Tag: keir-starmer

Several topics this week and none of them good…

~ Julian Samways ~ Leave a comment

No one political event this week requires a dedicated blog. Three occurrences have all raised issues of importance, none of which fill you with optimism…

The tin ear of Sunak

This blog rated Sunak as a competent technocrat who would restore a degree of sanity to the Conservative Party. At the same time, it also predicted he wouldn’t particularly resonate with the electorate. Too true. His lack of political nous is somewhat of an understatement. He has tried to re-boot his premiership many times in many different directions and yet to no beneficial effect whatsoever. He was to be the competent steady ship with a firm grasp of economics, but then became an agent of change, cancelling HS2 of all places in Manchester and announcing a longer-term ban on smoking having just said he wanted to cut government interference in people’s lives. Then in a huge U-turn, in comes Cameron (no change there then…) and a bunch of moderate Tories to the Cabinet having partly given up pandering to the Right of his party. The only policy Sunak has been consistent on is Rwanda, which he doesn’t even believe in, and it has been a disaster. This week, in an interview with the vile Piers Morgan, he even got drawn into a £1000 bet that he would get illegal migrants on a plane to this wonderful place before the next election. What was he thinking of?

Adding insult to injury, on Wednesday, at PMQs, still pursuing culture wars as a dividing line with Labour, Sunak makes a crass joke about transsexuality whilst the mother of the murdered teenager, Brianna, is in the parliamentary building. Oh dear. He should stick to his core economic competencies, ignore the Tory Right (they have nowhere to go this side of an election) and protect his dignity. He is no political tactician and now we all know it.

Hobson’s choice…

Labour’s £28bn U-turn

Subsidising green initiatives has been a huge boost to the US economy. But Labour has now run scared of a similar policy in the UK, which was one of its few differentiating election pledges, cancelling the commitment on Thursday. The party seems to stand for nothing now except not being the Tories. Starmer comes across as believing in very little, has created confusion about what he wants to achieve in government and, frankly, looks shifty. The Tories are in such a dire mess, it probably won’t make any difference come election time. Labour is set for a huge victory, but it bodes ill for its competence in government.

Biden’s cognitive decline

This blog thought he could get away with it. Biden would beat Trump regardless, having actually run (even if by delegation) a competent administration. Trump has his own issues with cognitive decline, and, in a highly polarising election, voters would ultimately rally around Biden in the face of the awful consequences of a second Trump presidency.

Hobson’s choice again…

This may still be the case but just recently Biden has mixed up Mitterrand with Macron, Kohl and Merkel and Ukraine with Iraq. Now, devastatingly, the Special Counsel appointed to examine Biden’s handling of top secret files found he had mishandled them but declined to pursue a legal case on the basis his memory has “significant limitations” and accordingly Biden would present himself “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”. In a press conference to dismiss these findings, the outraged Biden subsequently confused the presidents of Mexico and Egypt when asked to comment on the Middle East. Oh dear indeed. Three quarters of voters, whilst being no fans of Trump, have voiced serious concerns about Biden running again. It seems the Democrats are taking a huge gamble with Biden, and it is at the whole world’s expense.

Sunak, Starmer, Biden, Trump? What a choice…

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Tories head towards the abyss…

~ Julian Samways ~ Leave a comment

Sunak seemed such a breath of fresh air. Polite, diligent, hard-working, technically skilled, good at PMQs. It seemed as if he would rescue the Tories, at least to the extent of minimising their defeat.

No longer. Weighed down by a fundamentally divided party, attacked at every turn by the angry Right, it seems as though he has lost his way. Sunak no longer resonates with the public as his strategic policy choices become increasingly confusing. He was the ‘change candidate’, always a struggle after 13 years of Tory rule, but brought back Cameron. He cancelled HS2 to Manchester whilst in… Manchester. And although it might not resonate very widely, as leader of a party that is meant to be in favour of a smaller, non-intrusive State, he announced he would make it an offence for anyone born after 2009 to be sold tobacco. A little populist spat with Greece over the Elgin marbles recently just made Sunak look small and added to questions about his political judgement.

Things are going from bad to worse…

A solid Autumn statement was too little too late. The tax burden is still rising, public services are still failing, and no one is really listening anymore because few believe the Tories will be around in the next few months to implement any longer-term tax and spend plans.

And then the obsession with illegal (and legal) migration. Sunak has refused to face down the Right on this issue, managing to seem weak, incompetent and illiberal all at the same time. Surely, he has nothing to lose. Whatever treaty amendments are made with Rwanda, the policy is now in tatters. Costing £165 million and rising, one doubts a single plane will take off to this destination before the next General Election. He has ignored or is ignoring sensible, practical solutions advocated by his party’s Left, such as constructive cooperation with the EU, because he feels he needs higher profile, more definitively ‘red meat solutions’. The problem with this approach is that he upsets moderate Tory voters and fails to appease his right-wing who are watching the rise of Reform in the polls with increasing alarm.

Net legal migration figures have soared, illegal migration still feels out of control. The new Home Secretary, James Cleverly, has had his past moderate comments on the topic thrown back at him, consequently plummeting down the popularity league table amongst Tory Party members. Crazy.

Sunak appears harried and who could blame him if he has had enough. The Tories need to leave office, move to the Right in private and look forward to many years in the wilderness, before regaining commonsense with an expanded, more representative grassroots base, frankly without the need of a fair proportion of their current membership at all.

Starmer has become a lucky politician and is being treated as the next Prime Minister, which in itself, allows him to gain stature. In the face of all the uneasy compromises Starmer made to become leader, just this week he embraced Thatcher and fiscal conservatism, straight out of the Tony Blair playbook. He can afford to because brutally, suddenly, his Tory opponents have collapsed.