The Prime Minister risks squandering the first chance in decades to make Britain better, says Fleet Street Fox. He needs to reshuffle and reset
It was all so easy last year. The problem was clearly the Tories. They brought 19th century minds to a AI-generated dog fight, they fought like cats in a sack, they made so many cutbacks they broke Britain.
Now we have the first chance in decades to improve things, and not much has changed. The problems are bigger and quicker than our creaking state can handle. The internal party strife is starting to gnash its teeth over policies people cannot survive. And Britain, frankly, is no better off.
Officially, the Labour Party is united. If you ask any of them what, exactly, they’re united behind, they’ll say “Keir”. Which is all very well and good, but he’s not a plan or a philosophy. Flexibility is more electable, but that is why, unofficially, the Labour Party is a house of cards teetering on the edge of outright rebellion.
The first 100 days were a nightmare, the Winter Fuel Payment cuts were botched, the messaging feels like it was done by an archaeology student and the benefit cuts have done more to strangle economic growth, health improvements and employment opportunities than they have saved any money. Half the Parliamentary party has its head in its hands, and senior figures like the metro mayors have been saying publicly they’re unchuffed at some of the government’s policies.
A case in point is this week’s chaos over the Hillsborough Law – a simple bit of legislation, already written and put before Parliament, making it illegal for public officials to lie and giving victims of injustice financial backing. Post-Mr Bates, Grenfell, Windrush, infected blood, it is clearly needed and an experienced politician would have got that one through early. Instead it was comprehensively screwed. Officials who would be subject to its sanctions advised ministers they should rewrite it, no-one asked the campaigners to be part of it, and when they finally heard what was in it all hell broke loose.
It will now be rewritten for a third time, hopefully better – but only because the PM woke up to the huge political cost of pissing off Liverpool, Liverpool fans, those in his party who’d campaigned for it for the best part of a decade, and giving the media yet more ammo to call him a turncoat. He swerved that at the 11th hour, but it showed that he is having to delegate this stuff to people who display all the worldly wisdom of Bridget Jones at the school disco.
The PM cannot hope to deal with all the binfires himself. There’s small boats, the NHS, jails, schools, potholes, pensioners, benefits, farmers, steelmakers, car manufacturers, journalists on his doorstep. He’d far rather be dealing with Putin and Trump and there’s an argument for saying that, if those two aren’t handled well, the whole world will go in the chipper and people will be nagging about the Nuclear Winter Fuel Payment instead.
He’s relying on ministers, who are relying on advisers, who are helped by civil servants all of whom are generally decent people but really want the minister not to do or say anything that will involve extra work. A minister that wants to change things has next to no chance of achieving it when up against people who trust the machinery more than a Johnny-Come-Lately politician who lied on their CV. It is in this well-meaning void that scandals are born, and if your minister is stupid enough to accept freebies in a cost-of-living crisis, then you can be damned sure they won’t spot the massive cock-up that’s about to lose the entire north west of England.
Keir has tried to tidy it up. Sue Gray went early, and today his director of communications Matthew Doyle has skipped off too. More experienced heads have been brought into the No10 team, but there’s an awful lot of greenery in the rest of government which is ripe for a reshuffle voters can actually see.
Who would mourn Rachel Reeves? Whither Ed Miliband, who’s had to chew more climate change in the party he once led than anyone can reasonably swallow? And Lord Chancellor Shabana Mahmood – who herself delegated the politically-vital Hillsborough Law to others to mishandle – could disappear without too much public grief. Were a few heads to roll, Keir’s image would be the better for it.
But more importantly, his government and party would perk up, too. A light dusting of fear stops the whingeing, and a sense that the leader has a destination in mind would give that mindless unity a bit of purpose. Temper it with some compassion, perhaps by offering employer incentives to recruit the disabled, and guaranteed work placements for children of families on benefits, and they’ll be seduced all over again.
You don’t need to check the polling or ask a focus group. Just lick your finger and stick it in the air, and the wind is starting to blow against the government. Not because it is rotten like the last one, but because it is amateurish, cack-handed, and immature. So much so that, when I asked the Cabinet Office yesterday whether the Hillsborough Law was fudged because a minister decided for no obvious reason that it was “legally unworkable”, they didn’t try to deny it. A confident government would have pushed back hard – but this is one in near-permanent panic, less than a year after a landslide.
No-one is happy. Its members, its MPs, its activists, its voters, its donors, the unions, the country at large, are grumbling increasingly loudly. Only Donald Trump seems to approve, and he’s an habitual bankrupt with the common sense of roadkill. Its time for a major reshuffle – clear out the incompetents, and restart the machine. This time, with some red diesel and a kick up the bum.
