

The unedited version below or enlarge the picture to read the printed version.

Starmer Only United the Nation Against Him!

“Starmer’s Toast!” runs one headline. The sixth UK Prime Minister in just ten years has only one legacy: Starmer united the entire country…against him. Of course, the historic dislike of Starmer, the most disliked Prime Minister in British history, represented a failure on all fronts. He alienated all, Left, Right and Centre.

For the far-Right, Starmer was not racist and authoritarian enough, for the Middle the global crisis stopped any progressive reforms. For the Left his appeasement of the ultra-nationalists, warmongers, Zionists and climate deniers had no link with a Labour Party based upon representation of the working class.

All of this is unlikely to be changed by the seventh Prime Minister in a decade. Tensions are heightened in this time of polycrisis. Could Starmer have done better? Certainly. But he was specifically installed as a corporate careerist managing a short-term systemic restructuring of The Party plc.

Starmer inherited the largest-ever membership numbers in an active Labour Party. His back-stabbing treachery and continuing vengeance against Corbyn and Corbynistas emptied-out the Party’s activist base at the behest of his wealthy donors, the capitalist elite benefactors of media entrepreneurs, bankers, oil and arms companies.

Trade unions funding the Labour Party were neglected and delivered far-short by comparison with Labour’s corporate whoring.

Despite the Labour Party’s complete reliance on the tens of millions in funding from the trade unions, he knocked us aside. Starmer copied and amplified many of the policies of the previous Tory governments that had bled-dry the Exchequer and handed our tax-billions across to the private sector.

He alone cannot be blamed for the crisis of housing and health services, nor the maintenance of four million working class children living in poverty. But his immediate support for the Tories’ two-child benefit cap (poor judgement) and cuts to disabilities funding provoked universal distrust from the beginning, and stayed despite U-turns.

The far-Right and Reform UK were the sole benefactors of Starmer’s bureaucratic elitism, No 10’s careerists completely cut-off from our day-to-day lives and pandering to brutal neo-fascist demands of vengeance against refugees arriving in boats, offering no safe route for asylum. These past two years have materialised an ideological and violent assault on democracy and human rights characterised best by the race-riots in Belfast that Starmer failed to call-out as terrorism.

Under Starmer, Labour sought to prove its nationalist credentials, echoing calls to restore Britain’s empire and bowing to Trump despite constant rebuffs. He committed to raising defence spending to 3.5% of GDP as the world’s third biggest spender on nuclear armaments – illegal weapons of indiscriminate mass murder – at the expense of our welfare.

Let’s be clear, Starmer slashed disability welfare; armed a genocide; arrested pensioners for protesting against genocide; allowed Trump our bases to bomb Iran; diminished rights to trial by jury; appointed a convicted child sex offender’s best pal as us ambassador; ripped up Indefinite Leave to Remain rules plunging migrants into homelessness and fear.

And, given that the climate crisis threatens every element of our social fabric, means of production, security and stability, Starmer’s readiness to cut cash for transition away from fossil fuels exemplifies the hypocrisy of a State tied to the billionaire corporations rather than our basic human requirements.

What now? We should expect more of the same. No new leader can change the general conditions. The next Labour Prime Minister, whoever, will continue the austerity assault on the majority and follow in the footsteps of Starmer’s demise. Unless directly challenged, the far-Right will continue to grow out of the disillusionment with democracy.

This epoch of instability and collapse of the old world order demands a socialist revolution, to oppose the racists and fascists, redistribute the disgusting levels of wealth from the corporations and restore working class living standards.

We should not rely upon politicians – the future is ours to create. That requires extra-parliamentary activity, for an end to war, an end to fossil-fuelled industry, and end to poverty. We have to fight for ourselves as workers, in collective activity that challenges power at the top. This means campaigning on the streets, and in our workplaces for progressive policies based upon worker’s rights and social justice.

The heat is on, and with millions of workers suffering from record temperatures this week, the immediate demand is for a top temperature after which we are not expected to work but still get paid – just like the statutory minimum temperature. That’ll make a far greater difference to worker’s lives than any new Prime Minister. Everybody out on Heat Strike this Thursday!