Can Sir Keir Stramer stop giving endless speeches after 5 months of failure & plummeting polls…& just get to work?
PICTURE the scene in the Downing Street flat which the Starmers now call home.
Sir Keir is busy announcing to wife Victoria the details of his mission to take out the bins, his target to buy some more milk, and in laborious detail just how he plans to achieve the milestone of emptying the dishwasher.
But none of all this ever gets done.
Whether or not Lady Starmer believes her husband’s grand statements is her business — but he has been in office for just five months and voters have already lost faith in the Prime Minister’s ability to match his fine WORDS with ACTIONS.
The country was subjected yesterday to yet another Starmer speech telling us what he plans to do to sort out the mess left by 14 years of Tory government.
This was not, No10 informed a sceptical nation, a reset after five months of failure. It most definitely wasn’t a relaunch, amid plummeting poll ratings with disillusioned voters.
Absolutely not.
No, this was all a part of Labour’s “plan for change”.
The PM set out his “six milestones” for delivering that change, with David Brent-style promises about measurable deliverables” — the stuff he wants voters to judge his Government on in four and a half years’ time.
Those “six milestones” are of course completely and utterly different from the “five missions” before the election and the “six first steps” after his election victory.
Oh, and the “seven pillars of growth” and “three foundations” he’s talked about, too.
The trouble is that a lot of the six milestones he mentioned are the same as some of the missions and steps, and most of those were already pretty meagre offerings in the first place.
They cover a range of things — boosting our real household disposable income, NHS waiting lists, building new homes, getting kids ready to start school, recruiting more police officers and fossil fuel- free electricity by 2030 (watered down from 100 per cent to the equally unachievable 95 per cent).
The Prime Minister described this as “the most ambitious yet honest delivery plan in a generation”.
Elephant in the room
Well, if you think nine out of ten patients waiting ONLY four months to see a hospital consultant is ambitious, it sets the bar pretty low.
And crucially, those milestones didn’t include any targets for cutting immigration, despite a million more people arriving here each year; any goal to cut welfare costs, despite the billions spent on working-aged people claiming sickness benefits; or a date when we will spend more on defence amid rising global threats.
There wasn’t just one elephant in the room, there was an entire herd, stomping and trumpeting as Starmer spoke.
But who was listening, anyway?
Five months ago, in his maiden speech after Labour’s election landslide, Sir Keir pledged the “work of change will begin immediately”.
Since then, we’ve had more than 67 reviews, consultations and taskforces set up, but very little has got done.
And the things they have done have been disasters — from scrapping winter fuel allowance and increasing employer National Insurance contributions, to the farmers’ inheritance tax, bus fare rises and prisoner early releases.
All that is not even to mention Freebie-gate, Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ alleged CV lies and a Cabinet minister forced to quit over her criminal conviction for fraud.
To be fair to Starmer, I should point out his election manifesto promised change, it didn’t specify that it would be change for the better.
But he can make as many speeches as he likes, and milestones, missions and first steps just won’t hack it any more with long-suffering voters.
Labour said they had a plan. But they don’t.
This country needs fixing and it needs fixing NOW
They said they would grow the economy. Yet they aren’t.
They said they would be competent, and they’re not. They said they’d fix the NHS. They won’t.
In a few years’ time, Starmer will be making yet another speech, announcing his 347th relaunch-that-isn’t-a-relaunch, and nothing will have changed.
The PM needs to stop talking about change and get down to the long, hard slog of actually delivering on his promises.
We simply cannot afford to wait for another four years before we start on the road to recovery.
This country needs fixing and it needs fixing NOW.
So, instead of talking about what you’re planning to do, Prime Minister, why don’t you just get on and do it?
Oh, and while you’re at it, can you take the bins out.
WALLACE SHOULD BE LONG GONE
EVEN as a “middle-class woman of a certain age”, I wanted to give MasterChef star Gregg Wallace the benefit of the doubt, as a big believer in innocence until proven guilty.
But the huge number of women coming forward to tell their tales of his alleged lewd, sexist and demeaning behaviour suggests there is a case for him (and the BBC) to answer.
What saddens me most is how so few of Wallace’s female accusers felt able to speak out for years.
The last time a man put his hand on my knee, I told him I would punch him in the face if he did it again.
Indeed, I featured on the front page of this very newspaper years later – and the man in question, former Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, ended up losing his job.
Gregg Wallace should have been told to shut his cakehole, put his clothes back on and get out of the MasterChef kitchen a long time ago.
IF you thought British politics was broken, look across the Channel to see just how bad things can get.
The French President has got himself into a pickle, unable to keep a government or pass a budget, while the French economy is close to collapse.
Emmanuel Macron’s decision to call a snap general election in the summer to outflank his presidential rival Marine Le Pen spectacularly backfired when his own party was left in a minority.
Quel domage!
Now Macron’s choice for PM, Michel Barnier, has been forced to resign, with the hard left and hard right uniting in a vote of no confidence after his three months in office.
To be fair, though, Barnier did manage to last two Liz Trusses.
But with Macron leading the efforts to punish the British for daring to vote for Brexit and to leave his beloved EU, it’s hard to have any sympathy for this arrogant little man.
Does anyone know the French for German word schadenfreude, to describe delight in another’s misfortune?