A Keir Starmer Labour Government has a good chance of becoming Britain's first authoritarian technocracy.

The old woman who lives in the apartment above me is dying. She is dying from the lung disease I was diagnosed with last year. My bout with this disease hopefully has a few more rounds before it puts me flat out on the canvas like it has her.

I loaned the old, woman my dad's walker; so that she could get around her place without falling down. Her family, in thanks and because they don't like waste- gifted me some frozen meals their mother refuses to eat because they have rice as a side. I accepted them because- these times we live in- it's best never to turn away offers of free food.

The Frozen Food Company promised on the front of the box that their dinners taste like the "good old days."

 Eating one of those meals last night, I thought they tasted like our era. It was bland and despairing. It elicited angst in me at how neoliberalism is the most corrupt and cynical of economic ideologies.

It's just a hollow time to be alive. We are gas lit by corporations to buy their shoddy products or manipulated by our corporate news media to accept as true-hard centrist bullshit that masquerades as cut-in-stone manifestos for change.

After I finished my meal, I thought they could have called my supper, Memories of Keir Starmer because the picture on the box looks appetising but the contents inside tasted like shit. Starmer will take Britain to where Boris Johnson couldn't because Bojo just didn't have the discipline to do the heavy lifting to build an authoritarian technocratic state that is fascistic as well as competent. Starmer however is more ambitious than Albert Speer and will get that job done. So the future like our past is pretty fucking grim.

In 1930, during the hours when the sky sinks into dusk, working-class boys like my father dug through the rubbish bins of restaurants in Britain's north, looking for food to eat. Six million men were out of work and a poor relief of 10 shillings a week ensured that their children went to bed hungry. Great Depression kids of the unemployed were turned feral by politicians who claimed like today's Labour and Tory MPs- that money doesn't grow on trees.

The year my dad turned seven, Labour Prime Minister Ramsey Macdonald introduced harsh austerity against the working classes to combat an economic crisis created by the affluent. It pushed my father's family further down into a warren of destitution.

My dad was put to work as a beer barrow boy to help with the rent on a room his family let in a seedy slum in Bradford. He grew to believe he was a beast of burden to be used and abused by the adults who were his master.

The elimination of poverty was the bedrock that founded the Labour Party and allowed it build the Welfare State in 1945.  Keir Starmer repudiated that mission to eliminate poverty when he told Britain he had no intention of removing this Tory government's two-child benefit cap. 250k children live in dire poverty because of that cap. According to Labour, they aren't worthy of a decent childhood. They don't deserve- according to Keir Starmer- what every Labour MP's child takes for granted each day to have adequate food and housing. Let's be clear, nice essays from Gordon Brown about how Labour will bring about a better tomorrow for the poor are nothing more than another Labour grandee trying to make a legacy from his self out of words rather than socialistic action. 

A hundred years ago, my father was born into a Britain where Tories and much of the middle class believed bairns like my dad weren't worthy of nutrition, healthcare, a place to live, and the right to be kids. They were only seen as future unskilled or semi-skilled workers to make their profits- much like a milk cow makes a farmer's fortune.

In 2024, we have come almost full circle back to that world. The Labour Party helped make this happen when they surrendered the battlefield of economic and social progress to the self-interests of the entitled. It didn't have to be that way, but now there is no stopping it.

Voting for Labour in the next general election has all the hallmarks of belonging to a cult if you aren't a Tory. There aren't enough talking points written by a political spin doctor whose postcode is located in hell that can alter the facts that Labour under Keir Starmer is ideologically, not even centrist but totally conservative.

Labour under Starmer began on the promise of better workers rights, but as each year elapsed those promises became more vague. It’s the same with affordable housing which was omitted from being in any of Starmer’s six steps to paradise pledge. As for fighting climate change no neoliberal government the world over has any real intention of stopping our destruction. So, despite Ed Miliband trying to become Britain’s John Kerry despite Kerry doing fuck all all to save the world from American’s fossil fuel energy giants sector, Labour’s record on fighting climate change won’t be much better than the Tories. Also disturbingly Labour under Starmer openly talks about the possibility and necessity of nuclear war to protect the nation's "freedoms." This is a clear sign that Starmer wants Britain to be a foot soldier for America’s foreign policy which is geared to eternal war as a profit making enterprise for the 1%.

Labour under Starmer isn't averse to privatising the NHS, which will turn at least England into the State of Indiana with better beer. Labour under Starmer aids and abets genocide in Gaza. It begs the question if they are going to let Palestinians be ethnically cleansed- whose next?

Refugees are demonised, and that crisis- according to Keir Starmer is the fault of unscrupulous, people smugglers, not 21st-century colonialism and climate change. ,

To vote for Keir Starmer's Labour in the next election is as stupid,  and malicious as those who voted for Boris Johnson because he was going to "Get Brexit Done."  They have told you what they are going to do. No wishful thinking on your part will change their march towards making my dad's past your future. Only not voting for them may clip their wings to a minority parliament. 

Thanks for reading and supporting my Substack. Your support keeps me housed and also allows me to preserve the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith. A yearly subscriptions will cover much of next month’s rent. Your subscriptions are so important to my personal survival because like so many others who struggle to keep afloat, my survival is a precarious daily undertaking. The fight to keep going was made worse- thanks to getting cancer along with lung disease and other co- morbidities which makes life more difficult to combat in these cost of living crisis times. So if you can join with a paid subscription which is just 3.50 a month or a yearly subscription or a gift subscription. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. But if you can’t it all good too because I appreciate we are in the same boat. Take Care, John