The dangerous stupidity of Keir Starmer

You can say many things about the opportunistic moral vacuum that is Keir Starmer, but he’s not stupid, he just behaves as though he was. The one time human rights lawyer Starmer’s latest foray into deliberate and dangerous stupidity was his plea to European leaders yesterday to curb human rights laws in order to introduce harsher measures against refugees and asylum seekers. Starmer has still failed to learn, or perhaps more accurately, Morgan McSweeney won’t let him learn, that you do not tackle the far right by attempting to appease it. When you concede to the far right you only empower it and encourage it to make even more extreme demands and make more and more hysterical fear mongering claims.

The far right has long since moved on from “legitimate concerns about illegal immigration” to blatant racism and demands to strip Indefinite Leave to Remain from people who have been long settled in the UK, working, paying taxes, and raising families. These are the policies espoused by the National Front in the 1970s and 1980s. Every inch of political ground that Starmer concedes to the far right emboldens them to call for the literal ethnic cleansing of towns and cities across the UK. If you’re not white, if you don’t come from a Christian heritage, the far right doesn’t want you in the UK. To them you can never belong here, no matter how long your family has lived in Britain.

Members of minority communities, whether they are ethnic or religious minorities, members of the LGBT+ community or neuro-divergent people and disabled people, now nervously scan the news, praying that the latest criminal atrocity has not been carried out by a member of their community, because to the far right the crimes of any individual from a minority group is proof that the entire community is a danger to “our” women and children. Yet crimes committed by white heterosexual cisgender men are only proof of the criminality of the individuals who commit the crimes, and how dare anyone suggest that white heterosexual cisgender men are a danger to “our” women and children, doing so would be met by howls of protest from the very same people who condemn all migrants or all trans people for crimes committed by an individual migrant or trans person.

What Starmer is doing now, by entreating European leaders to tear up decades old international human rights laws will do nothing at all to quell demands from Farage and Badenoch that the UK leaves the European Convention on Human Rights. Indeed, it will do the exact opposite. When European leaders refuse to agree to water down long established human rights conventions. Badenoch and Farage will simply cite this as proof that the UK needs to withdraw unilaterally from the ECHR, and Starmer will have given them the political justification for doing so. Starmer will no longer be able to argue that if the opposition policies are in breach of the ECHR then it means that it’s Tory and Reform policy which needs to change, not long established standards of human rights.

It’s a shocking political own goal, entirely needlessly, Starmer has conceded that it’s the ECHR which is the problem, not the performative cruelty of Reform UK and the Tories. Starmer is continuing to reinforce the messaging of the right that immigration is one of the biggest problems that the UK is facing. Since taking power in July 2024 he has done exactly nothing to push back against that right wing narrative, so it’s hardly surprising that it keeps gaining traction.

More proof of Starmer’s folly came today in the shape of an opinion poll asking voting intention in next May’s Holyrood elections. Eighteen months ago, Anas Sarwar and Labour MSPs were striding the corridors of the Scottish Parliament, convinced their long exile in the political wilderness was over, and all they had to do was to wait for the electorate to change its mind while the Labour party in Scotland remained as craven and hypocritical as it was when the people of Scotland decided they’d had enough of it.

According to the new poll by Ipsos, Labour has plummeted 7% compared with the company’s previous poll in June. Labour now sits at 16% in the constituency vote, behind Reform on 18%. The SNP is far ahead of both on 35%. The Tories are far behind on 11%, the Scottish Greens and the Lib Dems are both on 9% with others on 2%.

On the regional list vote, the SNP are still enjoying a comfortable lead on 28%, while Labour and Reform swap positions with Labour on 18%, just ahead of the Scottish Greens and Reform, both of whom are on 17%, the Tories trail behind on 12% (+2), the Liberal Democrats are at7% the Alba Party is on just 1% as are all others combined.

Ballot Box Scotland calculates that if these results are replicated in May, we will have a Scottish Parliament with a massive pro-independence majority , 60 SNP MSPs and 17 Greens. Labour would have 19 MSPs, Reform 17, the Tories would be down to 11 and the Lib Dems on 5, making a total of 77 pro-independence MSPs and just 52 anti-independence.

On these figures neither Alba nor any of the other minor independence parties will come close to winning a seat.

On the independence question Ipsos finds a majority in favour, 52% vs 48% No, however 16% of those currently backing No say they may change their minds if Farage becomes Prime Minister. That could add almost 8% to Yes, taking support for independence close to the 60% figure at which a solid pro-independence majority is unarguable.

This poll is particularly dismal for Keir Starmer, who has a favourability rating of negative 63%. Only 14% of respondents are happy with his performance while 77% think he’s doing a bad job.

This poll confirms three things, firstly that Starmer’s approach is only strengthening the far right and taking Labour to an electoral hammering, secondly, that although Scotland is not immune to the rise of the far right – given the state of the British media which inundates Scotland it would be surprising if the far right was not benefiting in Scotland too. And thirdly that despite the best efforts of that British media, support for the far right is at lower levels in Scotland than it is in England, and that the rise of Farage is driving Scots to back independence. Further, the poll confirms that the SNP and the Scottish Greens are the only pro-independence parties which can win Holyrood seats in May.

The dangerous stupidity of Keir Starmer may yet prove he is the unwitting midwife of Scottish independence.

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