U-turns seem to be having a moment, especially if you are the political editor of the BBC. That’s Chris Mason, by the way, that over-eager weasel with a scrap of something bloody caught in his teeth.
Incidentally, I am old enough to remember Margaret Thatcher saying: “You turn if you want to, the lady’s not for turning.” This line, incidentally times two, was crafted for her by the playwright Sir Ronald Miller, and was itself a pun on Christopher Fry’s play The Lady’s Not For Burning.
Thatcher did not get the reference but whistled that tune anyway.
Sir Keir Starmer has partially changed his mind on three big policies: efforts to make it harder for people to claim personal independence payment, the winter fuel payment for pensioners and holding a statutory inquiry into grooming gangs.
The headline on Mason’s ‘thought piece’ on the BBC website says: “A hat-trick of U-turns – and this is the most awkward of the lot.”
A longer feature marking the first year of this government, in this case not by Mason, is headlined thus: “Starmer’s stormy first year ends in crisis – now he faces a bigger battle to turn it around.”
It has not been an easy first year, but ‘stormy’ and ‘crisis’ seem to be words better suited to the 14 years before that, when the Conservatives set about exploding themselves and the country, thanks in part to a bomb called Boris.
In a sense you can call something whatever you want. But are these U-turns or just embarrassing concessions to political reality? Grabbing the U-turn label from the big box of political cliches seems, if nothing else, lazy. I’d rather have a prime minister who is prepared to change his mind. Better that, say, than cowering in the court of Mad King Donald, where truth is whatever Despot Don says it is.
But that is to digress into an all-too-easy cul-de-sac.
It was good to me that Starmer won a year ago, although reactions to the anniversary will depend.
The haters can perhaps be divided into two camps, one to the right and one to the left.
Many on the right hate Starmer because that is their reflex and, if they own or edit newspapers, their job. Some on the left hate Starmer because he isn’t Labour enough, because he isn’t Jeremy Corbyn – or just because.
I have my doubts, especially on his keenness for defence. Is that really what we want from a Labour prime minister? It’s not what I want but you don’t always get what you want.
Incidentally times three, I have always thought the defence industry should really be called the attack industry, as that’s what it does, too often with innocent civilians as the victims.
As for those Labour supporters who dislike Starmer, they are passionate in their antipathy, and I know some in that camp. Fair enough, but let’s skip back to that ‘just because’.
To support a party in opposition only to abandon that party when it wins power might be seen as a petulant sulk; such desertion also has consequences. Democrats who turned against Joe Biden helped push Trump into the White House for a second time. As Labour supporters or voters who turn against Starmer risk helping Nigel Farage win power – a grim eventuality Chris Mason and the BBC seem determined to report on every other day.
Two celebrities today add their views in newspaper interviews. Rod Stewart tells The Times that he ‘quite likes Nigel Farage’, while Maxine Peake tells the i weekend that she is ‘petrified by Reform. Just look at America’. Unsurprisingly, I am with Maxine on this one.
I’d suggest that the problem with Starmer’s government is that no one knows exactly what it’s for, what it believes in. Starmer is so fixed on what he sees as his pragmatic purpose that he forgets to raise his head, look around, and try to work out what is it that people are thinking.
A lighter and kinder touch, a glimpse of wit wouldn’t go amiss either. And whoever is telling Starmer that the way to beat Nigel Farage is by being more Nigel is leading him through the wrong door.
Perhaps you never get the governments you want. One thing is certain, though: one led by Farage would be a government no-one should want.
However you view all this, these are merely the thoughts of one man peering down from a ledge and raising matters that, at the moment of writing, seem worth raising. No offence is intended, unless you are Nigel Farage.