Keir squirms over broken promises
... as he unveils five ‘missions’ with barrage of baffling jargon
SIR Keir Starmer was left squirming as he struggled to defend his broken promises while unveiling ‘five missions for transforming Britain’ yesterday.
The Labour leader, who set out the missions in a jargon-laden speech in Manchester, said he was making the ‘case for change’ as he insisted the UK would become the fastest-growing G7 country under his leadership.
But he struggled to explain why he should be trusted again when challenged about a series of U-turns and the ditching of some of the ten pledges he made while running for Labour leader in 2020.
He refused to stand by his commitment to abolish university tuition fees and renationalise utilities and the railways, saying he would look at what is ‘affordable’.
And he struck a glaringly different tone on ‘jihadi bride’ Shamima Begum, saying judges were right this week to refuse her
‘No commitments on immigration’
appeal against being stripped of her British passport. In 2019 he criticised judges for making ‘the wrong decision’ by stripping Begum of citizenship.
He also struggled to answer questions about whether he could be trusted on Brexit, having repeatedly tried to frustrate the 2016 Leave vote.
He was challenged over comments in 2019 that former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn would ‘make a great prime minister’. Sir Keir has now banned Mr Corbyn – who sits as an independent – from standing for Labour at the next election.
He insisted ‘ the public are very keen on’ his blueprint for national renewal following criticism that it lacks detail, is packed with jargon and is effectively meaningless. He said he would wipe the floor with the Tories in a general election.
The ‘five missions’ are intended to counter the five key Tory pledges announced by PM Rishi Sunak last month and will form the backbone of Labour’s election manifesto.
But while Mr Sunak has vowed to ‘stop the migrant boats’, Sir Keir did not make any commitments on immigration.
He said: ‘Anyone looking at these missions will realise they’re hard thought-through, they reflect the really big challenges of the country and they come, each of them, not just with the mission… but also with the underpinning, the specifics that are needed as to how they’re going to be achieved.
‘If anyone wants to know, “Do the public trust and want any of this?”, then there’s a very good way to find out. Let’s have a general election.’
Tories mocked the Labour leader. Deputy party chairman Greg Hands said: ‘Starmer will say anything if the politics suit him.’
of that before. He also pledged to ‘fix our relationship with the eu’ – Remainer code for cosying up to Brussels once he’s safely in power.
But that was it for serious proposals. His language remained as sterile as a smear of domestos.
He spoke wonkishly of ‘frameworks’ and ‘ compasses’, whatever that means. He pledged to make the streets safer by being ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’. I’m sure I’ve heard that before.
But while Tony Blair, who coined the slogan, was willing to make gutsy attacks on the Left of his party and took on the unions even while in opposition, Starmer’s speech contained nothing bold whatsoever.
He was trying to bore himself into power. There came a repeated promise to lead a ‘mission- driven government’. He must have said it more than a dozen times. What did it even mean?
Soon we were on to his plans for turning Britain into a ‘clean-energy superpower’. Time was when Labour manifestos made crackpot spending commitments. But since the Tories have stolen that ground, nowadays it’s all about setting pie-in-the- sky green targets.
Sure enough, we were promised that under Labour, Britain’s energy supplies will be carbon-neutral by 2030. Believe that when you see it.
The half-hour mark passed and the meaningless slogans continued. There was talk of a ‘national renewal for a new national purpose’.
We ended on some claptrap about ‘a Britain we can walk towards together’, which sounded like something you might read on an advert for dignitas – not an unappealing prospect after a speech like that.
QUESTIONS
from the media came and were met with lots of head- scratching from the dear Leader.
An ITV reporter wondered what Starmer would do on his first day in government.
It was an open goal – a perfect headline-stealing opportunity.
Would he banish zero-hours contracts? Would he drag the remaining hereditary peers from their taxpayersubsidised nosebags in the Lords?
er, no. Starmer waffled on about putting the necessary ‘ building blocks’ in place.
Oh, brother. If he thinks the voters will tolerate this sort of empty twaddle should he make it to No 10, he’s in for a nasty shock.