Keir Starmer used to be a Trotskyite.

As a twenty-four-year-old activist, he was a member of the editorial collective of Socialist Alternatives magazine in 1986-1987. Socialist Alternatives was produced by an organisation of the same name that represented the British section of the International Revolutionary Marxist Tendency (IRMT).

We know this because in March 2020, as Starmer was campaigning for the Labour leadership, the New Statesman, a socialist publication long linked with the Fabian Society, described Starmer to Labour supporters as a ‘sensible radical’ they should support and air-brushed his radical past with Socialist Alternatives by suggesting that all those who opposed Thatcherism in the 1980s were driven to embrace such radical positions.

In May 2020, following Starmer’s victory in the leadership contest, the Social Review, a magazine concerned with discussing the future of socialism, picked up on this story and expanded upon Starmer’s time with Socialist Alternatives. It noted how the democratic socialist magazine Chartist described Socialist Alternatives as ‘the human face of the hard left’. It had its origins in Pabloite Trotskyism and promoted a redefinition of the socialist project in response to the triumph of Thatcherism and changes of that era as it sought to develop a British counterpart to the Alternative Movement then emerging across the continental European left.

In June 2024, as Starmer was battling Rishi Sunak for the keys to Number 10, the Conservative Daily Telegraph published an expose on ‘Starmer’s history of Left-wing views revealed’. It highlighted how Starmer had claimed that immigration policy was racist and questioned the role of the police. Writing from the picket line of the anti-Murdoch printers’ dispute, Starmer asked ‘the question of the role the police should play, if any, in civil society. Who are they protecting and from what’? However, the Daily Telegraph failed to dive deeper and examine the implications of Starmer’s time as a Pabloite Trotskyist.

Stalin advocated a policy of socialism in one country, strengthening socialism in the USSR rather than a global revolution. Leon Trotsky thought that Stalin was a sell-out and championed a policy of permanent global revolution. Anyone who can make Stalin seem moderate is very dangerous indeed. Following his expulsion from the USSR and the Communist International, Trotsky established the Fourth International in France in 1938. Michel Pablo (the pseudonym of Mikhalis Raptis a Trotskyite leader of Greek origins) eventually rose to become the secretary of the Fourth International. Pablo was eventually expelled for advocating deep entryism and founded the IRMT. In short, he was so madly radical that even the Trotskyists kicked him out.

Deep entryism works by ‘boring from within’. Radical workers known as ‘borers’ would join established (and often small c conservative) trade unions and attempt to join their leadership to shift their stances in a Trotskyite direction. They are a parasite that plots to take over its host.

The most well-known recent example from the UK is Militant Tendency. They began working in the Labour Party in the 1950s, and gained control of the Labour Party Young Socialists and Liverpool City Council, before being expelled in the 1980s.

Is Starmer a Pabloite Trotskyist boring his way inside the Labour Party? We can’t say for sure at this point. But, next time you see Two Tier Kier pursuing an insane policy that lacks common sense, ask yourself this: is this the action of someone incompetent or someone intent on fomenting permanent revolution?

Thankfully, there is no reason for despair. You can vote for Reform and help them to champion the causes of limited government, low taxes and incentivising economic growth against mad Leftist throwbacks that will increase taxes, increase the powers of the nanny state at the expense of our freedoms and send the economy into a doom loop exactly as their Marxist brethren did in the USSR.