‘The 6 targets Keir Starmer SHOULD have unveiled if he was doing this correctly’

Let me be absolutely clear: we’re tired of politicians talking the same old drivel.

More police, shorter waiting lists, better growth, tightening of belts, in it together, you can trust me, it’s all someone else’s fault and whoops, turns out we didn’t change a damned thing.

When a politician says “let me be absolutely clear” we know it means they’re being opaque, and we can see right through them. And when they trot out milestones or pledges as Keir Starmer did yesterday, we also know they’re going to be much the same as the last lot, they’ll claim to have hit them by bending the laws of physics, and there’ll be a three word slogan that will hang around their neck like Jacob Marley’s chains.

Well, bah humbug. Britain didn’t vote for Starmer, it voted for change. And while he’s left it five months to announce the plan he still doesn’t have the money for, what he should have done is announce something inspiring.

Every Prime Minister says more bobbies doing police work. We can take it as read there’ll need to be NHS reforms, investment, and hair-pulling. Don’t waste your valuable morning at Pinewood Studios in a conference room saying the same old crap everyone thought you were doing already.

All he had to do was roar up in an Aston Martin, just like Pinewood’s most famous, and most British, superspy. Step out of Aston Martin. Adjust cuffs. Wink at the cameras and enter room. Once in room, do not talk like a politician. The unclarity, the bureaucrap, the over-emphasis on a drawn-out ‘aaaaaay’ rather than ‘a’ which normal humans use. It simply makes that minority of the nation still paying attention wince. Then say things like this:

TARGET 1: EVERY POTHOLE FIXED

A tricky one in the depths of winter, with floods and freezes busting up the tarmac like Thor in a snit, but there’s not a single person in the country who’d say no. It’s practical, visible, and what’s more by fixing rather than filling you could actually resolve the issue leading to the pothole – install kerbstones, ban HGVs from minor roads, get councils to downgrade empty double deckers to minibuses, invest in a tarmac made of recycled plastic that won’t bust up the same way. Fixing is a lot cheaper, and means when you get to filling the hole stays filled.

TARGET 2: FLOOD PROTECTION

It’s winter. The ground is saturated, the rivers are full, and we’re on the fourth storm of the season. Thousands of people are about to have the living room fill up with raw sewage and twigs, then find the insurance company either won’t pay out or won’t insure them again. It is, therefore, the perfect time to say that by this time next year every home in a danger zone will get free flood gates.

Dredge every river, and sod the hippies who worry about the newts. They’ll find a way to cling on, but Hebden Bridge might not. Give every town with a river in the middle of it subsidised flood protection in built-up areas, and make it a criminal offence for landowners not to maintain rivers that border or pass through their property. For next to nowt, next year’s floods won’t be so damaging, and it’ll mean a lot more to people than talking about Net Zero which you should be doing ANYWAY.

TARGET 3: REBOOT THE HOUSE OF LORDS

Kick out every peer who hasn’t been there for more than 30 days in the past year. Kick out every peer who hasn’t sat on a bill committee for a decade. Kick out every peer nominated by Liz Truss, who was clearly taking the piss. Kick out anyone who’s served a prison sentence, or been convicted of a crime involving blackmail, perjury, or writing really bloody awful books. Cheap as chips, and saves money for the NHS on every concerned citizen who otherwise would scream “Jeffrey Archer, BUT WHY?” and smash their head against the wall.

TARGET 4: END DOMESTIC ABUSE

We take more police, tougher sentences, and smashing criminal gangs for granted. Unfortunately, we take people being murdered, abused, raped, maimed and brutalised by their loved ones for granted as well.

This is longer-term and costs more, but the potential savings are around £23bn a year in NHS, justice and social work costs. So: zero tolerance of all domestic abuse reports. Fast-track justice in specialised courts. Dedicated police and psych teams in every local neighbourhood, not just at force level. Age-appropriate teaching in schools to spot and report the signs. More refuges. Public service adverts. And no-one, but no-one, gets parole halfway through their sentence if they’ve gone to jail for this particular crime. Make it a national mission to have at least a year where no-one is murdered by their spouse. Incredibly difficult, and it will take more than Jess Phillips, but my word you’ve have millions cheering you on.

TARGET 5: A NATIONAL CARE SERVICE

Another toughie, but it would please the poor who will otherwise die early and the rich, who will otherwise die poor. There’s more dementia, more long-term chronic illnesses that are survivable, more Parkinson’s, more people with multiple conditions who aren’t best looked after in hospital. More babies survive disabilities and grow into adults with care needs, and the NHS is not the place for them all to spend the rest of their lives.

A care service would be the place for proper, dignified, palliative care; for helping people to stay in their own homes as long as possible; for those who need residential support, some or all of the time. Let the NHS do health and let the NCS do care – the economies of scale, the easing of pressures, would mean in the long-term it saves rather than costs money. Large short-term set-up costs, but take the private care providers with you and it’s pretty easy to do inside five years. Waiting lists come down without spending a penny more on the NHS; what’s not to like?

TARGET 6: DEPORT BORIS JOHNSON AS A DETERRENT TO OTHERS

First off he was born in the US, so he wouldn’t be stateless. No doubt he might claim a right to remain on the basis of maintaining a family life, but seeing as that would involve relying on European laws and being honest about who his family are, it’s not going to work in his favour whatever happens.

Considering his Russian ties, he could be declared a threat to national security, or he could just be booted on the basis he no longer adds to the nation’s gaiety. He cannot be sent to Rwanda as that scheme’s been pulled, but the former Prime Minister who sounds posh but is really as thick as a brick would go down well in Donald Trump’s America.

But in general the point could and should be made that Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson betrayed Britain with a Brexit that made immigration worse, damaged the economy and divided families, and then damaged it again with a bad deal with our closest trading partners, and only promoting true believers who between them had the same nous and qualifications for running a country as a plate of cheese. Everything they touched was soured by their incompetence, and for that alone he should be returned to his country of origin which, mercifully and despite Eton’s worst efforts, isn’t here.

And that’s all it needed – cheap, easy policies, some even cheaper gimicks, and a couple of radical interventions which would make the next general election debate one in which the other side would have to say that the domestic abuse crackdown and a National Care Service were a waste of money.

But Starmer’s big problem is that he looks at everything through his own lens, same as Boris, Rishi, and Liz. He’s a nerdy technocrat who despises chaos, but you don’t win elections by making the paperclips line up. He needs to see what the rest of the country does – and start being the Prime Minister we want, not the one he thinks he ought to be.

A relaunch is a waste of time if it’s just more of the same. Bin it all, and start afresh. That is, after all, what people voted for.