STEPHEN GLOVER: Starmer should go – however what comes subsequent will probably be far worse. I concern we will probably be delivered into the jaws of hell. Here’s what I imagine will occur
The past two years have been bad enough. The next three are going to be even worse.
Starmer deserves to be hounded out of office, having shown yet again that he is unfit to be Prime Minister. But let’s not delude ourselves into thinking that what comes next will be a deliverance. We are only going to be delivered into the jaws of hell.
Look at the main candidates longing to supplant Starmer: Angela Rayner, Andy Burnham, Ed Miliband and Wes Streeting. The first three would be more Left-wing than the present occupant of No10, and very possibly even more incompetent.
Streeting is allegedly sane, and last week said he would support cutting welfare to boost defence spending, despite the PM’s refusal to make the same undertaking the previous day. I doubt Streeting’s preference will be a winning ticket in the modern Labour Party, most of whose MPs believe in magic money trees.
Imagine what will happen over the next few weeks. Today Sir Keir Starmer will give an account of himself in the Commons. He will reiterate his fury at not being told by the Foreign Office that Peter Mandelson had failed his official vetting.
As it happens, I believe the Prime Minister’s assertion that he wasn’t told. He would have to be literally certifiable to make Mandelson ambassador to Washington knowing that he had flopped a test designed to establish whether he was a security risk. Starmer may be inept but he isn’t mad.
Nonetheless he told a falsehood in repeatedly asserting that the Prince of Darkness had cleared the vetting process. He had no right to say this because he didn’t know whether it was true. He made it up. For that alone he should be shown the door.
It may be, though, that Labour MPs are in no hurry to act before next month’s local elections in England and parliamentary elections in Scotland and Wales. Nor have those scheming to replace Starmer quite got their ducks in a row.
Starmer deserves to be hounded out of office, having shown yet again that he is unfit to be Prime Minister, writes Stephen Glover
Starmer would have to be literally certifiable to make Peter Mandelson ambassador to Washington knowing that he had flopped a test designed to establish whether he was a security risk
Rayner is still being investigated by HMRC over her failure to pay £40,000 in stamp duty on the purchase of a flat in Hove. Burnham, the self-styled ‘King of the North’, hasn’t even got a parliamentary seat.
But we may safely assume that, after Labour’s imminent trouncing in May, Starmer will sooner or later be removed. As Deputy PM, David Lammy will probably be put in charge of the country while the party searches for a new leader. Millions of us will toy with the idea of emigrating.
Labour will go into meltdown – that’s for sure. Unlike the Tories, they don’t have any experience of assassinating their leaders in office. It is bound to be deeply divisive. Wounds will be created that will take a long time to heal.
Voters don’t like fractious parties that commit regicide. The Conservatives took years to get over their callous defenestration of Margaret Thatcher, though they managed to scrape the 1992 election. After Boris Johnson’s ejection in 2022, it has been downhill for the Tories all the way.
Labour is plainly unprepared to deal with the challenges of the age. Welfare spending is racing out of control, and this Government has shown no appetite to curb it. This year alone it is expected to increase by £18billion, which would buy about 15 new warships.
Nor is there the slightest evidence of the economic growth on which this Government has set its heart and staked its reputation. Hardly surprising when it loads businesses and consumers with ever higher taxes.
Whoever succeeds Starmer, things are only going to get worse. None of the would-be prime ministers would rein in rocketing welfare spending. I include Streeting because, although he might try, the Labour Party wouldn’t let him succeed.
There will be no miraculous economic recovery – why should there be? But there will be yet more taxes as the new PM (and presumably new Chancellor) struggle to balance the books.
Streeting in particular (though I don’t think he will win a leadership contest) would accelerate the alignment with the European Union started by Starmer, and undo the freedoms won by Brexit.
Once installed in No10, Angela Rayner would give the trade unions a further fillip with new powers injurious to business. Ed Miliband would speed up the debilitating drive towards Net Zero.
Rayner, Burnham and Miliband are enthusiastic proponents of higher taxes for the better-off. We can be sure that any Labour government they oversaw would eagerly introduce them. I doubt that Streeting could resist raising tax even if he wanted to.
Angela Rayner is still being investigated by HMRC over her failure to pay £40,000 in stamp duty on the purchase of a flat in Hove
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband would speed up the debilitating drive towards Net Zero
Andy Burnham memorably said last year that ‘we’ve got to get beyond this thing of being in hock to the bond market’. But it is the bond markets that are keeping us afloat, while charging higher rates of interest than they do in traditional European laggards Italy and Greece.
Starmer and Rachel Reeves are already leading us towards a financial crisis, when the bond markets will refuse to lend us more money without cuts in government expenditure. Any of the prospective leaders plotting in the wings would very likely immerse us in that crisis even sooner.
It’s practically certain that, whoever takes over, there will be no extra money to spend on our tragically depleted Armed Forces, despite the threat from Russia and America’s retreat from Europe.
A General Election should be called. I realise that under our parliamentary system there is no constitutional requirement to do so. Many prime ministers have been replaced over the years without voters being given any say about their successors, Boris being the most recent example.
However, if Labour is going to reconstitute itself as an even more Left-wing Party, and introduce extreme policies for which it has no mandate and which were not included in its 2024 manifesto, the verdict of the electorate should be sought.
It won’t be, of course. Labour won’t facilitate its own annihilation. Nigel Farage has long predicted an early General Election. I find it very hard to see how this would happen.
No, the party is much more likely to stagger on under a new, more extreme leader, loading us with even higher taxes and presiding over a sclerotic economy, while prioritising ever increasing welfare payments over the defence of the realm.
Sir Keir Starmer is by a large margin the worst prime minister of my lifetime (I exclude Liz Truss, who was a fleeting nightmare). His championing of Mandelson, whose unsuitability for our most important ambassadorship was obvious to the pigeons in Parliament Square, has been a disgrace.
And that is only the most recent in a string of errors, from allowing Rachel Reeves to increase the burden of taxes, to reversing Brexit, to refusing to raise defence expenditure by more than a token amount, to being an all-round national embarrassment.
He should go. Of course he should. I just think that what happens next will be even worse. Once we have enjoyed the sight of this incompetent Prime Minister being led away, we must prepare ourselves for three even more terrible years.
