Starmer's move against Palestinian refugees highlights collapse of liberal centre
3 March 2025
Siding with the
Tories, the British prime minister was outraged that a court allowed a
Gaza family to remain in the UK under a scheme designed for Ukrainians
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaks in Preston on 6 February 2025 (Oli Scarff/AFP)
They say you can see the world in a grain of sand.
In some cases, you can indeed view a global shift in ideology through the lens of a single incident. Take British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s recent response to a Palestinian family who came to the UK using a refugee scheme designed for Ukrainians.
Starmer was outraged. He went so far as to unreservedly agree with
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch when she raised the case in the Commons. Prime
ministers almost never give opposition leaders this kind of unqualified
endorsement at the dispatch box.
Both Starmer and Badenoch were criticising the judge who upheld the
Palestinians’ case. For this attack on the judiciary, the chief justice,
Baroness Sue Carr, slapped them both down, saying such criticism undermined the independence of the courts.
If Starmer and Badenoch had a problem, they could launch an appeal as
the proper route to redress, rather than publicly criticising a judge
unable to answer back, Carr told them.
And in this grain of sand, we can see the collapse of an entire
social democratic/liberal ideology. Core elements of this ideology are
meant to include equity and impartiality, the application of the rule of
law without fear or favour, and the defence of a rules-based
international order.
Starmer reacted to the case of the Palestinian refugees in a manner
that undermined the code that he - a human rights lawyer, as he never
tires of reminding us - is supposed to uphold.
Separation of powers
It should not matter whether refugees are Ukrainians or Palestinians.
If they stand in need of support as defined in the law, they should be
entitled to receive it. But Starmer chose to make his judgement on the
basis of political preference, not on the basis of need or equal
treatment before the law.
Starmer favours Ukraine in its war with Russia, and he does not favour the Palestinian people in their struggle against the state of Israel.
This is the measure that he applied in this case: when the court ruled
that the Palestinian family should be treated in the same way as
Ukrainian refugees, he attacked the court.
It is a cornerstone of parliamentary democracy that there is a separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary.
Put simply, Starmer still hates former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn more than he hates Trump
Starmer politicised this case and ignored that distinction. This is
precisely why the chief justice responded so strongly and publicly to
his and Badenoch’s attack on the court’s decision.
What is astounding about all of this is that the foundational precept
of social democratic and liberal attacks on Trumpism, and on the far
right in general, is their politicisation of the normal legal functions
of parliamentary democracy.
US President Donald Trump’s partisan appointments to vacant positions at the top of the American judicial system, highly political sackings
in the defence establishment, and contestation of election results by
court action, are all held up as examples of his ostensibly unique
contempt for the division of powers enshrined in the American
constitution, and his determination to bend the state apparatus not
merely to the will of the ruling elite (as has always been true), but to
his own specific will.
Starmer’s attack on the court’s decision in the case of the
Palestinian refugees shows that he is equally willing to dispense with
due process, and with the separation of powers, to pursue his own narrow
political ends.
Exploiting failure
The tragedy of the social democratic and liberal political centre is
that Starmer’s move in this case is not an isolated failing.
Trump’s “drain the swamp” rhetoric is effective precisely because the
old liberal elite are widely seen as corrupt by many American voters.
In Britain, the rapid decline in Starmer’s popularity
is precisely because he is seen as almost identical to the discredited
and corrupt Johnsonite Tory party, which took control of government
after the Brexit referendum.
This picture can only be enhanced by Starmer’s complete willingness
to prostrate himself at the feet of Trump, no matter how completely the
US president rips up the social democratic and liberal consensus that
has dominated establishment thinking since the Second World War.
Indeed, the more the populist right exploits the failures of the old
liberal centre, the more the old liberal centre adapts to the populist
right by shadowing their political stances.
In this way, a “doom loop” opens up: the liberal centre fails the
mass of the population, the far right gains, the far right fails, the
liberal centre regains power and fails again, and the far right
populists return in ever-more dangerous forms.
This is precisely the Obama-Trump-Biden-Trump cycle that we see in the US. But it is by no means limited to the US.
The isolation and collapse of the liberal and social democratic
centre is accelerated by the fact that they are more opposed to the
radical left than to the populist right. Put simply, Starmer still hates
former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn more than he hates Trump.
Eroding civil liberties
And yet, it is precisely this radical left that has the best chance of defeating Trump and the populist right more generally.
Trump’s tariff mania
will not create jobs, as Trump has told his voter base that it will;
rather, it will damage the US economy. In the short term, it will
immediately drive up prices, making working-class Americans poorer than
they already are.
To the extent that these measures are adopted internationally, and
that is already extensively the case, it will have a depressive effect
on the global economy, just as similar tariff wars did in the 1920s.
Trump’s politicisation of state machinery will erode civil liberties
and constitutional freedoms, undermining the populist right’s claims to
defend free speech and liberty in general.
In international affairs, Trump’s aggressive isolationism may end wars that he regards as unwinnable, like the conflict in Ukraine, but it will not produce a more peaceful or stable world.
In these circumstances, a radical left prepared to argue for workers’
rights and an economy that guarantees stable and secure jobs; which
pledges to end the erosion of real wages, and to rebuild health and
education systems; which vows to revitalise transport infrastructure,
and to defend freedom of assembly, free speech and effective trade union
organisation; and which commits to pursuing peace rather than war in
international arenas, is the best effective antidote to the far right.
It would be encouraging if at least some of those in the collapsing
liberal/social democratic centre were to join with this project, rather
than constantly stampeding to the right in hopes of reaching
accommodation with Trump and his international co-ideologues.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.