David Starkey
@DrDStarkeyCBE • 37,646 subscribers
Using Britain's history to fix where we've gone wrong. Subscribe to David Starkey Talks: https://t.co/WY4PNuazzr
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As I often do after a significant electoral contest in this country, I turned to my trusted correspondent and political analyst Mark Littlewood to digest what has happened. The Makerfield by-election represents a huge setback for the political Right in this country in a number of ways. We have grown used to seeing Reform on the march since the election of 2024. Labour's collapsing polling and credibility has appeared for the last two years to play straight into the hands of Nigel Farage. But a confluence of factors has stalled that progress. First things first, Andy Burnham was always by far the most likely winner of this by-election. Many analysts with an axe to grind against Reform presented the Makerfield constituency as theirs to lose because of the friendly demographics, totally ignoring that it is slap bang in the middle of Burnham's home ground, where his popularity is (deservedly or not) stratospheric. Reform didn't help themselves by talking up their chances at the beginning of campaigning, like Gawain Towler did on my channel. It was only towards the end of campaigning that they began to recognise what they were up against in Burnham. Secondly, Reform's methods have been tested by this contest and found wanting. They relied once again on the unpopularity of Sir Keir Starmer, not considering that Andy Burnham was running on exactly the same message and providing a much quicker means of dispatching the Prime Minister. And they failed to articulate clearly and confidently what it was they stood *for* and how it is applicable to this constituency. Thirdly, though Restore performed very poorly and demonstrated that their online predictions were completely illusory, even the small fraction of votes they did pick up in this most favourable of regions is enough to deny any party of the Right many seats during a full general election. Supporters of the political Right in Britain are in danger of falling into the same trap of all disenfranchised peoples; that is voting for parties who are big on performative antics and emotionally satisfying bold statements, while totally ignoring the tactical reality they're facing. Let me be clear, Andy Burnham will fail as Prime Minister once he inevitably takes over from Starmer. He has no better answers to the problems facing this country than his soon-to-be predecessor. But that will not stop him doing enormous damage and potentially rigging the electoral system in his favour to further disenfranchise the political Right, who really do have the answers. We're entering dangerous times, and must choose our path with great care.
David Starkey59,367 Aufrufe • vor 8 Tagen
In what is clearly a sop to left-wing Labour MPs, the Prime Minister has boasted about banning overseas activists from attending Tommy Robinson 🇬🇧's Unite The Kingdom March on Saturday, including Members of the European Parliament. I thought we were supposed to be getting closer to Europe? I've been speaking to Tommy about this, click this link for the full interview:
David Starkey263,610 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
An amusing anecdote about the fake working-class hero Andy Burnham
David Starkey132,027 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
As soon as I heard that my friend Rupert Lowe was turning his Restore movement into a political party, I knew we needed to discuss the move. Another political party on the Right of British politics is precisely the thing I have been arguing against since the election in 2024. The last thing we need is to splinter the small-C conservative vote and allow some monstrous Left-wing coalition, possibly including Zack Polanski's Green Party, to form a government. Nonetheless, in the tradition of British parliamentary politics, it's important to discuss these things openly and respectfully, which of course Rupert and I did. I found it interesting when he told me that the impetus for turning Restore into a political party came from his rape gangs inquiry, and the insight he says it has given him into just how corrupt the British state really is. However I had to challenge him on his dismissiveness about Nigel Farage's political talent. I have often criticised Nigel, but that Brexit would not have happened without him is, to me, inarguable. And he is repeating the feat by bringing Reform to the position it is currently in of consistently leading the polls. My final question was the most obvious one. What if you peel enough voters away from both Reform and the Conservatives that the Left manages to scrape a majority again in 2029? You can see Rupert's response in the full episode.
David Starkey288,178 Aufrufe • vor 4 Monaten
If Reform UK turns to the Left, as they're showing some signs of doing, this country is finished.
Dr. David Starkey CBE704,222 Aufrufe • vor 11 Monaten
Recently at a talk I was giving a gentleman tried to make the point that the reason Sir Keir is perceived to be a bad Prime Minister is because of social media. I politely responded that the reason Starmer is getting a "bollocking" (a word not introduced into the conversation by me) is because he is absolutely and objectively terrible. What's more he's presiding over a system of government that the Labour Party created, that serves absolutely nobody other than people like him and his civil service and lawyer friends. Now that people have realised it doesn't work, and now that many of them have decided they'll vote Reform, he's throwing around smears like confetti; claiming if you're not in love with the mass immigration heaped on this country in the last few years you're nothing but a racist. Sorry Starmer, the public isn't buying it. Click here for the full exchange:
David Starkey478,111 Aufrufe • vor 9 Monaten
As a schoolboy I once played Malvolio in Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night’; the pompous, authoritarian steward of Olivia’s household. I completely misunderstood the role and didn’t realise I was having the piss taken out of me for the entire play, which made for an excellent performance. I cannot think of a better parallel for Sir Keir Starmer’s time in office. Vain and oblivious, he stumbles and stutters his way through his premiership. Or perhaps you can think of a more suitable Shakespearean character?
David Starkey88,050 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
Why oh why doesn’t our establishment accept that its only moral obligation is to the British state and the British people? Not to global welfare. Not to international liberalism. To us, and our country, and our self-government. That is it. The moment they do that, so many of the issues which plague our society become easier to manage. Immigration is no longer a question of benefitting the largest number of global citizens but about boosting the British economy while keeping British people safe. Foreign relations is not about promoting obscure minority rights in far off lands but about securing British interests wherever necessary. And most of all we drop the idea that every culture in the world is the same and therefore anybody can fit in here, and celebrate the fact that Britain has a highly distinct, highly evolved culture all of its own that we want to cherish and protect. What’s so difficult about that?
David Starkey117,411 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
Bridget Phillipson's admission that the government should prioritise the rights of asylum seekers over local British people in Epping - which was also the central thrust of the case made by the Home Office's lawyers - only brings into sharper focus the need to remove from power the "lanyard class" who live among the British people but prioritise everybody else over them. I've been discussing how we go about this with Douglas Carswell🇬🇧🇺🇸 on this week's episode of David Starkey Talks.
Dr. David Starkey CBE344,697 Aufrufe • vor 10 Monaten
It’s now clear that Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership is at least as dishonest as that of Boris Johnson, but worse for being cloaked in an insufferable sanctimony. There’s a remarkable play to be written about a man who rises to the highest political office by denouncing the most trivial lies of his rival about who ate what cake at a party of six people or however many it was, only to succumb to a far graver mendacity about his own political decision-making involving the highest diplomatic role in the land and associations with a convicted sex-offender. It would be Shakespearean if the characters involved weren’t so insubstantial.
David Starkey71,664 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
I grew up in a council house in Cumbria. Their purpose was to stabilise the lives of a working class which up until then had been dependent on the whims of private landlords. But in the 1970s a change was made to the law which made it a statutory obligation to house not the traditional working family, but those deemed to be in most immediate need of housing. It is this law which explains why an immigrant who comes here illegally and may end up homeless is often put to the front of the queue for housing, even before local people. As with everything, there are specific legal reasons for the dilemma we’re in. We don’t need to change our culture, we simply need to change the law.
David Starkey49,802 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
Brexit was just the beginning of the process of taking back control of this country. In a sense the sequel of Brexit is an “internal Brexit” - wresting control from the deep state: the quangos, the judges, the permanent bureaucracy, and making it once again subject to public accountability. But if we’ve learned anything from the Brexit Wars, it’s how fiercely the establishment will resist this change. As Danny Kruger reminds us, just look at how even Parliamentarians in the 2015-2019 Parliament used unconstitutional methods to oppose reclaiming the sovereignty that is rightfully theirs. If it was that bad then, how bad will it be next time around?
David Starkey56,360 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
When speaking to members of the governing class, I’m often struck by the sheer array of topics that are raised as being of pre-eminent importance. The list is almost endless: climate change, democracy in Togo, trans rights in Bolivia… The last thing that ever comes up is the British national interest. I’m not entirely convinced many of them know such a thing even exists. And I’m not talking about the diffuse nonsense that claims Britain ultimately benefits when it spreads human rights around the world. No. There are, at any moment in time, clear, specific objectives that will need to be taken to secure the safety and prosperity of the British people. It is the job of our governing class to discern them and work to achieve them. What else do they think they’re there for?
David Starkey76,319 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
Leaving the ECHR, repealing the Human Rights Act, abolishing the Supreme Court; these are just the preliminary steps a Reform government will need to take to reign in judicial overreach. The real clanger will be what to do about judicial review; something that isn’t just a Blairite innovation, but has been growing in potency since the 1960s. I asked Danny Kruger what Reform is planning to do about it. What do you make of his response?
David Starkey50,664 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
The unstoppable Toby Young perfectly explains the impulse that is driving Labour to clamp down on free speech and the platforms, like this one, which facilitate it. A poisonous mixture of believing themselves always right, they're opponents always malign, and discomfort at robust intellectual exchange (I call this stupidity). A masterful summary:
David Starkey127,659 Aufrufe • vor 5 Monaten
The Church of England has unwittingly presented us with the perfect metaphor for the desecration of this country by the Blairite establishment. As I discussed with Charlie Rowley, Britain right now is a noble monument plastered with Blairite cr*p that has to be stripped off.
David Starkey159,504 Aufrufe • vor 8 Monaten
The "Boriswave" of immigration since 2021 was the culmination of a quarter-century-long revolution in British governance and life initiated by Tony Blair in 1997. Reform's acknowledgement today that it should be overturned is part of a long English tradition of reversing bad revolutions, from Magna Carta in the 13th century to the Restoration in the 17th. This is The Starkey Thesis: England's constitution is its history, and that history is CONSERVATIVE. It is both the accommodation of change AND the reining in of progressive fads. Blairism was the ultimate progressive fad; the alignment of this country and its common law system with the unworkable principles of human rights law and international law enforced by domineering judicial activists. It is time to restore the constitution we had, to reverse this bad revolution.
David Starkey166,433 Aufrufe • vor 9 Monaten
It has become perfectly clear that the so-called "rules-based international order", with its treaty obligations to facilitate illegal migration, has been weaponised against Western countries. It's no different to how China abused its membership of the World Trade Organisation and cheated in every way when it comes to trade. President Trump and JD Vance realise this and have chosen to do what any patriotic government must do, forget the rules. Again, we await such courage on this side of the Atlantic.
Dr. David Starkey CBE175,333 Aufrufe • vor 10 Monaten