As regular readers will know, I really don’t have much faith in any of the London based parties. Generally, the labels switch but the policy platform remains pretty much the same. But I have to confess that even I was amazed at just how quickly the wheels came off the new Government.
From the first budget statement from Rachel Thieves which singled out the most vulnerable for attack by withdrawing the Winter Fuel Payments to an estimated 10 million pensioners the trajectory has been on a way one ticket to the bottom of the barrel where it will no doubt collide with what is left of Labour’s left wing credentials. It’s not often that I feel sorry for Tony Blair’s former spin doctor in chief Alistair Campbell, but he must be frustrated beyond belief as he watches the bunch of amateurs who now carry out his role flounder with neither clue nor skill.
The one group of people who will always turn up on polling day are the elderly, where voting is still seen as a civic duty. Yet this is the one group Labour single out for punishment! With a supposed £22 billion black hole to fill it’s hard to understand just why the £1.2 billion which this measure is supposed to save is the only answer! Campbell would never have allowed this kind of farcical scenario. Even if Blair’s government had decided on such a measure he would have “strongly advised” that it be delivered as part of a plan not in splendid isolation. Hiding it among other measures would at least have given a veneer of cover.
No doubt when Rachel Thieves made her announcement in July, it was anticipated that the fury would have died down over the summer, but it was still raging when the new crop of Labour MPs returned at the beginning of September. And dutifully trooped through the voting lobby to kick their new constituents in the teeth. Change, they cried in June, aye, right!
But finally the story was forced off the front pages as details emerged of just how quickly the new Labour “leadership” had emulated the tories in finding their way to the trough. Starmer’s appeal for us all to tighten our belts felt a bit unreal when we found out that his belts and everything else was bought and paid for by yet another peer. Rarely has the jibe of Labour being bought and sold for tory gold looked so apt!
As this storm grows arms and legs with Starmer’s utter lack of any political antenna on full display as he tried to justify his record on freebies when it emerged that his Deputy and then his Chancellor had also discovered the trough. Cue a u-turn! Oh, we’re sorry, we won’t take any more free clothes! But what about the holidays, concert and footie tickets
With an estimated personal fortune of some £8 million he couldn’t even afford to buy his own tickets when he was in opposition. No wonder Sue Gray is paid more than Starmer, she buys her own clothes!