12 things you should know about Starmer's "Things Will Get Worse" speech
Keir Starmer's "Things Will Get Worse" speech was absolutely crammed with lies, distortions, excuses, and economically illiterate rubbish.
If Britain had any kind of functioning media, Keir Starmer’s diabolical "Things Will Get Worse" speech would have been absolutely shredded for the dishonest rubbish that it is, but just like the Tories before him, he’s playing politics on easy mode, knowing that the British media class will give him an easy ride as long as he demonstrates that he’s committed to serving the interests of wealthy elitists and the establishment order.
Here are 12 criticisms that you probably won’t have heard from capitalist media or the BBC.
"We have inherited not just an economic black hole [but also] a societal black hole. And that is why we have to take action and do things differently. Part of that is being honest with people – about the choices we face. And how tough this will be. Frankly – things will get worse before they get better."
There’s so much wrong in this single quote that it accounts for the first four of the 12 points.
1. "Things will get worse before they get better"
Starmer peppered various iterations of this claim throughout his speech, also stating that we have to suffer "short-term pain before things get better".
The problem of course is that this is exactly how austerity was sold to us in the first place back in 2010. Remember how Cameron and Osborne promised that their savage austerity cuts would have eliminated the budget deficit by 2015, then things would get better?
Austerity didn’t do what they claimed it would. The budget deficit was supposed to be cleared 9 years ago but it hasn’t been; the national debt has tripled; the cuts have just continued and continued; public services are in a desperate state; local governments all over the country are teetering on the brink of insolvency; and wages have remained stagnant for a decade and a half.
We’ve already had fourteen long years of "short-term pain" with the promise of jam tomorrow never coming true, and yet Starmer has nothing to offer except more of the same myopic austerity cuts, and more lies about how doing the same economic vandalism as before is magically going to work this time around and bring prosperity.
2. "Being honest with people"
It takes an awful lot of brass neck to claim that you’re "being honest with people" in a speech so jam-packed full of lies, distortions, excuses, and economically illiterate rubbish.
One important lesson in life is to judge people by their actions, not their words.
People whose behaviour matches their stated principles are the ones to actually trust, while the kind of people who publicly self-identify as "being honest" are most often the ones to be suspicious of (especially when their self-proclaimed honesty is shrouded in a load of excuses, distortions, and deceptions).
One clear sign of Starmer’s dishonesty is his refusal to even use the word austerity once in this entire speech, even though expansion of the Tories’ ruinous austerity cuts is the entire reason for all of this talk of economic black holes, difficult choices, and things getting even worse.
3. "difficult choices"
Anyone with a grain of sense knows that when politicians like Starmer talk about "difficult choices" they mean that they’re intent on choosing to do things that make life worse for ordinary people in order to protect the interests of the extremely wealthy.
Does anyone really believe that the £millionaire donors who have been throwing cash at Starmer and his Labour-right allies have been doing it out of the goodness of their hearts? And not for influence and access?
The mega-rich have hoarded vast fortunes over the last 14 years, while the rest of us have suffered austerity, wage stagnation, and failing public services, Now Starmer’s choosing to make life worse for ordinary people rather than risking the wrath of the mega-rich and their capitalist media propaganda hacks.
He says he’s making difficult choices, when in reality he’s making the easy choice to go after ordinary people without the power to fight back, because he’s terrified of the alternative of upsetting rich establishment elitists.
4. "The black hole"
Starmer repeatedly refers to the black hole in the public finances, claiming that "in the first few weeks, we discovered a 22 billion pound black hole in the public finances."
This financial mess makes the perfect excuse for ripping up his election pledges and doing the austerity ruination he always wanted to do, however the whole thing is a deception.
Labour were repeatedly warned before the election that the public finances were in a diabolical mess, with the Institute for Fiscal Studies even stating that Labour and the Tories were engaged in a "conspiracy of silence" over the real state of the public finances, and their true economic intentions.
Banging on about this "black hole" is just an excuse for even more Starmer pledge-breaking, and not even a good one.
5. "Those with the broadest shoulders should bear the heavier burden"
Who do you think of when a politician like Starmer speaks of "those with the broadest shoulders"?
Billionaires, bankers, city speculators, corporate executives, landed gentry, establishment insiders, tech bros, property hoarders, media moguls …?
Well the first two groups Starmer’s already gone after are pensioners (confiscation of the Winter Fuel Allowance) and people living in social housing (plans to hike their rents in order to subsidise those who can afford to buy houses of their own).
Actions speak louder than words.
6. Sadface
"I didn’t want to means test the Winter Fuel Payment. But it was a choice we had to take."
At the same time Starmer was confiscating the Winter Fuel Allowance from millions of British pensioners to save around £3 billion a year, he was promising Zelenskyy a no-strings £3 billion per year for his forever war with Russia.
Even if you think burning so much money in Zelenskyy’s money pit is a good idea, it’s still easy to pay for that, keep the Winter Fuel Allowance, cover the entire £22 billion black hole, and still have money left over.
All the government would need to do is stop paying the private banks interest on the quantitative easing cash that was created out of nothing by the Bank of England and credited into the accounts of the private banks for free.
This one simple adjustment could save an estimated £40 billion per year, but Starmer refuses to do it because he’d rather do sadface and pretend that he had no choice but to go after pensioners instead.
7. "Deep rot"
"When there is a deep rot deep in the heart of a structure, you can’t just cover it up. You can’t tinker or rely on quick fixes. You have to overhaul the entire thing. Tackle it at root. Even if it’s harder work and takes more time. Because otherwise what happens? The rot returns. In all the same places. And it spreads. Worse than before. You know that – and I know that."
Keir Starmer is a symptom of this deep rot.
Pledging to continue with even more of the austerity ruination that’s left British society and the public finances in such a dreadful state is the absolute polar opposite of "overhauling the entire thing".
If Starmer wanted to tackle Britain’s economic malaise "at root" he’d be planning long-overdue investment in the drivers of future economic prosperity (education, infrastructure, quality public services, transport links, modernisation, public health …) and he’d be explaining that Britain needs to repatriate our vital infrastructure and services out of the hands of the parasitical private profiteers who have been bleeding the country dry for decades.
In this speech he goes on about water companies pumping raw sewage into our rivers, but he refuses to acknowledge that the reason this has been happening is because the privatisation profiteers spent the money that should have been invested in maintenance and upgrades on bloated executive salaries and vast shareholder dividends instead.
It’s impossible to cure the rot by keeping everything the same. You know that, and I know that.
8. GB Energy
"Great British Energy will be owned by the taxpayer, making money for the taxpayer. Producing clean energy and creating good jobs."
This is a flat out lie. GB Energy will not produce electricity because Labour is in hock to the interests of the privatised energy companies. Instead of creating renewable energy capacity, GB Energy will bankroll renewable energy projects for existing private energy companies. This means public money will fund these projects, while private energy profiteers siphon off the profits.
9. "Taxpayers’ Money"
Starmer repeatedly refers to "taxpayers’ money" in his speech, but this phrase is deliberately deceptive.
Governments do not spend "taxpayers’ money". The money that is spent is created, and the money that is raised in taxation is destroyed to keep inflation under control.
When the amounts that are created and destroyed by government are similar, that’s a balanced budget. When the government spends more than it raises, this represents a loan from the public finances into the wider economy.
If Starmer doesn’t understand these absolute economic basics, we’re in big trouble, and if he does understand them but he’s choosing to spread economically illiterate tropes to justify his austerity agenda, we’re no less screwed.
10. "Growth" = "wealth creation"
"Growth… And, frankly by that I do mean wealth creation … the number one priority of this Labour government"
Wealth creation is a right-wing economic myth predicated on the lie that the more wealth a government shovels into the pockets of the already extremely wealthy, the more jobs they create.
The reality is the exact polar opposite. The most effective way of increasing wealth and prosperity is to provide better living standards to the poor and ordinary. They spend additional income into the economy, creating additional demand, rather than siphoning it off into tax havens, gambling it on the stock market, hoarding property, and wasting it on imported luxuries like yachts, sports cars, private jets, and million pound watches.
It’s profoundly dispiriting to witness a Labour leader mindlessly parroting the right-wing wealth creator myth, while promising to make life worse for the rest of us.
11. Riots
"These riots didn’t happen in a vacuum. They exposed the state of our country. Revealed a deeply unhealthy society. Infected by a spiral of populism…"
This would be an awful lot more convincing if it was coming from someone who hasn’t been stoking the populist culture war furnace by spewing vitriol at Bangladeshis during the general election; parroting far-right anti-immigration tropes; constructing a “hostile environment for people of colour" within the Labour Party; and promising to build more refugee detention centres.
Once again it’s all someone else’s fault, but Labour are going to continue doing the same things that led us here into this "infected" state in the first place!
12. Gimmicky symbolism
One of the most infuriating aspects of Starmer’s "Things Will Get Worse" speech was his reference to the symbolism of giving it in the same Downing Street garden where Boris Johnson held his lockdown-busting parties.
Starmer is trying to dress himself up as the sensible and respectable moderate who is going to bring an end to all the Tory sleaze and corruption, but once again it’s just another ruse. He’s already been caught red-handed giving political access and top civil service jobs to millionaire Labour Party donors.
This gimmicky symbolism was obvious bait for the kinds of client journalists who prefer style above substance, because it’s so much easier to write about the symbolism of Starmer’s presentation choices, than it is to fact check his lies, or conduct any kind of rigorous analysis.
This ruse worked an absolute treat, with the Guardian leading their coverage with a glowing appraisal entitled "Starmer’s choice of venue for first set-piece speech filled with symbolism", whilst they studiously ignored all of the lies, deceptions, broken promises, and economic illiteracy.
One of the main reasons the UK is seemingly locked into terminal decline is Britain’s diabolical media class, and their outright refusal to contradict politicians who keep promoting the absurd economic fairy story that it’s possible to cut our way to stability and prosperity, even after 14 painful years of evidence that this ridiculous nonsense simply doesn’t work.
Who cares that he’s using the same deceptive language, and the same dishonest pledges of jam tomorrow, to promote the same harmful austerity policies as the Tories. He did his speech where Bodger held a lockdown-busting party, what an awfully clever boy he is!
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I've been telling people for years to judge Starmer by his actions and not by his words. He was a snake when he tried to oust Corbyn and he's no different now. Good article.
James O’Brien’s reaction to it was predictable, hilarious but also chilling. “If you dont like that you don’t like Britain.” WTF?