I am going to shock Spectator readers and say something in praise of the government. There is one area where they are genuinely, consistently impressive, precise even. Received wisdom states that an institution is generally either malign or incompetent. The Starmer ministry time and again hits the absolute sweet spot where it can reasonably be regarded as both by the maximum number of people possible.
In the House today we turned to a classic of this genre of cock-up: the cancellation of mayoral elections. As everyone knows, cancelling elections is always a sign of a good and healthy government. If anything, Keir Starmer is too popular; I suspect he’s just cancelling one of the first proper verdicts his government would face at the ballot box to give the other parties a chance to catch up. It really is an absurd and dangerous state we are in: a sort of Muppets 1984.
Even the minister had to admit the situation was less than ideal, however, as ever, it couldn’t be the government’s fault. There are no prizes for guessing who was to blame: ‘We are doing it because of the state of local government which the party opposite left.’ Now you might assume that the minister in question was the secretary of state. No such luck, the government is consistently chicken-hearted when it comes to scrutiny, sending out its hauntingly ambitious lower echelons instead. Liars led by donkeys.
Step forward Miatta Fahnbulleh. The MP for Peckham is perfect for this kind of job. She doesn’t appear to be a woman who has ever knowingly used a sentence that a normal person could understand. She is uniquely well-equipped for double-speak, having spent years spinning every aspect of government spending, however ill-devised or wasteful, as ‘investment’ during her period working for a think tank that largely existed to pump out numbers backing Labour policy. The only sign of any loss of composure was the mixing of idioms; ‘We are gripping the mantle’, said Fahnbulleh.
Fahnbulleh’s defence was paper thin. Apparently cancelling elections was actually ‘strengthening partnership and joint working’, a bit like how the fire in February 1933 was actually about strengthening the structural integrity of the Reichstag. ‘THIS is about investment in places’, she said. Maybe the minister genuinely believes this, but I suspect she doesn’t care either way. She is a 21st-century iteration of W. S. Gilbert’s Sir Joseph Porter: ‘I thought so little, they rewarded me by making me a junior in the MHCLG.’
Annoyingly for the government not even their own MPs believed them, former council leader Jim McMahon was scathing in his criticism from the backbenches. The government had broken ‘moral and legal obligations to councils’ by pulling the rug on them. ‘Trust is hard won but easily squandered,’ he said ominously, Quite how anyone trusted a government led by a Brylcreemed Iago in the first place is surely the real question.
The rest of the House was pretty scathing too. The Lib Dem spokesman Zoe Franklin lambasted the government for leaking the information to the press last night, as did Father of the House Sir Edward Leigh. The Leader of Reform was in the party and visibly hopping mad. The Deputy Speaker ticked off Mr Farage for using ‘you’ three times in his tirade. ‘I’m not cancelling elections anywhere!’ she protested. ‘To describe this as a dog’s dinner is offensive to the makers of Pedigree Chum!’ bellowed Gregory Stafford. The Labour benches were pretty bereft of life, I’ve seen more people turn up for the unlocking of a drain than deigned to come to support this.
Starmer’s spokesman later denied that he was behaving like a dictator
Still, as with the unblocking of a drain, there were always some unpleasant globules ready to rise to the top. We got a toady non-question from Andrew Cooper, finishing with ubiquitous Starmerite mush. ‘Does she agree with me that this is the difference a Labour Government makes?‘ There are sea anemones with more backbone than this. We also got a typically preposterous intervention by Peter Prinsley, the sinister doctor from Bury St Edmunds, who has the voice of a British minor royal and the self-entitlement of a Japanese God-Emperor. ‘I know the people of Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket will want to get this right’ he simpered.
Starmer’s spokesman later denied that he was behaving like a dictator; it’s always reassuring when such things even have to be said. In fairness, the difference with most dictators is that they were dab hands at getting stuff done: much more malign than they were incompetent. Sir Keir, by contrast, is both.
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