(Read on, or view here: https://youtu.be/9Bvl9AfXwY0 )
After the euphoria of historic election victory comes the hard slog of actually running the country. Which brings the inevitable snags and setbacks. But as our Political Correspondent Peter Spencer reports, Keir Starmer has clearly taken to heart the advice of fellow winner Tony Blair.
You have the most power when you first get in, but are least confident about using it. That was my mistake, said Blair, you must do better.
And hey presto, when parliament grunted into gear after the summer break there was an awful lot to talk about.
So much so that when Starmer’s team got together on Monday they forgot to even congratulate him on his sixty-second birthday.
What with that, and missing out on his hols, he’s getting the idea of how heavy the burdens of office really are.
But, work to be done, these guys had the week’s debates and votes to sort. Lots of them. Proof that the new government is powering ahead with its pre-election priorities.
Like renationalising the railways, guaranteeing that Treasury homework is checked by official bodies and creating a company that’ll switch the nation to green energy.
Later they’ll be cracking on with easing restrictions on workers’ right to strike, and boosting their position within companies.
But first off, laying the ground for GB Energy was the biggie, and the initial bit got voted through with barely a whimper.
It’ll take a few years, but the idea is to double energy generated by onshore wind farms, triple solar power and quadruple offshore wind.
No question it’s a big state concept, using government muscle to concentrate investors’ minds and make sure dots join up.
Of course the Green Party, in conference this weekend, wants more action and sooner, but there’s a more immediate political snag looming.
Starmer insists that besides being good for the planet, the new clean energy drive will lop three-hundred pounds off people’s heating bills.
Problem being that’s exactly the same amount as most oldies will have added back on, via the means-testing of the winter fuel allowance.
This is going to be voted on in parliament in coming days and there’s already a clutch of Labour MPs calling for a change of heart.
Remains to be seen whether they’ll be punished if any of them dare actually rebel, but it does call into question whether Starmer overplayed his hand in the first place.
The Chancellor Rachel Reeves talks endlessly of ‘tough choices’ come next month’s budget, but the Prime Minister’s facing a tough choice of his own.
Does he stick by the plan and look mean, or give ground and look weak?
Not that the Conservatives are in the position they’d like to be to exploit his difficulty.
That’s because a couple of years back leading leadership contender Kemi Badenoch also called for rich pensioners to lose this perk.
Talking of the tussle for Rishi Sunak’s job, the whittling down is well under way, Agatha Christie-style.
And then there were none? It won’t quite come down to that, but from the original tally of six the grassroots members will eventually be offered the choice of just two.
Meanwhile, the contenders are trying to make two quite separate pitches the same time. One aimed at their fellow MPs and the other at the folk who’ll ultimately decide.
A tough call, given that the parliamentary party has an identity crisis of its own, and the ordinary members have a different set of priorities anyway.
All rather reminiscent of actors performing on the stage during shows that’re also being streamed into cinemas.
The close-up techniques for cameras and projected delivery for big space audiences are hard to match.
Which explains why working out who stands for what, and who’s really winning, is pretty much impossible at this stage.
Starmer’s hoping the mists aren’t going to clear up any time soon, as he needs time and voter goodwill while he tries to clear up some of the mess he’s inherited.
During the campaign he more than once made the point that he can’t just go to bed one night and dream up a new jail or two.
And the existing overcrowding crisis is sharply underlined by news that he’s at least thinking about outsourcing some of the old lags to prisons in Estonia.
He’s also trying to show he’s on the case regarding cross-channel migrant arrivals, a matter given added poignancy by the drowning last week of twelve unfortunate souls.
Interesting to note that the ditched Tory idea of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda is now being looked at by the Germans.
Some might associate this move with the striking victory in a regional state election of the AfD, a party widely regarded as right-wing extremists.
This broke a taboo that’s held since the Nazi era and unnerved the central government. But if Rwanda’s a sop to the insurgents, what does that say about Sunak’s scheme?
And what, incidentally, does last week’s excoriating report on the Grenfell disaster of seven years ago say about the last government’s approach to regulation?
David Cameron might have wished he’d skipped the slogan ‘bonfires of red tape’, given that the bonfire in the inflammably-clad tower block killed seventy-two people.
It looks like unscrupulous companies that so demonstrably put profit before safety will finally get the rap, but what of ministers who looked the other way?
While they’ll be squirming of course, it’s down to Starmer to make sure victims’ loved ones get justice as soon as possible.
But here another slice of lacklustre Tory legacy heaves into view. The clogged-up state of the penal system. Yet another headache for the new man in Number Ten.
And there’s more, much more, though some bits are demonstrably less troubling than others. But there again, it depends who you ask.
Brief history lesson follows.
The original officially titled Cabinet Office Chief Mouser was a black cat called Peter.
At first he wasn’t very good at his job because the staff loved him too much. But he got the hang of it when they cut back on the treats.
Nonetheless, he was joined in the 1940s by the Munich Mouser, so-called after the agreement the then PM Neville Chamberlain signed with Hitler.
Then Churchill, clearly made of sterner stuff, brought in a black stray who’d impressed him by chasing off a huge dog from Admiralty House.
Now scroll forward to the here and now, and Starmer’s payback to his kids for making them move to Downing Street.
After finally talking them out of getting a dog, he compromised on a second cat to live alongside their dear little rescue moggie JoJo.
The final hold-up centred on the fact that the only door to their new flat is bombproof, and they could hardly blow a hole in it to install a cat flap.
But his thirteen-year-old daughter did pick up their new cute little Siberian kitten on Monday.
She’d clinched the argument by pointing out that the problem isn’t any bigger for two cats than one. Simples.
Which proves if you want a healthy dose of good common sense – look to the lady.
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