Not at all sure about this new Keir Starmer, this action man of passion. He will not tolerate this, and won’t stand for that, and certainly refuses to learn any lessons from the party opposite. No, he won’t. Not going to do that. Sorry.
Nor will he ever let Argentina take the Falklands because his uncle nearly died in the 1982 war. Gibraltar is also safe, even though none of his relatives nearly perished there. As leader of the opposition he was a rules-based civil servant. As prime minister, he bestrides the narrow world.
He’s going to rebuild Britain. He said that out loud. That he was given a “massive majority” to deliver national renewal and he would do it. Big job, that. It’s not like a subscription to Netflix. It’s not automatic. It takes giants to renew a nation. Is he going to get Tony Blair back, and Peter Mandelson?
In his half hour he gave half a dozen other sausages to fortune. Keir Starmer’s famous pork-based products – at least he’ll enjoy eating his words when the time comes.
He is going to “give the country its future back”. “Reset the relationship” between industry and its workers. Create “a new partnership” between bosses and the bossed. Crowd in billions of foreign investment.
Basted in pork fat, spitting and oozing, the sausages turned on fortune’s spit.
He will “house all veterans”. “Give all children the right support and raise standards for them all.” He will clean up the mess left by the last government. Create “tens of thousands of jobs” in offshore wind. Stabilise the economy. Yes, stabilise it.
On and on the sausage machine went.
How long before fortune turns on him? Let’s not be impatient. On the Government’s current trajectory, there should be a general moral, spiritual and national collapse on or around November 12th. At tea time.
On a more practical level, the PM did give one hint of an effective strategy to balance the nation’s books.
Hospices.
One of his more attention-seeking MPs had climbed Mt Kilimanjaro to help his local hospice, and having brought his efforts to the world’s attention asked for his leader’s reaction.
“We want everyone to have quality end of life care,” Keir told the House. Ahhhh! That’s what the Assisted Dying Bill is about. It’s to partner the withdrawal of the Winter Fuel Allowance.
Retirees on the state pension probably cost the state three-quarters of a million pounds in benefits, healthcare and mobility scooters over their rest-of-life. If “life” isn’t too strong a word for it.
So: if we can help an extra 50,000 pensioners on their way, in the most compassionate, high-quality-care way (a painless injection and an exit tax) we can fill that fiscal black hole with them. Every year. And rid the country of 50,000 Tories. As a solution it’s not just economic, it’s political. And for the Left – total.
Not trying to hurry anything along, but who is to be the next prime minister? Nigel Farage arrived this morning in a prime ministerial black Range Rover with driver and bodyguards. Significantly, you might think, he came in the back way, taking us all by surprise.
There is actually a back way in to the British premiership. It requires a collapse of faith in the Labour party (“Surely not!”), an enduring revulsion with the Tories, a continuation of the Lib Dem revival, a Green bounce and a surge of Reform. A fragmented parliament, a disillusioned electorate, a working class enraged by the deindustrialisation of net zero. Out of the smoking hell of a 2029 election, the dark silhouette of a man called forth by destiny.
Or is James Cleverly more likely? Assuming he wins the leadership of the Tory party when Kemi collapses, informed conspiracists predict his position will be deputy prime minister. He will arrange for the return to Parliament in 2026 of his old friend and mentor, Boris Johnson, gracefully vacate the leadership in 2027, and in the event of a narrow Boris-based victory, take up his aimiable place in one of the nation’s great offices of state.
