Max Thompson: How the Starmer government turned into the Grinch

Max Thompson is Campaigns Officer at the Free Speech Union.

There is stiff competition for who will take home the Grinch of the Year award in 2025.

Will it be our puritanical Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer? Sainsbury’s, which removed a Christmas card from sale after a trans activist claimed to be “offended”? Or the wokearati who have seized control of Brighton & Hove Museums?

Who knows — each would be a worthy winner.

With Christmas just around the corner, people up and down the country are looking forward to tucking into their turkey, making merry, telling jokes, and singing along to festive classics. And given the year we’ve all had in Starmer’s Britain, a bit of seasonal cheer wouldn’t go a miss.

So enjoy it while you can. This may be the last Christmas in which you’re allowed to embarrass yourself belting out your favourite festive tunes — courtesy of the Starmer government.

The Employment Rights Act — the legislative lovechild of the Prime Minister-in-waiting, Angela Rayner — passed last week. With it comes the long-anticipated banter ban, ruining soon to a pub near you.

Pubgoers may now be deprived of one of Britain’s most cherished Christmas traditions: a boozy trip to the local. Landlords will be under pressure to prohibit classics such as Baby It’s Cold Outside, Do They Know It’s Christmas?, and perhaps even Jingle Bells.

Under the Act, employers have a new legal duty to protect employees from third-party non-sexual harassment — including the private conversations of customers. To insulate themselves from costly legal action, pub owners may feel compelled to suppress anything that could cause offence, including songs with allegedly “problematic” origins.

The risk? An expensive complaint over the supposed racist roots of the 160-year-old Christmas staple Jingle Bells could land a landlord in an employment tribunal.

As if Labour were not already hammering the hospitality sector with economic mismanagement, business-rate hikes, and minimum-wage increases, it is now piling on additional bureaucracy and legal risk — for some businesses, it will be the final nail in the coffin.

Expect a banter bouncer in every pub, a code of conduct on every wall, and proof of your equality, diversity and inclusion training before you’re permitted to order a festive pint.

And it’s not as though the Free Speech Union didn’t warn the government. The Free Speech Union worked closely with the opposition front bench — notably Shadow Business Secretary Andrew Griffith MP — and led resistance in the House of Lords. But thanks to Labour peers and their band of illiberal Liberal Democrat colleagues, amendments tabled by the Free Speech Union’s founder and General Secretary, Lord Young of Acton, were defeated.

As Lord Young told The Telegraph: “The Government didn’t listen, insisting we were being alarmist, but a ban on Christmas music and carol singing will be the least of it. Prepare to live in a country in which every hospitality venue is a micromanaged ‘safe space’, overseen by lanyard-wearing banter bouncers. Welcome to Starmer’s Britain.”

In a society increasingly eager to take offence, even wishing a particularly woke member of staff a “Merry Christmas” instead of a “Happy Holidays” could, in theory, land a struggling landlord in an employment tribunal court. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex would no doubt approve. But remember: the banter ban isn’t just for Christmas — it’s for life in Starmer’s Britain.

Of course, it wouldn’t be Christmas without a row. Trans journalist Sophie Molly recently took offence at a Christmas card sold by Sainsbury’s, prompting an unreserved apology from the supermarket and the card’s appropriately named publisher, Emotional Rescue. The offending message? “This Christmas, I’m identifying as a Grinch.”

Apparently, this is transphobic. I would politely suggest that Sophie develops a little self-awareness — and recognises that the only Grinch in this story is him.

In perhaps the clearest sign that the silly season is in full swing, Brighton & Hove Museum has published a plan to decolonise Father Christmas. Yes, jolly old Saint Nick, notorious colonial oppressor and white supremacist.

A blog post on the museum’s website describes Father Christmas as “too white” and urges him to abandon his naughty-or-nice list because it represents a “Western binary” that embeds in children the idea that “the coloniser has the power to judge all people”.

Father Christmas has become the latest victim of the cancel-culture mob.

But it doesn’t stop there. The piece suggests ways in which Father Christmas might “check his privilege”, including undergoing a sex change — because a “Mother Christmas” would apparently be the silver bullet that finally topples the patriarchy.

For many, recasting Father Christmas as a white supremacist — let alone a white saviour — is a bewildering development. But should we expect anything less from the UK’s wokest city?

Unsurprisingly, the author flirts with the idea of a communist revolution at the North Pole, suggesting Santa should work among the elves to demonstrate equality, with greater representation of elves from all four corners of the globe. Elves of the world, unite!

The post even questions Father Christmas’s democratic mandate to judge who is “naughty” or “nice”, asking: “How can he assess, for example, Indigenous children practising their own cultural traditions?”

Conversely, one might argue that implying children from non-Western cultures cannot be “nice” — regardless of behaviour — renders the museum’s position both hypocritical and bigoted.

While the blog post is laughable, it also highlights a more troubling trend: the capture of cultural institutions by progressive, authoritarian ideology.

Just as we thought wokery had finally exhausted itself, it becomes clear that the fight against cultural vandalism is far from over.

Only Sir Keir Starmer could make Britain’s most famous puritan leader, Oliver Cromwell, look like Buddy the Elf.