From the magazine

The reformation of the Labour party

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle
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EXPLORE THE ISSUE 01 March 2025
issue 01 March 2025

The world order has shifted on its axis, having been given a peremptory boot by the US President. What is striking to me is the speed with which our government has accustomed itself to the new dawn, overnight, almost with a sense of relief. Listen to senior Labour figures today and they do not always sound like the internationalist lifestyle-leftist Labour ninnies of old. They sound rather less internationalist than previous Conservative administrations. A whole stupid ideology seems to have been shed within a week or so.

It would not surprise me hugely to hear Keir Starmer talk of ‘remigration’ in fond terms in the not-too-distant future. The Prime Minister – or that chap who advises him, Boaty McBoatface or whatever he’s called – has grasped rather quicker than those ossified liberal idiots on the mainland (Ursula von der Leyen and the crew) that there is much to be gained in this new landscape and that on most issues there is no sense in recalcitrance. It is not simply Donald Trump and J.D. Vance’s broadsides that have effected this change, but the politics of Europe too. Labour seems to have realised at last that there is no future in the hand-wringing, virtue-signalling, liberal-leftism of old which has impinged upon our societies for at least 30 years. Something new is called for, from the White House, from the electorate.

It is no small issue for a Labour government to cut our overseas aid budget almost in half and bung the resultant saving to defence. The residents of Hampstead and Kensal Rise will be in a right tizzy.

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