The Authoritarian Drift of “Sensible” Labour

There’s a peculiar sickness creeping through Starmer’s Labour. It isn’t the usual hypocrisy of office or the ritual amnesia that afflicts all governments once the brass plate goes on the door. It’s something more insidious – a growing belief that control equals competence.

The new plan to let police restrict “repeated protests” is being sold as a tidy administrative measure. “Cumulative impact,” they call it, as if democracy were an irritant that needs a dab of ointment. But let’s call it what it is – a rightward lurch dressed in bureaucratic beige.

Labour knows perfectly well that the Public Order Act already gives police the means to deal with genuine disorder. This isn’t about riots, it’s about reputation management. Starmer wants to look “tough on disruption” to reassure the Mail and the Telegraph that he’s not one of those woolly liberals. It’s the oldest trick in the Home Office playbook – erode rights quietly, and tell the public you’re “protecting communities.”

But here’s the stupidity. No Tory voter ever switches sides because Labour flirts with authoritarianism. They’ll always pick the genuine article. Meanwhile, the very people who gave Labour its majority – the young, the idealists, the union members, the ones who still believe protest is part of democracy – will see this for what it is and start switching off. Disillusion doesn’t make noise; it just stays home next election.

The government seems to think voters are reassured by firmness. In truth, they’re reassured by fairness. You can’t claim to champion free speech while throttling the means by which ordinary people exercise it. And you can’t posture as a government of integrity while borrowing your policing language from Priti Patel’s desk drawer.

This is the paradox of Starmerism – a movement that fears looking radical more than it fears looking weak. So it governs by avoiding risk, mistaking caution for wisdom. But democracy doesn’t survive by being tidy. It survives because it tolerates being inconvenient.

If Labour keeps moving right to occupy what it calls “the centre ground,” it’ll find that the centre has quietly moved on without it. The party of protest risks becoming the party that outlaws persistence – the same persistence that won women the vote, secured workers their rights, and brought down apartheid.

Once you start policing how often people may speak, you’ve stopped listening. And when a government stops listening, it’s only a matter of time before the shouting starts again – louder, angrier, and this time, against you.