Sir Keir's government assessed.

 

After almost two years in office, and with the shadows lengthening around it, now seems a good time to attempt a fair assessment on Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership.

In broad-brush terms  he has not led us into an illegal war, mishandled a pandemic or crashed the economy.  By comparison with some of his recent predecessors, these must surely count as strong plusses.  In addition he has played a respectable role in foreign affairs and steered a careful course in avoiding involvement in America’s illegal invasion of Iran and promoting independent European security.

 In a recent (15^th May) article on Guardian On-line Polly Toynbee has listed well over a dozen of what she regards as achievements appropriate for a Labour government.  The main ones are:

·       Strengthening employment rights;

·       Restricting zero-hours contracts;

·       Increasing the minimum wage;

·       Strengthening renters’ rights and ending no-fault evictions

·       Ending new leasehold tenancies;

·       Restricting  the sale of new council houses;

·       Ending the two-child benefit cap;

·       Promotion of green energy;

·       Re-introducing “Best” Start family hubs;

·       Bringing rail services back into public ownership;

·       Banning conversion therapy for gays and transgender people;

·       Providing breakfast clubs for primary school children.

However (the list that follows is mine, not M/s Toynbee’s)

·       Ending the iniquitous two child benefit cap was too late: it should have been done on the first morning of office;

·       The Overseas Aid Budget, already reduced by the Tories form 0.7% of GDP, was further reduced to 0.3%.  Even David Cameron said we should not solve the UK’s fiscal problems on the backs of the world’s poorest;

·       The negative rhetoric on migration, and in particular the “island of strangers” speech, was a disgraceful attempt to fend off  the far right;

·       The massacring of the people of Gaza remained uncondemned;

·       Civil liberties and the right to protest have been restricted.

·       The declaration of Palestine Action is a terrorist organisation, ruled illegal by the Supreme Court, is unworthy and remains Labour policy.

·       The opportunity to escape  the restriction placed on tax increases  thought necessary to win the election, was twice missed, first on the “discovery” of the £20bn “black hole” and then the withdrawal of US support for the defence of Europe.

·       Over-timid attempts to re-align with the European Union.

T  There have been  far too many "u-turns."  One or two indicates that a government is listening and prepared to be responsive.  Too may indicates poor preparation. 

Along with these lapses, unfortunate to say the least, there has been a complete lack  of any attempt to introduce the root and branch reforms which are necessary to  facilitate effective and responsible government. “Good chaps” can no longer be relied upon. We were promised “change” but all Labour has done is tinker at the edges.  Where are the measures to:

·       Reform parliament and make it an effective scrutineer of the government;

·       Stop the “churn”  in both government and the civil service;

·       Ensure responsible ownership and behaviour of the media;

·       Devolve genuine powers and responsibility to the nations, regions and local areas;

·       Reform our outdated taxation system, and end the childish delusion that we can have a decent society without paying for it;

·       Adopt an electoral system that will ensure fair representation  in a society where not two but five (and in some parts seven) parties compete?

On a scale of 1 to 10 I would give the government under Starmer about 5.  I’m not confident Wes Streeting or Angela Rayner would do any better. Andy Burnham or Ed Miliband might.

 

Espensive manoeuvring

 In 2016 the television actress Tracy Brabin was elected as Labour MP for Batley and Spen, the constituency in which I live. (It has now been re-drawn to  become Spen Valley.).  In 2022 M/s Brabin decided she would rather be, or the Labour Party thought she had the best chance of winning the election for, the Mayor West Yorkshire.  

She did win, so resigned as our MP and was replaced after a by-election by another Labour MP, Kim Leadbeater.

The average public cost of a parliamentary by-election is just short of a quarter of a million ponds. (£228, 000 -  it varies with the number of candidates, as a large part of the cost is the Freepost to which each candidate is entitled.)  

 I thought at the time that the Labour party should have born  the public cost of this by-election. 

There was no need for it other than the internal manoeuvrings  of the Labour party.  It arose only becasue the Labour Party felt that Miss Brabin had the best chance of winning, or she preferred the job and she was prepared to break the promises she had made to the electorate of Batley and Spen if she got it.

 This argument applies to the creation of a vacancy in the Makerfield constituency  in order to give Andy Burnham an opportunity to re-enter parliament and challenge Sir Keir Starmer for his job.  

There is no need for it other than that sections of the Labour party think it would be to their advantage.  

So they should pay the public cost.

 Much more expensively, should Mr Burnham win the Makerfield seat he will have to resign as mayor of Manchester and the by-election to replace him is estimated to cost the public purse almost five million pounds (£5 000 000 - it's a very large electorate.)

I'm sure these manoeuvrings feed the public's distrust of our apolitical system.   Politicians  abuse it for what we see as their "games."  It's not just the cost, but the fact that the actors as so willing to break the promisees of devoted service they have made to their previous constituents in order to further their careers.

 And the manoeuvrings are not  always successful.

Way back in 1964 the Labour Party under Huddersfield's own Harold Wilson won the general election (with a narrow majority of four.) But their shadow foreign secretary, Patrick Gordon Walker, failed to win his seat of Smethwick after a bitter and racist Tory campaign. 

Gordon Walker was a senior Labour figure who had been expected to become foreign secretary. A "vacancy" was created  for him a a safe constituency, Leyton, by transferring the Labour winner to the Lords.

PGW fought the by-election - and lost.

The electorate didn't like being manipulated.

 Things may not have changed. 

 

How to be a better Prime Minister

 

As I start writing this (11h15 on Thursday 14^th May) no Labour MP has yet triggered a leadership contest.  Whether they do or don’t, here is some advice to Sir Keir Starmer or whoever replaces him.

Look at the careers of the five previous prime-ministers: Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, and Sunak.  They have each been crashing failures and ousted in ignominy.

 One if the reasons why is they have tried to do too much, be centre stage, and made the job an impossible one beyond the resources of one person.  (The possible exception is Johnson, who thought he didn’t need to do much, just be centre stage.)

So if there were an international crisis, there was the PM, seen to be jetting off to wherever,(we have  foreign secretary for that); a medical crisis, there’s the PM in a white coat, (we have a health secretary for that); an industrial crisis, there’s the PM adorned in hard hat and high-viz jacket (we have an industry  secretary for that); some natural tragedy, there’s the PM  dripping sympathy and assurances that the thoughts  and prayers of the nation are with the victims,(we have a royal family for that, and they do it very well.)

Let us go back to the drawing-board, in this case the Construction.

Ours is not a presidential system, but a cabinet system.  The prime minister  is not exactly the boss, but the “first among equals” (the clue is in the title). His/her job is to prioritise, encourage, cajole, warn  and , when necessary, replace his/her  colleagues.

Then set back and let them get on with the job. If they succeed they get the glory and the government gets the credit.

Certainly that seems to have been the case  in my childhood. 

The minister  who enabled me and my cohort to have a free secondary education was R A Butler.  He wasn’t even in the government when his famous 1944 Education Act was implemented.

Nye Bevan created the National Health Service which has cared for our bodies (and some minds) ever since, and is regarded by many as the Labour Party’s greatest achievement.

Manny Shinwell steered us through the infamous cold spell and resulting  energy and transport crisis of the winter of 1946/7.  ( Hardy any houses had central eating or double glazing and most were heated by one central coal fire, but coal was hard to get. You boomer and generations x, y z and whatnot, nor present day politicians, haven’t a clue what real austerity is.)

The great foreign secretary Ernest Bevin  secured us in the Atlantic Alliance and, for better or worse,  ensured we had our own atomic bomb so that he did not “go naked into the conference chamber."

 I can’t recall what Hugh Gaitskell did to come to our notice, but he was famous enough to feature in a parody Good King Wenceslaus (When old Gaitskell came  in sight, Gathering winter fu – u-  el!).

 Oh yes, and there was a prime minister.  He was Mr Attlee, quiet and self-effacing.  Later he wrote his own epitaph:

Few thought he was even a starter,

There were those who thought themselves smarter, 

But he ended P.M.

C.H. and O.M.

And an earl and a knight of the garter.

 

So, Sir Keir if you survive, and if not whoever succeeds you, please don’t rush around trying to look powerful: set priorities, sit back, pull strings and let your colleagues  bloom.

Are we now a nasty nation?

 Way back in 2002 Conservative politician Theresa May warned hge Tories  that they should be careful not to  be seen as "the nasty party,"  

Sadly , eleven years later, as Home Secretary, she was the one to hire lorries to tour areas of high immigration with posters threatening people who might not be legally here to "Go Home of Face Arrest." 

 Under May the  Home Office deliberately tied to create a Hostile Environment. "  It was officially  intended to deter those whose legal presence might be questionable, but in practice tends to create hostility towards and uncertainty within all those communities who "look a bit different."

And last Thursday 7th May 2026 the acceptability of this policy was confirmed by just about half those who took part in the election.

The combined support for  the Conservatives, who have moved even further to the right under Kemi Badenoch, and Nigel Farage's Reform party, was 47%.  This is massive compared with the raggle-taggle support of the Labour Party (15%) and the Liberal Democrats and Greens each with 14%.

The right wing massive superiority will not go unnoticed by the whichever Tory leader survives to the next general election, and the triumphant Nigel Farage.

Yet are we really so nasty as a nation?  What has happened to our much-vaunted virtues of  tolerance and belief in fair play, not to mention our Judaeo-Christian heritage? 

 The division in British  politics were ably described in an article by  Andy Beckett in the Guardian on the day before the election:

“On one side are millions of left-leaning Britons whose economic prospects are worsening, whose anxieties about climate change are rising, whose horror at Israeli and the US’s  wars is absolute, and whose alienation  from  the compromises of conventional Labour politics is deep. . . . . .

 . . . .another [is] a coalition of interests, including the right wing media, the right of Labour, the Tory party, corporate lobbyists, defenders of Israel and the Anglo-American “special relationship”, and supposedly realistic centrists from the pages of the Financial Times to the deep-state recesses of Whitehall. Protecting the status quo against the disruptive plans of the left has been one of this  loose and adaptable establishment’s  main priorities for decades, arguably for centuries.  And it has rarely been defeated in this struggle.”

One can quibble about the details (I don‘t believe all “progressive’s” economic prospects are worsening.  Some of us are very comfortably situated) but the gist, especially the summary of the forces of the establishment, has the ring of truth. 

 That right-wing coalition is now led by a charlatan whose greatest gift is persuasive communication by appealing to our lowest instincts.  He is also good a gaining financial support from those interested in maintaining their own positions financial advantage.  Not all of them may love in this country

 Form where did all the money to finance Reform's incredibly successful campaign come? 

Whether Sir Keir Starmer survives as Prime Minister or not,the Labour Government with its massive  parliamentary majority should waste no time in imposing the strictest possible rules for donations to and the financing of political parties.

 The rich and unaccountable should not be allowed to use their money to poison the electorate.

 I am reluctant to accept that we are really a nasty people - but we are easily led astray.