If someone were to read the runes, this first Labour Christmas would not augur well. Not only have we had Keir Starmer’s excruciating ‘illuminations countdown’ in Downing Street – a joyless event if ever there was one – but also the cut-price Christmas Tree in Trafalgar Square – perhaps the mangiest conifer the Norwegians, in their gratitude, have ever been able to dump on us. A Hampshire priest has been savaged for telling children that Santa Claus doesn’t exist and now, we’re informed, Gen Z have declared an outright hostility to turkey and trimmings. Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse, a hoohah has sprung up about the BBC ban on the playing of Sir Starmer and the Granny Harmers’ anti-Labour song ‘Freezing This Christmas’, which has lyrics like:
And she told me that she doesn’t get out of bed till midday,
Because she didn’t want to turn the heating on.
Each time I remember, I’ve paid taxes all my life,
I cry as I wonder: Will I make it?
Will my wife?
‘Merry Christmas, Keir,’ goes the last line. ‘I hope you can sleep at night.’
Ironically, it all started like a fairytale for Labour and their supporters. In his victory speech, Starmer eulogised that ‘a weight has been lifted, a burden finally removed from the shoulders of this great nation. And now we can look forward. Walk into the morning, the sunlight of hope, pale at first but getting stronger through the day, shining once again etc. etc.’
Among the media class, there was rejoicing. Pundits like Mariella Frostrup spoke of the new government looking like ‘grown-ups unified and in charge.’ Andrew Marr gushed that ‘for the first time in many of our lives…Britain looks like a little haven of peace and stability,’ while Treasury Minister Darren Jones simply announced that ‘the adults are back in the room.’
Now Labour are all at sea, the burden’s back again, and the sunlight has vanished. Those ‘adults’ turned out to be, in the words of ‘someone close to Tony Blair’, ‘a bunch of librarians and academics in charge of a government.’
Where did the festive magic go? As we approach Christmas and steam full tilt into the Bleak Midwinter, it’s worth enumerating the gifts Santa Starmer and his band of merry elves have doled out to us. The good children – public sector workers and probable Labour voters – have been handed their stockings, some of which are bulging with goodies. For some train drivers, a pay increase to £81,000 for a four-day week; for junior doctors, a 22 per cent rise over the next two years. Naughty little Rachel Reeves fibbed a bit on her CV, but Santa darn well likes her and she stays right on his lap.
The bad children, meanwhile, have been grabbed by the collar and, from Santa’s Grotto, sent home howling. People with pension schemes, owners of small or large businesses, parents who send their children to even the lowliest private school, those who rent out properties or own land and grow our food – a good dose of cod liver oil and reduced pocket-money for them all!
They’re not the only ones, either. Those with a tiny amount of shares or precious metals to sell had already seen, under the Tories, the allowance for capital gains tax halve from £6,000 to £3,000. Now Reeves has almost doubled the lower tax-rate too, from 10 per cent to 18 per cent. Better forget any asset-liquidation, however poor you are, till 2029.
Then there are tenants hoping to buy council houses. Angela Rayner (who bought her own council home in 2007) has sent a wrecking ball through their dreams, proposing to raise the threshold on occupancy from three years to ten, and to slash maximum discounts to as little as £16,000, depending on the borough. Rural voters face the threat of higher council tax bills next year, as the same Ms. Rayner reportedly diverts funds into towns and cities. The promised fattened turkey has become the scrawniest of broiler hens.
As an early Christmas gift to the grandparents, Labour gave us the Assisted Dying Bill. Soon, the elderly will no longer have to burden the state with their medical expenses, claims for free bus-passes or tedious complaints about the winter heating allowance. As Scrooge puts it in A Christmas Carol: ‘If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.’ The rest of us, before we get there, got 1p off a pint of beer – something of little interest even to confirmed dipsomaniacs or darts players, but eliciting whoops of happiness from Labour MPs.
So ubiquitous is that £22 billion black hole it’s now taken on a life of its own
Gone is that seasonal splendour Scrooge’s nephew spoke so eloquently of in the same book, the sense of Christmas as ‘a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; …when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.’ Instead, Labour seems more like the Grinch, out to steal our happiness and optimism, and impose on us a reality as dull as most of the cabinet:
‘And they’re hanging their stockings!’ he snarled with a sneer,
Tomorrow is Christmas! It’s practically here!
Then he growled, with his Grinch fingers nervously drumming
I MUST find a way to stop Christmas from coming!
Of course, Labour would have you believe they are not the Grinch at all. The Grinch is that dastardly ‘£22 billion black hole’ left to them by the Conservatives. This has become such a trope from Labour – the ‘Black Hole Government’– you now tense for it in every ministerial speech and sense an entire nation groaning along with you when Keir/Rachel/Angela finally refers to it; convincing no one, like an elderly relative blaming their flatulence on the family chihuahua. So ubiquitous is that £22 billion black hole it’s now taken on a life of its own and become a kind of supporting character in the ongoing Starmer-drama – a ghastly, pesky Pimpernel popping up hither and thither, laughing maniacally as it flings its firecrackers and makes its getaway, thwarting all their noblest plans. It is Holmes’s Moriarty, Harry Potter’s Voldemort. Get ready to hear about it a lot more in 2025 and remember: Keir Starmer and his cohorts would be doing truly wonderful things for us if that ‘£22 billion black hole’ – such a shock to Labour, forcing them against their will to break all their pre-election promises – hadn’t reared its ugly head.
“‘Bah,’ said Scrooge. ‘Humbug.’” Or, as Keir himself once put it with raised eyebrows of his opponents: ‘They actually believe what comes out of their mouths.’
Meanwhile, a Merry Christmas to all readers. A pint of beer at my local’s gone down to £5.16 and, before the black hole swallows me, I intend to take full advantage.
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