Starmer's Enoch Powell impression shows he's the most dishonest politician in our history

Compare to what Keir Starmer was saying just a few years ago

This might seem like a big ask. But park for a moment what you think about Keir Starmer, and park what you think about immigration.

It’s a challenge given these are topics which inflame huge passions.

The first question here is about honesty and integrity. It’s about the consequences of the country being run by someone with no principles, who seems to believe in extraordinarily little except for power for its own sake, and all the trappings that come with it.

It’s not a coincidence that Keir Starmer has received more gifts and freebies - like suits and glasses from wealthy Labour donor Lord Ali - than every Labour leader since 1997 put together, and yes that does include Tony Blair. (And that’s based on figures which are now tears out of doubt). It tells us a lot about how he sees power.

In his big speech on immigration, Starmer declared that “we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together.” saying that accordingly immigration must be much lower.

As has been widely noted, this bears striking resemblance to Enoch Powell’s notorious Rivers of Blood speech in 1968:

But while, to the immigrant, entry to this country was admission to privileges and opportunities eagerly sought, the impact upon the existing population was very different. For reasons which they could not comprehend, and in pursuance of a decision by default, on which they were never consulted, they found themselves made strangers in their own country.

This speech led to Powell being sacked by the then-Tory leader Ted Heath.

Furthermore, in his foreword to the new immigration white paper being published by the government, Starmer says that the damage immigration “has done to our country is incalculable”, saying “public services and housing access have been place under too much pressure”.

As Nadia Whittome, one of the few decent Labour MPs left, notes, Starmer’s rhetoric “mimics the scaremongering of the far right.”

Zarah Sultana, who was a Labour MP until Starmer’s goons booted her - because she voted to repeal the Tories’ two child benefit cap, which drives hundreds of thousands of kids into poverty - went ever further:

The Prime Minister imitating Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech is sickening.

That speech fuelled decades of racism and division. Echoing it today is a disgrace. It adds to anti-migrant rhetoric that puts lives at risk.

Shame on you, Keir Starmer.

Yet the same Keir Starmer - when he was running to be leader of the Labour party - declared with passionate - or confected - deliverty in 2020 that “we don’t scapegoat’ migrants”, that “low wages, poor housing, poor public services are not the fault of migrants or people who have come here.” He declared these are the consequences of “political failure," concluding: '“So we have to make the case for the benefits of migration’.

During that same leadership contest, he declared: “I think Conservatives have created this hostile environment’, referring to immigration, denouncing the idea it’s “based on people trying to cheat rather than actually based on an open welcoming environment.”

He said:

I think we should welcome people wherever they come from, thank them for their contribution and see them as part of our families, our communities and our society, and embrace that.

Not only does he say Britain is better because of immigration - he even assails Labour being “a bit scared of making the positive case for immigration for quite a number of years”, and how that must change.

So back then he was actually suggesting that Jeremy Corbyn had not been pro-immigration enough.

Look let’s just speak directly here. This is the most brazenly dishonest frontline politician in British democratic history.

Some will immediately go - oh but what about Boris Johnson. There’s no question that Johnson was pathologically dishonest, and I wrote about that over and over again when he was prime minister. But the reason Starmer is more dishonest is that Johnson didn’t run as one thing to become Tory leader and then do something completely different.

The equivalent would have been if Johnson had run to be Tory leader on its hard Brexit platform and then ended up, I don’t know, joining the customs union and single market.

In that leadership election, Starmer notoriously put forward what he described as 10 pledges. That included increasing tax on the richest 5%, which he abandoned, even though our public services need the money far more than they did even when he made the pledge half a decade ago

He promised to scrap tuition fees - abandoned; he promised public ownership of utilities like water and energy - abandoned; he promised to “promote peace and human rights”, including making Britain “a force for international peace and justice.” This is the guy who still gives Israel the crucial components for F-35 jets to rain death and destruction on the people of Gaza.

On the question of immigration, he’s gone from claiming Jeremy Corbyn wasn’t pro-immigration enough to sounding like Enoch Powell.

Let’s not pretend a man in his early 60s went through a sudden Damascene conversion which happened to coincide with having being safely installed as leader of the Labour party, when he knew that the Labour membership at the time were left-wing and would never in a million years have voted for the policies and approach Starmer went on to adopt.

The recent book ‘Get In’, written by the incredibly well connected Sunday Times journalists Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund, made clear that Starmer’s team deliberately lied to the Labour membership in order to get elected.

What’s happened as of late is very straightforward. Labour got a kicking at the hands of Reform UK and so Starmer is pivoting to bash immigration in an effort to stop them stealing votes.

Here’s the teeny tiny little problem. Forget the rights and wrongs of this approach. We know from all the precedents that this fails on its own terms. In the first half of the 2010s, both Labour and Tory leaderships spent vast amounts of times bashing immigration, and that just drove up Nigel Farage’s support and led to Brexit.

In other countries - like France, like Germany, like Austria - politicians competing over bashing immigration has just increased support for anti-migrant right-wing parties at the expense of mainstream parties.

Why? Very straightforward. Because it shifts the conversation on to their terrain, it legitimises their arguments, it means they’re winning the argument, it means they can claim voting for them delivers results, but they can always outbid the main parties and seem more authentic and believable.

What we really need is - as Starmer himself said years ago - is politicians who don’t blame problems caused by them and the powerful on migrants.

The reason our public services are a mess is because of austerity, because of cuts, because of the refusal to tax rich people properly.

If we reduce the number of migrants coming in who pay more in tax than they take from the state, when we have an ageing population we need to support, then we’re going to have less money. Just a basic fact, if we’re going to have this conversation, let’s have it honestly.

Starmer has announced that social care jobs will be closed off to migrants. Here is a really striking example of how it’s anti-migrant politics, rather than migrants, which cause people hardship. This sector is dependent on migrant workers, and it is chronically afflicted by low page and poor conditions - which Starmer’s government is not addressing. Given there are 131,000 vacancies in the sector in England alone, does Starmer believe that there will be a sudden influx of British workers into this badly treated sector? Or will it just drive the care sector further into crisis, with disastrous consequences for elderly people in particular?

And because the top of immigration takes up so much political time, we end up not talking about why our services are in such a mess, because of the rich hoovering up the wealth created by the efforts of millions of workers.

Who was it who stripped the winter fuel payment from pensioners, who retained the Tory two-child benefit cap which drives children into poverty, then launched an assault on disability benefits set to drive over a million people into poverty or further into hardship? This was Starmer’s government, of course, not migrants. Perhaps we can have a sensible discussion about who is really causing pain to people in this country.

My prediction is Starmer will never satisfy those angry about immigration. He’ll never be seen as authentic on the issue. He’ll just help make the issue the main topic of debate - and thus help shore up Nigel Farage.

Meanwhile, he won’t solve the cost of living crisis, or the housing crisis, or public services being on their knees

What he has proven again is that he is pathologically dishonest. He doesn’t say anything out of conviction or principle, he just cares about power. We deserve better than that - which is why I’m backing Zack Polanski to be Green party leader - and why the left generally needs to get our act together to offer a positive vision of society, rather than this miserable race to the bottom.