Keir Starmer and the Slow Death of English Liberty

There is something deeply unsettling about Sir Keir Starmer’s rise—not merely in the way a man of such rigid ideological conviction has slithered into power, nor in the eerie silence surrounding his radical past, but in the quiet, bureaucratic suffocation he embodies. He is no firebrand, no demagogue, not even a compelling liar like a Blair or Clinton. He is something far worse: a dull fanatic, a lifelong inhabitant of far-left sectarianism’s shadows, now, as last man standing, handed the keys to the British state. And the most alarming thing is not that he is a Trot – but that no one seems to care.

The British press, long since abdicating its duty to scrutinise power, churns out endless drivel about Starmer’s ‘boring’ persona, his ‘forensic’ mind, his ‘moderate’ rebranding of Labour. The truth is far more sinister. Starmer was not just a leftist – he was a Pabloist, a follower of Michel Pablo, the Trotskyist theoretician who preached ‘deep entryism’: the slow infiltration of mainstream parties by revolutionaries steering them towards radical ends without ever declaring their hand.

Decades later, Starmer has done precisely that. He did not storm the Labour Party; he colonised it. He did not shout Marxist slogans; he normalised them. Now, as Prime Minister, he governs not with the clenched fist of revolution but with the dead hand of bureaucracy – issuing diktats, silencing dissent, and attempting to reshape Britain into something unrecognisable, all while the press yawns and looks away.

How did a product of affluent Oxted and Reigate Grammar – a school that breeds estate agents and stockbrokers, not Trots or pinkos – develop such disdain for the capitalists around him? Perhaps it was rebellion, personal grievance, or something else entirely.

Whatever the reason, Starmer’s early writings as co-editor of Socialist Alternatives reveal a young man who despised the traditional working class long before it became fashionable. In those yellowing pages, he declared socialism must no longer be rooted in ‘white, male workers’ but in an ‘anti-capitalist alliance’ of feminists, environmentalists, ethnic minorities, and every other aggrieved faction to be marshalled against the existing order.

And so it has come to pass. The Labour Party, once the voice of the industrial proletariat, now sneers at them. The white working-class voter – Labour’s former backbone – is treated as an embarrassing relic, a bigot-in-waiting, a problem to be managed rather than a people to be represented. Working-class girls raped by Pakistani grooming gangs are denied justice; Labour-linked offenders escape any party accountability. Starmer’s Britain, should the public ever fully accept him, would weaponise the grievances of the marginalised against the majority, dissolving community bonds in the acid of identity politics.

Thanks to Starmer and his glove puppet Chancellor, the State grows ever larger, more intrusive, more convinced of its right to dictate how Brits speak, think, and live. The only saving grace? The Tories left the coffers empty, rendering most of Starmer’s desired socialist excesses stillborn while capital flees offshore.

His career as a human rights lawyer was not, as apologists claim, a noble defence of the oppressed – it was training for legalistic authoritarianism. As Director of Public Prosecutions, he expanded State control over speech, protest, and private conscience. Now, as Prime Minister, he pushes laws criminalising ‘wrong’ opinions in pubs, policing online discourse, and silencing Christians who dare quote scripture in public.

This is not liberalism. It is soft totalitarianism – the kind that smothers dissent under taxes, regulations, and equality directives rather than sending men to gulags. It doesn’t break down doors at midnight; it ensures no one dares speak out by day, or fears doing so.

Why does the media ignore Starmer’s past? The same outlets that would hound a Tory with far-right ties treat his Trotskyist roots as a quirky footnote – if they mention it at all. The BBC, The Guardian, even The Telegraph look away. Perhaps his authoritarianism aligns with some of their prejudices. Perhaps they fear being labelled ‘conspiratorial.’ Or perhaps, in modern Britain, some ideologies hide in plain sight while others are hunted to extinction.

In 1986, at the height of the Cold War, a young Keir Starmer – then in his mid-twenties – chose to attend a Communist work camp in Czechoslovakia. This was an era when the regime ruthlessly suppressed dissent: playwright Václav Havel, a future president, languished in prison for daring to speak out against totalitarianism. Yet while Havel fought for freedom, Starmer willingly participated in a system built on its denial.

Still, Starmer is framed as Corbyn’s antidote – the ‘sensible’ leader who purged Labour’s hard-left fringe. But this is deception. He is not Corbyn’s opposite; he is his successor, a man who learned that open socialism is electoral poison, but stealth socialism is devastatingly effective.

Blair, too, admired Trotsky – not as a revolutionary, but as a tactician. He repackaged Marxist dreams as ‘modernising reform,’ expanded the state under the guise of ‘progress,’ and bought off the working class with welfare. Starmer has sharpened this playbook. Where Blair was a salesman, Starmer is a technocrat – less charismatic, more ruthless, and far more dangerous.

The consequences are already clear. The rich flee Britain at record rates – not fearing the guillotine, but recognising a government that despises them. Capital does not stay where it is unwelcome, and Starmer’s Britain punishes enterprise, treats success as a moral failing, and bleeds the productive dry to feed the State’s insatiable maw.

The great irony? Starmer’s socialism does not empower the working class – it impoverishes them. By driving out wealth, stifling growth, and expanding bureaucracy, he ensures the very people he claims to represent will be worse off. But perhaps that’s the point. A desperate population is a dependent one – and dependency breeds control.

Starmer is no ranting dictator, no blood-soaked revolutionary. He is something more insidious: a grey man who believes so utterly in his righteousness that he need not shout. He won’t send tanks into the streets. He will simply ensure that, year by year, law by law, dissent grows smaller, the state grows larger, and the people grow quieter.

Orwell warned that the real threat to freedom is not the boot stamping on a human face forever, but the smiling bureaucrat who assures you it’s for your own good. Starmer is that bureaucrat. And if Britain does not wake up soon, it will sleepwalk into tyranny – not with a bang, but with a weary sigh and the rustle of a thousand new regulations being filed away. For Britain’s sake, and the economy looks like it will cut short Labour’s term, the Labour Party and the quangos that feed its roots must be dismantled for good.

Dominic Wightman is the Editor of Country Squire Magazine, works in finance, and is the author of five and a half books including Conservatism (2024).

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(Photograph: Simon Dawson, No 10 Downing Street, OGL 3 <http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3>, via Wikimedia Commons)

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