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<\/p>\nSean Bell is a writer and journalist based in Edinburgh.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Keir Starmer,<\/span> the U.K.\u2019s sixth prime minister in a decade, has resigned. Even allowing for the weariness of repetition, this should theoretically <\/em>be a big deal.<\/p>\n Within that benighted kingdom, it will be for some \u2014 the John Fetterman-esque cartoon Andy Burnham,<\/a> now widely considered Starmer\u2019s all-but-inevitable successor, looks set to grip the poisoned chalice that is leadership of the British Labour Party, for all the good it will do him. The ascendant far-right outfit Reform U.K.<\/a> will likely regard Starmer\u2019s downfall as another stepping stone to turning Oswald Mosley\u2019s deferred dreams of Anglified fascism into reality. <\/p>\n The Greens, who have enjoyed some recent success<\/a> with their novel proposal that left-wing people might actually want a left-wing party to vote for, may see this as further proof of the once-verboten idea that \u2014 whisper it \u2014 maybe the Labour Party doesn\u2019t need to exist. And those constituent nations of the U.K. which are not England but are nevertheless forced to abide by its whims will be reminded that the British state they are bound to has not enjoyed stable government for quite a while.<\/p>\n The question of whether the wider world should take heed of the U.K. and its travails remains open, and for good reason. The centuries long legacy of Britain\u2019s various eccentric neuroses being imposed outside of its island isolation is horrifically grim, and I would not blame anyone for wishing to see it quarantined like patient zero in a zombie outbreak. Yet there are lessons to be learned from Starmer\u2019s short, sad tenure, especially as the international left will continue to face manifestations of the worldview he represented \u2014 not least the U.S. Democratic establishment, as New York primary voters<\/a> will need no reminding this week, who seem stubbornly resistant<\/a> to learning them.<\/p>\n Starmer pursued the credo of centrism by meeting his government\u2019s increasingly psychotic right flank where they were.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n It shouldn\u2019t be controversial to say that Starmer\u2019s rise was not achieved on his own merits. As Labour leader, Starmer\u2019s role was essentially pest control<\/a>: He was installed as head of a party that has historically, if intermittently, pretended to belong to a species of socialism, and was tasked with disinfecting Labour of any threat it might genuinely embody that ideology. In this mission, he was nominally successful, purging the party of anything associated with his leftist predecessor Jeremy Corbyn (whose specter continues to haunt<\/a> Britain\u2019s commentariat, despite achieving precisely zilch). Starmer, the best that central casting could produce, was then delivered to Downing Street with a ridiculous majority by an electorate exhausted by more than a decade of Conservative government.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In power, the Tories had alternated between brutality and incompetence, and Starmer did not buck that trend, reaffirming Gore Vidal\u2019s contention that trying to find much difference between Labour and the Tories was like bringing \u201ca measuring rod to Lilliput<\/a>.\u201d At every turn, Starmer pursued the credo of centrism by meeting his government\u2019s increasingly psychotic right flank where they were, and was somehow shocked and dismayed to find this only made him more despised<\/a>, while also emboldening and empowering reactionary forces.<\/p>\n Under Starmer\u2019s health secretary and supposed human being Wes Streeting, trans youth in the U.K. were stripped of gender-affirming healthcare<\/a>, and Britain\u2019s frothingly transphobic \u201cgender-critical\u201d lobby \u2014 from which their equally exterminationist<\/a> American sympathizers have taken much inspiration<\/a> \u2014 fumed that young trans people still existed. <\/p>\n Starmer\u2019s government saw Palestine solidarity activists <\/a>criminalized<\/a> under a dubious<\/a> interpretation of anti-terrorism law, yet British right-wing media continued to grumble<\/a> that pro-Palestinian protests were still possible at all. Within a year of Starmer vowing his government would curb legal immigration and \u201ctake back control<\/a>\u201d of the U.K.\u2019s borders, immigrants in Britain were subjected to pogroms<\/a> and firebombing<\/a>.<\/p>\n It should not need to be spelled out, but Starmer and his backers have shown time and again that it still does \u2014 if the mythic Overton window shifts to the right, and you obligingly follow suit, it will simply move further toward that extreme, and reward only the tip of the spear. Those in the U.S. who saw Kamala Harris struck mute<\/a> on trans rights<\/a> and blind in the face of genocide<\/a> in Gaza<\/a> know too well the stakes of \u201cmoderating\u201d to the right<\/a> in the interest of \u201cconsensus<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Since his resignation, a small and desperate coterie of British pundits have urged their dwindling readership to <\/a>focus on the positives<\/a> of Starmer\u2019s reign by emphasizing those instances in which he stood firm on the rock of not-quite-fascism, particularly in foreign affairs. After all, they point out, he recognized a Palestinian state<\/a> (while simultaneously offering precious little resistance<\/a> to killing the people who would otherwise live there). But whether in the United States\u2019 kidding-but-not-really bid to colonize Greenland<\/a>, its pursuit of regime change in Venezuela<\/a> via the enactment of a lousy \u201980s action movie, or a war with Iran<\/a> \u2014 the sheer sloppy-drunk incompetence of which stunned even its most vociferous critics \u2014 the Starmer administration never achieved any greater fortitude than weakly suggesting, \u201cI say, steady on \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n There was never any realistic hope that this erstwhile human rights lawyer was going to seriously confront a sclerotic superpower ruled by a meat-headed fascism which treats human rights as a laughable suggestion. It is appropriate that in <\/a>his resignation speech,<\/a> Starmer expressed pride in supposedly protecting Britain\u2019s youth from social media<\/a>; this feat of Herculean self-aggrandizement was, in its own way, telling of Starmer\u2019s entire premiership. Given the choice between taking on the entrenched power of social media platforms (to which the U.K.\u2019s political class remains unashamedly addicted) or restricting the liberties of a constituency not particularly useful to him, Starmer inevitably chose the latter.<\/p>\n Less than a decade ago, the idea that the American progressive left might be in a healthier state than its British equivalent would have drawn hoots of derision from those smugly confident in Corbyn\u2019s brief ascendance<\/a>. Yet the left in the United States \u2014 from the days of Occupy Wall Street<\/a> through Black Lives Matter<\/a>, the Palestinian solidarity movement<\/a>, and on-the-ground anti-ICE resistance<\/a> \u2014 has wised up to the idea that it must move in an independent and extra-parliamentary manner. They may take heart in developments such as the rise of figures like Zohran Mamdani, but they seem to understand that real political change requires mass organizing<\/a> beyond party structures and a willingness to break<\/a> with the accepted norms and niceties of the political process.<\/p>\n \n By signing up, I agree to receive emails from The Intercept and to the Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Use<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n This understanding passed entirely by all those on the British left who invested<\/a> in Labour, along with those centrists and liberals who warned<\/a> against the insidious influence of identity politics <\/a>and \u201cculture wars\u201d<\/a> that would require giving a shit about the rights, liberation, and lives of embattled and persecuted minorities. Starmer\u2019s premiership, and its ignominious end, are the consequence.<\/p>\n\n
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