Keir Starmer’s rose garden speech today should be seen as a companion piece to last month’s melodramatic Commons statement by Rachel Reeves on the condition of the public finances.
In each case the purpose was clear – to lower expectations and buy the government more time by heaping extra blame on the last Conservative administration for the state of the nation.
So there we have it – any union that can bring a key industry to a standstill now knows there is a PM in office who will always seek to buy it off
How much validity there is in a pitch saying things are much worse than they expected is highly debatable. But it was both predictable and indeed predicted that Labour would do this.
As Prime Minister, Starmer naturally gave a rather broader assessment than his Chancellor had in her Commons statement of four weeks ago. But the core message was the same. Prisoner early releases – didn’t want to do them, the fault of the Tories. Means-testing the winter fuel allowance – didn’t want to do it, the fault of the Tories. An impending ‘painful’ Budget – don’t want to do it, the fault of the Tories.
Inviting in an audience of normal people – ‘apprentices, teachers, nurses, small business owners, firefighters’ – enabled Starmer to make another highly political point when he cited No. 10 and its garden as having been ‘once used for lockdown parties’. Both were now ‘back in your service’, he boasted.
Yet everyone will surely agree that despite the high moral tone, at some point Labour will start to be judged on whether it looks like turning things round. And this is where the Prime Minister’s speech was most lacking.
He claimed that the recent riots did not merely reveal the ‘sickness’ afflicting Britain, but also in their aftermath revealed the cure. This was apparently to be found ‘in the coming together of a country’ to clear up the mess the morning after.
But a spirit of togetherness depends on every part of society feeling that the rules of the game are fair. And yet while Starmer spoke frequently of the white riots, there was not even a line in his speech about the orgy of crime at the Notting Hill Carnival including a spate of stabbings which have left three people fighting for their lives in hospital. Two Tier Keir, anyone?
And he also advertised his weakness in the face of trades union militancy by setting in place a principle that concessions should be made to strikers if their conduct is causing knock-on economic damage: ‘I defy anyone to tell me that you can grow the economy when people can’t get to work… or can’t return to work because they are stuck on an NHS waiting list,’ he said in reference to the big no-strings pay rises for train drivers and junior doctors.
So there we have it – any union that can bring a key industry to a standstill now knows there is a PM in office who will always seek to buy it off. If he really thinks such a situation will be conducive to economic growth then he will soon find out differently.
According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, the most recent disappointing rise in recorded public borrowing ‘appears related to strong growth in public sector pay’. So with this approach Starmer and his gang are likely to create more black holes than they eradicate via impending tax rises. And those tax rises themselves are bound to further disincentivise enterprise and hard work anyway.
Labour could perhaps get lucky with the global economic climate. Its moves on streamlining the planning system could possibly pay off to some extent too. But the overall likelihood is that Starmer’s administration will preside over continued economic sluggishness and further debilitating declines in social solidarity and national unity.
The relationship between the British public and its new Labour government is the kind of loveless marriage of which veteran wedding-goers are liable to say on their drive home from the reception: ‘I give it a year tops until it is on the rocks.’
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