David Starkey - Politics

Politics

By his own admission, Starkey was raised in an austere and frugal environment of near-poverty, with his parents often unemployed for long periods of time; an environment which, he later stated, taught him "the value of money". "I suppose my politics remained essentially in the middle-of the-road Labour left until the end of the 1970s". Starkey blames the Callaghan administration for "blow the nation's finances". He bemoaned the Tories when they were in opposition, criticising Michael Howard in particular: "I knew Michael Howard was going to be a disaster as soon as he opposed top-up fees, either out of sentimentality or calculated expediency so that it might get him a bit of the student vote...Instead of backing Tony Blair, causing revolution in the Labour Party, the Conservatives have been whoring after strange gods, coming up with increasingly strange policies." He likened Gordon Brown to the fictional Kenneth Widmerpool, continuing, "It seems to me that with Brown there is a complete sense of humour and charm bypass." Starkey prefers radical changes to the UK's constitution in line with the federal system used by the USA, although in an interview with Iain Dale he expressed his support for the monarchy, the queen, and Prince Charles. In the run-up to the UK Alternative Vote referendum, he was a signatory on a letter to The Times, which urged people to vote against the proposals.

A supporter of the Tory Campaign for Homosexual Equality ("Torche"), during one of many appearances on the BBC's Question Time he attacked Jeffrey Archer over his views on the age of homosexual consent. In 2009, Mike Russell, then the Scottish government minister for culture and external affairs, called on him to apologise for his declaration on the programme that Scotland, Ireland and Wales are "feeble little countries".

It was a joke! The question was did I think the English should treat St George's Day the same way the Scots and all the rest of them treat their saints' days - St Andrew, St Patrick and my answer was no. That would mean we would become a feeble little nation like them and we're showing every sign of doing just that. H.G. Wells has this wonderful phrase - "the English are the only nation without national dress". It is a glory that we don't have such a thing. —David Starkey

More recently, he described Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond as a "Caledonian Hitler" who thinks that "the English, like the Jews, are everywhere". Appearing on Any Questions? in 2010, he told Labour politician Caroline Flint she had "prattled on". During the 2011 Conservative Party Conference, he spoke at a fringe meeting, declaring London Mayor Boris Johnson as a "jester-despot", and Prime Minister David Cameron as having "absolutely no strategy" for running the country. He urged the party to re-engage with the working class rather than the "Guardian-reading middle class".

His comments in August 2011 on the BBC's Newsnight programme, made during a discussion about the 2011 England riots, precipitated support and condemnation from several notable commentators. Starkey claimed that "the whites have become black", and that "a particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic, gangster culture has become the fashion". Labour leader Ed Miliband called his comments "racist, frankly". Author Toby Young, blogging in the Telegraph, defended Starkey by claiming that Starkey had been talking not about black culture in general, but "a 'particular form' of black culture". Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Starkey argued his views had been distorted, that he referred only to a "particular sort" of 'Black' culture, and that "black educationalists" Tony Sewell and Katharine Birbalsingh supported the substance of his Newsnight comments. The broadcast regulator Ofcom said that Starkey's comments were part of "a serious and measured discussion", and took no action. After stating in a June 2012 debate that a Rochdale sex trafficking gang had values "entrenched in the foothills of the Punjab or wherever it is", he was accused by writer and fellow panelist Laurie Penny of "playing xenophobia and national prejudice for laughs", prompting a furious response from the historian.