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EZRA LEVANT | Keir Starmer makes his exit — leaving a poorer, more divided Britain behind
00:30:30
Just as Trudeau was awful, Keir Starmer was awful. But what is remarkable is how quickly he fell. It took Trudeau years to crater that badly in the polls. Starmer did it in two.
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Hello, my friends. The UK has a new Prime Minister, or at least the old one is on his way out pretty quick. Keir Starmer, the authoritarian censor is done, but the guy who replaces him is probably just as bad. We'll go deep on that, but first, let me invite you become a subscriber to Rebel News plus, it's the video version of this podcast. Just go to rebelnewsplus.com click subscribe. And in addition to getting great video content, you'll support Rebel News because we get no money from the government. And it shows. Tonight, Keir Starmer is gone as the UK's Prime Minister. But is his successor any different? It's June 22nd and this is the Ezra Levant Show. Shame on you, you censorious bug. Well, if you want the world's news, you can wait for the news to happen. Or in this case, you can go to Donald Trump's social media platform. Yesterday, Donald Trump announced that Keir Starmer, the UK Prime Minister, had confirmed he was stepping down Today, the final humiliation from Donald Trump, who had basically been at some sort of political war, a moral war, a sense of humor war, a social media war against Q Starmer from the very beginning. His successor is already in place. Andy Burnham is the name. He was the mayor of Manchester who just won a by election about a week ago, and he's universally been anointed by the party to take over from Keir Starmer. No general election. He just won a by election a week ago. It really reminds me of how Mark Carney just took over from Justin Trudeau and they had some internal process and wham, bam, thank you, ma'. Am, it was done. Now, just like Trudeau was awful, Keir Starmer was awful. But it's incredible that he got as low in the polls as he did in just two years. Trudeau took longer than that. Starmer had a really bad social style, at least to me. He always seemed plastic and fake. There was nothing real underneath there. He looked sort of stunned the whole time. Or maybe that was me projecting on him that he would just brazen things out. It obviously didn't work. He had the lowest polls of any recorded prime minister. Keir Starmer mentioned me, not by name, but a few weeks ago, actually more than a month ago, when I was due to go to the United Kingdom to attend and observe one of Tommy Robinson's rallies, Keir Starmer announced that me and about a dozen others would simply be banned because we were friends with Tommy Robinson. Here's his speech on that and you'll
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see it again on Saturday at a march designed to confront and intimidate this diversity and this diverse country. That is why this labor government will block far right agitators from traveling to Britain for that event, because we will not allow people to come to the UK to threaten our community and spread hate on our streets.
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Yeah, it's sort of crazy. I mean, he, like so many other politicians, is a lawyer, but, you know, there's a lawyer. There's a certain way of thinking as a lawyer. You think about what rights are, what powers are, what limits are. I mean, I think thinking like a lawyer can be a good thing, but there's also a terrible way to think like a lawyer, which is to over lawyer things and to come up with excuses for doing or not doing things. And that's really what he was. He used to be the head of the Crown Prosecution Service, the top prosecutor. And you could really see that in how he used those powers. For example, he did his best never to prosecute rape gangs, but he would sue into submission any Conservatives or right wingers who criticized, for example, the Islamification of society was a real two tier system. In the end, he only had tears for himself, though. He had no tears for any of the other tragedies of his tenure, just for himself. Take a look at him crying for the real victim here, Keir Starmer.
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When I leave the biggest job in the country, I shall spend more time on the most important job. Being the best husband I can to my fantastic wife, Vic, who has been a rock by my side through good times and bad, and being the best dad I can to my beautiful children, who are my pride and my joy. Thank you very much.
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Well, I know that I've talked about Keir Starmer before, probably more than most Canadian journalists, because I used to travel to the UK before I was banned from going there.
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And.
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And so, just out of natural interest, I started following him and holy smokes, the first thing to know, I made a list of 10 things and I could probably come up with 20. But here's 10 things I want to tell you about Keir Starmer. The first is, I think he destroyed the Royal Navy. Now, obviously it didn't happen all in the last two years, but the Royal Navy used to be more dominant than any other in the world. It ruled the world. It enabled the British Empire to. You know, they used to say, the sun never sets on the British Empire. There was actually a period of time when there was a law in the UK that the UK had to have more naval ships than the next two world's navies combined. That's how big it was. Well now it's either all in the dock or being refitted or maintained. Only one ship was seaworthy enough to be dispatched to the recent conflagration in the Mediterranean in the Gulf. Which one ship? And it broke down. This happened under its watch. In fact, just a couple weeks ago a couple of cabinet ministers in charge of the military just resigned. Not in disgrace, the opposite. Saying that it would be a disgrace to continue on. Imagine that a Defense Minister resigning because the Prime Minister would not fund the military. Just incredible. I suppose the second thing I think about these are in no particular order is I mentioned before the Islamification and, and two tier nature of the law. Because of the growing and massive demographic of Muslims in the uk they've introduced a blasphemy law. It hasn't passed yet, but they propose to make it illegal to criticize Islam. Cousin marriage is being legalized in the UK because it's such a prominent feature of Pakistani Muslim Brits. Sharia law actually rules today and in many places. And we did talk about at length about the rape gangs that were covered up in part by Keir Starmer. I think there's a real contrast. There's so many contrasts. There was a mum named Lucy Connelly who very briefly after some children were stabbed by a Muslim extremist, talked about he would. She wouldn't care if their migrant hotel burnt down. She wasn't calling for it to happen, she just said she wouldn't care. That was only up for an hour or two before she took it down. She was sentenced to years in prison versus for example, these brutes at the Manchester airport who beat the living daylights out of police, including a woman police and you know, two levels of justice for two different criminals and two different sets of victims. There's other weird things going on. Like there's a group of islands called the Chagos Islands or Diego Garcia as Americans know them. There is a key military base there that the US uses, including for its B1 bombers in some bizarre third worldism. Keir Starmer wanted to give those NATO bases, give that Chagos Islands back to I think it was Malaysia or Indonesia, forgotten the country. And to pay them billions of dollars to give them back the land for this key military base and to pay them what this kind of third Worldism. They were even contemplating slave reparations the British Empire was, which ended slavery as we know it. That's how crazy it was. Other things that we've been copying here. In Canada, for example, Kier Starmer proposed to have Internet ID for adults. Now, he said it was for kids, but the way to sort kids and adults is to test everyone's age. So you would have to sign in before using the Internet, as if they wouldn't track you. It's a bad idea. We're copying here. And, you know, I really don't think that there's a lot of consistency. The same Keir Starmer is, is fine with children undergoing transgender surgery, but he won't let a teenager on social media. By the way, about 30 Brits a day are arrested for things they write on Facebook or Twitter. 30 a day. That's according to the Times of London. I hate to say it, that is a larger number than we know of in Russia or China. Now, there may be things happening that we don't know about. But seriously, 30 a day, that's thousands. 10,000 a year. By the way, a lot of this is fueled by demographics. I mentioned that before. Every day boats cross over from France, bringing refugees. But obviously you're not a refugee if you're coming from France. France is a delightful place. Maybe their welfare system isn't quite as generous as in the uk, but that doesn't make you a refugee. The law of refugees is you must seek asylum in the first country that you reach that is safe. France is not an unsafe place. But Keir Starmer insists on accepting those migrants. The lawyer in him says the European Convention on Human Rights forces him to do that. That's obviously not true. And like I say, with the Islamification of the demographics of the uk, other policies tend to change too. For example, the uk, which for a generation was a key supporter of Israel, now declared under Keir Starmer, just like our Mark Carney did support for the sovereignty of Palestine, and he did that when Hamas was still holding hostages in the Gaza Strip. Just incredible. Again, for domestic reasons, there's other policies that are just inscrutable, like his decision to attack farmers and declare an inheritance tax. So if a son would take over a farm from his father, they would have to sell the farm in in order to get the required liquid funds to pay the debt. Just absolutely. A war on farmers. War on food, similar to the war on cheap energy. Amongst the highest electricity prices in Europe because of their insane net zero schemes, banning fracking and investing in uneconomic windmills. Another example, just to throw one at you, is the war against pensioners. Why would you do that? Related to the relief they would get over fuel subsidies in the winter. Just very strange in recent days. You're not even going to believe me when I say he said that we need, that the Brits needed to kill hundreds of wild ponies. I mean, I suppose after the list of things I just went through, I went through about 10 different terrible policies that cumulatively have alienated the vast majority of Brits over the last two years. And just on his way out the door, he said, what could drive my numbers down lower? I know, let's kill the ponies. Keir Starmer, he will be forgotten as quickly as he got to. He's forgotten already. He's forgotten already. A man who left no imprint in society other than making the world's problems a little bit worse. Stay with us. We'll talk with Jack Hadfield. More about this subject next. Well, Keir Starmer, one of the worst prime ministers in recent British history. I mean, I don't know my history going back centuries, but he's certainly the worst, I would say far worse than Neville Chamberlain, who made a catastrophic strategic decision, but at least conducted himself with some grace and some self awareness. Keir Starmer, the most unpopular Prime Minister in recent history and one of the worst in terms of his population policy. Who cares about his popularity, I suppose, other than he was an utter failure at everything. And I'm glad he was because some of his plans would have impoverished, censored and destroyed the United Kingdom, or what's left of it. Joining me now is someone who loves the United Kingdom and I want his input on whether or not the change to Andy Burnham is a good thing or a bad thing. Joining us now, Jack Hadfield. You can follow him online at Jack Haddishack, Great to see you again. Last we were speaking about, we knew that Keir Starmer was in danger, but there was a key by election in Makerfield where the mayor of Manchester, one of the great cities of the uk, ran. And it was basically putting in a new player to rescue the Labour Party from the disaster. Reminds me of what happened in Canada when Mark Carney was put in to save the party from Justin Trudeau's plunging popularity. Tell us a little bit about the events of the last few days about who Andy Burnham is and what this means for freedom and prosperity in the uk. There's a lot there, but let's hear it.
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Yeah. So the by election happened in Makerfield, which is just south of Wigan, which is a town in the northwest of Greater Manchester, historically in the Lancashire area. And so Andy Burnham ran in that city seat. He was only able to run in that seat because the former Labour MP Josh Simons specifically stepped down. So that Burnham, who as you said was the Mayor of Greater Manchester, was then able to get a seat back in the Commons and challenge Keir Starmer for the leadership. Now, looking at the previous polls on this now, while this had been a Labour seat for the past 100 or so years, basically ever since it's been created and the previous seats that came before it, the polls at the time basically had Reform winning by around 50% of the vote. If there were to be a general election in Makerfield at the time, and I think if there was any other candidate at any other time, Reform would win in Makerfield. Now, what happened on Thursday night where results came in on Friday morning at 3am so funny enough, I actually got the results for both Reform and Restore. About right, Restore got fewer than 7% of the votes, which is the rightest challenger party to reform reform, then got 35% of the vote, which was around 5% under where I'd predicted them, which is around 40. But Burnham completely smashed it. He got about 55% of the vote. Now, there are three factors why this happened. And I think the first factor, the first two factors I think we understood already, the first one was that he's pretty popular already in the north and people wanted to sort of give him a chance. There is that there give him a chance to start running things. So there's that factor factor number two was the coalescence of an anti reform tactical voting from the left. So basically the Tories, the Green Party, the Lib Dems basically got no votes and all of the sort of left wing vote went to Labour. And the third key factor, which is I think why his vote numbers were completely underestimated by the polls and by everybody else and by myself included, is that people wanted to get Starmer out immediately. This is what Reform had been running on their campaign in the local elections was vote reform, get Starmer out. And I think that's why, because Keir Starmer was such an unpopular Prime Minister and they saw by putting Burnham in right now, actually this is the way to just, you know, chop off the Starmerite head immediately in one swift blow. I think there are quite a few people who apparently said on the doors that there'll be voting reform in the general, but voted wanted to vote Labour now, specifically Frankie Burnham, to get rid of Keir Starmer. And obviously that's what we've seen happen this morning. You know, Keir Starmer crying at the podium Saying how proud he was and everything he's done. And it looks like it's going to be a coronation for Andy Byrne as Prime Minister. We're streeting. He was expected to challenge Keir Starmer for the Labour leadership and suggested he had done before. After Keir Starmer stepped down this afternoon, said that he would be backing Andy Burnham for pm. So it doesn't seem like we might even not have a Labour leadership contest. It seems like it might be a straight up coronation for the King in the North.
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Wow. You know, when Justin Trudeau was replaced unceremoniously by his own party, a party that he had led for a decade, it was as if he was immediately forgotten, to use the phrase, by George Orwell, he was put in the memory hole. Everything about him was forgotten, erased. Because he was so personally unpopular and associated with so many bad things, it took. He was like the liver of the body for the Liberal Party in Canada. It took him 10 years to get that toxic. Keir Starmer did it in a fraction of the time. Are there any significant differences in terms of policy between Keir Starmer and Andy Burnham? I don't know that much about Andy Burnham other than, like you say, he was the mayor of Manchester and of course, you know, he's a Labor leader, so he. He has left his views. But on some of the signature items for Keir Starmer, censorship, you know, government ID to get on the Internet, his war against Conservatives, his prosecution of anyone who says mean tweets, his belief in Net zero. These are. I mean, I suppose this is sort of a standard leftist menu. Is there any important difference, Jack, between the new incoming PM Andy Burnham and Keir Starmer?
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Is there any important difference? I think no. Now, Burnham has been presumed to be someone that's more on the left of the economy than Starmer. Starmer is considered to someone who's been a bit more to the right of the Labour Party. Now, Burnham has had said many things about wanting to rejoin the eu, wanting to break the fiscal rules and basically bring in more borrowing. I think what we'll see probably from Burnham, is more of a borrowing and redistribution of wealth to the north of England, the peripheries outside from the southeast, from the main sort of productive areas of the country, sucking out productive capital and giving it to the peripheries of the country. And that's sort of summing up and what Manchesterism is. But on that, he's actually been flipping back and forth multiple times on many of the things he cares about, like just to get elected. He is right now. All things to all men. One of the biggest, crucial differences, sort of before the by election that people on the right were worried about was that Keir Starmer, with Shabana Mahmud as his secretary, was going to put in ILR reforms. That's the indefinite leave to remain, meaning that people would have to wait 10 years, not five years, in order to apply for British citizenship. And this would apply to the Boris wave who'd come over. So we were worried that if Burnham would come in and then chop away at those reforms, that would be a disaster and people who are at the Boris wave now would be able to get citizenship and could be a disaster on that front. But there seems suggestions that he's going to keep Mahmoud as his Home Secretary. And even before the by election, just a week or so before the by election, he said, no, actually, I think I wouldn't scrap the ILR reforms. So he's been back and forth on it. So, you know, he seemed at the face of it to be the left wing of Keir Starmer. I think he may be slightly economically, slightly more redistributed, slightly more welfarist, but on all of the key issues, I don't think he will be. And obviously he's been able to get able to be so popular as a mayor of Greater Manchester by just doing things like nationalising and taking the public transport network under public ownership, for example, and doing these things that you can just easily do and yet to be popular as mayor. But because I think, frankly, his policies and the way he will govern will be substantively have no difference between Keir Starmer and that his popularity will plummet. It's already starting to go down from the by election. So I think within six months or so of him being Prime Minister, his honeymoon period will be over and will be hated as much, if not more so than Starmer is now by the general public.
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Now, one of the former Labour leaders, Jeremy Corbyn, was accused of being far too chummy with Islamism and he was credibly accused of being anti Semitic himself. And. And this was all pre October 7th. Keir Starmer, who supposedly was to be more moderate than that, granted his declaration of sovereignty to Palestine even when Hamas was still holding hostages. And although he's the target of so many protests, I don't know, it's. Do you think there's going to be a significant change in the UK's policy vis a vision Israel? Will it go back a little bit more to the Jeremy Corbyn approach? It's one thing to say those things in opposition, but what about as Prime Minister? Where is he on Islam, Israel, Jews, etc. I'm just curious because that is a battleground or a front line on these things.
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Well, again, I don't think he's actually said that much about these specific things. So I think this is quite wise to do so. Again, if you're trying to be all things to all men as he is now, and I don't think he's taken that much of a line, I may have to correct myself on that. But I certainly when people imagine, you know, who they think of Andy Burnham in their head, certainly somebody who takes a hard line on one side of the Israel Palestine issue does not crop up into somebody's mind. I think again, as mayor of Greater Manchester, he will have no overall reason to talk about foreign policy. I can't imagine that there will be again much difference. I think especially on the left now that Israel has become less popular among the left. But again also these aren't completely radical people in government. I imagine he will stay somewhere similar to the start on the line that is critical of Israel in some ways, but it obviously is not completely aligned with the radical Palestinian jihadist activists for example as well. So I don't think there'll be that be that much difference on there. No, again, overall I think we're going to see really continuation of government even though people are expecting some big change.
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Yeah, I think you're probably right. I think he's managed to keep some of his because he was a mayor. Mayor by definition don't really deal with certain things. One thing that has always bothered me about UK politics is how even the so called Conservative Party was so deeply in favor of net zero. I mean Boris Johnson was committed to that. And net zero is basically a way to make energy more costly in the west while allowing China, India and other developing countries to burn fossil fuels at will for their industrial revolution. And it bothered me under Boris Johnson, it's continuing. I mean, there's an antipathy towards fossil fuels in the uk. The UK pays some of the highest energy taxes in Europe. It's particularly hard for pensioners and there was a real crisis there. Is there any chance that Andy Burnham might become more moderate on the climate stuff or is he still full Greta Thunberg on that stuff like Boris Johnson was?
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Yeah, full Greta Thunberg. I mean, obviously now the current Energy Secretary is Ed Miliband Red Ed, as people used to call him and frankly still do now. He was the leader. He was the labor leader from 2010 to 2015 and fought against Cameron in the 2015 election and lost. But he came back as the Energy Secretary in Keir Starmer's cabinet. And he is one of the worst proponents of Net zero that you can imagine. That is, frankly. Now, again, obviously, like for me and for many other people on the right, sort of, immigration is the big issue. But things like Net zero and energy policy are probably not as destructive as allowing millions of billions of people from the Third World to come into your country and to commit crimes and whatever. But the actual energy policy that they're doing right now is absolutely horrendous. And there have been some rumours floating around that Andy Burnham may tap Ed Miliband to be his chancellor, in which case we're going to see Net zero on steroids and Ed's going to be at the treasury pulling the purse strings and certainly having even more control over more areas of our life and making the Net Zero madness continue. But I can't. Yeah, I think that's one of these areas where there is potential for it to get worse than the current Starmer regime. But let's see.
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Last question. Jack, you mentioned immigration. Obviously, we talk a lot about that. We looked at Restore UK's study into the rape gangs, which is just shocking and I'm pleased to say it's had some attention on this side of the Atlantic. There's a very large YouTuber named Asmongold who read through the entire document seven hours for his viewers and had nearly a million views. So there are. Some of that news is coming out, and I think that the rape gangs are absolutely linked to mass immigration of people from misogynist cultures. How could it not be? Is there any difference between Keir Starmer and Andy Burnham on mass immigration? I mean, it seems like no one in the Labour Party is willing to do anything substantive about it because they know those immigrants will, in time, vote Labor. Is there any daylight between Starmer and Burnham on this stuff?
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No, definitely not. I mean, in fact, even as mayor of Greater Manchester, Burnham himself, he, for one, he said that you tried to be against a national inquiry on the grooming gangs. There were other inquiries and reports that were sort of taking place in Oldham, which was under the Greater Manchester purview, which wasn't able to get much data and so on. There was more reports that were trying to get information from Greater Manchester police. Greater Manchester Police was very, very reticent to allow this data to be out there on the grooming gangs. And guess who as mayor of Greater Manchester, had the role of police and crime commissioner baked into his position, who could have pressured the Greater Manchester Police to open their books, open their data to these people who are doing the reports. Well, guess what? It was Andy Burnham. So Andy Burnham has had a role himself in certainly not assisting in the release of this evidence to the general public. And I think that's one thing where again, you could say Andy Burnham is worse than Starmer on the grooming gangs. And certainly, again, if we're talking about immigration overall, we're going to see a general continuation of the policy again, hopefully, as I said, Shabana Mahmoud stays the same sacrament. At least get those IR reforms in. Illegal migration is still going down, but again, Burnham is a leftist. Burnham will not crack down on legal migration either. So that's not a good thing. But yeah, it really is business as usual. As much as people wish this to be a change, would like there to be a change again again at six months. In six months, I think you're going to say instead of people singing Keir Starmer's a rude word that I can't say on air, they'll be singing that to Andy Burnham is a word for I can't say the phrase. But I'm sure we've all seen the video clip of people chanting that.
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Yes, there were some Scottish soccer fans, football fans in Boston who were chanting the chant you're referring to. We'll, we'll end the segment with that. Jack, great to see you. Hey, welcome back. Your letters to, to me about Friday's Calgary event with Keith Wilson sheepdogging. It says, Keith for leader of the new independent Alberta. Get her done. What was interesting to me is that the media who have been so hostile to the independence movement, actually engaged with Keith Wilson for a substantive question and answer. Went on for about an hour. It was actually pretty cool to watch. Itsefa said, we already know Canada can't exist without Alberta. Independence must be won anyway. You know, in some ways, Central Canada would love to be rid of Alberta. All that oil, all those carbon emissions, all those right wingers, but come on, who's kidding who? They love that oil and they love having someone to beat up. I'm not saying all Easterners, but the Ottawa Laurentian elite. You know who I'm talking about. Gordon Kirk says, we Albertans so love you. And thank you to Merrill Leach for your immense sacrifice for Albertans and all Canadians.
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Rebel News.
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We 100% stand with you. Well, thank you for saying that, Gordon. It was a pleasure to hang out with Tamara Leach. And remember, she's still actually under house arrest. But one of the. I'm not going to call it a loophole. One of the characteristics of house arrest is that you're allowed to work. So we made her a job offer that requires her to travel all the time. And I feel really good about that because it's such an unjust sentence. And the fact that she's out and about and doing great work for Rebel News and spreading her own view of the world, I think. I think it's a great victory. And I want to thank every Rebel News viewer who made that possible. Anyways, that's our show for the day. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us at Rebel World headquarters, to you at home, good night and keep fighting for freedom.