Just a month after the election, the hollowness of Labour‘s glib promise to ‘mend broken Britain’ is already apparent.
In opposition they were tigers, pouncing on Tory failings and suggesting they could fix every national malaise from the small-boats crisis to the ailing NHS.
In power they look more like rabbits in the headlights, quickly realising that saying you are going to solve a problem is not the same as solving it.
To disguise their paucity of fresh ideas, their blanket policy is to blame the Conservatives for everything, set up a new quango and/or order an emergency review.
Sir Keir Starmer‘s response to the riots following the hideous Southport murders was typical. His ‘big’ speech yesterday was a stream of tired verbiage.
Laws must be enforced … safe streets … new intelligence unit … all necessary action. We really have heard it all before.
Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer delivers a speech during a press conference on August 1
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper pays tribute to the child victims of a knife attack on July 30
His pledge to maintain public order would carry more weight had he not recently announced the early release of thousands of criminals. How is that supposed to make us feel safer?
Several of his ministers are also finding government tough. Endlessly sanctimonious Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is now presiding over record numbers of cross-Channel migrants herself, with no credible game plan to stop them.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting has sprayed public money at junior doctors and other NHS staff in a bid to end strikes, only to be faced with industrial action by GPs demanding similar largesse.
Meanwhile, Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s risible claim to have inherited ‘the worst economic circumstances since World War Two’ continues to unravel.
Cutting interest rates yesterday, the Bank of England doubled Britain’s growth forecast for this year, exposing Ms Reeves’s claim of an economy in tailspin as a flat lie designed to justify tax rises not mentioned in her party’s manifesto.
It took more than a decade for voters to finally turn against Tony Blair and New Labour. With Sir Keir, much of Britain may already be feeling a twinge of buyer’s remorse after only four weeks.
An unfair fight
In a civilised world, allowing a man to beat up a woman is a crime against human decency – and the law. At the Olympic Games, it seems, it’s jolly good sport.
In a grotesque spectacle yesterday, a female Italian boxer retired 46 seconds into her bout, having been left stunned and in tears by a ferocious punch to the face from her opponent, Imane Khelif.
Algeria’s Imane Khelif during the Women’s 66kg preliminary round match against Angela Carini of Italy
Imane Khelif next to Italy’s Angela Carini, at the end of their women’s 66kg preliminary boxing match
The Algerian was banned from the 2023 world championships by the International Boxing Association after showing male levels of testosterone and a DNA test is said to have shown the presence of both X and Y chromosomes
She said later she had never been hit so hard. This is hardly surprising, as Khelif, while identifying as a woman, is effectively a biological male.
The Algerian was banned from the 2023 world championships by the International Boxing Association after showing male levels of testosterone and a DNA test is said to have shown the presence of both X and Y chromosomes.
Yet the IOC ignored the ruling and put Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting (also previously banned after failing a gender test) into the ring with biological women.
Men punch on average roughly twice as hard as women and their bodies are better able to absorb heavy blows. Pitting one against the other is both immoral and potentially lethal.
The Olympics are meant to be the epitome of fair and healthy competition. This pathetic capitulation to the trans lobby shows how tarnished that ideal has become.