A Sea of Troubles?

(Read on, or view here: https://youtu.be/wzoC-_O4P4k )

Asurvey conducted by an even-handed pollster last week suggested three-quarters of us think this government is at least as chaotic as the last lot. And it’s easy to see how this narrative has taken hold, what with its policy U-turns, likely tax rises and struggles to contain the threat from Nigel Farage’s Reform party. But what’s easy and what’s accurate can be two very different things.

Hated as he is by many, Tony Blair did manage pretty much the wisest quote ever by any politician: ‘Most people, most of the time, don’t give politics a first thought all day long.’

And why should they? After doing their bit in the voting booths they’ve got their own stuff to deal with.

The problem being that their own stuff can be so hard. Like paying the mortgage or rent, or the lekky bill, or getting a hospital appointment, or a decent school that isn’t falling to bits.

Not that things have miraculously changed in the year since Keir Starmer took over the show. Perfectly logical then to say Labour’s as rubbish as the Tories.

Except that the promised new health, transport and education infrastructure, and affordable homes, are up against the same thing as Rome. They don’t get built in a day.

Starmer’s drawback is not that he isn’t making a start, it’s that he hasn’t really got the word out – that mid to long-term projects are exactly what it says on the tin. Er, mid to long-term.

The other awkward bit is that he simply daren’t spell out what we’re up against as a nation. A rattlingly empty piggy bank.

Blaming the last Conservative administration barely scratches the surface. Indeed in some ways he’s just as bad as them, in not coming clean about how much we haven’t got to play with.

No surprise really, what with the ripples from the American-led financial crash of 2008 still spreading outwards. Even leading to those infuriating potholes in the roads not getting fixed.

The connection being that the post-calamity clawback here in Blighty meant that town halls lost nearly half the top-up they were getting from Whitehall.

Only that was just for starters. Covid came with a hefty price tag, as will Russia’s aggression, and let’s not forget that severing ties with our biggest trading partner also cost us a bob or two.

On this front at least Starmer did manage to make headlines last week, with his entente même plus que cordiale with our traditional enemies across The Channel.

Of course it barely scratched the surface of Brexit, even though surveys suggest we’d really like to, but it was a far cry from the V-sign so joyously meted by Boris Johnson.

Quite sweet really, seeing the French President invoke 1066 and all that in his speech to MPs and peers, even as paintings of historic British victories like Agincourt smirked down at him.

But he did ruffle a few feathers by claiming that British voters were ‘sold a lie’ about how Brexit would reduce both legal and illegal immigration.

It remains to be seen whether the jointly announced ‘one in one out’ scheme to cut Channel crossings in small boats will make much difference.

But there’s no question he was only stating the obvious. Both sets of numbers shot up after we left, thus reducing the Leavers’ ‘take back control’ slogan to the level of Orwellian Newspeak.

Starmer did look strained when Macron came out with this, but probably because he wouldn’t dare say such a thing for fear of making too many people cross.

To that extent he’s in the same bind as he is with the nation’s finances.

If he really spelt it out he’d have no choice but to admit that the only way of getting all our cash-starved services to work properly again is to pass on the bill to taxpayers.

The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is expected to drop hints in that direction when she makes her big set piece speech at a swanky Banqueting House do in a couple of days.

So far all she’s done is leave open the possibility of so-called ‘stealth’ taxes, in the form of frozen thresholds at which income tax creeps in and up.

As wages gradually increase, so do more and more people get drawn in. Nothing exactly underhand about this, the Tories were well up for it too.

But it does raise a fair bit of dosh without creating anything like the stink that impossible to miss tax rises do.

Arguably Starmer really goofed with his pre-election promises not to pull any of the obvious revenue-raising levers like National Insurance, income tax or VAT.

And Reeves seems to be falling into the same trap, in that she’s still maintaining that there’s no change there.

The upshot being all those nippy snippy slippy slidey cuts, like the winter fuel allowance for oldies and pared down welfare benefits which the government’s had to back off from anyway.

And not only did those very ideas get the party and the country frothing with rage, the U-turns have left the nation’s coffers that bit more hollowed out.

Or, as the official number crunchers, the Office for Budget Responsibility, rather bleakly puts it, the public finances are in a: ‘Vulnerable position.’

All of which can only fuel speculation that, come the autumn budget, tax rises in one shape or another are inevitable.

Of course there is a school of thought both within the Treasury and the Labour party that says that might be the time to fess up.

That’s to say admit to how bad things really are and tell the punters they’ll just have to suck it up.

It may be the only way, to stem the tide of bile that simultaneously states that everything’s falling to bits and the government’s bleeding the nation dry.

To some this feels almost as perverse as a kid begging for a penknife then telling daddy he’s irresponsible for giving it to him.

And, though it clearly pains him to say it, even Times columnist and, ahem, Tory peer, Daniel Finkelstein is minded to see it that way.

‘The moment the administration made its first choices,’ he wrote last week, ‘there was fury at both the tax rises and the spending curbs.

‘What did everyone expect? That merely electing a new government would change everything overnight?

‘I have struggled all of my adult life against the magic money tree theory, but now here’s a new one: the magic wand theory.’

Talk about an impossible maze, for both the government and the rest of us to try and find our way out of.

Maybe the problem is we humans overestimate our own intelligence and would be better off letting dear little fluffy creatures show us the way instead.

Works perfectly well for Sonny and his mates, who get walked to their school in Glasgow every day by two-year-old Kiki the cat.

Begs the question who’s the owner and who’s the pet round here?

But it’s also pretty humbling for all, including Kiki herself, as she’s made it to the finals of this year’s National Cat Awards.

Sounds like she’s earned it. As the school’s head says she has: ‘A hundred per cent attendance.’