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Opinion

Don’t Be Fooled Again

13 Sep 2024 4 minute read
Sir Keir Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves. Photo Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire

Ben Wildsmith 

I hope you haven’t been guilty of prematurely criticising our new government. Characteristically, I made that mistake, just the once, and was upbraided by some of the most sensible people in Wales.

Pursing their lips at my jejune impertinence, they set me straight.

‘How can Sir Keir fix 14 years of Tory misrule in a couple of months, you stupid boy?’ they fulminated, as I stared at my shoes and hummed ‘Hitler Has Only Got One Ball’ under my breath.

I’m a repeat offender, having outraged decency by questioning the desirability of a huge Labour majority before the election.

Eye rolling

Then, the eye-rolling owners of the moral high ground demanded absolute discipline under threat of what they insisted could still be a Conservative victory. Enquiring if Labour might give us some inkling as to which policies they intended to enact was evidence of middle-class frivolity when ‘real people’ desperately needed a Labour government. I was to shut up or forever be bracketed with the Tories.

Now, a couple of months in, as the frost settles on tartan shopping trolleys and the NHS is told to behave itself or be closed down, it remains inappropriate to critique the new, porcine proprietors of Animal Farm. Before the election, no questions were to be posed because of the danger that Labour might lose. Now, having been returned with an unassailable majority from 34% of the vote, any dissent is an affront to the will of the people.

The political strategists behind Labour’s victory are lauded for their success in gaming the first-past-the-post system so effectively. Some of them have been sought out by the team running the similarly policy-free Kamala Harris campaign in America. The point of difference is that Trump really might win that election, whereas the Tories could have appointed Sir David Attenborough as leader and abolished income tax for all the good it would have done them.

Puzzling decisions

Perhaps beating an utterly discredited government that was outflanked to the right by Reform wasn’t quite the stunning political achievement that the victors assume. Now that the same strategists are running the government, we are seeing some puzzling decisions.

For instance, if you were intent on proving your muscularity by duffing up the pensioners, going so far as to suggest that there would be a run on the pound if you didn’t, would you send your Foreign Secretary to Ukraine with a £600 million ‘extra’ cheque the next day? Does that seem either sensible or politically savvy to you?

Owing to the long tenure of the Tories in Number 10, hardly anybody on the Labour benches has much experience of anything but opposition. Wes Streeting has exhumed Alan Milburn to advise him on the NHS and long-forgotten characters like Jacqui Smith and Pat McDonnell are also on board. No wonder Oasis realised their time had come.

Starmer’s personal reputation, however, rests on two achievements. He routed the Corbyn-supporting left of the party and won the election. The first of these was achieved by misleading the membership as to his policy intentions, whilst the second involved obscuring them from the electorate.

‘Reform’

Today, Starmer announced a freeze on NHS spending unless it submits to ‘reform’. Details of this reform are sketchy, but we can safely assume he doesn’t mean renationalising outsourced services and rolling out free prescriptions in England. He was clear on only one thing, that his programme of government was for ten years, not five. Nobody is to expect any results before the next election, only after a decade can we judge his performance.

A quarter of a century of austerity is a big chunk of life for people who had nothing to do with the banks stealing the world’s money supply in 2008. The first chance anyone will have to make that point is our Senedd elections. Don’t be fooled again.


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Mab Meirion
Mab Meirion
1 month ago

Don’t be fooled again…ha ha…and again…the crooks get remission and we get another twenty months…@Lemmy not Lammy…

Mab Meirion
Mab Meirion
1 month ago
Reply to  Mab Meirion

I’ve just read the news that Lammy has something to do with War against Russia and Lemmy was fascinated by the Third Reich…

Both somehow unsettling…

Putin has been looking rough lately…

I reckon Lammy or Lemmy could take him…

Mab Meirion
Mab Meirion
29 days ago
Reply to  Mab Meirion

I sense a Dieppe…

Mr Lammy, perhaps you should read Donald Featherstone

Annibendod
Annibendod
1 month ago

Spot on again. You’re not the only socialist who finds little to no socialism in the Labour Party Ben. It has been like this for most of the last hundered years. Following their first rise to prominence, they have spent their time suffocating the Left in order to be “electable”. In 2017, so successful were they that they stymied the election of the first Left Wing government in the lifetime of anyone not drawing a pension. And now with a whopping quarter of the eligible vote behind them, they look very happy perched on the Tory throne aka UK Government.… Read more »

S Duggan
S Duggan
29 days ago

If Labour continue on the path they’re taken, hitting different sectors of ordinary people (including, scrapping the 25% council tax rebate now being considered)and not targeting the super wealthy they are going to lose in 2026 and 2029. Both election are there for the taking for Plaid. These will be dangerous elections as the far right will also be looking to benefit, if Labour continue on it’s current path. So it’s essential Plaid does well, or we’ll be even further in the sh*t.

hdavies15
hdavies15
29 days ago
Reply to  S Duggan

Plaid will only do better if it makes the real hard effort to communicate with the electorate in a serious way. Less soapbox rhetoric and a lot more detailed exposition of where we are, where we want to be and how we might get there. To date their record on meaningful comms is feeble and no wonder they get ignored in many of the areas they need to make large gains.

Vincent Van Go
Vincent Van Go
29 days ago

Anyone blaming Labour for doing what it takes to achieve power under the FPTP two party system is working for the Tories. If you want your choice of politics in government it can only happen by changing the voting system and forming part of a coalition where the voter decides how much influence you have, not the party hierarchy.

Annibendod
Annibendod
29 days ago
Reply to  Vincent Van Go

What should people who are bitterly disappointed with Labour’s abject failure to reform the UK and fix its broken economic, constitutional and political models do?

Vincent Van Go
Vincent Van Go
29 days ago
Reply to  Annibendod

Campaign to change the voting system.

Annibendod
Annibendod
29 days ago
Reply to  Vincent Van Go

How do they get past the LabCon gatekeepers? Better off voting Plaid/SNP/Green until the UK breaks.

CapM
CapM
28 days ago
Reply to  Vincent Van Go

Changing the voting system –
That’s on Labour’s ‘Things to avoid doing at all cost’

T3DSK1
T3DSK1
29 days ago
Reply to  Vincent Van Go

this was touted by the labourites when they where the opposition will they live up to their ideals now they are in the driving seat?

Vincent Van Go
Vincent Van Go
29 days ago
Reply to  T3DSK1

They didn’t back change in 2011 so it’s unlikely. It’s sad because it guarantees another round of Toryism in five or ten years.

CapM
CapM
28 days ago
Reply to  Vincent Van Go

Labour the Tory enablers.

Allibert
Allibert
27 days ago
Reply to  CapM

labour the sheep in wolf`s clothing or summat like that

includemeout
includemeout
29 days ago

To our new masters, politics is purely a game of tactical positioning. The current cuts are clearly intended to hammer home the narrative that “the Tories wrecked the public finances, and now we have no money (except for war of course, but there’s always money for war)”. One assumes the plan is to reverse those cuts in a few years, and claim that “thanks to Labour’s stability and certainty, we can now afford good things again”. The fact that people will be hurt by those cuts in the meantime is of course regrettable, but the end of ten years of… Read more »

Linda Jones
Linda Jones
29 days ago
Reply to  includemeout

Austerity whether under a Labour or Tory government is always a choice. Clearly Starmer and co have ditched the moral high ground of Corbyn and joined the tory killing
machine of neo liberalism and monetarism. It wrecked the UK under the tories and will do further damage under Starmer and co.

Mab Meirion
Mab Meirion
29 days ago
Reply to  Linda Jones

The Fat Shanks Effect as curated by the latest incarnation of Burke and Hare…

T3DSK1
T3DSK1
29 days ago
Reply to  includemeout

lets hope there isn`t a war because we are in no position to fight one with our present military might

Gwion
Gwion
29 days ago
Reply to  T3DSK1

That’s why they’re only chosing to battle the pensioners and the NHS that’s already on its knees

T3DSK1
T3DSK1
27 days ago
Reply to  Gwion

Perhaps it`s time to take a leaf out of the Chartists book and march on the Capitol.
Or the Westgate Hotel whichever takes your fancy

Last edited 27 days ago by T3DSK1

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