Starmer has revealed himself to be the most politically hopeless PM of my lifetime

Telegraph

18 hours ago

We are told that it was 'personal' reasons which caused Rachel Reeves to weep at Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) on Wednesday. No doubt that is true. But when a prominent person weeps on a public occasion, the tears are prompted by a confluence of the personal and the political.
Whatever upset Ms Reeves felt was surely compounded by her desperate and isolated political situation following the collapse of the Government's welfare reform Bill.
The first Rachel wept, as is recorded in the Old Testament Book of Jeremiah. She was weeping for her children, but hers were public tears too: she was revered as the wife of the patriarch Jacob and mother of Joseph. God told her: 'Refrain thy voice from weeping and thine ears from tears: for thy work shall be rewarded.'
It has to be said that Sir Keir Starmer was rather less generous to his Rachel than was the Almighty to the Mother of Israel. When, across the floor of the House, Kemi Badenoch pointed out to him that his Chancellor 'looks absolutely miserable', he did not turn round to comfort or even to check. Nor did he take up the Leader of the Opposition's invitation to confirm Ms Reeves in her post.
Before the session ended, the Prime Minister did say something about being 'grateful' to her, but by then it was too late. Afterwards, No 10 declared that Ms Reeves was 'going nowhere', a phrase which, in the circumstances, was either tin-eared or barbed.
In an interview, Sir Keir insisted she would continue as Chancellor for the next election and for years beyond. He is in no position to make such a promise.
People often complain about the 'bearpit' of PMQs. This week's half hour was certainly uncomfortable to watch, but it did show why such occasions can make a difference. In a few minutes of parliamentary theatre, we got to the heart of the matter.
In passing, it is worth pointing out that Mrs Badenoch did well. With wit and concision, she identified Labour's key embarrassments – the second U-turn at the very last moment, the fact that a cost-cutting Bill will now save nothing at all and Sir Keir's problem that 'he does not know what he believes'.
She seized the chance to get her own party back on the long road to the economic respectability it so badly lost in government. Whereas Labour had just voted for spending more money, she said, the Conservatives know the nation must 'live within its means'. Sir Keir's capitulation vacates the political ground of prudence, giving the Tories the chance to re-occupy it – and at a time when Reform has decided to become a big-spending party.
In the end, those who want to give ever more public money to people who do not want to work are fewer than those who do work and will now almost certainly have to pay higher taxes. On this point, Mrs Badenoch spoke with justified confidence.
An oddity caused by the slow Conservative leadership election process last year is that Mrs Badenoch has still not addressed her annual party conference as leader, so the troops do not feel they know their general. Now she has a victory under her belt to celebrate with them. She has won on some other subjects recently, such as the grooming gangs inquiry, but this week was her first big breakthrough.
More important right now is what all this means for the Government which we might still have for four more years.
Again, PMQs gave useful optics. Most of the time, the camera concentrated on just three people on the front bench – the Prime Minster in the middle, inexpressive as usual; to the right, the crumpled Chancellor, in a blue suit, trying and failing to conceal her distress; to the left, in a striking all-red number, the Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner, head erect and smiling in a nothing-to-do-with-me sort of way. You could see the future, and why it won't work.
It still seems almost incredible that a government only a year old should have cut off its room for future progress so early. There may be a case that the public finances, though bad and getting worse, are not so disastrous that all is lost, but history does suggest that such a serious failure of economic and political will is very hard to come back from.
Wilson's Labour government lost confidence after having to devalue the pound in 1967, and lost the election in 1970. Heath's Tories executed their U-turn on free markets and non-intervention in 1972, and lost (twice) in 1974. Labour went 'cap in hand' to the IMF in 1976, and lost to Mrs Thatcher in 1979. John Major's Tories won a general election in April 1992 but had to take the pound out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism in September. Tony Blair trounced them in 1997.
In some of these cases, notably Major's, the economy did recover, but in all of them the government was seen to have failed in its economic stewardship. The voters duly punished it.
This time, the Government has undoubtedly failed. Labour's selling-point to the electorate a year ago was that, unlike the Tories, and particularly the horror story of Liz Truss, it would restore growth and control the public finances with enough discipline that the proceeds of that growth would improve public services. It has taken only 12 months, almost to the day, to discredit all those promises.
In reaction, some have criticised the rebel Labour MPs who forced Sir Keir's retreat for their economic illiteracy. Downing Street special advisers speak unattributably to lobby journalists with foul-mouthed quotations about the idiocy and self-indulgence of their party's backbenchers.
It is true that social media have made MPs more narcissistic and less loyal to their party. It is also true that failure to rein in welfare spending is – along with the NHS – the road to national ruin. But Sir Keir and his political advisers seem to have a very hazy idea of what it is like to be a member of Parliament.
With all aspects of social policy, MPs will have numerous constituents who will be directly affected and will complain to them. Most MPs of the governing party will be prepared to justify unpopular government policy if they can do so as part of a big story of foreseeable recovery or of dire necessity. It is incredibly hard to do so, however, when the policy unexpectedly removes existing money from claimants, and when the overall picture of what the government is trying to do is so contradictory and confusing.
In the case of personal independence payments (PIPs), there are a great many scandals (some recently documented by the TaxPayers' Alliance) about how easily people can get the money for inadequate or trumped-up reasons. A government set on persuasion could have dramatised such freeloading to win over voters. It did not. Instead, it suddenly threatened millions of claimants, thwarting reasonable expectations. You don't have to be a Zarah Sultana-style Corbynista to worry. Any decent MP would want to voice those discontents at Westminster.
In my lifetime, and therefore in the lifetime of the great majority, no Labour government has ever been able to cope with bad economic conditions. They have been boom-time phenomena, triumphantly so in the case of Tony Blair's first two terms. Sir Keir's administration has quickly reverted to this depressing type, adding a political incompetence that would make anyone weep.