The Starmer Doctrine: Feeding War, Starving Children

War Over Welfare: Starmer’s Costly Pledge Amid UK Child Poverty

As NATO celebrated its 75th anniversary, a grim irony unfolded. Sir Keir Starmer, our newly minted Prime Minister, jetted off to Washington to pledge fealty to the military-industrial complex.

Now, as he wings his way back to British soil, the stark reality awaits him: children across the UK have gone to bed hungry, their growling stomachs a damning counterpoint to the fanfare abroad. The contrast between Starmer’s largesse in foreign affairs and the dire situation at home could not be more pronounced, setting the stage for a reckoning with his party’s purported values.

The hypocrisy in itself is breathtaking. Starmer, once a human rights barrister who advocated for dismantling NATO, now wraps himself in its flag, comparing the alliance to the NHS as a “great achievement” of Labour. You have to wonder if he’s forgotten or maybe he just thinks we have that the NATO he now champions should have ended in 1991, when the Soviet Union crumbled along with the Berlin Wall.

We should peel back the layers of this geopolitical onion before it all gets shoved down the memory hole. Remember NATO’s promise of “not one inch East” after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991? Well, it seems they were using a rather creative measuring stick. That “inch” has stretched a thousand miles, with NATO swelling from 12 countries facing 31 Warsaw Pact nations, NATO now boasts 31 members encircling a lone Russia. And we wonder why the bear is growling.

This eastward creep, backed by an ever-expanding EU, pressed right up to Ukraine’s doorstep. When Kyiv dared to say “NO” to both EU and NATO membership in 2014, the response was swift and brutal. A regime change erupted, a far-right coup masquerading as democracy. Orchestrated by Western powers, with Biden pulling strings from Washington, it toppled pro-Russian President Yanukovych. This wasn’t the voice of the people, but a calculated move to install a puppet regime on Russia’s borders, with far-right shock troops as the principal dancers in this macabre ballet.

NATO's Stoltenberg: "The war didn't start in February last year, the war started in 2014."
Stoltenberg is right. The war started in 2014 with a US so-called regime change commonly known as a coup and we are all paying the price now… #WWWIII pic.twitter.com/xggofm5OE5

— Labour Heartlands (@Labourheartland) February 24, 2023

But the curtain didn’t fall there. This regime change was merely the opening act of a tragedy that has since claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced millions. What began as a civil war has metastasised into the front lines of an imperialistic battle, a proxy war between the Eagle and the Bear. And who stands to gain from this bloodshed? Not the common Ukrainian or Russian, certainly. No, the true victors are the arms manufacturers like Lockheed Martin, poised to win the war, and vulture capitalists like BlackRock, ready to devour whatever remains of Ukraine in the aftermath. This is the grim reality of modern warfare – a feast for the oligarchs, paid for with the blood of the common people.

And now, enter stage left our esteemed leader, Sir Keir Starmer, the self-proclaimed champion of Labour values. With a flourish befitting a West End performance, he pledges £3bn annually to Ukraine “for as long as it takes”. A blank cheque written on the backs of British workers, signed with the ink of austerity.

When it comes to paying contractors, the sky is the limit; when it comes to financing the basic functions of the state, the coffers are empty.

― Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Let’s pause to consider the magnitude of this commitment. Three billion pounds, year after year, funnelled into a conflict that shows no signs of abating. “For as long as it takes” – a phrase that should send shivers down the spine of anyone familiar with the concept of ‘forever wars‘.

But Starmer’s largesse has a curious boundary. It stops precisely at the shores of Britain. While he’s eager to send our hard-earned public money to arm Ukraine, he’s remarkably reticent when it comes to feeding hungry children at home. The two-child benefit cap remains firmly in place, a cruel reminder that in Starmer’s Labour, guns trump butter every time.

This is the same Labour Party that once stood for the working class, now playing at international statesmanship while families across Britain struggle to put food on the table. It’s a betrayal so profound that even George Orwell might struggle to capture its full hypocrisy.

Starmer justifies this generosity with the tired “domino theory”. He’d have us believe that without our intervention, democracy itself would crumble. Again, Orwell would be proud of such doublethink. If the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact of 31 countries couldn’t topple NATO’s 12, only a quantum leap of imagination would suggest that a lone Russia, still struggling after two years to subdue a small region of Ukraine, could defeat the might of NATO’s now 31 military members across Europe.

Country First, Party Second: Starmer’s Doublethink

“Country First, Party Second,” Starmer proclaims with the hollow righteousness of a modern-day Pharisee. But one must ask: which country? Certainly not the United Kingdom, where his policies paint a grim picture of misplaced priorities and callous indifference.

While Starmer eagerly feeds the insatiable maw of the war machine, he stubbornly maintains the cruel two-child benefit cap at home. This draconian policy, so heartless that even some Tories blanched at its implementation, affects over 450,000 families and leaves 1.6 million children – one in nine in the UK – wanting. The stark contrast between lavish foreign military aid and domestic austerity is a damning indictment of Starmer’s Labour.

As Noam Chomsky aptly observed, “For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit.” It seems in Starmer’s calculus, funding foreign conflicts trumps feeding British children. This ideological pirouette would be almost comical if its consequences weren’t so dire.

So, while the coffers of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin overflow with British taxpayers’ money, children in Birmingham, Manchester, and Glasgow go to bed hungry. Families across the nation buckle under the weight of the two-child cap and a crushing cost-of-living crisis. Is this really what we thought Labour stood for?

More pressingly, we must ask ourselves: Who does our government truly serve? Is it the people of Britain, struggling to make ends meet? Or is it the arms manufacturers and geopolitical strategists playing chess with human lives?

Starmer’s Labour Party has made its choice clear. They’ve chosen to fund forever wars while allowing child poverty to flourish at home. They’ve chosen to parrot NATO talking points rather than address the root causes of global conflict. They’ve chosen bombs over bread, missiles over medicine.

It’s time for the British public to wake up to this grim reality. The next time you hear Starmer speak of “Country First,” remember the 1.6 million children his policies condemn to poverty. Remember the billions funnelled into a proxy war while our public services crumble. And ask yourself: Is this the Labour Party we need? Is this the government we deserve?

In the words of Tony Benn, “The way a government treats refugees is very instructive because it shows you how they would treat the rest of us if they thought they could get away with it.” Replace ‘refugees’ with ‘the working class’, and you have a perfect description of Starmer’s Labour. It’s high time we demand better.