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Just How Dystopian Could Starmer’s Britain Become? (Part 2)

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Scaling back trial by jury, further attacks on lawful speech, the nationwide deployment of deeply flawed facial recognition systems… The list just keeps growing longer. 

We first asked this question — Just How Dystopian Could Starmer’s Britain Become? — just over a year ago. At that point in time, with the  government just four months in office, all we could offer as an answer was: how long is a piece of string? Now, 13 months later, it is abundantly clear that said string is very long indeed, and it is getting longer by the day.

On his election, in July 2024, Starmer promised that his Labour government would “tread (stomp?) more lightly” on the lives of voters. It is one of a growing multitude of pledges Starmer has broken during his 17 months in office. In this particular case, it took just two months for Starmer to change course, telling delegates at the 2024 Labour Party Conference that the State would, in fact, take greater control over people’s lives.

In the months that followed, plans were unveiled to, among other things, launch “non-mandatory” digital identity (more on that later); expand the use of live facial recognition technology (ditto); resurrect an old Tory policy to grant inspectors at the Department of Work and Pensions increased powers to snoop on claimants’ bank accounts; and intensify the British State’s crackdown on lawful speech.

That, it turns out, was just for starters. For the main course, the Starmer government is now setting its sights on trial by jury, a legal protection that has existed in England for almost a thousand years and forms one of the bedrocks of democratic legal systems.

Curtailing a Centuries-Old Right

In an ostensible bid to reduce court backlogs, Deputy Prime Minister and Lord Chancellor David Lammy has announced plans to limit people’s right to trial by jury in England and Wales. If the plans are enacted, a new tier of “swift” courts will be created to replace jury trials for most offences that carry a likely jail sentence of less than three years as well as complex fraud and financial cases.

Speed and expediency are the goal. Under the proposed changes, only the most serious offences — murder, manslaughter and rape — would continue to be heard by a jury of one’s peers. Despite the fact that English Common Law draws upon the ancient right of trial by jury rooted in Magna Carta, Lammy asserted that “we must never forget that [Magna Carta] implores us not to deny or delay justice.”

Bearing the Orwellian title “Swift and Fair Plan to Get Justice for Victims”, Lammy’s proposal, which is presumably not his own, is extremely controversial. As writes Daniel Alge, senior lecturer in Criminology & Criminal Justice at Brunel University of London, the right to be tried by one’s peers has deep roots in the legal tradition of England and Wales:

Its origins trace back to Magna Carta in 1215, which promised that no one would lose their liberty or property without “the lawful judgement of his peers and the law of the land”.

The judge and legal philosopher Lord Devlin described trial by jury as “the lamp that shows that freedom lives”. It is a symbolic cornerstone of justice in England and Wales.These proposals go far beyond the recommendations put forward in Brian Leveson’s independent review of the criminal courts, published in July 2025. Leveson proposed trial by judge alone where the defendant requested it, or in particularly lengthy and complex trials. But Lammy’s proposals appear to be a watering down of leaked MoJ plans to restrict the use of jury trials to only “public interest” cases with sentences of over five years.

In practical terms, jury trials already form only a small part of the system, accounting for around 2% of all criminal cases. Ministry of Justice data shows that most criminal cases are resolved in the magistrates’ courts, in which three magistrates (who are volunteer lay people rather than professional judges), determine guilt as well as sentence.

In other words, this will probably have a limited impact on the court backlogs. There can be no doubting that the criminal courts are under extraordinary pressure, with a record backlog of over 78,000 crown court cases. However, NC readers will be unsurprised to learn that the main cause of that backlog, according to Alge, is “years of budget reductions, court closures, maintenance backlogs and limits on the number of days courts were permitted to sit.”

One of the most disturbing aspects of Lamy’s proposed changes is their potential political implications. For centuries juries have served as a democratic check on government power. In fact, that is exactly why the barons approached King John in 1215 to sign the Magna Carta, requesting the right to trial by jury — as a check on the unruly king’s power.

The renowned English jurist, justice, and Tory politician William Blackstone (1723-1780) wrote the following about trial by jury:

“Trial by jury ever has been, and I trust ever will be, looked upon as the glory of the English law… So that the liberties of England cannot but subsist so long as this palladium remains sacred and inviolate; not only from all open attacks (which none will be so hardy as to make), but also from secret machinations, which may sap and undermine it; by introducing new and arbitrary methods of trial.

In the House of Commons on Tuesday, Labour MP Diane Abbot left Starmer with egg on his face by reminding him of what he himself had said about trial by jury in 1992: “the right to trial by jury is an important factor in the delicate balance between the power of the State and the power of the individual.”

As Steve James writes for WSWS, one of the real targets of the proposed legislation is something called “jury equity” or “jury nullification”, which can be particularly important in trials of a political nature:

This refers to the right of a jury to determine whether a crime has been committed at all, regardless of the opinion of the trial judge.

Jury equity was famously exercised in 1985 by the jury in the case against civil servant Clive Ponting, who leaked details of the then Tory government’s misinformation over the circumstances surrounding the 1982 sinking of the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano by the Royal Navy, with the loss of 272 lives.

Ponting was acquitted after a two-week trial, despite admitting that he had leaked the documents in question and the trial judge’s insistence that he had no defence in law. Ponting claimed, and the jury agreed, that releasing the documents, which exposed government lies over the circumstances of the sinking, was in the public interest.

The principle has become an irritant to governments ever since, particularly following a series of cases in which members of climate and anti-genocide protest organisations such as Extinction Rebellion and Palestine Action have been acquitted despite instructions from the bench.

Added Legal Protection for Financial Criminals?

The fact that complex financial and fraud cases, which are defined as those involving “hidden dishonesty or complexity outside the understanding of the general public”, will also be exempt from trial by jury if Lammy’s proposed bill is enacted is also deeply troubling, though it seems to be getting far less traction in the media.

Without trial by jury, the legal process would be even further tilted in the favour of the UK’s financial and business elite. After all, it’s easier to corrupt one judge than 12 (angry) men and women. And this is the UK we are talking about, the country that arguably perfected the art (if you can call it that) of financial crime, which it then exported around the world.

All of this would be concerning enough if it were being done by a government that had shown itself to be more or less worthy of the voters’ trust. That is most definitely not the case here.

In fact, Keir Starmer is the most unpopular prime minister since records began in 1977 — a feat he managed to pull off in little over a year. His Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, is also the most unpopular chancellor on record.

It’s not hard to see why: they have broken just about every promise they made to voters. As the veteran journalist Peter Oborne warned before Starmer’s election, “it would be very unwise to believe a word Starmer says — he has a long record of making promises which he then goes on to break.”

Laying the Foundations of an Authoritarian State

Starmer also has extreme authoritarian impulses. As The Guardian‘s George Monbiot warned in February, his government is laying the foundations of an authoritarian state that could be used by an even more extreme government in the future — perhaps even one led by Reform leader Nigel Farage:

Here are three of the consistent features of authoritarian states: the extreme persecution of dissent, the use of parajudicial measures to shut down opposition movements, and the selective application of the law. All three are already widely deployed in the UK. Though they were introduced in their current form by the Tories, they have been sustained and defended by Keir Starmer’s party.

What this means is that if a hard- or far-right government starts doing what they always do – persecuting minorities and opponents, ripping into public services and the enabling state – and if good citizens take to the streets to defend the people and institutions under attack, the government will be able to round them up and throw them in prison, without the need for a single new law or statute.

Freedom of speech is under constant attack. As the Times of London reported in April this year, police officers made 12,183 arrests in 2023, when the Tories were in office, the equivalent of around 33 per day, under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988.

The acts, which make it illegal to cause distress by sending “grossly offensive” messages or sharing content of an “indecent, obscene or menacing character” on an electronic communications network, are being applied on an ever-broader basis. We don’t yet know how many arrests were made in 2024, when Starmer came to power.

What we do know is that hundreds of people, including many pensioners, have been arrested for simply protesting against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The recent prosecution of Natalie Strecker for writing and sharing tweets calling for resistance against the genocide revealed just how twisted the UK’s legal system has become.

From former UK ambassador Craig Murray’s blog post, “The Terrifying Case of Natalie Strecker”:

Strecker is charged with eliciting support for Hamas and Hezbollah, based on 8 tweets, cherry-picked by police and prosecutors from an astounding 51,000 tweets she sent, mainly from the Jersey Palestine Solidarity Committee account….

The prosecution case is that these tweets, both collectively and individually, amount to an invitation of support for Hamas and Hezbollah resulting in up to ten years in jail in Jersey, or 14 years in jail on the UK mainland.

The prosecution explicitly stated, and the judge notably intervened to make sure that everybody understood, that it is the offence of supporting terrorism to state that the Palestinians have the right to armed resistance in international law.

Judge John Saunders interrupted the prosecution to ask whether they were saying that he would be guilty of support for terrorism if, in a lecture, he told an international law class that Palestinians have the right to armed resistance in international law.

After some kerfuffle when faced with such an awkward question, the prosecution replied that yes, it could be the offence to tell law students that.

“A Fledgling Police State”

While Strecker was eventually acquitted, her case reveals a very disturbing truth about the state of lawful speech under the Starmer government, notes the journalist and author Jonathan Cook:

The British state considers it unlawful to repeat what international law explicitly states: that occupied peoples like the Palestinians have a right to resist their illegal occupation.

That means:

a) The Starmer government openly rejects international law.

b) The Starmer government can scrap free speech and the right to protest – the bare minimal foundations of a democracy – whenever it chooses. We must conclude that we now live in a fledgling police state, that the number of political prisoners is going to grow rapidly, and that the room for dissent is going to shrink further and further.

The fact that this is all happening under a prime minister who before entering politics was a senior human rights lawyer makes it all the more disturbing.

“Facial Recognition” in “Every City, Town and Village”?

At the same time, the Starmer government is planning to unleash live facial recognition cameras across the UK’s urban landscape, completing a project begun some years ago under the Tories.

The Daily Telegraph reports that facial recognition technology could be used in “every city, town and village”. Under the plans, the Police could also be allowed to compare photos of crime suspects against the images of 45 million Britons stored in the passport database.

Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch, warned that the expansion would transform the UK into an “open prison” and that passports would become “mugshots for a giant surveillance database, putting the British public at risk of misidentifications and injustice”:

“Every search through this harvest of our personal photos puts millions of innocent citizens through a police line-up without our knowledge or consent. Sir Keir Starmer’s Government is committing to historic breaches of Britons’ privacy that you might expect to see in China but not in a democracy.”

The scheme is already hitting resistance among some local councils. A cross-party group of independent, Labour and Liberal Democrat councillors on Woking Borough Council is calling for the scheme to be suspended, warning that it “risks residents’ right to privacy” and disproportionately impacts ethnic minority communities.

The mass roll out of facial recognition systems goes hand-in-hand with the government’s proposed digital identity system, which in turn goes hand-in-hand with the online age verification system launched in the summer as well as the central bank digital currency (CBDCs) — the so-called “Digital Pound” — that the Bank of England is currently developing.

Digital identity is the keystone of the digital control grids governments around the world are rapidly erecting to keep their restless populaces in check. Without digital identity, the programmable CBDCs that would give central banks and government unprecedented ability to track and control our spending would be unworkable, as the Bank for International Settlements admitted in 2021.

So far, almost 3 million people have signed a parliamentary petition calling on the Starmer government to scrap its plans to launch a de facto mandatory digital identity system. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) notes, the digital identity systems being created by governments around the world are “fundamentally incompatible with a privacy-protecting and human rights-defending democracy”:

It potentially leads to situations where state authorities can treat the entire population with suspicion of not belonging, and would shift the power dynamics even further towards government control over our freedom of movement and association…

In a country increasing the deployment of other surveillance technologies like face recognition technology, this raises additional concerns about how digital ID could lead to new divisions and inequalities based on the data obtained by the system.

EFF is one of 13 rights groups, including Big Brother Watch and Privacy International, that will be urging Members of Parliament to “oppose measures that risk turning the UK into a Checkpoint Britain” at this coming Monday’s petition debate. [For interested UK-based readers: click here to use Big Brother Watch’s speedy tool to call on your respective MPs to attend the debate]

Of course, as we noted in the first post in this series, most of the dystopian policies and practices highlighted in this post — particularly the crackdowns on protests and free speech — represent a continuation, and at times intensification, of policies and practices already well under way under the Tories. 

It is also true that these policies and practices form part of a generalised trend among ostensibly “liberal democracies” — as broad economic conditions deteriorate and AI-enabled technologies advance, the temptation among governments to exploit these new surveillance and control systems is irresistible while the potential benefits for Big Tech are huge.

It is a trend of which Starmer’s Britain is most definitely at the sharp, leading edge. 

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