“I HEARD you want your country back. Ha. Shut the f*** up.”
So went the lyrics spewed at Glastonbury by Pascal Robinson-Foster, a vegan poet from Ipswich who now raps as part of the hilariously named duo “Bob Vylan”.
Starmer may come to regret his latest U-turn as much as he regrets giving his immigration speech
The PM is just one year in and things are looking very bleak for his administrationGetty
Not even the most controversial part of the set, but a sentiment strangely echoed from the heart of Downing Street this weekend.
As part of a fairly miserable apology and U-turn tour to mark his first year in No10, Sir Keir Starmer was characteristically more long-winded.
Yet in abandoning and apologising for his landmark speech on immigration given just last month, he might as well have put it like bile-filled Bob.
“It was just a case of reading the words out,” Starmer actually admitted in a soft-soap interview with his bestie turned biographer, anti-Brexit campaigner Tom Baldwin.
I cannot remember a more toxic admission from a premier who most voters already deeply distrust and suspect holds very few views of his own.
Smell blood
Many saw May’s speech as a desperately needed sign the PM had woken up to how immensely naffed off the country that elected him really is with the border farce, and his immigration clampdown was widely welcomed.
For a moment it had looked like Sir Keir had finally got it, only for him to now admit he was simply parroting a line.
At the time, bad faith critics on the left and within Labour’s ranks leapt on his phrase that “we risk becoming an island of strangers”, as Enoch Powell once said Britons “found themselves made strangers in their own country”.
It was an absurd row, and Starmer rightly rejected the criticism then and sent his Cabinet out to do the same.
Yet now with his clearly unquenchable thirst for U-turns, he now bleats: “I wouldn’t have used those words if I had known they were, or even would be interpreted as an echo of Powell . . .
“I had no idea — and my speechwriters didn’t know either, but that particular phrase — no — it wasn’t right. I’ll give you the honest truth: I deeply regret using it.”
While he explained that he wished he had read the speech more closely, but was reeling from shock on the morning it was given due the firebombing of his old house, I suspect Starmer may come to regret this about-turn as much as he appears to regret giving the speech in the first place.
In accepting the premise of the Powell row he has handed his enemies an undeserved victory — and they already smell blood as Labour haemorrhages support on their left flank.
And to those that liked the speech and its content, the PM wishing that he had “held it up to the light a bit more” will only cement the feeling he was once again speaking with a forked tongue.
Not least as he appears to admit he was only handed the speech the morning it was given to him to read out, which hardly screams leadership.
If he regrets the language he used, then what were the problems around uncontrolled immigration that he was trying to highlight?
The point was either correct or it was not.
Did he even believe a word of it at the time? Or is he just incapable of sticking to anything for more than a few weeks?
Well, clearly not, given the immigration row was not the only humiliating climbdown this weekend.
Starmer took to the Sunday Times to insist he was again too distracted — this time by world affairs and summit-hopping — to notice that the left of his party were up in arms about benefits cuts.
With the prospect of losing a vote this Tuesday, despite his massive 160 majority, most of the £5billion cuts to the mammoth benefits bill were chucked out the window on Friday.
When I asked Starmer in an interview in January whether he really had the balls to take on the left and cut benefits, he insisted he “loved fights”.
So we can chalk that up to another reverse ferret, but this one comes with danger beyond Westminster.
With long-term government borrowing already more expensive than at the height of the Liz Truss fandango, it’s a very dangerous message to send to the bond markets.
Doom loop
If Starmer can’t even get a salami slice of cuts through with his massive majority, how on earth is he expected to stop the ballooning benefits bill, NHS black hole, more defence cash needs and mounting debt interest payments pushing the country into a doom loop?
City types I’m talking to warning buyers of UK government debt may well make their views on this all known in the starkest way possible this week when markets open.
That should solve any distraction problems the PM is currently suffering.
Just one year in and things are looking very bleak for this administration.
A fairly grim milestone, where No10 appears to be lighting bin fires everywhere rather than candles on cakes.
In a series of interviews to mark the unhappy birthday, the PM has stressed communication problems have blighted the “story” his Government is trying to get across.
But there can be no story or a narrative when there is an utter lack of coherency from the very centre: Himself.
No amount of resets, or changes of spin doctor or advisers, are going to be able to hide the simple fact there appears to be very little behind the curtain.
SIR Keir is not the only one suffering with vision problems.
Meeting troops at Carver Barracks in Essex on Friday to mark Armed Forces Day, under-fire opposition boss Kemi Badenoch posed for photos squinting down a telescopic rifle sight.
Under-fire opposition boss Kemi BadenochPA
Only after it was posted online by the Conservatives – and hastily deleted – did anyone notice the protective cover was still on the scope.
Hardly the only Tory to be staring into the dark these days.
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