by liberal japonicus
I heard there was some stuff happening in the UK. Here’s a thread for you to explain it to everyone.
"This is the Voice of Moderation. I wouldn't go so far as to say we've actually SEIZED the radio station . . . "
"This is the Voice of Moderation. I wouldn't go so far as to say we've actually SEIZED the radio station . . . "
by liberal japonicus
I heard there was some stuff happening in the UK. Here’s a thread for you to explain it to everyone.
It’s instructive to read letters of resignation from ministers who’ve resigned recently over policy differences – Jess Phillips on 12th May, and John Healey on 11th June. The common message is that Keir Starmer talks a good game but fails to deliver.
A British Prime Minister is unlike a US President in that, by construction, he has the votes in the Commons to get legislation enacted. But also, by construction, he needs to retain those votes to keep his job. Most MPs are anxious to win their seats again at the next General Election, and they want the party leader most likely to facilitate that. Before Theresa May, MPs were highly reluctant to depose a Prime Minister, but that guideline has been destroyed by Brexit and its consequences – if a PM’s MPs perceive an electorally more attractive alternative, he’s gone.
The British government operates under budgetary constraints which do not (yet) apply in the US – they can borrow only so much money, as Liz Truss discovered. Meanwhile, voters want more government spending, especially from Labour governments, and lower taxes, especially from Conservative governments. In the absence of economic growth, which has been crushed by Brexit, these things cannot be delivered. (I’m looking at these numbers per capita.)
Furthermore, the main categories of UK government spending are on benefits (especially the state pension), health, and education. In all of these things, static spending, in real terms, looks inadequate – see Baumol‘s cost disease. Debt interest and the armed forces are two more rising costs – Healey’s resignation was because defence spending wasn’t, in his view, increasing fast enough.
Any Prime Minister would have had a difficult time in the last two years – Rishi Sunak called the last General Election five months before he had to because he didn’t want to be responsible for impending decisions on spending. Burnham will have the same challenges. In the short term the hope is that he will do a better job of presentation: he could hardly do worse.
In the medium term, the country won’t get stable governments unless economic growth is restored. The biggest single positive step would be to rejoin the EU. We’ve got to the point where that’s not unimaginable.
(I’ve used “he” because the context is Starmer’s resignation. But two of the four short-term Prime Ministers who preceded him were women.)
I think the main problem is the lack of education of the voting public. Most voters make decisions based on impulsivity, obsolete class identity and nostalgia. I have no idea how anyone can deal with this. And even the educated ones you hear on e.g. ‘Any Qestions’ seem to be mostly overinformed cranks.
Pro Bono’s comment pretty much tells the whole story.
I only wish we could rejoin the EU, especially since Michel Barnier has proposed that we might still be able to have some of our originally negotiated special terms etc. But although it seems that public opinion has moved, I am afraid that if definite moves were made in this direction, it might reinvigorate the loathsome Farage, and Restore, and all that they represent. That might have some seriously undesirable consequences; the (re)election of Trump has proved that nothing, no matter how terrible, is impossible.
The biggest single positive step would be to rejoin the EU. We’ve got to the point where that’s not unimaginable.
I can see calling it imaginable. But possible any time soon? It seems like that would require some significant portion of the population to accept that they were conned by the pro-Brexit campaign into thinking that the economy would benefit, rather than suffer. (They were told there would be negative consequences, but chose not to believe it.). Oops.
Getting people to accept that they made a mistake, is really difficult. Nobody likes to admit, even to themselves, that they were played for fools. I’d guess that it will take a bunch of Brexit believers dying off, and being replaced by younger voters who have no personal history in voting for it I’d live, for Britain’s sake, to be wrong about that. But….
The numbers are quite encouraging:
https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/54925-what-do-britons-think-of-brexit-10-years-since-the-referendum
And if Brexit achieved anything it was that the idea of leaving the EU is not even contemplated anymore in any member state.
I don’t know if the EU should want the UK back anytime soon though. Because, as has been mentioned, there will always be some populist hay to be made by agitating against it in the England; for we are only talking about England here really.
Not that one shouldn’t agitate against e.g. the EU’s shameful immigration or agricultural policies – but that’s another matter which doesn’t concern the likes of Farage etc.
I always like Jamie Boule’s takes and this one connects UK and US politics
https://youtu.be/LNFic3cTD4E?si=KmMN4L5sLG2ISdMd
“Under Starmer, the UK became so much more hostile to immigrants, so much more hostile to migrants, and so much more hostile to trans people.”
I suspect many in the UK would wonder where the evidence for this is. When UK citizens are arrested and serving jail time for posts on social media, the violence of members of these groups is often ignored.
https://www.davidsonmorris.com/labour-immigration-policy/
Since entering government in July 2024, Labour has placed immigration at the centre of its policy programme. Reforms have been delivered through successive policy statements and Rules amendments rather than a single consolidated programme. The cumulative effect has been a more restrictive and closely managed framework than that inherited in 2024, which, for employers and individuals, has created a period of ongoing adjustment.
So the home office, in its infinite wisdom, is now denying international students short term visa to attend their graduation ceremonies:
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/jan/27/the-home-office-barred-me-from-attending-my-own-graduation
https://www.varsity.co.uk/news/30665
https://www.clivelewis.org/uncategorised/news-and-updates/2026/06/24/helping-constituent-visa-for-graduation/
This is happening in a climate of falling application numbers from international students and rising visa denials by the home office.
International students are a major factor in keeping UK universities financially afloat as they pay double the fees of UK students.
The home secretary is now issuing Trump-style blanket visa bans to applicnats from certain countries. It seems to me that very home secretary goes a bit nuts after a few months on the job:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2jy74895eo
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jun/24/childrens-watchdog-rebukes-home-office-plan-to-crackdown-on-refused-asylum-seekers
I generally have a lot of time for Jamelle Bouie. But (although I argue with some of my friends who say the NYT and their commentators seem to understand very little about the UK), I do think that his analysis in the the video that lj linked shows that there is a lot he hasn’t understood about the Starmer administration’s actions!
GftNC – I do think that his analysis in the the video that lj linked shows that there is a lot he hasn’t understood about the Starmer administration’s actions!
You know that you have now obligated yourself to unpack that for us, yes? Can’t just leave it hanging like that.
Well, I did originally do a long draft, but decided I didn’f feel up to another row about the trans issue. Suffice it to say that:
Starmer is a) loathed and considered transphobic by trans activists, and b) loathed and considered someone who does not care about women’s safety and rights by extreme GC feminists (an end of the extreme polarisation axis to which I do not belong). Also, because so much of what TAs object to is a result of rulings by our (non-corrupt) Supreme Court and other courts, I did not get the impression that Jamelle Bouie was paying sufficient (or any) attention to that when he ascribed many of the developments here to Labour.
On immigration, I didn’t know about the latest stuff that novakant linked. But one should not forget that the minute Starmer came to power Labour put an immediate end to the Tories’ disgusting “deport illegal asylum seekers to Rwanda” policy (which I assume is one of the things that inspired MAGA’s policies).
Further to the whole Starmer situation, this from the Grauniad is by an economist much approved by those of my friends on the leftier end of the spectrum. Personally I haven’t currently got the bandwidth to absorb it (it is 36C here, with no a/c), but I know some of you may be interested:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/26/make-people-dream-build-economy-common-good-mariana-mazzucato
Starmer is a) loathed and considered transphobic by trans activists, and b) loathed and considered someone who does not care about women’s safety and rights by extreme GC feminists (an end of the extreme polarisation axis to which I do not belong).
This sounds like a perfect example of the perils of triangulation. Add to that
Gaza<>Israel
Corporate Wealth<>Nationalization
anything to do with Morgan McSweeny
and you’ve got a good list.
Yes, I think there is an element of triangulation and political calculation about it, but I also think his views have somewhat evolved, as have so many people’s (in both directions – hence the scarily increasing extremism on parts of the GC side). I think Bouie does not give Starmer credit for possible incremental intellectual development – he is no Donald Trump.
I think between Mazzucato and Kate Raworth you have the makings of an eco-friendly economic paradigm shift that is user friendly enough to crossover into the public imaginary. Glum austerity will never win the day for the center left. It cedes too much ground to the right and feeds into amygdala politics. Change requires aspirational narratives.
I think Bouie does not give Starmer credit for possible incremental intellectual development – he is no Donald Trump.
I get that you disagree with Bouie’s take, but he didn’t in any way equate Starmer to Trump.
I’m someone who really really really wanted Starmer to succeed, so anything I say about him is the ‘more in sorrow than in anger’ vibe. I also think that loyalty does stand for something, so the whole contrast between Starmer’s announcement and Burnham’s selfie is a bit hard to take and one wonders if there had been a bit more loyalty, might he have done better. Of course, if he had had low interest and didn’t have to deal with fuel shocks from both Ukraine and Hormuz, as well as the various messes left by the conservatives, that might have helped. But Starmer crippled himself by taking people who were then briefing against him or who were acting at cross-purposes. In the New Statesman piece on Starmer, the author tried to get him to say that the UK was in some way broken, and he refused to. He seemed convinced that incremental policies were going to solve the problem. In retrospect, I think we can see that was a mistake.
My own feeling is that Starmer was a lot like Jimmy Carter, moral and upright, but didn’t have enough of a realpolitik streak (despite the way Starmer defenestrated the Corbyn supporters) to do what was necessary. Some could accuse me of hypocrisy, saying I want my politicians to be pure, and tearing them down when they don’t pass any of my particular litmus tests, but seeing as it is the 10th anniversary of Brexit and Farage is still swanning around, I’d rather have a small measure of hypocrisy rather than swimming in it like that.
lj, I pretty much agree with what you say about Starmer, and even the Jimmy Carter analogy. I don’t know if your realpolitik criticism means the same thing as my longtime assessment that Starmer is a terrible politician, but it sounds like it, and I fully agree that a bit of hypocrisy would be preferable if that solved the problem.
But my contention that Bouie didn’t understand the UK situation (with which, of course, you and anybody else may disagree) is based on two other things. Firstly, the point i made earlier about the courts: most of the incredible ire, misery and dissatisfaction among TAs, many trans people and their parents is because of the government’s decision to follow the various courts’ rulings, albeit tardily. And our courts are not corrupted by politicians, and what they say goes, if appeals fail. We don’t have a constitution so unless Parliament changes a law, the law means what the courts say.
And secondly, Bouie’s point about the right not being perceived to have agency is not correct in the UK. I am familiar with the theory because I have heard it expressed about the US here on ObWi, and of course I know Cleek’s Law. I don’t know how right or wrong it is. But here, we have had hugely consequential, ideological and prolonged Tory rule (think of the Thatcher regime for example), and no such theory, IMO, holds true. There can be reasons other than reaction in a democracy to think certain of a party’s policies are so likely to alienate voters as to need moderating.
I don’t love Corbyn or hate Starmer, in fact I have criticised the former and defended the latter more often than not. That said, I could have done without the holier than though hippie-punching, double crossing, and Stalinist cleansing of the party. Also, say what you want about Corbyn, young people loved him because he took them and their problems seriously unlike most boomers. The final straw for me was his stance on the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the authoritarian crackdown on domestic protest against it.
Mazzucato again, this time headlined “Labour has abandoned the missions that brought it to power. Here’s how Burnham could revive them”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/28/labour-keir-starmer-government-five-missions-failed-andy-burnham-mariana-mazzucato
Speaking of triangulation, the home secretary wants to double the time immigrants already in the country have to work and pay taxes in the UK before they get leave to remain from 5 to 10 years.
To reiterate: this applies to immigrants already in the country who came here on the basis that they wood get leave to remain after 5 years.
Until they get leave to remain these immigrants are tied to their employer, which often results in exploitation and is an obvious power imbalance.
So the home secretary wants to make an already unjust system (workers rights anyone?) even more unjust by changing the rules in the middle of the game.
When a junior minister asked for at least care workers to be exempt fir this rule change, as they perform vital services and exploitation is rife on the sector, the home secretary asked for him to be sacked:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jun/29/leave-to-remain-care-workers-campaigners-mike-tapp-shabana-mahmood
How does all this cohere with Labour values? And never mind Labour, how does it align with the often touted (and experienced when e.g. queueing) British values of fairness?
It doesn’t, but Farage, the Daily Msil etc. …
Typed on my phone with fat fingers and autocorrect on, sorry
AutoCorrect tells you all you need to know about how far AI is from being ready for prime time.
Now it turns out that Starmer and Streeting sold out the NHS to ingratiate themselves with Trump – well done:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/02/keir-starmer-britain-pharma-deal-covid