Starmer is the last gasp of a dying regime

I sometimes wish I’d started a blog about aeroplanes instead of politics. I never get bored of aeroplanes - looking at them or talking about them. Politics, on the other hand, often leaves me either catatonic with boredom or chronically depressed. This week it’s a little of both. Pick any subject and you’ll find that whatever is broken could be fixed, but almost certainly won’t be, and the current government will find new and creative ways to make it worse.

Of course, we knew all this at the election. Labour is not going to stop the boats. Labour is not going to fix crime. Labour is not going to bring energy bills down. Labour is not going to fix the economy. Labour is not going to solve the housing crisis. It will only succeed in breaking the few things that still work.

More depressingly, hardly anyone voted for this. Only on in five people actually voted for Labour and if opinion polls are anything to go by, rather a lot of them are regretting it. Starmer’s administration hasn’t even reached the hundred day mark and it’s already mired in sleaze.

Were I more tribal, it’s the sort of thing I could really go to town on, but to be honest with you, I find all this process stuff eye-wateringly tedious. Just for once I would like for a minister to be brought down over their terrible policies rather than for accepting the odd freebie. The only reason it’s getting so much traction now is because Labour put such store in propriety over the course of the pandemic - to the extent of toppling a Prime Minister.

The other reason the media is running with it is because this is what they do best. They enjoy it, and they’ve made a bloodsport out of it. So much so that if they ever did know how to interrogate policies and whether they’re working, they’ve completely forgotten. They never bother to look any deeper.

One such example is Michael Crick tweeting “Labour's new climate envoy Rachel Kyte is co-chair of climate advisory board of Quadrature Climate Foundation, linked to Quadrature hedge fund based in the Cayman Islands which invests in fossil fuel firms. Quadrature gave Labour £4m on 28 May, at the start of the election campaign, a fact which only emerged a week ago”.

There is a story here but it’s not what Crick thinks it is. Links to fossil fuels are tenuous innuendo. The hedge fund is just as likely to invest in "green energy" companies if there's a lucrative subsidy return. The story here, which

Ben Pile

has been pointing out for years, is the cosy relationship between philanthropic foundations and governments, pushing for more subsidy and more unworkable technologies to achieve Net Zero. Ben has nicely skewered Mr Crick over on X.

As such, Quadrature is just one lobbyist among many, operating at all levels of government and in international organisations. Dale Vince of Ecotricity is one such corporate parasite. Him and his entire industry should be under investigation. Renewable energy is the greatest scam of the twentieth century and if the media could bring themselves to examine any subject of a technical nature, there would never have been a need for winter fuel payments. Expensive energy is a policy choice.

Though I can barely bring myself to write about Net Zero anymore, having covered it with some intensity last year, it is still haunting us. Ed Miliband is bringing back the “boiler tax” and landlords will be prohibited from letting homes falling short of Net Zero energy efficiency standards. This is in the same week we learn that Tata Steel is building a huge new blast furnace in India while shutting its furnace in Port Talbot.

As such, we have a government dedicated to making rentals more expensive, while exporting manufacturing jobs to India, and still keen as ever to drive up energy bills and plaster the countryside with windmills and solar panels. Whatever’s in Ms Reeves’s budget next month, we can safely say that nothing is getting fixed while Labour is in power.

What strikes me about the new Labour government is not how gratingly inept it is. That was always a given. It’s that the regime has healed entirely from Brexit and is returning to business as usual. It’s almost as though Brexit never happened. Labour has learned no lessons, and it has left no mark on their collective psyche.

Depressingly, we’re back to prancing around on the “world stage”, doling out climate reparations and posturing in the UN. We’re back to bicycle shed syndrome trivialities, nanny statism, open borders and cronyism. The Brexit insurgency failed. We are very far from the political and economic renewal demanded by the vote in 2016. All we’re getting is more of the same.

But as we know, Labour has no real mandate. Labour’s mandate may be an ocean wide but it’s an inch deep. Their popularity is already tanking, and I don’t ever recall a government in my lifetime entering office without even a short honeymoon. Two-tier, free gear Keir is rapidly becoming the most hated man in the country and possibly the most hated PM in the last half century. The low turnout at the last election tells its own story. This is a dying regime and the public are losing faith in politics.

The sad part is there is a huge gap in the market for something radical and different. We desperately need a government willing to take radical action on immigration, energy and housing, turning away from the stale liberal consensus, but nobody seems to be up to it.

From the looks of the conference, Reform has the outward appearance of momentum, but there are emerging signs of internal disunity. Meanwhile, immigration hard-liners are losing faith in Farage’s ability to deliver. In a recent interview he made it clear that remigration is not on Reform’s agenda and he does not share the online Right’s concerns about demographics.

Then, over on Tory street, we still have the tedium of a Tory leadership contest ahead of us, where again it’s like being asked to judge a tallest dwarf competition. Robert Jenrick is emerging as the favourite, and he’s the only contender likely to present a challenge to Reform. Though he’d make an adequate PM in normal times, there seems to be no sense of urgency or realisation that these are not normal times.

It is perhaps hyperbolic to say that the grid will be on the brink of collapse this winter, but we’re going to be heavily dependent on gas and interconnectors in order to keep the lights on. Here, the shadow of the Ukrainian conflict may come back to bite us. As Putin's forces have focused on wiping out the Ukrainian electricity infrastructure, European generation may be diverted eastwards, and not be so readily available to make up for the UK's shortfall. Consequently, energy costs are only going to go upwards.

Meanwhile we’re hearing the ever louder tick of a demographic timebomb. The last election saw the emergence of Islamist sectarianism in our towns and cities, shortly followed by a week of rage as rioters took to the streets. This is not a functioning country.

Power is there for the taking for the man (or woman) who can find the courage, conviction and confidence to say that Britain cannot go on like this, and step forth with innovative and radical solutions. Reform have mastered the complaining part of the equation, but it’s doubtful that will ever translate into policy - and if we can’t expect radicalism from them, it seems delusional to expect if from the Tories. With nobody willing to step up to the plate, it seems we can only sleepwalk further into the abyss.