24-05-2025
MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: Labour's in a mess of its own making... now the rebels are gathering
This is a Government in a mess. It has failed on its own terms, and it has failed in the eyes of the electorate.
Perhaps most profoundly, it has betrayed itself for cheap and quick popularity over the issue of mass immigration.
Why, after that, should anyone trust anything it says?
We are not sorry that the Prime Minister has abandoned the foolish position on migration which he previously held.
It was a wrong and dangerous position, and it was shored up by a great deal of spiteful intolerance towards those who opposed it. But it was something the modern Labour Party had claimed to believe in, with all its heart. As it turned out, it did not really care.
Well, in Britain, we like our politicians to have some sort of core principle, passion and belief, even if we do not agree with them. Otherwise we might think they were mere careerists, not fit to be trusted with His Majesty's Government.
Now comes the accelerating crisis caused by Labour's incurable desire to spend other people's money while remaining popular.
The national budget simply cannot be made to add up – or at least the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, cannot make it do so.
Labour came to power last year committed to appeasing its trade union friends, and so to enormous public sector wage bills. It pretended the predictable crisis, which resulted from this crude political pay-off, was actually the fault of the previous Tory government.
But this did not alter the fact that it lacked the money to meet this and other commitments.
And so came the abolition of winter fuel payments for about 10 million pensioners.
Sir Keir had to draw heavily on the loyalty of his MPs – who do not think they were elected to
do this sort of thing – to get it through Parliament in the first place. They hated it and still resent being made to vote for it.
Now, appalled by the defection of Labour voters to Reform in local elections, he has reversed the decision.
But he will not get back the loyalty he lost by making it in the first place. Perhaps this behaviour makes some sort of sense – changing your mind can be a virtue in politics.
But Sir Keir is changing his mind so much that there is not much mind left, just a panic-stricken expression on his face and a feeling of doom creeping over his backbenches.
And now, as so often happens to Labour governments, he is faced with open party warfare.
He has become Captain Hopeless, swinging the rudder from Left to Right and back again.
The Chancellor has become an embarrassment, thanks to her inability to make the nation's ends meet, as well as her general haplessness. No wonder she and Sir Keir face an ill-concealed rebellion from Deputy Leader Angela Rayner.
Ms Rayner has a simple answer to the excuse that there is no money to pay for Labour's promises.
That answer is – the one her party almost always reaches for at some stage – a major increase in taxes, from which most Labour voters would be exempt.
This would, of course, lead to the usual economic strangulation which the Labour Party specialises in.
But Ms Rayner has a popular appeal that Sir Keir can only dream of and a history of standing up to him. She must be causing him serious worry.
Alas, for those of us who think we can spend our money better than the state can, another question arises. Why is the most dangerous opposition to the Starmer Government currently coming from its own Left wing?
