In his first speech as Prime Minister, Keir Starmer promised to put country before party and ‘tread more lightly’ on the lives of the British people.
Either he failed to convey this to any of his senior ministers, or it was an empty pledge he had no intention of honouring.
In the two days since Parliament reconvened, there has been a flurry of policy decisions. All are designed to appease Labour activists or trample over ordinary lives in hobnail boots – or both.
For example, to suspend some arms sales to Israel just as six Israeli hostages brutally murdered by Hamas were being laid to rest is a disgraceful, deeply callous and dangerous act.
It sends out a signal to Hamas and its Iranian puppet-masters that terrorism works and will make every Jew in this country feel less safe.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaks during his speech and press conference in the Rose Garden at 10 Downing Street on August 27
Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s pious claims about being driven by international law are sheer humbug. This shameful decision has been made principally to pacify pro-Palestinian zealots within his party.
Take also the latest auction of licences for creating wind and solar farms. The result will delight Labour’s green lobby while impacting negatively on millions of lives.
To persuade energy companies to build these colossal blots on our land and seascape – and the super pylons that go with them – Environment Secretary Ed Miliband has more than doubled the subsidies offered under the last government.
Foreign-owned utility firms are the biggest winners, while the biggest losers are ordinary customers, who will see billions added to their fuel bills over the next few years to pay the tab.
Labour’s unconditional surrender to the unions also carries on apace. After awarding a series of inflation-busting public sector pay rises, Deputy PM Angela Rayner is now putting the final touches to her ‘New Deal’ for workers.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy leaves 10 Downing Street after attending the weekly Cabinet meeting on September 3
This will give employees increased benefits and the right to flexible working but impose a costly burden and a tangle of new red tape on employers which is likely to stifle growth.
On immigration, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper constantly talks of ‘smashing the gangs’ behind the small boats crossing the Channel yet has done nothing of any significance to achieve that.
With another 12 migrants tragically drowning in the Channel yesterday, her cluelessness and lack of urgency is shown to be risking lives.
Then we come to Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s big fat lie about being left the worst economic legacy since the War, including a supposedly hidden £22billion black hole in the public finances.
This ludicrous fantasy is being used as cover for stripping pensioners of their winter fuel allowance, cutting new hospital building and the anticipated fleecing of savers, workers and businesses in the forthcoming budget.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves leaves Downing Street following a Cabinet meeting on September 3
And all the while, Sir Keir talks the economy down as if we are some benighted banana republic – discouraging the investment he claims to want to attract. What an amateurish and utterly charmless crew they are proving to be.
So, this is how we can expect life to be for the next five years. Ruled not by a mature, forward-looking, joined-up government but one in thrall to a gimcrack alliance of activists, cranks and Leftist pressure groups.
Come October and the budget, we’ll get our first real sense of the financial pain we will have to endure to feed Labour’s voracious client base. For all Sir Keir’s sanctimonious bluster, it’s clearly party first, country a very distant second.