There are worse things for a government than being hated. Being pitied, for one thing. And a year into Keir Starmer’s premiership, we appear to have already reached that stage.
As ‘Iron Chancellor’ Rachel Reeves struggled to hold back tears in the House of Commons today (we’re told, over a personal matter), the UK prime minister, fighting for his political life after another humiliating u-turn, reeled off the supposed achievements of the first year of his Labour government. Breakfast clubs, if you’re wondering.
It was a pathetic spectacle. This week, he set out to reform welfare and claw back some money for the groaning public coffers. With the legislation gutted and then gutted again by restive backbenchers, the bill will now do neither. So he was left jibbering about bowls of muesli in primary schools, as if this were a historic blow for social justice.
Starmer and his frontbench have come to resemble the cast of a light-hearted comedy, in which they have ended up running the country by a series of hilarious misunderstandings; left to play-act the part. No one’s laughing now, as the government appears incapable of governing even as crises, both domestic and international, pile up around them.
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