A Vote of No Confidence

I like Sir Kier Starmer. He’s a decent bloke. Smart. Boring. Boring should be a good quality in a politician. All politicians should be boring. It should be a box on the application form. If politicians and politics isn’t boring, things have gone terribly wrong. That’s how I see it. Kier saw Corbyn out the door. Kudos for that. And he guided Labour to a landslide election win on a small vote share without promising anything beyond ‘we won’t raise income tax’. He banked on an electoral policy of do nothing while their opponents repeatedly committed acts of huge self harm. It worked. Sort of. It worked up to the point of election day. Having assumed power, the expectation of Labour voters was that their own personal manifestos would all be fulfilled. Everything and anything from rejoining the EU, or the customs union, to massive benefits spending and on to executing the rich. Future disappointment was baked into the win.

In the event, the most important thing Starmer’s party has needed to do is raise income tax. But that was the thing he promised not to, so instead there’s been a complex set of complicated business-punishing rises that still haven’t filled the gap. There have been policy successes. But the failures have been more noticeable. The abandonment of the welfare reforms were caused by an act of self-sabotage. Other policies, such as the digital ID card, were self inflicted crises. Digital IDs are a perfectly reasonable idea in theory. But why propose a policy you know will be stunningly controversial, impossible to pass, with little to no real world gains if you could get it through parliament.

The number of U-turns has become farcical. Farming inheritance tax, grooming gang probes, winter fuel payments, workers right and so on. Then there was the appointment of Mandelson to be the US ambassador. Handing back the Chagos Islands? Why? What is the great thinking behind that. It simply hasn’t been explained in a way that the average Brit will understand, and my suspicion is that it’s just another ideological tic from a government that doesn’t quite know what it’s doing. And this weekend there was the refusal to allow the US to use bases in the UK and Diego Garcia. A decision which was rational, moral and the right thing to do - and utterly wrong. I’ll explain…

Years ago, maybe decades ago, I read Alastair Campbell’s diaries. One thing has always stuck with me. He argued that the key to successful politics was to work out how something would end, and to get there first. I think he’s right. And I think it is clear for all to see that Kier Starmer, alack and alas, has not gotten the memo. He is repeatedly the last to arrive at the finishing line. He was always going to end up in a situation where UK jets would have to provide support for the US against Iran, and that they would fly out of their UK bases. 

This can’t go on. Chopping and changing leadership is an act of last resort. But if it is necessary, it’s necessary. In two or three years we will have a General Election. I do not think Reform will win. Their current polling is likely their high point. It’s not much better than Labour’s current numbers, which are likely their low point. Labour can win. But the folk in the PLP need to accept what is obvious, and act. I have no vote in this. But if I did, I’ve made what it would be known today. We can all see where this is going to end….