The article titled Liberal Authoritarianism from Uncibal should serve as a foundational understanding of where not just the British state is but to a fair extent much of the Western World.
Starmer, it is plain, is one of those socialists for whom the appeal of socialism lies not so much in its amelioration of poverty, but rather in its provision of a rationale for the imposition of a perfect order on society – the construction of a ‘great social machine’, as Sydney Webb once put it, within which every individual must be made to fit. There is the touch of the Javert about him; he is one of those men who, all things considered, prefers the stars, who ‘know [their] place in the sky’, to people, who have an irritating tendency to exhibit free will. There is also in the air around him a quality that CS Lewis called ‘Saturnocentric’, which Michael Ward summarised as a combination of the ‘astringent, stern, tough, unmerry, uncomfortable, unconciliatory, and serious’. It is no surprise at all that Starmer should once have made his living as England & Wales’ Director of Public Prosecutions: this is a man who would take to the political task of steering public policy regarding criminal prosecutions like a duck to water.
It should also be no surprise that Starmer was once a human rights lawyer. Some have found it difficult to square these two aspects of his character. Silkie Carlo, the prominent civil liberties campaigner, for instance, remarked in a recent interview concerning the use of live facial recognition how strange she found it that Sir Keir, who purportedly is a human rights advocate, would embrace a technology that seems almost designed to usher a Chinese total surveillance system into the UK.
But this confusion is based on a complete misunderstanding of what human rights are all about.
I heartily recommend reading the entire linked article as it is penetrating indeed. But I do lament the loss of the term ‘liberal’ to now mean someone intolerant of all unlicenced opinions and behaviours, i.e. to mean someone who is profoundly illiberal.
This excellent article brings two other quotes to mind, one from a certain Italian leader and the other modestly from me.
Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state (Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato)
– Benito Mussolini (speech to Chamber of Deputies – 9 December 1928)
…and…
Socialism must be the most ironic use of language in the history of human linguistics: it is the advocacy of the complete replacement of social interaction with political interaction, the very negation of civil society itself.
Adam Smith called such people “men of system”, viewing the populace like chess pieces. Not much has changed in a fundamental sense since he wrote the Wealth of Nations.
Starmer is an authoritarian to the very core. Even the way this c**t speaks is like a parody of a traffic warden. What’s the deal with that?
He liked lockdowns. He wanted them to last longer and to be more severe.
Well, we have more than four years left of this brute in office. It’s going to be terrible.
The opinion polls for Labour are already dire. The issue is how, under a fragmented opposition and our winner-takes-all voting system, he and his gang are turfed out. At some point the Tories and Reform must take decisions unless they want a decade of this.
Not everyone has the option of emigrating. But many are: and not only wealthy people. The exodus is significant.
I knew this lot would be a shower of shit. But the speed of its fall into abominable behaviour surpasses anything I’ve seen in 40-plus years of following current affairs.
johnathan Pearce
You have it – this is already without question the worst government in UK history even before the budget, and could be among the very worst globally. What they can ‘achieve’ in four more years boggles the mind.
We’ve seen this before. People who have some glorious end in sight, whether it is a religious rapture or an inspiring Utopia feel empowered to expend their efforts by ‘any means’ to achieve that glorious ‘end’.
You see this in the unfolding of political thoughts. The UN as a vehicle for world peace, when everybody will love and respect each other. The EU for European peace and friendship. The WEF. Climate change activists. Marxism – “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”.
So people who are carried away by their enthusiasms for a glorious future have a Liberal intent but an authoritarian methodology, and will brook no opposition on the road to (their version of) Utopia. We should call them Zealots.
The reversal of the word “liberal” from meaning pro liberty, roll back the state, reduce government spending, taxation and regulations, to meaning the opposite – anti liberty, forward for the state, increase government spending and regulations, is a long story – and a baffling one.
Baffling because the socialist “liberals”, the folk of the Guardian, the New York Times and so on, deny that any fundamental reversal has taken place – they still claim to be pro liberty, even as they crush liberty.
At one time they said that they were against economic liberty, but supported Civil Liberties such as Freedom of Speech – but now they crush all aspects of liberty, whilst, at the same time, saying they support liberty – that they are pro freedom (as they confiscate more and more money, order people about in their own business, put people in prison because they not like what they say, and-so-on).
Every European Union country also has, by edict, to have “Hate Speech” laws – so it is not even the case that it is just in the English speaking world that the word “liberal” has been reversed. For example, President Macron, who supports “Hate Speech” laws and presides over taxes and spending of about half the entire French economy is described as a “liberal” – which would have utterly astonished, and angered, the great Liberal School economists of France.
It’s perhaps no coincidence, given our current political climate, that another public prosecutor is up for election to the highest political office in the USA.
As for the idea that an educated elite should plan society and order everyone about – it is an old idea, going back to Plato (and,most likely, long before) what is baffling, and angering, is that such totalitarians are now called “liberals” and proclaim themselves the ardent defenders of liberty.
We are told, for example, that the European Convention on Human Rights “protects our freedom” – but it did not prevent the Covid Lockdowns, people, who had committed no crimes, being put under semi House Arrest, and independent business enterprises (again whose owners had committed no crime), being shut down, nor does this “liberal” document defend the right to keep and bear arms (even the socialist George Orwell said that the sign of liberty was the rifle on the wall in the English working man’s cottage), or prevent people being sent to prison for peacefully expressing opinions the ruling establishment does not like.
These European and United Nations “rights” documents appear to be totally insane – for example the United Nations one proclaims a “right to holidays with pay” – the documents seem to have redefined the word “right” from a limitation on state power, to, rather, goods or services from the state – or delivered by private persons because the state threatens them with punishment if they don not deliver these goods and services to people who did not pay for them.
By the way – I am very well aware that there were confusions in English speaking liberalism from the start, at least in the Mills (father and son) and the rest of the “Philosophical Radicals” who seemed to be very much influenced by the statism of Jeremy Bentham – but the understanding of the word “liberalism” was held to be anti statism, so, for example, when J.S. Mill expressed support for Freedom of Speech he was expressing a liberal opinion, and when he expressed support for this or that state service (normally, in his case, a local one) he was doing something else.
With the “New Liberalism” in Britain, or the “New Freedom” in the United States, something very different is going on – the expansion of the state by David Lloyd-George or Woodrow Wilson is proclaimed to-be-liberalism (an insane claim – but very much a mainstream one now).
The New Dealers in the 1930s United States based their policies, for example the National Industrial Recovery Act and the National Recovery Administration (the Blue Eagle thugs) on Fascist Italy – yet these people are proclaimed “liberals”, and people who oppose state control of society are denounced as “Fascists” – which would have baffled Mussolini as he would have, correctly, seen that they (the people who oppose state control of society) were liberals – which he (correctly) stated were the opposite of Fascists.
Didn’t Enoch Powell say something along the lines of “The word ‘social’ negates the noun to which it is applied.”?
Brendan Westbridge – and F.A. Hayek, the word “social” is a “weasel word” – it sucks out the meaning of any word, such as Justice, that it is put in with. Like a weasel sucking out he yoke of an egg.
Starmer is a recognisable personality type – the busybody, the compulsive minder of other people’s business. I don’t know how many of them there are in the population, but I’m guessing maybe 20-25%. These animals naturally flock to positions in the government apparat, though they exist in the middle ranks of large corporations too.
There’s a nice line in A Man for All Seasons, in which More tells Rich “a man should go where he won’t be tempted.” But obviously that good advice is widely ignored. Hence the number of kiddyfiddlers who gravitate towards schoolteaching or sports coaching. I suppose it’s the market at work.
But the question arises – not an easy one for libertarians – how can these compulsive busybodies be redirected from their bureaucratic command posts, into different jobs where their natural compulsion to order will be beneficial to society, or at least not so damaging as having them directing our lives. We can’t shoot all 20% of them, and it would be unkind t do so. So what sort of holes can these pegs be slotted into, where they can earn a living crust doing something useful ….. far away from any power over others ?
How do we mould and shape Kier Starmer to make him fit?
Johnathan Pearce:
There’s lots of people migrating to the country as well, and migrants are younger and work harder.
Van_Patten opined:
The worst government in UK history is quite a claim. What exactly have they done that makes you think that? (genuine question)
@Paul Marks: The ECHR would not defend freedom of speech, as far as I can see. It is a mishmash of post-1945 statism and forms of left-“liberalism”, completely hopeless when set against the magnificence of the US Declaration, Bill of Rights and Constitution. The ECHR has nothing resembling the Amendments of the US, such as the first, second, or fifth. There’s just nothing. We should, as I am sure you would agree, leave it immediately.
When the UK does eventually leave the convention, it would be nice to think that a British sort of Jefferson, Adams, Madison and the rest could come up with a fresh start. The UK constitution, a mass of different laws and statutes, is broken down. Some of that was done even before Tony Blair came along. But I think there is a need for some sort of rebuilding of our system of liberty in the UK. The problem, however, is that we don’t have people like the Founders with their classical liberal sense of what liberty and rights actually are. That’s why a change in the climate of ideas is going to be hard and long.
This IEA podcast discusses a lot of this and well worth thinking about. The growth of “thought crime” laws in the UK is monstrous.
The decline and reversal of the meaning of the word “liberal” is infuriating.
Van Patten: ” . . . . this is already without question the worst government in UK history even before the budget, and could be among the very worst globally.”
USA: “Here, hold my beer for a second . . .”
Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state
Based on this, how can anyone hold the idea that fascism is a right wing ideology?
Anti-egalitarianism and anti-universalism.
Unless discussing France circa 1790, the left/right paradigm obscures more than it reveals. Was the preceding ‘Conservative’ government, which by embracing Net Zero & the panoptic state, resolutely paved the way for the current economic & civil liberties nightmare… on the ‘right’? Yet is was quite fascistic economically (watch a few episodes of Clarkson’s Farm for a good laugh & then tell me UK is not pretty close to a command economy) & very happy to ban smoking & control what people can see & say online.
Starmer is just dialing up the Blairite project, something the Tories left pretty much intact during its time in office. Indeed, Theresa May & Rishi Sunak added to the infrastructure of tyranny we now find in place.
Alex – the people who are leaving the United Kingdom tend to be net taxpayers. And the people entering the United Kingdom tend to be net “taxeaters”.
Anyone who still does not see this – really needs to get out more. This is not Victorian Britain – there are lots of state benefits and public services now, and that is why many (not all – but many) people come here.
Anyone who thinks that the present mass migration into the United Kingdom or the United States is a, net, economic benefit to the existing population – is mistaken. And nor is it just an economic matter – as the displacement of a population that, in the case of the United Kingdom, has lived here for so many centuries, is a tragedy. And screaming “racist” or “Islamophobe” (or whatever) does not make it any less of a tragedy. The English are certainly not perfect (no population group is) – but they have done more good than bad in the world, and any person of normal moral feeling should feel grief in seeing them, by a combination of societal (cultural) decline (much of it deliberately pushed – by an utterly vicious “liberal” establishment elite), low fertility rates, and mass immigration, “on their way out” of the world.
Johnathan Pearce – I agree with your comment on Freedom of Speech – and can think of nothing to add to it, other than to commend you on how well written it is (I tend to think of something that needs to be said – and then say it, without bothering about how well I explain what I mean – and that is bad of me).
Perry – I was not shy of attacking the last government for its weakness in the face of officials and experts, indeed I was punished for doing so, and was threatened with worse punishment (much worse punishment).
But replacing a bad government with a worse government does not make things better – it makes things worse.
This Nigel Farage and others have yet to understand – but bitter experience will teach them this grim truth, the grim truth that a handful of seats in the House of Commons can not achieve anything.
Unless the right comes together this country is finished – the first order of business of Mr Jenrick or Mrs Badenoch (who ever is elected leader of the Conservative Party) must be to form an alliance with Reform – with people such as Nigel Farage and Lee Anderson (it was absolute outrage that Lee Anderson was effectively forced out of the Conservative Party for using the word “mates” – the word “mates” is no way of obscene, and I quite understand why he refused to apologize for using the word “mates”).
Both sides have made the mistake of saying an alliance is not necessary – but in the country, if there is to be any chance of winning the General Election of 2029, it most clearly is necessary.
The right came together in Canada – which is why there is hope in the next General Election in Canada.
If Reform and the Conservatives continue to scratch each other’s eyes out – there is no hope (none) in the United Kingdom.
And the next five years will be terrible – far more terrible than most people yet grasp.
I very much doubt if I will be around in 2029.
An alliance with Reform would mean that a few people left the Conservative Party – but they are precisely the people who gave in to the establishment of officials and “experts”, I would not be sorry to see such people leave the Conservative Party.
British politics is still, in large part, tribal – Reform can not win a General Election without the active support of families at the local level who make up the Conservative Party, and the Conservative Party can not win without the people who voted Reform or stayed at home in 2024.
An alliance, on the basis of real so called “right wing” (in reality just traditional Conservative policies of lower taxes, less government spending, deregulation, and an end to mass immigration and an end to “Woke” Marxist cultrual policies) policies, is a necessity for both the Conservative Party and Reform.
Fraser Orr yes indeed – Mussolini had been the leading Marxist in Italy, and remained an admirer of Karl Marx right to the end.
The fact that Orthodox Marxists killed Mussolini (and killed his mistress – after they had finished abusing the woman) because they considered him a heretic (and he was a heretic – as he had adapted Marxism) does not change this.
The New Dealers in the 1930s admitted that Fascist Italy was the inspiration for their, terrible, policies – but the corrupt education system and corrupt mass media (including the entertainment media have shoved this fact down the “Memory Hole”.
As for National Socialism – it was not “just” economically Collectivist (as the books “Omnipotent Government” and “The Road to Serfdom” explain), it was also culturally revolutionary, as the works of Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn show.
The claim that either Fascism or National Socialism were conservative is indeed false.