UK: Believe Starmer When He Says He Wants To “Transform” the Country

Labour doesn’t want to get into government for the sake of holding power—it wants to radically transform the country. Leader Sir Keir Starmer has been quite open about this, even if he hasn’t been clear about what exactly he intends to change.

Starmer said earlier this week—and not for the first time—that he hopes to spend at least 10 years as UK prime minister, during which time he will implement “fundamental” reforms.

A decade indicates how long I think it’s going to take for the fundamental change which will see a country transformed, and that years later people will be able to look back and say, “that was a real game-changing government.”

His party’s manifesto doesn’t say much about what shape this transformation might take. But what we do know of Labour’s plans—to irreversibly remove large quantities of Parliament’s power and hand it to bodies filled with more Leftists—is bad enough. Likewise, cranking the green agenda up to 11 and making it easier to change gender. So too is what we know about Starmer’s political past (and, crucially, present).

Hence a warning from eminent historian David Starkey at an event in London earlier this month regarding Labour’s “determination to create a one-party state”—one ruled, Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens adds, by “the most Left wing government this country has ever had.”

Yet most of Labour’s opponents still appear not to have grasped any of this. It makes sense for Nigel Farage and Reform to play down the threat of Labour—to say that Starmer and his team are only in it “for their careers”—so as to not scare supporters into voting Conservative in order to limit Labour’s power.

But why—unless, as many are increasingly, half-jokingly suggesting, they actually want to lose the election—are the Conservatives not using these points to their advantage? Despite all that is known about Starmer’s programme, prime minister Rishi Sunak continues to trot out the line—as predictable as it is false—that his opponent has “no plan.” He’d be much wiser to make it absolutely clear that Starmer does have a plan, and that nobody (save for a few radical establishment types) wants to see it put through.

After 14 years of betrayal, this is the one argument that the Tories have going for them. And they’re too dimwitted to realise it.