The Starmer Government was elected last year with a large majority. Yet, it is already no more popular than the Sunak and Brown Governments were towards the end of their respective tenures. The reasons for this are partly that Labour’s victory was not the result of a positive desire for a Labour Government, but rather the consequence of a public backlash against the Conservatives. Someone had to win the seats lost by the Tories, and Labour was simply the only available alternative. It is also because the new Ministers are comically incompetent. Labour’s managers installed the present leadership in 2020, assuming the party would be out of power until at least the end of the decade. It seemed prudent to let mediocrities warm the benches rather than exhaust anyone with actual ability in the drudgery of opposition. Thus, the Starmer Government is an embarrassing mistake.
A further reason for its struggles, to be fair, is that whoever won the 2024 election would have been unfortunate. The monetary expansion following the 2008 financial crisis, combined with ruinous Green policies and failed attempts to break the Russian economy, were bound to bring us to where we now are. Additionally, the steady growth of a politically correct police state was always likely to generate widespread discontent. Labour has simply been unlucky in finding itself holding the parcel when the music stopped.
However, the primary reason for its predicament is that there appears to have been a change of heart within the American ruling class, and this shift may be echoed at the top of the British ruling class. Before proceeding further, it is necessary to clarify the use of the term “ruling class.” Power is always a cloudy thing, difficult to locate precisely, and more often than not, constitutional structures only serve to obscure its true workings. Moreover, in the complex and affluent societies of the modern world, a ruling class is never a monolithic entity but rather a collection of interest groups whose fundamental interests overlap, though they frequently disagree on strategy and priorities. Occasionally, these disagreements are sharp enough that one faction displaces another as the dominant force.
In the case of England, the dominant element within the ruling class has long been the monied interest centred in the City of London. Beneath this, the British Government does not take regular or direct orders from the monied interest but governs with its advice and consent—albeit sometimes with resistance. Below this, there exists an extensive network of administrators, lawyers, regulators, educators, media figures, and businessmen, all deriving income and status from an extended state. These groups are often in conflict with each other, and their collective pressure sometimes forces government policy changes that the monied interest must accept. There are no rigid boundaries between these layers, as individuals can move up or down, or simultaneously occupy multiple positions within the hierarchy. The fundamental aim of the monied interest is to use Britain as a base for extracting vast wealth from the world through a series of financial mechanisms that are, at best, only semi-transparent.
While evidence for this assertion is difficult to document explicitly—powerful individuals rarely advertise their influence—its effects can be discerned by examining historical trends. Consider the economic liberalisation policies of Robert Peel in the 1840s, particularly the repeal of the Corn Laws. These have traditionally been framed as a victory for northern manufacturers against the landed aristocracy. In reality, these reforms disproportionately benefited the monied interest in the City of London. The northern manufacturers, though vocal, were a minor component of Britain’s economic power structure. Their factories relied on cheaper food for their workers, but they lacked the financial leverage and deep policy entrenchment of the banking and trading elites. The repeal of the Corn Laws, and Peel’s broader economic policies, facilitated the freer movement of capital and goods, consolidating London’s dominance over global finance.
After 1918, the monied interest largely displaced the industrial and landed interests, which had been weakened by taxation, war debt, and shifting economic priorities. This consolidation continued after the Second World War. The formal empire, once a tool of economic extraction, was abandoned when financial mechanisms made direct colonial rule unnecessary. Bribing local politicians and leveraging international institutions became more efficient means of controlling global wealth, eliminating the risk of raising up alternative power centres in Britain.
Since the 1970s, the supremacy of the monied interest has become increasingly malign. It has employed several strategies to maintain dominance:
- Empowering the managerial class – Executive and administrative power has been entrusted to a non-entrepreneurial bourgeoisie composed of unintelligent, unoriginal functionaries. These individuals are conditioned to defer to their perceived betters, ensuring that government remains a reliable transmission mechanism for monied interests. This has led to an unchecked expansion of regulatory agencies, quangos, and bureaucratic inertia.
- Promoting social fragmentation – The ruling class has allowed and encouraged the adoption of bizarre and destructive ideologies, fostering racial and cultural divisions under the guise of “equity.” This justifies mass immigration, which disrupts working-class solidarity, and reframes elite rule as a kind of leftist paternalism—authoritarianism without wealth redistribution.
- Deindustrialisation – The systematic closure of Britain’s industrial base was not merely about economic efficiency but about neutralising potential threats. An industrial economy supports independent businessmen and politically influential workers, both of whom could challenge the financial elite. The destruction of coal mines, steelworks, and shipyards was a strategic move to weaken these groups permanently.
This brings us to the present crisis. The monied interest expected to use China as a vast workshop for producing goods, from which the financial elites would extract profits. But China did not remain a compliant economic colony. Instead, it leveraged Western investment and technology transfers to engineer the most rapid economic ascent in history. It now rivals America in GDP and surpasses it in innovation. Worse for the monied interest, China seeks to free itself from dollar hegemony and build its own financial ecosystem.
The initial response was to break China’s will by eliminating Russia as a strategic ally. The Ukraine war was meant to be a trap, drawing Russia into a prolonged conflict that would collapse its economy and open China to encirclement. This effort has failed spectacularly. Western sanctions have backfired, revealing economic weaknesses in the sanctioning countries. NATO’s military technology has proven inferior to Russia’s. Worse still, proposals for British conscription were met with outrage, highlighting the diminished usefulness of native Britons as enforcement tools.
For at least a decade, there has been a debate within the ruling class over whether the “woke” agenda is an asset or a liability. This debate appears to have been settled in America by the re-election of Donald Trump. His first presidency was obstructed by entrenched elites, but he has returned as the frontman for a faction that seeks to stabilise America’s industrial base and working-class cohesion as tools of state power.
Britain is likely to follow suit. The Starmer Government, if it has any instinct for survival, will need to:
- Cut taxes and public spending, particularly on wasteful social engineering projects.
- Reverse mass immigration policies that have undermined social cohesion.
- Abandon destructive environmental commitments in favour of energy independence.
- Rebuild the industrial and defence base necessary to maintain Britain’s relevance as a global power.
If Labour refuses, it will be removed. The ruling class understands that a completely enfeebled Britain is useless as a financial hub and enforcement tool.
For ordinary Britons, some prosperity, some free speech, and some security are preferable to none. But we should not mistake this for a restoration of national self-rule. Rather, it is a calculated retreat, akin to the Soviet Union’s Perestroika and Glasnost—meant to preserve elite dominance rather than relinquish it.
I will quote de Tocqueville:
The regime that a revolution destroys is almost always better than the one that immediately preceded it, and experience teaches that the most dangerous time for a bad government is usually when it begins to reform.
So let it be for us.
