Keir Starmer is the most unpopular Prime Minister in history, and with good reason. He’s dull, he’s weak, and he’s a serial liar. He won a landslide election by pretending Labour would be moderate in power, like Tony Blair. Labour would encourage enterprise, keep a lid on state spending and only hike three taxes. What a joke.
It’s hard to believe now, but Starmer pledged Labour would raise just £8.6billion through three measures: applying VAT to private school fees, increasing the windfall tax on oil and gas companies, and reforming the tax status of foreign non-doms. Chancellor Rachel Reeves told us the same story, but she turned out to be a serial liar too. So far, she’s hit us with £66billion worth of taxes, and justified this by lying about the state of the economy.
Labour has raided farmers, family businesses, pensioners, savers and workers, and is throwing the money at benefits claimants.
Yet incredibly, Labour Party members don’t think he’s left-wing enough. They want Labour to tax even more, spend even more and let in even more asylum seekers. And they’ve made their views clear on who they want to deliver that.
Starmer is on the ropes right now. Angela Rayner and Health Secretary Wes Streeting have drawn up a chummy little pact to oust him. Probably after the local elections in May, when the party faces a battering.
Mayor of Manchester Andy Burnham and home secretary Shabana Mahmood are also in the running. Would any of these be an upgrade on Starmer? I’ll leave you to decide.
But there is the one Labour cabinet member who terrifies me. He’s keeping his head down at the moment, but he’s the party favourite to replace Starmer.
His name? Ed Miliband. Yes, him.
A new YouGov poll of Labour members showed more than half believe the party is unlikely to win the next election if the PM stays. Well, they’re right there.
Then they lose the plot. Because 55% of party members reckon that Ed Miliband is the best person to replace him. Seriously?
Madness has gripped the left. Labour’s landslide has filled Westminster with bored, frustrated backbenchers who are in a state of constant revolt.
They know they’re doomed, but want to show the world just how principled they are, by pursuing all the crankiest hard-left Labour policies they can. More tax, more benefits, an all-out war on wealth, that type of stuff. And they reckon Ed Miliband is the man to give it to them.
And they’re probably right. In power, Miliband has pursued his plans with a shocking ruthlessness and defiance of reality. He’s blowing tens of billions on his reckless net zero charge, wiping out our oil and gas sector, and all the jobs that depend on it. And he doesn’t care. He won’t stop.
He’s also a liar too, claiming that his policies would shave £300 off our gas and electricity bills. Instead, they’ve increased by that amount.
The country firmly rejected his bid to become prime minister in 2015, but now it looks like he could sneak in through the back door. The damage Miliband would inflict in No 10 doesn’t bear thinking about. It would make Starmer feel like the warm-up act. Just because Labour are hopeless doesn’t mean they can’t get worse. Much worse.