No doubt Lord Alli should not have been given a 10 Downing Street pass, but that is true of most who work there. BB (Before Blair), roughly 100 people were in the building. Today, it is 300. The quality of government has deteriorated as the numbers have swelled. At least Lord Alli has been genuinely useful. It is officially declared that he gave Sir Keir Starmer ‘multiple pairs of glasses’ worth £2,485. It was an inspired move. Until about April this year, Sir Keir did not wear spectacles on public occasions. Observers concentrated on his startled and unhappy-looking eyes because they were the only striking thing in his oddly inexpressive face. Once Lord Alli had found him the right frames (slightly reminiscent of old ‘National Health specs’, but with a reassuringly expensive finish), Sir Keir looked avuncular, wiser, more prime ministerial. An election landslide was in the bag.
Labour priggishness inevitably invites accusations of sleaze to mark its first hundred days. The charges are rather weak, so far. However, the fact that Jess Sargeant, who oversaw the unit for constitutional change at Labour Together, is now deputy director of the government’s Propriety and Constitution Group shows how tangled the ‘ethical’ web has become. Labour Together are the stormtroopers of Starmerite moderation, fanatically loyal to Morgan McSweeney, Labour’s Dominic Cummings. They are ill placed to inhabit the rarefied world of propriety, as defined in the civil service rulebook. Ms Sargeant is not neutral, and presumably not supposed to be. Therefore her appointment infringes propriety, as does Sue Gray, who made a similar error in reverse, moving from running government propriety and ethics to running Sir Keir. Starmerites are the political equivalent of Albigensians. They see themselves as ‘parfaits’, free of sin. Voters may soon disagree.
The very first item in the Democratic party’s 2024 ‘platform’ – roughly what we call a manifesto – published in time for its national convention in Chicago last week, was a ‘land acknowledgment’: ‘We gather together to state our values on lands that have been stewarded through many centuries by the ancestors and descendants of Tribal Nations who have been here since time immemorial.
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