UK: Conservatives Don’t Know What They’re Up Against

In his first televised election debate with Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer on Tuesday evening, Rishi Sunak will argue that Starmer “doesn’t have any convictions, he doesn’t have any principles”—that Labour simply wants “power for power’s sake.”

The same case could easily be made against the Conservatives, who after 14 years in office are only now pledging to end the confusion over the legal definition of biological sex and to introduce national service for 18-year-olds. Not to mention all the renewed talk about finally tackling legal and illegal immigration—too little, too late.

But Sunak is wrong to describe Starmer’s Labour as being without convictions. In fact, he “could not be more wrong,” according to small-c conservative author and journalist Peter Hitchens. Hitchens has, in his own words, long urged “patriotic, sensible people to dump this miserable [so-called Conservative] party,” but now “beg[s]” them to “vote against a Starmer government.”

He argues that Starmer doesn’t want to gain office for the sake of it, but because he is “a dedicated dogmatic Leftist.”

We already know that Starmer wants to give children the right to vote, make it easier to change gender and go full throttle on the net zero agenda. It is frightening to imagine what other radical measures he could impose upon Britain should he win a large Parliamentary majority at the July 4th election, as many pollsters expect he will.

The Conservatives’ naive messaging actually does Starmer’s work for him. He wants to appear moderate to voters who still fear that former Labour leader (and overt Leftist) Jeremy Corbyn holds some sway in the party. Tories have latched onto the Labour row (and subsequent U-turn) surrounding Corbyn ally Diane Abbott’s position in the party as a supposed demonstration of Starmer’s flip-flopping and lack of principles. But it actually shows how committed Starmer is to consolidating his power—that is, to getting as many of his own Leftist allies into Parliament as possible so he can wield his strength to push through his own clearly radical agenda.

The Right, said Hitchens, is making the same mistake now as it did in 1997, ahead of then-Labour leader Tony Blair’s election victory, which was painted as a win for the ‘moderates’ despite it bringing about “the total triumph of political correctness in the Civil Service, in schools and universities and in the courts,” as well as

The great wave of mass immigration which transformed the country. It broke up the United Kingdom. It wrecked the House of Lords [Parliament’s unelected upper chamber], kicking out the hereditary peers who were the most independent and honest people in it.

And much more.

Starmer is, however, unlikely to notify Sunak of any of this when the pair ‘clash’ at tomorrow’s debate. After all, the idea that he only wants power “for power’s sake”—rather than to actively do more damage to Britain than the Tories have managed in 14 years—comes across much better than the alternative.