It’s not been a good week for the PM.
Yesterday, he attempted some damage limitation over the Axel Rudakubana case and the associated initial official and legal responses, but nevertheless, social media has been busy fisking him. It is not true, as some online have claimed, that he represented the Rwandan father in an asylum appeal, but immigration issues have flared up again. Why can the Government not take swift and decisive action, as Trump has done straight from his inception as President?
Belatedly, Labour have announced a public enquiry, previously avoided in favour of locally-based investigations (which might be a prey to local intimidation.) “We will not let any institution deflect from its failures,” said Sir Keir now, bowing to the inevitable.
There was a sense of predators circling at PMQs. Andrew Snowden (Con) twitted Starmer with Labour’s “honeymoon period” sackings, resignations and counter-briefings; was Sir Keir himself the root cause? “We have just won a landslide victory,” came the non-reply.
Not one like Trump’s, it must be said. Bearing in mind the slender support for Labour in July’s General Election, perhaps we should have a referendum on the PM’s radical agenda. There is a triple precedent in Britain for votes on major constitutional change – Brexit (twice) and the Alternative Vote (once, but in the light of 2024, maybe again sometime).
In the light of recent dismal news about unemployment and government borrowing, did Starmer still believe the Chancellor was doing a good job? This was asked by Rebecca Smith (Con), to which Sir Keir gave another flippant answer: “I thought the honourable Lady was just reading out the last Government’s record.”
That was hardly adequate, for as Reeves flew to Davos, a hedge fund manager was warning of a potential “debt death spiral” here. Yet the PM told Sir Bernard Jenkin (Con) that, despite our recently increased taxes and regulation, the IMF was predicting the UK would see better growth than Europe. Perhaps we should ‘trust the science’? Or at least compare results with the US, which is taking the opposite tack.
America is certainly giving us pause for thought. Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey wanted a reassurance that our farmers were not going to be undercut in trade deals with the US. The PM replied that “we will never lower our standards”. On the other hand, Trump was yesterday bemoaning America’s trade deficit with Europe and, whereas Sir Keir was telling Mike Martin (Lib Dem) of his commitment to spending 2.5% of GDP on defence, The Donald opined to his press conference that Europe needed to boost that to 5%.
Clearly, there is much for us to discuss with our special friends in Washington. Whether or not Lord Mandelson is the man to speak for us is moot; some say yes, while others think he will be somewhat restricted in his duties.
Marx said that capitalism’s inherent contradictions would cause it to collapse. Labour’s paradoxical approach to economic recovery may well do the same for us and for its own party, what with aiming for growth while making it harder and more expensive to employ people. Similarly, we still have Miliband the Mad driving for Net Zero while the Government plans to approve Heathrow’s third runway – a U-turn on Starmer and Co’s 2018 position – as Adrian Ramsay (Green) pointed out. But then, Ramsay himself is a NIMBY on ‘renewable infrastructure’, as Sir Keir reminded him.
When Will Stone (Lab) boasted of the Panattoni Park development in Swindon, the PM used the chance to mention the new National Wealth Fund’s potential contribution to economic stability and growth. Here, we have another double bind, for ‘no man can serve two masters’: exploiting our pensions for HMG’s projects may well hamper fund performance, which could in turn impact pensioners; still, the latter are by definition not ‘working people’, who ‘don’t have savings’.
The theme of the exchanges between Starmer and Badenoch was education – another field bristling in difficulties. Kemi highlighted the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill’s cap on teachers’ pay and restrictions on hiring talented non-qualified staff; Sir Keir spoke of breakfast clubs and limiting uniform expenses. Kemi said that the Bill was an ‘attack on excellence’, something that did not bother Anthony Crosland when, in 1965, he promised to ‘destroy every f***ing Grammar School in England. And Wales. And Northern Ireland.’
Checking on home education was a safeguard against domestic child abuse, claimed the PM, skirting around another relevant issue – that of raising children with a radicalised political or religious agenda. Home education is a vexed area; the right to educate one’s own child ‘otherwise’, in defiance of a creeping State power grab, has become complicated by an influx of people who, in some cases, seem to have some very different values to our own. Now, we are into the culture wars, as well as a political conflict.
As of Monday, the transatlantic ideological divide seems now to be between those who want to level up, versus those determined to level down.
Different beginnings – how will the seeds grow?
