It is undoubtedly a turning point in British politics that the reforms have outpaced the Conservatives, according to a poll. However, Nigel Farage’s suggestion that “A vote for the Conservatives is now a vote for the Labor Party” is not quite correct. Because Reform does not have the numbers to replace the Conservative Party; just to destroy them, with no clear idea of what will happen next. When the red fog clears, we will be left with a future worse than even the rainiest Tories can muster.
YouGov’s voting intention survey shows Reform up two points to 19 per cent, with the Conservative Party on 18 per cent. But the impact of all this on Labour’s vote share is equally significant: down one percentage point to 37 per cent.
The country now faces the prospect of Labour’s “supermajority” being won with less than 40 per cent of the vote and likely low turnout. More than half of voters appear ready to support parties other than Sir Keir Starmer’s on July 4 – and yet, as Remainers claimed in the 52/48 referendum results, we will end up with “hard labour” without a mandate.
Compare this to the 80-seat majority Boris Johnson won with 44 per cent of the vote in 2019; this is the highest vote share for any party since the 1979 general election. Labor looks set to win a larger share of the vote than in 1997, with much less support than Tony Blair’s 43 per cent. I am reminded of Churchill’s quote that democracy is the worst form of government apart from all other forms of government.
This is doubly worrying when you consider what we know, or rather what we don’t know, about what Labor plans to do while in power. His manifesto was unveiled in Manchester on Thursday to much undue fanfare. Charisma-less Starmer, so lacking in self-awareness that he failed to realize that the gadget maker joke was being directed at him and not his late father, appears in at least 33 “presidential” images. But a man who can’t decide whether a woman has a penis or who can’t even explain why he willingly supported Jeremy Corbyn for four years beyond “I didn’t think he would win” has nothing remotely statesmanlike about it.
Having managed the impossible feat of looking even more robotic than Theresa May, this dull personification of political Mogadon is already boring everyone and hasn’t even stepped into No 10 yet. We have at least four years, maybe ten years ahead of us. This is the postponement of forced intimacy, folks. Fasten your seat belts and enjoy the slide.
Even more troubling, Labor will be given this huge amount of power after a manifesto that raises more questions than it answers. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) put it, “this was not a manifesto for those looking for big numbers.” The costs are only given for the final year of the next parliament, rather than every year, and “there is no indication there is a plan for where the money will come from”.
Meanwhile, a multitude of “reviews” and “strategies” that the IFS describes as “dizzying” are being proposed to tackle some of the challenges facing the country. I’m sure we’re all looking forward to the announcement of dozens of new “tsars” to fix Britain; because of course this approach has always been successful. Will any of these programs be led by anyone remotely Right-leaning, in the interest of Labour’s much-vaunted support for “diversity and inclusion”? I wouldn’t hold my breath.
As historian David Starkey has pointed out, Starmer intends to devolve greater powers not only to Scotland and Wales, but also to people like himself: lawyers and judges. Describing the proposals as a way to “dismantle our traditions of parliamentary government”, Starkey highlighted how the manifesto reflected the self-confessed socialist’s long-standing desire to consolidate the worst aspects of the Blair and Brown years: devolution; welfarism; nanny state; Human Rights Act and the Supreme Court – to make them irreversible.
Devolved nations, arm’s length bodies and civil servants are likely to be given more powers at the expense of our parliamentary democracy. But the problem with handing over control of the state machinery to unelected technocrats is that they are completely unaccountable to the people they are supposed to serve and often act in their own self-interest. If you think lawyers like Starmer have already failed “the will of the people,” as Conservative Party candidate Miriam Cates has pointed out, wait until she is in charge.
At a more fundamental level, this smoke and mirrors manifesto tells us which taxes Labor will not impose (income tax, national insurance and VAT), but does not tell us which taxes it will impose. The promise of no more taxes on “employees” is as vague as it is disingenuous. Who exactly are “working people”? Some of the country’s wealthiest men and women are “working people.” Is Starmer ignoring tax increases for them? And if not, how can he convincingly claim that Labour’s first priority is “creating wealth”? Meanwhile, are we seriously supposed to believe Labor is the “party of business” when shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves talks about one of her economic inspirations, the eccentric Cambridge professor Joan Robinson, who was once an ardent defender of the Chinese tyrant and mass murderer? Mao Tse Tung? It’s worth noting that successive Labor leaders have refused to rule out introducing capital gains tax (CGT), while deputy leader Angela Rayner has failed to deny that Labor could apply it to the sale of family homes during Thursday’s leaders’ election. contention.
Other questions remain unanswered. Labor may have watered down its unaffordable “green welfare plan”, but we’re no closer to knowing how it will decarbonise the electricity grid by 2030, how much it will cost, or what will happen if it probably doesn’t work. .
The party talks a good game about improving people’s skills and ends up talking about “British jobs for British people” but cannot confirm how and by how much this will reduce immigration in the short term. When asked what to do with illegal immigrants arriving by the thousands on barely inflatable Canal boats, Labor offers no real solution beyond talk of “smashing the gangs” and scrapping the Rwanda plan.
So what really is the transgender plan? The manifesto proposes to “modernise, simplify and reform the intrusive and outdated gender recognition law with a new process”, without specifying what that process would be beyond “the need for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria by a specialist doctor”. Will this be an in-person appointment or a gender reveal via Zoom?
He is now so close to entering government that Starmer or his shadow cabinet is unlikely to tell us. But considering the idea that absolute power corrupts absolutely, I think it’s probably prudent at this stage to expect the worst.