Throughout the election campaign, Sir Keir Starmer assured us Labour had a plan. A plan for change, a plan to fix our public services, to grow the economy, stop the boats, heal the NHS, end Tory ‘chaos’.
So where is it? Did he lose it down the back of the Downing Street sofa? Leave it on one of the many aeroplanes he’s been on lately? Or perhaps he just can’t read it because the designer glasses he received from his friend and benefactor Lord Alli aren’t strong enough.
Whatever the case, its contents remain a mystery. Since coming into office, he has launched no fewer than 61 reviews, consultations and task forces yet achieved nothing of substance.
Does that sound like a man with a preconceived plan – or someone totally unprepared for government trying to disguise his lack of genuine vision with a lot of bluff and bluster?
After a litany of mis-steps, broken promises and a Budget that united most of the country in anger and recrimination, Sir Keir is to ‘reset’ his hapless administration with a speech on Thursday.
It is expected to be a management consultant’s dream, full of missions, measurable milestones and, of course, ‘a plan for change’. Whether this is the same plan or something different is hard to divine.
What does seem clear, however, is that although a staggering 20,000 migrants have now crossed the Channel under Labour and legal migration is stratospheric, it will contain no target for reducing the numbers.
Neither is there a meaningful strategy for getting some of the 2.8million claiming long-term sick benefit back to work. Although these are the two most pressing problems facing Britain, both are being kicked into the long grass.
After a litany of mis-steps, broken promises and a Budget that united most of the country in anger and recrimination, Sir Keir Starmer is to ‘reset’ his hapless administration with a speech on Thursday
A staggering 20,000 migrants have now crossed the Channel under Labour
Migrants try to board a smuggler’s inflatable dinghy in an attempt to cross the English Channel, on Ecault beach in Saint-Etienne-au-Mont, near Neufchatel-Hardelot, northern France on October 30, 2024
Moving into the Christmas season, one doesn’t wish to be uncharitable. But from what we know of Sir Keir’s ‘relaunch’ it looks like a sham – a load of verbiage to distract from the paucity of real ideas for improving this country.
Cooking up a storm
The BBC’s failure to investigate properly multiple complaints of sexually inappropriate behaviour against MasterChef host Gregg Wallace brings a depressing sense of deja vu.
At least 13 people, including female broadcasters who featured on the celebrity version of the show, came forward over 17 years alleging impropriety. But neither the BBC nor the production company that makes the programme appears to have done much more than ‘talk’ to him.
Mr Wallace denies having intended to offend, but he clearly did – many times. And he doesn’t help his case by contemptuously dismissing the complainants as ‘middle-class women of a certain age’.
At least 13 people, including female broadcasters, came forward over 17 years alleging impropriety against the MasterChef host Greg Wallace
The allegations – mainly of lewd remarks and gestures – are nowhere near the magnitude of those levelled against Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris and others. But they are serious, nonetheless.
This is not the 1970s when everyday sexism was excused as harmless ‘banter’. The world has moved on, and the BBC of all organisations should realise that.
Yet the first instinct of its managers is still to protect star presenters who behave badly rather than stand up to them. Even after the scandals of Savile, Harris, Huw Edwards, Russell Brand and the rest, they seem to have learned nothing.
Commendably, it was an investigation by BBC News which highlighted this grubby affair. Perhaps the reporters involved might give their corporate bosses some lessons in openness and integrity.