The phrase ‘Starmer’s Britain’ was first articulated three years before he got power. At 6:28 p.m. on 9 May 2021, a figure named ‘scrambled egg localist [rose emoji] [Union Jack emoji] [stars emoji]’ tweeted: ‘In Starmer’s Britain there will be no rich people or trains, leopard print will be abolished, and every woman will be pregnant and barefoot’. Recent events had shown Starmer at his most gormless. On 6 May, Labour was mauled by the Conservatives in the Hartlepool by-election, and on 9 May, Starmer tried to respond. He replaced ‘Anneliese Dodds’ with ‘Rachel Reeves’ as shadow chancellor, and attempted to sack Angela Rayner (wearer of the leopard print) but ended up making her ‘shadow first secretary of state’. Egg localist’s cryptic tweet, after that impotent day, was the earliest expression of the paradox of Keir Starmer. He was – his Britain would be – at once ineffectual and sinister.
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Starmer’s Britain has a wide canon. The Chagos Islands deal is a central text, and the videos of bottle-popping yutes celebrating early release from prison are seminal works of the genre. Rachel Reeves crying, the Manchester Airport police beatings and the slow senescence of the Assisted Dying Bill are other essential moments in Starmer’s Britain – all pathetic and ominous in equal measure. Hadush Kebatu, the sex pest, is one of the Great Men of the Starmerverse (along with Peter Mandelson). Hadush caused the Epping riots last year by sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl. He was accidentally released from HMP Chelmsford and spent two days roaming Essex and London with an avocado-print tote bag. He tried, keenly, to turn himself in, but was unable to get bemused officers to re-arrest him. He was finally caught and deported back to Ethiopia after negotiating a £500 ‘resettlement grant’ from Starmer’s government.
