Sir Keir Starmer thinks all he has to do is let the Tories sink – that’s not happening
I WILL be the first to confess that I never held out much hope for this Government.
Like many voters, I am not impressed by the Conservative Party’s attempt to run our country since 2010.
The last six years in particular have been a shambles, for the country as well as the Tories.
Remember, this is a party that after the Brexit vote gave us not only the tortuous Theresa May years but the agonising Liz Truss days.
So when Rishi Sunak was imposed on the country by Conservative MPs, I thought, “The gig is up”.
Sunak seemed a competent enough bloke. But they cannot keep delivering Prime Ministers as though trying out players in a junior football league.
Add to that the migration crisis, cost-of-living crisis, inflation and much more and I took it as read that the Tories were headed towards the exit.
But as they often say, politics is in large part a matter of luck. And just as the Conservatives were lucky at the last election to be running against Jeremy Corbyn, it seems Rishi might have a secret weapon in Sir Keir Starmer.
In some ways Starmer should be a shoo-in for PM. A former Director of Public Prosecutions, he has shown that he can tie up his own shoelaces, which is more than can be said for some party leaders in recent years.
And given that by the next election the Conservatives will have been in power for almost 15 years, it seemed obvious that a change of government is coming.
For months the talk in Westminster has been over whether the next election will be a 1997 moment for the Tories, or worse. But in 1997 the Labour Party had a significant asset — Tony Blair.
Whatever you think of him now, at the time he came across as an inspiring and moderate leader.
Much of what Blair promised may have come to nothing or worse. But he felt like a clean sweep.
It was not just that the Tories had given us decline and sleaze. It was that Blair promised something new, and reviving for our country.
By comparison, consider Sir Keir. He has shown himself willing to take on some of the most rancid elements of his own party, including Corbyn.
But that aside, what is he offering?
Other than not being the party of farthest-left radicals, what exactly is Starmer’s plan for Britain?
What do he or any of his front bench have to say about how to get Britain up and firing on all cylinders again?
It is a mystery to me. In fairness, it may be a mystery to him.
Labour frontbenchers crop up on the radio, television and sometimes even in the House of Commons to talk about things like the cost-of-living crisis. But they provide no answers.
Sure, they can come up with the occasional crowd-pleasing Labour classic like taxing the rich more.
But their grasp of basic numbers once again seems to be elementary. They can’t even agree on such policies.
Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves says Labour aren’t planning to increase the historic tax burden. Shadow Deputy Leader Angela Rayner says they are.
At the sillier end of politics many Labour MPs are still genuinely incapable of saying what a woman is.
Sir Keir himself has only just managed to agree that, on balance, women probably do not have penises.
Poor performance
Such poor performance is starting to make itself felt in the polls.
From being a dead cert for the next election, Labour are starting to lose ground.
A poll out this week, asking who would be the most capable Prime Minister, put Sunak and Starmer on level pegging.
Another recent poll showed that 47 per cent of voters think Sir Keir has done poorly in setting out a vision for government.
These are not the worst figures suffered by a recent Labour leader. But they show an interesting turnaround.
Starmer has done slightly worse than many people expected, Sunak slightly better.
Much can happen before the 2024 election, and there are lots of reasons to judge the Conservatives harshly.
But on issue after issue, from our border security to the safety of our children and international trade, Sunak’s government has shown itself competent and surprisingly bold.
Starmer seems to have hoped that the Conservatives would just sputter along and head toward inevitable electoral defeat.
He seems to have thought that all he needed to do was watch them sink while staying steady himself.
But it is beginning to look like the ride isn’t going to be all that easy — and Starmer may sink first.
Gutter politics
IN an effort to woo voters, the Labour Party’s comms team this week released a new advert. Talk about politics of the gutter.
The poster is a photo of Rishi Sunak.
The caption reads “Do you think adults convicted of sexually assaulting children should go to prison? Rishi Sunak doesn´t.”
It goes on to give some manipulated figures to make Sunak look weak on child-rapists.
I wonder how the thousands of young girls raped in Labour-controlled areas including Rotherham and Rochdale feel about this?
For years Labour councillors, Labour police commissioners and even Labour MPs covered up or ignored the scandal of Pakistani-dominated “grooming gangs”.
This was child-rape on an industrial scale. And it all happened under Labour´s watch.
Sunak and his Home Secretary have promised to bring the sickos to justice and stop this happening again.
Meanwhile Labour tried to select one of the Rotherham councillors most involved in this cover-up as their Parliamentary candidate at the next election.
He has since had to stand down, saving the area’s voters a job.
We're not a hotel
I WAS interested to read a story this week about the migrant barges.
This is the news that the Government is trying to stop housing asylum seekers in hotels.
Instead, there might finally be extra facilities to put up the historic numbers arriving here.
The proposal is to put 500 single adults on the barge, floating off Portland Harbour in Dorset.
Sure enough, some have threatened to disappear on to the streets rather than live on a boat moored off a famous beauty spot.
The open-borders Lefties are also out in force: How dare the Government not put them in hotels that many hard-working Brits can’t afford?
It is utterly impossible to keep allowing tens of thousands of migrants into the country and for the taxpayer to keep putting them up in hotels.
Likewise, when some of the migrants claim they’d rather be on the streets, they reveal something important.
Something some of us have said for a very long time.
Britain is not a last resort for them, it is a destination of choice.
Many are here because they like the generous and free services that we provide.
If they don’t like our accommodation then perhaps they should stop in one of the many other safe countries they have already travelled through.
Beat it, nasty Nicola
I BET Nicola Sturgeon is pondering her own fall from grace at the moment.
Fancy going from fawned-over Scottish First Minister to having your house searched by police in just a few weeks.
The truth is that all the woes that have befallen Nicola are of her own doing.
During her time in power every single thing about Scotland declined.
From education to healthcare, to the horrific figures that show the country is the drug-death capital of Europe.
In her time in office, Sturgeon could have addressed some or all of these things.
Instead she was too busy grandstanding, blaming the English for everything and sucking up to Brussels.
It’s high time a light was shone on nasty Nicola and the ugly fiefdom she made.
Oh do Beeb quiet
WE hear a lot about BBC “impartiality”.
Mostly because the BBC finds it very hard not to show its left-wing bias in covering politics.
But, as The Sun reported yesterday, now BBC bias has even hit Eurovision.
Fans reacted furiously to a piece on the BBC website ahead of next month’s contest bad-mouthing some of the acts.
It made predictions over who would do well and who wouldn’t.
Which included kicking some of the acts from countries like Slovenia that can’t afford costly PR campaigns.
This is all strange because the BBC is host of the extravaganza, where the UK will be represented by Mae Muller, above.
I’ve heard of people being judge, jury and executioner. But trying to be judge, jury and host is a tough act to pull off.
Prince Tarry
WE are still waiting to hear whether or not Harry and Meghan are going to be Coronation chickens.
Will the California couple turn up to King Charles’s Coronation in May?
They seem to want to keep everyone guessing – including Harry’s family.
My suspicion is that they are aware the public, never mind the Royal Family, may not welcome them after their tell-all tittle-tattle.
If the couple came with their children then I doubt anyone would boo them.
But Harry and Meghan insist that their kids have no Press attention.
Only the couple themselves have the right to invade their own privacy.
Still, how unbelievable is this? Only a decade ago Harry would have been cheered to the rafters at a public event.
Thirty years ago Camilla would have been booed.
Had Harry married someone who put duty over celebrity, perhaps he would be looking forward to the day as much as everyone else is.