POLITICS CORNER

[Tripps]

More evidence of the PM's plight. From the 'Comments section' elsewhere. My view is that there's always the possibility that he remains a closet Marxist, and wishes the collapse of the nation, and it is all done by intention. Ably assisted by Mr Milliband and his hasty net zero nonsense.

It's hard to imagine there are still those who have stopped seeing what's in front of them, and would never not vote Labour.

Good piece by Allister Heath in the DT - I think Starmer will be long remembered as the PM that almost completely destroyed the UK.

"Time’s almost up for Keir Starmer. He is finished. He no longer has any real friends or allies, having sacrificed them all for the sake of prolonging his time in office by a few days. He has broken almost every promise he made, lied repeatedly and exposed himself as a hypocrite. He seems to care little about policy or detail or people, and has utterly failed to articulate, let alone impose, a vision for Britain. Few know what he stands for. He looks miserable and despondent, a grey man animated only by his unusual skill at internal Labour poliGood ticking. He is a living embodiment of what happens when extreme moral arrogance collides with the reality of being a Labour apparatchik in 2026.

He has destroyed the Labour Party for no noticeable benefit to anybody other than himself. He has ruined the economy. He has failed to reform the public sector and the NHS, or to reverse the housing construction crisis, which are supposedly areas where only Labour can act. His obsession with international and human rights law over Chagos and immigration has exposed Britain to global ridicule. He has accelerated the demise of our under-funded Armed Forces, while simultaneously intensifying the deranged lawfare campaign against them.

Elected on the grounds that he backed “working people”, he has further crippled “alarm clock Britain” for the benefit of growing legions of welfare-dependent adults who should be in work. He has betrayed every culturally conservative group in Britain, from private school parents to eurosceptics to farmers to the entirety of the petite bourgeoisie and aspirational working class. Far from applauding him, his erstwhile base among the far-Left, environmental extremists, the urban precariat, woke and anti-Western fanatics are, at best, bitterly disappointed and, at worst, furious with Starmer, a failed PM who must feel he can never catch a break.

He has backed Britain’s first wealth tax, but this disastrous policy has merely whetted Left-wing appetite for full-on socialism, if not proto-communism. He claimed that we would serve as a bridge with America, but his relationship with Trump has broken down. He pledged that he would respect Brexit, but has been rapidly reversing it (though not by enough to placate the Centrist Dads). He has turned against Israel, though not viciously enough for Green maniacs, and is sucking up to China. His time in office has been a complete, unmitigated disaster.

Inertia appears to be the only reason why Labour has, so far, only lost around half of an already emaciated 2024 electorate. It has further to fall. Technical problems relating to his successors – one of them isn’t an MP, another has yet to fix her tax problems – is a central reason why he is still in office; others include the incompetence, cowardice, short-term self-interest and generalised stupidity of his MPs, who are marching towards electoral oblivion.

Yet even the lemmings are finally getting it. The Mandelson scandal was the last straw. Something has changed in the putrid air of Westminster, and it’s not just the stench of panicky Labour MPs. One can smell plotters everywhere.

Starmer’s time in No 10 is coming to an end. Barring a miracle, he will go down as the shortest-tenured Labour PM in British history, failing even to catch up with Gordon Brown. It will be richly deserved, for rarely, if ever, has a man been this unsuited to the second highest office of State (after the King, that is).

None of Starmer’s last-ditch attempts at delaying the inevitable will succeed. He hopes the King’s visit to the US will boost his popularity. It won’t. He will seek to weaponise Britain’s dislike of Trump: he jumped on reports that the administration may be mulling backing Argentina’s claim over the Falklands. He will blame the war in Iran for the ongoing cost of living crisis, seeking to deflect from his own blunders, tax hikes and growth-killing measures. It won’t work either. He may seek to appease some on the Right of his party: he claimed on Friday that he would finally begin the process of banning the IRGC in the next Parliament. He hopes that the Home Secretary’s efforts on immigration will reduce small boat arrivals.

None of this will make any meaningful difference to his prospects. The council elections in England, and the elections in Wales and Scotland, will be a historic disaster for Labour. It will almost cease to be a national party. When the results come in, and the enormity of the catastrophe becomes apparent, Labour MPs will finally turn on Starmer. Will he uselessly seek to cling on? Will he bow to the inevitable? Will he negotiate a six-month exit? What is sure is that when he does depart, Starmer will fade into obscurity faster and more comprehensively than any previous Prime Minister. He will be neither missed, nor even remembered".




PS I heard a news bulletin on LBC where the first item was about Trump's two man delegation going to Islamabad to negotiate with the Iranians.

The last item in a three or four minute bulletin was a news flash that 'breaking news - they would not be going'.

Impossible to keep up. I shan't bother to try.

[Stanley]

That's a bleak assessment of Starmer David but I can't fault it. I share your disgust at Milliband's actions. (Which will have more and more damaging effects as the economic situation worsens...)
Your news flash about delegates is correct, I shall cover it in 'Seen in the news.'

Have a look at THIS assessment from Laura Kuenssberg.....
"We're living the dream," a minister jokes. Labour might have to rely on black humour over the next couple of weeks. Each day brings a vast set of elections closer - local tests in England, and national ballots in Wales and Scotland - votes that another cabinet minister frets "will be a disaster". We've been travelling around Wales this week, and Scotland last week, talking to the politicians vying for power, and the most important people of all - the public who'll make the choice on 7 May. Just when Labour needs to be going hammer and tongs in a campaign, instead, almost every day brings fresh embarrassment to the prime minister over his decision to give Lord Mandelson one of the finest jobs in the land - our man in Washington. Ructions in Whitehall. Rancour in Labour. A sense the government doesn't seem to have a grip. How big is the impact in Wales and Scotland of Sir Keir Starmer's woes? "It's just so huge," says a senior Labour MP who's been knocking on voters' doors in recent days. But these elections aren't remotely all about the government's recent horror show - we'll come to that in a second. Voters will decide who makes important devolved decisions affecting the lives of millions of people - the kind of schools kids go to; the standard of the care patients receive when they are sick; even income tax rates. Both the Labour administration in Cardiff and the SNP government in Edinburgh have been in charge for a remarkably long time - Labour since 1999, the SNP since 2007. It's perhaps not surprising, then, that voters we met in both countries expressed a similar level of disillusion with the status quo, frustration with a patchy track record on public services, and a sense devolution itself has not been all it was cracked up to be. The two countries are poised to make very different decisions on what's next
There is much more and I think i's worth taking note of.....