Yves here. With Trump news consuming the air supply, it seemed useful to look at some of the wobbles among what passes for leadership across the pond. Pretty much no one expected Starmer to last very long. However, my impression from this remove is that Starmer has managed to underperform the weak expectations for him. This is not just his lame political conduct, like failing to address a growing hunger crisis in the UK and instead running to Ukraine to enter into a 100 year pact. The economy is going into stagflation as Starmer is in deer-in-the-headlights mode.
UK readers are encouraged to opine.
By Richard Murphy, part-time Professor of Accounting Practice at Sheffield University Management School, director of the Corporate Accountability Network, member of Finance for the Future LLP, and director of Tax Research LLP. Originally published at Fund the Future
Keir Starmer really does not understand what he is doing. It must be that statements issued by his own team informed these comments in the FT this morning concerning an extended Cabinet meeting held yesterday afternoon and evening:
Sir Keir Starmer has launched another attempt to reboot his ailing UK government at a six-hour cabinet meeting, held against a bleak economic backdrop and crumbling public support.
The prime minister admitted his administration had been too slow, too cautious and risked being left behind by world events, telling ministers at a special meeting on Friday in Lancaster House: “We can either be the disrupters or the disrupted.”
The FT added:
At the end of a week which saw the Bank of England halve its growth forecasts for 2025 and the populist Reform UK party overtake Labour in a YouGov poll, Starmer’s allies said he had made “a passionate call to increase the pace of change”.
There are four things he very obviously does not get.
The first is that however hard he calls for it, growth is not going to happen in a world as chaotic as that we are now living in. When every signal being sent out into the world from Trump says that chaos is imminent, the world is going to be in precautionary mode. People and companies are not going to spend. They are not going to invest. They are going to save. That is what always happens when people are afraid, and they are rightly afraid right now. Telling people to do otherwise is going to have no impact. They are not going to listen to him. His whole plan is utterly hopeless in a world where growth is not on the cards.
Secondly, it really is time he gave up on growth anyway, for two reasons. One is that most people know that the benefits of growth only go to the wealthy. They are not interested in any more of that happening. And, unless he says what he wants to grow and why, then they will be alienated because, by itself, the word has become meaningless. He could talk about growth in the one thing he can control, which is the state sector, and people might listen. But, since he will not talk about, or even countenance that, any discussion of growth is now a political turn-off.
Thirdly, it should have dawned on him by now that the word ‘change’ is also seen as meaningless unless explained. Unless the change from ‘something’ to something else’ is explained, with reasons for the change being given and potential benefits being laid out for all to appraise, then people are now as alienated by this word as they are by growth. People might be desperate for radical change in our political system so that it might function for them, but when Starmer has turned his back on everything from proportional representation onwards that might really deliver change, they do not trust him with the word.
And, fourthly, for a man who makes the average conveyancing lawyer in a small market town look exciting, the claim to be a disrupter is ludicrous. That is most especially so when nothing Labour is offering appears to change anything that really matters in any of the biggest areas of concern, from healthcare to education and onwards. In fact, all labour seems to be doing is maintaining the status quo.
Starmer can say these words. No one will, however, believe a word he says. Only actions matter now, and he does not believe in the state, reform of the state, or in what a state liberated by proper macroeconomic thinking can do. Unless he changes – and that seems unlikely – those at yesterday’s meeting must realise that they are doomed to failure. It’s just going to be torture whilst the path to Starmer’s painful demise is rolled out.
Starmer seems to be a double fool. If he said nothing, people might suspect him to be a fool. But with all the stuff that he comes out with has confirmed in people’s eyes that he is a fool. He is obsessed with Project Ukraine but signing an agreement to give that financial black hole £3 billion ($3.6bn) a year in military aid ‘for as long as it takes’ while the UK’s finances swirls around the toilet bowel is plain nuts. Not that he is that different to leaders like Macron or Trudeau or Scholz. What is worse is that the Tories don’t have much to offer either that could win back voters. I mean, how bad can it be when British voters look at Labour and the Tories and think that somebody like Nigel Farage might be a reasonable choice to make instead. To make it worse, Starmer has surrounded himself with more fools. For example, the UK’s Foreign Minister Lammy made a speech the other day and said, I kid you not, ‘Kievan princesses married British princes a thousand years ago, our partnership is about hundreds and thousands of years old.’ Russia’s Maria Zakharova had a field day with that one and asked ‘Why not older? [Ukrainians and Britons] also hunted Brontosaurus together.’
Thank you, Rev.
It turns out that in the past year, Lammy has received £70k from Zionist lobbyists.
I lived in the UK for 4 years but find myself these days thinking how just the idea of visiting gets me nervous. The UK feels from outside as a police state, authoritarian and vengeful.
As for Starmer… we all know from life people who are subservient to power, who rose above their merit purely based on being disgusting slimy boot lickers, who have no honour and happily betray anyone that they see as in their way. And we all recognise Starmer as such a person. I don’t think I have ever felt such disgust. And I don’t know anyone, his masters, fellow labourites or anyone else who has an ounce of respect for the guy.
Add to that that the guy looks utterly lost and clueless beyond doubling down in what he thinks his masters want him to do.
The way a former human rights lawyer tried to justify war crimes, how he stabbed Corbyn in the back, etc, etc. Vile.
He makes the game too obvious, he has become a liability.
Sounds like it’s time for the UK to start looking for it’s future ex-Prime Minister.
Thank you, Yves.
I will try to write more later, but just want to add that in addition to the hunger crisis, there’s a growing personal debt crisis and, in the provinces, noticeable rise in homelessness.
Labour is just not interested and desperate for Big Finance to bail out UK, Inc. That
desperation extends to wining and dining US giants at Downing Street and pointedly excluding their UK peers, e.g. appointing someone from Amazon to be trust buster. BlackRock may as well relocate from the City to Whitehall, if only that would make it easier for Angela Rayner to get handsy with Larry Fink.
My parents, both 80 last November and in Blighty since May 1964, and I are planning to leave in the next couple of years. A year ago, we thought of selling up in Mauritius, but have flipped 180 degrees since the summer and some racist attacks in mid-Buckinghamshire and one at York on the son of a friend and his girlfriend last July.
The rate of decline appears to be accelerating. I would also add there’s a noticeable public loss of faith and signs of mental and physical stress.
There’s quiet quitting and talk of it from not just immigrants and the children of immigrants, but Britons with no overseas connections.
It makes sense for immigrants and their offspring to pack up. Just before Christmas, the FT featured Labour’s record since the election and some score settling by the Starmer back room team led by Cork born and raised and Fine Gael, so Irish Tory, hatchet man Morgan McSweeney. Not everything said was published as the FT is anxious not to burn bridges.
One of the FT team is a friend. The friend’s spouse is of Indo-Mauritian immigrant parentage. The pair would like to start a family. The friend was alarmed to hear that Labour will not be outflanked from the right by Farage’s Reform and looks forward to and even relishes fighting on Reform’s turf. Labour plans to capitalise on Starmer’s record as chief prosecutor and highlight cases where criminals of immigrant origin were prosecuted. McSweeney sees Europe and the US swinging to the right, Germany this month, France in 2027 and Vance winning in 2028. McSweeney, the brains behind Starmer, would like his sock puppet to make common cause with Meloni, Merz and Weidel, Le Pen and Vance.
I won’t waste your time by commenting on the British left.