If the fuses keep blowing maybe the toaster needs replacing. Morgan McSweeney, Tim Allan, who’s next? Has the PM’s position become un-Number-Ten-able?
Belatedly Twitterites are starting to worry about who might come after Starmer. Sir Keir is being described as moderate and restrained by comparison.
They’re wrong.
The choice is between socialist hotheads who rush like a bull at a gate and will be defeated by a horrified populace, and crypto-communists who proceed more slowly and thoroughly - the Fabians, the Gramscians, the Pabloites.
Blair’s influence within the Labour Party continues. His Institute for Global Change is said to be deeply influential. Although Andrew Neil protests “Blair has never been Starmer’s mentor. Never. And recently they’ve barely been on speaking terms” you have to look at who has been working with the PM: tentacles of the New Labour octopus.
If TB is disappointed in KS it will be because Starmer is a clunker in presentation. We see it weekly in PMQs but here is Sir Keir in Hastings where while passing judgment on the Prince of Darkness he gives us this hostage to his own political fortune:
“No one — however well-connected, however experienced, however senior… should hold public office if they cannot meet the basic test of honesty.”
Some are saying there should now be a General Election.
Wrong again.
In the first place it is unconstitutional, as barrister Steven Barrett explains: out of the massive Parliamentary majority someone can be found to lead the Government on the King’s behalf.
Secondly the people are torn. Labour has shown its ghastly colours, the Conservatives are deeply unforgiven but Reform is still “an emotional spasm.”
The Right is split between the Tories, Reform and other nascent parties such as Advance UK. If Labour went to the country now it could destroy Reform who have an unlicked bear-whelp of a manifesto and a leader who has yet to prove he can assemble a Cabinet with strength in depth that could survive his departure.
The Left is also fragmenting - some are off to the Greens who are a combination of eco cranks and revolutionary Islamists, some to the Lib Dems, some to independents.
A GE now might be dangerous. A heartbroken electorate might stay away from the polling booths on such a scale as to realize what Tony Benn warned against in 1991:
“Apathy could destroy democracy. When the turnout drops below 50 per cent., we are in danger.”
- and again ten years later:
“The real danger to democracy is not that someone will burn Buckingham Palace and run up the red flag, but that people will not vote. If people do not vote, they destroy, by neglect, the legitimacy of the Government who have been elected.”
Already the dangerous question of legitimacy has arisen, when a Government acts as though it has a mandate for radical change when only a fifth of the voting population cast their ballots for them and many of those are suffering buyer’s remorse.
Such a crisis could scarcely come at a worse time. Starmer seems keen to get our weakened military involved in Ukraine. The rich are being driven out of Britain, many entrepreneurial types in the prime of life are emigrating. Businesses are going to the wall, manufacturing is dying because of Net Zero. Both Peter Hitchens and Rupert Lowe (see 31:25) are expecting a run on sterling at some point.
Our economy is threatened by an international trade imbalance against a background of Britain’s crippling Net Zero commitment and doctrinaire hostility to business. Unemployment is rising for these reasons and also because of mechanisation and AI. In this context the use of immigration to swell GDP can only be seen as lunatic. We are heading for a State where many millions will be long-term welfare dependants and the system will break.
It is odd that Starmer claims to work for the working class defined by him as those who do not have savings, when the public sector workers whose pay has recently been greatly boosted have not only greater job security but pensions that embody future financial benefits that personal schemes cannot match.
Foreign relations are also an issue. Why is China being allowed to build a Lubyanka-like fortress in central London? Why does it look as though the Chagos giveaway is likely to go ahead, after a period of US opposition? Did Starmer fly halfway around the world merely to get a lower tariff on Scotch whisky exports or did he give certain private assurances to the Chinese Government? Would that explain why he didn’t take his Foreign Secretary with him but instead his “national security adviser” Jonathan Powell who served a decade as Blair’s chief of staff (1997-2007)?
We seem to be weakening in every way. Is that the big idea?
As Starmer gave us his delusionary vision in Hastings we have to remember the significance of that place where almost a thousand years ago the flower of Anglo-Saxon nobility faced invasion, defeat and systematic oppression. Is Sir Keir standing on Senlac Hill or is his back to the sea?
Perhaps only a swift and full disaster will give us the opportunity to rebuild.
