Keir Starmer wants you to forget aspects of his first 105 days in power (Image: PA)
Prime Minister,
One hundred and five days ago your party were elected under our system of parliamentary democracy to govern this country for the next five years. As leader of the Labour Party winning an overall parliamentary majority this elevated you from the leadership of the opposition in the last parliament to the office of Prime Minister in the latest.
Your success in winning the election with a substantial overall majority of 174 seats represents a remarkable achievement, at least on the face of it under our first-past-the-post electoral system. Unfortunately for you though the underlying statistics would suggest the scale of victory had rather more to do with voter aversion to the Tories as opposed to overwhelming support for Labour. Indeed, your actual party support stands at under 30 percent in a Techne poll just six days ago.
Regardless of statistics you are the PM, and your party won the right to govern, which as democratically inclined citizens most of us readily accept. But your victory and the statistical scale of it is not the metric by which your administration will be viewed.
Performance, delivery, and commitment to service are some of the criteria by which you will be judged. Indeed, you have publicly announced that you hold yourself to these fundamental standards, so your actions will be very closely monitored accordingly.
With this preamble in mind, Prime Minister, how would you rate your performance so far? Well, let’s be brutally honest and say that your short time in office has been disastrous. It’s been chaotic, irresponsible, inept, and so far, a comedy of errors to rival Laurel and Hardy.
Oh, the press can be beastly at times, can’t they, Possum? But here’s just a small list of some of the embarrassments to which you and your government can lay claim to fame since you came to power. It’s all yours and you need to own it.
- Exposure of excessive largesse from your chum Lord Waheed Alli to both you Lady Victoria, along with a chunk of present cabinet ministers
- Widespread acceptance of VIP freebies for soccer match and entertainment superstar performances
- The untimely departure of your chief of staff, Sue Gray, who you poached from the Civil Service under controversial circumstances
- Blaming the Tories for all manner of things that many believe is disingenuously at variance with the truth
- Holding an investment summit almost simultaneously with a new workers’ rights charter that is anything but complimentary to economic growth
- An unwelcome farrago over a UK infrastructure investment by P&O parent, DP World
- Two-hundred cronies of yours hired by the Civil Service bypassing parliamentary scrutiny during your first 105 days in office. That’s two a day, isn’t it? Wow. Any comment?
These are a few things of which the public are aware. You talk of commitment to service, Prime Minister, but should that perhaps not be pre-fixed with the word self?
You and your wife have benefitted significantly from Lord Alli’s enormous financial generosity, even post-election. Clothes, spectacles, use of a luxury penthouse for your son to study for his GCSE exams in peace and quiet etc. Would that ordinary school kids could be so lucky? You get to attend football matches courtesy of Premier League clubs along with cabinet members and your (then) chief of staff.
And you have become a Swiftie too. Congratulations! Perhaps you’d care to comment on the London Mayor confirming having a word with the Met to give Taylor Swift a recent official escort to Wembley for protection?
And now for my pet peeve at you and your Chancellor. You have stripped millions of vulnerable pensioners of the winter fuel payment in a single act of spite, citing Tory fiscal irresponsibility with the mythical “black hole of 22 billion” you keep bleating as being the reason.
Give it a rest, Prime Minister, none of us in the real world believe this “cobblers” for a second. Your union paymasters want massive inflation busting pay hikes, so you picked on our pensioners to deliver it. You know it and we know it too! You and your cabinet ministers are never slow to claim your heating allowances, so you’ll be alright Jack this winter, won’t you? My God, how do you lot sleep at night?
Tax and spend is the only language you seem to understand. You talk about being of service to “working people”, yet this is little more than divisive rhetoric insinuating high wage earners who perhaps sit in company board rooms or who have substantial private income as somehow shirk an honest day’s hard work.
They send their offspring to private schools and are now to be clobbered with a 20 percent increase in education costs because of your VAT raid. Yet those parents who don’t have similarly deep pockets and who make mammoth sacrifices for their children in an effort to give them the best start in life, and who by the way are the largest number of school fee paying families by far, are bracketed or assumed as not being worthy of a “working people” moniker.
They work just as hard if not harder than anyone else. And how do you propose to accommodate the surge in demand for state education places for displaced former private school pupils whose families can now no longer afford private school fees? How does your clueless Education Secretary plan to handle the mental health fallout from the emotional trauma of this disruption to their young lives?
She demonstrated nothing but contempt in a recent interview for those who don’t qualify as “working people” by your definition. Doesn’t this embarrass you even a little, Prime Minister? Reigate Grammar worked well for you, didn’t it? And to be clear, rightly so!
Do you seriously maintain that Labour has changed, Prime Minister? I don’t think so. Judging by a mere one hundred plus days in office it isn’t hard to grasp how the next five years could and likely will pan out, that is if you last that long! I would respectfully suggest that you don’t get too comfortable in Downing Street, and the same goes for the rest of your team with their bottoms parked on the seats around the cabinet table.
Politics is notoriously fickle, especially whence in elected office. The Tories thought they’d cracked it for a long term stay in government back in 2019. How did that turn out? We shall see how Labour handles their turn, won’t we? But so far, not so good, is it?
Good luck, you’ll need it!
Sincerely,
Christopher Smithers Esq.
