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Notes -
I'd take umbridge with the idea that the closest parallel to Starmer is Rishi Sunak, or that he is a neoliberal centrist. Whilst Starmer is fundamentally a manager rather than a leader, and is very comfortable with the grey bureaucratic blob of the civil service, Starmer has been deeply ideological since his younger days, where he was a Eurocommunist/Left-Green. Whilst I'm not quite as convinced as Peter Hitchens that Starmer is secretly an ultra-leftist waiting to pounce (he has certainly moved to the centre) his instincts are deeply "woke", for lack of a better term.
For those who don't know, Eurocommunism was that strain of non-USSR aligned leftism that started the whole intersectionality craze, where various oppressed/marginal groups could become objects for the revolution now that the industrial working class had either been co-opted or ceased to exist in the affluent west. And this wasn't just a university debate club phase! Starmer wrote for Trotsykist adjacent magazines well into his 20s, and was chair of the Society of Labour Lawyers, which was well on the left of the party, well into the 2000s.
Now this isn't to deny that he is a 'centrist' figure, or has moved the party to the right. He abandoned various left wing policies and commitments pretty quickly, and I think his economic views are certainly well to the right of Corbyn. But his political instincts and ideological basis are certainly on the left in a cultural/social sense (read: woke) in a way that they very much aren't for investment banker Sunak. Perhaps the best description of Starmer would be as a "cultural" or post-68 Leftist. Starmer spent decades advocating as a lawyer for migrant rights, environmental activists, civil liberty organisations and so on.
This is all to say that whilst Sunak and the Conservatives have let the country drift to the left on social views, and presided over massive overhauls, Starmer would not only allow this for political reasons but positively embrace it.
Also worth noting for those not in the know, that despite the frothing allegations that Reform and Farage are neo-fascists, they are in fact basically Thatcherite. Farage is a classical liberal- his anti immigration commitment is getting net migration down to ~0, and if outflows were in the hundreds of thousands he'd bite the bullet and allow inflows of a similar amount. This is not the same kind of politics as the Identitarians over the channel. Having said that, the voter base is pretty similar, and sits firmly in the socially conservative, economically left wing corner of the political compass. Farage is very much a top-righter. From the social media content they are putting out I suspect that many of the Reform activists/staff lean toward the redpilled side of things, but seeing as the party has little to no chance of being in power, it is most likely a marriage of convenience. Farage's play is presumably to try and destroy the Conservatives even further to lead whatever remains of the right in 10 years time (or to set up someone else to do so).
For those who haven't seen it.
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