Starmer: A Tale of Two Bullies

by Brian Patrick Bolger (October 2024)

 

 

The British Prime Minister recently discovered football. He likes to don an Arsenal shirt and sip a pint of bitter in an Islington hostelry. He wants to appear ‘connecting’ with working class people. However, the affinities to the British working class stops there. He took expenses from Parliament of £76,000 between 2019 and 2024, the highest of any MP. He accepted £20,000 worth of dresses and glasses from one donor. Another donor, Lord Ali, has given Lady Macbeth (Starmer) £20,000 worth of frocks and a ‘personal shopper’ who waits on the new liberal royalty like a medieval courtier. There is something rotten in the state of England.

This is a PM who lambasted the Conservatives with their grubby nepotism and budgetary extravagance. The tough football fan image continued with the first policy gambit of bullying Pensioners into accepting the cuts of ‘Winter Heating Allowance’ this month, which his own party researched would cause 4000 deaths this winter. Socialism in action. Then there were the draconian sentences on a few hundred rioters, sentences of about 2 years imprisonment often for throwing stones. At the same time, convicted murderers will be released early due to prison overcrowding. A BBC TV pundit caught with indecent images of children walked free from the Court of the Crimson King. There seems to be no logic to any aspect of the new Labour government’s judicial and public policy, except Starmer’s posturing as the ‘school bully’. Yet the winter of disccontent will not be about domestic policy, but the crushing realpolitik of international affairs.

Yet the paucity of the tough guy image was revealed this week when the night club bouncers Starmer and Foreign Secretary Lammy, flew to Washington to ‘solve’ the Ukraine crisis. The main objective was to persuade Biden to go all in on long distance ballistic missiles for the Ukraine, to bring the fight to Russia. This is all enthused by mainstream media who tout the need to ‘win’ versus Russia. To suggest that you cannot ‘win’ versus Russia is evidence of the appeasement tendency. It’s Arsenal and Starmer, remember. However, the Starmer show this week, its aggressive posturing, has merely highlighted the enigma of NATO as an alliance. The Biden reception in Washington was cool; journalists I spoke with said Biden was in a foul mood. Having spent a few weeks with Kamala Harris, it comes as little surprise. The man is a walking non-event. All eyes are on Trump and the Ukrainian U-turn.

Having a grasp of geo-politics must be de rigeur for a national leader. Yet to bounce into Washington guns ablazing—contradicting his partners—is tantamount to naivety, if not sheer incompetence. To give long range ballistics to the Ukraine would be the equivalent of engaging in a proxy war with Russia. This is understood by the Germans who refuse to countenance giving long range capability to the Ukraine. The overall Ukraine tactic by NATO allies has been risible. The economic war has failed; the sanctions have meant increased fuel prices and a smouldering recession in Europe. Food prices have risen. On the geopolitical stage it has meant the cementing of China with the global south and a resurgent Iranian axis. Britain taking the lead from a frail and limited Biden government is inexcusable.

In 1807, Napoleon met the Russian Emperor Alexander I on a barge on the river Neman. They wined and dined until late in the evening and returned with a treaty and agreement. That was the age of diplomacy. Vance, in the US, has already presented his view of the settlement, based on giving up the Donbass and leaving the Ukraine out of NATO. It is not about ‘winning’ and, like Kissinger maintained with China and Russia, one must accept them in all their contradictions.

Putin had timed his sabre rattling brilliantly. Starmer and Lammy were flying over the Atlantic and news broke that Putin had issued a red line no go warning to the west over their possible use of ballistic missiles. The experience and timing outfoxed the beleaguered Starmer who seems out of his depth as much as Liz Truss was with Lavrov. It should be a prerequisite of any members of the political class, especially in foreign affairs, to have a comprehensive knowledge of European and world history, a knowledge of International Relations. The British executive, of Starmer, Lammy and Rayner is quite frankly laughable and signals Britain’s demise as a world player but also the consequences of the bizarre liberal world at home, where nepotism and critical theory has replaced ability.

Further discussions on the use of long range missiles continue this month at the UN General Assembly. Lord Dannatt, the former chief of the British Army, continued the rhetoric of ‘winning.’ ‘We need to help them to dominate Russia on the battlefield. This is in the best interests Of Kiev and all in Western Europe.’[1] He said they should be able to use Storm Shadow missiles even if Biden and Co. refuse to partake. ‘We should just start allowing them to use Storm Shadow with no announcement. The US may then follow later.’

To what end? The reality is that even long range missiles would make little impact. If you look at the map of the Kursk invasion, one fact is notable. That is that on a grand scale of the size of Russia, the few miles of territory taken in Russia is a tiny speck in a gargantuan swathe of the steppe. Escalation with long range missiles means no agreement, no diplomacy. The solution is Napoleons and Alexanders on the raft at Tilsit. The French can at least supply the wines.

It is a tale of two bullies. The one is the new PM, tough on Pensioners. This government gave junior Doctors a pay rise, but took aim at the Pensioners. In this they favoured the middle class over poor pensioners. The second bully is the International one, and he has had his nose bloodied by a tough operator from the streets of St Petersburg. The Labour Party and Starmer are inexperienced in the ring of realpolitik. Yet the stakes are high. there is now a movement in the US to realism in foreign policy. Realism is not isolationism, yet it is the intellect to think the long game, as in Chinese ‘Tianxia‘ ( ‘all under heaven’). The Chinese play a long game of satellite accumulation with soft loans and diplomacy. The ILO ( International Liberal Order) which dominated International Relations since the end of WW2 is in its death throes, whether we like it or not. Grand schemes of Marxism v Liberalism are in abeyance. Now there are wars of territory and resources, of military ‘Grossraum‘[2]. The American and British notion of exporting liberal colonialism has failed. The global south can see through the inequities and its underlying economic colonialism.

A strong, unified Europe is essential in the new power blocs of the world. Europe as a super bloc. But it is divided by internal divisive logic; focussing on short term liberal soundbites and a morality of good and evil. Europe cannot be dependent on the weather cock of American foreign policy. We need leaders, not ineffectual bullies. An element of realism in foreign policy.

Kissinger noted that, “A turbulent history has taught Chinese leaders that not every problem has a solution and that too great an emphasis on total mastery over specific events could upset the harmony of the universe.”[3]

 

[1] https://inews.co.uk/news/world/british-military-chiefs-tell-starmer-to-let-ukraine-use-uk-storm-shadow-missiles-3277724
[2] ‘Grossraum’: Carl Schmitt’s idea of a civilisational European bloc. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schmitt/
[3] Kissinger, H. (2012). On China. Penguin

 

 

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Brian Patrick Bolger LSE, University of Liverpool. He has taught political philosophy and applied linguistics in Universities across Europe. His articles have appeared in the US, the UK, Italy, Canada and Germany in magazines such as The Independent, The Times, The American Spectator, Asian Affairs, Deliberatio, L’Indro Quotidiano Indipendente di Geopolitica, The National Interest, GeoPolitical Monitor, Merion West, Voegelin View, The Montreal Review, The European Conservative, Visegrad Insight, The Hungarian Review, The Salisbury Review, The Village, New English Review, The Burkean, The Daily Globe, American Thinker, The Internationalist, and Philosophy News. His new book, Nowhere Fast: Democracy and Identity in the Twenty First Century, is published now by Ethics International Press. He is an adviser to several Think Tanks and Corporates on Geopolitical Issues.

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