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New Statesman
12-08-2025
- Politics
- New Statesman
Palestine Action and the radicalisation of grandma
Demonstrators attend a pro-Palestine Action protest on Saturday 9 August. Photo byLast weekend (9-10 August), the Metropolitan Police arrested more than 500 people on Parliament Square for displaying signs supportive of Palestine Action, a group the government has recently categorised as a proscribed terror organisation. One of the things that has led coverage of these mass arrests is the average age of those involved: of the 519 people who provided the police with a date of birth, just under half were over 60, with 15 octogenarians detained. On my Instagram feed, among the blur of holiday pictures, a video of a woman in her sixties or seventies being carried across the grass plays again and again. 'That could be your grandma,' an offscreen voice tells the police who are carrying her. Surprise at protesters' ages led several BBC bulletins and the coverage of various newspapers. This angle suggests that Palestine Action's supporters were formed of a novel demographic composition. But this is not a silent cohort at last moved to action, some slumbering conscience of the nation. The old maids haven't ditched their bikes mid-misty cycle to Holy Communion to rush to Parliament Square and get arrested for terror-related offences. Or if they have, it shouldn't surprise us: these statistics describe no more than the demographic in the United Kingdom that does politics. People of every age have political beliefs, of course, and polling can tell you that the young are more concerned about events in Gaza, or more sympathetic to Jeremy Corbyn's new party, than the old. Age (along with education level) is a good predictor of political opinion, but it's a less useful metric when you consider not what people are thinking about politics but who is actually doing it. The average age of the Labour Party membership after the surge when Corbyn was elected leader was 51. Councillors are the base unit of political activism in this country, and only 16 per cent of them are under 45 (on average, they're 60). More than half of trade union representatives are over 50, and anyone who has ever run a local Labour branch knows that retired public-sector workers are the party's most dogged foot soldiers. I'm sure the same goes for the Conservative Party and retired private-sector workers, or the Liberal Democrats and retired biologists who play the French horn. Politics is an old person's game. I spent much of this year writing a book about the anti-Brexit movement – a serious political force between 2017 and 2019 – and arguably Britain's biggest protest movement since the campaign against the war in Iraq. The People's Vote marches – lampooned as the 'longest Waitrose queue in history' – pulled in hundreds of thousands. Its base was what you'd expect. A survey of Remain activists by the political scientists Adam Fagan and Stijn van Kessel found 87 per cent were 45 or older, with 41 per cent over 65. Part of the reason for all of this engagement, of course, is simply free time: whether you're becoming a councillor or standing outside parliament with Steve Bray every Wednesday, retired or retiring people generally have more of it than younger people. But when it comes to protest that brings with it significant legal jeopardy – such as that undertaken by the Palestine Action protesters – we can think a little more deeply than 'they have the time'. While the Extinction Rebellion protests were cross-generational, over-65s were over-represented among post-protest defendants. A criminal record is not damaging to the prospects and future of a retiree who is more likely to own their home outright in the way it is to a 21-year-old who is likely to rent. As with anti-Brexit protesters who talked about rights they enjoyed being taken from their grandchildren, older people who took the legal risk over climate protests often did so with inter-generational fairness on their minds. A similar calculation played out this weekend. All of this protesting and activism is downstream from the most important bit of political engagement that older people reliably do at much higher rates than younger people – vote. One can post up a storm about youthquakes and Gen-Z radicalism, but in assessments of activity rather than of disposition, it's the old who are more relevant and more engaged, in all kinds of ways. Our political system acknowledges this – two-child limit, acceptable; winter fuel means test, unacceptable – but culturally it's not something we seem to grasp. That the political activist in our collective mind's eye looks more like Phoebe Plummer, the 23-year-old Van Gogh soup-thrower, than Alice Oswald, the 58-year-old poet who was among the Palestine Action arrestees, is one of our many national failures of perception. It is probably helpful for Palestine Action's supporters that we have a media environment that tends to take the concerns of people with grey hair more seriously than those with pink. But who actually does politics is a fact of public life that Government strategists would do well to reckon with, instead of doubling-down on the 'hippy-punching' stance that got it into this mess in the first place. That could be your grandma; and she definitely votes. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe [See also: Palestine Action and the distortion of terrorism] Related
Scotsman
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Scotsman
I voted Remain, but here's why Starmer is getting too close to the EU
Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... 'Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in,' despairs Al Pacino's mafia boss Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part 3, as he tries in vain to leave behind his life of organised crime. It's not an exact analogy, but supporters of the UK's departure from the European Union may be feeling something similar this week. The Brexit wars are back, if they ever went away, thanks to a deal unveiled in London on Monday by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, with Ursula von der Leyen and Antonio Costa, presidents of the European Commission and the European Council. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad In a spectrum of favourability towards Brexit, Reform leader Nigel Farage could sit at one end and Starmer at the other. From a crowded field, few politicians did more to try to keep the UK in the EU. Starmer was Shadow Brexit Secretary under the Labour leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and campaigned for a 'People's Vote' – another referendum he hoped would reverse the result of the first. European Council President Antonio Costa, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen host a joint press conference during the UK-EU Summit at Lancaster House in London | Pool/AFP via Getty Images As Labour leader in opposition, he appeared to make peace with the 2016 result and ruled out a re-run, vowing in July 2022 to 'move on from the arguments of the past'. Three years and a thumping House of Commons majority later, and the old arguments have made a return, which should surprise no one. The Prime Minister is not known for his constancy and his aversion to Brexit clearly runs deep. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad For Starmer and those who sit with him at his end of the Brexit-ometer, the EU is a beacon of progressive values, economic strength and political stability. 'New beginning for old friends' From this perspective, there are only downsides to Brexit, which can be blamed for much of what's gone wrong with the UK over the past decade. For the Europeans, it may also have had the unwelcome effect of putting ideas in the heads of other member states. No wonder Starmer, von der Leyen and Costa looked so delighted as they announced the outcome of their negotiations. They stressed this was not a reversal (perish the thought) but a 'reset' of relations - a 'new beginning for old friends', as von der Leyen put it. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad But on the other side of the aisle, many of the 17.4 million people who voted for Brexit will, at the very least, have concerns. On fishing, the UK has signed up to allowing EU vessels access to British waters for another 12 years. The free trade agreement rules that were drawn up in 2020 were due to be renegotiated in 2026, and annually from then on. This will now not happen until 2038. Slippery slope The 'dynamic alignment' agreed in London will see EU rules, overseen by the European Court of Justice, applied in food, farming, energy and climate policy. Slippery slope theorists suggest that, if EU rules can be applied to British burgers and sausages today, they can be introduced for something else tomorrow. And of course these closer ties, and participation in EU schemes, will come with a hefty price tag from Brussels. No wonder Farage, many Tories and the fishing industry have been crying 'surrender', 'sell-out' and 'betrayal'. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad But Starmer and his supporters see the EU 'reset' as a diplomatic triumph – the third of three trade deals in quick succession, after the US and India. Chancellor Rachel Reeves now has her sights set on the Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar. The 'hat-trick of deals' shows the UK is 'back on the world stage', Starmer told MPs on Tuesday. 'Get Brexit Undone' Emboldened by his success, he may well continue to chip away at the barriers between the UK and the EU. 'Get Brexit Undone' could be his rallying call, after Boris Johnson's 2019 election slogan 'Get Brexit Done'. Obviously this would be wildly popular at the Starmer end of the spectrum and wildly unpopular at the Farage end. Most people are somewhere in the middle. Starmer needs to be alive to the fact that for many Remain voters, like me, today's EU looks like a very different proposition from the EU of 2016. This week, the europhile French newspaper Le Figaro published an op-ed entitled 'The EU is a hostage to its bureaucracy'. The bloc's refusal to innovate and 'relaunch European capitalism' meant it had 'ruined its agriculture and industry', rendering it incapable of competing with the US and China, it said. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Anti-Brexit demonstrator Steve Bray and fellow pro EU-activists wave flags as they protest near Lancaster House, the venue of the UK-EU Summit in London | AFP via Getty Images It cited how car manufacturing and steel and chemical production have plummeted in recent years, with European industry shrinking on the world market from 22.5 per cent to 14 per cent since 2000, and how three million farms have disappeared since 2015. Last October, French president Emmanuel Macron, a passionate proponent of the EU, said: 'Our former model is over – we are over-regulating and under-investing. In the two to three years to come, if we follow our classical agenda, we will be out of the market, I have no doubt.' 'We must genuinely fear for our self-preservation' Macron's warning followed a grim assessment the previous month from former Italian prime minister Mario Draghi. In a 400-page report, Draghi, who was president of the European Central Bank from 2011 to 2019, said Europe was stagnating and that, without more investment and less bureaucracy, 'we will have to scale back some, if not all, of our ambitions'. 'For the first time since the Cold War, we must genuinely fear for our self-preservation,' he wrote. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad These comments, from europhile quarters, paint a picture of a crumbling empire, and in countries across Europe voters are turning en masse to insurgent eurosceptic parties. There is no shortage of reasons why UK support for reintegration with the EU may be less solid than Starmer would like to believe.
The Guardian
18-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Dear Keir Starmer, there is a way to rout Nigel Farage – and it's staring you in the face
Most reviews of Get In, the recently published history of Keir Starmer's Labour by the Times journalists Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund, focused on its exposure of the prime minister's unease with the rough and tumble of politics, and his consequent reliance on Morgan McSweeney, now his chief of staff. A spectacular what-might-have-been moment in the book concerns another Downing Street svengali figure, however; one rumoured to be plotting Nigel Farage's path to power at the next election. At the beginning of 2019, it turns out, Dominic Cummings attempted to convince aides to Jeremy Corbyn that Labour should vote for Theresa May's Brexit withdrawal agreement, thereby prompting a split in the Conservative party and a swift election. Labour could then fight and win that contest on its own natural territory of funding the NHS and public services. As Cummings put it in a text to Corbyn's spokesperson: 'You get Brexit through, [People's Vote] fucked … high chance of Govt collapse … Tory civil war guaranteed for years in any scenario.' Plausible? Corbyn's sharpest political ally, John McDonnell, was among those who didn't buy it, fearing that Labour would be deserted by millions of middle-class remainers crying betrayal. Instead, under Starmer's direction as shadow Brexit secretary, the other fork in the road was chosen. The party backed a second referendum, and was subsequently routed in the 'get Brexit done' election at the end of the year. Viewed in hindsight, the politics of that moment look just as invidious as they did then. But as May's local elections approach, and Farage promises to park Reform UK's tanks 'on the lawns of the red wall', the anecdote is of far more than historical interest. Cummings – in bracingly ecumenical fashion – understood the social democratic potential in the disruptions of the 2010s, as the blue-collar vote asserted itself in unpredictable ways. Does Labour, even now? As a now familiar pattern of extreme political turbulence continues domestically and abroad, Labour's massive but shallow victory last July seems almost a trick of the electoral light. Polls indicate that support is being lost to the right, the left and the centre. Front and centre in the north of England and Midlands, though, is the gathering momentum of Farageism. The Runcorn and Helsby byelection on 1 May will be a knife-edge affair – one that many Labour loyalists believe Reform will win. A Farage triumph, in the first Westminster contest since the heady days of last summer, would underline that the resentments and aspirations for which Brexit was a vehicle have not gone away. As the government continues to box itself in by sticking to self-defeating fiscal rules, it may already be too late to avoid a Runcorn outcome that will trigger painful memories of December 2019. But between now and the next election, if Labour is to avoid the strategic mistakes of the recent past it will need to think in more imaginative, ambitious and generous terms about who the Reform-facing or Reform-curious actually are, and what they are trying to say. A report in March by the polling group More in Common delivered one suggestive nugget that might help. Collating responses according to its own range of voter types across the political spectrum, the report's authors noted an unusual overlap. 'Loyal nationals' and 'progressive activists' were both more likely than other groups to think 'the government should act to limit the damage done by business'. Interesting. According to More in Common's typology, progressive activists will have gone deep into further education, live in cities, support Labour or the Greens, care about inequality and like the Guardian. Loyal nationals often read the Mail or the Sun, feel looked down upon by the certificated, are anxious about external threats and believe the nation should come together in defence of the collective self-interest. Is this a partial snapshot, then, of Labour's old, fractured voting coalition finally in agreement? In a subsequent dispatch published in the Guardian, More in Common's director, Luke Tryl, recorded similar sentiments in the towns of Merthyr Tydfil and Dudley, where Reform has been on the march for months. Alongside the now familiar distrust, bordering on contempt, for politicians, Tryl noted that 'big business was seen as just as bad. Energy companies and supermarkets profiteering from the cost of living crisis, Amazon not paying its fair share of tax, tech companies damaging young minds, were all raised across the two days as examples of rampant corporate greed.' Though it talks a good game in the regions, and sees the potential in some judicious 'old Labour'-style positioning, Reform generally aspires to satisfy corporate greed rather than challenge it. Its general election manifesto pledged to slash corporation tax as well as inheritance tax rates, and drastically raise the threshold for paying the higher rate of income tax. Loyal national types are wooed by mining of the darker seams of communitarian angst: 'small boats' rhetoric, the promise to take Britain out of the European court of human rights and boilerplate attacks on 'diversity'. Depressingly, it appears that Starmer and McSweeney's Labour continues to view blue-collar voters primarily the same way – to be courted through crackdowns on immigration and a high-profile focus on crime and policing. It is fatuous politics to play down the importance of either issue in Reform-friendly constituencies and beyond. But this remains a desperately narrow, limited interpretation of working-class values and preoccupations. Cummings' insight throughout the Brexit period was that in regions such as South Yorkshire and Tyne and Wear, there is a hankering for – and a memory of – a more collectivist politics than the exploitative rentier capitalism presided over by both the main parties for decades. The notorious £350m NHS pledge on the side of the Brexit bus worked for a reason. However cynically it was conceived, it stood for a reassertion of popular priorities and control over everyday lives, and the classical blue-collar (and Labour) values of mutuality and solidarity. As Labour has belatedly begun to realise in relation to the potential demise of the British steel industry, standing up for the public good against powerful but remote interests can be popular with 'progressives' and 'patriots'. This principle, rather than a technocratic obsession with growth, can be the cornerstone of a future Labour voting coalition that calls Reform's bluff and injects some much-needed idealism into the nation's politics. Such an approach would mean prosecuting a critique of the way contemporary capitalism works far more radical than the government has dared or wished to contemplate. Across the Atlantic, Donald Trump is undertaking his own quixotic version of this. Is it too much to hope that modern Labour, eventually, can respond with resources already present within its own traditions? Julian Coman is a Guardian associate editor
Yahoo
16-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Starmer should thank his lucky stars for Donald Trump
For a man who cultivates the unctuous air of an 18th-century parish priest, Sir Keir Starmer has remarkably few principles. In the 1980s he was an anti-establishment lawyer when 'Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, Out, Out, Out' was the simplistic chant of the defeated Left. By the 2000s he had risen to become the Director of Public Prosecutions, joining the very establishment he once railed against. 'Hard man Starmer' was his narrative, not Mr Socialist Lawyer. When Jeremy Corbyn offered Starmer the chance to back his toxic mix of far-Left economics, pusillanimous foreign policy and a party stained by anti-Semitism, Starmer jumped at the chance. Where more serious and consistent figures such as Rachel Reeves quit the Opposition front bench rather than serve such a ridiculous master, Starmer proposed in both 2017 and 2019 that Corbyn would make a very fine prime minister. He even supported a second Brexit referendum, one of the most wrong-headed policies of the past two decades. When the Corbyn project failed – as it always would – Starmer won the Labour leadership election in 2020 promising to be 'continuity-Corbyn', including backing public ownership of the railways, the postal service, energy and water. By the end of the year the MP for Islington North had been suspended, ludicrous talk of a 'People's Vote' on the EU banished and Starmer was recasting himself as a mushy Leftist/centrist bank manager who could be trusted to calm everything down. Voters took a chance, and have suffered buyer's remorse ever since. Last week a poll by the wealth management firm Saltus revealed that confidence amongst high net worth individuals – the entrepreneurs that drive growth – is at its lowest since the poll began in February 2022. We now have Starmer 4.0 – the man who claims he can get on with Donald Trump and last week refused to sign the European-led pact on controlling artificial intelligence (AI). America didn't sign it either, J D Vance describing Europe's approach as threatening to 'strangle' new technology and left the AI summit dinner before the Chinese representative spoke. If anyone is still wondering whether Starmer will face towards the European Union or the US, there is your answer. Those close to the Labour Government are now briefing that Starmer's weakness for flip-floppery could actually be his strength. Because Starmer does have one principle that he will never resile from – what's in it for Keir Starmer? As I wrote in November, Trump is just what the Prime Minister needs if he is to ever reconnect with what voters actually want, rather than what the hard-Left unions or comfortable residents of north London think they may want. What I said then – less net zero, less regulation, less gloom, more growth, growth, growth – has come to pass. Starmer has backed Heathrow expansion and is now planning a major announcement on increased defence spending with Reeves. Yvette Cooper – the Home Secretary – is publishing videos of illegal migrants and foreign criminals being marched on to deportation flights, a move straight from the Trump playbook. Jonathan Powell, Blair's former chief of staff and now Starmer's National Security Adviser, once said that the job of the UK ambassador to the US was to 'get up the arse of the White House and stay there'. Peter Mandelson, newly appointed to the post in Washington, is doing his very best, talking of Trump's 'dynamism and energy' where he once opined that the president was 'reckless and a danger to the world'. 'I consider my remarks about President Trump as ill-judged and wrong,' Mandelson said in an interview with Fox News, Trump's favourite television channel. 'I think that times and attitudes toward the president have changed since then.' Yesterday Jonathan Reynolds, the Business Secretary, was gamely arguing that the UK could rediscover its role as the connecting highway between the US and the EU. 'I believe we in the UK can play a part, as that bridge between the US and Europe as we adjust to this new era – and it certainly is a new era,' he told the BBC. There is talk of Prince William being increasingly deployed as a weapon no other country can access, a direct route to Trump's love of royalty and UK flummery. Ukraine is the wild card, Trump backing a 'peace' deal with the dictator Vladimir Putin that will test the resolve of Europe to take on its duties as the main defender of freedom on the continent – militarily as well as politically. Relying wholly on America's security umbrella is no longer tenable. Without under-estimating the disaster on Europe's eastern border, where brave Ukraine looks set to be left swinging in the wind, my sources insist there are positive signals of a new mood in the Government. Those around Starmer are finally seized of the opportunity to pivot and make the arguments voters want to hear. 'We need to be reformers, the electorate won't thank us for blaming the Blob,' one key official tells me. Under the considerable cover of the Great Orange Blimp, Starmer could try a radical reinvention and hope everyone notices. Sadly, the threat of foot-shooting is still very real. Labour was at it again last week, announcing the appointment of Ashley Dalton as a new junior health minister. Dalton had never much bothered voters with her public pronouncements beyond saying that everyone had a right to self‑identify as a llama and that Brexit voters were 'short-sighted' and 'stupid'. 'Woke madness of new Labour health minister' responded The Sun, still the reliable temperature gauge for hard-working Britons. 'I am in despair over this tone-deaf choice,' one well-connected Labour supporting friend WhatsApped me. 'Utterly mind-boggling.' Another source acidly commented: 'Two seconds on Google could have spotted the problem.' Lord Hermer, the Attorney General and close friend of the PM, is, I am told, 'still causing chaos in Number 10' as the media dig up case after case of the 'Lefty-lawyer' variety. The fact he has represented Gerry Adams in the past has prompted Robert Jenrick to describe him as 'Corbyn in a wig'. 'Don't hire another lawyer with a name ending in 'mer',' is the joke doing the rounds in Whitehall. Part of me feels sorry for Starmer, a man who lacks a political compass in stormy seas patrolled by gunboats. The economy is flatlining and NHS productivity is falling – the two big tests for this Government. Luckily he does have one skill that could save him – an unerring focus on his own self-preservation. If he doesn't change one outcome is certain. Defeat. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
16-02-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Starmer should thank his lucky stars for Donald Trump
For a man who cultivates the unctuous air of an 18th-century parish priest, Sir Keir Starmer has remarkably few principles. In the 1980s he was an anti-establishment lawyer when 'Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, Out, Out, Out' was the simplistic chant of the defeated Left. By the 2000s he had risen to become the Director of Public Prosecutions, joining the very establishment he once railed against. 'Hard man Starmer' was his narrative, not Mr Socialist Lawyer. When Jeremy Corbyn offered Starmer the chance to back his toxic mix of far-Left economics, pusillanimous foreign policy and a party stained by anti-Semitism, Starmer jumped at the chance. Where more serious and consistent figures such as Rachel Reeves quit the Opposition front bench rather than serve such a ridiculous master, Starmer proposed in both 2017 and 2019 that Corbyn would make a very fine prime minister. He even supported a second Brexit referendum, one of the most wrong-headed policies of the past two decades. When the Corbyn project failed – as it always would – Starmer won the Labour leadership election in 2020 promising to be 'continuity-Corbyn', including backing public ownership of the railways, the postal service, energy and water. By the end of the year the MP for Islington North had been suspended, ludicrous talk of a 'People's Vote' on the EU banished and Starmer was recasting himself as a mushy Leftist/centrist bank manager who could be trusted to calm everything down. Voters took a chance, and have suffered buyer's remorse ever since. Last week a poll by the wealth management firm Saltus revealed that confidence amongst high net worth individuals – the entrepreneurs that drive growth – is at its lowest since the poll began in February 2022. We now have Starmer 4.0 – the man who claims he can get on with Donald Trump and last week refused to sign the European-led pact on controlling artificial intelligence (AI). America didn't sign it either, J D Vance describing Europe's approach as threatening to 'strangle' new technology and left the AI summit dinner before the Chinese representative spoke. If anyone is still wondering whether Starmer will face towards the European Union or the US, there is your answer. Those close to the Labour Government are now briefing that Starmer's weakness for flip-floppery could actually be his strength. Because Starmer does have one principle that he will never resile from – what's in it for Keir Starmer? As I wrote in November, Trump is just what the Prime Minister needs if he is to ever reconnect with what voters actually want, rather than what the hard-Left unions or comfortable residents of north London think they may want. What I said then – less net zero, less regulation, less gloom, more growth, growth, growth – has come to pass. Starmer has backed Heathrow expansion and is now planning a major announcement on increased defence spending with Reeves. Yvette Cooper – the Home Secretary – is publishing videos of illegal migrants and foreign criminals being marched on to deportation flights, a move straight from the Trump playbook. Jonathan Powell, Blair's former chief of staff and now Starmer's National Security Adviser, once said that the job of the UK ambassador to the US was to 'get up the arse of the White House and stay there'. Peter Mandelson, newly appointed to the post in Washington, is doing his very best, talking of Trump's 'dynamism and energy' where he once opined that the president was 'reckless and a danger to the world'. 'I consider my remarks about President Trump as ill-judged and wrong,' Mandelson said in an interview with Fox News, Trump's favourite television channel. 'I think that times and attitudes toward the president have changed since then.' Yesterday Jonathan Reynolds, the Business Secretary, was gamely arguing that the UK could rediscover its role as the connecting highway between the US and the EU. 'I believe we in the UK can play a part, as that bridge between the US and Europe as we adjust to this new era – and it certainly is a new era,' he told the BBC. There is talk of Prince William being increasingly deployed as a weapon no other country can access, a direct route to Trump's love of royalty and UK flummery. Ukraine is the wild card, Trump backing a 'peace' deal with the dictator Vladimir Putin that will test the resolve of Europe to take on its duties as the main defender of freedom on the continent – militarily as well as politically. Relying wholly on America's security umbrella is no longer tenable. Without under-estimating the disaster on Europe's eastern border, where brave Ukraine looks set to be left swinging in the wind, my sources insist there are positive signals of a new mood in the Government. Those around Starmer are finally seized of the opportunity to pivot and make the arguments voters want to hear. 'We need to be reformers, the electorate won't thank us for blaming the Blob,' one key official tells me. Under the considerable cover of the Great Orange Blimp, Starmer could try a radical reinvention and hope everyone notices. Sadly, the threat of foot-shooting is still very real. Labour was at it again last week, announcing the appointment of Ashley Dalton as a new junior health minister. Dalton had never much bothered voters with her public pronouncements beyond saying that everyone had a right to self‑identify as a llama and that Brexit voters were 'short-sighted' and 'stupid'. 'Woke madness of new Labour health minister' responded The Sun, still the reliable temperature gauge for hard-working Britons. 'I am in despair over this tone-deaf choice,' one well-connected Labour supporting friend WhatsApped me. 'Utterly mind-boggling.' Another source acidly commented: 'Two seconds on Google could have spotted the problem.' The historical case work of Attorney General and close friend of the PM, Lord Hermer is I am told, 'still causing chaos in Number 10' as the media dig up case after case of the 'Lefty-lawyer' variety. The fact he has represented Gerry Adams in the past has prompted Robert Jenrick to describe him as 'Corbyn in a wig'. 'Don't hire another lawyer with a name ending in 'mer',' is the joke doing the rounds in Whitehall. Part of me feels sorry for Starmer, a man who lacks a political compass in stormy seas patrolled by gunboats. The economy is flatlining and NHS productivity is falling – the two big tests for this Government. Luckily he does have one skill that could save him – an unerring focus on his own self-preservation. If he doesn't change one outcome is certain. Defeat.
