The FT has done some fascinating analysis of Keir Starmer's speeches over the last few years.
What they found was:
The single word “change” — Labour's monosyllabic campaign slogan deployed extensively last year — is the running theme that continues to punctuate Starmer's speech even after his party won the election.
In data, this looks like this:
This is fascinating because the one thing that everyone knows is that Keir Starmer has never delivered change, unless it is to make things worse. And that is unsurprising. Victor Hugo once supposedly said that “Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come”, but that first of all presumes that the person wanting change has an idea, and we know that Starner has said, "There is no such thing as Starmerism", to which he then added, "And there never will be". The idea of change initiated by him is, in that case, very hard to imagine.
For change to happen, he would have to first notice that something is wrong. There is no sign he has. In fact, he seems to be in denial. Neoliberalism has dominated for forty years, but despite its evident failures, inclduing rising inequality, collapsing public services, and climate breakdown, the political class of which Starmer is a part insists that this is just how things are. As if we had never moved on from Thatcher, we are told "there is no alternative", and Starmer and his colleagues appear to cling to that story because the status quo feels safer than the unknown to them.
The fact that the cracks are now very apparent is ignored by most politicians, Starmer included. They are in outright denial of stagnating wages, housing market failures, and growing corporate and media power. People know that something is badly wrong, but Starmer is dithering. Unsurprisingly, populists are exploiting this by offering false solutions that promise change without delivering it.
This is despite the fact that new narratives have emerged. Ideas such as the Green New Deal, universal public services, fair taxation of wealth, and modern monetary theory have all gained traction. Campaigners, academics, and some politicians are starting to prepare the ground for something different, but Starmer pretends otherwise.
The result is that he cannot deliver change, no matter how many times he uses the word. His syntax might make sense: in plain English, the words he uses can be strung together, but they lack semantic reasoning because he fails to give them meaning, and those who hear them know that.
In that case, opposition to his position is inevitable. The far-right is mobilising, but as recent opinion polls show, so, too, are other parties. The LibDems, SNP, Plaid Cymru and Greens are all forecast by YouGov to be heading for record, or near record, representation in parliament. They are experimenting. In contrast, the Tory and Labour defenders of the old order are resisting because their privilege is at stake, but the reality is that we are at or near a tipping point. The momentum for change exists. Once it starts, it becomes difficult to suppress. Starmer either delivers on his promise now, or he will fail. Those are the only options he has.
I stress, I know we are still in the status quo. But as I suggested recently, the centre cannot hold. Whatever happens now, change is inevitable. All we have to find out and influence is what it is. We can beat neoliberalism, or we can get fascism, but Starmer's the last of his breed: his passive kow-towing to the Cioty is at the end of its day.
New ideas must be nurtured.
Setbacks are inevitable, but they need not be permanent.
And lasting change has to be cultural as well as economic.
We are on this path now. The only choice is to where, and Starmerisim is not on the destination list at present.
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‘For change to happen, he would have to first notice that something is wrong. There is no sign he has.’
How correct.
When you are being showered with gifts from your funders and others, he must have thought he’d ‘arrived’ when that happened and that all was good with the world.
Based on my recent holiday in Kent, I suggest that Starmer has a week away there driving round the County’s minor A roads and the B ones
The effect of decades of ‘Austerity’ is very obvious
No steer does not “do change” he tinkers and believes he is being radical.
He’s finished. He just hasn’t realised it yet and he may never realise it.
The tragedy is that his party, while disillusioned with HIM, hasn’t realised that they don’t merely need a new PM, they need a complete reset of their economic thinking too.
They are just looking for a different face to stick on the same failed austerity policy, the same failed foreign policy (pro Trump, pro Israel), the same failed climate policy, the same failed utilities, public transport, housing, health and social care policies (with some new cities for some time in the distant future, some improved worker rights, but still lousy pay and declining real jobs and crumbling infrastructure).
Labour MPs haven’t got it yet. I wonder if they ever will?
Hi Richard,
To add to “Campaigners, academics, and some politicians are starting to prepare the ground for something different …” I’d like to take the liberty of plugging this:
https://criticaltakes.org/the-corporation/so-what-should-we-do-about-corporate-power/
It’s a sketch of what a worldwide civil society agenda for transforming the very large corporation as an institution might look like, based on what some campaigns are already calling for, plus some basic questions that such an agenda would need to respond to (including on the purposes of the corporation in law, the permissible limits of profit, etc).
The UK would be one of the countries where such an agenda would need to be shaped and fought for.
I’d be interested to know what you think!
Best wishes,
Diarmid
I will try to look later.
Shared for now
George Orwell wrote about Oceania and Eurasia renaming physical continents.
I’ve been wondering about a world ruled by Microsoftia, Appleonia, Teslania, Palantiria, Tatania, Metania, Alphabetica, and of course TonyBlairInstitutia. Not places, not countries, but mega supranational corporations.
Douglas Adams writes about this in Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, naming among others the DolmanSax Corporation (something to do with shoes and mattresses) and robotic AI Lift Manufacturers Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. Marvin the paranoid android can explain it better than me.)
As for Palantir getting the digital ID contract plus the NHS data…
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/palantir-glitch-exposes-data/
Personally I think we are already far more under their thumb than we imagine. I want my life back!
I think you are almost certainly right
I like the names
And the idea
“the DolmanSax Corporation”
It was the Dolmansaxlil Galactic Shoe Corporation. The name is a mashup of shoe shops Dolcis, Manfield*, Saxone and Lilley and Skinner, which were all fixtures in 70s-80s shopping centres.
* The HHGTTG wiki says Freeman Hardy & Willis (another shoe shop of the era) but I think that’s unlikely.
Douglas Adams died far too young.
It’s a bit of a Freudian slip I would suggest since it’s readily apparent that Starmer “doesn’t want to change” the Neoliberal system much, indeed wants to reinforce it, he therefore compulsively keeps using the word “change”!
@ RobertJ says: September 29 2025 at 4:18 pm
The following link is worth a look as a thoughtful exposè of where Digital ID could well be leading us.
https://richarddavidhames.substack.com/p/the-convenience-trap
I also note that https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/730194 has at the time of writing attracted 2,529,231 signatures already (for what it’s worth).
I keep my digital ID as distributed and as diverse (and home-based) as possible. Every login has its own email and so far that also applies to gov.uk logins too. Never ever “sign in with your google or facebook ID” – Why would anyone do that?
Avoid free email, avoid the megacorps. Store YOUR data on your own hardware, at home, don’t rely on rented cloud server space or rented cloud-based software, if you do, neither the cloud software nor the cloud hardware NOR EVEN YOUR OWN DATA is yours anymore. . Storage hardware to own at home, is cheaper than its ever been. Dont hand your photo galleries to Zuckerberg, your email archive to Bezos, and your documents and office systems to Microsoft.
What worries me is that gradually, this is getting harder. For example I can avoid “login with google or facebook” on sites that offer it to me, but its impossible to avoid “bc2login.com” on the sites that use it to administer their logins, so despite my resistance, Microsoft know more about me than I trust them to respect or protect, because bc2login is the only way to login to sites that I regard as none of Microsoft’s business.
Digital ID is aimed at bringing us all into one huge monetised, surveilled, controlled corporate/government corrall, with Sauron having “one algorithm to rule (and profit from) them all”. Maybe one year of individual digital autonomy left?
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Yeats.