Here’s a video version of the article if you want to see my lovely face and hear my dulcet tones:

“Labour are the real Conservatives,” Keir Starmer has confirmed in a speech pitching his version of the party as the real home of Tory values.

At last, he is admitting what many of us have been claiming since he abandoned his first party leadership pledge, back in 2020.

He has tried to disguise his meaning for some by claiming to be criticising Rishi Sunak’s (eponymous) Conservative Party for failing to protect the NHS, BBC, rivers and seas.

In fact the meaning Starmer puts forward is more in line with conservationism – the protection and preservation of institutions, traditions, the environment and wildlife.

By deliberately confusing the two, he seems to be trying to trick the voting public into accepting his enforced policy shift, moving the Labour Party from socialism to neoliberalism.

In declaring that he has made this shift, he is telling left-wing voters that they no longer have any representation among the main two parties in Parliament.

Starmer made his intentions clear by referring to Clause IV of the Labour Party Rule Book, which originally called for common ownership of industry – nationalisation. Tony Blair abandoned the commitment to nationalisation in 1995 and Starmer has said he plans reforms that will be like New Labour’s changes to Clause IV “on steroids”.

Nationalism, not nationalisation

Starmer said his party would now emphasize patriotism, based on what he called the “true worth of service, respect and stability”. He means unthinking loyalty to a flag, rather than to the well-being of the people living in the country it represents, it seems.

Indeed, he attacked people who question unthinking patriotism by attacking them as those who harbour “patronising contempt for those who fly our flag”.

How utterly vile.

‘If that sounds Conservative… I don’t care.”

Responding to critics who said he was too right-wing, Starmer admitted his bias. He claimed that “precious” parts of Britain’s “way of life”, communities, and environment are worth preserving.

“If that sounds conservative, then let me tell you: I don’t care,” he said. “Somebody has got to stand up for the things that make this country great and it isn’t going to be the Tories,”

But he was contradicting himself. He said the BBC, NHS and our waterways need protecting but his plan to take Blair’s Clause IV rejection of nationalisation to extremes means not only a dedication to protect the privatised water companies but to continue the profit-motivated takeover of the NHS. What does that foretell for the BBC?

Broken promises

Alongside Starmer’s speech, the party-affiliated LabourList website has published what we’re being told is a leaked internal draft of Labour policies which includes plans that socialists would support, like renationalising the railways, repealing anti-trade union legislation and “in-sourcing” public services back to the public sector.

But Starmer u-turned on his pledge to re-nationalise the railways last year, after his shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, said the policy was no longer compatible with “fiscal rules” she would introduce to restrain public spending.

He’s unlikely to have changed his mind on this because Labour’s line at the moment is that there’s not enough money to carry out all the changes Starmer promised when he was campaigning to be the party’s leader.

And this means that the other leaked plans are also unlikely to be true, as they would both involve increased spending.

From the Sky News article linked above:

The Labour leader insisted he took a “pragmatic” approach when asked about whether he would place rail, energy and water companies back under public ownership.

From this it is easy to conclude that any promises he is now making about water companies are also untrue.

And from that, it is easy to conclude that Starmer’s claim that Labour is now the party of real Conservative values is also untrue.

Under him, Labour is not an alternative to Sunak’s Tories. It is exactly the same.

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