Labour’s real agenda for Britain is far more terrible than anyone imagined

The new Government has been unleashed, dedicating itself to total victory in both the class and culture wars

Welcome to Sir Keir Starmer’s cacotopia, his wretched vision for Britain in which everything will soon be as bad as it can be. The Cassandras – of which I was one – who warned that Labour would prove to be a catastrophe, the most Left-wing administration since the 1970s, an existential threat to Britain’s prosperity, freedoms and national unity, have been vindicated in record time. 
I already miss the Tories, for all their incompetence and cowardice and lack of principles: at least they sometimes got it right. Starmer’s Government, by contrast, is a ruthlessly efficient, highly focused, “progressive” wrecking machine, led by true believers dedicated to total victory in the culture and class wars. They have delivered a masterclass in how to seize the levers of power, harness a sympathetic Blob and ram through a revolutionary blueprint to empower the state, cut down tall poppies, promote radical greenery, undermine self-government and turbocharge wokeism. 
The Government has achieved almost as much in 40 days as the Tories managed in four years. Labour’s miserable 33.7 per cent of the vote isn’t providing any kind of psychological restraint or self-doubt about legitimacy: as far as the Starmerites are concerned, this is their moment, and they are going for it. 
Take immigration: Angela Rayner has dropped Michael Gove’s proposed “UK connections test” that would have limited social housing applications to long-term UK residents. Labour has scrapped the Rwanda scheme, and replaced it with nothing: we are meant to pretend that illegal immigration is no longer an issue, to turn a blind eye to the small boats crisis, even though there were 703 arrivals on one day alone this week. 
The Government is fanatically supportive of the European Convention on Human Rights; many of its activists support entirely open borders. Yvette Cooper has watered down plans to increase minimum salary requirements for spouses of migrants, and Starmer’s likely inability to meaningfully reform welfare means that he will soon face pressure from employers to import even more labour. 
Or take education: a Left-wing academic has been tasked with reviewing the national curriculum, fuelling worries of dumbing-down or politicisation. Higher standards in maths and English are a key Tory achievement: destroying this progress by banning phonics, as some would like, would be a calamity. Academies will be subjected to the national curriculum, and free schools will see their autonomy curtailed. Free speech protections in universities are being axed. The 20 per cent VAT on private schools is being accelerated; parents who pay for their children’s education should be lauded, not persecuted. 
Labour believes that prison works for thuggish, far-Right racists, which is good, but why not extend that to all kinds of law-breakers? Where is the credible prison-building plan? All the signs are that Labour is far too “progressive” on crime. 
The Government won’t increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2030. It can’t confirm whether we will participate in the Global Combat Air Programme to build a sixth generation fighter jet. MoD budgets for science, tech, and research and development face cuts. The Minerva satellite project is under threat. There seems to be no strategy to reinforce our nuclear deterrent or fix the MoD’s crippling pathologies. 
In the meantime, David Lammy has turned against Israel. He has dropped the UK’s case against the International Criminal Court prosecutor’s ludicrous request to issue an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu. He is mooting a ban on arms exports to Jerusalem. He reflexively condemns attacks on Hamas, failing to accept that the terror group uses civilians as human shields. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps remains unbanned. 
The Government is desperate to move closer to the EU’s orbit; the dream of divergence is over for now. The Product Safety Bill gives Starmer fresh powers to shadow single market rules, even though Germany’s economy is in dire straits. It will seek to sign up to endless EU projects, and embrace even fewer Brexit opportunities, fuelling Rejoin sentiment. 
Claims that the Government is pro-growth are delusional. Yes, its supposed plans (targets, rather) to boost housebuilding, as well as a few infrastructure projects, are welcome. But Ed Miliband’s dislike of North Sea oil and gas is a disaster; his decision to sign off big solar farms and onshore wind farms won’t be enough to prevent blackouts caused by absurdly ambitious decarbonisation deadlines. 
The avalanche of red tape on employers and the empowerment of unions will restrict job creation. The war on non-doms will backfire; the UK is suffering an exodus of millionaires. Far too much is being spent on pay rises for public-sector workers. 
As a consistent opponent of welfarism, I support scrapping the universal winter fuel allowance, but the looming tax raids on pensioners, hard workers, savers and investors to fund Reeves’s alleged £22 billion “black hole” are abhorrent. Will she reduce pension tax relief? Or slash the tax-free pension lump sum? Will she introduce a vicious gift tax, or force even more people to pay even more inheritance tax? She will surely increase capital gains tax, making it less profitable to invest. 
What about the taxation of property? Will she revalue council tax bands? Introduce an explosive wealth tax? How bad will it get?
We should be grateful for small mercies. In Facial Justice, his masterful political satire, L P Hartley imagines a post-nuclear war hellscape that forces the last 20 million humans to live in underground caves. Britain is run by the Darling Dictator and infected by egalitarian madness. “Legal justice, Economic Justice, Social Justice, and many other forms of Justice, of which we do not even know the names, had been attained; but there still remained spheres of human relationship and activity in which Justice did not reign,” Hartley explains. 
Hence why citizens must wear sackcloth and ashes not to be “anti-social”, why they are restricted to a 17.5 per cent quotum of personality not to inspire envy, and why Jael 97, an increasingly rebellious alpha, classified as “over-privileged” because of her beauty, must report to the Ministry of Facial Justice for reconstruction. 
If you need cheering up during these grim times, read the book: by comparison, even Starmer’s Britain’s will seem like a conservative utopia.