IN MODERN British politics being manifestly mediocre in intellect and morality is a positive trait. Political rivals are not threatened by you, and will accede to your rise as a compromise candidate or placeholder. And you, being too dim-witted to do otherwise, are psychologically comfortable with any inanity representative of the false consensus and inverted principles of the day.
It’s Sir Keir Starmer’s intense mediocrity that has been the key to his rise. He was morally mediocre enough to smoothly support Corbyn and McDonnell when the Radical Left took over the Labour Party, and could equally smoothly transition, through the sheer power of his defensive blandness, to the post-Corbyn pretence of a return to moderate normality (quickly revealed as a fraud by the extremist steps taken in government, but just effective enough to win election). Throughout his period in Blairite government, in Opposition, and now as Prime Minister, Starmer has retained a characteristic Beta Male profile: the kind of man who can perform every compromise that shouldn’t be made without the encumbrance of moral refusal, while also doubling down on every dominant insanity with the stubbornness that only the very weakest of men insist on.
When we think of that peculiar combination of weakness and stubbornness, it might seem difficult to grasp how the two go together. But think of how Starmer has navigated Brexit. His was one of the least insistent and most accommodating voices on the pro-EU side when it was politically disadvantageous to be a firm Remainer, reassuring voters as Opposition Leader that a Labour Party he led would not reverse Brexit and not seek to undo any of the changes Brexit occasioned.
In 2023 for example the then Tory government seized on Starmer’s comment that Britain did not seek to divert from European law and standards, arguing that this meant that Starmer would seek to reverse Brexit. Starmer replied with a firm negative:
‘I have repeatedly said that there’s no case for going back into the EU and that includes the single market and the customs union . . . We will not be a rule-taker. The rules and laws of this country will be made in Parliament according to the national interest.’
At that point, in order to replace the Tory government, Labour needed to reclaim the Red Wall that had fallen to Boris Johnson in 2019, so he made it seem as if Labour would abide by Brexit.
Today, of course, the election is already won, Labour are in power with a massive majority that enables them to force through anything they please, and Labour have been busily dismantling Brexit as fast as they can – signing up to new pledges on an EU Army, signing up to the student Erasmus scheme again, declaring that Brexit is a failure and has been incredibly damaging to the UK, placing the blame for covid economic damage and Labour high tax economic damage on Brexit, and pursuing a Reset policy with the EU that has already seen the re-adoption of more than 70 EU laws and accords which Brexit ended. Most of Brexit (which was already a partial Brexit by the agreed terms of the Johnson deal) has been reversed.
Typically, though, Starmer isn’t honest about what he is doing. He uses the language of reset to pretend that it’s simply a new accord, and not the old submission. It’s a typically hair-splitting, legalistic, cowardly way to enact radical change – a betrayal, while describing the betrayal as sensible, moderate and beneficial.
All of this is the proper context for understanding how Keir Starmer and his government have treated British soldiers. To establish what I am talking about when describing Starmer as a Beta Male, here is a 2021 clip of him attempting to spar with a punchbag.
This physically weak man, a political coward and opportunist, is the man who leads a government betraying UK troops.
They betray them by signing them up to EU authority and oversight, a gross distortion of their duty to protect UK sovereignty and independent military capacity.
They betray them by dangerously running down stockpiles of ammunition and equipment by sending what little we have to Ukraine and by not protecting the manufacturing we need to create more.
They betray them by offering their services in foreign wars when they have simultaneously run down their numbers and supplies, their ships, planes, tanks and facilities, so much so that we can barely field a fully equipped regiment and can’t even put our most powerful vessels to sea.
They betray them by putting them in inadequate and squalid accommodation and by paying them a beginning wage that asks them to risk their lives for less money than they could get for stacking supermarket shelves.
But worse than all of these is the treatment of the veterans of the Northern Ireland Troubles.
In October last year Beta Male Keir Starmer started the process of reversing the Tory government’s Legacy Act, which was introduced in 2023 and which protected British veterans from fresh cases, false claims of historic abuses, and vexatious litigation from politically motivated opponents including IRA terrorists and their families. The Legacy Act wisely recognised that avaricious lawyers and IRA families were motivated to bring cases against former UK soldiers who had served during the Troubles. The Act balanced the amnesty that Tony Blair had given to Irish nationalist terrorists by recognising that if reconciliation meant some terrorists would never see prison it must also mean that British soldiers should not be dragged through the courts for disputed or false claims referencing events that occurred 30 years ago.
Heedless of warnings that what they were doing was a sickening betrayal of the Armed Forces, including by senior officers, Labour MPs voted 373 to 106 to withdraw protections that barred civil actions and offered partial immunity for troops who served during the Troubles, replacing the Legacy Act with a new Troubles Bill. Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn and the Labour Government argued the original Legacy Act contained ’indefensible and legally defective provisions’ that violated human rights laws and failed to rebuild trust in Northern Ireland communities.
This, remember, while the ‘softly softly’ approach promised to the IRA regarding their past crimes continued.
In May former and even serving soldiers took the unprecedented step of launching a public campaign against the repeal of the Legacy Act, driven by the extremity of the crisis to engage in political activity that servicemen and women ordinarily (and by both law and custom) avoid. In April LBC reported:
‘In a co-ordinated intervention sent to all MPs, representatives of the regimental associations of the Special Air Service, Special Boat Service and Special Reconnaissance Regiment say former operators, now in their sixties, seventies and eighties, are being repeatedly pursued over incidents they insist were carried out lawfully on behalf of the state.
‘Many are in poor health. Several suffer from severe post-traumatic stress disorder. At least one has attempted to take his own life.
What does this mean?
It means that terrorists who blew up British women and children know that they are protected and won’t be pursued through the courts for their crimes, while soldiers who risked their lives following the orders of the British State are pursued in the courts for doing so. The British State even provides legal aid to some of these cases against our veterans. The overall effect is of a system that sent men to fight and risk death, and when they survived and returned home, now years later persecutes them for doing so.
Nor is Starmer’s Beta Male contempt for Alpha Male soldiers and resentful betrayals of our fighting men exclusive to himself, but rather seems to permeate his government. Lord Hermer (who is the current Attorney General) pursued a notorious ‘witch hunt’ against British troops despite being warned that the allegations were lies, the Telegraph disclosed yesterday. Starmer and his close friend Hermer collaborated on a 2007 case which pursued a soldier who has already twice been cleared of the allegations against him. Starmer took on this case pro-bono, apparently so strongly motivated to persecute British soldiers through the courts that he was willing to do it for free. That case and a submission by the current Prime Minister and the current Attorney General set the legal precedent fof potentially hundreds of claims against British veterans, including those currently being pursued.
It’s simply extraordinary that the current Prime Minister who may authorise fresh troop deployments and decide on Britain’s military actions, and the Attorney General who provides the senior most legal advice to the government, both have track records of assisting cases against British soldiers and creating the precedents by which more veterans face the nightmare of protracted court proceedings and even potential prison sentences.”
The effect on recruitment and morale in the modern Army is obvious. By Labour’s actions, no serving soldier can expect future governments to offer any reciprocal loyalty to them. It is little wonder that special forces troops are quitting in ‘significant’ numbers – losses that are said to be significant and a ‘threat to national security’.
Ideologically, as Starmer’s former support for Jeremy Corbyn proves, the Labour leader is fine with betraying Britain and its troops when it comes to the Troubles. His and Hilary Benn’s lawyerly excuses for their gross betrayal are an even more disgusting version of the same government’s reversal of Brexit. Only in this case the lives and freedom of elderly veterans are on the line, and the lesson is that if you fight for the British State, it will stab you in the back – the knife wielded by men who are themselves weaklings and cowards.
The revenge of the Beta Male politician is a nasty and unpleasant one. The contrast between Starmer and our veterans is a psycho-drama as well as a political travesty of justice. It’s a pathetic, cowardly, dishonest man getting his revenge on strong, traditional Alpha Males who had the patriotism and courage he has never possessed and who shame him by comparison. And in typical fashion for a Beta Male, that vengeance is even obtained when the victims are elderly and vulnerable; an act takes no courage to perform, only lawyerly excuses and moral vacuity.
