Keir Starmer is a bit of a paradox. I’m fascinated by how unfascinating he is. I’m intrigued by how unintriguing he is. Did you ever do that thought experiment where you ask the question, “What is nothing?” So you might conclude, “When I close my eyes, I’m seeing nothing” but you’re not, you’re seeing blackness. Or you might say, “A place where time and space does not exist” but that doesn’t work either, by describing it as a “place” you’re describing it as a “something”. You wrack your brains frantically, and then you think you have it, and you say “What about a state of?……” Sorry Timothy, as soon as you said the word, “state” you described it as a “something”. Checkmate Timothy!
However, for philosophers, physicists, artists and intellectuals, the quest to find the concept of “nothing” actually ended on 2nd of September 1962. The day Keir Starmer was born.
I don’t think any other British Prime Minister has managed to embody the concept of absolutely nothing the way Starmer has. Thatcher was callous and cruel sure, but she always seemed to be an actual person with an actual personality. I remember as a child, granted at a time when I knew nothing about politics, John Major struck me as so boring that I feared a conversation with him would be like actual torture. But then, “boring” is an actual personality characteristic. With Keir Starmer, you get the impression that if he stood on a weighing scales, the weighing scales would still say “zero”, because the scales would absolutely refuse to recognize him as having any actual physical presence in this universe.
Do you guys like Father Ted? Remember Father Stone?
Is Keir Starmer the Father Stone of politics? Not even close. Father Stone is funny. Notice how the long awkward silences he’s causing are funny to the audience. So not even Father Stone is nothing. Father Stone is, hilarious actually. So Keir Starmer can’t even manage to be the Father Stone of politics.
But because Mr Starmer doesn’t occupy any tangible space in this universe, he can’t please anyone. The left hate him. The right hate him. The centrists hate him. How do you make yourself unappealing to centrists? Ask Starmer, he managed it somehow.
But Starmer is on a quest to become something. He wants to be a statesman. He wants his name mentioned alongside Churchill, Thatcher and Blair (all terrible people, but that matters not one jot to Mr Starmer.) And I think he’s found it. I think he’s found his way of gaining significance, of being remembered. So that’s great! Starmer is going to end world hunger or….
Don’t be silly. Of course his way of finally gaining significance isn’t going to be doing something moral or just! Haven’t you being paying attention? Starmer is going to gain the significance he wants by letting people starve to death!
Look at this! There’s protests in New York City over the fact that Starmer is about to let the hunger strikers die! And is Starmer relenting! No! Isn’t Starmer such a big boy in his big boy pants!
You might be thinking, surely it’s better to be forgotten by history, then to be remembered as the person who let a group of people starve to death? If you’re thinking that, you live, and be grateful for it, in a completely different moral universe from Keir Starmer. As Acton put it all those years ago, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Starmer is not thinking, “Be nice,” or “Be kind” or “Don’t kick that puppy.” The men and women of power don’t think like that. Their power separates them from the rest of us, until they no longer view us as people. I’m not saying there won’t be times, here and there, when very powerful people are troubled by their pesky old conscience, but it’s rare. And given that Starmer’s stance on protesting in favour of Palestine has been “I don’t allow that” it seems unlikely he’s going to have any feeling of remorse when, soon, unless something changes, fast, at least one of these brave hunger strikes dies.
Who Are The Hunger Strikers?
Qesser Zuhran
Quesser Zuhran, aged 20, is accused of breaking into the UK site of Israeli-linked Elbit Systems. She is on day 47 of her hunger strike.
Amu Gib
Amu Gib is charged with conspiracy to destroy property and conspiracy to enter a prohibited place for a purpose prejudicial to the safety and/or interests of the UK. They are accused of breaking into RAF Brize Norton, which is the largest station of the RAF in the United Kingdom. They are on their 48th day of hunger strike.
Heba Muraisi
Heba Muraisi is on her 47th day of hunger striker. She is charged with an incident in Filton.
Teuta Hoxha
Teuxta Hoxha is on her 41st day of hunger strike. She is charged with criminal damage and aggravated burglary at Elbit Systems.
Kamran Ahmed
Kamran Ahmed is on day 40 of his hungry strike. He is charged with criminal damage in violent disorder, accused of breaking into a property owned by Elbit Systems.
Muhammad Umer Khalid and Jon Cink
Muhammad Umer Khalid and Jon Cink have chosen to end their hunger strike after 41 days and 13 days respectively. They are both charged with breaking into Brize Norton.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/palestine-action-hunger-strike-prison-b2887068.html
Are you worried about the fact that they’ve all passed their fortieth day? Can you imagine not eating for more than one month? What kind of unimaginable pain and suffering must they be in?
And as you can imagine, the internet has been a cesspit of absolutely horrible comments about these brave people, who are in the process of dying in order to do what is right. And I’m absolutely sick of hearing the question of “Why don’t they just eat?” For more than two years, the government of Britain, and other world governments, stood back and did nothing while the people of Palestine were shot, bombed, starved, burned, frozen to death after the destruction of their homes, the survivors mourning the death of so, so, many loved ones. Actually, it’s not quite true that the British government did nothing. Because they did something alright. They made it illegal to protest in favour of Palestine. That was the reaction of the British government to seeing their fellow human beings slaughtered. Don’t criminalize Nehenyahu and other Israelis who are responsible, but rather criminalize people who protest against them.
It’s sick. It’s beyond sick. Now do you see why these protestors took the extremely drastic action of going on a hunger strike? Countless Palestinian people have already lost their lives due to hunger. Maybe, there is some faint hope, that British citizens (their Britishness shouldn’t matter but that’s the world we live in) risking their lives through hunger will get some type of justice for the people of Palestine. I hope it doesn’t take the deaths of these wonderful, brave, people. But given the absolute, callous indifference to them that the Labour government has so far shown, I’m deeply worried that they will have to lose their lives before anything changes.
But sadly, I believe Starmer might get what he wants out of this. I can’t think of any other British Prime Minster, with possible exception of Liz Truss, who is better summed up by the word “pathetic”. Starmer is pathetic. And I think he longs to be seen in a similar light to someone like Thatcher, that really tough, completely uncompromising PM. Sure she was cruel, and heartless, but Starmer lives in a reality where cruelty and heartlessness don’t matter. He just wants to be remembered as a great prime minister, but not by any metric that matters to a person with any morals.
What better way to be remembered, in his twisted view of the world, than to replicate Thatcher’s cruelty towards the IRA hunger strikers towards the Palestine action hunger strikers! You go Starmer! Now you can be the, eh, Iron Man, just like Thatcher was the Iron Lady! Well done Starmer! Well, fucking, done!
I could say that to anyone with a conscience he’ll be remembered as a monster. But he doesn’t care. I could say that to anyone with a conscience he’ll be remembered as a morally vacuous shitheel. But he doesn’t care. I could say that to anyone with a conscience he’ll be remembered as, possibly one of the worst things to ever happen to Britain. But he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care what anyone with a conscience has to say about anything. All the men and women of power care about is achieving “greatness” by their own sick, twisted definition of it.
Look at this video where Jeremy Corbyn asks junior minister Jake Richards if he will arrange a meeting with the legal representatives and families of the hunger strikers. Richards flatly says “No”, to the laughter of other MPs.
Laughter. The thought of people starving to death is funny to them.
But I think what some MPs are hoping for, is that the hunger strikers will suffer so much under the pain of hunger that they will cease their hunger strike (two already did, and I don’t blame them, I certainly couldn’t go on hunger strike for as long as even they did.) But this is a very risky gamble they are taking. All of the other hunger strikers are beyond day forty. It’s entirely possible that they will die over the next few days. It is entirely possible that one of them will die as I’m typing this sentence. The callousness of Jake Richards, and the other MPs who laughed, will be remembered if that happens. Listen to Ash Sarkar talk about that in this video:
But hang on, wasn’t my point that Starmer and his ilk don’t care about being despised by the unwashed masses? Yes, Starmer, Jake Richards, and all those MPs who laughed, don’t care what the average British citizens thinks of them. But that doesn’t mean the average British citizen can’t make things hard for them. If, and hopefully it won’t happen, one of the hunger strikers dies, the opinion of many, many people who dismissed the hunger strikers as people just play acting at revolution and justice, will change. As long as the hunger strikers are alive, they can be dismissed as people who are eating in secret, or who will stop the hunger strike as soon as things get tough. But, nobody will be able to say that, if their courage, dedication, and quest for basic justice, is so strong, that they end up losing their lives. The Labour party’s popularity has been in freefall for quite some time, and I wonder, if one of the hunger strikers die, will that cause such unpopularity towards Labour, among the “ordinary” people who Starmer doesn’t care about, that it could be the end of the Labour Party?
It’s hard to see what’s next after that. One possibility will be that Farage will sweep into power, and there’s no way that’s going to be good for Britain. Another possibility, and we can only hope, is that Labour and the Tories will finally be replaced by something better.
It’s just horrifying to think that we live in a world where it might take people starving themselves to death before we see anything change.
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