YOU can always tell when a politician wants us to take them seriously.
They take off their jacket and tie, roll up their shirt sleeves and stand in front of an impressively big bit of factory machinery, in the desperate hope that, as they read an autocue in front of cameras, they look more down-to-earth and honest.
PASir Keir Starmer was in ‘serious mode’ as he launched his latest salvo against Nigel Farage[/caption]
The Mega AgencyThe truth is, Starmer is scared of the Reform leader[/caption]
It’s a gimmick that rarely convinces voters, but we absolutely KNOW that Sir Keir Starmer was in “serious mode” when he did just that to launch his latest salvo against Nigel Farage.
The Prime Minister, despite having a whopping great majority of 165 MPs and four more years in office before the next general election, appears to be remarkably agitated by the potential threat posed by a man who leads a party with just five MPs.
Smell desperation
Indeed, barely a speech, or an interview or a PMQs now passes without Keir talking about Nigel.
But while the PM pretends to laugh at the Reform leader, often treating him with undisguised contempt, it is obvious to everyone that Starmer is now a VERY worried man.
It’s not just Reform’s first place in the opinion polls that scares Keir, or even the party’s victory in the recent local elections and seizing one of Labour’s safest seats.
It’s also the prospect that Farage is seeking advice from proven campaigners including Dominic Cummings.
The Vote Leave chief, who led the Brexit vote and was the architect of Boris Johnson’s 2019 victory, claimed this week that Farage could “definitely” become Prime Minister at the next election if he follows his advice, saying: “Reform has been a one-man band — it’s been Nigel and an iPhone,” but now it’s time to make a proper plan for government.
Not surprisingly, Labour are throwing everything they can at Farage but, so far, nothing is sticking.
They’ve tried calling him a far-right bigot, and that didn’t work.
They dismissed him as a posh public schoolboy and ex-City trader who doesn’t care about ordinary Brits.
But that didn’t work either.
So the latest tactic is to tell us that Reform’s numbers don’t add up.
Starmer dismissed Farage’s economic plans — announced to much fanfare on Tuesday — as “fantasy” policies and “a mad experiment” that will result in a Liz Truss-style economic meltdown.
You can almost smell the desperation coming from Labour as they seek to head off Farage’s turquoise army at the pass.
The Mega AgencyFarage is seeking advice from proven campaigners including Dominic Cummings[/caption]
Certainly, Farage’s pledge to bring back Winter Fuel Payments for all pensioners will be a very popular policy across the political spectrum.
And more generous tax breaks for married couples would appeal to many families with young children.
But his plan to scrap the two-child benefit cap is a sop too far to the left for many Reform supporters — and probably wouldn’t help a single child in poverty.
His “ambition” to raise the personal tax allowance from £12,571 up to £20,000 a year, pulling millions of people on low wages out of tax altogether, is laughably unaffordable at upwards of £50billion a year.
All that said, voters know it’s a bit rich for Starmer to criticise Reform for uncosted policies when he himself happily backed Jeremy Corbyn’s free-spending manifestos in the 2017 and 2019 elections — and indeed his own manifesto costings in 2024 were a fairytale fiction.
Not to mention the small matter of Labour’s Net Zero target for 2050 coming with an unaffordable price tag of seemingly more than £1trillion.
Fraught with problems
Meanwhile, on the other side of the political aisle, the Conservatives are getting openly jittery at how Farage, not the Tories’ Kemi Badenoch, is increasingly seen as official Leader of the Opposition.
The local elections proved that Reform is now appealing to both Labour and Tory voters.
PAThe PM is painfully out of touch with voters[/caption]
That presents its own difficulties for Farage, because trying to be “all things to all men” is fraught with problems.
Every policy that will appeal to one set of voters may also put off the other side.
Yet when the Prime Minister is worried enough about Farage to go on the telly to attack Reform’s policies, instead of announcing his own, it shows the upstart party’s main man is leading the political agenda, not Keir.
The next general election may still be four long years away, but the political rivals’ shirt sleeves are well and truly rolled up ready for the fight for No 10.
Khan is wrong
SADIQ KHAN has called for cannabis possession to be decriminalised, insisting that the current law, which classifies it as a Class B drug, “cannot be justified”.
The Mayor of London claims the law is damaging “community” relations, because black people are more likely than whites to face a police stop-and-search for suspected cannabis use.
As per usual, Khan is wrong.
There’s plenty of evidence about the harms caused by regular cannabis use.
Decriminalising possession for personal use will simply create even more demand for the organised criminals supplying the drug.
We’re told that the “war on drugs” hasn’t worked so we may as well give up fighting.
Given that people walk freely on the streets smoking weed these days, it has not really been a hard-fought battle.
If we are going to decriminalise cannabis because the law isn’t being enforced, then why not decriminalise shoplifting or carrying a knife while we are at it?
Maybe if we bothered to ENFORCE the law, fewer people would risk breaking it.
Luvvies should blame Hamas
GARY LINEKER and his celebrity chums Dua Lipa and Benedict Cumberbatch have joined 300 other luvvies to signal their virtue in a letter to the Prime Minister calling on him to “end the UK’s complicity” in Gaza.
They demanded that Sir Keir Starmer ban arms sales to Israel and push for humanitarian aid and a ceasefire to save “the children of Gaza”.
Gary Lineker has joined 300 other luvvies to signal their virtue in a letter to the Prime Minister calling on him to ‘end the UK’s complicity’ in GazaGetty
Dua Lipa has also signedGetty
It is a tragedy that innocent people die in wars but, for some reason, the children killed in Yemen, Syria or Ukraine don’t hold as much interest for righteous celebs as those in Gaza.
The people complicit in the deaths of innocent children in Gaza are the Hamas terrorist leaders, who have publicly stated that they want Palestinian kids to be martyred and paraded on camera for their cause.
That’s why their fighters use them as human shields.
If Lineker and his grand-standing mates really want to save those kids, they should publicly back Israel’s military efforts to defeat Hamas and free ordinary Palestinians from their evil clutches.
So don’t applaud the likes of Lineker for their moral stance on Gaza.
They aren’t helping Gazan children – they’re just fighting Hamas’s propaganda war for them.
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