The Perfect End

He is going and the system is nearing its end

Starmer is a gonna - there is no chance I can see that he will lead Labour into the next election. He will be lucky to last through the summer to be honest. The May elections will be devastating for both of the big parties. The public has had enough of a state and a political system which seems incapable or unwilling to actually deal with the nation’s problems that are now piling up. That is why the smaller parties are surging in popularity across the nation.

The only thing that links the Greens, Plaid and Reform is that they are outside parties which have not been tainted by the last twenty five years. They are perfect weapons to deliver what for many hope will be killer blows against a system and an elite who have utterly failed us. This is backed up by polling in Wales that shows people are picking between Plaid and Reform depending upon who has the best chance of winning, not their divergent political positions.

The current crisis ironically perfectly showcases why we are here. It has shown off the very worst of the main players that make up the political system and sums up why the British public is now looking to burn it all down. Have no illusions about it, that is exactly what the public wants such is the level of frustration, anger and hopelessness which many now feel including the author.

You have a political class who simply refuse to govern, they instead believe it is their job to referee the existing and now manifestly failing system even as the country continues to rot into the ground. The idea that one should make decisions and change the rules is beyond them. This is personified by Starmer who is the final avatar of the EU / Blairite state which has built up over the last quarter of a century.

He is utterly incapable of grasping that as Prime Minister he should be changing the system to fit the nations needs rather than supporting it even as it produces ever more malevolent outcomes like the near weekly rapes by the boat people and SAS soldiers being taken to court for killing the country’s enemies. For him process is more important than the outcome - his worldview has no flex.

Our Keir is simply one of many especially in Labour who refuse to see this reality and it is why they hated leaving the EU which created additional guardrails for them and why even now they are desperate to get back to it. For then they can simply blame the bloc for their lack of action “Sorry guv, we can’t the process won’t let us”. It is the ultimate get out of jail / do nothing card.

Focusing on the process is Starmer’s fall back position on everything from opening up North sea to the Chinese super embassy through to even the farce over Diego Garcia. His world revolves around doing what the process says, not what is required for the betterment of the nation. This attitude is perfectly shown off by the Mandelson affair.

Starmer’s response has been not to defend the appointment as a long shot that has gone wrong but to state repeatedly that he has followed the process - for the record I believe him. Not that the process was followed but that he thought it was - because effectively he left the system to get on with it. What I charge him with is simply not doing his job and asking questions, making decisions and owning the outcomes. Instead he has tried to hide behind the process and everyone else because though he wanted the appointment he didn’t want to actually make the decision.

And let’s look at the process which everyone says must be followed. You have a system which is so utterly deranged and dysfunctional that we have ambassadors failing their foundational clearance in all but name; then they are actually cleared even after the security services must have found a cupboard full of skeletons.

I mean how could they have not. The man was a friend of a known paedophile. Who had business interests with Russia and China and who was still bound contractually to the EU. So basically he hung out with a nonce and was pally with our three largest geopolitical competitors. None of this was a secret by the way - anyone could find this out by simply Googling the man. MI5 can hardly have worked overtime to build out a case to fail him.

What really gets you is the Foreign Office decided to pass him anyway with absolutely no political input. This coming from a civil service which apparently won’t say boo to a criminal migrant without a ministerial directive. The system worked i.e. the PM got his man but it is apparently so broken that decisions with massive security implications are now taken without democratic oversight.

If I was an ally of this country I would be seriously wondering who else is now working in Westminster, with access to our secrets and theirs, who is also not suitable but that the system has glossed over because the process said so - paging Jonathan Powell.

I mean it is a perfect example of why people are so angry. Absolutely no one is taking any responsibility let alone flagging that perhaps that the system is not fit for purpose because apparently decisions can be taken by civil servants not based on national security but because they thought it might be inconvenient to the government of the day. Then when it blows up the response from all parties is to point at everyone else. It is humiliating that we should be governed by people who think this is tolerable.

The final part of our political system that the scandal drags through the gutter is the media. Not because they have not done their job here. They have, they have completely exposed the absolute shambles at the heart of government. It has been noticeable that even the left wing press have chased down the facts including Labour’s pet paper the Guardian.

However I think my point is broader than what they have done in this case. The speed at which the media turns on any political scandal is telling. Yes the Prime Minister may need to resign and yes it is important but is it really more important than any number of the other crises that are now ripping through our country?

If only the press showed the same level of enthusiasm for holding to account politicians from across the house who demonstrate a rampant disinterest in our wrecked fiscal environment, failing social settlement, collapsing defence posture and more. I mean it’s not like they don’t have enough issues that they should be fixing but aren’t.

This is a big problem as the public sees a Westminster bubble which is obsessed with borderline irrelevancies rather than the actual issues of the day. I mean how about the system focuses on policy and outcomes instead? Unfortunately it creates a circular feeding system where everyone is focused on who is up and down and not whether we will have gas this winter or why young women across Britain are more and more in danger from migrants etc.

All in all this entire sorry tale is a perfect bookend to Starmer’s benighted premiership. He came into office thinking that it was the previous occupants who were the problem. For him the system just needed a quick nip tuck and as long as the process was followed everything would be fine. He will leave a failed Prime Minister whose reputation is in tatters brought low by a crumbling political order and state neither of which even pretends to serve the public. We the British public deserve better than this and we will get it one way or other.

Roll on the 7th May.