Starmer’s warped priorities only legitimise the far right
Speymouth
This week President Emmanuel Macron of France was on a state visit to the UK. With so much going on in the world right now, you might have thought that Macron and Britih Prime Minister Keir Starmer would have had plenty to discuss. There’s the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the chances that war with Iran might – literally – blow up again, the war in Ukraine, Trump’s destruction of established international trade and the fall of America into a corrupt autocracy, Elon Musk turning his AI into a self-described Mechahitler, the need for the UK to strengthen economic and political ties with the EU in the face of Trump’s capricious decisions, unreliability, obvious cognitive decline, and the rise of the far right, and much more besides
Coincidentally, in Paris while Macron was meeting with Starmer in London, someone paid £7 million in an auction for a handbag. Yes you read that right, seven million for a handbag, the original Birkin bag once owned by the late Anglo-French actress Jane Birkin. To channel Lady Bracknell from the Oscar Wilde play The Importance of Being Earnest, “A Haendbaeg?!” The edition of The Telegraph the next day which carried this tale of conspicuous consumption by the super rich also carried an opinion piece which claimed that a wealth tax was a moral abomination.
There’s absolutely a moral abomination going on here, but it’s not a wealth tax. If you can afford to spend £7 million on a handbag, you can afford to pay more in tax. Over the last few decades, the richest have continued to increase their share of wealth and income. Back in the 1970s the CEO of an American company was paid 20 times the wages of the average employee of his company – and it was usually a man. Now it’s 400 times.
The increasing greed of the rich is one of the most important issues of our age. Not only does it impoverish the rest of us, by putting decent housing and dignified standard of living ever further out of reach for the majority, it also contributes to the degradation of our public services and public infrastructure as the rich evade paying their fair share and splurge their wealth on a £7 million handbag or Jeff Bezos’s $50 million wedding in Venice at which the groom wore a hideously ill fitting tuxedo and the bride for reasons of her own chose to dress up as a flower vase from her nan’s living room. Money can buy you many things, but it can’t buy you good taste or self-awareness.
The increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of a few poses an increasing danger to our fragile democracy. The super rich are buying politics and politicians in order to ensure that governments work to further the interests of the wealthiest. Elon Musk has already shown his willingness to spend millions of dollars to get the politics that suits him. He has transformed his social media platform Twitter into a toxic sewer of racism, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, antisemitism, islamophobia and crazed conspiracy theories. Mark Zuckerberg, as he was calling time on fact checking on Meta and changing moderation rules to allow homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic and racist abuse, was wearing a hand made Swiss wristwatch which costs $900,000.
In the early days of the Internet it was hailed as the dawning of a new Information Age of Enlightenment, democratising access to information. Instead it has given us Flat Earth crazies, 5G conspiracy bollocks and anti-vaxxers. We are very far from living in a new golden age, we are living in an oligarchy.
But never mind any of that, the most important thing for Starmer to talk about with Macron was the desperate refugees and asylum seekers trying to cross the English Channel in small boats. The real priority here is pandering to GB News and voters in the English regions who are tempted to vote Reform UK.
The small boats issue is the very definition of fake news. The UK takes in far fewer refugees and asylum seekers than most European countries. As someone with personal experience of navigating the byzantine and ruinously expensive UK visa process with a foreign spouse I know that British immigration rules were already some of the tightest and most stringent in the world, even before Starmer’s supposed government of change tightened them up even further. People are driven to attempt the dangerous crossing of the English Channel because the British Government has closed down safe and legal routes into the UK.
I have an American friend, a doctor. He is highly educated, well-off, and self-sufficient. He is approaching retirement age and would love to retire to Scotland. Even in retirement he’d have an annual income several times the amount of the average British wage, he could afford to buy a property outright, and to pay for private health insurance and social care if he ever required it. He would not take any job from a British worker, he would not be any drain on public resources. In fact he’d be a net benefit to the community. However there is no legal route for him to come to Scotland to live. The UK abolished its retirement visa scheme in 2022 even though those who applied for it had to demonstrate that they were financially self-supporting. My friend has decided to retire to Ireland instead, and has recently been granted a retirement visa by the Irish authorities. If it’s impossible for someone like him to come to the UK, imagine how hard it is for someone fleeing persecution or the risk of death in their own country.
A politician with real weight and substance would be making a positive case for immigration and challenging the tropes of the extreme right and the lying charlatan Farage. Starmer seems to be making it his priority to legitimise right wing talking points at every turn. The entire worldview and strategic priorities of the UK are being held hostage to a few boats and ranting populists. At every turn, Starmer is making it more and not less likely that the next British Prime Minister will be Nigel Farage, and you thought Boris Johnson was bad.
My mum’s funeral went as well as these things can go and I’m glad it’s over. Thank you to everyone who left messages of support and a particular thanks to members of the SNP Prestwick branch who sent beautiful flowers.
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