Starmer – Tory lite or just Tory?
JVL Introduction
What on earth is this government thinking? Some people who voted for them thought that once they were elected things would improve but it is perhaps worse than we feared. As Malik says: “the radicalism not only has not transpired, but something else, something cold and stomach-sinking, has emerged: a government clear in its intent on making savings by targeting the most vulnerable in society – the sick, disabled people, mentally ill people. This isn’t simply a locking in of the austerity state Labour inherited, but an extension of it.” As John McDonnell put it: What’s the point of a Labour MP who votes for something so cruel, tin-eared and short-sighted?
Labour Ministers, when interviewed, state that this is the Labour Party, ergo the Party of work. Surely it was supposed to be the Party for the working class; and yes it stood for jobs, but also stood for decent pay and conditions, security, dignity, equality and compassion, none of which seems to be informing decision makers. Even most backbench MPs are furious and worried and their pressure seems to have worked according to Sky News: Disability benefits freeze will not go ahead after Labour MP backlash. However, it is worth noting that 36 MPs who formed the Get Britain Working Group have actively welcomed the proposals. (Their names are in that link.)
The anger must continue, the injustice is outrageous and it should not take pressure from MPs to prevent this obvious failure of compassion. Before, eg cutting benefits to young people experiencing mental health crises, how about examining what this is caused by and why the post pandemic reaction has been so much more severe in the UK than in most other countries.
LL
This article was originally published by The Guardian on Mon 17 Mar 2025. Read the original here.
Many said the Starmer era would be just Tory-lite – now it’s worse than that. Time to stop the pretence
He’ll be radical, the PM’s allies claimed. Well, look now, as poor people are targeted and ministers boast of wearing Tory clothes better than the Tories
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Starmer is a vile liar. He won the leadership with money from BICOM founder and has expelled many Jews from membership for “antisemitism”. 30% of the cabinet and party are members of Labour Friends of Israel. They will do anything for a free sunshine holiday and a helicopter flight over stolen Palestinian land to see how the Israelis are “making the desert bloom” and hiding all evidence of Palestinian towns and villages by planting trees with money from the Jewish Land Fund.
I can recognise a number of Holborn & St Pancras CLP veterans on the list of the vile Get Britain Working MPs. I’m also annoyed that another Get Britain Working member was the person chosen by Newsnight defend the government’s welfare ‘reforms’ ie cuts, without any mention of this newly formed cabal.. which incidentally includes Luke Akehurst of We Believe In Israel… BRING OUT THE GARLIC, SOMEONE!
Just a few short weeks ago, Starmer announced a massive increase in welfare spending for the arms companies. They have uniquely high levels of access to government and can thus exercise a huge amount of influence.
Now, of course, Starmer did not describe it in those terms. No, he called it ‘defence spending’.
This is an outright lie: The UK military budget alone is not that much below that of Russia. When we count all the European NATO countries, we clearly see that Russia is heavily outspent.
The first stage of the increase is to be paid for by cuts in aid. We can now clearly see where the second stage of that increase is to be paid for!
Another reason why Starmer wants to increase military spending is to gain influence over President Trump so that he can get involved in the peace negotiations to end the war in the Ukraine. If Starmer is successful in this quest, then we can reasonably expect him to try to prolong the war.
We really do have to recognise that Starmer like most all western leaders use exactly the same language and direction of travel as that uttered in Washington for exactly the same reasons.
Starmer is not Labour, like most in his cabinet he is a self serving right wing Neo-Liberal that ows his alliegance to the corporate sector, hence his actions against what traditional Labour stands for is signalling to the corpoate sector that it is business as usual.
No real Labour Prime Minister would support the genocide taking place in Palestine, and with a background in the law openly flout international law.
He has aided Israel by the RAF flying over Gaza and passing intelligence information to them so that they can bomb the civilian population, and now refuelling American aircraft that bombed 5 children in Yemen.
What we should all understand is that he and his cabinet know that life does not have to be this way, that they deliberately ration money in the economy to entrench the private corporate sector against the interests of people and to shrink the public sector.
There is absolutely no need for poverty or cuts in public services, which only serves the interests of the corporate sector and mega rich.
This document by the University college of London, took two years research at the Bank of England prove that our government has never used taxation to fund public expenditure – and as a matter of fact – that all money in the economy is anyway issued by the Bank of England out of thin air.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/sites/bartlett_public_purpose/files/the_self-financing_state_an_institutional_analysis_of_government_expenditure_revenue_collection_and_debt_issuance_operations_in_the_united_kingdom.pdf
Neither, he’s Labour through and through.
I tend to agree with Hassan more than Mervyn in the Comments above. Remember that even the Attlee government made the decision to side wholly with NATO . They also did not attempt to renegotiate the wartime Lend Lease debt, which meant that the UK has been literally in hock to the USA until the last money was repaid under Gordon Brown 70s years later. It is not surprising that ‘our independent nuclear deterrent’ can only be detonated with US permission. Labour governments have been willing participants in all this. Just saying.
He is not Labour and he is worse than the tories. He is a liability, and he is expanding poverty to keep his paymasters happy. And Lizzy wants young people to join the army to save on benefits or is it to turn them into cannon fodder, because he might want to keep the war going? And he will do that by throwing the population of the country under a bus.
“Remember that even the Attlee government made the decision to side wholly with NATO”
Great point Amanda, and its worth remembering that thats the government the ‘Spirit of 45’ socialists romanticize about.