Starmer and Reeves are now a threat to British democracy

Labour lied to us. It deceived us. It sold itself on a false prospectus. It perverted every democratic norm to orchestrate one of the greatest political heists of all times, promising voters they would be electing one kind of government – centre-Left, technocratic, boring – while delivering instead a radically socialist and authoritarian administration.

The situation is extremely grave. Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have normalised dissembling as routine communication. Their agenda is built on fabrications and fantasy. They have robbed Labour of its moral legitimacy. They have deprived it of its intangible authority. They have broken a sacred compact with the electorate, and they are almost supernaturally unpopular.

I do not write this lightly, but Starmer and Reeves have become a threat to British democracy: they must go as soon as possible. Our institutions cannot function if voters (and even the Cabinet and senior officials) cannot trust anything their PM and Chancellor says. The system can cope with ordinary political dishonesty, but not with this level of lying.

It doesn’t matter whether Starmer planned to pull off his confidence trick, or whether he fell into it out of desperation, uselessness or after bullying by his “soft Left”. It is an unforgivable betrayal either way. Voters feel disenfranchised and listless.

The Budget was based on the greatest political lie since Tony Blair’s dodgy Iraq war dossier: Reeves and Starmer knew there was no black hole in the public finances, and yet pretended – to the media, to the public, to markets – that the OBR had told them that there was, all the better to ram through tax increases to pay for more welfare.

Yet this was merely the grossest untruth in a shameful list. We were told in the manifesto that taxes would rise by £8.5bn, and yet they have already been jacked up by £68bn a year. We were promised, laughably, that Reeves’s spending plans were fully costed. The manifesto pledged that National Insurance and income tax wouldn’t rise, and yet employers’ NI (borne by workers) has been hiked savagely, as has income tax on dividends, savings and rents. Reeves swore in a Sunday Telegraph interview that she wouldn’t be imposing a wealth tax or any kind of mansion tax, and is now rushing to do just that, pulverising property rights.

There was no mention in the manifesto of universal digital IDs and yet they now represent a core plank of Starmer’s vision for the modern welfare state, another remaking of the relationship between citizen and state that threaten civil liberties and data security. This may not have been a lie per se but it certainly was an unacceptable omission from a manifesto drawn up so recently. Labour also promised not to undo Brexit, but a surrender seems underway here too.

There was also no discussion of scrapping trial by jury for numerous offences, an even more monstrous attack on our liberties and customs, and yet David Lammy now wants to ditch Magna Carta, one of Britain’s greatest gifts to human civilisation.

The manifesto was silent on legalising assisted dying, another explosive policy. This might be fine if it were genuinely a matter of conscience for MPs, as Labour insists, but in reality the Government is clearly implicitly supportive of this exceptionally ill-conceived revolution. As to welfare, Starmer insisted the two-child benefit cap was key to controlling welfare – until he suddenly realised that scrapping it was the most important policy he could be pursuing. The election debates were a farce.

There are two ways to understand representative democracy. The romantic take is that parties pitch, voters choose carefully which personalities, vision and policies they prefer, and winners implement their pre-agreed plan to the best of their ability.

The demos, the people, have power – kratos – but it is exercised through their agents, the politicians, who treat voters with respect. The world looked more like this in the 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher’s Tories fought Neil Kinnock’s Labour.

Those of us who care passionately about democracy, who believe in an open society and in Britain’s traditional liberties, are desperate for a return to this kind of politics: it would re-engage voters, restore trust and facilitate genuine debate about how to reboot Britain. It would allow power to be clawed back from technocrats, lawyers and unelected international bureaucrats.

The second position on democracy is bleaker, but more realistic in the Britain of 2025: it posits that politicians are often incompetent liars who will promise anything, before proceeding to do whatever they want once in power, breaking every promise, collecting freebies, enjoying their ministerial cars, bribing voters with their own cash and accelerating the nation’s ruination.

This cynical take is a more accurate depiction of politics in today’s Britain, especially under this despicable Labour Government. Representative democracy becomes merely the least bad system on offer: as Sir Karl Popper put it, it simply allows the public to peacefully remove governments from power every few years, in orderly fashion.

Yet this minimalist case isn’t enough, or sustainable. Older voters switch off. The young are desperate for inspirational leadership to build a better world. Many are coming to the wrong conclusion: that democracy is out of date, for wimps, incapable of rising to the challenge. Some are turning to extremists: Islamists, fascists, radical Greens, Stalinists, Nazis.

An Onward poll shows that 38 per cent of 18 to 34 year-olds have a positive view of “a military strongman with no government or elections as a way of running the UK”. A Channel 4 poll finds that 52 per cent of Gen-Zers believe “the UK would be a better place if a strong leader was in charge who does not have to bother with parliament and elections”. The real answer: we need better politicians.

Starmer and Reeves’s culture of lies will have turned the young even more against democracy. The Labour leadership’s intolerable behaviour is poisoning the well. It cannot be allowed to stand.

It’s time to cheer on our unlikely allies, backbench Labour MPs. The sooner they launch their coup the better. The next PM-Chancellor duumvirate may be even worse than Starmer-Reeves, but it is hard to see how they could be any less honest.

[Source: Daily Telegraph]