I’ve witnessed firsthand the complexities of global conflicts and their intersection with domestic politics. The 2024 UK election, which seems poised to usher in a Labour government under Keir Starmer, presents a moment for reflection on the true nature of political change in Britain. While many celebrate the prospect of ending over a decade of Conservative rule, I urge caution in expectations. Starmer’s Labour, despite its rhetoric, represents more continuity than change in the grand scheme of British politics, particularly in foreign policy.
From the outset of his leadership campaign, Starmer’s inauthenticity was palpable. His slick branding and carefully crafted pledges seemed designed to placate party members rather than represent genuine convictions. As someone who has observed countless political figures, I found it incredible that Labour Party members ever believed Starmer’s Ten Pledges. His body language, tone, and facial expressions betrayed a lack of conviction in his own words.
The speed and polish with which his campaign was assembled spoke volumes about the backing he had – this wasn’t a grassroots movement but a well-funded operation telling people what they wanted to hear. As leader, he has systematically broken these pledges, ruling the party with an iron fist and molding it into an establishment-friendly entity.
Starmer’s leadership style has been characterized by a robotic adherence to public relations messaging. The Labour Party under his guidance has become a tightly controlled machine, where dissent is quashed and a uniform message is maintained. This discipline may make the party appear “fit for power,” but at what cost to its principles and the diverse voices within its ranks?
Nowhere is Starmer’s establishment-friendly approach more evident than in Labour’s stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict. As someone who has reported extensively from Gaza, I find his position on the recent Gaza war deeply troubling. Starmer’s statements have been sanitized of humanitarian concern, detached from the brutal realities on the ground. His approach seems designed to signal to the establishment that under his leadership, the UK will remain a steadfast ally to the US, NATO, and Israel, regardless of the human cost.
This stance has not gone unnoticed by voters, particularly the youth. In constituencies where younger voters traditionally lean Labour, we’re seeing a pivot towards parties like the Greens, who offer a more balanced and humanitarian approach to foreign policy. Starmer’s apathy towards Palestinian suffering, juxtaposed against the war crimes we’ve witnessed through media, paints him as callously indifferent to international humanitarian crises.
While a Labour victory would mark a symbolic shift in British politics, the macro realities of governance are likely to remain largely unchanged. The focus of election coverage on domestic issues, even as a genocide unfolds abroad, speaks volumes about the entrenched nature of British foreign policy. It’s a stark reminder that regardless of which party holds power, certain aspects of our international stance remain frustratingly consistent.
Economically, we’re unlikely to see the radical changes many hope for. Issues like inequality and child poverty, while perhaps addressed rhetorically, are unlikely to see substantive policy shifts. The absence of proposals for a wealth tax or significant reforms to capital gains tax until perhaps a hypothetical second term indicates a cautious, incremental approach rather than the bold, transformative policies many Labour supporters desire.
The mainstream media’s role in shaping Starmer’s image as a “safe” candidate cannot be overstated. Unlike his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, Starmer has received the nod of approval from media grandees, positioning him as “fit for office” despite his lack of substantial policy commitments. This stark contrast in treatment reveals much about the media’s power to shape political narratives and influence public perception.
From the moment Starmer took the Labour leadership, he was given the benefit of the doubt by key figures in the UK media landscape. Commentators, broadcasters, and Westminster insiders signaled their approval, a stark contrast to the skepticism and outright hostility faced by Corbyn. This media landscape has allowed Starmer to play a disciplined game, maintaining a sanitized image palatable to a broad swath of the electorate and media establishment.
Despite these criticisms, it’s not all doom and gloom. There’s a glimmer of hope that pressure from the left could push Starmer towards more progressive policies, particularly regarding Palestinian statehood. If the UK and France were to recognize a Palestinian state, following the lead of other European countries in 2024, it could trigger a domino effect leading to the end of Israeli apartheid.
This potential for change, however slight, offers a ray of optimism in an otherwise bleak political landscape. The self-illumination of Israeli policies post-October 7th has opened eyes globally, potentially paving the way for more countries to take a stand against apartheid and occupation.
As we approach this election, I implore the public and fellow journalists to maintain a balanced perspective. While the symbolic importance of a Labour victory shouldn’t be dismissed, we must remain clear-eyed about the limitations of Starmer’s Labour. The real work begins after the election, as citizens and activists push for genuine progressive change.
We must acknowledge the rarity of changing the party of governance in the UK – it’s happened only three times in 50 years. Starmer’s potential to shift Labour from opposition directly into government is a feat achieved by only a handful of Labour leaders in history. This novelty and the relief of ending Tory rule are understandable sources of excitement.
However, we must temper this excitement with realism. Many of the UK’s deep-seated issues – from infrastructural decay to social inequality – cannot be fixed overnight. Starmer’s Labour, particularly in its first term, is likely to be extremely cautious, avoiding any moves that might be perceived as too radical.
The onus, therefore, is on us – the public, the activists, the journalists – to hold this new government accountable and push for the substantial changes our country and our world desperately need. We cannot afford to become complacent simply because the party in power has changed.
For those dismayed by Starmer’s centrism, the work now is to double down on efforts to influence Labour’s direction. This might mean joining the party to effect change from within or supporting progressive forces like the Greens to exert pressure from the outside. The goal must be to shift the UK’s political center of gravity leftward, pushing for more ambitious, transformative policies in Labour’s second term and beyond.
In conclusion, while changing the party of governance is noteworthy in British politics, we must approach this potential Labour victory with measured expectations. Starmer’s Labour may offer relief from Tory rule, but it’s far from the radical shift many hope for. The UK will likely remain tethered to its traditional alliances and economic models, with only incremental shifts towards a more progressive stance.
As we stand on the brink of this political transition, let us not mistake symbolic change for substantive transformation. The real challenge lies ahead – in holding our new leaders accountable, in pushing for genuine progressive policies, and in continuing to fight for a more just and equitable society, both at home and on the global stage. Only through sustained pressure and engagement can we hope to see the meaningful changes that our nation, and indeed our world, so desperately needs.
Q1: You’ve described Keir Starmer as inauthentic and an establishment-safe candidate. Could you elaborate on specific instances or policies that illustrate this characterization?
A1: It seems incredible to me that Labour Party members ever believed Keir Starmer’s Ten Pledges when he was vying for the Labour leadership after Jeremy Corbyn fell. To me, reading his body language, tone, and basic facial expressions, you could tell that he just didn’t believe what he was saying and that, in fact, he was triangulating. You could also see, just judging from his branding and how slick it was and how quickly it was put together, that he had money behind him and that he wasn’t actually representing grassroots mood, but was rather just telling the grassroots what they wanted to hear in order to get that vote. When he became leader and Labour Party members were disappointed with his U-turns on almost all of his pledges, it was incredible to me that these folks were disappointed because as far as I could discern, from the very beginning, he was never going to stick to any of them.
This was my initial example from the very get-go about how he appeared inauthentic. He then proceeded to break all of his pledges over the ensuing months and years. And he has been really robotic in his politics and in his appearances from the very beginning. And he’s ruled the Labour Party with an iron fist, where everyone follows a robotic public relations line, to the extent that they’ve successfully disciplined the party’s image into a way that is fit for power. However, this fit-for-power quality is something which is really establishment-safe. And what that means is that the macros of the UK’s place in the world on a more historical trajectory will not be challenged, even though they betray the Labour Party membership’s beliefs and natural desires. And so it means that the UK will be safe for the Americans, safe for NATO, and safe for Israel. And we saw with his policies on the Gaza War, following the October 7th massacres, how he will put an Israel-first policy very, very strongly forward in order to protect Israeli interests and the sort of deep state, or the British establishment’s interests. And so we can see that actually he’s really incredibly small-c conservative in this sense, and that the UK’s switch from blue administration to red administration is really just two cheeks of the same backside, to borrow the very ugly phrase, but very efficient phrase, from the controversial George Galloway.
Q2: Given your extensive on-the-ground experience in Gaza, how do you think Starmer’s stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict has influenced public perception of his leadership?
A2: We can see from Vox Pops in constituencies where younger people, for example, may vote green, that the Labour Party’s stance on the Gaza war and Israel’s war crimes in Gaza have really pivoted voters to vote in principle for the Green Party because of their more humanitarian and balanced foreign policy position towards Israel and the Palestinians. And my experience is that Starmer’s foreign policy position on Israel was so sanitized from humanitarian concern, so detached from reality, so establishment-safe, as if he was holding up a placard saying, don’t worry, I’ll keep business as usual continuity with foreign policy in Israel. That was the subtext of everything he’s ever said since October the 7th. And so juxtaposing Keir Starmer’s statements on Israel-Palestine against the war crimes we’ve been seeing on our televisions and social media feeds, he comes across as really demonically apathetic. And having seen the firsthand realities of the situation myself, I just couldn’t vote for him in good conscience. It’s just something which I would never be able to do. It would be a complete betrayal. Even if I were to vote Labour for the sake of just saving the NHS in the UK, the fact that there are basically no functioning major hospitals left in the Gaza Strip is a fact that forces me to put into an internationalist context the fact that the national health system, if you would, in Gaza has been obliterated by Israeli apartheid genocide. And so to put above the Palestinians’ reality, my healthcare concerns in the UK would really be to speak to a kind of supremacist or exclusionary ideology that I just wouldn’t feel entirely comfortable with. And so I have to put these internationalist geopolitical considerations on my map as I make my decision.
Q3: You mentioned that the macro realities will not change despite new governance symbolically. Can you identify the key areas where you expect continuity rather than change, particularly in foreign policy?
A3: Macro realities that won’t change are the foreign policy realities. If you just look at the election coverage in the UK, the fact that a genocide has been happening at the same time is extraordinary, because most of the conversations people are having are domestic, where they’re putting their own sort of schemas of priorities first, which is understandable from a human perspective, but shows the extent to which foreign policy is a kind of don’t touch area of British politics when it comes to actually how you’re allowed to vote. So you’re allowed to have discussions about it, but it doesn’t really massively inform the majority of voters if a genocide can be ongoing, but instead we’re talking about domestic issues with such a level of saturation, I suppose, and such a level of absence of these foreign policy issues even at the time of such crises as we’re seeing. So that speaks to one very obvious macro issue.
The other is, I think, that the economic situations are unlikely to be challenged, so inequality isn’t going to be challenged particularly, child poverty isn’t going to be explicitly challenged either, we’re not going to have a wealth tax, we may see some tinkering, so council tax bans being changed that would hit some English Southerners, and maybe some increases in capital gains tax at the end of this parliament, but I think if we’re going to see any major quote-unquote socialist policy changes that will be in term two when Starmer is feeling a bit more confident.
Q4: How do you believe the mainstream media has played a role in shaping Starmer’s public image as a ‘safe candidate’? Are there specific examples or patterns you’ve observed?
A4: As I alluded to earlier, you can see from the get-go, when Starmer began to lead the Labour Party, that he was approved by safe figures in the UK media landscape. This includes commentators, broadcasting seniors, and grandees of the Westminster scene, who sort of nodded and winked that this man is fit for office and is a serious candidate. The sorts of nuanced biases and positionings that Jeremy Corbyn received were the polar opposite, an explicit sense and subtext that he was unfit for office, whereas Keir Starmer has been given the benefit of the doubt the other way. And as he’s played a very disciplined and tight game over the last couple of years, he’s got his party in a position where it is a massively controlled message, very sanitized and ready for office, and indeed palatable for voters, in a way that we’ve seen, you know, the Economist, the FT, the Sun all coming out to say, vote Keir Starmer, vote Labour. And that’s no surprise, because he’s not going to challenge vested interests particularly. He’s not going to challenge the macroeconomic model. He’s not going to challenge the macro foreign policy schema. So a lot of these things just are not really going to be changed. So we’re still going to be, you know, 3,000 miles away from having a Scandinavian-like social democratic model. That’s the key point. So although we may be shifted slightly to the left of where the Conservatives are, we’re still really far away from what’s the mean social democratic ideology that we would see among the EU 27. And again, we’ll be somehow quite hooked to the American model of governance and organization. So we’re seeing somewhat of a remedy to sort of an American model.
Although we will see the UK anchored still to the American model, we may move a tad over to the EU model of democratic order, but with Starmer, we’re only going to get a five percent shift in that direction. And even at the most optimistic, and he suddenly unveils himself as a socialist, not in name only, we’re not really going to see something radical for him, especially in the first term. And that means that the UK, to the extent that it sort of feels 10 to 15 years behind in terms of infrastructure and social mobility in comparison to other major economies in the EU, it’s going to take 10 years to fix some of these issues, especially because Starmer is going to be so restricted in the first term, the first five years, because he’s going to have to act with such a small-c conservative attitude and governance so that he’s able to win a second.
Q5: Considering your background in both war reporting and political correspondence, what are the major differences in how you approach these two fields, especially when dealing with sensitive issues like the Gaza conflict?
A5: Well, I can see it from different perspectives. I can see the reality from those who vote Labour because they’re desperate to get rid of the Tories and want to save the NHS at any cost and they’re not willing to vote for Lib Dems or the Greens because they’re afraid that this might split the non-Tory vote and therefore, because they’re literally worried about their own safety and the bio-safety, if you will, of their family and loved ones, they’ll vote Labour in order to guarantee that the NHS doesn’t completely die off under continued Tory rule going into a 15th year. At the same time, I can also see that we live on a globe where the UK is a speck of dust on the map and therefore, as an internationalist and someone that spent most of my life traveling and as most of my friends are not British, I can’t but resist the temptation to put my internationalist perspective first and although I’m able to empathize with these different perspectives, for me, I just can’t put a cross next to a party that has greenlit a genocide and has stated clearly that it would be willing to greenlight war crimes.
Q6: What do you see as the potential long-term implications of Starmer’s policies on the UK’s role in international conflicts, particularly in the Middle East?
A6: I think the only glimpse of hope is that Starmer will be indeed pulled to the left, a question that I raised earlier, and that in being pulled to the left, if the same happens with the French elections, we could see these two parliaments recognizing a Palestinian state. And if this happens, it will follow the recognition of a Palestinian state by three other European countries in 2024. By this point, and this may be by 2025 that the UK and France recognize a Palestinian state, this will be a move symbolic enough that it will be the first movements of dominoes or a domino effect where we see the end of Israeli apartheid and we see the downfall of this Israeli regime and ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people. So before October 7th, I was very gloomy, objectively, about the hope of any just, peaceful resolution to the Palestine question, but after the post-October 7th genocide, and given the self-illumination of horror that the Israelis have manifested by showing their hand in terms of their abuse and racism and apartheid and violence and terror, I am optimistic now that because we have seen some European countries really speak out and say no to the Israelis, that if we can get these major two economies, the UK and France, to also recognize a Palestinian state, that we will see significant dominoes falling that can mean that within 10, 15, 20 years’ time, that is to say within our lifetime, my lifetime, we could see a free Palestine or the beginning of an end to this ongoing longest ever occupation.
Q7: What advice would you give to the public and other journalists when analyzing political candidates and their policies, especially in times of conflict?
A7: I think we have to balance our awareness between objective and subjective. So, as I mentioned earlier, although we may feel a sense of relief that we’re getting rid of the Tories and we have a change, we have to remain objective about the limitations on Starmer and Labour in the UK, set up with the first-past-the-post electoral system, with a very entrenched system of democracy, where you can’t really confront the establishment or some of the big question macros of our democracy. And so, although, yes, we have to acknowledge and accept and enjoy the sense of relief that we may have with a shift in administration, we have to be realistic that this doesn’t mean that we can all pack up our work as citizens, because actually the work now has to be doubled down on to influence this Labour administration, either by joining the Labour Party or by further engaging with those political forces, like the Greens, that can shift the UK Labour Party and administration leftward in the hope of more progressive political realizations in the UK space.
Conclusion
Q: Would you like to add or clarify anything before we conclude?
A: I suppose I think that it is worth acknowledging that, you know, changing the party of governance in the UK is something that happens so infrequently. It’s, I think, three times in 50 years we’ve changed the party the Prime Minister is from. And secondly, the winning by Starmer and shifting of the UK’s Labour Party from opposition directly into government is something that is so infrequent. He’ll be, I think, the third or fourth Labour leader to pivot the party from the opposition benches and to get them into power. And so, again, this is something that is a novelty, and within the UK’s political system is worth acknowledging as something that is massively, symbolically exciting at some superficial level. But to be realistic about what this really means, including on the international stage, including on questions of climate change, the economy and inequality, and the UK’s, you know, infrastructure and lack of infrastructure investment over the last decades, a lot of these macro things can’t be fixed quickly. And the work, in a sense, begins now to try and pull Starmer leftward. Although, of course, in the first few years or first couple of years of his administration, he’s going to be very reticent if he wins a stonking, stonking majority to listen to those voices. We’ll see how big his majority is and to what extent he may be pulled leftward.