Peace Through Strength?
Something fundamental has shifted within the Labour Party. For many on the left, particularly those whose politics are rooted in anti-austerity, internationalism, and cultural progressivism, the party under Keir Starmer no longer resembles the movement they once supported. The institutions, ideas, and individuals that defined Labour’s radical edge have been quietly removed or publicly disavowed. In their place stands a party determined to present itself as a safe pair of hands to the financial markets, the right-wing press, and the security state.
Starmer’s leadership has been marked by a deliberate and sustained effort to reposition Labour as a party of managerial competence rather than social transformation. This has involved not only the removal of high-profile left-wing figures and the softening of previous commitments to public ownership and wealth redistribution, but a broader ideological shift: a calculated drift towards the language, policies, and priorities of the political right.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the government’s recent strategic defence review, a policy announcement that would not have looked out of place under a Conservative administration. But this is only one example among many. From immigration to welfare, from national identity to foreign policy, Labour has embraced a vision of Britain that feels increasingly indistinguishable from the one it once claimed to oppose.
This article is not an expression of surprise. For those of us who have tracked the direction of Starmer’s leadership since 2020, this outcome feels less like a betrayal and more like the conclusion of a process already long underway. But it is no less serious for that. A Labour government that continues the work of the Conservatives, under a new name and with softer rhetoric, represents not just political continuity, but the further narrowing of what is possible in British public life. For the cultural left, and for millions who once looked to Labour for representation, the question is no longer whether the party can be reclaimed. The question is where we go from here.
The Defence Review: A Rightward Signal
Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s recent announcement of a substantial increase in defence spending marks a clear ideological shift within the Labour Party. Speaking at BAE Systems’ shipyard in Glasgow, Starmer pledged to raise defence expenditure to 2.5% of GDP by 2027–28, with an aspiration to reach 3% in the next parliamentary term. He warned that the UK must be prepared for a “new age of insecurity,” citing growing threats from Russia and China and underlining the need to place the country on a permanent “war-fighting” footing (Walker, 2025).
As part of this new strategy, the government announced a £1.5 billion investment in at least six new munitions and energetics factories, which it claims will support over 1,800 skilled jobs in the UK defence sector (HM Government, 2025). Ministers have framed the move as a dual-purpose strategy: one that simultaneously enhances national security and boosts domestic manufacturing: a form of “military Keynesianism” designed to appeal to right-leaning constituencies as well as the defence industry (Elgot & Syal, 2025).
However, serious questions remain about how this spending will be funded. The government has confirmed that part of the cost will be met by reducing the UK’s international development budget from 0.5% to 0.3% of gross national income by 2027 (BBC News, 2025). Development charities and aid organisations have sharply criticised the move, arguing it reflects a shift away from global responsibility and humanitarian leadership.
More broadly, the decision to prioritise military spending over other areas of public investment raises concerns about the direction of the government’s economic strategy. While Labour presents this as a jobs-first, security-focused growth policy, critics point out that investment in healthcare, housing, education, or green infrastructure would deliver longer-term social and economic returns, while staying truer to Labour’s traditional values (Elgot & Syal, 2025).
This defence review is a political signal. Labour’s priorities are increasingly aligned with the ideological right: securitisation over social protection, international assertiveness over international aid, and fiscal conservatism over redistributive investment. In that context, the left’s concern is not simply with how the money is being spent, but with what, and whom, the Labour Party now exists to serve.
Austerity in Disguise: Public Services and Spending Priorities
Starmer’s defence review does not exist in isolation, as it sits within a broader economic and political framework that continues to prioritise fiscal caution over social investment. Despite assurances that public services will not face cuts to fund the military expansion, no clear, ring-fenced protection has been offered for key areas such as welfare, local government, or public health. As such, Labour’s claim that the increase in defence spending will be paid for through economic growth alone remains speculative.
When challenged on this point, Starmer refused to rule out future trade-offs. He declined to provide a detailed breakdown of where additional defence funds would come from, stating instead that economic expansion would create the fiscal headroom required (Walker, 2025). However, the decision to fund part of the increase by reducing the UK’s international aid commitment (from 0.5% to 0.3% of gross national income) by 2027 is a clear sign that social spending is already being sacrificed to support this agenda (BBC News, 2025).
Starmer described the new strategy as delivering “peace through strength” (HM Government, 2025) a phrase with a long political history, including its use by Ronald Reagan during the Cold War. In the current context, it reads as distinctly Orwellian: a comforting slogan that masks a deeper reality. It positions military power as the guarantor of national stability while sidelining the social foundations of peace, such as housing, education, and healthcare. As with so much of the government’s rhetoric, the phrase recasts strength and security in narrowly militaristic terms, quietly accepting that public provision must wait its turn.
The logic is depressingly familiar: a narrative of national security threat is used to justify redirection of funds away from services that disproportionately benefit those on lower incomes. This is not new. It echoes a broader pattern in post-2008 British politics, where perceived emergencies, whether financial, geopolitical, or migratory, are repeatedly invoked to rationalise restrictions on public spending. In that context, Labour’s plan reads as an evolution of the austerity model: rebranded, underpinned by militarised priorities.
What makes this shift especially concerning is that it has arrived with minimal resistance within the party. There is little serious internal debate about whether investing heavily in weapons and warfare is a justifiable economic strategy in a country where millions remain in fuel poverty, NHS waiting lists are at record highs, and local councils are collapsing under financial strain. Instead, Labour appears committed to making itself indistinguishable from the Conservatives on fiscal discipline and security, while banking on the assumption that voters will accept slower progress elsewhere as the cost of the appearance of being ‘safe’ and ‘strong.’
This is about political values. What is prioritised under pressure reveals what a government believes truly matters. In this case, Labour’s early decisions have demonstrated a willingness to meet the demands of military and security lobbies before addressing long-standing social and economic injustices at home.
Appeasement Politics: Immigration, Borders, and Language
Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has not only shifted rightward on matters of defence and fiscal policy. It has also adopted the language and framing of the political right when it comes to immigration and borders. In May 2025, Starmer told reporters that unless immigration levels were significantly reduced, Britain risked becoming “an island of strangers” (Sabbagh, 2025). The phrase was striking because of its resonance with years of anti-migrant rhetoric from figures like Nigel Farage and Suella Braverman. That it was delivered by a Labour prime minister only underlines how dramatically the party’s moral compass has turned.
Starmer defended the remark by arguing that social cohesion was under threat and that high levels of net migration were unsustainable. While these concerns are not new, what is significant is Labour’s choice to echo the terms of the populist right rather than challenge them. There was no accompanying call for stronger labour rights, no mention of exploitative visa schemes, or of the economic role that migrants play in propping up underfunded public services. Instead, the message was clear: high migration is a problem, and Labour will be the party to fix it.
This represents a major break from the party’s previous positions. Under Jeremy Corbyn, Labour committed to defending the rights of migrants, supporting freedom of movement, and rejecting the scapegoating of foreign-born workers for problems rooted in domestic policy failure. Today, that stance is all but gone. There is no serious pushback against the idea that migration is a threat to British life; there is only a competition over who can appear tougher and more in control.
It is part of a broader pattern. Labour has shown little interest in defending international human rights frameworks, challenging the outsourcing of asylum processing, or even responding meaningfully to the increasingly aggressive tone of UK border enforcement. These are not small matters. They speak to how a government understands belonging, citizenship, and moral obligation. And on all these fronts, Labour has chosen to fall in line with the right-wing consensus rather than offering a principled alternative.
For the cultural left, it signals that the values of internationalism, solidarity, and justice - which once stood at the heart of Labour politics - are no longer welcome. The result is ideological erasure.
The Silencing of the Cultural Left
One of the most striking features of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is not just what it says, but what it refuses to say, and whom it refuses to represent. The cultural left, once a vocal and valued part of the Labour movement, has been gradually but decisively sidelined. This is not the result of a sustained process of marginalisation, deliberate, and effective.
The signs have been consistent. Prominent left-wing MPs have been blocked from standing for re-election, suspended, had the whip removed, or publicly reprimanded for expressing views that diverge from the party line. There has been no serious effort to retain or engage with the grassroots organisations that flourished under the Corbyn leadership. The party’s internal democracy has been cut away, replaced by top-down messaging, heavily managed candidate selections, and a central leadership unwilling to tolerate dissent.
This marginalisation is not only political, but cultural. Labour has abandoned its earlier commitments to freedom of movement, international solidarity, and anti-racist organising. Support for the Palestinian cause, once proudly defended by many Labour MPs, has been reduced to vague, cautious language. Activists, artists, and campaigners who once saw Labour as a political home now find themselves alienated from a party that seems more comfortable courting the security state than defending civil liberties or human rights.
Cultural institutions, too, have felt the chill. There is no bold agenda for public broadcasting, the arts, or education. Labour has made no significant commitments to reversing cuts to cultural funding or to defending the autonomy of institutions under pressure from right-wing campaigns. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the party sees these sectors, and the often-progressive voices within them, as politically inconvenient.
In its public language, Labour speaks of unity. But that unity is narrowly defined. It does not include those who challenge the security consensus, question the moral framing of immigration controls, or call for structural changes to the economy. For all its promises of ‘stability,’ this Labour government has made clear that it is stability on its own terms. The left can either fall in line, or fall away.
For those who grew up or came of age politically under a Labour tradition of protest, internationalism, and working-class solidarity, this shift feels existential. The cultural left is no longer simply out of favour. It is being written out of the Labour project altogether.
Continuity Conservatism: Labour’s Rightward Trajectory
Across defence, immigration, spending priorities, and internal party culture, a pattern is now firmly established: Labour is not offering a radical alternative to the political consensus of the last fifteen years, but they’re working hard to inherit it. Under Starmer, the party has embraced a strategy of continuity conservatism, keeping the broad outlines of post-2010 governance while making minor adjustments to style, tone, and personnel.
This is clearest in Starmer’s repeated appeals to stability. Labour, we are told, is the party that will ‘restore order’ and ‘make government work.’ These slogans are designed to contrast with the chaos of the post-Brexit Conservative years, and they resonate with a public fatigued by crisis. But beneath the surface, they carry a second message: that Labour will not disrupt the status quo in any meaningful way.
Economic policy is a case in point. Labour has refused to commit to significant taxation of wealth, has back-pedalled on pledges for public ownership, and remains wedded to strict fiscal rules first devised to appease markets and media rather than meet the country’s social needs. On housing, energy, and transport, the language of transformation has been replaced by cautious pledges to ‘reform’ and ‘partner’ with the private sector.
The same dynamic is visible in Starmer’s approach to national identity. His government is determined to demonstrate that Labour can be just as patriotic, tough on borders, and supportive of military alliances as any Conservative predecessor. In doing so, Labour has largely vacated the ideological space once occupied by the centre-left; ceding ground to the right not only on policy but on the symbolic terrain of Britishness itself.
This strategy is calculated and deliberate. Starmer and his advisers believe that the route to a long period of Labour government lies in occupying the political centre-right, neutralising traditional Tory lines of attack, and presenting themselves as more competent managers of the same basic order. But that comes at a cost: the dilution out of Labour’s distinctiveness, the alienation of its traditional base, and the abandonment of the idea that politics can offer something better than managed decline.
Labour is clearly not turning the page on the Conservative era. Instead, it is binding the book back together and writing itself into the next chapter. It might possibly succeed in winning elections. But it risks doing so by lowering expectations, not raising them.
Conclusion: The Political Cost
Labour may have changed its tone, its leadership, and its internal culture, but what it has not done is offer a compelling new direction for the country. For much of Starmer’s leadership, the dominant criticism - even from within his own ranks - has been that he lacks vision. That he is managerial rather than transformative. That he can point out the problems, but not articulate a future.
It now appears that this gap is being filled, not by a progressive programme of social renewal, but by a defence and security agenda designed to project strength, stability, and purpose. In the absence of a bold economic or social project, Starmer has adopted the trappings of national resolve. His defence platform gives him a stage on which to look decisive, and an opportunity to appear in control. It is Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands, certainly, but it is also Tony Blair in Kosovo and Iraq, and Bill Clinton in the Balkans. Centrist leaders have long turned to military assertiveness when lacking a compelling domestic programme or when seeking to assert authority on the world stage. Starmer’s new defence platform offers a similar kind of visibility: helicopters, press briefings, and warship tours in place of radical economic policy. In the absence of a unifying social vision, strength becomes the brand.
This is not just imagery. It reflects a strategic calculation: if Labour cannot outflank Reform UK or the Tories on economic populism, it can try to do so on security, order, and projection of power. It is a pitch that neutralises much of the far right’s attack line, because, broadly speaking, they agree with it. Reform UK may shout louder about migration or sovereignty, but Starmer’s government is now delivering the same core message: Britain must be strong, tough, and ready for confrontation.
The political cost of this shift is profound. Millions who looked to Labour for change - for decency, fairness, and progress - are left unrepresented. The cultural left, the internationalist left, and the democratic socialist left have been written out of the script. The social crises facing the UK: soaring rents, collapsing councils, underfunded hospitals, have been sidelined, while military investment is fast-tracked and public consent is quietly manufactured through the language of duty and defence.
This is not a project of national renewal. It is a strategy for power built on risk aversion and ideological retreat. For all the talk of hope in 2024, we are now watching the consolidation of a government that sees change as a threat and control as the end in itself.
The suits are different. The faces are new. But the priorities remain the same.
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References:
BBC News (2025) ‘UK aid spending to be cut to fund Starmer defence plan.’ 2 June. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyrkkv4gd7o [Accessed 2 Jun. 2025].
Elgot, J. and Syal, R. (2025) ‘Labour pushes military Keynesianism to win support for defence spending.’ The Guardian, 1 June. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jun/01/labour-pushes-military-keynesianism-to-win-support-for-defence-spending [Accessed 2 Jun. 2025].
HM Government (2025) ‘PM’s remarks on the Strategic Defence Review: 2 June 2025.’ Gov.uk, 2 June. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pms-remarks-on-the-strategic-defence-review-2-june-2025 [Accessed 2 June 2025.]
HM Government (2025) ‘New munitions factories and long-range weapons to back nearly 2000 jobs under strategic defence review.’ Gov.uk. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-munitions-factories-and-long-range-weapons-to-back-nearly-2000-jobs-under-strategic-defence-review [Accessed 2 Jun. 2025].
Sabbagh, D. (2025) Keir Starmer defends plans to curb net migration: ‘We risk becoming an island of strangers’. The Guardian, 12 May. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/may/12/keir-starmer-defends-plans-to-curb-net-migration [Accessed 2 Jun. 2025].
Walker, P. (2025) ‘Keir Starmer refuses to commit to 3% defence spending target.’ The Guardian, 2 June. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jun/02/keir-starmer-refuses-date-uk-spend-3-gdp-defence [Accessed 2 Jun. 2025].