Is it
time for another general election? I mean, it’s been four months
John Crace
The sense
that anything you don’t like can be cancelled is gaining ground everywhere, as
Starmer finds out
Mon 25 Nov
2024 18.35 GMT
It’s the
logical conclusion to the disposable society. Don’t like the result of the last
general election? Then just have another one. Who cares if the new government
has only been in office for four months? If you’re not feeling markedly better
off already then the new prime minister is clearly a dud. No matter that it
actually might take years to turn around an economy that has been on its knees
for more than a decade. Just never give Labour an even break. Keir Starmer is
like a Premier League manager after a run of bad results. On borrowed time.
At least
that’s what the likes of Nigel Farage and Elon Musk would have you believe. So
thoughtful of the world’s weirdest man to take such an interest in us poor
Brits. You’d have thought he had enough on his plate running the new department
of government efficiency for Donald Trump. He could start by sacking himself.
That would save several hundred thousand dollars.
The petition
calling for a new general election has now got more than 2m signatures. Which
is probably no great surprise. Far more than that voted for parties other than
Labour back in July so they are probably no great fans of the government.
What’s more remarkable is that anyone is taking this stuff remotely seriously.
In this new world, anything you don’t like can be reversed within minutes.
Apart from Brexit. That must never be tampered with under any circumstances.
We have
arrived at the point where the wokest people are those who rail loudest against
the wokerati. Poor Nige. Can’t manage another second under a Labour government.
Of course, like most things Farage, he tries to pass it off as just a joke. A
bit of populist mischief-making. But you just know that – beneath the surface –
he’s deadly serious. Because if there was any chance of blagging a general
election through the petition, he’d take it.
To cap the
sense of the surreal, Starmer was even asked about the petition when he turned
up on the This Morning sofa on Monday. He had been there ostensibly to talk
about making spiking drinks illegal. “I know it’s already illegal,” he said.
“But I am determined to make it even more illegal.” That should do it. Still,
he treated the petition with the contempt it deserved. As far as he knew, the
UK still had a constitutional limit of a five-year parliament and so far we
were just four months in. Elon is going to be devastated.
But the
sense that anything you don’t like can be cancelled is gaining ground
everywhere. Later in the afternoon Priti Patel used an urgent question to try
to get the government to ignore an arrest warrant from the international
criminal court alleging that Benjamin Netanyahu has committed war crimes. In
Priti’s multiverse, we should be able to pick and choose which verdicts we like
and which we don’t.
So,
obviously, when the ICC issues arrest warrants against Vladimir Putin we
applaud its findings. But when the court finds grounds to believe that
Netanyahu may have used starvation as an instrument of war then Priti throws
her toys out of the pram. The ICC was nothing but a pariah court.
Understandably, Labour was reluctant to agree with Priti. And to think she’s
normally the first to complain about two-tier policing.
Still, no
one is ever going to die wondering what Patel thinks. Most of us already know
before she even speaks. It’s always the nastiest take imaginable. She is
someone of whom it’s almost impossible to think the worst because she’s already
one step ahead of you. On the other hand, Kemi Badenoch has taken to speaking
in riddles. You know that what she’s saying is almost certainly unpleasant but
there’s no way of verifying it. Her sentences begin somewhere in the middle and
end in a different paragraph. There is no logic. No obvious signs of
intelligence. She’s going to bore or confuse us to death.
There was no
CBI conference last year – the organisation was still in deep shame over sexual
misconduct allegations – so all it managed was a “winter moment”. But now it is
back. Sort of. The numbers were down and the main hall was half the size of
audiences past. But it is still a force that politicians feel the need to keep
onside. So KemiKaze was given the lunchtime slot for a keynote slot. It was
just a shame she did not bring her A-game with her.
What she
said was anyone’s guess. Delegates were turning to one another in
mystification. Looking for answers that were not forthcoming. But let’s see if
you can make any more sense of it. Kemi wanted to deregulate because that was
good for business. Er … Brexit, Kemi? Governments couldn’t do everything but
she couldn’t say what it could do.
She wanted
growth. Not just any growth, but a special kind of growth that you would know
by looking outside. Some jobs needed to go. Some people needed social skills.
Pots and kettles. There would be knobs and levers. The system was broken but
she couldn’t mend it. Restaurants should forget about having menus. We needed
an alternative strategy but she didn’t know what that was. She didn’t even know
if she would keep Labour’s national insurance changes. Perhaps yes, perhaps no.
Thank you and good night. She’s either a genius or a halfwit. You decide.
Later on,
Rachel Reeves joined us for a fireside chat. Or Je ne regrette rien. There was
no alternative to her tax rises. Have a go if you think you’re hard enough,
CBI. Tell us what you would have done differently. No one said a word. The
Ministering Angel of Death was heard in near silence. As was Kemi. The applause
was several claps short of polite. Fair to say most delegates don’t seem to
have a lot of faith in government’s ability to fix the economy. We are in a
state of unstable stability. They will believe in growth when they see it. That
way they can avoid further disappointment.
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