“I WANT to respond by saying I get it,” mewed Sir Keir Starmer after the mauling voters gave his government given their first opportunity.
But does he really understand?
Nigel Farage’s Reform party hammered Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour at the local elections
GettyStarmer threw the kitchen sink at Farage but voters heard it all and thumbed their noses[/caption]
The Prime Minister insists: “We must deliver that change even more quickly, we must go even further . . . ”
Which sounds a lot like more of the same, chalking up the extraordinary breakthrough of Reform as a mere protest vote that will melt away.
It’s a bold reaction to the public telling you that they don’t like what they have seen so far, only to tell them they are going to get even more of it even sooner.
Yet the breadth and scale of the Government’s pummelling last week should stop that coping mechanism dead in its tracks.
What Thursday’s message from the public showed is Plans for Change and policy tinkering is not going to cut it.
Nor are the traditional playbooks of party politics.
Starmer threw the kitchen sink at Nigel Farage, branding him on the eve of polls a Putin puppet who was going to personally bill voters for their hip operations.
Fatal error
Labour screamed, like the Tories tried before them, that Reform were a bunch of lazy cranks that never turned up to Parliament and cannot be trusted to run a whelk stall let alone a council.
But the voters heard it all and thumbed their noses.
Instead they were led by the continued cost-of-living pain after that promised growth failed to ever turn up, and immigration now topping voters’ concerns across the country.
The Tories borked(?) it, Labour promised change and the public feel like they have been sold a pup.
So why not give the other guys a go?
They can’t be any worse than the current or last lot.
Which leaves the Government in a tricky bind — fighting on uncomfortable ground but frankly with very little to lose.
If Labour don’t get radical and controversial soon, then they’re going to be out on their ear anyway.
What Thursday showed was just how out of touch Westminster is to how hardened public opinion over borders has become, and a classic Westminster tinkering response would be a fatal error.
Fatal error
Sacking a few ministers in a panicked reshuffle is not going to be enough, and those in No10 pinning their hopes on a new immigration White Paper to be published in ten days time should temper expectations.
Yes, there will be some red meat in it, tightening up absurd legal migration rules that allow successful asylum seekers to ship over their families on the taxpayers’ tab, but it risks looking like too little too late.
Some close to Starmer get it.
One senior Government source hit back at reports the Education Secretary and Culture Secretary were for the chop, saying: “Just sacking Bridget Phillipson and Lisa Nandy would be a joke response.”
But Labour MPs from all wings of the party are starting to loudly wonder whether this cautious government has the balls to turn things around.
Hemmed in by a slavish unwillingness to go to war with the international order over migration, the scale of the radicalism required to really change the country goes against the grain of everything this PM believes.
Starmer’s enemies on the left have already gone public with their criticisms, which is hardly a surprise given they have been carping almost since the moment he entered office.
But even the most ardent loyalists were reeling from Thursday’s bloody nose this weekend, keeping their powder dry publicly, for now, but acutely aware No10 needs a far punchier strategy.
There are real shades of Rishi Sunak’s doomed premiership in the predicament that Starmer finds himself in right now.
Inheriting a mess largely not of their own making, no one doubts their technocratic ability but questions always linger over their killer political instinct.
Lofty ideals
Sunak entered Downing Street desperate to keep the show on the road but refusing to countenance bold measures like leaving the European Convention on Human Rights or calling time on various nonsense from the United Nations.
He was constantly accused of not wanting to upset his global elite mates or being too squeamish to pull levers previously thought of as unthinkable, but now being demanded by the anger of the public.
But by the time Sunak woke up to the scale of the problems facing the nation and tried to get radical, especially on migration, it was too late.
A warning for his successor right there.
But can Mr Human Rights, happiest when mingling with his fellow lawyers on the international circuit, really be the one to get his hands dirty and reject the European Court?
The contradiction at the heart of Starmer’s premiership is about to play out.
We are about to find out whether the PM’s desire for power, to retain it and really use it, trumps the lofty ideals that made him the man he is today.
There’s still a fair few years before Starmer has to face all of the voters, and with his massive majority, if any one can rip up the established rules, it is him.
If he doesn’t do it, then the person who replaces him will be elected with a mandate to shoot his sacred cows anyway.
The public seem to have woken up to the scale of the response needed — will Sir Keir?
RUMOURS abound that No10 is mulling some dramatic Whitehall changes.
Both Labour peer Maurice Glasman, who has the ear of powerful Downing Street chief Morgan McSweeney, and Jonathan Rutherford, who is advising No10, have both suggested breaking up the Treasury in recent days.
APRachel Reeves would quit before having to scrap her sacred fiscal rules to limit government borrowing[/caption]
Lord Glasman told the New Statesman: “I believe the abolition of the Treasury is necessary for our economic renewal. It is an outdated institution at odds with contemporary reality.”
And he called for “a new economics ministry instead of the Treasury and Business in which priority is given to industry”.
While Rutherford told The House magazine: “I’d destroy it if I had half the chance. I would split the Treasury, like Harold Wilson, but not in a ministry – I’d put it in No 10 . . . frankly, this is the age of Trump. You’ve got to start doing stuff.”
With Rachel Reeves letting it be known she would quit before having to scrap her sacred fiscal rules to limit government borrowing, could they be on to something?
Eyebrows have been raised by a senior official from former Cabinet Office boss Pat McFadden’s team who has been sent to keep an eye on things at the Treasury, with McFadden tipped to run any emerging super department.
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