#SwindonsSundaySermon: Carry On Conservatives? Matron! Take them away!

I don’t know if you have noticed, but Keir Starmer and his Labour Party are struggling to get to grips with the transition from opposition to government.

For example, a vast majority of Keir Starmer’s stupendous assemblage of freebies (bribes) landed at his feet during his tenure as leader of its majesty’s official opposition.

The only people that were highlighting these blatantly obvious attempts to purchase direct access to influence to power were the likes of openDemocracy, who revealed Keir Starmer had taken more freebies than all Labour leaders combined since 1997.

The Canary — and some two-bit Swindonian blogger — whose name escapes me at this moment in time — was screaming it from the rooftops back in August 2023 when people thought the Tories were the problem, rather than the rancid neoliberal ideology that embraces corporate monopoly power.

Glad I got that off my chest.

Starmer: getting away with whatever he can

Put simply, what Starmer and Labour could get away with in opposition, from blatant bribes to pledges they never intended to deliver on, won’t be as easy to get away with now they are in government.

Starmer’s rock-bottom, diabolical personal approval ratings haven’t happened by chance. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a new government so desperate to be taken seriously by the electorate while simultaneously doing everything within their power to prove they cannot and must not be trusted to deliver the bold and radical changes that are so desperately needed by millions of ordinary people across the country.

Look at the business with Labour activists turning up in the United States to apparently campaign for Kamala Harris.

Labour claim these activists went entirely on their own accord, and while the media and many online will focus on whether this is the truth of the matter or not, very few people seem to realise the purpose of this visit is going to be very little in the way of knocking on doors for the Democrats and a whole lot more about opening doors for the Labour Party and the huge number of American corporations that stand to benefit from Labour’s ‘Blairism on steroids’ privatisation fetish.

Liars beget liars

Do you remember that cheating, racist thug – disgraced former prime minister Boris Johnson? Of course you do.

The proven liar Johnson spent the best part of five decades meticulously preparing for a job that he believed was his rightful entitlement. Within three years of benefiting from a pro-Brexit vote, he was finished.

The proven liar Starmer had the best part of five years to ‘forensically’ prepare for a job that he believed was his rightful entitlement. Within three months of benefiting from an anti-Tory vote, his personal approval ratings hit rock bottom, and his government feels just as detested as the inept and corrupt horror show that they’ve just replaced.

But Johnson isn’t the only Tory leader that Starmer is keen to emulate, as we discovered during the prime minister’s trip to Samoa for a meeting of Commonwealth leaders.

Reparations: a game of spot the difference

When asked about the longstanding issue of reparations, Starmer said we cannot “change our history”, and we should “look forwards, not backwards”.

Nice work Mr Starmer, particularly during Black History Month.

Just over a year ago, then-prime minister Rishi Sunak was asked by Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy if he would “commit to reparatory justice”, for Britain’s historical role in the slave trade.

Sunak replied:

trying to unpick our history is not the right way forward.

Both of the elitist playthings, unashamedly singing from the same colonialist hymn sheet, couldn’t be more wrong if they tried.

Asking a British colonialist to apologise for British colonialism is up there with ITV’s Big Brother censoring a pro-Palestine T-shirt when it comes to utter pointlessness.

Righting wrongs

The Atlantic slave trade saw millions of Africans enslaved, forced to work, and invariably murdered, especially on plantations in the Caribbean and the Americas, for centuries from around the year 1500. The British government and the monarchy were prominent participants in the trade, to our eternal shame.

We cannot change our history, prime minister, but we can go a bloody long way to ensure the world knows how ashamed we are of our ancestors, and that should be in the form of financial recognition of the legacy of slavery, via reparations.

Here’s the bit when we find out why successive British prime ministers have refused to get the cheque book out and even attempt to begin to put right the many wrongs that were committed over a three-hundred-year period.

Estimates for reparations from campaigners and academics have ranged from a conservative £205 billion to nearly £19 trillion.

Hello, is that Klarna? I have some reparations I need to spread the cost of.

Has Keir Starmer considered Klarna? Maybe the prime minister could give Zilch a call and see if they’ll stretch to a £19 trillion reparations credit line? He’ll only need to find a mere £4.75 trillion up front, and the rest can be repaid over three easy repayments.

Just think, how many pensioners would Keir Starmer need to freeze to cover that one? I’m not sure even the permanently generous Lord Alli is going to find that sort of loose change down the back of his sofa.

I went to school in the 1980’s and 1990’s, like many of you that are reading this now. I honestly don’t remember talking about Britain being the world’s leading slave-trading nation in exactly the same way I don’t remember us talking about Britain’s role in the Irish Potato Famine, nor did our curriculum teach us anything about the history of Britain’s shameful colonialism.

Maybe this has changed? I haven’t had children at school for a few years so I honestly couldn’t say, but I do know that we need to be more accepting of the unspeakable crimes committed by our ancestors in the name of British colonialism.

History will repeat itself

I’ve no doubt that in a couple of hundred years from now there will be numerous academics and political leaders apologising for Britain’s leading role in the West’s genocide of Gaza, and the people vilified for speaking the truth now, will be hailed as the visionaries who tried to make the world a safer place.

That is, of course, based on us not setting our own planet ablaze in the meantime.

And with a spineless, warmongering waste of DNA in the shape of Keir Starmer in charge of the country — but still behaving like an opposition party with limited accountability — this could well be sooner rather than later.

Featured image via Rachael Swindon