Tag Archives: Starmer

Why Starmer won’t Rule Britannia, he didn’t take my advice

About a year ago I gave Kier Starmer some unsolicited advice about how he should improve the British economy. This year it seems Kier will lose his premiership, in part because he ignored me.

Now to be fair, Kier Starmer is still Prime Minister. He isn’t (politically) dead *yet*. But most of the British press is writing his political obituary so I might as well get in on the fun myself.

To be clear: the proximal cause of Starmer’s downfall is not the economy directly. His inability to handle the political issue of immigration (leading to the Reform party winning big at the local elections) alongside his bad judgement in the Mandelson scandal are probably the most notable reasons for his current quagmire.

But I sincerely believe that his inability to grow Britain’s economy is behind both of these issues: if wages were rising then immigration alone would not have let Reform win big. And likewise his recent scandal could have been water under the bridge if he was more popular (which would be easier if wages in Britain were rising).

And I believe the reasons he hasn’t been able to grow Britain’s economy is because he didn’t do any of the things I suggested. He hasn’t reformed Britain’s labor market or property market in any pro-growth ways. In fact most of his signature policies of late seem to be tax rises, stealth tax rises, and reforms that make it *harder* for Britain to grow, not easier.

Even Starmer himself admitted during the 2024 election that the property market needed significant reform. He claimed he would fix Britain’s broken planning system, a system designed to stymie anyone who wants to build anything anywhere, not a great system for a country that needs to build more houses and more power plants since they have the some of the worst housing shortages and energy prices in Europe!

But despite constant promises, constant claims that it would *eventually* be done, Starmer has taken 2 years and the 3rd largest majority in Labour’s history and turned it into *nothing at all* on the planning front. In fact, house-building has *gone down* since Starmer has taken office, and energy costs have *gone up* even faster than the rest of Europe.

Starmer can stand next to all the wind farms in the world, plenty of them will still get built even *with* a broken planning system. But the stark truth is that *way less stuff is getting built in Britain* than was being built under his Tory predecessor. And *way way less stuff is getting built* than would be built if he just *reformed the planning system like he promised*.

He just seems to have no mindset for growth. His other big 2024 promise was to not to raise taxes on working people. So as soon as he came into office he raised taxes on *any business that wanted to employ a working person*, which is a stealth tax on working people even if people don’t “see” it. Just because someone doesn’t see an extra few thousand pounds get taken from their paycheque doesn’t mean the tax is really “free.” Companies notice when it costs an extra few thousand pounds to employ any worker, and they respond by lowering their hiring and freezing raises to recouperate.

OK that’s not *actually* how it works. If we want to get technical (and I guess we should) what ACTUALLY happens is marginal, like this:

  • With every worker costing an extra few thousand pounds to employ (because of Starmer’s new tax), some companies will no longer think they can increase their profits by hiring more workers, the costs are just too high.
  • This isn’t every company mind, it’s only a few, it’s only those on the margin between profit and loss
  • But these few companies will pull out of the hiring market because they just don’t think a new worker is worth the cost. Now there’s *the same number of workers chasing fewer jobs*
  • What happens when the same number of dollars chase fewer goods? Dollars are worth less than they were. What happens when the same number of workers chase fewer jobs? Workers are worth less than before.
  • The same number of workers chasing fewer jobs means companies can suddenly be a lot more picky. They won’t need to raise wages to fill positions, or raise wages to ensure retention, and so they just won’t raise those wages since they don’t have to.
  • The companies aren’t making bank off of this mind, the money they save by not raising wages is the money going straight to Starmer through his stealth tax (which is supposed to not harm working people, mind you).
  • The result is the same: some companies stop hiring, many companies freeze wages, workers are harmed even if they don’t get to see the money coming out of their paycheque and going to the government.

Anyway, Starmer isn’t pro-growth enough. He hasn’t reformed any of the awful red tape that has kept Britain from growing, and he’s even added some of his own plus plenty of new taxes to boot. The results are unsurprising: Britain’s growth has flatlined and the voters aren’t happy with the poor economy. This makes more of them willing to listen to other parties (like Reform) and also primes them to already hate Starmer himself, such that a scandal which a more popular PM could weather (the Mandelson Scandal) has become deadly for Sir Kier.

And besides all that, the Mandelson scandal was entirely of Starmer’s own making, and it is a stupid scandal to boot.

Starmer’s brand was predicated on an end to sleaze: no more dirty deals or giving favours to friends. Starmer wasn’t like that (he said), he was upright and by the book.

But then once Starmer was in office, he took a well-known sleazeball (Peter Mandelson) who is ALSO a known affiliate of Epstein, and hands this man an ambassador position for which he is thoroughly unqualified. Britain’s foreign service is *supposed* to be more professional than America’s, political allies don’t just get handed ambassadorships as a thank you for their service. But Starmer did just that.

Mandelson had never worked in the consulates and embassies before, unlike the ambassador he replaced. And his lack of experience made it completely clear that he only got his position simply because Starmer wanted to reward him, as he was one of the (many) Grandees who had helped Starmer’s rise to power.

The whole saga then descended into a he-said she-said about the fact that a sleazeball like Mandelson *obviously* didn’t pass the rigorous vetting an ambassador needs to pass, but Starmer’s people made it clear that they wanted Mandy so he was appointed to the ambassadorship anyway. Starmer has tried to say *he himself* didn’t do anything wrong, but seriously: even a decade before anyone cared about the Epstein scandal, *Mandelson was already a known and tainted player*. Over 20 years ago I remember a comedian joked “who the hell made Mandelson a *lord*? The Sith?” He’s not a clean figure and he never has been. Even if you personally didn’t write a message saying “ignore the vetting red flags, I want Mandy,” no one could possibly say that they thought Sith Lord Mandelson was a clean and appropriate candidate for ambassador.

Anyway that’s my obituary on Kier Starmer. He never had a plan for growth, and he thought taxes were consequence free if people didn’t see them in a paycheque. He rose to power not by his skill at getting things done, but by his skill at convincing people he was a safe pair of hands. Safe indeed, he’ll never drive the car off a cliff, but only because he’s too scared to turn it on in the first place.

Building on the green belt

Kier Starmer wants to build houses on the green belt. For those of you who don’t know, the “green belt” is an area around some English cities where house-building is heavily restricted. It’s name conjures images of pristine creeks and primeval forests, land that has been protected since the dawn of time and must remain so. But nothing could be further from the trust, most of the green belt is monoculture farms and car parks. The only thing “green” about it is the branding. Which is exactly why the Green Party and other self-proclaimed “environmental” groups are so heavily opposed to Kier Starmer’s plan.

In far too many cases, I’ve seen that “Green” and “Environmental” groups are really just NIMBYs. High rise development is far more efficient than spread out housing, but green groups in my city are opposed to it. The German Greens are famously anti-nuclear, but pro-coal; or rather national Greens are fine with coal away from them but local Greens hate coal in their backyard. And in California, CEQA and other environmental regulation has destroyed the state’s ability to build nearly anything. The state has decided to little by little allow special carve-outs to CEQA for projects of dire need (or good kickbacks) but has still refused to just scrap CEQA for good.

But to bring it back to housing, I think the utter lack of housing in most of the Western world is a damn crime, and the entrenched groups opposed to housing must be fought at every turn.

Just take the Green Belt, a quick search of social media shows that many self-proclaimed leftists are up in arms about it. But what is so wrong with a car park being replaced by houses? And the Tories are against it as well, but why should a supposed party of free market economics forbid people from building what they want on their property? If I want to turn my house into an apartment block, why should Big Government forbid me?

The reason is of course NIMBYs, and there’s an entire Maginot Line of mottes and baileys that the NIMBYs have constructed to defend their arguments and their property values. The most baffling is their claim that more supply doesn’t lower prices. In fact some go so far as to claim that a new apartment will raise housing prices in the area through some mechanism heretofore unknown to economics. But think for even half a second: when there was a shortage of eggs just this year, what happened? The price of eggs rose, yes? And when the egg shortage was alleviated by more production, then what happened? The price fell, just as supply and demand says it will. When there is more of stuff, prices go down.

If a brand new high-priced apartment gets built, then a rich lawyer and family can move out of his luxury apartment from the 90s which is sort of grotty after 30 years of use. Now a young couple can move into that apartment from the 90s, moving out of their tiny apartment in the suburbs. And now someone who was homeless or living with family can move into the tiny apartment vacated by the couple. New housing, even ultra-expensive luxury housing, lowers the price of all housing as people move into it and move out of where they currently are.

Another NIMBY motte is the demand that instead of building new houses, we should implement a policy that is utterly useless. Usually they demand that we should have rent control, or forbid foreigners from owning houses, or forbid corporations from owning them. Absolutely none of these things help in the slightest, in fact rent control is actively harmful. Yet NIMBYs will claim we should never ever build a single new home until these useless policies are implemented.

I saw a truly mask-off moment on social media when talking about Boulder Colorado. I wasn’t aware, but Boulder is one of the most unaffordable cities in America. And on a news story talking about such, the response from Boulder residents was clear: “you don’t have a right to live in Boulder, if it’s too expensive then get richer or leave. We don’t want more houses or apartments because it would change the character of Boulder.” You could very easily see George Wallace saying the same thing.

At the end of the day, NIMBYs think that they, personally, should be immune to market or government forces. Their neighbor should not be allowed to build a bigger house on his land because it would affect them personally. And the government should not be allowed to build houses either because again it would affect them personally. NIMBYism is a blight upon capitalism and a war against the poor. I think anyone on the Left, Right, or Center should oppose it.

So god-speed Starmer, and please build 10 million houses on the green belt you beautiful centrist bastard you.