Source - Low Status Opinions 15/10/24
I don’t know about you, but I’m old enough to recall the fall of Rishi Sunak’s Tory government.
No one mourned its passing.
By the end, the fetid stench of rot and decay hung over the whole sorry enterprise. An administration despised by the entire nation, but loathed most of all, by its own erstwhile supporters.
Traditional Tory voters who had watched incredulous as the party of Churchill, Thatcher and er, Hague, drifted forever leftwards. Betraying its core principles, and surrendering ever more of our nation’s culture, history, and values to the wreckers, critical theorists, and haters.
Younger readers are unlikely to appreciate the genuine relief we all experienced, when after fourteen long years of Tory atrophy, incompetence, sleaze, and treachery, Sunak’s hapless administration finally collapsed in on itself in the spring of 2024.
Its final act of wilful self immolation, to call an election months before it was obliged to do so. As if even it had grown weary of its own vacuity, exhausted by its own uselessness.
In the end it was like a terminal patient who, given six months to live, turns to his doctor and says,
‘Six months? How about today? Today works for me’.
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It took the Tories fourteen long, grim years to reach their low point.
The Labour Party finds itself in much the same place after just over 100 days.
Something clearly isn’t right at the heart of Keir Starmer’s government.
The same sickly sweet stench of rot already hangs over everything he touches. Cloying, acrid and rank.
And it’s not just Starmer. There is a vacuum at the top level of government.
If incompetence was a super power, then Starmer’s cabinet would be the Avengers.
Each member has their own unique and apposite inability.
We have a chancellor who cannot count, a Woman’s Minister who can’t distinguish between the sexes, an Energy Minister who is on a crusade is to put Britain’s lights out, a Home Secretary who combines all the charm of a Parisian waiter, with all the love of English people, of a Parisian waiter, a Business Secretary who has never run a business, an Education Secretary who wants to restrict access to education, and a Foreign Secretary who could be outwitted by a sleepy Chinese toddler.
Even sausage emancipator Keir Starmer’s own MPs have begun to abandon him. With the fearsomely moral left wing MP Rosie Duffield walking away from his party on the grounds that after just three months in power the levels of "sleaze, nepotism, and apparent avarice" are simply "off the scale".
But while the redoubtable Ms Duffield may have stuck to her principles, the rest of Starmer’s hapless crew seems relaxed about all the backstabbing, grift, and cronyism.
That was until last week, when we heard whispers that finally there was dissent in Labour’s rank ranks.
With reports that, at last, something had pushed Starmer’s forlorn and hopeless troops over the edge.
But what exactly was it that had finally spurred them into rebellion?
What had roused these cabinet dunder heads from their brain dead slumber, caused them to rise up, stand fore square and resolute, and like Gandalf, defiant before the Balrog, declare ‘This shall not pass?
Maybe the cabinet was aghast at Rachel Reeves insistence on removing the Winter Fuel Allowance. A policy which they themselves assured us would undoubtedly lead to four thousand nanas freezing to death in their homes each winter. And would, according to their moments-past selves, constitute the ‘single biggest attack on pensioners in a generation’
No. Of course not.
That was back when the hapless Tories were proposing the move. This is entirely different, because when Labour is killing old people, it is for the greater good. Don’t think of it as a grandma, dead from hypothermia, think of it instead, as the icy hand of generational justice.
If not the disappearing Winter Fuel Allowance, then perhaps the endless revelations about free Taylor Swift tickets, penthouse flats, boxes at Highbury, and wardrobes full of free clothes, paraded smugly past an incredulous public, like a reboot of the Generation Game’s conveyer belt, has finally become just too much to bear.
Essentially, Starmer embodies all the sleaze of John Major, with none of the personality.
Maybe, but when half the cabinet is also snuffling in the trough, decked out as they are, in free clobber, living it up in swanky Manhattan apartments, DJing in Ibiza, wallowing in birthday treats, and strolling round the paddock in fur lined wellies, they are hardly likely to point the finger.
So I guess it can’t be that.
Ok. What about Starmer’s spiteful insistence on slapping 20% VAT on private education?
Our cabinet are a clever lot, (not you Lammy), they’ve read their Thomas Piketty. Or at least, they half listened to Paul Mason saying something nonsensical about Quantitive Easing on the Today programme that one time. So they have a proper grounding in economics.
They know that if you tax something you usually get less of it. And seem to have concluded that in the face of international competition from China, America, the EU and now, Mauritius, what Britain’s next generation needs to put it ahead of the game, is less education.
It’s a bold plan to be sure.
Still, the most important point is that rich people are evil and must be punished for having nice things. (Unless of course those nice things were gifted to them by Lord Alli.) So this short sighted, self defeating policy gets a pass, because in the end it’s the principle that counts.
Talking of Mauritius, maybe his cabinet are aghast at Starmer for handing over the strategically important, Chagos Islands (nope I hadn’t heard of them either) to Mauritius (also, pretty vague on Mauritius, to be perfectly honest) on the impartial and neutral advice of the Prime Minster’s old lawyer mate, Philippe Sands KC, who now works for the Mauritian government as Global Head of Island Grabbing. Or something.
Apparently the islands have changed hands in return for an undisclosed, but significant sum of money.
Ha ha. Bless you. No. Not money we’re getting from Mauritius. This is the British government remember.
So of course it’s the other way round. We’re literally paying Mauritius a fortune to take this priceless asset off our hands.
And you thought Theresa May’s hapless Brexit negotiators were rubbish.
But on the other hand, owning islands, like wearing hats, Nelson’s Column, The National Trust, and supporting the continued existence of Jews, is colonialist. And so the cabinet clearly believes that getting rid of them, islands, not Jews, (though with this lot you can never be quite sure) can only be a good thing. So it gets a pass.
Well if it’s not that, then maybe the most racially diverse, and female friendly cabinet EVER, if you don’t count any Tory ones, is rebelling because Keir Starmer has, within weeks of taking power, instituted a two tier justice system?
One which imprisons fifty three year old women for saying hideous things on their Facebook page while ignoring when professional left wing scolds, and joyless busybodies like Nick Lowles, boss of unbearably smug pressure group Hope Not Hate does, what seems to many people, exactly the same thing
A two tier system which brands anyone protesting the stabbing of children a ‘far right thug’, while ensuring that fans of Hamas and Hezbollah are at liberty to march for jihad down a Jew free Whitehall.
No. It’s not that.
Or maybe the Labour cabinet balked when Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood emptied our prisons. Flooding our streets with hardened criminals, violent crooks and serial rapists just to make space for those angry grans and teenage rioters.
Again no.
Because though it might seem like an indefensibly dangerous and foolhardy scheme at first, there are many clear upsides. Not least how releasing all these drug dealers will provide a real shot in the arm for Britain’s completely legitimate Turkish Barber industry.
And Britain’s criminally undervalued criminal community is absolutely delighted, with many scumbags expressing their gratitude to Ms Mahmood by promising to never do a rape ever again to become life long Labour voters.
So I guess that’s one more for the ‘plus’ column.
OK. Are the cabinet up in arms because even though her first budget is still weeks away, Rachel Reeves tax policies, far from ushering in the promised golden age of plenty, are already impoverishing the country?
As all the proper rich people, you know the ones who own businesses, buy big houses, employ people, and pay much of the taxes which prop up our crumbling NHS, pack up their yachts, Lamborghinis, and suitcases full of money, and head for Dubai.
Nope.
Again the cabinet members are fine with all that.
Because, they know they can easily make up any shortfall (the big brains at the Institute for Fiscal Studies claim Rachel Reeves needs to tax us an extra £25bn to ‘avoid austerity’), with cash taken from regular, hard working people’s wages, savings, small businesses, buy to let flats, pensions and their kids’ inheritance.
Broadest shoulders, and all that.
OK. Maybe the cabinet are feeling miffed that immigration, both legal and illegal seems out of control.
That despite Starmer’s infantile promise to ‘smash the gangs’. You can barely move on an English beach for illegal immigrants, lining up for a 99, and a free hotel.
An exaggeration? Only a bit. It was just revealed that one in every hundred people currently living in Britain is an illegal immigrant. That’s an awful lot of flakes.
And it comes to something when even the OBR concedes that legal, mass immigration might not be quite the perpetual motion money machine it’s been cracked up to be, with each unskilled immigrant costing the rest of us £150 grand a pop.
Well no. Labour is pretty relaxed about the situation, because unlike you, they are not bigoted, beastly and racist.
You might have thought we would have run out of reasons for the Labour cabinet to be unhappy with its own government by now. But not a bit of it.
So let’s quickly power through a couple more options.
Is it that they are unhappy with Rachel Reeves plans to change her ludicrous ‘fiscal rules’ and borrow £50bn quid off the bond markets. So she can piss it up the wall on even more stuff we don’t want or need?
You know exactly the policy which did, after 40 days, for Prime Minister Liz Lettuce?
Nope. Now it’s a Labour government tanking the economy, I’ve hardly heard it even mentioned.
What about Transport Secretary (at time of writing) Louise Haigh doing her best to chase away £1bn investment from one of the dwindling number of companies which were still prepared to throw cash at Britain’s car crash economy, P&O?
The ferry company whose initials, I’m guessing, now stand for ‘Pissed’ and ‘Off’ after Haigh, and DJ Growler called the company “unscrupulous” and “exploitative”.
After some hasty grovelling by Starmer the deal seems to be back on. But either way it’s no biggie.
After all, according to Labour’s long term economic plan. The fewer ‘fat cats’ exploiting British workers by providing them jobs, futures, and livelihoods, the better.
How about global village idiot Ed Milliband’s latest wheeze to waste invest £22bn (sounds familiar) on a groundbreaking carbon capture scheme?
For some reason no other country in the entire world is prepared to spend billions and billions of pounds of taxpayers money on a technology which is both breathtakingly expensive and has never once worked.
Still at least Ed has given us a cast iron guarantee, that like HS2, Heathrow’s third runway, and Hinkley Point C, his carbon capture scheme, which I’m reliably informed by subsidy guzzlers industry experts will make Britain a world leader in innovative magic bean technology, will be up and running by, at the very latest, the year Never Hundred and Neverty.
But no, these eco loons always seem happy to throw away other people’s money on virtue signalling schemes, no matter how fantastical and foolhardy.
OK. If the Labour front bench is happy with all of these madcap schemes, nonsense policies and traitorous decisions, what is left that could have got Starmer’s top team in such a fluster?
Well I’ll tell you.
The cabinet is aghast because Keir Starmer took a funny turn, and somehow managed to make one solitary sensible decision in his first hundred days. Or at least one that is a step in the right direction.
He’s opted to reduce Britain’s Overseas Aid Budget by £2bn.
Which reduces the amount of money we’re stealing off our greedy grandchildren to give away to saintly foreigners, from a ball crushing £15 bn a year. To a merely eye watering, £13bn.
And the cabinet is not happy about it.
It is demanding that Starmer keeps leeching money from impoverished, over taxed, under waged, British bus drivers, shop workers, and small businesses owners, so they can shovel it out the door to feather the nests of countless unaccountable NGOs, international institutions, ‘charities’, working groups, and multinationals, in countries which are rich enough to have their own space programmes.
Look. We all want to help people around the world who are in genuine need.
And no doubt at the margins Britain’s Foreign Aid does do some good. But essentially it is a money laundering scheme dressed up as soft power. A massive grift masquerading as an emergency service. The Sheriff of Nottingham cosplaying as Robin Hood. (Also recently cancelled)
Now let’s be fair, many of the above examples are simply extensions of existing Tory policies. Or Tory policies taken to their illogical iliberal conclusions, but Labour has opted to double down on each and every one of them.
And voters are beginning to notice.
Not only is Starmer himself catastrophically unpopular, Labour currently leads the Tories by just one point in the polls. (I’ve seen one poll where they are actually neck and neck)
That’s the Tory Party! Which doesn’t even have a proper leader.
Although to be fair, that statement has been true for quite some time.
The honeymoon for Keir Starmer is very much over. Sure. The Labour Party will no doubt be busy bodily destroying this country for another five years to come.
And potentially long after that, unless the Right gets its act together.
But Starmer’s government? If this were an actual wedding we’d all be thinking the same thing.
I give it a year.
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