“Labour either needs to answer What the Romans Did For Us and shout about successes… or critics screaming about failures will crucify the party”
Westminster life regularly kills political satire without the comedy but Labour should take inspiration from Monty Python’s hilarious Life of Brian. My favourite film is, I readily accept, more Easter than Christmas with its crucifixion rather than birth and Jeremy Corbyn-Zara Sultana splits over the creation of Your Party own the People’s Front of Judea-Judean People’s Front scene.
What a Life of Keir remake requires is for Starmer to reformulate “what have the Romans ever done for us?” and listing sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, roads, fresh water system and public health into a story to hammer home the UK Government’s positives.
Because if the Prime Minister doesn’t do that he’ll be toast – he might anyway amid solidifying evidence the electorate’s concluded, fairly or otherwise Starmer’s a terminal dud – and the party will go down with him unless there’s change at the top.
So what has Labour done for us since it won the July 2024 election? Apart from NHS funding to cut waiting lists, school free breakfast clubs, a youth guarantee jobs scheme, secure and ultimately more affordable housing, going after Covid rip-off cheats, creating Great British Energy to ultimately reduce bills and keep lights on, introducing new job rights, lifting half a million working class kids out of poverty and – not there yet, admittedly – pursuing economic stability after Tory austerity and Liz Truss lurches?
Not enough? Let’s add raising the minimum wage, restoring rail to public ownership, help to pay energy bills, saving steel plants, rescuing Jaguar Land Rover from the worst of Donald Trump’s destructive tariffs, five interest rate cuts, wages finally going up faster than prices (see below), undoing a little of the bad Brexit barriers and net migration’s falling.
I’m no excessively optimistic Pollyanna and catastrophic own goals such as the winter fuel cap and retaining the vile two-child benefit cap before capitulation were wrong, stupid and self-defeating. But unless Starmer, his Ministers and MPs consistently highlight achievements all voters will hear are blunders, mistakes and omissions exploited by political rivals.
The risk of crowing is the PM and team appear arrogant and complacent. The danger of timidness and silence is immeasurably greater when it would be inevitable crushing defeat.
I know I don’t believe Farage in racism row
Who do you believe: 28 school contemporaries accusing Nigel Farage of racism and anti-Semitism or the snarling man himself? Thought so. Me too. The Reform UK leader’s slippery, hectoring, bullying and deranged responses raise troubling questions about how much a Hard Right wannabe Prime Minister has changed in adulthood. Twisted Farage screaming “Hitler was right”, “gas them” and “that’s the way back to Africa” jibes he denies were the type of language heard on the BBC at the time is hypocrisy when the broadcaster, unlike Nasty Nigel, issues warnings ahead of offensive repeats and the Reform ranter attacked the Beeb for removing a goose-stepping episode.
Reform’s record £9million donation from Thai-based crypto speculator Christopher Harbone, the anti-migrant party happy to pocket a fortune from a British migrant called Chakrit Sakunkrit in his adopted home, won’t buy Farage a new reputation.Abuse and bullying victims often recall hurt more clearly than louts dishing it out, particularly if the offender’s playing down horrors rather than apologising. As Equality and Human Rights Commission former chair Baroness Kishwer Falkner asked: “Why can’t he just offer an unreserved apology for any distress caused? I just don’t get it. It seems to me that that would be the most genuine thing to say if he’s genuinely not a racist.” We can guess the answer to that one too.
No relief in the cost of living crisis
Wages are finally rising in value during the UK Labour Government yet working people typically just £12 a week better off after 17 largely Conservative years explains why most folk still feel squeezed – because they are financially.Revisiting over the weekend TUC number-crunching of official data is also why Kemi Badenoch, Tories and Reform Tories on steroids in power with their failed boss class austerity politics would again be terrible for pay packetsWorkers would earn £317 a week more, £16,500 a year, had wages after 2008 matched the average 2.3% annual real growth on top of inflation of the previous eight Labour years, stated a TUC report.Instead the gain was a painful, pathetic 0.04% during a grim Conservative 14-year lost stretch from May 2010 to April 2024.No wonder 58% of us feel no relief in the cost of living crisis against 30% experiencing an easing. It’s why making work pay properly must be a national priority alongside revived public services.
Let’s embrace liberty, equality and fraternity
Versailles in a France that guillotined its Royal Family in a way even this diehard Republican wouldn’t advocate in Britain nevertheless nails the myth our country needs pampered privileged princes to earn tourist bucks.The magnificent chateau outside Paris attracts 10million visitors a year without costly sitting tenants whereas Windsor Castle can boast only 1.5m and Buck House a measly 500,000.What’s more you like I did may wander Versailles’ mindblowing extensive gardens for free while here a selfish Charlie keeps a London precious lung to himself and opens the gates only to a relatively few invited guests.MPs lifting the veil on peppercorns for palaces after the Andrew Mountbatten Windsor sordid sex-and-free rent scandals is sunlight undermining the mystique of a wealthfare state family racket relying on darkness to prosper.Vive la République and let’s embrace liberty, equality and fraternity to enjoy this side of the Channel the delights of our great buildings without subsidising living monuments to unfairness.
Going up
Classroom warrior Bridget Phillipson lost the Labour deputy leadership battle but an impressive Education Secretary who grew up in North East England on free school meals in a single parent home won the vital Cabinet war to rescue kids from poverty.
Going down
When feather-bedded huge landowners and farmers will enjoy an Inheritance Tax sweetheart deal the Labour suspension of revolting Penrith MP Markus Campbell-Savours was justified unlike the earlier punishment of child poverty rebels.
Speaker’s corner
“Whether in the warnings of the prophets or the teaching of Jesus, there is an unambiguous call to ensure justice for the weakest and most vulnerable.” Politics and religion always mixed so the CofE, Methodists, Baptists, Salvation Army and others uniting to combat Far Right extremists led by wealthy convicted fraudster Stephen Yaxley-Lennon(aka football thug Tommy Robinson) will stop violent Grinches stealing Christmas.