Kemi Badenoch has had some thoughts on the Labour party. When pressed by the Telegraph on who or what would come after Rachel Reeves in the terrible event of her being defenestrated, Kemi mused, ‘They [Labour] are going to go through lots of different cycles of Labour MPs, some of whom are very similar to the ones that have gone to the Jeremy Corbyn party. You see what a rabble they are. Labour are actually not that much different.’
The thing that really unites the Your Party nuts and Labour MPs is their sanctimony
Is that fair? Like many, my weekend was considerably enlivened by highlights from the livestream of this weekend’s inaugural Your Party conference. This has been dubbed ‘comedy gold’ and ‘better than Netflix’. It was certainly surreal and sad. A lot, and I mean a lot, of the people called to speak at the podium did not seem at all well, and the kind of not at all well that you can’t hide.
One of the most popular clips shows a young woman who is giving an address, and who proudly states – among a litany of other attributes – that she is a ‘mad comrade’. Such honesty is welcome, and refreshing in the public discourse, where very strange people from across the political spectrum usually fall over themselves to appear normal and ordinary. ‘I’m a loony and proud’ is disarming, and almost charming.
The Your Party delegates, with their piercings, hair dye and wild staring eyes put me in mind of the citizens of Mega City 1 in Judge Dredd, or the holding pen in the early rounds of auditions for The X Factor; ‘I see myself as the next Mariah Carey’, then cut to Louis Walsh cracking up and Simon Cowell raising his hand. In fact, just like The X Factor auditions, the Your Party conference was slightly uncomfortable viewing – because where does one draw the line at mocking the afflicted?
They may not sport woolly rainbow hats and nose studs, or precede their pronouncements with an announcement of exotic pronouns (though I wouldn’t put either past Stella Creasy) but is Kemi right to make the comparison between Labour MPs and these tragic misfits?
Last week, Labour MP Clive Lewis told the Daily T podcast that there are children in his constituency who are ‘eating sand’. These conditions – worse than those in the siege of Stalingrad in 1942 – apparently prevail in Norwich in 2025. This weekend, Lewis tweeted breezily that a Budget ‘can’t make a nation poorer’ because it ‘moves wealth around and may change future productive capacity, but doesn’t make wealth vanish’. What does he think wealth is?
Not to be outdone, Neil Duncan-Jordan MP suggested a raid on private pensions, the sort of thing Robert Maxwell did, now retooled for the 21st century. Are these Labour ideas so very different from Zarah Sultana’s advocacy of ‘nationalising the entire economy’? Or the Green leader’s ‘Zack and the Beanstalk’ faith in magic beans Weimar-style money printing – now repackaged under the glossy, funky-sounding banner of Modern Monetary Theory?
But the thing that really unites the Your Party nuts and Labour MPs is their sanctimony. We saw this in Labour’s reaction to Kemi’s glorious roasting of Rachel Reeves last week, as the Commons camera cut to Reeves wearing a shocked, ‘I’ve never been spoken to like this in all my puff’ expression. Some have suggested this was a pose, but I’m not so sure.
Because there is a loop in the heads of the left, at all levels, from soft to hard and all points in between: everything that I do is to help and do good, so anybody that objects must be evil. I am a nice person – how could anybody be so downright rotten as to criticise me? Starmer looked similarly taken aback at the weekend when quizzed by Beth Rigby. It is obviously quite inappropriate for mere journalists to question the shining seraphic light of the Labour party.
This mental block is so deeply ingrained that even transparent lying is dressed up as morally virtuous. In July Starmer removed the whip from rebel Labour MPs who voted to lift the two-child benefit cap. Now, five months later, he says he feels ‘personal pride’ about lifting the two-child benefit cap. You can’t reconcile this behaviour unless you factor in the subject’s belief in their moral infallibility. In Starmer’s mind, a total reverse doesn’t matter, because he is always right.
The left are supported in this belief by our culture, which portrays the economy as wicked – boo hiss money men versus honest and ingenuous lifters of the oppressed. This is a childlike and quite inane view of politics and indeed the world, but that doesn’t prevent it being very appealing, particularly to the disappointed and resentful. It is written through our culture like Blackpool through a stick of rock.
‘Did you lie?’ Trevor Philips asked Reeves on Sunday. Reeves’s instinctive reply – ‘I’m a Labour chancellor’ – was highly amusing in a ‘nuff said’ way. But then of course, her first impulse was to reach for saintliness; Labour is holy, if anything I am too wholesome. Because Labour and the wider left are the good people. Their uprightness cannot, must not, be doubted, even as they plunge the country into ruin with insane economic policies.
Reeves and Starmer are not wearing colourful tea cosies and ranting in the street, yet. But are they mad comrades? Yes.
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