New right-wing PM’s police-state instincts are already on display
Skwawkbox has long warned its readers that Keir Starmer – the ‘long-time servant of the security state‘ – would drag the UK towards a police state if he got into power.
In so-called ‘opposition’, Starmer enabled the Tories every time they assaulted our civil rights to protest or to be free from spying and surveillance – and when they passed laws to protect undercover police and their agents from legal consequences for their crimes – including rape and murder. He went further, colluding with the Tories to defeat an attempt to overturn anti-protest legislation, to block measures to protect journalists from state persecution and to pass laws to prevent public bodies acting against apartheid.
His front bench, including Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, are on the same page in protecting state criminals and targeting the vulnerable.
But Starmer’s police-state instincts go back a long time before he conned his way into the Labour leadership and ultimately number ten. As Director of Public Prosecutions, Starmer flew in fury to Washington DC to grovel to the US government after Theresa May blocked the extradition of autistic hacker Gary McKinnon, which he had promised to secure for the US.
His department was deeply involved in attempts to extradite Wikileaks journalist Julian Assange – then destroyed all records of his involvement and actions – he has attacked both the Black Lives Matter movement and environmental protest campaigns, whitewashed racism and enabled the Tory government’s fascist legislation to punish protest with prison sentences of ten years if it is deemed ‘inconvenient’.
As so-called ‘opposition leader’ he supported Israel’s right to starve Palestinians in Gaza, said he will not authorise the referendum on Irish unity that is legally required under the Good Friday Agreement, and abolished Labour’s front-bench ‘Shadow minister for peace and disarmament role’.
He and his allies waged relentless war on Labour’s internal democracy to remove left-wing MPs and to impose right-wing friends of apartheid in parliamentary candidate selections, covered up abuse and sexual exploitation of vulnerable domestic violence victims, protected parliamentary sex pests – and, since several of his MPs lost their seats to independent candidates, his drones have engaged in a campaign to smear and potentially even criminalise the independent MPs and campaigns who defeated them.
Starmer is deeply authoritarian and holds democracy in utter contempt – and now he is exploiting the far-right’s riots in Southport, Hartlepool and other towns to impose new measures aimed at curtailing the freedom of all of us – and subjecting every ordinary person in the country to even more intense and constant surveillance than we already suffer.
Starmer responded to the actions of right-wing thugs by announcing sweeping new powers for police to monitor the public’s movements using facial recognition technology, to share information to enable them to track people more efficiently, and to impose restrictions on an individual’s right to take part in protest. The measures include the re-creation of the ‘National Police Unit’ that Thatcher used to break the miners in the 1980s.
And he made clear in his comments that he intends to target social media and to pressure social media companies to collude even further in the state’s spying on communications and attempts to organise. The excuse for these measures may be the far right’s thuggery – but the powers can and will be used primarily against the left and any who dare to dissent or stage civil disobedience against the increasingly authoritarian state he has already started to construct.
The UK, its democracy and its freedoms are in grave danger.
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One word…
AUSWEIS
PS. I notice the nonce-excusing gobshite hasn’t been on much since the election.
Hasn’t even got the bollocks to face up to the fact that everyone else has been, and will continue to be, proved right.
Hopefully he’s followed iscariot’s example
Told ya.
Tried to warn ya’ll.
How could Starmer N O T push Britain towards a (far) more authoritarian future? This is the guy who prosecuted a student called Alfie Meadows for violent disorder.
Remember?
At a demonstration against tuition fees in December 2010, Alfie M, a philosophy student, was assaulted by a police officer who hit him so hard with a truncheon that he had to undergo emergency brain surgery to save his life. . Of course, DPP-Starmer ensured that the truncheon-waving police officer escaped prosecution. His victim though – the student who underwent emergency brain surgery – was prosecuted by Starmer for VIOLENT DISORDER.
After two trials returned inconclusive verdicts, Meadows’s lawyers wrote directly to Starmer begging him to drop the case. Starmer declined, and the defendant was brought to trial for a third time. He was finally acquitted on all counts and Starmer was a NOT a Happy DPP.
Blaming the victim is something disgusting reprobates like Keir Starmer often do.
Thirteen y§ears later – when Labour members had unbelievably made Starmer the leader of their party – Alfie Meadows received an apology and a £ large sum in compensation from the Met for their life-threatening action against him 13years earlier
After the acquittal of Alfie Meadows, Starmer drew up prosecution guidelines that made it easier for the CPS to prosecute peaceful protesters. Starmer’s rules ensured CPS lawyers could take action against any effective form of protest. He effectively criminalised protest- although theTories would need to pass additional legislation to substantiate Starmer’s DPP rules, which he, Keir Starmer, whipped Labour MPs not to oppose.
thanks for the background info on PM Starmer. Was appalled when he labelled the entire British working class as “right wing thugs” in his speech to the nation yesterday
Scandalous:
What the Fuhrer thinks he can get away with and what the people will allow are miles apart
Go on son, knock yourself out
But the issue is ‘what the people know’, Doug. When 56% of labour members voted Starmer for leader, they didn’t know he would rescind his ten main-line (leftish) party commitments, his “10 pledges” as soon as he was LOTO.
Also, they did not know that Starmer had received considerable financial support from a group of very wealthy individuals, including Trevor Chinn and Trevor Tayler, both long-time campaigners against increasing taxes for the wealthy.
SAF, Labour members also did not know that Keir Starmer’s post- Alfie Meadows prosecution guidelines as DPP was the first step to criminalising peaceful protest.
The public? They know even less – unless they buy Oliver Eagleton’s The Starmer Project.
OOOps, MARTIN Taylor..
Go on son, knock yourself out.
Keef couldn’t knock the skin off a rice puddin’. We’ve all seen the video.
If dayglo donald gets a second term (ffs) I’d love to be a fly on the wall when the magically-healed lughole tears a strip off the toolmaker’s lad and makes him cry for his nursey mam.
And we were led to believe that ‘hard left extremists’ were the problem…