(LifeSiteNews) — On the Fourth of July 2024 Keir Starmer won the U.K. general election with around one-fifth of the vote. This delivered him a huge majority in Parliament, and he vowed on the day that “politics can be a force for good. And that is how we will govern.”
Four months later, over two-and-a half million Britons have signed a petition to call another election. Though few believe this will result in an election, it is a strong sign of mounting dissatisfaction with the Labour government – and the numbers signing are rising by the thousands every minute.
Almost immediately on taking office the Starmer government plunged in popularity. Despite ending his first week in power with a reasonable approval rating in the polls, his support has suffered an “historic drop” in ratings, according to Politico’s report three weeks ago.
“Keir Starmer has suffered the biggest post-election fall in approval ratings of any British prime minister in the modern era,” the report said. He is “languishing on an approval rating of -38,” which is “a precipitous 49-point drop” from early July.
A disastrous budget and a declaration of “class war” on British farmers has followed this survey, with the latest indication of Starmer’s deep unpopularity seeing millions call for him to go.
One major reason for the call for an election is the Starmer government’s response to the knife murder of three girls aged six, seven and, nine by suspect Axel Rudakubana, initially described as a “boy … from Cardiff” on July 29, 2024.
Court sketch of “Cardiff teen” Axel Rudakubana. Source: X
READ: UK’s new Prime Minister Keir Starmer moves toward digital tyranny in response to civil unrest
Some British social media users who expressed outrage at the killings faced swift prosecution and some still face imprisonment. Starmer was accused by Elon Musk of being “Two-Tier Keir” – applying the law unevenly to imprison critics, whilst freeing actual violent criminals to make space for “keyboard rioters.”
“Is this Britain or the Soviet Union?” – asked Musk as news of the arrests for speech crimes broke.
British judges have handed down harsh sentences – up to 38 months – for “hate speech,” including posts on sites such as X (formerly Twitter).
One man, Yorkshire grandfather Peter Lynch, subsequently died in prison. He was described as “the victim of a vengeful, out-of-touch Prime Minister” in the Daily Telegraph. Starmer had vowed to “crack down on far-right thugs” such as Lynch, who was jailed for shouting that police were “protecting people who are killing our kids and raping them.”
A 2015 report said up to “one million British children” may have been sexually exploited by immigrant gangs. The judge who jailed Lynch had also set a convicted child sex offender free.
The convictions were pursued under an official narrative of countering hate speech, as many of those prosecuted alleged a terrorist motive to the killings, linking this to the fact that the suspect was the child of Rwandan immigrants. These claims were routinely dismissed as dangerous conspiracy theories – and hate speech.
Starmer was formerly a lawyer who has worked in the past to secure rights and benefits for illegal immigrants, and once promoted a 2015 petition to “accept more asylum seekers and increase support” for them.
Evidence emerged at the initial hearing before his trial that the suspected killer had been found in possession of an “Al Qaeda training manual” and was attempting to manufacture the nerve agent ricin. He was charged under the Terrorism Act.
In addition to terrorism charges, and three counts of murder, the BBC reported “he is also charged with ten counts of attempted murder and possession of a knife.” Eight children were wounded, along with two adults, during the attacks.
READ: UK’s draconian ‘online safety’ laws are turning traditional values into criminal ‘hate speech’
As this news broke, reports emerged showing Starmer had known that the suspect would face terror charges “for weeks,” whilst he and his government condemned “misinformation” whenever terrorism was mentioned in connection with the attacks.
As The Sun reported, both former Prime Minister Liz Truss and a former adviser to Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings, said Starmer would have known this “immediately” after the attacks.
Many judges who have imprisoned British social media users for “tweet crimes” have been found to have released child sex offenders without jail time, fueling further outrage. A report from the Telegraph confirmed the trend of releasing “pedophiles” without custodial sentences.
Musk again commented on one shocking case.
This seems messed up https://t.co/G1hmBSJV9o
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 15, 2024
With the investigation of a British journalist, Allison Pearson, over a “non-crime hate incident,” the charge of “Keir Stasi” was reprised, with Elon Musk once again chiming in.
Pearson was visited at home by police over an old tweet, in a case which has since been dropped. Yet Elon Musk’s friction with the Starmer government does not end here – nor with him.
READ: Keir Stasi? UK government wants to prosecute ‘non-crime hate speech’
Breaking the ‘special relationship’?
The Starmer government is also mired in a serious scandal concerning the incoming Trump administration. As the Washington Post reported, Starmer’s Labour Party “helped organize 100 members to volunteer for the Kamala Harris campaign, with a focus on the swing states.”
The Trump campaign responded with a legal complaint with the U.S. Federal Election Commission, charging Starmer’s Labour, together with the Harris campaign, with “making and accepting illegal foreign national contributions.”
Though the scandal was hand-waved away by Starmer, his cabinet ministers have a long history of making outrageous remarks about President Trump. U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy, for example, has alleged Trump is a member of the Ku Klux Klan and called Trump a “neo-Nazi sociopath.”
That the Trump campaign has called Starmer’s party “far-left” is not the half of it. The U.K. government has long pressed for escalation in Ukraine – a war which Trump has vowed to end.
READ: UK’s David Cameron tricked by Russian pranksters into admitting he pressures Trump, GOP on Ukraine
With the war’s end would come a harsh reckoning of costs – including to energy bills, in human lives, and of course in the once notorious corruption of Ukraine itself. The Pandora Papers revealed the “hidden fortunes of the world’s elite and crooks” and the report, issued in November 2021, even detailed the shady financial dealings of Zelensky himself.
With isolation looming in Europe, Starmer is looking very lonely. His chief continental ally, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, has just seen his government dissolve. Right-wing populism is growing across Europe, with France, Sweden, Austria, and the Netherlands looking to politicians far friendlier to Hungary’s Viktor Orbán than to pro-open borders and permanent war progressives like Starmer.
British intelligence operations under Starmer have also included attempts to “kill Musk’s Twitter,” with Kit Klarenberg reporting on November 3 how “British Intel Again Targets Donald Trump.”
Starmer’s troubles at home and abroad are serious and seemingly insoluble. His Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, has recently been exposed as a liar. She had claimed to have been an economist, when in fact she had been a sort of clerk – and had also been described as “useless.”
With Britain’s economy facing disaster, its citizens under threat of imprisonment for tweet crimes, and with the Labour Party seeing farmer protests in London against its tax and land grab, Starmer’s government is stoking war abroad and charged with starting one at home – against its own people.
His government is an advertisement for a world order which Americans – and Europeans – are voting against in huge numbers. So, what happened in the U.K. in July?
The real winner of the last election in the U.K. wasn’t the Labour Party. Half of all adults did not vote at all, and turnout was the lowest since universal suffrage was introduced, as the IPPR reported.
“If non-voters were a party, they would have been the largest party by some distance,” it found.
Britain does not just face a crisis of confidence in its current government when the largest vote share is won by “none of the above.” It is hard to see how a petition can fix this, but given the level of disengagement with the electoral machine, it is notable that two-and-a-half million people can be bothered to sign it at all.
If you can motivate millions of people who do not vote into taking an interest in politics, perhaps – as Keir Starmer did – you can call yourself a “force for good.”