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England and Wales’ top judge, Lady Carr, is “deeply troubled” by last week’s PMQ exchanges between Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch about a Palestinian family from Gaza seeking sanctuary in the UK.
The family applied through a scheme reserved for Ukrainians. (Desperate people try desperate means. And anyway, why is there an ethnic hierarchy for asylum seekers?) Their claim was dismissed, but an appeal was allowed by senior tribunal judges this January.
Badenoch mauled the Prime Minister for this judicial decision. He capitulated: “She’s right. It’s the wrong decision,” and promised to work on “closing the loophole”.
Starmer used to be a respected lawyer who upheld the independence of the judiciary. Now, as a politician, he is more squalid than Liz Truss or Boris Johnson. They never swayed from their political credos – you knew who they were. Starmer is a shape-shifter, apparently with no attachment to the history of, or commitments to, human rights previously made by the party he leads.
I wonder, has he impressed Morgan McSweeney, Labour’s Dominic Cummings? In Get In, a new book on Starmer and his party, Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund claim McSweeney thinks the PM is like an HR manager. Well, look at him now! Mainstreaming the demonisation of migrants and various other populist messages and policies. Labour publishes TV footage of forced deportations and vows to deny citizenship for ever to all adult refugees who arrive via irregular routes, even those with leave to remain i.e. legitimate reasons to seek asylum.
Christina McAnea, the general secretary of Unison, a backer of Starmer, and nine Church of England bishops are among 148 signatories to a letter warning these policies could encourage “a toxic politics” and validate far-right tactics to “bring hate and disorder to our streets”.
A party which espoused enlightened values and internationalism is today a monolithic, absolutist, undemocratic and uncivilised entity. Labour has become disdainful of voters who value equality, justice, redistribution, fair wages, compassion, humane immigration laws, diversity and inclusion or cultural heterogeneity. We are the party’s most reliable base and they treat us as the enemy within. How did this happen?
First, Starmer’s coterie purged left-wingers, then antisemites – some real, some imagined – then performatively stood firmly with Israel while showing little empathy for Palestinians – remember Starmer saying Israel “has the right” to withhold power and water from Gaza in the days after the Hamas attacks?
After Dianne Abbott was subjected to atrocious racist attacks by a Tory donor, Starmer and his circle expressed concern, but, as she writes in her book, to her it felt insincere because they were, at the same time, plotting her exit. She won her seat again in the last election.
In the same election, Faiza Shaheen, a respected economist and equality campaigner, was dropped because of tweets she had liked about Israel. Her candidacy in Chingford, Iain Duncan Smith’s constituency, was endorsed by local activists. She could have won. Several others were also cancelled. Loyalists, however, were rewarded with seats. McSweeney’s wife was one of the lucky ones.
Now Labour comes down hard against immigration and those on benefits, including disabled people. Meanwhile they court, flatter and service the needs of the moneyed.
All this to win over Reform voters – the only political game in town. Middle-class and liberal voters are disparaged and sidelined by the Tories, Reform and now Labour, even though we are the people who vote, pay proper taxes, volunteer, and care about the state of our nation. Minorities are disregarded too, in Labour’s case, because as one of Starmer’s circle told me, “They will vote for us whatever. And you will too. They are our captive voters.”
This captive will break out. If Starmer seeks only to appeal to Reform enthusiasts, if he believes we will back blue Labour, however reluctantly, he is misguided. Some liberals will stay faithful, because Labour is their tribe, but many of us have had enough already.
Even though I admire and like our hard-working local MP Rupa Huq, if the party carries on marching to the right, it will not get my vote. I may even spoil my ballot paper in protest.
In 1987, I joined an elite network, which, at the time was called the Successor Generation, now the British-American Project. It’s mission is to ensure young influencers maintain the “special relationship” between the US and the UK.
I was a newbie journalist, and excited when a letter arrived asking me to go to lunch at an exclusive venue. Around 40 of us ate and talked as mysterious figures circulated and listened. I was among the chosen ones.
For a week each year we met, either in the UK or US, and fraternised with the powerful, went to banquets, attended fab events and participated in discussions. My first jamboree was in St Louis. Over the following six years I met many extraordinary people (some loathsome ones too) learned to debate with adversaries and made some lasting friendships.
But the emphasis on an idealised special relationship felt like indoctrination and was, also, patently unequal. How many times can one endure Americans spouting off about how our health service is a failure because it is socialist? Or that Black lone mums are doing it for state cash? I stopped attending.
Donald Trump’s awful politics are creating mass revulsion among our people. They now see the special relationship was always unequal. We were the supplicants, they the masters. Perhaps now we can liberate ourselves from that unholy deal and American dominance.
I met Georgina Jackson, young, smart, with a mass of black curls, and greenish eyes. She works as a PA for Peter York, a friend, who famously co-wrote the Sloane Ranger, a book on class, manners and style. His latest brilliant book, A Dead Cat On Your Table, examines the way we are politically manipulated.
Georgina suggested we have coffee. So we met, sipped mochas, talked and talked. She takes photographs of dancers in old working men’s clubs and edgy, secret venues, of lovers kissing and young snappy dressers. They are as evocative as old French movie posters. She opened my eyes to another London.
Message to oldies: befriend the young instead of resenting them. It’s the best way to stay young.
Our son gave us tickets for a show at Ronnie Scott’s, the famous old Soho Jazz club, and some money to buy lunch too. Matt Holborn and his band were celebrating the American jazz violinist Stuff Smith who was a big name in the first half of the last century.
It was packed. Mr Brown is a jazz buff – I find the stuff he likes too abstract and cacophonic. But this music was celestial, rapturous. Carried away, I knocked my wine glass. It broke, cut my finger. The band stopped, checked I was OK. Who does that? Bought the CD. Find them and buy it. They deserve to be better-known.
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