Understanding Starmer – Power and Obsession
UNDERSTANDING STARMER – POWER AND OPPRESSION: From The Province Of The Cat
by George Gunn
Before he became a politician, “Sir” Keir Starmer was the Director of Public Prosecutions for England and Wales from 2008 to 2013. Now that he is a politician, he stood successfully for the Premiership of Ukania on a ticket of not being a Tory and of delivering nothing except some kind of nebulous “change”. Now that Starmer is the Prime Minister and his version of the Labour Party are in power the “change” that was sloganized turned out to be the effortless transformation into a Tory who is actively prosecuting the poor, the old and the weak. This metamorphosis has been tragic for the people of Ukania, but for the people of Scotland, it could, possibly, be an opportunity.
With power, inevitably comes oppression. Without any clear ideas of his own with what to do with the power he has achieved Starmer unthinkingly apes Trump in everything and in following the nihilistic pathway of the USA Starmer, like Trump, is gradually becoming a dictator. The consequences of this, obviously, for the people of both Ukania and the USA is appalling. The power of the oligarch resides in the oppression of the many. As John-Jacques Rousseau pointed out in the 18th century, no system of oppression is interested in the welfare of the oppressed. It is on the misery of their condition that the oppressor can more easily rest their full weight. So it is that Starmer punishes the poor who cannot fight back and rewards the rich who can. So it is that his government invests in English infrastructure and not in Scottish – unless it is infrastructure in Scotland that will benefit England such as windfarms, power substations the size of small Caithness villages and pylons three times what currently experience, all for transferring – asset stripping – electricity form the North of Scotland to the South of England. In reality, all governments invest all power in themselves.
Keir Starmer, as far as it is possible to tell, believes in what he is doing, in as much as he believes in himself, in as much as he believes in anything. But it is equally apparent that he does not understand the consequences of what he is doing and to believe without understanding only benefits fascism, which is the arch-enemy of people and of progress, and which is on the rise across Europe and beyond. For the Scots, this is not the time to be defeatist. There are many good and positive energies active in the domestic political sphere, and as the future will be made of the same stuff as the present, there is every reason to be optimistic. That may seem a grand claim – romantic even – but for those of us involved in the cause of Scottish independence the word discouragement should have no meaning. An independent Scotland can be achieved.
Whatever Starmer and Trump may think, and as the old theory reassures, capitalism cannot expand further than the limits of the Earth’s physical surface. Or so it was assumed. Now in the age of the internet, AI super-computers and privatised space travel, capitalism seeks to dominate outer space in planetary exploitation as well as controlling inner space through information and data. The alternative, contemporary socialism, has reams of premonitory texts charting the coming mega-crisis but has little to say about how to avert this anti-revolution.
We are in a period of transition, but a transition towards what? No-one has the slightest idea. What is striking is that the political left (both socialist and independence supporting) has settled down into this transition as if it were a definite, permanent stage, so that all analysis of the crisis has become comfortable, accepting commonplace Ukania government sponsored slogans as fact. Somehow this analysis believes that socialism and Scottish independence will arrive the day after tomorrow, or the day after the day after tomorrow – and so on until Judgement Day. In this way these true believers will never be disappointed.
Throughout the history of humanity people have struggled, suffered and died to free the oppressed. Tragically their efforts have always led to the replacement of one oppressive regime by another. The French revolutionary dream of “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” has been replaced, as Bernhard von Bülow the Prussian President in 1900 put it, by the German reality of “Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery”. If those who struggled for freedom in the past were destined to perish then it requires of us, who are alive, to prepare ourselves to perish with a clear view what we leave behind.
In Scotland, to cultivate the change we need, to actually make our own transition from colony to sovereign independence, we have to combine legal with illegal actions: the systematic actions of seasoned militants along with the spontaneous unrest of the majority of Scots. The stinking corpse of Unionism has to disappear from the stage of history. This will happen because this is the pattern of civilisation. The Union may be a corpse, giving off a rotting guff, but the institution of Westminster is, as yet, not done. It may be the democracy of the un-dead and do little more than go through the motions of representing the demos – and under Starmer government has become oppression exercised in the name of management – and when it eventually it slouches into the grave of history it will be as the result of the avaricious rise of the new fascism, not from the gentle convictions of old socialism.
Those of us who maintain that it will be Scottish independence which will administer the final, fatal blow to Westminster have not begun to understand Starmer and his falange of English politicians, who in recently announcing a huge 40% cut in aid to poor countries and people in preference for a rise in defence spending of to 2.5% or even 3% of Ukanian GDP, have shown themselves to be the true inheritors of “Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery”. “Fraternité” they cannot afford. But as Maynard Keynes once remarked, “Everything we can actually do we can afford.” On the other hand Rachel Reeves has told us all that there is “no money”, embracing wholeheartedly the Joseph Goebbels philosophy of ‘‘Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they – the people – will believe it.” Scottish independence may yet have a hand in the final demise of Westminster but until that day – the day after tomorrow? – it still twitches and corrupts.
In understanding Starmer the Scottish independence movement has to either expand or succumb. Since 1999 Holyrood has confined itself all too tidily within its set borders, those allowed and those proscribed by Westminster. The more Holyrood, because of the demands of history, moves to breaking out of this cramped accommodation the more Westminster will curb our freedoms, of movement, of free speech (the press, the public, the individual), or simply denying that the bills passed by the Scottish Parliament can be incorporated into Scots Law. As long as Scotland plays the Westminster game there is nothing much we can do about this.
Keir Starmer speaks in slogans and Starmer’s government lives on slogans and the slogans coming out of Westminster, ironically, have a Soviet-era ring to them – “The security guarantee has to be sufficient”, “Fight for peace in Europe”, “We are a government of pragmatists not ideologues” and so on. One party in power, the rest in prison – the prison of opposition, the prison of isolation, the prison of “no alternative”. In Ukania there is no longer any distinction between the pathological and the normal. It bears repeating: understanding Starmer is to understand that government has become oppression exercised in the name of management.
René Descartes used to insist that a clock out of order is not an exception to the laws governing clocks – it is a different mechanism obeying its own laws. So it is in Westminster – in the negative – and so it must be in Scotland – in the positive. Ukania is a state of various parts, all ultimately subject to a centralised administrative system on which the entire economic, political and intellectual life is dependent, and ultimately emasculated. The clock of Scotland should consist of the repaired and reinstated wheels and cogs of a true democracy, whose institutions work for all. To understand Starmer is to understand that for all of us who live in Scotland – no matter what colour or creed – is to understand that we have to exist in order to struggle. Neither Starmer or his puppet-master Trump can stop us from working towards a clear comprehension of the object of our effort: an independent Scotland that is equal for all. Nothing they can say or do, nothing in the world, can stop us from thinking clearly, from existing fully and from understanding what must be done.
©George Gunn 2025
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Odd use of the word ’emasculated’ in context. I would have thought the ostentatious virility associated with fascism was more of a defining feature of Starmer’s militaristic posturing and enabling.
As for Scotland sending surplus electricity from its wealth of renewable energy sources south to England, I really don’t see the objection in principle. There is no reasonable way that this could be described as ‘asset stripping’. In fact, capitalists are more likely to build their data or computation farms closer to such power sources (energy is always lost through transmission), whether we want such assets or not. I’d prefer to give the electricity away than England build more fossil fuel or nuclear plants.
Sleeping dog – SOS for Scotland wants to build more nuclear plants in Scotland despite opposition from Holyrood.
Scottish customers in Highlands have higher standing charges than virtually any other customers in UK. When challenged about this the head of Ofgem on Martin Lewis tv programme said it was because of infrastructure costs. Who is paying for infrastructure from Scotland to England?
The term heads you win tails we lose comes to mind.
Do you think Westminster will stop telling Scotland how much it subsidises us as it transfers all the energy generated up here down to bolster the SE of England.
I disliked the term ‘it’s Scotland’s oil’ in 1970’s but having seen how Scotland got shafted by Thatcher while she used proceeds to subsidise privatisation projects I have grown up and recognised the realities of how Westminster operates.
Westminster only recognises power and from my perspective the energy resources that Scotland has (renewable and fossil) are the bedrock upon which a more democratic, fairer Scotland can be founded and built in 21st century.
@John, I found MV Ramana’s book Nuclear is Not the Solution: the folly of atomic power in the age of climate change (2024) to be helpful.
I live in Wester Ross, surrounded bmby hydro and wind generation. The hydro plants have been reduced in capacity and the wind farms are paid to shut down. We already produce far more electricity here than we can use but face massive, destructive increases in generation, grid and storage which benefit only SE England at our expense. Let them generate their wind power near where they want it, and invest in some actually beneficial homes and industries here to use our surplus. Scotland, as I said, is simply a colony. We exist only to be exploited and destroyed for the benefit of international crooks and profiteers. As for high use industries moving to the Highlands, look at aluminium. It meant importing all the materials and leaving us with the waste. As for data centres, the IoT, AI – we need all that stuff like a hole in the head.
oh, and I omitted to say that here, our marginalised rural community pays the highest electricity charges in the Uk – and generators pay the highest grid connection charges – simply because of our distance from London. As if the electricity had to go all the way down there and back again. While generators near London are actually paid to connect to the grid. We are just mugs to put up with all this.
@John Wood, I wasn’t saying we needed data centres, the IoT, AI; I was saying that the article misrepresented ‘asset stripping’ in this context. There are a few good uses of data centres (necessary public services, archiving digitised cultural records, say, and web-hosting sites like Bella of course), Internet-connected devices (like sensors used in climate science, for example), and AI (some medical applications for instance), but many of the actual uses appear to be frivolous or outright harmful. My secondary point is that these installations are often sited next to electric power sources and natural cooling for efficiency and cost (as they are in Iceland). I consider the artificial deserts in Scotland to be much more of a concern than the aesthetics of pylons or turbines, by the way, but then, I’m not a poet.
Yes indeed – but it’s not true that no-one has any different vision, that idea that the status quo is somehow inevitable is an excuse based on Unionist propaganda. There is always an alternative. Snd if we initially get it wrong, we can fix it.
The problem is just that Scotland has internalised a colonial mentality – that like any colony it’s been told it’s too wee too poor too stupid to govern itself and people believe it. Flower of Scotland , all gone. It’s the basis of the Scottish cringe. And even parties supposedly dedicated to serving Scotland’s people lack the confidence to do so. We have a colonial administration that centralises power and does as its told.
Of course there’s an alternative, it’s staring us in the face. And by and large we actually do know what we want and don’t want. But as in England., or America, it’s not on offer.
We don’t want fascism. We do want empowerment, and that means subsidiarity, decentralised government. We have successful models in our Nordic neighbours we can learn from – yet we seem transfixed by the colonial power in London.
To change the world we only have to change our minds and stop being ruled by endless Project Fear. In 2026 we can simply refuse to vote for any candidate of any party who will not commit to upholding the Claim of Right and putting constituents before party. If none will do that, spoil our ballot.
We need independence too from ‘neoliberalism’ which is just a euphemism for corruption. We need to insist that no-one in Scotland is above the law, and that the public interest always comes before private profit.
Let the international ‘investors’ (pirates) go to hell. Scrap the ‘freeports’, the techno-fascism We need real people, in real communities, working together for the common good, not dog eat dog destruction.
It’s all perfectly possible if we want it and refuse to take no for an answer. Because we will get the government we deserve. And we deserve better than the utterly corrupt, colonial administration we have at present that doesn’t dare to upset its UK and US masters.
We just need to pluck up the courage and get on with it.
Passive resistance is very effective. Remember the Poll Tax?