Month: May 2026

Labour now unfit to govern but what is the alternative?

~ Julian Samways ~ Leave a comment

Nigel Farage must be rubbing his hands with glee even as he faces a formal enquiry into his £5 million gift from a crypto billionaire. Whatever Reform and its leader get up to it cannot be more embarrassing than the current activities of the Labour Party.

Starmer maybe a decent person but to date he has been a poor prime minister. Does this merit a challenge to his leadership? Would his colleagues be any better? Almost certainly not and nothing justifies the current political circus as the country struggles with multiple problems.

Labour has got itself into an awful mess as it grapples with changing its leader. Equal support for Starmer, Burnham and Streeting. Ministers and backbench MPs in equal numbers calling for Starmer to go or stay. As authority drains away from Starmer’s government, it now seems less likely Starmer will hold on. It feels as if the excitable media is getting its way.

Whilst we await Streeting’s rush to challenge Starmer before Burnham gets into parliament you may ask why doesn’t he concentrate on turning round the NHS? Why doesn’t Burnham concentrate on running Manchester? Why doesn’t Angela Rayner concentrate on sorting out her tax affairs? Why doesn’t the government govern?

Changing prime ministers every five minutes is no solution to improving how the country is run. Just ask the Tories. The country currently feels ungovernable, certainly not governable by second rate politicians and the public are entitled to despair. Not only over the behaviour of the Labour Party but because there seems no other alternative.

That 25% support for Reform, putting it in first place in the polls looks more significant by the hour although not yet enough.

Not yet two years after a general election, political gridlock? Is that now the only option? How thoroughly depressing.

Keep Calm and Carry On…

~ Julian Samways ~ Leave a comment

No pictures today. The blog is being written on a ship, mid-Atlantic…

But with access to all the usual news channels it is easy to track the UK’s local election results. And, well, no surprises really. All the parties mostly did as expected. Confirmation of a wholly fractured electoral landscape was made clear.

First, Reform. With c25% of the vote their success is of course a reflection of voter disillusionment with established parties. They are now in the driving seat to run a swathe of councils. Their record to date has often been chaotic although making little fundamental difference to any council’s activities. Only time will tell if they are able to survive voter scrutiny. We will hear far more from Farage in the coming months but he has one major problem. He and his party are loathed by three quarters of the public and this isn’t going to change between now and the General Election.

For the other parties, ex Labour, the Tories’ electoral irrelevance was confirmed. The disappointing performance of the LibDems highlighted for anybody taking notice. The Greens and SNP did well but fell short of the more optimistic expectations. Plaid Cymru saw off Reform in Wales. Good for them. Remember, at one stage, Reform was expected to come top.

That only leaves Labour… umm…

The elections were a disaster for the government. The sheer unpopularity of Starmer and his ineffectual administration stripped Labour bare.

The path to recovery, however, is really quite simple. Lay out a clear policy plan and deliver. Is Starmer the man to do this? Almost certainly not, as shown by the bizarre appointments of Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman to vague government roles. But, there is no alternative amongst his colleagues. They are mostly all tainted, more left-wing or useless. Often all three and that includes Andy Burnham. Oh dear indeed…

Populists thrive when moderates fail. Speak to the Democrats about Trump is one glaring example. So, in this respect, it was a good night for Reform. There is currently no alternative to the current mob in power including Starmer and Reform can afford to sit it out, basking in the electoral sunlight.

Starmer is likely to be safe for now. Changing prime ministers every five minutes doesn’t work. Keep Calm and Carry On or to put it another way, wait for something to turn up is probably the only option. What a choice… We are three years from a General Election. After the past week it suddenly feels just around the corner…

UK politics: the worst of all worlds

~ Julian Samways ~ Leave a comment

Towards the start of the Labour government’s tenure, this blog made the case that all non-populists should wish Starmer well, regardless of whether they voted Labour. If he was a successful Prime Minister, it would be good for the country generally and, in particular, head off the lure of Reform UK and populists generally.

Hopes were high. The antithesis of a dishonest populist, Starmer had previously held a big government job and would bring competence, process and transparency to his role undiluted by ego.

Solid but just not political enough…

Those hopes seem a long time ago. Taking, albeit minor, gifts, trying to place his former communications head as an ambassador, endless personnel changes handled charmlessly are bad enough, but the Mandelson hire is a real mess. The incompetence, lack of political nous in approaching him and the subsequent fallout is breathtaking. Why the hell was he given the job before being fully vetted? The media continues to feed off revelation after revelation, hysterically pushing Starmer to the brink. However, this blog has always argued the Mandelson saga and all the other missteps are not enough on their own to justify Starmer’s resignation as none of his colleagues would be any better at the job of PM. What a position to be in; the worst of all worlds and a terrible indictment of the quality of today’s politicians.

But…

It is Starmer’s overall inability to do the job of PM which may do for him in the end. Unprepared for government, incredibly he feels any specific political agenda is an unnecessary distraction from his job as, well, the political leader of his country. Need we say more…

Benefits reform has stalled, an anti-growth agenda introduced despite the rhetoric to support business, solutions to the social care crisis kicked into the long grass, house building becalmed, the defence review frozen. The list goes on. U-turns are commonplace as Starmer loses his nerve on policy after policy and the parliamentary majority, now skin deep, remains unused.

Starmer is simply not political enough and has squandered his election victory. The government has no direction, no agenda and has been rudderless since the start. That is his real failure, not Mandelson. He is the Labour equivalent of Rishi Sunak. Decent, basically competent but out of his depth when it comes to the art of politics.

The relatively competent conduct of foreign affairs in an almost impossible environment no longer seems enough. Domestic governance is so poor that Labour’s trajectory is to be wiped out in May’s local elections with the chances of turning things around before the General Election, not due for another three years, looking more difficult by the day.

So, what choice do we have? Labour’s lack of reality that blow hard, lightweight Andy Burnham or Angela ‘tell it as it is’ except on tax Rayner or failed infuriating former leader, Ed Miliband, is its and our saviour is for the birds. Today’s Tories and LibDems also offer very little. No wonder the electorate turns to extremes in frustration as will be shown by next week’s local elections (more on that after the results without the media’s hysteria about the wipeout of Labour…).

Against this backdrop, it still seems we should stick with Nurse Starmer for fear of something worse. But it feels like an increasingly big ask…