Very few political speeches have the power to echo down the centuries.
Extraordinary words, wielded by master manipulators, silver tongued evangelisers, and supra-natural rhetoricians. Orators with the rare skill to excite the humors, stir the blood, to bend history to their whim, wish, and will.
I’m thinking of the demagogue, Hitler, at Nuremberg. I’m thinking of Churchill vowing to defy his might, to fight him on the beaches.
I’m thinking of JKF, his words unshackling humanity from the confines of our planet. Reminding us that we do these things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
I’m thinking of Jo Swinson rallying a crumpled, defeated, nation with the proclamation that she could, Nay Sir! Would! Become Prime Minister!
But surely posterity shall record, how no address has ever stirred the tired spirits of men, quite like Keir Starmer’s ‘Strangers Island’ speech of May 2025.
Who could have guessed that a humble press conference to unveil a white paper on immigration would provide a backdrop for such soaring oratory?
Starmer’s speech was a tour de force of nasal monotony. Truly a masterclass in top level dronery. A towering, tone deaf, triumph of tedium.
‘Now, in a diverse nation like ours, and I celebrate that,….’
Thundered Starmer, his voice cutting through the silence like a sinusitis sufferer, with his bandage swathed head, stuck inside a far away bucket.
‘…these rules become even more important. Without them, we risk becoming an island of strangers..’
Truly Cicero is reborn and walks amongst us.
After having his arse handed to him in May’s disastrous local elections, Keir Starmer has suddenly found his inner Farage.
Declaring in forthright terms that something, anything, must be done, and quickly, to stem the ever increasing tide of legal, and illegal immigration which he only now acknowledges, is threatening to engulf, what is left of our broken, ruined nation.
Er.. It’s a bit late now Keith. Warning that we risk becoming an island of strangers is a bit like suggesting to Madonna, that the time might have finally come, to cut back on the Botox.
Of course despite the soaring rhetoric, Labour’s proposals are predictably feeble, inadequate, and unworkable.
There will be some changes to visa requirements, plus new restrictions covering ‘indefinite leave to remain’.
These are the rules which govern how long a visitor has to spend here, before they automatically gain the right to remain in the country permanently. It’s a system which has, quite honestly, always left me baffled.
It’s like a rule dictating that if you only hang around Centre Parcs for long enough, they have to give you a chalet.
Then there is the new, English language requirement. Which also seems pointless. Since every government website, NHS leaflet, local government document, and benefits form, features so many different foreign languages you’d think this country was sponsored by Duolingo.
Plus, student visas will be……. blah blah blah. To be honest. By this point I’d lost interest.
Call me a cynic, (I know, I know) but it’s unlikely that our bosses will bother to clamp down on overstaying geography students, when they can’t even bring themselves to deport the thousands upon thousands of foreign burglars, gangsters, and rapists, currently clogging up our legal system, and prisons.
And of course none of this tinkering will do anything to reduce the £15bn a year (A figure which recently tripled overnight from £5bn, because no one in government can add up), that it’s currently costing us, to house, feed, and clothe the thousands of illegal immigrants arriving by dinghy every year month.
Ferried across the Channel by people smuggling gangs which remain, at time of writing, resolutely unsmashed.
And yet this hasn’t stopped the progressive classes, Guardian reading scolds, and the far left, Marxist wing of the Labour Party, (AKA The Labour Party), from reacting with spittle flecked fury at Starmer’s milquetoast pronouncements.
These morally superior champions of moderation, anti racism, and balance are part of the same class of people who leapt to their feet in delight to cheer and chant ‘from the river to the sea’, on October 7th 2023 while the blood of babies was still slippery on the ground.
These are the compassionate few, gleefully intoning that the only good Tory is a dead Tory. They are the Kindly Ones, who mount the stage to demand their caring, sharing audience ‘punch a terf’.
All now clutch their pearls in shock and indignation on hearing Starmer’s feeble utterances.
(And no, just to be clear. I’m not accusing any of the people below of doing the exact things above.)
Labour MP Olivia Blake, warned that Starmer’s provocative use of language could
“risk legitimising the same far-Right violence we saw in last year’s summer riots”.
Which does seems a bit of a leap. Especially since the report into the ‘summer’ riots (Bloody summer!!😡) concludes there was nothing ‘far-right’ about them.
Still, these people do tend to have an over active imagination. They not only still believe that socialism can work. (I concede that it does usually achieve equality. But only by making everyone equally dead.) But that popping on a frock, can turn a 6ft, 15st scaffolder, into Beyoncé.
Meanwhile erstwhile Labour MP Zarah Sultana (My least favourite flavour in a packet of Revels) claims Starmer sounds exactly like that bête noire of the Left (if they still said ‘bête noire’, but they probably don’t, just in a case it might be, you know, accidentally racist) Enoch Powell.
And fair enough, like Starmer, Enoch always sounded to me like he could do with double dosing on a couple of packets of Tunes.
Even one time Labour shadow chancellor, stone faced bruiser, John McDonnell, has claimed Starmer’s banal words were “shockingly divisive”.
And we would do well to listen to his wise counsel. After all, Mr McDonnell knows a thing or two about ‘shockingly divisive’ language.
Seeing as he once demanded a female MP be ‘lynched’. Described Winston Churchill as a ‘villain’. And said he’d like to see Mrs Thatcher ‘assassinated.’
It seems that one minute the enlightened classes are shrieking in indignation at the very suggestion that uncontrolled, mass immigration might possibly, perhaps, maybe, have its downsides.
In the next breath they will dismiss the very real, seemingly racially motivated rape and abuse of thousands of white working class girls as a mere ‘dog whistle’.
But what I genuinely don’t understand is why the progressives are kicking up such fuss in the first place. Dunderheaded dolts that they are, they seem to be the only people left in Britain who believe a single word Keir Starmer says.
They don’t seem to understand what’s perfectly obvious to the rest of us. Starmer is only pretending. He’s simply LARPing, pantomiming as a knuckle dragging gammon, adopting a pose for political expediency.
Of course these new measures won’t make a blind bit of difference. They are not supposed to. They are purely performative. Simply intended to signal to the masses, and especially fleeing Labour voters, that the government is responding to public opinion. ‘Doing something’.
They’re a pointless measure, and will have zero effect.
Like banning the sale of kitchen knives on Amazon. Making village flower shows adopt crippling anti-terrorist measures. Or buying David Lammy a history book.
Of course this volte face, from blu haired open borders activist, to ruddy faced anti immigration gammon, is not Stamrer’s first flip flop.
He has plenty of form in this area.
One moment Keir is busy hurling nanas into prison for spicy tweets, claiming that anyone who isn’t giddy at little girls getting stabbed is a ‘far right thug’.
The next he’s in the Oval Office droning on from the side lines like a dad at a birthday party, that Britain has had Free Speech for ‘a very, very long time’ (True) and that he’s ‘very proud’ of it. (Clearly not true)
One minute Sir Keir is doing his level best to assure us Brexit is done and dusted, safe in his hands. That he has no intention of rejoining the basket case EU. The very next he’s nipping over to Brussels for a quick ‘reset’, to betray democracy, 17.4 million voters, and personally hand over all our fish.
In one instance Starmer kneels stands next to the Union Jack looking glassy eyed but patriotic. The next, he’s giving away the Chagos islands. Literally borrowing money so he can pay hostile nations to make our country smaller, our navy weaker, and our people poorer.
Out of office he claims his government will adhere to the very highest public standards. Defined by integrity, probity, and honour. Yet once ensconced in power we find him luxuriating in Lord Alli’s penthouse, lying naked on a bed of designer clothes, giggling, as he makes it rain Taylor Swift tickets.
(Yes the ‘naked’ thing was maybe a bit much. But give a guy a break. I’m trying to paint a picture here.)
And after years of confused befuddlement, Starmer suddenly claims to finally know what percentage of women have penises. (Crib Notes for any, still baffled, Guardian readers: None%)
Now, less than a year into this creaking, leaking, useless administration, Starmer has become so weakened, desperate, and unloved, that he’s had to flip yet again.
As he seeks to shore up his crumbling voter base by parking his tanks on Nigel Frage’s lawn.
Well he would, but of course, we no longer have any tanks.
Because we gave all our tank money to Ed Miliband. And he spent it on windmills, magic beans, and unicorn juice.
Hours after his speech Starmer Tweeted
Settlement in the UK is a privilege that is earned, not a right”,
Though under his watch, and the last fourteen years of hapless Tory rule, the entire world could easily earn that privilege, by simply turning up uninvited, and demanding their rights.
Rights which Sir Keir Starmer has spent his entire legal career, fighting tooth and nail, to hand over.
Ultimately though Starmer’s ‘island of strangers’ refers to more than just immigration.
It is really about the Balkanisation of Britain.
How the progressive elites have spent the last thirty years parcelling up our nation into special interest, identity groups.
Dividing this island’s people, along sectarian lines. Classifying, codifying, and categorising us by, race, class, ideology, education, religion, sex, politics, and even sexuality.
And then insisting that the inevitable disputes, conflicts, and enmity, can only be ‘resolved’ with even more of their meddling. Legalisation, regulation, restrictions, and rules, censorship and snooping, creeping authoritarianism. And ultimately by them, the benign, enlightened classes, helping themselves to ever more of our wealth, wages, and money.
Let’s leave it there.
We might all be living on Starmer’s Island of Strangers.
And yet weirdly, the most out of touch, remote and disconnected strangers aren’t those new arrivals steadily filling up our town centres, villages, and streets.
Nor are they the care workers flooding into the country on endless visas for vacancies which never ever seem to be filled. Nor the thousands upon thousands of foreign students who have evidently arrived in Britain to complete their PHD in Deliveroo Studies.
They aren’t even the never ending stream of men, wading ashore at Dover, straight into four star hotels, decades of free legal aid, and lifetimes on benefits.
No. The very strangest strangers are the people running it all.
Starmer. Cooper. Reeves. Miliband. Phillips. Lammy. Rayner. Phillipson, and all the rest of the oddball numbskulls who make up this hopelessly incompetent, endlessly rapacious, Janus faced, government.
These out of touch weirdos, kooks, true believers, foot stompers, knowledge dodgers, pole climbers, and loons, are so very disconnected, cut off, and estranged from the rest of us that it’s not even like they’ve just arrived from a different country.
It’s like they’re from an another planet.
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Thank you for reading Low Status Opinions.
I’ve been hacked twice this week. With a scammer impersonating me and pretending to offer my readers some kind of fake investment deal. Thankfully no one fell for it. We all think we are immune to such things, but they obviously work sometimes, or they wouldn’t do it. But fortunately no harm done.
A heartfelt thanks to everyone who contacted me, and then blocked and reported the rogue.
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That’s it. See you in a couple of weeks, by which time, as predicted, we will be back in the EU.
Thanks again for your incredible support this week. It’s great to know you’re out there.
ATB
LSO
Has anyone noticed a depressing similarity between this EU reset, and the US-UK "trade agreement?"
Trump sticks tariffs on goods from the UK. We then do a trade agreement that waters down those tariffs. Trump has conceded nothing that he didn't impose a few weeks earlier. We will let in cheap US beef that will harm our farming industry.
In Starmer's EU reset, the EU have simply removed a few pathetic, unnecessary and petty punishments imposed on us because we left them. All this nonsense over rigorous checks on pets, e-gate restrictions, non-sharing of data on criminals etc was entirely unnecessary. Yet to get rid of this nonsense we will be paying probably £3 billion a year, taking rules from the EU with no input into them, and destroying the fishing industry. Not to mention potentially millions of Eastern European "students" coming over to the UK to earn minimum wage in hospitality and the care sector, or the horrendous carbon trading rules that will destroy our industry. All so we can export sausages to Europe that they won't buy, and bid for weapons contracts that will be given to someone else.
Low Status Opinions, you are one of the best writers I've seen on Substack, but please let us never speak of Keir Starmer naked again. Deal? It's what's best for Britain.