Labour Falling Apart
Starmer's decline is accelerating.
Keir Starmer is already in enormous trouble.
It’s remarkable that having secured a large Parliamentary majority with around a third of the General Election vote, the Prime Minister seems to have no plan as to what he actually wants to achieve.
This is the same drift we saw from various Conservative Prime Ministers.
It serves as a huge warning to Reform UK. And it actually is fairly simple.
A Nigel Farage Government must go in, day one, with specific legislation that is quickly delivered as law.
Leaving the ECHR, for example, would be a tangible outcome that would make our country far safer.
But for now, we’re stuck with a Labour Government that has lost control.
Illegal migration boat crossings are exploding to levels never seen before. Starmer’s weak ‘smash the gangs’ motto has been exposed as hogwash.
The economy is taking a beating, with businesses and workers receiving a brutal hit.
This week’s mess surrounding Starmer and his Chancellor Rachel Reeves isn’t going to help.
As ever, lefties are urging Labour to now raise taxes even further. That will be a disaster.
And increasingly we can see this is a u-turn Government.
They’ve done it on a grooming gangs inquiry, the winter fuel cut, tax rises and indeed the Welfare Bill saw Starmer lose control of his own party this week.
Discipline amongst backbench Labour MPs has already broken down.
The collapsing level of support for Labour - and Starmer personally - will mean that party discipline continues to disintegrate as MPs panic.
It now seems that some left-wing MPs may break away from Labour and form another party, possibly involving Jeremy Corbyn.
Why aren’t they joining the Greens? Or even the Liberal Democrats? Honestly, what is the actual policy difference between these various groups?
They all represent the failing status quo just as Labour do: high tax, weak borders, ridiculous levels of net migration.
The British public have had enough of all of this. That’s why in the latest Find Out Now poll Reform have an 8-point lead, sitting on 30%.
Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives continue to slip towards annihilation: the same poll has Tory support (16%) at just over half that of Reform and just one point ahead of the Liberal Democrats.
The prospect of the Tories coming fourth at the next General Election is very real, as things stand.
It isn’t just opinion polls that tell us much about the nationwide swing against Labour and in favour of Reform.
Two by-elections deep in safe Labour territory this week show us the reality of what is happening, and where the real battle now lies.
The Cramlington and Killingworth constituency saw Labour secure 49% of the vote at the General Election last year, way ahead of Reform on 21%.
Yet a Council by-election in Killingworth this week saw Reform gain the seat from Labour, 38% to 32%.
In an even safer Labour constituency, Newcastle upon Tyne North, Labour got over 50% of the vote at the General Election. Reform came fourth with 12%.
But in Longbenton and Benton ward this week in that very seat, Reform surged to 32%. Labour held on with just shy of 40%, but the swing since last year is undeniable.
This is where the huge political fight will be, with the country desperate for strong political leadership.
As Labour continue to stumble along and lefty infighting ramps up, Reform must continue the momentum and deliver a real plan for change in Government unlike Starmer’s vague words and u-turning disaster.
Great news! Always entertaining watching the loony left fighting amongst themselves, Marxist revolutions always eat their own. Next we will see purely Islamic parties form and dump these fools. The Left are dinosaurs, no one wants them.
We risk seeing Starmer and Rachel from accounts being sacked. Who will replace them will be far worse. We will see Denis Healy's rates of tax (98%) for the wealthy return, causing the loss of huge swathes of tax revenue and investment drying up.
We need to believe that Reform will correct this and address some of the massive issues we face. I think Reform can act quickly and effectively on immigration. But I think some other policies may lack the rigour of deep research. Where is the equivalent work done by Sir Keith Joseph before Thatcher came to power? The current Liebour government did not do any deep research before it came to power either, and it shows.
Some of those issues are:
- Root and branch reform of the NHS, in the teeth of leftwaffe hysteria about losing the 'free at the point of use' (which we know will not be lost).
- Dealing with welfare - incentivising work, but also changing the culture in the UK to make sure that hard work is rewarded. Changing the culture is very difficult. The horrendous socialist outcome of people being dependent on the state must be rolled back to an optimal safety net.
- Dealing with the demographic problem. This problem is multifaceted; not only do the financial aspects of housing affordability and parenting need to be addressed, but deeper reasons for not having children have to be recognised and solved. Korea has a horrible demographic problem, but its fiscal improvements for solving this have not worked - we need to learn.
Also, Thatcher needed several terms of power to turn the country. I remember her second election in 1983. The pain the country had to endure to turn the corner after she was elected in 1978 threatened her re-election. It was only the decisive action and victory in the Falklands War in 1982 that delivered electoral success. Reform needs a more than one term, how we are going to persuade the country to keep taking the medicine is going to need a genius.