Starmer's political stupidity is a gift to Farage

Keir Starmer's multiple acts of conscious cruelty against the vulnerable since becoming Prime Minister have handed Nigel Farage a golden opportunity to pretend to be the good guy.

Nigel Farage’s only political strategy is to get people talking about Nigel Farage, so in a way I’m falling into his trap by writing this, but it needs to be said.

A brief aside

Today Farage simultaneously hammered the "extreme-right glee" and "liberal outrage" buttons by claiming that "Lucy Connolly should not be in prison ... there were millions of mothers, after Southport, feeling exactly the same".

Connolly was jailed after pleading guilty to inciting racial hatred after saying "set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care… if that makes me racist so be it".

It’s a wild claim to say that "millions of mothers" were left feeling that burning down hotels full of innocent people would be an appropriate response to the horrific Southport stabbings, but you’d have to be naive not to expect anything but outrageous hyperbole from extreme-right grifters like Farage.

Of course the extreme-right fanatics are delighted with Farage’s comments, just as they revelled last summer when gangs of racist thugs smashed up our communities, vandalised libraries, attacked mosques, looted shops, set up racist road blocks, and actually attempted to burn down hotels.

Farage’s natural base of extreme-right fanatics want to be allowed to incite violent mobs into rioting, looting, arson, and attempted murder with no consequence.

But the liberal outrage is just as valuable to Farage, because borked social media algorithms mean outraged shares and critical replies are probably even more valuable in terms of social media engagement than approval-based interactions, because they’re more likely to spread the content to new audiences beyond extreme-right echo chambers.

Farage is only posturing about this sentence, because the only control politicians have over political sentencing is their ability to change the laws.

Political leaders can’t just release people from prison because they sympathise with their racist and violent outbursts, because that’s not how things work in liberal-capitalist democracies.

There’s a separation between the government and the courts for good reason, but Farage doesn’t care about facts or reality. All he cares about is generating as much attention as possible.

The main point

In the same speech, Farage claimed that Reform would scrap the Tory two-child policy and reinstate the Winter Fuel Allowance.

The two-child economic sanctions against families are an absolute obscenity, which needs to be scrapped for many reasons, not least the way that ageing demographics mean economic prosperity is unsustainable without either increasing the birth rate by incentivising families to have more kids, or increasing immigration.

Farage probably has no intention of actually scrapping this obscene policy, especially since he’s likely to immediately trigger a Liz Truss style economic collapse, the moment Reform’s make it up as you go along political agenda comes into contact with reality.

But this doesn’t matter. It’s all about attention, and Keir Starmer’s stubborn stupidity has handed Farage this golden opportunity to be seen as outflanking Labour to the left.

Starmer is under enormous pressure from traditional Labour voters over his cruel and electorally stupid policies of raising and maintaining economic sanctions on vulnerable people.

And Starmer didn’t just refuse to reverse the diabolical Tory two-child policy either. He used the issue as a depraved loyalty test to justify an ideological purge of Labour MPs who refused to go along with his conscious cruelty.

Add in the Winter Fuel Allowance cut and Rachel Reeves depraved attacks on disabled people, and Labour seem to be actively trying to drive away their own natural supporters in a desperately futile attempt to pander to the kind of frothing right-wing fanatic who hates the idea of disabled people and hungry children receiving subsistence support, and would never vote Labour anyway.

Farage is merely accepting the golden opportunity that Starmer has handed him to court traditional Labour voters by positioning himself in opposition to Starmer’s conscious cruelty.

Farage is taking the opportunity to pretend that he’ll expand and protect the social security system to fish for left-leaning votes, whilst signalling to his extreme-right base that he’ll do the exact opposite, via glowing approval of Trump and Musk’s DOGE cuts to all kinds of social security programmes.

Starmer’s stupidity has created a win-win scenario for Farage and Reform.

If Starmer stubbornly persists with his policies of economically sanctioning the most vulnerable, Reform get to pretend to be the good guys. If he backtracks on his conscious cruelty, Farage and Reform can now try to claim the credit by accusing Starmer of "stealing their policies".

This entire mess is of Starmer’s own creation. If he’d acted quickly to get rid of the diabolical Tory two-child policy, instead of using the issue as a depraved internal loyalty test, Farage wouldn’t be able to capitalise like this.

And the cuts to Winter Fuel Allowance and disability support are further self-imposed wounds, which have invited Farage to deceptively posture as the good guy too.

Conclusions

Keir Starmer’s political idiocy was only ever masked by the fact the media allowed him to play politics on easy mode since he lied his way into the Labour leadership in 2020 until he fluked his way into Downing Street last year on a lower vote share than Corbyn achieved in 2017, and even 2019!

Now that he’s allowing a attention-seeking fraud like Farage to posture as the good guy, Starmer’s bone-headed stupidity is absolutely plain to see.

As if driving away Labour’s own traditional supporter base in a desperate effort to pander to people who would never vote Labour anyway wasn’t bad enough, Starmer’s now allowing himself to be easily outplayed by a far-right grifter like Farage!