Since it seems inevitable that we will soon have a Labour government it is worth pondering now what manner of monstrosity it might be.
The Conservatives have spent recent days warning about the known knowns of the Labour Party. Which is perhaps inevitable. But to continue with the Rumsfeld-ism, we should spend at least some time dwelling on the known unknowns. The things that we know that we do not yet know.
Of utmost importance is the question of the vast number of Labour MPs who will come in on the expected landslide. Have any of the public got an idea of what this avalanche of new Labour MPs will be like? Or how they will act once in Westminster? I doubt it. Sources inside Labour have in recent months tried to assure me that they have got the party’s candidate selection technique tied up. That is, that the moderates in the party have tried to make sure that the people standing at this election are “don’t scare the horses” leftists rather than Corbyn-ista head-bangers of the type one might have feared would dominate after the party’s recent years.
Yet I suspect that, after the election, we will discover two things about the new MPs. The first is that there will certainly be a cohort – whatever their number – who will represent the worst of the modern Left. They will include demagogues and fanatics. People who wish to pull their party and this country in a radical leftist direction. The party leadership may keep these people on the backbenches, but still they will pull things their way to some extent. The second discovery we are likely to make is that the new intake will include a larger number of people who knew to perform at their party’s selection process as moderates but will turn out to be redder once they are inside the House of Commons. But as I say, these are things we know that we cannot at present. We can only expect.
What we do know with considerable certainty is what the top of the Labour party will look like. The first thing to note is the astonishing, almost unbelievable lack of talent. Keir Starmer himself is a man of some distinction as a lawyer, but he is a weak man. Indeed his idea of leadership is to say that he is a strong leader. The facts prove otherwise. Whenever a wind blows on any area not in his immediate area of expertise he bends to it.
Consider the moment in 2020 when politicians were encouraged to “take the knee” because of the actions of one rogue policeman in Minnesota. Did the killing of George Floyd say anything about the state of America? Personally I think not. But did it say anything about the state of Britain? Absolutely not. Yet Starmer was one of those weak leaders around the world who found a mainly online movement of ideologues – intent on interpreting the whole of Western history through the lens of George Floyd – that he was willing to abase himself with this pointless sign. An act that his deputy, Angela Rayner, joined him in.
Will that same wind blow at some point? Possibly. But what is certain is that there will be other winds that will blow, and the chances that they will take our next Prime Minister with them are sure. To what destination we cannot yet know.
The same pattern has occurred with the stupid gender debate which has wasted so much of everybody’s time. Thanks to a couple of scientifically illiterate academics in America, much of the Western world has been swiftly persuaded that our species is an essentially hermaphroditic one. We are expected to pretend that biological sex is not a fixture of our species and that human beings can become whatever sex they like. To say that this is scientifically illiterate is obvious. To say that it leads to dangerous outcomes is obvious. But the misapprehension has taken most of the Labour Party with it.
At no stage has Keir Starmer stood up for the lone voice in his party – Rosie Duffield – who has pushed against this palpable nonsense. In fact, he left her out to dry. At the same time, his Shadow Foreign Secretary has shown the kind of biological illiteracy which we must assume is the norm at the top of the Labour party. This is a man – lest we forget – who on a radio programme once said that it is possible for a born male to develop a cervix.
This is as worrying in a person about to assume one of the great offices of state as it would be if Lammy had gone on live radio and proclaimed that it is possible to turn base metals into gold. Except that such a belief would be relatively harmless by comparison. If our future Foreign Secretary believed in alchemy, at least it would not give the green light for medical frauds to mutilate the bodies of children. Again, this is a wind that has blown. And the “adults” in the Labour Party have utterly failed to stand against it. Expect similar failures to inform their decision-making on every issue from carbon Zero to immigration.
Talking of Lammy, we can seem many other directions in which this country will go. Last week he gave a worryingly statesman-like pronouncement in the House of Commons. Specifically, he gave his party’s fulsome support to the actions of the ICC. This is an organisation which no sovereign democracy should ever either acknowledge or participate in. It is currently seeking to prosecute a democratically elected leader for the first time in its history.
America and Israel are among the democracies wise enough never to have signed up to this political and partisan sham of a body. A body advised by the campaigning leftist lawyer Helena Kennedy. But this country – and the incoming Labour government in particular – seem utterly at ease with the idea that the conduct of wars involving allies (and in the future no doubt ourselves) should be adjudged by sectarian campaigners. Good luck with that.
Finally, of course, we know that the Labour high command was opposed to the public vote we took part in eight years ago. Will Labour decide to take us back into the EU during their time in office? It seems inconceivable to me that they will not be at least tempted to do so – through some door or other. Meaning that a decision that this country seemed to have put to bed will be opened up once again.
These, then, are some signs of what our country will soon be. One led by people who believe in the out-sourcing of foreign and domestic policy, and the turning of the UK into a sort of medium-sized NGO. What an indictment it is of the current government that this wholly inadequate B-team should be regarded as so vastly preferential to them.
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