Is there anything Keir Starmer won't U-turn on? If voters don't like his principles, no problem, he just changes them

The Sun

25-05-2025

SO taxes are going up then . . .
After a week of dithering from Downing Street, that was the only clear message sent out by our Groucho Marx Prime Minister.
3
3
'Those are my principles, and if you don't like them . . . well, I have others.'
Farewell, then, cuts to winter fuel payments, blowing yet another hole in Rachel Reeves' sums and diminishing credibility as Chancellor.
In a spectacular self-sabotage, the Government has taken the hit, upset everyone, burnt its trust with the public and now won't even get the savings and the confidence from the markets that were meant to see responsible grown-ups in charge.
But should we really be surprised any more? The U-turn can be added to a very long and rapidly growing list of Sir Keir Starmer's flip-floppery. And it won't be the last.
He was going to abolish university tuition fees, until he didn't. Same for Universal Credit and the House of Lords, along with nationalising water and energy and mail.
Causing carnage
All detention centres were going to be shut and deportation flights injuncted by his lawyer mates — now hardman Keir boasts how many foreigners he's kicked out.
Women could have a willy, until a court made clear of course they bleedin' can't.
There was £28billion for green investment, until that was put on the bonfire.
The Waspi women were going to get billions in compensation, until they didn't.
Meanwhile, employers' National Insurance wasn't going up and farmers were not going to be ruined by tax hikes, until it did and they were.
Don't even get me started on the PM's years of Remainer sabotage, second referendum baiting and heartfelt longing to rejoin the EU, only to insist that there would be no unpicking of the referendum result and we're all Team Brexit now.
And lo, last week he hands Brussels the crown jewels in return for a non-binding watery bit of paper announced with great fanfare that would see the UK become an EU rule taker and open up our borders and wallets again in return for, well, not very much.
Keep up! With the winter fuel climbdown banked, panicking Labour MPs now have the two-child benefit cap on their U-turn shopping list.
Add to that their militant organising to soften No10's already fairly menial cuts to the benefits bill (on course to hit £100billion a year by the end of the decade) and you have what Labour love to call a giant black hole in the public finances.
With every humiliating forced backtrack, Rachel Reeves' job gets harder and harder.
Borrow more or raise taxes?
Probably both if her last Budget was anything to go by.
It's pretty clear now why the PM conducted another, much quieter, U-turn behind the scenes in recent weeks and delayed a reshuffle mooted for this side of the summer hols.
It's far from clear how he is going to have a Chancellor by Christmas.
Having staked her reputation in No11 on keeping to her fiscal rules not to increase borrowing for day-to-day spending, and having already hiked taxes to their highest burden in history, Reeves is running out of road.
'A Prime Minister just making it up as he goes along . . . they have lurched from crisis to crisis, U-turn to U-turn.' Not my words, but the words of Sir Keir Starmer at PMQs a few years ago
You wonder how long Starmer will continue to insist you cannot get a cigarette paper between the two of them, and force the most humiliating U-turn yet.
Few in Westminster believe Reeves could scrap those 'iron' rules and credibly keep that job. However, given Starmer has effectively outsourced his entire economic policy to her, the blow back will be on him too.
No wonder butter-wouldn't- melt-in-her-mouth Deputy PM Angela Rayner is causing carnage behind the scenes. Mystery memos showing ankle to the Labour left and doe-eyed denials on TV that she ever wants to be PM . . . right on cue.
So with all this chaos, you would have thought the Tories would be delighted.
Only the Shadow Cabinet spent their Bank Holiday Weekend texting each other and half of Westminster loudly wondering if they might have to do something sooner rather than later about Kemi Badenoch.
Big barn door
Ironically, she could well be collateral damage in the winter fuel mess, after managing to miss the announcement at the top of Prime Minister's Questions last week, only to ask whether the PM would U-turn ten minutes later.
Tory MPs are incandescent that she missed such a big barn door.
Some very senior Conservatives say Badenoch's fate was sealed in that bungle, and it's now when not if they join in the U-turn action and have another go at choosing a leader after just nine months.
'A Prime Minister just making it up as he goes along . . . they have lurched from crisis to crisis, U-turn to U-turn.'
Not my words, but the words of Sir Keir Starmer at PMQs a few years ago when he was the one asking the questions.
A nimble, canny and competent Leader of the Opposition would have had that quote up her sleeve for a moment just like Wednesday's winter fuel mess.
Sadly, we are not blessed as a nation with one of those.
THE House of Lords is not a happy ship.
Old timers complain that the usually genial upper chamber has been so stuffed with bruiser ex-MPs it's killing the vibe.
Meanwhile, Labour's plan to boot out anyone over 80 is causing major disquiet in their own ranks as experts such as celeb scientist Robert Winston face the axe.
And I hear a deal may be done with the last remaining hereditary peers, who want to be slowly abolished one at a time by nature's pruning shears rather than forced to retire all in one go.
Tea cups rattling all round.
KEMI Badenoch's curious private chauffeur contract as a Cabinet minister is under the spotlight as her enemies circle.
But relations with the famously tight-knit Government Car Service have not improved since she left office.
One of the few perks of being Leader of the Opposition is a driver from the official ministerial pool and £65,000 blacked-out Land Rover Discovery Sport on the taxpayer.
Assigned a popular female member of the chauffeuring team when she got the job, mysteriously a replacement was quickly sought after just a matter of weeks.
And according to my peak cap-wearing mole, Badenoch has now asked for a vehicle 'more befitting a future PM'.
The Cabinet Office, which runs the service, declined to comment on whether they would be granting her an upgrade.
A Conservative spokesman insisted they 'do not recognise these claims'.