Another day, another humiliation for the Prime Minister. The Government’s Welfare Bill, a much-needed piece of legislation designed to get a handle on the vast and unsustainable amounts of taxpayer money being dished out in PIP (personal independence payments) to people who, in the words of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Liz Kendall, are ‘taking the Mickey’, finally came to a vote.
The opposition from the Left of the party had been incessant, aided and abetted by the usual interested parties and the handwringing liberal press.
And fair enough, it’s never easy to take benefits away from people – plus the Conservatives should have never allowed the whole thing to get so out of control in the first place.
But government is not about people-pleasing (that’s one of the things that failed the Tories), it’s about making tough decisions. And if you can’t do that in the first year of government, with a stonking majority, when can you?
Instead, the plan – to reduce the welfare bill by £5billion – had been reduced to a quivering pile of political jelly, along with poor Kendall herself. As for Sir Keir, he was his usual unapologetic, inscrutable self, his presence in the Chamber about as commanding as a soggy Cornetto.
Truth is, the whole sorry saga is just the latest in a series of U-turns and fudges which all point to the same undeniable truth: after a year in the job it is becoming increasingly apparent that Keir Starmer is fundamentally unsuited to the role of Prime Minister.
He has shown himself to be a moral and political vacuum at a time when Britain is in desperate need of leadership and vision.
More than that, he is a weak leader who is incapable of standing up to the hardline bullies in his own party, let alone to some of the weapons-grade trolls that now operate on the world stage. That makes him not only a dud but also an incredibly dangerous dud.
The plan – to reduce the welfare bill by £5billion – had been reduced to a quivering pile of political jelly, along with poor Liz Kendall herself, writes Sarah Vine
He will do and give anything to avoid making a tough choice and, when challenged, he will always find excuses for his own failures.
This bill is a classic case in point. By his own admission, he only got around to giving it his ‘full attention’ last Wednesday, after he got back from the Nato summit in the Hague – a fact that is itself pretty astonishing.
Something of that magnitude cannot be wholly delegated to a secretary of state, however capable or experienced (and in the case of Kendall, there is not a great deal of evidence to suggest she is either).
Where was the detailed consultation and planning with ministers? Where was the to-ing and fro-ing of ideas, the gaming of scenarios? Boris Johnson, for example, when he was Prime Minister, did that all the time, endlessly stress-testing proposals with his team.
Welfare reform should not be some half-baked afterthought. The Prime Minister should have been across it in every detail, and the fact that he clearly left it in the bottom of his red box until the last minute is deeply troubling.
But perhaps even more worrying is what that omission tells us about his character. Being Prime Minister is not a straightforward, one-dimensional, nine-to-five role. It’s a dizzying, dazzling rollercoaster. Everything, everywhere has to have your full attention – all of the time.
An ability to multi-task is a crucial part of the job description. That slightly mealy mouthed, almost whiny excuse – ‘I turned my attention fully to it when I got back from Nato on Wednesday night’ – sounds like the sort of thing a work-from-home civil servant would say. It’s certainly not very reassuring. Or statesmanlike.
It also implies that he felt he had more important things to do – which, if you are someone who genuinely relies on PIP, is more than a tad insulting.
But the real giveaway here is what it tells us about Starmer’s overall approach to government in general. Which is, quite simply, that he never fully accepts responsibility for anything.
It’s always someone else’s fault. The Tories first and foremost, of course, as he never tires of reminding us even a year in. But also, people within his own ranks.
Just ask poor Rachel Reeves who, for all her mistakes, should not have to carry the can for his government’s financial mismanagement. And yet there she is, about as popular as JK Rowling at a Stonewall rally, the entire burden for Labour’s first disastrous economic year in power resting on her shoulders.
A responsible Prime Minister, a principled Prime Minister, a Prime Minister with even a shred of honour, would support – or at least pretend to support – his Chancellor as she tries to push through much needed (however cackhanded) fiscal reform. Instead, he always seems to be busy elsewhere. Coincidence? Some might call it moral cowardice.
Whether this is a deliberate tactic to avoid being associated with uncomfortable choices or a symptom of a wider inability to fully engage isn’t clear; perhaps a bit of both.
Welfare reform should not be some half-baked afterthought, writes Sarah Vine. The Prime Minister should have been across it in every detail
It’s certainly the case that Whitehall staff have been surprised at the Prime Minister’s withdrawn approach to government: his lack of warmth, his closed-door policy, his inability to take advice – even from those whose job it is to advise.
The whole Sue Gray debacle is an interesting case in this respect. Having moved from her supposedly impartial role as a civil servant (always questionable, given that Gray was the woman who effectively dispatched Johnson via her role in the Partygate report – AKA the biggest stitch up in recent political history, possibly ever), she caused some considerable outrage by taking up a political role as his chief of staff in opposition.
But once in office, she lasted a matter of months before getting her marching orders.
Why? A lot of senior mandarins (including Gus O’Donnell, veteran Cabinet Office chief, who reportedly ‘had his head in his hands’ when he heard that Sir Keir had appointed her), thought she was fundamentally unsuited to the role, and told him so repeatedly.
But he just didn’t want to hear it. He avoided making the difficult decision until things became so fraught he had no real choice.
And even then, he accepted no responsibility for his tin ear and colossal error of judgment, icily dismissing her by simply saying ‘she wasn’t the right person’.
On other matters, he has a lawyer’s tendency to demur and can be astonishingly disingenuous.
Take, for example, his protestations about his court-room defences of various questionable groups and individuals, such as the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir and the radical cleric Abu Qatada.
He hides behind the ‘cab rank’ rule (a principle in English law that means barristers cannot refuse a case based on personal opinions provided they are properly compensated for their work).
But if you do certain cases pro bono, as he did, then that rule doesn’t apply; it also doesn’t apply outside the UK – and given that his defence of Hizb ut-Tahrir was in the European Court (against the German government), that might be seen as a somewhat flimsy excuse.
Also fairly flimsy on closer scrutiny was his blustering condemnation recently of Palestine Action for breaking into RAF Brize Norton and sabotaging two aircraft.
In his human rights champion days, Starmer defended a number of similar protests, including – as reported in The Mail on Sunday – the actions of Lindis Percy, who was arrested over 500 times for breaking into and protesting outside RAF and US bases.
Not only did he advocate for Ms Percy, she was also featured in his campaign video when he was running for the Labour leadership in 2020.
Against a backdrop of images of campaigners, she said: ‘Keir defended me, and many others, to bring public scrutiny and awareness to the presence of the US visiting forces so that we can live in a more peaceful and less secretive society. Keir never asked for anything in return.’
It is reasonable to assume, on the basis of that quote, that he helped her pro bono, and therefore, once again, his beloved get-out-of-jail cab rank rule would not apply.
It all adds up to a picture of a north London Leftie more concerned with preserving his own reputation among the ‘nduja classes’ than a genuine man of principle who wants to improve life for ordinary Britons.
Indeed, one senses that part of him is fundamentally uncomfortable with his role as Prime Minister of a country that he does not seem to remotely identify with and that in some instances appears to actively deplore.
Hence his paralysis over illegal immigration; his attacks on farmers and obvious indifference towards the countryside; his deranged loathing of private schools; his eagerness to give away the Chagos islands; his betrayal of Northern Ireland veterans; his stubbornness on grooming gangs. His world view is basically the inside of a VIP tent at Glastonbury.
But there is one thing he really cares about: impressing his international law buddies. One of his first moves as Prime Minister was to appoint Lord Hermer as Attorney General. Most new Prime Ministers don’t even know who the Attorney General is, least of all care enough to appoint their own.
And yet he was falling over himself to install a man who, like him, is obsessed with the Rule of Law and the deployment of ‘lawfare’ for political ends. Hermer’s past clients include Gerry Adams and a number of Islamist terrorists. He says the British Empire is ‘deeply racist’. Go figure.
Another one of his international law buddies is Philippe Sands, who has been making some decent coin lately by representing Mauritius in the Chagos Islands deal.
At a recent talk at Cambridge, Sands delighted in telling his audience how he had ‘humiliated’ Britain in the courts, adding that it was a ‘special’ thing to be celebrated for doing so.
Given how much Starmer and those around him appear to openly loathe this country – her traditions, her history, her people even – it’s a mystery as to why he wants to run it. Unless, that is, his ultimate aim is to destroy Britain entirely. Judging by this first year in power, that is exactly what he intends to do. But to replace it with what?
I shudder to think what the country will look like by the time of the next election, when half the nation is comatose, sucking on the great greasy teat of the welfare state while the ever-dwindling pool of taxpayers grind themselves into the ground to fill the empty coffers left behind by fleeing entrepreneurs and failed businesses.
When our fields grow nothing but wind turbines and grey solar panels; when all our children are educated to the same dismal standard; when killing your unborn baby at 40 weeks is no longer a crime and when the old, the sick and the disabled are shuffled off early.
How much damage can one joyless, self-satisfied north London lawyer who doesn’t dream, doesn’t care for novels, can’t remember the last time he got a bit tipsy (‘the answer is not never but I cannot remember’) and has no role models (‘I don’t pick heroes’) do in four years?
The answer, I fear, is rather a lot. And we’re about to find out.
