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‘The Character of Britain’

It should be The Character of the British Regime under Starmer, for Britain is not Labour or the regime.
  • “Labour approved more arms sales than the Conservatives permitted over the previous four years… [W]e cannot accuse Starmer of ‘inaction’ or ‘complicity’. For he is not a bystander, but a perpetrator… [A]n adamantine commitment to upholding the interests of the powerful which sanctions even the most intense forms of violence, including the crime of genocide.
  • “Rather than trying to resolve the war in Ukraine, Starmer proposed a major provocation: sending UK troops to the front line as part of a ‘coalition of the willing’. Rather than calming tensions with China, his government inflamed them by announcing that it is ‘ready to fight’ in the Pacific.”
  • Palestine Action. “The decree is without precedent in British history. Never before has the state taken such extreme measures to eradicate a protest movement.
  • “During his time in office, environmentalists have reportedly received the harshest jail terms ever handed down to peaceful protesters in Britain.
  • “Labour’s brutality abroad and repression at home are both heavily racialised, with new police powers and ‘antisocial behaviour’ laws often deployed against communities of colour.
  • “Once they took the reins of government, Labour duly launched a ferocious assault on migrants: ramping up immigration raids and summarily ejecting people from the country, while broadcasting the lurid footage on social media.
  • “The PM became well versed in inciting racial hatred: channelling Enoch Powell to claim that Britain has become an ‘island of strangers.
  • “While splashing out on more bombs and stronger borders, the government also slashed vital services.
  • “Labour also announced that it would retain the Conservatives’ two-child benefit cap, despite the policy pushing eighty children into poverty each day.”

Summary: “Genocide in the Middle East to protect the US–Israeli order from Palestinian resistance. Authoritarianism to defend ‘British culture’ from the corrupting influence of protesters and migrants. Austerity to safeguard the privileges of investors against groups like pensioners and benefits claimants. Starmerism was nothing more than the fortification of these power structures against perceived threats from outside. This was not quite the politics of New Labour, defined by faith in free markets and the cult of modernisation. It was a politics of our present: an age of anxiety, in which the establishment strives to root out agents of disruption in the interest of stability.”

Full article: Oliver Eagleron on Labour under Starmer

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