DAN HODGES: Starmer is cynically gaslighting the British people but he should beware – voters won’t be fooled.H
Alright, enough now. It’s one thing for Keir Starmer to frame the tough road ahead. It’s legitimate for him to attempt to lay the blame for the country’s ills at the doors of his opponents. History has always been written by the victors.
But yesterday’s heavily trumpeted speech against the sunlit backdrop of the Downing Street Rose Garden didn’t see the Prime Minister setting out his vision for Britain so much as embark on a crude and cynical attempt at gaslighting the British people.
If you want a clue to the true objective of his ‘Fixing the foundations of the country’ address, simply go to the Downing Street website and peruse the text uploaded by the No.10 civil servants.
On no fewer than seven occasions you will encounter the phrase ‘[Please note political content redacted here]’.
For all the noble talk of ‘a government of service’ this wasn’t a serious or objective attempt to address the state of the nation. Rather than a clumsy exercise in political buck-passing and posterior covering.
The voters get it. They know they drill. A politician presents his or her case in the election. They win. They feign horror at the mess they have inherited. They frantically back-pedal on their promises, but pledge to move heaven and earth to eventually make things right.
What’s more, they especially understand it’s Keir Starmer’s drill. In the 2020 leadership contest, he used exactly the same playbook. He set out 10 Left-wing ‘pledges’, told everyone who would listen what a good friend of his Jeremy Corbyn was, and praised ‘the very important moves’ his predecessor had made during his time as leader.
Then, when the contest was won, he promptly ditched them all, threw Corbyn out of his parliamentary party and air-brushed him out of Labour’s history.
But mugging off a bunch of keffiyeh-sporting Corbynite cultists is one thing. Trying it on with the hardworking men and women who entrusted him with power two months ago is something else.
“I have to be honest with you” Starmer sombrely intoned yesterday, “things are worse than we ever imagined. In the first few weeks, we discovered a £22 billion black hole in the public finances. And before anyone says ‘oh this is just performative’. Or ‘playing politics’. Let’s remember. The OBR did not know about this”.
Well, there are several reasons people are saying it’s performative politics. One of which is that, in June, the Chancellor Rachel Reeves told the country: ‘We’ve got the OBR [Office of Budget Responsibility] now. We know things are in a pretty bad state… You don’t need to win an election to find that out.’
There is also the analysis of respected financial analysts like Paul Johnson of the Insttitue for Fiscal Studies (IFS), who wrote at the start of the month: ‘The chancellor cannot honestly announce a series of tax rises in her October budget, blame them on this hole that she has just discovered, and claim that she couldn’t have known pre-election that tax rises would be needed to maintain public services. That fact was obvious to all who cared to look.’
Keir Starmer claimed yesterday that he wanted to level with people about the challenges facing them. But instead he’s playing them for fools.
Then there are the actual OBR figures themselves. A major component of the ‘black hole’ that has supposedly shocked Reeves and Starmer is the unfunded cost of public sector pay settlements.
So what are they claiming? That in opposition they thought Rishi Sunak was planning to award Mick Whelan and his train drivers an inflation-busting 15 per cent pay deal? Or they believed that once Labour secured power, Whelan and his members would fold and settle for a pat on the back and bag of pork scratchings?
Keir Starmer claimed yesterday that he wanted to level with people about the challenges facing them. But instead he’s playing them for fools.
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Last week, Ofgem announced a lifting of the energy price cap, a move that resulted in a projected average hike in bills of £149 from October. In response, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband raged: ‘The rise in the price cap is a direct result of the failed energy policy we inherited, which has left our country at the mercy of international gas markets controlled by dictators.’
But wasn’t he aware of that policy prior to entering government? Did these shadowy dictators only seize control of global energy markets on July 4? And, if he was aware, why were he and Starmer running around during the election campaign promising everyone a vote for Labour would actually mean a £300 cut in their energy bills?
We know why, and so do the voters. Like every other politician, Starmer lied to secure power.
And people understand that. They knew Starmer was lying. They didn’t actually believe any of his new politics – a ‘government of service’, restoring faith in the public sphere nonsense – they just wanted the Tories out and we’re prepared to put a tick next to Labour to deliver it.
But our Prime Minister seems unable to grasp that fact. Indeed, it appears he and his Ministers are the only people who actually retained any faith in Sunak and his benighted administration and are genuinely astounded they left the country in such a state.
The British people are not idiots. They will accept some post-election choreography but then they expect to see their government stop the spinning, and start governing. And they don’t want to see their Prime Minister acting like Claude Rains’ corrupt police chief in the classic film Casablanca, loudly proclaiming he is ‘shocked!’ to find gambling going on just as his winnings are thrust into his hand.
Starmer’s objective in his Rose Garden apologia was to assert his integrity. But he instead showcased his mendacity. As exemplified by the abolition of winter fuel payments, energy price hikes and rising taxes.
The Prime Minister is protesting so much about his toxic legacy, he is now at risk of creating his own George HW Bush moment. ‘Read my lips,’ the Republican presidential contender pledged in the middle of the 1988 election campaign, ‘no new taxes.’
People didn’t really believe him at the time. But he banged on about it so much, they eventually took him at his word. Then ended up booting him out of office after four years when he broke it.
Keir Starmer has such a large parliamentary majority he doesn’t face quite that fate. Yet.
But he needs to be careful. A performative political game is precisely what we saw in the Rose Garden. And the voters aren’t going to be fooled by it.
