WHAT’S not to like about some of the noise the government is making lately?
Hiking defence spending, cutting the mind-bending aid budget, slashing the absurdly bloated benefits bill and even attempts to kickstart a new US trade deal.
Can Sir Keir Starmer stick to his guns when the leftie howling from his own side begins?[/caption]
The drumbeat toward the Spring Statement later this month says tax hikes are out and the music will finally stop for Whitehall’s over-bearing spending habits.
And the mood music coming out of the Home Office ahead of their White Paper on tackling legal migration in a couple of weeks suggests an eye-catching wave of visa restrictions is imminent.
I’m reserving judgment while we await Sir Keir Starmer’s Brexit renegotiation, which I fear will be hard to stomach, as well as some tangible NHS reform.
But credit where credit is due. This is the stuff the Tories spent the last few years merely talking about.
Albeit while the Labour Party successfully screamed “austerity” at any effort to trim our massive state or reform the public sector.
Sorely mistaken
While this change of heart in government may be music to the ears of Sun readers and columnists alike, this tack toward the common-sense centre by Starmer is fraught with danger for him.
The real test will be whether ministers can stick to their guns when the howling begins.
Do they really believe this stuff? Probably not.
Have they been forced into it by political and economic necessity? Yes.
Are they going to be met with a wave of opposition from their own side? Oh yes.
The Left is just getting warmed up and Sir Keir needs to watch his flank.
If Labour thought they had bought off their union mates with last year’s public sector pay splurge, they were sorely mistaken.
Even the TUC, which is meant to be a slightly more moderate voice, were out yesterday decrying “Trumpian” rhetoric and policies of this government
Their sin? Saying civil servants should be fired if they are useless, pay should be linked to performance and perhaps it would be a bit more efficient to use more computers in the public sector.
And look at who our old chums at transport union the RMT have just elected to be their new chief.
Devout Irish republican and socialist ideologue Eddie Dempsey is even more hardline than his old baldy boss Mick Lynch.
Another nightmare for Labour will be a second coming of Corbynista crackpot Matt Wrack, formerly chief agitator of the Fire Brigades Union, now poised to lead 300,000 teachers in the NASUWT.
With the half-a-million strong National Education Union already in the hands of another lefty-retread Daniel Kebede, it can’t be too long before this lot start making trouble.
Meanwhile keep an eye on the polling.
The ultra-lefty Greens are steadily climbing from the six per cent they scored in 2024, closer to nine.
Seared in the minds
And the Liberal Democrats — I am loath to say — are playing a smart game by becoming the permanently outraged anti-Trump party.
As Starmer does all he can not to upset the White House, the Lib-Dems are hammering from the left and saying out loud what many, many Labour MPs wish they could about the President.
Meanwhile the pro-Gaza independents have created a formal alliance with exiled Jeremy Corbyn with big plans to topple ministers Wes Streeting, Shabana Mahmood and Rushanara Ali, who all have large muslim populations and wafer-thin majorities in their constituencies.
Luckily the post-Corbyn hard Left is still dominated by clowns like Richard Burgon in Parliament and spiteful cry-bullies like the Guardian’s Owen Jones.
I can’t see the virulently anti-Israel rapper Lowkey becoming the Nigel Farage of the Left, but someone could yet.
The speed at which Corbyn was able to briefly become a thing between 2016 and 2018 is rightly still seared in the minds of Labour strategists.
And the recent German elections were a warning sign for Downing Street.
The governing left-wing SDP got spanked with its worst result since the war, with just 16 per cent of the vote, on a record post-reunification turnout of 82.5 per cent.
While Die Linke — literally The Left — forged from the old Communists came from nowhere to take nine per cent of the vote.
The BSW — hard-Left splitters — hit 4.97 per cent, which was just shy of the target needed for seats, yet hoovering votes away from the mainstream regardless.
Given Labour seized power last year on just 33 per cent of the vote, bleeding out anything near 15 per cent to the left would be curtains.
I may want to believe the Government has the stomach to do what needs to be done, but those numbers speak for themselves.
‘GUESS who’s back’ was Nigel Farage’s refrain at last year’s election, but you’ll never guess who else is back on the scene.
Dominic Cummings has been talking tactics with Reform[/caption]
Yes that’s right, the Barnard Castle eyesight testing, Boris-slaying, partygate string-puller and self-styled guru of “regime change”.
A little birdy tells me he has buried the hatchet with his old foe Farage, who he spent most of the Brexit referendum trying to stop getting on the telly.
Last seen abandoning his efforts to set up a new party and sucking up to Elon Musk with increasingly deranged rantings on X, Cummings has been talking tactics with Reform.
I hear he’s in direct communication with Nige, who I would gently suggest sups with a long spoon.
Given Reform’s MPs can currently fit in the back of a cab yet are already at each other’s throats, I’m not sure adding such a toxic influence into the mix is wise.
Cummings has blown up almost every politician he has ever worked with and that was before he departed the reservation.
A STARTLING job advert to join the BBC’s “Jihadist Media Team”.
I thought for a moment they were formalising their commissioning of documentaries narrated by the children of Hamas terrorists or writing fawning scripts for Jeremy Bowen about the heroic defence of those brave lads against the evil Israelis.
No, apparently the team monitors jihadist media to “gain insight” and ensure “we are following reliable and up-to-date sources”.
That might explain some of the howlers of late.
