(Read on, or view here: https://youtu.be/cMPC-fQtBa0)
It was just another speech, albeit delivered in a glitzy film studio. And maybe just yet another reset. But, like the vote on assisted dying, this story is going to run and run. That’s because the Prime Minister has finally refined his message into six discernible targets, by which voters actually will be able to judge his performance. As risky as it is bold.
Logically, what’s likely to top everyone’s priority list is the promise to put more money in their pockets.
Apart from the fact that it was probably this notion that got Donald Trump over the line, it also refines Keir Starmer’s previous rather wafty-sounding message.
No getting round it, the election pledge to secure the ‘highest sustained growth in the G7’ by the next election was hardly a hot topic over a pint at the pub.
By contrast, this new one is something we can all figure out at the bar. And at the supermarket. And when the bills come in.
Cutting NHS waiting lists is also likely to resonate. Making sure hardly anyone has to hang on for more than eighteen weeks for routine operations sounds reassuring, if somewhat overdue.
Having somewhere to live would be nice too. Of course we’ve heard the promise to build one-and-a-half million new homes before, but this time we’re invited to actually count them.
Also handy to know there’s a bobby on the beat should there be a spot of bother in the neighbourhood. This undertaking’s hardly new either, but again it’s a priority stated in bold.
Finally, there are the aims to get more kids ready to start school by the time they’re of age, and to make sure we really do switch to largely green energy in the coming years.
Interestingly, neither legal nor illegal immigration make it to the list. Which could be something to do with two things.
One, though the Tories squandered millions on trying to stop small boats the arrivals didn’t really make any difference to many people’s lives.
And two, given that it’ll take years to train enough Brits to build all these promised new homes we need to bring people in to do the job.
They’ll also be needed for the new gigafactories, solar farms, roads and railways that the government’s promising to fast-track through the planning process by the next election.
Not that any of this is stopping the Conservatives from poo-pooing Starmer’s reset not reset/relaunch not relaunch. But, whatever it is or isn’t, it certainly is getting talked about.
And canny observers have noted that the message is aimed almost as much at the civil service as at the voting public.
In his speech the PM hit out at Sir Humphrey sitting in the ‘tepid bath’ of managed decline. Adding: ‘This plan will land on desks across Whitehall with the heavy thud of the gauntlet being laid down.’
But along with the stick there’s the carrot. Getting something done is a lot easier if it can be argued that it fits into a target. That way it gets priority – and money.
All in all, what we seem to be seeing is evidence of a government finally cracking the code of both how to get things done and, crucially, how to get its message out.
On that second front it’s clearly failed abysmally during its first five months in office. Witness its tanking poll ratings.
OK it’s only one, and could well just be a blip, but a survey conducted for the number-crunchers Find Out Now put Labour behind both the Tories and Nigel Farage’s Reform party.
Worth bearing in mind that although as Director of Public Prosecutions Starmer did head a government department, it was hardly in the political mainstream.
Meaning, for all his apparent self-assurance, he entered Number Ten as a bit of a virgin. And has had to learn the ropes while trying to do the job.
But recent weeks have seen a root and branch revamp, with new new faces behind the machinery and messaging of his government.
Of course the risk with the newly sharpened and refined set of targets is that they are by definition quantifiable. Meaning if they fall short the failure’s there for all to see.
Or, as Starmer put it, this new reset blueprint will: ‘Give the British people the power to hold our feet to the fire.’ Better get it right then, or he might find it ain’t half hot, mum, as someone once said.
But it’s easy enough to be glib. The realities on the ground make for daunting reading.
Take the plan to make the health service up its game. Right now, heading into winter, it’s busier than it has ever been, with ninety-five per cent of beds already occupied.
This seems to be bleeding through to the ambulance service, with two-thirds of crews facing delays when they drop patients into A and E. Some are dying while awaiting emergency treatment.
Then there’s the promise to make our streets safer. All well and good, but where do you put the wrong ’uns when they do get collared?
The government’s got plenty of stick for letting criminals out before they’ve even done half their time. But an official report last week showed we’re heading for a huge shortfall in prison places.
Twelve-and-a-half thousand, according to the National Audit Office. Demand outstripping supply? And the rest.
But it’s a no-win for ministers. Take the hullabaloo in central Lancashire thanks to Deputy PM Angela Rayner’s overriding local objections to a new super-jail on the green belt.
Would all those who really do want something as horrid as a prison in their backyard please put their hands up. No one? Funny that.
On top of all that there’s the grinding backlog in our court system.
Seems this is not a new thing, given that Shakespeare’s Hamlet cited ‘the law’s delay’ as a justification for suicide. But it sure is bad.
Mary Prior KC, who chairs the Criminal Bar Association, says of the system: ‘It is broken because it’s not effective … There’s this old saying, isn’t there? Justice delayed is justice denied.’
Given that some of those delays are now stretching on as long as four years, her frustration, and that of victims, is all too understandable.
Of course all these examples are legacy issues and it’s not necessarily easy to pin the blame on any one person or grouping. But the Conservatives were in charge for fourteen years.
Which makes you wonder whether some of their media cheerleaders aren’t being the teeniest bit trigger-happy.
Take this from Allister Heath, top columnist for the Telegraph, known to many as the Torygraph:
‘Keir Starmer has been in office for only five months, but it is already clear that his government will be the worst in half a century.
‘There is no hope of a comeback, no chance of a meaningful change of direction or sudden outbreak of inspiration.’
Blimey, makes you wonder what the guy’s on. Though there’s nothing new about that sort of thing either.
Thanks to the wonders of modern science, boffins at the University of South Florida now know what was in a two-thousand-year-old Egyptian mug found near the Great Pyramids of Giza.
It’s decorated with the scary face of fashionable god of the period Bes, who was big on, basically, sex, drugs and rock’n’roll.
And DNA analysis of chemicals scraped from the cup’s inner walls has revealed that the tasty beverage was a cocktail of psychedelic drugs.
Cool … Who says the sixties were where it’s at, man?
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