You've Been Warned Starmer
Regimes that treat their people with contempt end badly. Labour are on course to learn this the hard way.
This government got off to a rocky start. At the time their poor performance in their first hundred days was ascribed to growth pains. Forty two days later it’s becoming clear that their preferred modus operandi is confrontation and that their policies are founded in dogma not evidence. Starmtroopers see the Chancellor’s economy with the actualité in her LinkedIn profile as a good thing.
The consequences of her trainwreck budget are increasingly obvious. Inflation is up, hiring is down, government spending is up and tax revenue will fall as there is no growth. For many governments this would be worrying. This one is simply denies the evidence. The Soviet Union’s Politburo was the same; whenever yet another five year plan failed they rewrote the targets and claimed success.
Of course, the Politburo was supported by the KGB, whose long reach meant it could treat the people as chattels of the state. Labour doesn’t yet quite have that power, although the state is working on it, non-crime hate incidents being an exemplar of creeping state procedures becoming part of the law. Likewise the expanding definition of terrorism means MI5 now spends 25% of its time on the “far right terrorism”, many of whom may be under 18. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t seen any Hitler Youth rallies - the only racist marchers I see are the pro-Palestinian ones whom London’s Mayor and the Prime Minister approve of.
Like the Politburo, this Labour government treats the individuals in the country with contempt. After providing a very vague manifesto they are claiming a mandate for whatever they do, regardless of what they campaigned on. Taxing pensioners to pay train drivers -neither was mentioned specifically. Increasing employer’s NI wasn’t either. Nor was changing the inheritance tax breaks.
Rather than working through the implications and consequences of their policies before imposing them, Labour relies on the work of intellectuals in think tanks. (I use the word intellectual in the widest possible sense; some of them are also idealogues and fanatics, others can only aspire to adequacy.)
Torsten Bell’s Resolution Foundation came up with arguments for scrapping the agricultural relief in June and again in September as did some other clowns such as Arun Advani, Commissioner (should that read commissar?) of the Wealth Tax Commission. It’s not a statutory body, it’s a pretentious left wing think tank. Its funders include the University of Warwick, The London School of Economics and UK Research and Innovation, who all get money from government, that is our taxes. Why is the state funding the production of such drivel with our bloody money?
There is no mention of lifting the agricultural inheritance tax exemption in the manifesto. They do mention inheritance tax avoidance through offshore trusts (good luck with that – I suspect some of the wealthier Labour MPs and supporters will squeal blue murder.) The manifesto mentions farmers precisely three times, all in the context of support. That can’t be construed as a mandate to devastate an industry, which is what these policies will do.
The Prime Minister, Chancellor and assorted ministers continue to deny that the £1 million inheritance threshold catches most farms. The National Farmers Union, which knows a bit about British farming, disagrees but is ignored. Sir Keir may think that BBC Verify is a credible source, perhaps because they get their agricultural data from a non-farming Labour activist. No-one in the real world trusts the BBC any more.
As it happens I collect fruit from farms all over Kent. They vary in size, but are all much larger than ten acres, have extensive cold stores, packaging, washing and weighting facilities (which might be jointly owned between several farms). Some have their own fleets of trucks and tailers too. They are all worth over £1 million, some many tens of millions. Many are family owned. Most have other uses for their cold stores, using them for Mediterranean fruit too. (If you have an expensive asset you must work it hard all the year round).
If the family had to sell some land (i.e. orchards) to pay an IHT bill it would throw the whole farming enterprise out of kilter. Even if the new owner of the orchards agreed to cooperate closely, the owner needs to make a margin too, so more profit must be produced from the same acreage. If the new owner has other plans, as they might well do given the net zero subsidies, the family’s farm is smaller. Either they buy in more produce or accept that all their plant and machinery – millions of pounds worth of the stuff – is now oversized and thus inefficient and in need to replacement. Either way profitability will decline unless prices go up – welcome back inflation!
All this operational risk and inflation to give Rachel Reeves £500M a year to splurge on the public sector, or indeed to throw at UK farming’s competitors. This may be spectacular incompetence or it may be part of Crazy Ed’s plan to turn the best farmland in the world to solar parks. What it definitely isn’t is a policy that was mentioned in their manifesto (I read it so you don’t have to), nor a way to feed the nation. Labour has no mandate for this ill-researched lunatic policy. And yet, given their 100+ majority, it can’t be stopped unless more than 50 labour MPs vote against the government. Hell will freeze over first.
I recently read a book called “Britain is Better Than This” by Gavin Esler, once of Newsnight fame. It highlights the problems that arise when a government gets a large majority with a minority of the popular vote. He illustrates repeatedly that a Prime Minster with a large majority is very hard to control or hold to account. He wrote it at the time of Johnson, (I don’t think Esler is a fan), who won an 80 seat majority with 43% of the vote, (28% of electorate).
Starmer’s 86 seat majority came from just 33.5% of the vote, representing just 20% of the electorate. Starmer’s untrammelled power is far worse for the UK than Johnson’s; where Bozo treated the world with an insouciant disregard for society’s norms of behaviour, Two-Tier thinks he is the law. “L’état c’est Moi” ended badly for the Sun King despite his divine mandate. Two-Tier’s Labour party’s mandate is less compelling.
Which brings us to a chap called Michael Westwood, whom I’d not heard of until the weekend but am now keen to buy a pint. He started a petition to Westminster, calling for a general election on the grounds that “I believe the current Labour Government have gone back on the promises they laid out in the lead up to the last election.” When I signed it had 30,000 signatures. As I type this it’s on 2,641,346. Check the current figure here (you can sign there too). The petition is now the third largest ever submitted. The top two, with over 6 million and 4 million signatures, were Brexit related.
Any petition over 100,000 signatures will be considered for a Westminster Hall debate, not a Parliamentary one. That means there is no vote and the petition cannot be fulfilled. To that extent this petition is a bit of hot air, the public letting off steam. Procedurally it can be ignored and, given that it’s asking for the impossible, it probably will be.
Outside of Parliament, in the real world, it’s a bit different. Imagine the implication of the number of signatures rising to over 9,708,716 (the number of votes Labour got on July 6th). The petition itself would still have no force, but the government’s life would become very difficult. “Where’s your mandate?” would be an unanswerable stock question for any journalist or, indeed, member of the public for any and every Labour MP.
This government’s contempt for us, the people, is utterly brazen. Whether caught with Taylor Swift freebies, exaggerated CVs or a expert paper telling them a net zero grid is both unaffordable and unachievable by 2030, they ignore the evidence and then carry on regardless. Rather than solve a problem that they have created, they deny it exists. That might work in the lesser parts of academia, arguing perhaps how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or whether God is a woman. In the real world ignored problems don’t go away, they just get bigger, worse and more expensive to fix.
Labour’s visceral need to distribute other people’s wealth led to a tax change that wasn’t in their manifesto, or even the official preamble to the budget. That led to 20,000 farmers marching in London and now 2,642,018 signatures on a petition. The government ignored the demo and will ignore the petition. So eventually the discontented public, including the farmers, will be forced into things that the government can’t ignore.
If Starmer takes comfort from that sounding a bit like King Lear’s ineffectual rage, “I will do such things -- what they are yet I know not -- but they shall be the terrors of the earth”, he’s a fool. Some people, somewhere in the UK are planning something – I would guess blocking the food distribution network after Christmas. Then he’ll be sorry he didn’t read Kipling, as I suggested earlier this month. The relevant lines (from a “Norman and Saxon”) read:
From the richest old Thane in the county to the poorest chained serf in the field,
They'll be at you and on you like hornets, and, if you are wise, you will yield.
You’ve been warned, Starmer.
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In addition to your poem, I have another apposite one by G.K. Chesterton called 'The Secret People', that talks of the past and presages the future ... even to the mention of being overrun by outsiders and ruled by men with 'bright dead alien eyes'.
Please read to the end - it's a fabulous poem, even now.
'The Secret People'
Smile at us, pay us, pass us;
but do not quite forget;
For we are the people of England,
that never have spoken yet.
There is many a fat farmer
that drinks less cheerfully,
There is many a free French peasant who is richer and sadder than we.
There are no folk in the whole world
so helpless or so wise.
There is hunger in our bellies,
there is laughter in our eyes;
You laugh at us and love us,
both mugs and eyes are wet:
Only you do not know us.
For we have not spoken yet.
The fine French kings came over
in a flutter of flags and dames.
We liked their smiles and battles,
but we never could say their names.
The blood ran red to Bosworth
and the high French lords went down;
There was naught but a naked people under a naked crown.
And the eyes of the King's Servants turned terribly every way,
And the gold of the King's Servants
rose higher every day.
They burnt the homes of the shaven men,
that had been quaint and kind,
Till there was no bed in a monk's house, nor food that man could find.
The inns of God where no man paid,
that were the wall of the weak.
The King's Servants ate them all.
And still we did not speak.
And the face of the King's Servants
grew greater than the King:
He tricked them, and they trapped him, and stood round him in a ring.
The new grave lords closed round him, that had eaten the abbey's fruits,
And the men of the new religion,
with their bibles in their boots,
We saw their shoulders moving,
to menace or discuss,
And some were pure and some were vile;
but none took heed of us.
We saw the King as they killed him,
and his face was proud and pale;
And a few men talked of freedom,
while England talked of ale.
A war that we understood not
came over the world and woke
Americans, Frenchmen, Irish;
but we knew not the things they spoke.
They talked about rights and nature
and peace and the people's reign:
And the squires, our masters, bade us fight;
and scorned us never again.
Weak if we be for ever,
could none condemn us then;
Men called us serfs and drudges;
men knew that we were men.
In foam and flame at Trafalgar,
on Albuera plains,
We did and died like lions,
to keep ourselves in chains,
We lay in living ruins;
firing and fearing not
The strange fierce face of the Frenchmen
who knew for what they fought,
And the man who seemed to be more than a man
we strained against and broke;
And we broke our own rights with him.
And still we never spoke.
Our patch of glory ended;
we never heard guns again.
But the squire seemed struck in the saddle;
he was foolish, as if in pain,
He leaned on a staggering lawyer,
he clutched a cringing Jew,
He was stricken; it may be, after all,
he was stricken at Waterloo.
Or perhaps the shades of the shaven men,
whose spoil is in his house,
Come back in shining shapes at last
to spoil his last carouse:
We only know the last sad squires
rode slowly towards the sea,
And a new people takes the land
and still it is not we.
They have given us into the hand
of new unhappy lords,
Lords without anger or honour,
who dare not carry their swords.
They fight by shuffling papers;
they have bright dead alien eyes;
They look at our labour and laughter
as a tired man looks at flies.
And the load of their loveless pity
is worse than the ancient wrongs,
Their doors are shut in the evening;
and they know no songs.
We hear men speaking for us
of new laws strong and sweet,
Yet is there no man speaketh
as we speak in the street.
It may be we shall rise the last
as Frenchmen rose the first,
Our wrath come after Russia's wrath and our wrath be the worst.
It may be we are meant to mark
with our riot and our rest
God's scorn for all men governing.
It may be beer is best.
But we are the people of England;
and we have not spoken yet.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us.
But do not quite forget.
Starmer riles the lion at his peril !
Well, I hear the Prime Minister Rht Hon Sir Sir Sir Rodney K 'I am the law' Starmer KC MP has decided already a petition does not matter, and thanks to some of his Laybour party peeps they have made this super clear via MSM.
Patrick is right. To get the public and farmers riled at the very same time is incompetence.
The solution? Fire the self-regarding Sir RK Starmer KC MP and stop messing about.
Mr Milibean, Dame R Reeves and a few more need to go as well.
There's a country to save.
Professional paper weights are not required.