STEPHEN GLOVER: From tax hikes to unwinding Brexit and workers' rights, 10 reasons to fear a Starmer supermajority

The odd thing is that I want Sir Keir Starmer and Labour to succeed. We have suffered nearly a decade of political turmoil and, like most people, I long for a period of settled government.

Yet I don’t believe we’re going to get it. Sir Keir may have been coy about his true intentions, but he has said enough for us to be certain that he and his party are proposing nothing less than the transformation of Britain.

Keir Starmer is planning five years of 'national convulsion' for Britain

Labour’s socialist revolution will be vigorously opposed by many, including the Conservative Party — unless it is reduced to an impotent rump next Thursday. But we should be in no doubt that we face five years of national convulsion.

Here are 10 good reasons to fear Labour…

Tax 

Despite having ruled out increases in income tax, national insurance and VAT, shadow ministers haven’t denied that capital gains tax, property taxes and inheritance tax could rise. It’s certain at least some of them will — partly because a Starmer government will need extra revenue to fund its ambitious plans, and partly because (as the imposition of VAT on private school fees illustrates) Labour is still fighting the class war. All that is in doubt is how long it will take for these assaults on modest wealth to be adopted. The first salvo may come in a November Budget.

Immigration

Professor Brian Bell, chairman of the Migration Advisory Committee, recently suggested that the Tories had a ‘fighting chance’ of slashing net migration to 150,000, having presided over a record high of 745,000 in 2022. The last Labour government ushered in the era of uncontrolled immigration, and there’s no evidence that the next one will be any different. Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper refuses to set immigration targets. Starmer’s proposals to stop the boats crossing the Channel are laughably vague. Labour won’t get a grip on either legal or illegal immigration.

Defence

This is a case not of what Labour would do but of what it wouldn’t. It has refused to match the Tory pledge to increase defence expenditure from around 2.3 per cent of GDP to 2.5 per cent by 2030. Labour can find billions to fund its pet projects such as Great British Energy, but in the midst of a Russian-inspired European war, and with China, North Korea and Iran becoming increasingly antagonistic, it won’t bolster our dangerously depleted defences.

Planning

The Labour leader at the Port of Greenock while on the General Election campaign trail with (left)  Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar and (right) Shadow Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero Ed Miliband

Labour has promised a radical overhaul to planning laws. It hopes to build 1.5 million new homes in the next Parliament — an increase of 50 per cent on what was achieved in the last. Independent observers reckon that immigration accounts for about 40 per cent of new housing demand, but Labour never acknowledges the connection. It also aims to reintroduce onshore wind farms, which are a blight and often ineffective. There will be more ugly pylons, too. Much of our beautiful countryside will be despoiled.

Voting rights for 16-year-olds

Why should 16-year-olds — who aren’t allowed to drink alcohol in a pub, drive a car or fight in a war — be given a vote? This self-serving measure is designed by Labour to entrench its power for ever, the supposition being that the young are overwhelmingly of the Left. Starmer could be in for a surprise, though. Hard-Right parties attracted many younger voters in the recent European elections. In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally increased its share of the youth vote from 19 per cent in 2019 to 30 per cent.

Closer to the EU 

Labour claims it has no intention of rejoining the European Union, or even the single market and customs union. It would say that, wouldn’t it? Although passionately pro-EU — so much so that he tried to reverse Brexit while in opposition — Sir Keir knows that to openly embrace the cause of rejoining would be political suicide. The talk has been of improving the UK’s trade agreement with the EU. Very gradually we will edge back into the maw of Brussels,

Sir Keir’s hope being that the process will be so low-key that few will resist it.

The Constitution

The last Labour government was constitutionally the most radical ever. It abolished the right of most hereditary peers to sit in the House of Lords, invented the now over-mighty Supreme Court, and introduced devolution to Scotland and Wales. The next Labour government will be no less proactive. Its manifesto pledges to ‘modernise’ the Lords, and then to replace it with ‘an alternative second chamber’. There will be greater powers for Holyrood and Cardiff, which will lead to Scotland and Wales drifting still further from England, and enfeebling the Union.

The impending collapse of the SNP in Scotland is admittedly one bonus of Labour’s triumph. But the SNP, armed with enhanced powers, will be back.

Workers’ rights

New workers’ rights have been championed by deputy leader Angela Rayner. Zero-hours contracts, though popular with many, will be banned. Employees will have more protection against dismissal from day one. Sick pay will be available to workers earlier. Recent trade union laws introduced by the Tories will be repealed. These measures will entail extra costs for businesses. Meanwhile, unlike the Conservatives, Labour makes no undertaking to curb the ballooning welfare budget — particularly sickness benefit. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, one in ten British workers are claiming health-related benefits.

Net Zero

Labour plans to achieve Net Zero in Britain at least five years before the rest of Europe

Labour is committed to achieving net zero by 2030, at least five years before the rest of Europe. The burdens placed on industry will be painful — and expensive for consumers. Under the Tories, new cars with combustion engines were due to be banned by 2030, but this has been pushed back until 2035. Labour is set on 2030. Stellantis, the owner of Vauxhall, warned earlier this week that it would be forced to close its UK factories unless rules requiring manufacturers to sell a certain proportion of electric vehicles are relaxed. The ideologically-driven Ed Miliband, prospective Climate Change and Net Zero Secretary, may not be accommodating.

Gender wars

Sir Keir has rowed back from his absurd contention that it was ‘not right’ to say that ‘only women have a cervix’. But his party is committed to making it easier to change gender. This week it emerged that people who want to legally transition will no longer have to prove that they have lived in their preferred gender for two years. The bigotry and bile of some in the party was illustrated last week by remarks from actor David Tennant, a Labour stalwart. He recommended that Kemi Badenoch — the Cabinet minister who has defended women’s rights — should ‘shut up’, and imagined her not ‘existing any more’.

Some people say Sir Keir Starmer has played his cards so close to his chest that we don’t know what kind of government he will lead. There are certainly many unexplored corners. But we do, in fact, have a pretty good idea of how Labour will rule us.

From taxation to planning to constitutional reform to workers’ rights to net zero, the British are heading towards a political revolution of which they seem unaware, and surely don’t want. Yet none of us can pretend that we haven’t been warned.