Starmer Stumped

Read on, or view here: https://youtu.be/xIQeCB9Gi4g )

It almost looks like the Prime Minister’s official residence has been relocated. To somewhere between a rock and a hard place. Headline issues of the moment, the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and the stuttering state of the British economy, are two classic cases in point. And the government’s difficulties are at the same time all Sir Keir’s fault and none of his doing.

Shakespeare’s history plays tell us that the dying King Henry the fourth told his son that the way to get the British people on his side was to wage a foreign war. He did just that, and it worked wonders for him.

Likewise, not so very long ago, for Margaret Thatcher. Her fight for the Falklands transformed her from a figure almost as unpopular as Starmer to a kind of super-heroine.

Obviously he doesn’t have that option. But he could press the other lever that she did so deftly. Voice training, that moved her on from sounding like an overexcited parrot to a figure of authority.

Few would dispute that, irrespective of policies, Starmer has the performative skills of a jellyfish. In lamentable contrast to Nigel Farage.

The fact that the Reform leader’s blueprint for a better Britain is largely illogical, implausible and uncosted doesn’t change the fact that all the polls suggest he could well win the next election.

Testimony, if ever there was one, to the persuasive power of personality politics.

And, beyond delivery, there the question of message refinement. Here, Labour’s fallen as short as the Tories. As those same surveys suggest that voters can’t figure out what either of them really want.

Behind the scenes Starmer is at least trying to put that bit right. As well as mulling over some kind of Cabinet reshuffle he’s looking to a serious rejig of the often malfunctional Downing Street operation.

A bit overdue, given that with the Conservatives scarcely even in the game the right wing newspapers are on a war footing on their behalf. And their rumblings are gradually seeping into the nation’s zeitgeist.

It’s worth remembering that last year’s election was far more a kick in the ballots to the Tories than a smiling endorsement for Labour. Which made them a soft target from the word go.

And as Chancellor Rachel Reeves struggles to find a way of pleasing, well anyone really, in her autumn budget, Homer’s Scilla and Charybdis spring to mind.

The hero Odysseus knew his tough call over whether to let the sea monster eat half his crew or to risk his ship being sunk in the giant whirlpool wasn’t going to win him a lot of friends either way.

And, similarly, Reeves is simultaneously up against ubiquitous grumbles over Britain’s crumbling public services and shrieks of rage about the tax rises needed to fix the problem.

Here, going back to the messaging issue, Downing Street is maybe missing a trick.

The respected pollster More in Common has discovered not only that sixty per cent of us think Britain is on the ‘wrong track’ but also that Brexit is the most frequently cited as the core problem.

It’s true that Starmer has gone to considerable trouble to build bridges with our one-time chief trading partner, but it’s also true that he’s failed to fully capitalise on what he’s achieved so far.

Point being that in his earlier UKIP incarnation it was Farage more than anyone else who delivered what now turns out to have been an unpopular seismic change.

If Labour were to keep punching hard on that sore they might just erode the man’s popularity. They could also, if they got their act together, do a lot more to big up flaws in his anti-migrant policy.

Of course he’s smart enough not to endorse the violence at some of the protests taking place outside hotels housing asylum seekers.

But there is a hefty undercurrent of support within his party, which sits uneasily alongside police data revealing that getting on for half the people arrested in last summer’s riots had been reported for domestic violence.

Previous offences also include actual and grievous bodily harm, stalking, breach of restraint and non-molestation orders, controlling coercive behaviour and criminal damage.

Farage has however been explicit in his condemnation of asylum seekers, accusing the lifeboat folk of acting as a ‘taxi service’ to get them across The Channel.

Here once more Labour might do well to highlight the reaction from the RNLI, and what volunteer Dan Sinclair had to say about the profound impact this sort of work has had on him.

Regarding one rescue, he told the BBC: ‘There was a little girl on that boat. When we took that little girl – who was probably four years old – off that boat, she looked at me straight in the eye and she said ‘Thank you. I love you.”’

What price compassion? Yes, housing such people in hotels does cost. But a majority of them are granted asylum when their claims are finally processed. Often after years of delays, when they could be sorted within months.

It was two decades ago that the then Home Secretary John Reid condemned the Home Office as: ‘Not fit for purpose’. Feels like not much has changed.

In fairness, alongside the tricksy business of breaking the people-smuggling gangs’ business model, the government is working on a new fast-tracking system for dealing with applications.

But teacher’s scribbled note on kid’s report does spring to mind: ‘Must try harder.’

Donald Trump, meanwhile, hasn’t had much luck with ending wars anywhere, however hard he tries.

And nor has he got very far in persuading his old chum Benjamin Netanyahu to ease back on what’s increasingly seen as Israel’s grotesque policy of genocide in Gaza.

Now that Britain’s joined France and Canada in the symbolic but potent step of leaning towards recognising Palestinian statehood, the Israeli government’s nascent pariah status is becoming more apparent.

Even as The Donald waves around his new disruptive set of import taxes, he’s threatening to be extra beastly to the Canadians for not being very nice to his mate Bibi. Though he might change his mind in a few minutes.

Who knows? Perhaps a far pleasanter fellow whose funeral procession in Birmingham last week brought out the crowds in their masses might have been on to something more constructive.

After his retirement concert with Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne announced an extraordinary new project, creating works of art with a bit of help from … chimpanzees.

He was doing the main pictures, then getting them to add their own brushstrokes here and there, with, as an end product, abstract expressionist paintings.

The idea was to auction them, and pass on the proceeds to a sanctuary for their dear little fellow creatures who’ve been rescued from animal testing labs, badly run zoos and wildlife traffickers.

Compare and contrast Osbourne’s kindness with Donald Trump’s often rather less benevolent policies. And ask yourself who’s the chimp and who’s the chump.