Cabinet reshuffle latest: Starmer’s days are numbered, says former Labour MP - "Sir Keir Starmer’s days as Prime Minister are numbered, Rosie Duffield has said. The former Labour MP, who has sat as an independent since last year, said the Prime Minister’s Cabinet changes were “shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic”. “I can say things that my former Labour colleagues can’t, but I’m obviously in WhatsApp groups with a lot of them,” she told Times Radio. “They’re my friends. I’ve known them a long time... Sir Keir Starmer still has a “gaping hole” in his Government because it lacks a clear message, Prof Sir John Curtice has said. Britain’s leading polling expert said that “reshuffling a pack” as the Prime Minister had done with his Cabinet changes on Friday would not solve one of its central issues. He told BBC Breakfast: “The crucial thing that reshuffling a pack doesn’t obviously do, though maybe what happened on Monday might help, is that a big gaping hole in this Government’s politics is a clear message about what is it that it’s trying to do in terms of the kind of country it is trying to create.” The polling expert added: “Getting the economy growing, getting people to feel that they’re actually getting to be better off, that is still a central challenge, and a reshuffle is not going to change that.”" Housebuilding slumps to near-decade low despite Labour’s grand plan - "Labour pledged to speed up housebuilding when it gained power, with policies to cut planning red tape, build on the green belt and revise compulsory purchase powers." Britain’s most apolitical town has turned on Starmer: the Reform revolution has truly begun - "I realised Jeremy Corbyn was finished as a force in British politics in the summer of 2018. He had been flying high for a couple of years, running Theresa May worryingly close in the 2017 general election. But in a set of focus groups one summer evening in 2018, ordinarily placid working-class voters railed against Corbyn for his lack of patriotism and the way he seemed always to support enemies of Britain. While these sentiments had been expressed elsewhere in England earlier, the location of these groups was important. They were held in Long Eaton, a working-class town just outside Nottingham. I had been holding focus groups in Long Eaton for a while, not because it was a proxy for average England but because it was the most apolitical town you could imagine. Nobody had strong views on politics and locals rarely talked about it in their daily lives... Long Eaton was so useful because it was the place to check whether England really was turning in a particular direction. When people in Long Eaton felt something intensely, you knew it was truly felt across England; when Long Eaton turned against Corbyn, I knew he was done. Spirited1 on X - "So @Keir_Starmer You’ve flooded the UK with undocumented males, including ISIS cells & Iranian spies & now you’re risking Israel, one of our closest allies, cutting us off from terrorist intelligence sharing. It’s almost as if you’re actively encouraging attacks on UK soil." Lord Hermer will bring down Starmer’s government - "Contrary to popular belief there was always such a thing as Starmerism – for those with the will to see. Though a crass, Poujadist figure, Sir Keir’s abiding belief is that the elected politicians have mucked things up and now require a firm hand. New public bodies (which, in the classic pub-bore phrase, would be ‘free from bias’), new powers to the courts, new powers to Whitehall, and new codes of ethics for parliamentarians would do the trick. Such a programme dovetailed nicely with the other pillar of his world-view: Human Rights – the idea that nearly all moral questions in public life are already settled and so there is no real need for politicians. Or debate. Apart from that he’s easy. Sir Keir’s first speech in front of Downing Street focused almost entirely on the constitution and standards in public life, with the economy tacked on in a perfunctory way right at the end. The latter would, like everything else, now be franchised out to a public body – in this case a newly empowered OBR... Sir Keir will never leave the ECHR to solve the problem of illegal landings or even try to ‘disapply’ some of its clauses, as some have suggested. The speech on immigration was then withdrawn. There was also some talk late last year about a rewiring of the state to be undertaken by Pat McFadden. Yet the Government will not even consider something as elementary as a reduction in civil service headcount. It also appointed as Cabinet Secretary Chris Wormald, a figure who is almost a byword for the status quo in Whitehall, and who has apparently frustrated the planned changes. Time and again with Sir Keir we find this idiotic commitment to ‘institutions’ hobbling everything, including some highly necessary technocratic reforms. What passed for Starmerism’s original economic policy died a death when the House of Commons filleted the Government’s Welfare Bill (perhaps they were right to. Can the same people who locked up the populace for two years at the beginning of this decade really demand get-up-and-go from them now?). Now he writhes once more. Yet Sir Keir’s personal credo will doom this new soft-Left agenda, just as it has everything else. The new levies on landlord income would, from people like Torsten Bell’s point of view, ideally be matched by a corresponding increase in housebuilding to avoid a decline in stock. Indeed at the beginning of this parliament plans were in train for a Left-YIMBY programme that might’ve achieved this. This has already floundered; Downing Street was not willing to meaningfully deprive green NGOs of their veto over construction. Housebuilding numbers are now actually sliding. It’s been a case of Left-YIMBYism but forgetting the YIMBYism – what Sir Keir would no doubt call an ‘own goal’. What makes continental-style dirigisme work reasonably well, what compensates for the higher rates of taxes, is that it is actually possible to build things like power stations and reservoirs without getting bogged down for years in legal challenges... The public will resist development if they see it as a vector for mass immigration, or crime; nor will they entertain any talk of a transition to a high-tax economy so long as the farce of the hotels continues. What then is the way forward for people like Bell – people who, unlike Sir Keir, have some worked-out idea of what they want the country to look like? The answer is simple. They must topple Lord Hermer and force an exit from the ECHR." Ouch! Starmer and Reeves now less popular than Donald Trump - "Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are now less popular than Donald Trump in the eyes of British voters. According to the latest City AM/Freshwater survey, Donald Trump and his on-off acolyte Elon Musk are ferociously unpopular with the average UK citizen. More than 57 per cent of respondents told pollsters they had an unfavourable view of the divisive pair, compared to just 26 per cent who said they liked Trump, while just a fifth voiced support for Musk. But the level of animus reserved for the two men at the top of US politics and industry was eclipsed only by the pair at the helm of British policymaking, whose approval ratings continue to languish at near record lows. Approval for the UK’s first Labour Chancellor in over a decade has plummeted since her maiden tax raising Budget last autumn. Some political commentators predicted it might receive a sympathy boost after she became emotional in the House of Commons, but it continues to hover around -36. Her unpopularity with the voters is surpassed marginally by Prime Minister Keir Starmer whose approval rating – minus 37 – remains the lowest of all UK figures tested by Freshwater Strategy. The pair’s floundering popularity with British voters will be compounded by the warm response they gave Nigel Farage, and his insurgent party, Reform UK. The party – formed out of the ashes of Farage’s Brexit Party – was the most popular of all the UK’s main ‘political figures’ and organisations. Its net approval rating of plus three points made it the only party of which UK voters had a favourable view. Brits’ view of Trump rose nine points over the past month, the poll said, while Musk’s fell by two points with voters perhaps perturbed by some of the highly controversial tech entrepreneur’s more extreme rhetoric. Farmers were respondents’ most popular ‘notable figure’, closely followed by King Charles and Jeremy Clarkson." Attorney General Lord Hermer appears to take swipe at Starmer over criticism of judges - "Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, said: “The rule of law does not prevent politicians – or indeed any other citizen – from publicly disagreeing with a judge’s decision. The Attorney General seems intent on hijacking the rule of law in favour of rule by lawyers. “If judges step into the political arena, they should expect a political response. But instead of asserting control, Keir Starmer is being ruled by lawyers.”" Labour MP calls for Lord Hermer to be sacked - "Graham Stringer, a senior backbencher, said Lord Hermer should not have been appointed to the upper chamber because he lacked “democratic experience”. He said the peer had nonetheless been involved in major decisions such as the handover of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, which will cost up to £35bn over 99 years. The Attorney General has been accused of trying to block government policies by handing more powers to lawyers. Last month, The Telegraph revealed that he had handed himself an effective veto over policy in new guidance for Government lawyers by telling civil servants to inform him if ministers may be about to break the law. He has also been criticised over alleged conflicts of interest linked to his previous human rights work, including representing Gerry Adams against IRA bomb victims in a High Court case that is due to go to trial next year."
Working-class voters abandoning Labour for Reform - "The YouGov survey found of more than 10,000 people found broken or undelivered promises were the main reason for people deserting Sir Keir Starmer’s party. It comes as Reform continues to enjoy a consistent lead over Labour. Nigel Farage’s party is polling at 27 per cent across all voters while Labour is on 23 per cent and the Conservatives 17 per cent."
Working class people are too stupid to know that Labour is the party that has their best interests at heart. They should not be allowed to vote, and left wing activists should vote on their behalf
The Democrats are in deep trouble in the US – and Labour is on the way to joining them - "The measure of a political party’s failure lies not in how many agnostics and opponents it fails to convert, but in how many loyalists it fails to preserve. The endorsement of new, unnatural voters – Latinos in the US for Donald Trump, or Tories voting for Labour for the first time – might deliver big electoral swings but is ultimately not sticky. And these votes are only meaningful if the bedrock is solid. That bedrock is the people who consistently show up, no matter what, from generation to generation, for a party. And the Democrats are losing them. In extensive research published last week tracking voter registration, the New York Times identified an alarming pattern. The Democratic party has been “haemorrhaging” voters since way before election day. In the states that track voter registration by political party, Democrats lost to Republicans in all of them in the years between 2020 and 2024. By the time Kamala Harris took over from Joe Biden, the party had already shed more than 2m votes in those states, and Republicans had gained 2.4m. This is part of a “four-year swing” that amounts to 4.5m votes. In a chilling conclusion, the report states that “few measurements reflect the luster of a political party’s brand more clearly than the choice by voters to identify with it”. The signs get worse the more closely you look. It’s not just a decline in new registered voters, but a hacking away of those natural voters who parties can easily rely on. Some of the sharpest declines were among young voters who came out emphatically for Joe Biden in 2020, then swung towards Trump in 2024. An assumption that voters who are young, Black or Latino would register mostly in the Democrats’ favour was no longer safe. The most striking thing about these revelations is how long and consistent the turn-off has been: “There is no silver lining or cavalry coming across the hill,” said one voter registration analyst, “this is month after month, year after year.” They show how during the last election, when the Democrats were battling with the damage of a belated handover from Biden to Harris, and a swirl of other challenges, the party was already on the back foot, hostage to a years-long disillusionment. And if you look at some of the reasoning for Democrat abandonment from last year, the same conclusion heaves into view – the Democrats rested on their laurels, and Trump attacked. The vibe contest was between business as usual, and the promise of something different... Centre-left parties seem trapped by their inability and unwillingness to articulate values in ways that go beyond just saying the other guys are bad for democracy, by identifying a vision of what and who they are for. They are operating in a world where traditional coalitions around class, labour and identity are dissolving, where high barriers to home ownership, social mobility and job stability have been erected, and the relationship between hard work and prosperity, or even viability, has been severed. Combine that with an online and media ecosystem that trades in attention and feeling, and you have a political climate that requires policy intervention and campaigning edge. Instead, as summed up by Gabriel Winant after Trump’s victory, Kamala Harris had “stretched her coalition into incoherence” in a “grab bag” of policies “sharing no clear thematic unity or coherence”. This is the result of both a lack of direction, and of a party that now houses both the powerful and those at the losing end of that power, which can only mean a lop-sided capture by the former. Or, as chillingly observed by Anton Jäger: “Bankers and warmongers predominate in Democrat ruling circles, the indebted and the marginalised among its rank-and-file.” This reminds me of Keir Starmer’s drive to cast Labour as “pro-business, pro-worker and pro-wealth creation”. You cannot have coherence when the interests you represent, or claim to represent, are by definition antagonistic. This brand tension has an analogue in a smaller but no less revealing way in the UK, where students are abandoning Labour.
Starmer is by far the worst PM of my lifetime. But having Angela Rayner installed in No 10 would be a new order of catastrophe: STEPHEN GLOVER | Daily Mail Online - "Will we one day look back at Sir Keir Starmer’s disastrous prime ministership with something like nostalgia?... I suspect so. Starmer is arrogant, untrustworthy, incompetent and weak. He is by far the worst prime minister in my lifetime (I omit Liz Truss from consideration). I long to see the back of him – and so apparently does much of the nation. But what if his successor were even worse? What if this person set out with even more determination than Sir Keir to destroy the wealth-creators in our country, empower the trade unions and give comfort to our enemies? Step forward Angela Rayner – the woman who notoriously described Tories as ‘scum’. She was one of Jeremy Corbyn’s closest allies, and served loyally in his shadow cabinet from 2016 to 2019. Here is the most likely next prime minister of our country. And it may not be long. Two things are clear after the Government was forced to eviscerate its modest welfare bill in the Commons on Tuesday evening at a cost of some £5 billion, which will be borne by the taxpayer. One is that respect for Starmer’s authority has dwindled among many Labour MPs. Rachael Maskell, a leading Labour welfare rebel, said that the virtual abandonment of the bill by the Government saw a ‘change in power’ away from Sir Keir as the legislation ‘disintegrated before our eyes’. The other lesson of Tuesday is that the parliamentary Labour Party is more militantly Left-wing than many observers had assumed. It won’t allow the Government even to trim ballooning welfare expenditure this side of the next election. A number of Labour MPs, including Maskell, have called for higher taxes on the better off. Here is an extraordinary thing. Many on the Right correctly regard Starmer as being significantly to the Left of Tony Blair. The Government he leads has raised taxes and genuflected in front of human rights law. Like previous Labour administrations, it is addicted to tax and spend. But lots of the party’s MPs regard the PM as too Right-wing. They can’t abide even his half-hearted attempts to cut the welfare budget. They think he sounds too Right-wing on Israel and is too chummy with President Trump. They don’t like the sound of his anti-immigration rhetoric, some of which Starmer has recently disowned... There will be more tax rises in October – that is certain. Cabinet Minister Pat McFadden accepted yesterday that there will be ‘financial consequences’ to Starmer’s capitulation on the welfare bill, and refused to rule out tax increases. Starmer will of course sacrifice Rachel Reeves in a hopeless attempt to save himself... Because he is essentially weak and pliable, he will give in to the inevitable backbench demands for higher taxes for the better off. It may buy him some time but I doubt it will save his job. No, Rayner is in the ascendancy. So long as she doesn’t make any mistakes, her day is coming. There are many people, including perhaps even some on the Right, who will welcome her over Starmer. Unlike him, she knows what she believes, and works hard to achieve her ambitions. Nowhere has this been plainer than in her championing of greater workers’ rights. Starmer has allowed her to pursue her dream, presumably in the hope that it would keep her busy and reduce her scope for plotting against him. He has been shamefully oblivious to the harm that it will cause the economy. Measures include protections against instant dismissal from the first day of employment and a ban on zero-hours contracts. By the Government’s own cautious calculation, the cost to businesses will be some £5 billion a year. I daresay it’ll be much more. Smaller companies, already hard-pressed because of higher taxes, will suffer most. If Angela Rayner becomes Prime Minister, all of Starmer’s mistakes will be magnified. There will be more tax and more government spending. The trade unions will be rampant. Net zero will be on steroids. As for illegal immigration, there’s no reason to believe she will be more effective than Sir Keir. Tomorrow is the first anniversary of Labour coming to power. Only one year! So much needless damage done, so much more disillusionment with the political process... I’ve little doubt that, whoever is in charge, Labour will bankrupt the country as our deficit widens and foreigners are no longer prepared to lend the Government money at affordable rates. The crash, though, would be worse under Rayner."
Starmer accused of misleading voters over Angela Rayner stamp duty row - "Sir Keir Starmer has been accused of misleading voters after he dismissed allegations against Angela Rayner and her tax affairs as a “briefing war”. Speaking to the BBC on Monday, the Prime Minister offered his full backing to his Deputy and suggested the stories being written about her were sexist and classist. On Wednesday, that changed, and Sir Keir said it was “the right thing to do” for Ms Rayner to refer herself to the independent adviser on ministerial interests. But on Thursday it emerged that Ms Rayner received tax advice on Monday, the same day as Sir Keir’s BBC interview... This timeline throws into question whether Sir Keir was honest with the electorate about the state of her tax affairs as scrutiny mounted... Peter Kyle, the Science Secretary, claimed that the Deputy Prime Minister had been singled out because of “her accent and her background”."
Tories repeat calls for Rayner to resign after lawyers claim they did not provide tax advice - "The Conservatives have repeated calls for Angela Rayner to resign after a legal firm she used said it did not provide her with tax advice in a row over underpaid stamp duty. Party leader Kemi Badenoch said more "damning evidence" had come to light regarding the deputy leader's tax affairs, which is now subject to an investigation by the prime minister's independent ethics adviser Sir Laurie Magnus... Verrico & Associates, a conveyancing firm that handled the purchase of her £800,000 flat in Hove, East Sussex, did not in fact give tax or trust advice to Ms Rayner - and that they believed they had been made "scapegoats" in the political row. Joanna Verrico, the managing director, told The Telegraph: "We acted for Ms Rayner when she purchased the flat in Hove. We did not and never have given tax or trust advice. It's something we always refer our clients to an accountant or tax expert for... "We probably are being made scapegoats for all this, and I have got the arrows stuck in my back to show it. We are not an inexperienced firm, but we're not qualified to give advice on trust and tax matters and we advise clients to seek expert advice on these."... Ms Rayner became tearful as she claimed she received incorrect tax advice and spoke to her family about "packing it all in"."
Angela Rayner’s departure is an old-fashioned scalp for the rightwing press | Angela Rayner | The Guardian - "Angela Rayner’s departure from cabinet marks an abrupt end for a politician who had fought doggedly to reach Labour’s top table. It also represents an old-fashioned scalp for the press, elements of which have been poring over her finances and living arrangements for more than a year. The frustration among Rayner’s friends is that she had already survived waves of stories aimed at derailing her political career. However, they say her admission that she did not pay the correct stamp duty on the purchase of a Hove flat, which some see as a maddening own goal, gave her opponents a clear opening... It followed Rayner’s lengthy admission that an error had been made, which she said had come after incorrect advice"
A lack of integrity is only an issue if the left disapproves of you
If the "rightwing press" says Russia invading Ukraine is bad, that means Russia invading Ukraine is good
Of course, the leftwing press glosses over the fact that she lied about the advice too
Naturally, the writer wasn't so charitable about Boris Johnson
Why is the BBC painting Rayner as a working-class victim? - "How did it follow this news, with its next story at 11.59? By pointing out – in case anyone might have missed the juxtaposition – that while we all know about Ms Rayner’s status as a working-class exemplar, the man who was sitting in judgment on her was the very opposite: a posh boy. The opening words to the BBC’s story – the most important thing for us to realise, in the mind of the BBC – were this: “Sir Laurie Magnus, the prime minister’s independent adviser on ministerial standards, attended Eton College and Oxford University, before inheriting the hereditary title of Baronet in his 30s.” We weren’t so much invited by the BBC to draw our own conclusions about the story as having its view thrust down our throats. The only thing missing was the headline; perhaps something along the lines of, “Posho kicks out heroic working-class woman”. Not just any heroic working-class woman but, according to Ed Miliband, “one of the great British political figures of our time”, as he put it in a tribute after her departure. The word “delulu” has recently entered the Cambridge English Dictionary, and it’s good to see the Energy and Climate Change Secretary embracing such of-the-moment concepts. Rayner’s former Labour backbench colleague Zarah Sultana, however, had other ideas. She is now, of course, co-leader with Jeremy Corbyn of Your Party (columnists are going to have to come up with some sort of shorthand to avoid having to point out after every mention that we know it really isn’t your party or mine). For Sultana, the former deputy PM is a class traitor: “Angela Rayner should have been sacked… She repeatedly put the government and its harmful policies above the working class and labour movement she claims to represent.” It’s that “claims” that I love. Whatever else Ms Rayner may or not be, only Sultana has managed to find fault with her working-class credentials.It’s those credentials, of course, which have formed the basis of how Ms Rayner’s Labour colleagues have sought to defend her this week, as if we should somehow be thrilled that such a woman was in government and cut her some tax slack because of it. But what has her class got to do with anything? Sir Laurie’s verdict is clear: she was told to seek advice about her stamp duty and she didn’t. That is a clear breach of the ministerial code. But it’s worse than that. Her defence in her interview earlier this week with Beth Rigby was that she was advised it was fine to pay the normal stamp duty rate. We now know that this is simply not true. Two separate law firms suggested to her that she needed specific tax advice, with one going as far as to recommend it. She ignored them both. That decision may have been careless rather than malign in intent. But her defence that she did indeed seek advice – in effect that she was wrongly advised – appears to be economical with the truth. So I am puzzled how Sir Laurie can say in his letter to the Prime Minister that she acted with integrity. But whatever was going on in Ms Rayner’s mind, one thing we do know for certain: it had nothing to do with Sir Laurie Magnus being a Baronet."
Starmer is playing with fire with his Brexit betrayal - "A new academic survey of British attitudes to national sovereignty has revealed a huge gulf between what the British public thinks and what our political class says we think. UK prime minister Keir Starmer and a chorus of like-minded supporters from other parties, including the Lib Dems’ Ed Davey and pro-EU Conservatives, insist we need a Brexit ‘reset’... Most polls tend to ask leading questions, such as ‘Should we be working more closely with our neighbours?’, which produce answers that sound favourable to rejoining or realigning with the EU. Johnson’s poll asked straightforwardly: who should be in charge of key policies? The poll was conducted through YouGov, a credible pollster, and used a large representative sample of over 4,500 adults. The questions presented 20 different policy areas that had previously been constrained by EU membership. Crucially, the questions did not directly mention ‘Europe’, ‘the EU’ or any other supranational institution. Participants were asked who, in principle, should be responsible for setting particular policies. The options given were: a) UK governments alone; b) UK governments in voluntary non-binding agreements with other countries; or c) UK governments being bound by international institutions. The answers may astonish even the most avid of Brexiteers. ‘UK governments alone’ was the most popular answer for all 20 policy areas – and an outright majority for 17 out of 20. AI regulation, data protection and trade rules were the only issues that did not receive outright majorities for full UK sovereignty. Yet even in these areas, ‘UK governments alone’ remained the most popular answer. The results leave nowhere to hide for our political parties. For 15 of the 20 policies presented in the survey, Labour voters gave majority support to ‘UK governments alone’. These excluded AI regulation, data protection, fishing, immigration and trade rules. If Keir Starmer wants an electoral future, he’ll need to wise up to the actual views of his party’s supporters. Labour voters clearly want his government to be responsible for Britain’s policies – and to be accountable to the British people when it gets things wrong. The message to the Conservative shadow cabinet is beyond refute. Tory voters gave majority support to the ‘UK governments alone’ option in all 20 policy statements. Similarly, Reform UK voters supported the ‘UK governments alone’ for every policy. No surprises there. Even Liberal Democrat voters, a supposedly Europhile bunch, gave majority support to ‘UK governments alone’ in 16 areas. The Greens will also be shocked to discover that for over half of the policy areas, their voters also gave majority support to ‘UK governments alone’. When broken down further, the survey responses continue to challenge received wisdom. While those who voted Leave in 2016 backed British sovereignty in all 20 policy subjects, Remain voters gave majority support to ‘UK governments alone’ in 15 out of 20: an astonishing 75 per cent of the policy topics. By stripping away the tribal classifications of EU, Brexit, and party labels that feed perceptions and prejudices, the British public’s attitude toward decision-making and democratic accountability becomes far clearer. And yet, there remains very little public debate surrounding Starmer’s Brexit reset, in which control is about to be ceded to the EU over a vast range of policies."
Clearly, the Protect Democracy, the public needs to be ignored
Starmer has carried through one of the worst legacies of Tony Blair: 'lawyer brain - "It’s no wonder Starmer – who possesses what must be one of the greatest discrepancies between parliamentary majority and public popularity in British history – is so susceptible to it... Almost every well-touted “communication failure” of Starmer’s can be explained by the same, mad legalism: the man won’t talk about gilt markets, or pension funds; he has to keep talking about the OBR and its arcane rules. He seems incapable of assessing the morality of what’s going on in migrant hotels, or Gaza; he can only about international law, as though he were still back in the halls of Matrix Chambers. No wonder he has slumped to remarkable depths in the polls, and is facing considerable dissent from within his own party. He is on the verge of discovering what most of us knew already: that lawyers might be pretty good at getting their way, but they’re not exactly well-liked."
Starmer is the anti-Metternich – none of his moves have any meaning - "Having been involved in the backroom myself a few times on reshuffles, I know they aren’t straightforward. But successful ones accomplish three things. First, they bring in new blood, capable people at more junior levels, and give the government a new face. Second, the people actively symbolise a particular policy direction: voters can see what they are getting by who is chosen. Third, in raw political terms, they do the maximum possible to promote supporters and marginalise internal enemies. Starmer’s reshuffle fails on all three grounds. There are no new faces, only new business cards. There is no clear policy direction. To be fair, there wasn’t much of one before the reshuffle either, so perhaps it’s not surprising that the appointments make very little sense. What does moving Shabana Mahmood to the Home Office tell us? Yes, she is capable, but Labour policy is manifestly undeliverable. Why move Yvette Cooper to the Foreign Office when she has been either Home Secretary or the shadow for nearly 15 years? Do it if you are changing policy, but what’s the point if you aren’t? Steve Reed, an opponent of house building, is now tasked to deliver it. Jonathan Reynolds, one of the party’s most capable parliamentarians, is now Chief Whip, a job where the incumbent almost never speaks. And, most egregiously, David Lammy is Justice Secretary. A man who is more likely to be remembered for illegally fishing in his own garden than for his nonsensical philosophy of “progressive realism”, he has presided over an organisational shambles at the Foreign Office – so obviously we hand him the delicate task of sorting out British prisons. Meanwhile, Lisa Nandy, who has been unreasonably rubbished as Culture Secretary in every internal briefing, and threatened with having her Department abolished, gets to stay. And those who we really wanted to go, those ministers whose defenestration would at least have cheered us all up – Lord Hermer, Bridget Phillipson – get to continue to inflict their damage on Britain. And what about marginalising enemies? Well Starmer had that task done for him, at least in part, with the spectacular self-immolation of Angela Rayner, a woman who had been dancing on a volcano for a long time, and one which we could all see would one day blow up and blast her out of politics. He didn’t have the courage to deal with Windy Miliband, a man whose crank net zero project Starmer must know is crippling the Government’s supposed growth mission, but whose nonsensical detached-from-reality programme makes him appealing to the left of this party. Meanwhile, I guess the formal heir apparent is, you guessed it, the Deputy PM, David Lammy. That, at least, must be reassuring to Starmer. I’m reminded of Charles II’s comment to his brother James, who chided him for walking in St James’ Park without a guard: “They’ll never murder me to put you on the throne.”"
