Keir Starmer. The one-term Labour Prime Minister who believed in nothing and so protected no-one.

Nesrine Malik in The Guardian today is right [The Democrats are in deep trouble in the US – and Labour is on the way to joining them] Starmer is the UK's Biden; a brief reactive intermission in the grotesque far right takeover of society. His fate is sealed because he believes in nothing and has left the stage completely open for those who do believe in things - like nationalism, prejudice, hate and xenophobia.  

The day after Starmer won the election, he addressed the nation from Downing Street. He said the following words: 

“From now on, you have a government unburdened by doctrine, guided only by a determination to serve your interests.”

Though it got little attention, as a trans woman trying to survive in a country that was already hurtling towards bigotry and discrimination at a speed no-one could have predicted a few years before, I found it a deeply chilling remark. I wrote on this blog about it at the time.

It was said by him, I imagine, because he judged the country to be tired of the deranged, ideologically-based mess that was consecutive Tory administrations. It was also, in my view, said because he himself has never had a heartfelt political belief in his life. 

In speaking this way, Starmer lost the next election on day one. 

Using his own political emptiness as a guide, he seemed to be referencing not just the previous governments' beliefs or the nationally-suicidal way they had performed power, but the idea of beliefs at all. 

'Doctrines', as he called them, are simply organising constructs that allow us to interpret and guide us in the world. You might call them principles, or ideologies; phenomena that have been forces for both enormous good and evil in human history. The abolition of slavery, the extension of voting rights, the fight against Nazism in the Second World War, the creation of the United Nations, the establishment of equality laws in this country and others, and literally countless other examples, all came about as a consequence of doctrines. In each case, human beings clung to the North Star that they represented even when setbacks occurred. Ideologies - doctrines - principles - ethics - call them what you like - provided a secure philosophical, psychological and emotional base from which to try again, often against the odds. They were responses to the world, to its features, its unfairness, its possible destiny. They took analysis of the human condition and created around that a guiding vision to follow, and to share with others in the hope that they would be persuaded by it and follow it too.

Of course, doctrines have also produced in human beings the most horrific cruelty and horror. Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, the Rwandan genocide, Trump and MAGA, and most recently the genocide in Gaza being conducted by an Israeli government in the grip of a murderous ideology spouted by far-right voices without which it cannot survive. 

Doctrines are one of the most powerful creations of human civilisation. Inherently neither good nor bad, they are often magnetic. People are drawn to them for comfort and hope, particularly when times are hard. Societies that thought they could do without them entirely are dead in the water when social problems arise that are hard to solve, because they have nowhere to look for meaning or guidance. The Weimar Republic in 1931 fell apart under pressure from economic disaster and Nazi provocation because it could not tell a meaningful story to the German people around which political parties and voters could coalesce. The result was a government obsessed with a murderous doctrine that appealed to a people starved or certainty and hope. Organised religion has also been deploying doctrine of course - it's called belief, or faith - for millennia, sometimes with homicidal effects too.

Starmer, claiming to be doctrine-free, is staring down both barrels of a bitter and hate-filled, political shotgun now, held by those who have plenty of doctrine . And without a set of beliefs around which the Prime Minister can persuasively invite people to rally - without either the personal interest in nor the ability to make the arguments for those beliefs - his fate seems already sealed. 

I wrote first about all this shortly after the Labour election victory last year (in this post), drawing on CP Taylor's chilling play Good - a Nazi-era tale of warning about what happens when self-regarding, 'liberal' human beings imagine that they can live without principle and make tactical bargains with hate and prejudice - all the way to Auschwitz. In her excellent review of a recent production of Good staring David Tennant as the German everyman, Halder, Arifa Akbar wrote: 

'What Taylor shows, and Tennant conveys so unnervingly, is that a lack of principle and ideological zeal can in fact create the zealot. “I don’t believe in evil,” his lover tells him, but for Halder the bigger problem is belief itself. His slide into inhumanity comes about because of his not caring for others enough and not believing in anything enough...'

Starmer's inability to see any of this is extant a year later. It's all gone to pieces not only because of his lack of guiding principles but because of the second part of the statement quoted at the head of this piece from his first ever speech in government, his commitment to be..."guided only by a determination to serve your interests". 

It seemed like an anodyne, inoffensive remark - the kind of filler that all politicians spout when they get given power but want to sound humble. Yet in the context of the words he had just said - about the abandonment of doctrine - it rang huge alarm bells for me. Having said that he was going to exit the conversation about what was in "your interests" by having no beliefs of his own, he left the door wide open to others have plenty.

Even worse, he kept doing it. He spent his first months after being elected telling the country how bad things were and how they weren't going to improve for a long time whilst simultaneously throwing members of his own party out when they voted on principle against his attempts to make marginalised people's lives worse. This he did whilst being unable to express any kind of balancing 'vision' of why, in his view, proposals to cut benefits or winter fuel payments would be of long-term benefit, leaving many to surmise that he didn't have a vision, or even an answer to that question beyond bald cost savings - not one that he could express and defend at least. 

Responding simply to the "interests" of the electorate without engaging with them in a discussion, or putting forward a view about how those interests are best served is perhaps the final chapter in the Blairite project of Policy by Focus Group (full disclosure, I was there, in that industry watching it happen). It also assumes that most people have a fully formed, rational and robust model in their heads of their interests, and - critically - how to get them met - across a whole range of questions.

In one basic respect, people obviously do understand what is in their own interest. Reflecting on questions of quality of life and standard of living, for example, it is in my interest to have an NHS that can see me quickly, treat me and cure me, or for me to be able to send my children to a school that has enough skilled teachers in a building that isn't about to collapse. It is in my interest to be able to have a job and to be paid a living wage for it. It is my interest to be able to find somewhere decent to live and to be able to afford the rent. 

But beyond knowing essentially what we want or need, many of us start to get much more hazy about what has to happen in the country so that we can get these needs satisfied. This is where politicians (who have the power to change society) and newspaper editors (who have the power to influence both those politicians and members of the public who read what they write) come in. Their stock-in-trade is interpreting need and developing ideas about solutions for them. Society is set up this way - few of us have an Economics Masters or a PPE degree from Oxford and a career in dull political think tanks to draw upon when we reflect on these questions. We're mostly just trying to get by, and for some people that's a pretty hard task.

A key role of politicians and the media is to reflect the reality that we may not have the expertise, experience, resource, time or even interest in working out the solutions to the issues that affect us. That's their job. So they say, 'If this is what you need then this is what you should care about, vote for, or believe in. This is the solution'. 

It's a filthy game of course, at its worst (and its often at its very worst now), a kind of dark, unethical salesmanship built on inequality, greed and the obsession with control. The ability to manipulate this conversation, by suggesting solutions principally constructed to suit the ends of those with power, and who want to keep, using lies, distraction and the creation of scapegoats, is well understood. Marx was writing about this phenomenon as long ago as 1870* The trick for those involved in it is to communicate seemingly plausible (and usually ludicrously simple) 'answers' to complex problems, suggesting that people's needs will be met - whilst actually taking advantage of the situation to take more power or wealth themselves. For the darkest players of this charade, narcissistic self-aggrandisement is the aim. Just take a look at Trump.

Labour used to be part of this conversation, putting its view on what the answers could be. Some of us thought that for all its faults it was a party that stood in good faith for a set of ideas that generally could result in a fairer, more equal, more decent country. If you worried about getting summarily fired from your job, the answer Labour used to give was to join a Union. If you worried about not being able to feed your family, the answer it used to give was to vote Labour and it would help you keep more of your earnings whilst those with plenty and who could afford it, paid some more. If you worried about not being able to afford the gas or electric or water bills, Labour said that it would put these utilities in the hands of the state to ensure that their aim was to serve the citizens of Britain, not rich shareholders. 

Labour used to say these things - they had a doctrine, if you like. 

Not any more. Now Labour says nothing.

But others have plenty to say. Their voices fill the void that that Labour used to occupy, exploiting the suffering of people who feel that their lives are deteriorating, with a stream of lies and fantasies.

What happens if I can't get a GP appointment or a council flat and, in the face of Labour's silence, I am told that the reason for it is that brown-skinned people are arriving on the Kent coast in boats? Politicians from Badenoch to Jenrick to Farage are lining up to say that, competing with each other to simplify their answers and to make them more inhumane each week.

What if I am never told that the real reason is that the NHS has been starved of resources and political direction for 15 years, that doctors from the EU and elsewhere have left and that junior doctors' pay is now over 15% lower in real terms than it was in 2010** meaning that more are leaving and fewer want to train? What if I am never told that the money could have been invested instead of being spent on supporting the tax benefits of wealthy, mortgage-free pensioners?

What if I am never told that the disaster for council property started in the 1980s when a Conservative government encouraged the sale of millions of houses and flats, many of which were never replaced? Or that private landlords hiking rents have thrown more and more people out of private rented accommodation, placing further demands on the shrinking council sector? Or that councils' ability to build homes has been crucified by being starved of cash as successive governments tried to centralise power? Or that in fact just 15% of social housing in the UK is occupied by people born outside the UK - a smaller percentage than this group represents in the population as a whole?***

What happens when none of these things are heard? The field is left to those who will tell other stories - of hate and prejudice. Who will welcome an increasingly captive, and often confused, audience with simple solutions, faux-sympathy and shared outrage, whilst lying all the more. These voices will create community with those who waited to hear a different story but who now cannot anymore - locked, as they soon are by the platform capitalists whose monetary interests align with those who wish to fragment society not heal it, into online bubbles of outrage and revenge fantasy?

It's all happened before. Of course, Brexit - the biggest foreign and economic policy disaster in the modern era - was fuelled by all this, and the first indications of what would come next were made clear. People who were waiting months or years for an operation were told that it would be their interest to vote Leave because then the £350 million a week that Britain was "giving to the EU" could be used to fund the NHS. Everything about that statistic was a lie, but it did its job. Now the inhabitants of Britain, with its shit-infested rivers and coastlines, its falling life expectancy, its businesses crippled with costs to access European markets, its people denied the opportunity to live and work in Europe - or even pass through European airports without queues (and from 2026 facing a visa-waiver style system for which they'll need to pay) watch as refugees arrive in small boats - after their country gave up the legal right to send them back by voting to leave the EU.

Meanwhile, the man with no beliefs, no doctrine, no ideology, watches, bending in the face of this hurricane but with no seeming answer to it. His only efforts revolve around flattering and placating the hate. It's like feeding a starving, rabid dog - it just encourages it to come back for more. 

I have skin in this game. People like me have been on the sharp end of cultural hate in Britain for some years now, and with the government and its 'equalities' law regulator set to throw trans people completely under the bus by removing our basic and long-standing human rights of access to spaces on which we depend (like toilets) in the autumn, we know that the witch-hunt is far from over. After The Supreme Court's incomprehensible, shock ruling in April which erased 50 years of legal understanding and public policy, the country became the most legally trans-hostile nation in Europe. Though, as 'TERF Island', its levels of public hate towards trans people had made it world famous long before that. Whilst the media hatred of trans people in the UK was initially the responsibility of a group of 'Gender Critical' faux-feminists, it soon merged with an international far-right loathing of us that is now making much of the running in the UK. And it is fear of this - like his fear of the far right on other issues - that is playing most on Starmer's mind as he and his glove puppet ministers prepare to effectively eliminate us from UK society this autumn. Don't see it yet? Hatred of trans people was on page 1 of the Reform Party's 2024 election manifesto. 

Ironically, trans women like me are now routinely smeared with accusations that we are in the grip of an 'ideology' ourselves. In the 1990s the Roman Catholic church coined the term 'gender ideology' as it opened a new front first against feminism and subsequently, in league with some of the worst people in the world, against LGBTQ+ people. As someone who was born approximately 30 years before the first appearance of this term, who had understood herself to not be male for many years without any 'ideology' on which to draw and who had come to an increasingly clear understanding of herself before the internet existed, before even speaking with, still less meeting, another trans person, this came as quite a shock. Now, 30 years after conservative Christians started using the smear, it has recently even entered British law as an 'uncontested' description of my experience. 

The libel - now made institutional - is deep and sickening painful.I am not and never have been the product of an 'ideology'. I am and always have been just me, trying to make sense of my life, as I live it. 

But I certainly need an ideology - a doctrine - some principles - to protect me now. One founded on fairness, equality, rationality and human rights. I am part of a group second only to refugees in the level of vitriol it receives in the British public discourse. Many of the smears of refugees and asylum seekers (or indeed people of colour generally), are hurled at trans women too. Somehow we too have become a 'reason' for the decline of Britain and for the impoverishment of people's lives. Endless lies are told about us. Our elimination has been framed as being in the 'interests' of ordinary British people - and the government has walked away entirely from challenging that lie. 

It has done this because it has no 'doctrine' to which it can turn. No set of beliefs about protecting the marginalised or the vulnerable. No moral compass in which to ground itself, no platform on which it might stand, argue and take on the hate. With the 'interests' of the people now being expressed by media and right wing politicians alike as served by removing us from society and with a principle-free government cowed by the passionate hatreds that are shaping that conversation, under the bus we will be going. 

If you are in any way different, if you are an immigrant, if you are gay, if you are disabled, if you are unemployed, we'll see you there under those wheels - sooner or later. In the four years Starmer has left in office before he gifts Britain to Nigel Farage in a political earthquake of the kind never before seen in the UK, he isn't coming to the rescue. He isn't capable of it.

************

* 'The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker he regards himself as a member of the ruling nation and consequently he becomes a tool of the English aristocrats and capitalists against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself. He cherishes religious, social, and national prejudices against the Irish worker... This antagonism is artificially kept alive and intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short, by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes.' Marx's letter to Meyer and Vogt, April 1870  

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_04_09.htm 

** https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/resource/what-has-happened-to-junior-doctors-pay

*** https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/2024-Briefing-Migrants-and-housing-in-the-UK.pdf