The last “Tsar of All the Russias” was deposed in 1917 and executed in 1918. Though Russians no longer had a use for the title, Americans did.
When the Romanovs ruled Russia, Americans tended to use it pejoratively. In the early 1900s, the Illinois Republican Joseph G. Cannon was nicknamed “Czar Cannon” for his high-handed treatment of House Democrats. After the Romanovs fell, however, Americans saw an upside in granting unelected officials wide, often undefined powers. In 1918, Bernard Baruch, chairman of the War Industries Board, was praised as the “industry czar” for improving bureaucratic efficiency and military production in World War I.
In Google’s Ngram Viewer, the printed use of “tsar” tracks the growth of the federal government. It rises steadily from a low point in 1915, surges in the technocratic 1960s, accelerates through the recession-battling 1980s into the profitable 1990s and 2000s, and peaks in 2016. The bigger the government, the more bureaucrats and regulations, and the slower the wheels turn.
The biggest czarist of all was Barack Obama, who appointed 38 official czars, beating George W. Bush (33 czars) and Franklin D. Roosevelt (a mere 11). After a combined five years as president, two-term Donald Trump has a piffling five czars to his name. Only three are currently still on their thrones: Tom Homan (borders), Alice Marie Johnson (pardons), and David Sacks (AI and cryptocurrency). As often, Trump makes a poor dictator.
Meanwhile, monarchical Britain loves a czar, or “tsar” as they say across the pond. Between 1997 and 2013, researchers from King’s College, London, found that more than 230 people were made “policy tsars.” It began under Tony Blair’s Labour Party in 1997, but David Cameron’s post-2010 Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition was even bigger tsarists, appointing an average of 43 per year. Some British tsars are called by their imperial title, and others get the Rasputin-like title of “adviser,” but media and politicians call them all “tsars,” and invariably praise their corner-cutting powers.
Keir Starmer, who is still somehow prime minister as we go to press, has designated just one tsar. On March 9, Labour finally released “Protecting What Matters,” its plans for repairing Britain’s broken “social cohesion.” Labour knows all about this, because it did most of the breaking. The report is an admission of defeat after decades of multiculturalism and mass immigration, but it also opens a new front in the British state’s campaign to stifle anyone who objects to living with the results.
Enter the “Islamophobia tsar,” who might also be called the “diversity sultan” or even the “emir of equity” but will, at least officially, be euphemized as the special representative on anti-Muslim hostility. The concept of anti-Muslim hostility has no legal basis. It puts an Orwellian gloss on “Islamophobia,” which is similarly groundless in psychology or law but has plenty of support from Labour-adjacent NGOs, Islamist lobby groups, and the wavering Muslims of Labour’s electoral base. The special representative’s opinions will also lack legal basis, but the taxpayer-funded institutions to which he or she will opine will do the rest.
Labour designed this non-binding advisory in czarist fashion, to deploy the force of law while slipping the bonds of the law. Its definition of anti-Muslim hostility is contradictory and vague: the “prejudicial stereotyping” of Muslims for “their ethnic or racial backgrounds or their appearance,” with “the intention of encouraging hatred against them.” Yet the definition insists that it “does not reclassify Muslims as a racial group in law.” Labour claims that speech rights and the right to criticize “religion or belief” remain unaltered, but Labour also promises to raise the price of offending the adherents of one religion in particular.
Only Muslims will have the right to take offense at behavior that is “not necessarily unlawful, but which is reprehensible in the context, because it extends beyond the bounds of protected free speech.” Labour has not told the British people what Muslims might reasonably consider “reprehensible,” why the aggrieved feelings of 6% of Britain’s population require mollification, or why non-binding, non-legal advice should override both the established customs of the majority and speech rights that are conferred by Parliament.
The previous Labour government outlawed blasphemy in England in 2008, while Scotland took until 2024. Communities Secretary Steve Reed denies that Labour is bringing in “blasphemy laws by the back door.” But a state that has a communities secretary already concedes that different groups get different treatment.
“If British Buddhists became very aggressive and confrontational, could they get a tsar for themselves? Or would they have to promise to vote for Labour too?” the comedian John Cleese asked on X.
Labour also plans to abolish jury trials for offenses carrying prison terms of less than three years. It so happens that most convictions on speech grounds carry less than a three-year sentence. When the Islamophobia tsar opines that offense was intended, speech suspects will be hustled through the courts and tried by a judge alone.
The drift into tsardom and away from Parliamentary accountability is licensing the most extensive peacetime attack on British law and liberty since the dictatorship of Oliver Cromwell. This will not stop the English majority from speaking their minds when the future of the nation is at stake. But it will intensify a gathering nativist backlash.
Dominic Green is a Washington Examiner columnist and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Find him on X @drdominicgreen.
