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Anthony McIntyre ☠ Missing these weekly vigils leaves a bad taste in the mouth. 

I was not available for the previous two due to other matters kicking in that needed attending to. If only the Israelis would miss a day of child murder.

While we gather, the Eurovision Song Contest is taking place in Vienna. The organisers have not banned the genocidal state from participation, coming up with all sorts of jabberwocky about an artistic space where unity is promoted and from which an image of a better world might be projected, conveniently choosing to ignore that Israel is using the competition to song wash its genocidal image.

Ireland along with Spain, Iceland, Slovenia, and the Netherlands make up the group of five societies boycotting the event in opposition to Israeli genocide in Gaza. While thirty five countries will be taking part, it is the lowest number of entrants since the 2004 expansion. While Iceland and the Netherlands are reported to be screening the event, Ireland along with Slovenia and Spain are broadcasting alternative shows. In the case of RTE, it has opted to put out old Father Ted episodes. Certainly more than most other national broadcasters are doing but it would have been more pointed and imaginative to have broadcast history shows about the 1938 Nazi march into Austria in pursuit of Hitler's Anschluss project which aimed at creating a Greater Germany. It would have been poignant and a reminder of what horrors can follow from inviting those who perpetrate genocide. Austrians made the German Nazis welcome in 1938 while today the country makes Israeli Nazis welcome. Lesser Germany and Lesser Israel, seem to be concepts alien to the Austrian political and cultural psyche which favours greatness.

RTE's decision is nevertheless to be welcomed but the institution remains a strange beast. Last night it opened its early evening news slot with a report about its top earners where the station juggled with the interchangeability or crossover between presenter and producer. The semantic hairsplitting around producing or presenting might be of interest to the number crunchers in RTE or to the type that like to train spot or plane watch, but it is hardly the most newsworthy item on the public agenda.

RTE's coverage of the genocide in Gaza is considered by many to have has fallen short of the mark. Earlier this week I accompanied our very own Siobhan to Dundalk courthouse where she had been summoned for refusing to pay her licence fee. 


Inside the pre-hearing consultation room she made the case most strongly that she was vehemently opposed to the broadcaster's coverage of the Israeli genocide in Gaza. When people are prepared to stand up and take a hit for their beliefs it serves to remind us of just how many people, to quote the biologist Jerry Coyne, are wedded not to what is true but to what makes them comfortable. 

Which brings me to the Independent Writers Union of which I am a member. RTE, despite its failings, has shown more fortitude, than the Union. It at least is prepared to participate in a cultural boycott of genocidal Israel. The IWU declined to do any such thing a few weeks ago at its AGM, the reasoning being that it is not political. That leaves us as scribblers to look haughtily over the top of our glasses at our fellow writers in Gaza and the rest of the Occupied Territories and proclaim:

most sorry old bean that you are being murdered, your prisoners raped and now facing the noose, your children massacred, your education system destroyed, your intellectuals, writers and surgeons maimed to stem their creativity, your health system obliterated, your land stolen because your tormentors are the chosen people and you are children of a lesser god. But we, the Irish Writers Union, as a body of scribes can't do anything, because protecting our institution from allegations of being political must take precedence over protecting you from genocide.

And when we offer them that as an explanation for our commitment to nothingness, let's not feign surprise when they look at us through disbelieving and disdainful eyes and respond in three terse words: Irish Wafflers Union. 

This week our esteemed colleague. Siobhan, through a single act of civil obedience, did more to challenge the barbarism of Israel than the Irish Writers Union. A playwright, I don't imagine she will sign up for membership of a union too institutionally and non-politically timorous to write the wrong.

⏩Follow on Bluesky.

Song Washing

Geordie Morrow 🖌 with a painting from his collection of art work. 



⏩Geordie Morrow is a Belfast artist.

Back To Where It All Began

Cam Ogie ✍What began in an earlier critique of Trump, Vance and the wider populist-nationalist movement as a warning about modern politics drifting toward the theatrics of imperial Rome now finds its mirror image in Keir Starmer’s Labour government. 

Rome’s decline was never driven by one faction or one personality alone. Some emperors and like Trump evoking Caesarist politics, governed through spectacle, grievance and personal cults; others through sterile managerialism, bureaucratic insulation and an increasingly desperate attachment to office. Both reflected the same deeper decay: a ruling class detached from the public mood and incapable of recognising when legitimacy had begun to collapse.

That is where Keir Starmer enters the Roman parallel. Starmer represents something colder but no less dangerous: the late-imperial ruler who mistakes control of the machine for consent of the people.

If Trump evokes the theatrical populism of emperors who thrived on mass emotion and political spectacle, Starmer increasingly resembles the later Caesars whose authority technically endured while public belief in them steadily evaporated. Rome did not fall solely because of flamboyant demagogues. It also declined under rulers who mistook administrative control for genuine consent, who governed through caution and messaging while the society beneath them became restless, distrustful and exhausted.

A comparison with Nero is therefore not about literal tyranny, but about the psychology of political decline. Nero began with considerable goodwill, promise, image and carefully managed moderation. He presented himself as measured, reforming and modernising — a reassuring figure after instability. Yet gradually image overtook substance. Nevertheless, his reign, like Trump’s, descended into vanity, denial, loyalist courtiers, public alienation and eventual collapse though Trump’s ultimate reckoning remains unrealised. Economic pressures mounted, public frustration deepened, elite confidence weakened, and the emperor increasingly retreated into performance, loyalists and carefully managed appearances. The regime became consumed not with renewal, but with preserving itself.

Critics argue that Starmer now risks embodying precisely that late-imperial instinct. They now argue that his government has entered a similar phase of decay: not dramatic despotism, but managerial exhaustion, moral compromise, endless U-turns and a desperate clinging to office. Rather than recognising growing public disillusionment, the leadership appears determined to rationalise every electoral warning as temporary turbulence. Poor local election results are dismissed as mid-term protest votes rather than acknowledged as evidence of a much broader rejection taking shape. Yet the local elections revealed something far more dangerous for an incumbent government: not simple frustration with individual policies, but a hardening public mood against the Labour leadership itself.

The U-turns matter because they reveal a government without a settled political soul. Pledges are made, abandoned, repackaged, denied and reversed. From welfare to tax, winter fuel, migration, digital ID, farming, public spending and other reversals too numerous to list, the impression is not of tactical flexibility but of a leadership constantly retreating from its own positions. Labour promised stability after Conservative chaos yet increasingly resembles the same exhausted politics it replaced.

The parallels with the recent Conservative collapse are striking and should have been a warning. The Conservatives cycled through prime ministers at extraordinary speed — from Boris Johnson to Liz Truss to Rishi Sunak — in a desperate attempt to convince the electorate that changing the face at the top could somehow restore legitimacy to a government the public had already tired of. Each change sold as renewal, each really an attempt to preserve the party’s grip on power. But the public had already moved beyond blaming individuals. In the end, the electorate rejected not merely the individual leaders: they had rejected the whole exhaustive governing culture surrounding them. Labour now risks repeating that mistake. Removing Starmer alone may no longer be enough if the cabinet around him is equally implicated in the political failure.

Labour now risks repeating the same cycle in reverse. Starmer’s defenders insist that “the public do not want a leadership challenge” during difficult times domestically and internationally. Yet critics point to the local elections as evidence of precisely the opposite: the electorate is signalling deep dissatisfaction with the entire direction of the government. The claim that stability alone is virtuous begins to sound less like statesmanship and more like self-preservation.

The local and devolved election results have made that brutally clear. Labour suffered heavy losses across Britain, with reports citing voters “punishing Starmer’s Labour Party” and reporting more than 80 Labour lawmakers calling for him to go. The argument from Starmer’s defenders that “the public does not want a leadership challenge” during difficult times is therefore nonsense. The electorate has already delivered its challenge. The problem is that Starmer and those around him refuse to hear it. Indeed, critics increasingly argue that changing Starmer alone would no longer be enough. The problem, they contend, is not simply one man, but an entire political apparatus that rose and advanced under his leadership.

That refusal is sustained by a cabinet and inner circle whose political futures are inseparably tied to Starmer’s rise and survival. Critics argue that he has surrounded himself with sycophants, careerists and political dependants who increasingly confuse loyalty to the leader with loyalty to the country itself. Like the courtiers surrounding Nero and Rome’s declining emperors, they protect the illusion of authority because their own positions, ambitions and influence depend upon the survival of the existing order. This inevitably breeds caution, conformity and career preservation over honesty or principle, leaving ministers unwilling to challenge leadership failures even as public dissatisfaction deepens. The result is a culture of managed narratives, defensive messaging and political sycophancy in which maintaining power overtakes confronting reality, while repeated appeals for “stability” become less a defence of the nation and more a shield for political self-preservation.

This is where the charge against the cabinet deepens. Critics do not merely accuse Starmer of incompetence, but of moral complicity: of standing with Israel while Gaza faces devastation, mass death and an ongoing genocide case at the International Court of Justice. The ICJ has ordered Israel to prevent acts under the Genocide Convention and ensure humanitarian assistance, while the case itself remains ongoing. For many on the left, Starmer’s government has not simply failed to oppose illegal war and mass killing; it has politically enabled them.

The proscription of Palestine Action under Yvette Cooper sharpened that sense of authoritarian drift. Cooper announced the move under the Terrorism Act 2000, making membership or support a criminal offence if passed by Parliament. The Guardian later reported that the ban followed damage to RAF Brize Norton aircraft and that the government defended it as targeting serious criminality, while opponents saw it as a dangerous attack on protest and solidarity with Palestine. To critics, this looked like the machinery of the state being used not to protect democracy, but to narrow it.

Starmer’s migration rhetoric also fed the sense that Labour had crossed a moral line. His “island of strangers” language was widely compared by critics to Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” politics, a comparison Starmer rejected. But even if one rejects a direct equivalence, the political effect was clear: a Labour prime minister borrowing the emotional grammar of the right while claiming to defend progressive government. Like Trump, he reaches for fear; unlike Trump, he dresses it in administrative respectability.

The blocking or sidelining of Andy Burnham adds another Roman layer. Burnham’s allies have warned against a rapid “coronation” of Wes Streeting and called for Labour’s NEC to ensure he can contest a seat and enter any leadership race. If Labour’s internal machinery is used to manage succession, exclude challengers or protect favoured candidates, then the party begins to resemble a court rather than a democratic movement.

Streeting’s role only adds to the sense of decay. Reports have repeatedly framed him as a possible successor, while also noting that he has not launched a formal challenge. Critics see this as the worst of both worlds: alleged disloyal manoeuvring without the courage of open confrontation. In Roman terms, it is the politics of the palace corridor — ambition without honour, intrigue without responsibility.

Rome repeatedly demonstrated how dangerous such insulated leadership circles could become. Later emperors surrounded themselves with administrators and loyalists who reinforced the illusion of stability long after legitimacy had begun to fracture. Silence was interpreted as loyalty. Obedience was mistaken for support. Yet underneath the surface, public confidence eroded until collapse accelerated with astonishing speed.

That is why the Nero comparison bites. Nero did not fall simply because he was unpopular. The striking feature of Nero’s downfall was not sudden catastrophe, but prolonged denial. The empire was visibly weakening long before he acknowledged the danger. Provincial revolts spread, elite support collapsed, the Praetorian Guard deserted him, and still the machinery of imperial authority attempted to preserve the illusion of permanence. By the end, Nero remained emperor in title while power had already disappeared in practice.

Critics argue that this is the true danger now confronting Labour. Governments often become most defensive precisely when they sense weakness approaching. They tighten internal discipline, attack dissent, repeat slogans about responsibility and stability, and insist there is no alternative leadership capable of governing. Yet history suggests that once a governing class begins arguing that it alone must remain in office “for the good of the nation,” it is often because it fears the electorate may already have reached a very different conclusion.

Unlike Trump, Starmer’s danger is not assassination or imperial violence; The Roman comparison is symbolic rather than literal. Britain is not imperial Rome and Starmer is not Nero in any direct historical sense. The danger is political death by denial. A leader clings on. A cabinet flatters him. Rivals whisper but do not strike. The party machine blocks alternatives. The public votes against the government, only to be told that now is not the time to question the leader. But the underlying lesson remains timeless: political systems decay when leaders begin confusing institutional control with genuine public consent. Once belief in a government begins to die, the structures around it may remain standing for a time, but legitimacy has already started to rot beneath the surface.

That is the warning increasingly levelled at Starmer and his cabinet — that they risk becoming a modern political court, clinging to office not because public enthusiasm remains strong, but because too many careers, ambitions and reputations are now bound to the survival of the existing regime. And history repeatedly shows that when ruling elites become more concerned with preserving themselves than renewing public trust, the end rarely arrives gradually. That is the same fatal arrogance that haunted Rome’s declining Caesars: the belief that holding office is the same as holding legitimacy. It is not. Once the people stop believing, power becomes theatre. And when a ruler is left performing authority to an audience that has already turned away, the end has usually begun.

Like Rome’s declining Caesars, they often discover too late that power can vanish long before those holding it are prepared to let it go.

⏩ Cam Ogie is a Gaelic games enthusiast.

Beware The Ides Of May † Et Tu, Brute

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Nine Hundred And Seventy Three

 

A Morning Thought @ 3147

Azar Majedi 🏴 I like to express my deepest condolences to Yanar’s family, friends and comrades for this great and tragic loss. 


The news of her assassination was extremely shocking and heartbreaking. Yanar was a courageous and dedicated activist who worked hard to bring some degree of civility and humanity into the lives of many women who have been not only the victim of backward traditions but more so the victim of a destructive war that the US and its allies waged on the people of Iraq and further in the region. She is first and foremost the victim of this bloody war that the US and the West spearheading by Israel have imposed on the region.
 
Yanar was the victim of the dark scenario inflicted on Iraq, which became a breeding ground for terrorism. Many Iraqi people have fallen to their death by terrorism, a dark reality that has become so commonplace in the region, thanks to state terrorism.

I met Yanar only a few times. The last time I met her was in an international secular-feminist conference in Macedonia in 2009. I remember Nawal Saadawi was there too. Hundred women activists were there hoping to bring more civility and humanity to their societies which, ironically, all were in one way or another attacked or ruined at one time by the US and its allies. I remember Yanar was very hopeful and energetic. She got her energy from her belief in the possibility of building a better world. This hope and energy kept her fighting until the last moment of her life.
 
She fought for a noble cause; she lived with hope to achieve her goals. This hope helped her overcome the fear for her life. She knew she was in danger, but she didn’t give up. Her legacy is her resistance, endurance, resilience and courage. The best way to keep her memory alive is to fight for a better world.

Today more than ever the world is witnessing destruction, death and cruelty. We need to fight steadfastly for the cause we have fought for years. We will not give up until we can make this world a safer, a more humane and just world, where bombs are dismantled, terrorism belongs to history books; injustice and discrimination belong to the past.
 
She is missed and will be missed by many people who met her, knew her and received her care and support.

⏩ Asar Majed is the Chairperson of Organisation for Women’s Liberation.

In Memory Of Yanar Muhammed

Democracy For Sale ★ Written by Peter Geoghegan and Jenna Corderoy,

Exclusive: A discreet lobbying campaign by lawyers who have acted for oligarchs and the super-rich told government that reforming England's libel laws was too difficult.

Cormac Kehoe was in the semi-arid mountains above Málaga last August when he received an unexpected email. A county court in Bromley, south-east London, was ordering him to pay £10,000 for “defamation, aggravated harm and loss of business”. The 28-year-old freelance reporter didn’t even know a libel claim had been made. But the claimant’s name was very familiar: Claudio Di Giovanni.

Before taking a rare week off in the Andalusian hills, Kehoe had published an investigation into Di Giovanni’s property empire on the Londoner website. Now the Italian was suing him personally for libel. “It’s a nightmare, really. You’re trying to take a break from the relentless torrent of work and then you are suddenly faced with this prospect of financial ruin,” Kehoe said. Di Giovanni later filed a separate suit claiming £250,000 in damages.

Cases like Kehoe’s were supposed to be a thing of the past. London has long been called “the libel capital of the world”. 

How Lawyers To The Super-Rich Strangled Labour's Slapp Bill

Christopher Owens 🔖 “I see my sculptures before me: each one a failure. Yes, I mean it, a failure! But in each one there is also something of what I would want to create one day.”


Considering that his sculptures are some of the most reognisable in the world, that’s a bold statement for Alberto Giacometti to make.

Kenan Malik has written about how, when he saw one of the statues in person, he was struck by the way they were both visceral and abstract, conveying both an intangible sense of our own humanity and also a brute yet sensual imagining of our existence as humans.

Some reactions to have, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Produced in 2017 to coincide with a retrospective of his work at the Tate Modern in London, this acts as an essential beginner’s guide to the Swiss artist’s work and legacy, particularly the inclusion of a short biography as well as a few behind the scenes photos in his studio which should be an eye opener for anyone who’s seen Final Portrait

Photographs of his sculptures are reproduced with a cold veneer and clinical detachment which, intentionally or not, highlight the surrealism and the starkness one experiences upon viewing them for the first time.

A minor criticism is that there are very few reproductions of his paintings here. While maybe less well known, works like Diego demonstrate how he was able to flesh out the environment his subjects found themselves in as well as their own alienation from their surroundings.

Quite the feat, I’m sure you’ll agree. 

As Jean Paul Sartre concluded in 1948 when discussing Giacometti:

These figures are already seen as the foreign language we try to learn is already spoken. Each one of them reveals human being as one sees him to be, as he is for other human beings, as he appears in an intersubjective world – not for the sake of simplification at ten or twenty paces, but at a human distance from us. Each imparts to us the truth that a human being is not there first and to be seen afterwards, but that he is the being whose essence it is to exist for others.

Buy this book and gain a better understanding of the world around us.... 

Lena Fritsch (editor), 2017, Giacometti. Tate Publishers. ISBN-13: 978-1849764834

⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist and is the author of A Vortex of Securocrats and “dethrone god”.

Giacometti

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Nine Hundred And Seventy Two

 

A Morning Thought @ 3146

Tommy McKearney ☭ It would be entirely understandable if our readers were to take a measure of enjoyment from the latest spat embroiling Fianna Fáil and its leader, Micheál Martin.


Castigated from within and outside the party for his handling of the fuel protests, questions were bound to be raised about his leadership. Coming little more than six months after the Jim Gavin debacle during the presidential election campaign, even his closest allies were concerned for the party’s image and future.


Nevertheless, and notwithstanding the reasonable reaction to seeing a deeply conservative political institution in bother, it remains necessary to reflect soberly on the entirety of the situation surrounding the protests. Although the cost-of-living crisis generated a degree of empathy for the disruption (and discomfort for the coalition) from the less well-off and hard-pressed working people, the genesis of the conflict was neither labour-led nor inspired.

As the Marxist scholar Professor Helena Sheehan pointed out last month on her Facebook page, the protests demonstrated the ''…disproportionate power of those who own heavy vehicles…”. And, moreover, the state’s habit of making:

. . . constant concessions to those who embrace market forces when going their way and demand that the state compensate them when they have losses or even problems . . . 

In relation to the first count, it is indisputable that the owners of vehicles costing well in excess of €100,000 can hardly be considered as proletarian. Admittedly, not every protester was the possessor of such expensive machinery but were, nevertheless, for the most part in business as distinct from being waged employees.

Hardly surprising, therefore, that so many of the Dáil’s pro-business deputies in the coalition expressed sympathy for the plight of the ‘very decent’ people protesting while critical of their blockading of ports and oil depots. In fact it was this sympathy for the protesters that caused such turmoil for the Taoiseach and his ministers from many within the ruling coalition.

All things considered, the outcome of the protests demonstrated the nature and make-up of the 26-county Irish state. Faced with a rebellious cohort of some of those who normally wholeheartedly support the privilege-granting status quo, the government conceded to their demands. Of note was the fact that the price reductions were largely confined to petrol and diesel, with little done to alleviate the plight of low-income households depending on kerosene for home heating.

In short, the existing politico-economic system is designed only for the wellbeing of the more prosperous class. Furthermore, the free-market promoting coalition government is determined to ensure this remains the case. Any doubt as to the veracity of this need only be dispelled by reflecting on the message delivered recently in the government’s Spring Economic Forecast.

While the Department said that a general government surplus of €9.2bn is in prospect, there is no commitment to radically transform society in favour of workers or the less well-off. Speaking at the launch of the report, Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers emphasised this point when he said:

. . . There is a need for strong cost controls across Departments to enable continuing delivery of commitments in the Programme for Government . . . 


A Programme for Government that fails to include provision of public housing, a national health service free and accessible to all, a package to offset the cost-of-living crisis, not to mention planning for a sustainable economy into the future.

There is a risk in all of this that those who forced their agenda on a government fundamentally sympathetic to their demands if not their tactics may be encouraged to exert pressure in the future if they feel the need to do so. There is, currently, a real risk that events in the Strait of Hormuz may lead to an economic recession if not a 1930s-like depression.

Were this to come about, would the coalition government divert funds away from granting relief to those ‘decent’ owners of heavy road-blocking machinery and instead direct it towards support for the working class? Only the wilfully naive would believe the latter.

There is a need that a strong signal be delivered to all in authority making it clear such an outcome will not be tolerated. Only one group currently has the wherewithal to carry this out, and that is the trade union movement. Encouragingly, after a meeting last month of the Labour Employer Economic Forum (LEEF), which brings together trade unions, employers, and government representatives, ICTU General Secretary Owen Reidy said:

. . . Our message to the Government today was clear: stop caving in to business demands at the expense of workers’ living standards.

It is very important that every section of left-wing opinion in Ireland demonstrates its backing for the stance adopted by the ICTU and endeavours to ensure that they have the support necessary to make good on their warning to government.

Tommy McKearney is a left wing and trade union activist.
He is author of The Provisional IRA: From Insurrection to Parliament.
Follow on Twitter @Tommymckearney

Fuel Protests 🪶Farmers, Small Business And Rural Communities Under Pressure

Caoimhin O’Muraile  ☭ On Thursday 7th May the British Labour Party and party of government took a real hammering in the elections. 

These elections in England were for local councils and are never a great barometer of how a governing party’s fortunes are holding up. Council elections rarely are mirrored in a general election but that is normally when the loses have been moderate to slightly heavy for the governing party. This was a little different as these losses amount to 1,400 seats largely to the far-right Reform UK, it was a drubbing. 

Back in the nineteen-eighties many people voted with a protest vote at council elections voting for the fascist British National Party (BNP) councillors but nothing on this scale. This appears more than a regular protest and is concerning not only for the British Labour Party but all anti-fascists generally. Reform were undoubtedly the big winners and the BBC poll, the Projected National Share (PNS), which is calculated in 1,000 council wards predicted if people voted along similar lines in a general election it would make the far-right Reform the largest party on 26% of the vote share. The PNS puts the Greens in second on 18% followed by Labour and Conservatives on 17% each. If this is correct it shows up how broken the British electoral voting system of First Past the Post in general elections really is. It is not fit for purpose when a party with just 26% of the vote could form a government. As far-right parties across Europe have been gathering momentum is it an indication that the memories of fascism and the Second World War are fading? Or, are today’s voters not worried by the presence of authoritarian dictatorial parties governing them? Whatever the reason, and immigration is often the major or even only concern voiced by people - wrongly in my view - the presence of the far-right even neo fascism cannot be denied.

Reform by their own admission have no experience of government but have, they maintain, a lot of “business” organisational knowhow, and Reform representatives often criticise the Labour Government for having no “business experience”. This suggests a Reform UK government may introduce corporatism, private enterprise, into the system of government in Britain. This was central to Benito Musolini’s fascist regime in Italy and resulted in the banning outright of trade unions and trade union membership as was also the case in Nazi Germany. Trade unions were replaced with state run bodies like Hitlers ‘Labour Front’ which resulted in worsening pay and conditions and the erosion of worker’s rights! In effect corporatism brings big business into government and the country is organised like a large corporation with the electorate being the employees, with no trade union representation and very few rights. Could a Reform government go down this avenue? 

Another question the electorate should ask themselves at the next British general election before they cast their vote is; if Reform UK were to become the government in Westminster, could it signal the end of liberal democracy and elections in Britain? The last far-right Prime Minister Britain had was Margaret Thatcher but fortunately her party were, though right-wing, not far-right or fascist as was the case with her. When she was ousted as Conservative and Unionist Party leader in 1990, she demanded to remain as PM. She had to be virtually physically removed from that office and was succeeded by John Major, a more moderate Tory. 

Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, was a Thatcherite, a true-blue disciple of Thatcher, and today is a supporter of Trump in the US. Could a Reform UK government put elections into the dustbin of history? Well, Mussolini did in Italy during the twenties as did Hitler did in Germany back in the nineteen thirties and Farage does share some Hitlerite policies like locking immigrants, legal or otherwise, away in remote old army bases similar to concentration camps! Should this come to pass in Britain would anybody protest? Would they dare? Or would they, as was the case in Nazi Germany, just go along with it pretending to agree, fearful of doing anything different? 

Voters should think very carefully before going down the Reform UK unknown entity avenue, though there is an argument which encourages this leap into the unknown and that is; ‘we won’t know till we’ve tried’! Very true but the problem here is a reversal of the electoral decision to elect a Reform government may well prove irreversible? Just a word of caution! 

For those in the Six-Counties who think Farage and Reform will give a ‘border poll’ forget that, they are a strong UK party, a Unionist party, a party whose aims are to strengthen the United Kingdom not weaken it, and though they may make noises sounding as if a border poll might be on their agenda do not bank on it. They could weaponise such a poll, calling a snap vote on Irish unification at a point when it would almost certainly go against Irish unity. Farage would then probably tell all nationalists, including the Twenty-Six-County government; ‘you have had your poll now that’s an end to it’!

In Scotland, elections to the Scottish parliament at Holyrood were being held. Again bad news for the Labour Party was in store. The results there were a fifth term in government for the Scottish National Party (SNP), once called ‘Tartan Toryies', now considered to be to the left of Labour, winning 58 seats. The SNP are down six seats from sixty-four held previously which is significant because the magic number for an overall majority is sixty-five leaving the SNP weaker in this regard than previous. Labour and Reform UK came joint second with 17 seats each, with the Greens coming third with 15 seats, the Conservative and Unionist Party finished fourth with 12 seats and the Liberal Democrats claiming 10 seats. Scotland’s First Minister and SNP leader, John Swinney, is already making noises about another referendum on Scottish independence and why wouldn’t he? A different voting system is applied in Scotland for regional elections to Holyrood with the age of majority being sixteen as opposed to eighteen in a British general election. The system is a little complex for explanation here but involves party lists and constituency MSPs giving the voter two votes.

In Wales the picture for Labour was no brighter with the party leader and First Minister, Eluned Morgan, losing her seat - a major setback. Plaid Cymru won 43 of the 96 Senedd seats with Reform UK coming second securing 34 seats. Labour, hitherto the largest party in Wales, came in with a miserable 9 seats! All in all a very bad day for the British Labour Party and in particular party leader and Prime Minister, Keir Starmer. 

Could these disastrous results for Labour be replicated in a general election? If the polls are correct and at this moment in time well, they probably could be mirrored. These elections resulted in nationalist First Ministers in Scotland, “Northern Ireland” (the Six-Counties), and Wales. Starmer has no worries on this front, at least not immediately, because all these leaders are singing from different hymn sheets. John Swinney, Scottish First Minister, wants an independence referendum right now. Michele O’Neil, First Minister in Stormont, wants a unification referendum by 2030, while Plaid Cymru and expected First Minister, Rhun ap Iorwerth, did not even mention Welsh independence. It appears no unity of minds on the subject of independence or unification referenda among these nationalist leaders. This may come as some relief to Keir Starmer and his government short term.

After this drubbing taken by the party many Labour MPs are demanding Starmer sets an exit plan, a time frame for him leaving, to step down or plainly fucking off. As bad as Starmer is he, like Tony Blair before him, is not a Labour traditional leader or Prime Minister in the Clement Atlee or Harold Wilson mould. The modern British Labour Party bear few similarities to the genuine article and the party’s shift to the right has cost them dearly. To the left of Labour are the Greens who, like their counterparts Reform UK on the far-right, made huge gains in these elections at Labours expense. So, should the PM stand aside? In my view it would be a mistake for Starmer, bad as he may be, to step down because this may well cause a general election. If a new leader were elected, he or she may come under pressure to go to the country and would undoubtedly lose any election. Of course any new leader could refer to John Major becoming leader of the Conservatives replacing Thatcher and not going to the country. They could also look to the example of the walking disaster, Liz ‘take the piss out of MPs’ Truss, who had a brief spell, the blink of an eye, as leader of the Tories and Prime Minister. She was in charge for a couple of hours but again no election was called when Rishi Sunak replaced her unopposed as party leader and Prime Minister. The Conservatives had a huge majority but so too, this time round, do Labour. So, a general election should Starmer resign is not inevitable, though opposition parties would hammer the point. Starmer should, all the same, hang on in there because the alternative is unthinkable, a far-right government who may if elected by sufficient numbers drop their pretence and declare themselves what they are suspected of being, fascist in all but name!

It was not a great day at the races for the main opposition party the Conservative and Unionists led by Kemi Badenoch. They too had huge losses but their losses were less than Labours due to the fact they did not have that many to lose. The Conservatives were drubbed in the 2024 general election by Starmer’s Labour Party and their representation at council level was not great. Of Essex Councils 78 seats in Kemi Badenoch’s backyard Reform won 53 while the Conservatives came in with a paltry 13 seats, down from the 52 they won in 2021. If their representation was not great before these council elections, now it is less than that! 

Will the Tories demand the head of Badenoch? Highly unlikely. They will in all probability divert their losses into attacking Keir Starmer and demanding he steps down. The Tories, like Labour, know in a general election - if called tomorrow - they would be hammered and Badenoch would be a handy scapegoat to blame, they’re good at that. 

It is my prediction both leaders, Starmer and Badenoch, will stay in place for the time being because the alternative is not worth thinking about, a Reform UK government! This scenario does put the Conservatives in a slightly stronger position than Labour because if an election were to be called and Reform won, but not with the huge majority some expect, then a deal with the Tories is always possible. Many Reform UK candidates in any general election will be former Tory defectors. Therefore, a parliamentary pact between the right-wing and far-right is a strong possibility given certain conditions. 

Either way it spells bad news for Labour who, thankfully, still have the ball as far as elections go in their court! They will not by any rule or protocol be forced to call an election should Starmer go, unless Parliament votes for one. However opposition MPs would make huge waves in the Commons should the government not go to the country with a new leader at a time when Labour need to regroup and lick their wounds. They still have a huge majority in the House and could ride the storm. Starmer needs to rally his backbenchers at a time when unity, even a façade of agreement, will be paramount. 

Labour's recent history of supporting the party leader is not great: remember Jeremy Corbyn? Will they do the same to Starmer or will they, albeit reluctantly, back him?
     
Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

Should Starmer Stay Or Go?

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Nine Hundred And Seventy One

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