BRITAIN

NOW he’s safely in office, Sir Keir Starmer continues to reveal his real manifesto – attacks on pensioners, higher fuel bills, and a whole array of excuses for other flops and errors that he has not even made yet. With apparent gusto, he will tell us shortly that things will get worse before they get better and that he will not shy away from tough and unpopular decisions.

Such rhetoric has often been a favourite warning from Prime Ministers nearing their end of time in office, usually an attempt to claim that their difficulties will one day produce a happy outcome. But it is highly unusual for newly elected leaders with a full five years ahead of them to use language like this. If he starts in this way, what will it be like a year hence?

This is a government in trouble within weeks of being elected to office.

Beguiled by Labour’s legendary skills at spin and planning, many expected and hoped that Sir Keir would ride smoothly into power. It has been anything but. Apart from proposing to concrete over the Green Belt, abandoning any attempt to control illegal migration, splurging taxpayers’ money on extravagant public sector pay claims, and mauling independent schools with VAT, there has been little for the PM to boast about. The chief turn of phrase of his opening few weeks, along with that of his Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has been: “The Tories left a huge black hole in the national finances.” Labour claims that the outgoing Conservative government left a £22bn black hole that Labour has exposed following an audit of the books when they took over. Anyone who understands economics, whether Labour supporting or not, will know the claim to be untrue.

Absurdly, and in a similar vein, Labour has even started blaming the previous government for the recent violent disorders. No doubt the Tories have not been as tough as their voters would have liked on law and order, but Labour, for more than half a century has been the party of soft sentencing and politically correct policing, can hardly blame the Conservatives for the “cracks in our society”.

This is a government in a mess. The removal of the winter fuel payment to pensioners looks more than ever like a classic political bungle, now made even worse by the ten per cent rise in the energy cap that has just been announced by the energy regulator. It will hit many elderly people hard. Is this what Starmer calls a “government of service”? It increasingly looks like the sort of administration in which the people serve the state, and the state is above our heads in ways that aren’t normally associated with socialism.

Britons can feel the wind blowing and will know that things aren’t right. Expect some heavy hitting changes.

BRITAIN

FOR the first time in 14 years, and following an accurate exit poll, we have a Labour government. As protocol states, Sir Keir Starmer travelled to Buckingham Palace for an audience with King Charles III. In that historic setting, the Monarch invited Sir Keir to formally become the 58th Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and to form a Government.

The people of the UK have spoken, and Labour has convincingly won the election by a healthy majority.

There are many others, of course, who will be disappointed. But it is important to remember that our democracy can only function if the losers of a free and fair election graciously accept the result. As they have.

There is little doubt Sir Keir has turned his party around since becoming its leader.

Previously, it was slipping towards irrelevance under Jeremy Corbyn. Sir Keir set about expunging its Marxist policies and MPs, and has tackled the scourge of anti-Semitism with some success.

Transforming Labour into the party it is today has surely tested his mettle. Yet it is now that the hard work really needs to begin.

However, other than saying he puts “country first, party second” and wants “change”, Sir Keir has left voters with little clue about what he intends to do in power or how he would tackle the country’s many problems.

Wealth creation is his priority, but we know he will saddle business with a slew of new rules and obligations, while driving rich foreigners overseas by abolishing non-dom tax status.

Relying, as he does, on faster economic growth to pay for better public services is welcome. But what will fuel such a miraculous turnaround?

Of course, creating a stable political environment can help. Trade union reforms put forward by Angela Raynor, however, and a plan by Labour to give workers more rights, would likely inhibit that progress.

As a result, the party will inevitably need to raise money to fund its “agenda for change”.

Since it has pledged not to borrow more and will not slash public spending, the answer is likely to be taxing businesses, pensions, property, and inheritance. The politics of envy may soon surface.

Despite Sir Keir’s insistence that Labour can be trusted with defence, he has refused to commit to boost our dangerously depleted military to 2.5% of GDP. And that raises questions of whether the UK will be in a position to continue helping Ukraine in its war with Russia.

On soaring levels of immigration, which is putting intolerable strain on public services and social cohesion, and Sir Keir saying he will scrap the Rwanda scheme for illegal immigrants, Labour has offered no fresh thinking.

Other questions are multiplying. Given the need for energy security in a volatile world, is Sir Keir really going to ban new drilling licences for North Sea oil and gas? And what of Labour’s dogmatic target to decarbonise electricity by 2030? Quite clearly, that would risk the lights going out.

And will Sir Keir defend the ancient freedoms of the press? That’s essential in holding the powerful to account in a free and democratic society like the UK.

The millions of voters that have given him the landslide victory, Sir Keir must use it for the good of the whole nation – not just Left-wing interest groups.

For the Conservative Party, a disaster at the ballot box never seen before in its history, must lead to a period of reflection.

Over the years, the Conservatives have boasted of being a broad church, encompassing a wide range of views. Today, the congregation seems to have no unifying creed at all. This schism will continue with members moving to the far-right Reform UK Party led by Nigel Farage unless solutions can be found in stabilising traditional Conservative values and principles within the party.