SIR Keir Starmer disappeared in a tearful bubble of fantasy, serenaded on his way by the appalling ‘activist’ Steve Bray.
What is it about Bray that allows him continually to disrupt politicians going about their proper business in public? Why don’t the Metropolitan Police arrest him and charge him with offences connected to the nuisance he has been causing for years? Two-tier Keir, humiliated on his way out of Downing Street by a fine example of the two-tier policing he has so successfully promoted.
Euromaniac Bray’s Ode to Joy was probably the right tune to accompany the Starmer resignation. In the space of a sentence the outgoing Prime Minister managed to claim credit both for securing trade deals and for ‘rebuilding our relationship with our allies in Europe’.
Let’s forget the allies bit, even if it is a bit hard to stomach the claim that the French are allies. How does Starmer reconcile the entirely incompatible aims of making British trade deals and going back into Europe?
He didn’t bother to explain that one. A fine way to mark the tenth anniversary of the Brexit referendum from the man who once wanted to re-run the plebiscite on the grounds that the electorate got it wrong the first time.
We had from the soon-to-be ex-Premier the claim that he has given defence its greatest spending boost since the end of the Cold War. Erm, didn’t he lose his loyal Defence Secretary a few days ago because he will not in actuality give defence any money at all? There is still no Defence Investment Plan.
We had a list of economic triumphs. If any of that were true, would the electorate dislike him so much and would his party have ditched him?
Even the claim that he walked into Downing Street two years ago isn’t so. He didn’t even last that long.
There is no excuse for Starmer. The other recent Prime Minister who won a big election majority and then blew it at least kept his promise to get Brexit done, after a fashion. Boris Johnson may have been incapable of hard work or mastering detail, and he may have allowed his wife to pick useless staff. I mean, Allegra Stratton? But he did nearly die from covid, and however wrong he got the response to the epidemic, it was a serious problem that he tried his best to deal with.
Sir Keir came in promising to end chaos and just created more. It is hard to think of a single decision he got right. He even finished with a U-turn: what happened to his promise that he would fight for his job? We have for the next few weeks a Prime Minister without support from Parliament or the country. Anybody have any idea how that is going to work?
As I write it looks as if Andy Burnham will have his coronation. Then he will have to decide whether to go for a general election.
My bet would be that he does. Burnham is bright enough to know that he has no mandate and he should be familiar enough with what happened to the other Labour election dodgers of modern memory, Gordon Brown and James Callaghan. In his favour are the continuing and apparently irreconcilable differences on the right.
Autumn election, anybody?
Mind you, I should remind you that I got the Makerfield election entirely wrong – thanks, Nigel Farage – and last time I backed my political hunches at bet365 I lost every penny.
The only safe bet is this: we are in for a bumpy ride.
