I’ve got a whole lot of time for the writer Dan Salt. He only publishes about once a week on his Politically Homeless blog, but what he writes is well worth reading whether or not you agree or disagree with him either in whole or in part. His work especially resonates with me as I get the impression that he’s made a similar journey in politics as I have. I used to be centre left (with a short sojourn further Left when very young) but have moved to the centre right / right in part because I’ve seen the failures of the Left and also because the Left is failing to help or even acknowledge the needs of the working class in whose name they operate.
Mr Salt has produced a stunning evisceration of Sir Keir Starmer’s performance and although as he said he didn’t want to personally attack Starmer, many of Starmer;s problems, as Mr Salt points out, are down to Starmer’s personality, such as Starmer’s inability to properly gauge the optics of Labour’s policies. Mr Salt’s piece covers many of what he sees as Starmer’s faults such as in presentation, honesty, vision, his propensity to be wedded to ‘process’ etc. but it was this paragraph that really stuck out for me. Mr Salt strikes me as correct, Starmer is a man out of time. Starmer’s ‘gods’ are as Mr Salt said, the Post WWII international settlement with its international law and other aspects. The problem for Starmer is, like Communism, this international settlement and the associated international organisations that have sprung from that period following WWII, is a god that has clearly failed.
Mr Salt said:
Starmer is a liberal much more than any pretence of being a socialist. He believes in the world that was constructed internationally post World War 2 by the United States and at home post 1979 with Thatcher but socially and legally definitely 1997 with Blair. That is the world he grew up and came of age in and he thinks it works just fine. I actually think this is his largest and perhaps fatal flaw. The public is crying out for something new and yet he has nothing because fundamentally he doesn’t want massive change. His vision even if he had one would always be constrained by an unwillingness to change any of the major sections of the current settlement and yet that is what the public now wants more and more. As I wrote in my piece last week he and Labour have decided that the current paradigm is fine and so they are boxed in. They have inherited all of the same problems and all the same constraints. Abroad he may think the International Court of Justice defines international relations but pure power always has and always will. This is a lesson that the liberal classes are about to relearn possibly at our cost over the coming period.
Mr Salt’s piece was back in January 2025 and since then his judgement of Starmer seems to have been very prescient. He has been lacking in any connection with the populace, he can’t emote, or debate or make the sort of speeches that stick in the mind which any competent politician should be able to do. He also as Mr Salt says and on which I agree with him that Starmer doesn’t understand the emerging political world and that failure of Starmer to understand which way the world is going is going to be bad for him and probably truly awful for the ordinary Briton.
Links
Dan Salt’s piece on Starmer on the Politically Homeless blog.
https://politicallyhomeless.substack.com/p/starmer-is-unfit-to-be-pm