Not averse to rearranging the proverbial chairs on the deck of the Titanic, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, Keir Starmer, has reshuffled the members of his government. This comes after his deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, was forced to resign after taking a page out of libertarian philosophy and sapping the state of its fuel by avoiding taxation on a property. Analysis of the new appointments show how much disdain our current ruling politicians hold for any idea of the consent of the governed.
Peter Kyle, previously the Digital and Technology secretary, has now been given a promotion to the position of Business Secretary. A politician wanting to etch their name into history is a truly dangerous individual, and Kyle could not have done more to thrust his name into the front pages than accuse the surging Reform Party leader, Nigel Farage, of being a pedophile sympathizer for his criticism of the Online Safety Act. Kyle stated that if Farage were around during the time of Jimmy Saville, Britain’s most notorious pedophile, he would have supported measures to protect him.
The media was lit ablaze with all the state’s talking heads rushing to the airwaves to back their colleague’s statement, and Kyle even doubled down, stating those who wish to repeal the Online Safety Act were on the side of child predators. This was a full-throated effort by government stooges to silence opposition, making it too costly for your reputation and your life. It was a particularly evil example of the state quashing rebellion against the violation of our natural rights.
Given that Kyle so vehemently attacked those who criticized the Online Safety Act, it was a surprise to see him back the prime minister’s appointment of Peter Mandelson as U.S. ambassador. Mandelson, for those uninitiated, is most famous for being a stooge under the Tony Blair government and a strong advocate for the Iraq War whilst, predictably, saying there were “mistakes” during its execution. He is heavily linked to Jeffrey Epstein, who fondly referred to Mandelson as “Petie.” Mandelson even kept in contact with Epstein after his conviction for sexual atrocities, telling the financier that he should “Fight for early release.” Mandelson was sacked as U.S. ambassador after the government could not ignore the furor caused by his links to Epstein.
Kyle, an avowed hater of child sex offenders, appeared on multiple platforms defending the prime minister’s appointment of Mandelson because it was “worth the risk.” Maintaining good relations with Washington is worth the risk of handing a pedophile sympathiser a powerful position in geopolitics. Politics consistently rewards immoral behavior. Kyle decided against good faith interpretations of criticism of a piece of legislation that violates our natural rights, accusing critics of pedophile sympathy whilst sympathising for the friend of an actual pedophile less than a month later; Kyle has a moral compass that only points towards power.
The member of parliament for Peckham, Miatta Fahnbulleh, was promoted to the position of Housing Minister. Fahnbulleh spent some time as chief executive of the New Economics Foundation, a think tank that is dedicated to building an economics “that works for the people and planet.” It came as no surprise to learn that Fahnbulleh is a strong critic of the private rental sector given the mission of the New Economics Foundation exudes an air of leftist economic thought. In a paper written under her time as chief executive, the foundation argued, “Policy should be geared towards upgrading existing private rented homes to ensure they are energy efficient, & acquiring & repurposing them as homes for social rent.” They further argue that “Social housing held and controlled by the public sector is best placed to meet social policy needs.” In a separate publication, they argue that “rents for every home in the private rented sector in London be reduced to a desired rent level and then controlled by a ‘Private Rent Index,’ which would cap annual rent increases.”
It is not just London where they desire to restrain the private rental sector. Miatta argues that mayors too should have the authority to restrict rent rises. It took all of Keir Starmer’s might—and a great deal of political chicanery—to dispel the open, radical socialism that had overtaken the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. But with Starmer’s supposed centrism causing plunges in the polls, the prime minister appears to be shifting openly leftward where it is politically advantageous. Fahnbulleh is part of this leftward shift. Fahnbulleh has seen the private rental sector become a market which increasingly prices the poorest out of accommodation, and adjoined this fact with her ideology that believes the market, with the profit motive, fundamentally distorts housing in favor of richer individuals and groups. To Fahnbulleh, the state must be step in to resolve this distortion because it is an in-built feature of markets and capitalism. Socialists see the profit motive and believe that since the vast majority of wealth is held by a small percentage of people that the market is inherently geared towards caring only for the rich.
This ideological disposition always put the cart before the horse. There may be an acceptance that a free market housing sector did once create an abundance of cheap and affordable housing, but, the thinking goes, the endless pursuit of profit inevitably crowds out affordable housing and leaves only the luxury housing market. Since this is an inevitability—a running theme in Marxist thinking is how certain outcomes are the natural order of things—believers completely ignore the intervention of the state in creating these outcomes since they consider the state and the market as neccessarily symbiotic beings. In this case, it has led to a housing minister who only believes in the power of the state to deliver housing.
The state is the sole dispenser of many public services. The justice system appears to be wilting under the pressure of retaining law and order, with petty crime becoming commonplace. People should not be scared to go to a local shop with the fear that a potentially violent individual may attempt to steal butter and leave them full of holes for merely being in the way. Britain, the birthplace of the railway, witnesses the state-run Network rail preside over the decomposition of its marvel of innovation. Performance standards cannot be met so instead of attempting to reach the targets, the standards are lowered whilst thousands of people miss important events and see no improvement in services. When the state takes sole responsibility for the delivery of goods and services, politics infects the operation and provision of the resources involved. Resources are diverted to where it is politically appropriate without any method for judging its success. This expands as politicians attempt to bribe more people to vote until the market has been so twisted that socialists can claim the market itself is at fault and can outright abolish it.
This cabinet reshuffle gives hope to all those who are a few cards short of a full hand that they can truly get far in their careers. Promotion within the state apparatus comes not from voluntarily providing a quality good or service but from stealing the resources of others and then proposing that one’s image should be that of the saintly Mother Theresa. Politicians are more akin to gang members who violently steal resources from the innocent to protect and benefit “their people” than the business owner who foresees value in a product that serves others’ needs.
Peter Kyle is an out and out case of a politician whose ambition snuffs out any essence of morality. He claims to protect the most innocent in society—children—from online sex offenders and accuses others of being pedophile sympathizers in the process, whilst turning on a sixpence to do what he must to defend the best mate of a pedophile because it is worth the risk. Miatta Fahnbulleh will be quietly leading a crusade against the private production of housing, stating that the poor should have a choice of affordable housing despite willingly strangling the ability of private business owners to construct it. Fahnbulleh will further break the legs of the housing market and swoop in as a great liberator of the people; for politicians love nothing more than creating the circumstances for them to inflate their own sense of importance at the cost of millions.
