It is difficult to gauge who is the more discombobulated by the Labour government’s recent Damascene conversion to a political viewpoint roughly approximating to common sense – the Labour left, Reform or the Tory right. It is equally difficult to believe that the current administration is the same one which took office on 4 July last year, so wildly different is its apparent ideological viewpoint.
You will remember Keir Starmer’s first 100 days without much affection, I suspect. This was a government which seemed to delight in its staggering ineptitude, whether it be David Lammy and co conspiring with the Mauritians to reach a settlement on the Chagos Islands which infuriated the Chagossians, enraged the USA, cost us a lot of money, weakened our defences and pleased only the Chinese; or Rachel Reeves designing a Budget cunningly calculated to destroy completely what remained of our spavined economy. Add into the mix the personal enrichment of these dreadful politicians – the executive boxes, the gifts of middle-manager suits, the concert freebies – and one came to the conclusion that this was shaping up nicely to be the worst government in living memory, staffed by grasping oafs. Worse than Heath. Worse than Brown.
It seemed, too, that Starmer might not be too long for this world, nor would he be particularly saddened if the burden was suddenly taken from his shoulders. He looked perpetually constipated and tetchy, as if he had eaten nothing but rotten cheese for a month. The clock ticked, much as clocks do – and one counted down the days until Wes Streeting took over. Well, Wes did, anyway.
Donald Trump’s victory changed everything, much as it is changing the politics of the entire globe right now. It was a blinding flash for St Keir of Tarsus which suddenly occasioned him – and the rest of his cabinet, give or take one or two halfwits – to believe that a new direction might be in order and that maybe he should be listening more carefully to a few voices, not least that of Morgan McSweeney, but beyond him the likes of Jon Cruddas and Lord Glasman (not coincidentally the only senior Labour figure invited to Trump’s inauguration). It is a signal of how rapidly the intelligent bits of the left imbibed Trump’s rhetoric and fuck-you dynamism, took it on board and calculated: now, how might we do something similar? And so, in the space of less than two months after Trump’s gleeful accession, we have a government which is quite unrecognisable from the one which took office eight months ago. It has shape-shifted.
Let us count the ways. The first and most obvious was the Prime Minister’s decision to slash the overseas aid bill almost in half and shove the money into defence, with a pledge to increase the proportion of GDP spent on defence to 2.5 per cent. I am told that there is an aspiration to raise it still further, perhaps to 4 per cent. Almost halving overseas aid cost Starmer a cabinet minister (and I am sure we all greatly mourn the departure of Anneliese Dodds). It also hacked off the left, which seems to believe we should spend nothing whatsoever on defence because we are an inherently wicked country with a wicked history and that if anyone wants to attack us then they are probably right to do so.
Donald Trump’s victory was a blinding flash for Sir Keir of Tarsus
The defence stuff was a big deal. It is not often that Labour governments cut overseas aid, even if they know – much as do the rest of us – that it’s all a gigantic scam and the money goes to greedy third-worlders on the make. Less important, but still indicative, was the Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy’s address while delivering the inaugural Jennie Lee Lecture, in which she lambasted authors and activists who withdrew from artistic events over the perceived political or national ties of corporate sponsors. She regarded this as ‘self-defeating virtue-signalling’ which risked ‘gagging society’. Way to go, Lisa. But Labour turning on the liberal luvvies is really not what one expected.
There then followed Streeting, determined to get himself involved in a spot of therapeutic Doge-ing. In one fell move NHS England, an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy which costs us £600 million per year, was scrapped. The various news programmes turned to members of the previous Conservative government for observations, presumably believing that they would castigate Streeting and Starmer – but they didn’t. They mumbled, quietly: ‘Um, yep. Probably for the best, frankly.’ Even Jeremy Hunt, who oversaw NHS England’s early years on behalf of a grateful nation, was equivocal.
And then, of course, there are the cuts in benefits. It is as if a sense of realism has suddenly gripped hold of Starmer. Welfare Secretary Liz Kendall has an aspiration to cut benefits by £5 billion by 2030. Frankly I would times that figure by ten and insist the whole thing gets done by the end of next month – but still, this is a start, is it not? And then there’s that discombobulation I talked about, with the left dutifully screaming blue murder and the Conservatives looking puzzled and sheepish. You could have done that, couldn’t you, you Tories? But you didn’t.
The amount of money we spend on people who are not, by any normal definition of the word, ‘sick’ is both unfair and unsustainable. A general acceptance that there’s an awful lot of overdiagnosis going on is the next step in bringing a degree of realism and fairness to our benefits system. It’s a Blue Labour notion: you reward the people who do the right thing, who work hard, save money, do the best for their families and society. Just as it’s a Blue Labour thing to take the defence of your nation state very seriously indeed. It’s also Blue Labour to put the rights of the indigenous Brits before those of illegal migrants and to reduce, dramatically, the endless flow into our country. Haven’t seen much of that happening yet, but one lives in hope.
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