Kevin Maguire says No. 10 needs a rethink over failure to tell an engaging story, and fast, or Keir Starmer’s Government faces being dead in the water at the next election
Imagine if we had a UK Government reviving an ailing NHS, raising the minimum wage well above inflation, introducing breakfast clubs and giving free school meals to 500,000 more poorer kids.
One that was devising much improved new job rights, planning a huge house-building drive, bringing a fragmented rail industry back into public ownership, overseeing a green energy revolution to safeguard supplies and prices while investing heavily to guarantee steel production in Scunthorpe and Port Talbot.
Ministers committed to opening centres in every local authority to give all kids a better start in life and, finally, negotiate and implement concrete plans to deter and deal with small boat crossings where Rwanda failed expensively and disastrously.
A Cabinet consigning dinosaur Tory hereditary peers to the dustbin of history and a Prime Minister resetting relations with the rest of Europe to boost trade and avoid long passport queues.
You’d not be an excessively enthusiastic Pollyanna should you recognise that we have that UK Government but you’d also not be alone if you’d need to be Miss Marple to detect it.
Because winter fuel, disability cuts and the “Island of Strangers” rows mean that Government is a strange land to millions of voters, including those who put their X next to Labour a year ago.
As MPs pack their buckets and spades this week, Downing Street must think hard about the missing vision thing over the Summer.
The Government’s fatal lack of a compelling, vibrant story is becoming an obsession of mine. The awful own goals, too. And the can’t do rather than a can do approach to issues such as the pernicious two-child poverty cap.
Labour isn’t as good as it could be yet nor is it anyway as near as bad as Nigel Farage, Kemi Badenoch and the great disillusioned pretend or believe.
But unless Starmer and Co start telling an engaging story, the writing will be on the wall sooner rather than later for a General Election that might be up to four years in the future.
Donald Trump feels MAGA’s bite
Revolutions devour their children and you’d need a heart of stone not to enjoy his MAGA movement eating Donald Trump alive over the Jeffrey Epstein files.
The demented US President, who once hailed the now dead paedophile a “terrific guy” and “a lot of fun to be with”, is taking as much flak as Prince Andrew.
Claiming there was nothing to see then, when abusing supporters failed to stem criticism, demanding the Justice Department release a “client list” his puppet minister Pam Bondi claimed was on her desk before declaring it never existed won’t cauterise this bleeding wound.
Because conspiracy theorist Trump, a liar who questioned whether Barack Obama was born in the USA and entitled to be President, is suddenly at the heart of one of the juiciest conspiracy theories of them all.
Flying to meet Starmer this week and visit his Turnberry golf course in Scotland ahead of September’s state visit, Trump could always ask for a secret chat with the disgraced Duke of York to swap notes.
Diane Abbott’s suspension a mistake
Foolishly suspending Diane Abbott and four more Labour MPs is bullying Keir Starmer putting rocket boosters under Jeremy Corbyn’s proposed Left-wing rival party.
The venerable first Black woman elected to the House of Commons U-turning on an apology for offending many Jewish people by downplaying anti-Semitism deserved criticism but loss of the whip?
Equally backbench rebels Brian Leishman, Chris Hinchliff, Neil Duncan-Jordan and Rachael Maskell invited a stiff talking to from his enforcers yet surely not banishment.
The battered Prime Minister whacking MPs who were on the right side of the argument over caring for the disabled won’t reinforce his authority, It’ll be weakened, perhaps fatally.
The five plus another five on the Westminster naughty step all want to remain Labour yet Corbyn and co-conspirator Zara Sultana are eyeing possible recruits when Starmer’s pulling up guy ropes down one side of what needs to be a big tent to win.
‘Tycoon King’ and his Highgrove row
Labour’s new job rights can’t come quick enough for feudal lord Charlie Windsor’s gardeners after an exodus from Highgrove.
No wonder the peasants are revolting when a tycoon King worth an estimated £640million reportedly pays only the legal minimum wage, currently just £12.21 an hour, and is high-handed.
The feather-bedded hereditary monarch’s role in issuing marching orders to a probationary gardener, insisting “don’t put that man in front of me again” after the poor soul made a factual error about a flower, sounds nauseating.
Issuing instructions during daily walkouts and sending memos written in thick red ink portray pompous Chas as the boss from hell.
Charlie’s exploited gardeners need to join a trade union and create a right royal stink.
Going up
He’ll never have an easier mission when it was the Tories who ran a secret Afghan migration route and gagged Parliament and the media after that huge data loss on their watch but Labour John Healey was a commendably cool Defence Secretary.
Going down
All at sea Nigel Farage exposed Reform’s muddled posturing by claiming England’s sinking water firms “need private-sector innovation” when it is commercial companies putting up bills and dumping sewage. Total renationalisation is the only answer.
Speaker’s corner
“We haven’t forgotten you. We have failed you.” Leicester South Independent MP Shockat Adam at a meeting in Parliament summed up Britain’s hand-wringing after a young Palestinian, Abubaker Abed, criticised UK arms supplies to Israel during the ongoing slaughter and war crimes in Gaza. Shame on us.