IN case you haven’t heard, Sir Keir Starmer is angry.
He is FURIOUS that Israeli football teams feel Britain is too unsafe for them to set foot in.
He is SEETHING about the desperate state of our prisons that leak like sieves.
And he is RAGING about the billions needlessly squandered on migrant hotels.
But I bet he isn’t as cross as Barbara, a 70-year-old Sun reader who emailed me on Monday afternoon.
She told me she doesn’t normally write to newspapers, but had seen my report on the monstrous sum spent by the Home Office on asylum housing, and felt so enraged she had to get in touch.
Her email went like this: “I have just got up after working a 12-hour night shift at my local hospital.
“I have had three hours’ sleep and I am back tonight to do it all again.
“I am still working at the age of 70, not because I don’t want to retire but because life says I have to.”
Barbara got her first job aged 14 because her coal-mining father told her that work pays, but now she feels that grafters like her are the ones being “penalised”.
And she watches in dismay as taxpayer cash is frittered like Monopoly money on benefit payments, foreign aid and illegal migration.
She signed off: “That’s my rant over with — not that it changes anything, I’ve still got to go to work tonight and do it all again. And again and again until I drop!”
Unlike Barbara, our Prime Minister does have the power to actually change things. So what’s stopping him?
There is a growing sense of late that Starmer is becoming a passenger in his own government, lurching from crisis to crisis without a shred of grip.
Under the comfort blanket of Opposition, you can shout, scream and holler without the accountability of decision-making. But Starmer is now in government, and one with a thumping great majority.
To paraphrase that great Blair anthem, Things Need To Get Better . . . Take his response to the ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv football fans attending a match at Aston Villa.
Within minutes of the news breaking, Downing Street officials were on the blower to all and sundry, assuring them that the PM would move heaven and earth to overturn the decision.
People in Government almost seemed relieved when — after several days of silence — Maccabi took it out of their hands by pulling their fans from the game.
It is not good enough.
What did the PM actually do to bang heads together? What further resources could No10 have pledged?
Did he try to secure Wembley as an alternative venue?
Or take our ballooning benefits bill, which Starmer said must be wrestled down as a matter of “moral imperative”.
That same moral imperative melted away when a few carping Labour lefties decided they didn’t much like the idea of welfare cuts.
That lack of action on slashing spending now means the PM is seriously contemplating breaking his manifesto pledge by hiking income tax.
Blaming Brexit
Or take the increasing rate of illegal migration, which the Home Office insisted on Monday it was “furious” about. Great news! So why haven’t any migrants been moved out of hotels yet?
Where are the return hubs in third countries the PM promised last spring?
Where are the much-vaunted reforms to European human rights laws? Why are asylum seekers STILL taking expensive taxis to GP appointments?
Some advice to ministers: stop telling people how angry you are — it is really starting to grate.
People like Barbara have the right to be angry.
Those who convinced the public to hand them the levers of power do not.
It is why voters will have no truck with Chancellor Rachel Reeves standing up on November 26 and blaming Brexit and the Tories for her miserable Budget.
A Cabinet minister in the last government eventually banned his civil servants from putting out quotes saying he was “deeply concerned” about a matter.
This savvy MP quickly twigged that voters could not give a fig what he thought, just what he planned to do, and how quickly he would do it.
On Tuesday, the PM told me of his desire to be in the job for ten years.
Brushing away leadership speculation and rock-bottom polling, he set his sights firmly on a decade in power.
Starmer has frequently talked about wanting a “decade of national renewal” and sees himself staying the distance at the helm.
But the time for talk is over, and the time for action is now.
Hip, hip Horatio for Brits
I’VE been listening to a brilliant The Rest Is History podcast series on Admiral Lord Nelson, swashbuckling hero of the seas and our greatest naval commander.
Hearing how the fearless Horatio made light work of rival fleets gave me a brief pang of regret that Britain is not the global power it once was.
That was until I visited the BAE aerodrome in Preston on Tuesday, where the new Typhoon fighter jets are being built.
At around £70million a pop, they really are something to behold, and so are the pilots who man them.
One of them let me have a go in the Typhoon simulator, which thrillingly involved shooting down some enemies.
He kindly paused the video just before I was about to crash, but that’s beside the point.
The point is that in an ocean of declinist talk, it is important to remember that we as a nation have always punched above our weight – and continue to do so.
We have rights as well
A GAGGLE of numbskulls from Greenpeace erected cages around the statues of Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square yesterday.
A leaflet thrust at me by one of them warned of Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s plan to limit demonstrations that happen in the same place, week in, week out.
“The right to make your voice heard is fundamental to any democracy,” it crowed.
True, but rights cut both ways. What about my right to enjoy a Saturday in central London without relentless marches gumming up the streets?
More importantly, what about the right of Jews to feel safe from ghoulish pro-Palestine protesters who can barely disguise their antisemitism?
People should and do put up with occasional nuisance, and those of us who work in Westminster endure daily megaphone-induced ear-bashing.
But there has to be a balance to stop people taking the mick.
Testing times…
I BROADLY believe in free-market capitalism – but sometimes that conviction gets tested.
Being fleeced for £3.29 for a small bottle of water at WH Smith last week was one of those times.
Another came yesterday when the tech firm Nvidia, led by CEO Jensen Huang, above, officially became the first company worth more than $5trillion – similar in size to the German economy.
While great for them and the jobs they’ll create, I can’t help but feel a little bit intimidated by these Silicon Valley behemoths wielding more power than many sovereign states.
Just so luvvie struck
ONE more thing about Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry: why are people so shocked?
After a career falling over himself to be right-on, perhaps His Royal Wokeness made a beeline for the singer after hearing she also kisses girls and likes it.
Or maybe he is just following in the steps of his late dad Pierre, who famously had a dalliance with Barbra Streisand during his own stint as Canada’s PM.
Shacking up with Perry will feed Trudeau’s desire to stay in the limelight after getting the sharp elbow from Canadian politics.
He has always courted celebrity status – remember that cringey Vogue photoshoot? – which is why he failed so miserably as a politician.
For years he craved the approval of the luvvie class rather than governing for ordinary voters.
Good to see he has done well out of his time in office, anyway.
Not up to mob
AMONG the reactions to a mob of masked men marching through East London’s Tower Hamlets were demands to ban these menacing face coverings at protests.
Readers might know that the Government first introduced legislation to do this way back in February.
But because of the archaic Westminster system, it is still grinding through Parliament, at a snail’s pace, and probably won’t become law until some time next year.
How can something so serious take so long?
Scrutiny of laws is obviously important but, for goodness sake, surely we can speed up the process a little bit.
Gut the bureaucracy, strip back the box-ticking and get on with delivering. I’m sure the public would agree.
