Submission statement: This is an article about how the Labour Party squandered its massive majority and lost all its authority within 18 months, and how Kier Starmer is on his way out. Its relevance is kind of obvious – a centre-left government completely failing on contact with reality due to poor planning, poor policy, no real idea of its goals or strategy.
This is a long, detailed article and I would encourage you to read it all. Here are some select quotes
>‘The absence of a detailed governing plan was not an accident but a feature of Labour’s campaign. Aside from tax, where they ruled out change, Labour avoided boxing itself in… leaving the canvas blank enough for voters to project their hopes onto it.
> The government’s original sin, perpetrated by Reeves, was to tell everyone that things were only going to get worse. This was used to justify the decision to slash the winter fuel benefit, a policy which did untold political damage to save the paltry sum of £1.5 billion. She then raised taxes by £40 billion in her first Budget.
>‘[Starmer]’s completely incurious. He’s not interested in policy or politics. He thinks his job is to sit in a room and be serious, be presented with something and say “Yes” or “No” – invariably “Yes” – rather than be persuader-in-chief.’
>Downing Street staff stopped bothering to ask Starmer what he thought… Junior aides had been asked to draw up a statement of Starmer’s values. When one of them asked what the Prime Minister thought they should be, a senior aide replied: ‘Don’t worry, he’ll go along with whatever I put on his desk.’
>Another insider recalls: ‘Rachel is the only person in the cabinet with worse political antennae than Keir.’ A former cabinet minister says: ‘She has been one of the truly outstandingly awful chancellors of the post-war period.’
>The real breach with McSweeney’s team came after Starmer gave his speech in May 2025 warning that mass migration would lead Britain to become an ‘island of strangers’. Neither the PM nor his aides clocked that it would be seen as an echo of Enoch Powell. ‘Keir doesn’t read,’ a minister notes. ‘He has no hinterland.’
>[Starmer]’s hugely frustrated not to have got public credit for raising the minimum wage and introducing taxpayer-funded breakfast clubs. ‘He spends the weekends calling up old friends and complaining about how much he’s hating it and how worried he is about his family,’ a Labour veteran said. ‘They don’t enjoy Downing Street.
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Submission statement: This is an article about how the Labour Party squandered its massive majority and lost all its authority within 18 months, and how Kier Starmer is on his way out. Its relevance is kind of obvious – a centre-left government completely failing on contact with reality due to poor planning, poor policy, no real idea of its goals or strategy.
https://archive.is/wgnnK
!PING UK
This is a long, detailed article and I would encourage you to read it all. Here are some select quotes
>‘The absence of a detailed governing plan was not an accident but a feature of Labour’s campaign. Aside from tax, where they ruled out change, Labour avoided boxing itself in… leaving the canvas blank enough for voters to project their hopes onto it.
> The government’s original sin, perpetrated by Reeves, was to tell everyone that things were only going to get worse. This was used to justify the decision to slash the winter fuel benefit, a policy which did untold political damage to save the paltry sum of £1.5 billion. She then raised taxes by £40 billion in her first Budget.
>‘[Starmer]’s completely incurious. He’s not interested in policy or politics. He thinks his job is to sit in a room and be serious, be presented with something and say “Yes” or “No” – invariably “Yes” – rather than be persuader-in-chief.’
>Downing Street staff stopped bothering to ask Starmer what he thought… Junior aides had been asked to draw up a statement of Starmer’s values. When one of them asked what the Prime Minister thought they should be, a senior aide replied: ‘Don’t worry, he’ll go along with whatever I put on his desk.’
>Another insider recalls: ‘Rachel is the only person in the cabinet with worse political antennae than Keir.’ A former cabinet minister says: ‘She has been one of the truly outstandingly awful chancellors of the post-war period.’
>The real breach with McSweeney’s team came after Starmer gave his speech in May 2025 warning that mass migration would lead Britain to become an ‘island of strangers’. Neither the PM nor his aides clocked that it would be seen as an echo of Enoch Powell. ‘Keir doesn’t read,’ a minister notes. ‘He has no hinterland.’
>[Starmer]’s hugely frustrated not to have got public credit for raising the minimum wage and introducing taxpayer-funded breakfast clubs. ‘He spends the weekends calling up old friends and complaining about how much he’s hating it and how worried he is about his family,’ a Labour veteran said. ‘They don’t enjoy Downing Street.