Keir Starmer was right when he said: “The British people are tired of a status quo that has failed them.” The problem? He doesn’t seem to realise he’s talking about his own party. For all Labour’s talk of being different, for all the ways in which they talk about “change”, they’re not delivering it.
The people of the constituency I represent and the country aren’t interested in more empty promises and urges of patience, they just want action. Keir Starmer and his cabinet think they can trick us into believing they’re doing a good job by pointing to how change takes time. It’s true, of course, that the impact of good policy takes time to be felt. But they’ve had long enough to pass legislation – and have passed some that is moving us in the right direction. It’s what’s lacking from their agenda that tells the real story.
If we’ve had time to end no fault evictions, why aren’t we introducing rent controls or meaningfully investing in affordable homes? Millions of renters and small businesses are still forking out billions upon billions to a private rental sector that doesn’t deliver for any of us. My parliamentary colleague Carla Denyer and our two newly elected mayors Zoë Garbett and Liam Shrivastava were bang on the money when they wrote to Steve Reed this week: “… the government is set to transfer £70 billion to private landlords through housing support between 2024-28. That is six times the amount of money that was spent on affordable homes over the past five years.”
The Prime Minister has had time to spin dozens of Trump’s strikes on Iran – using British runways – as “defensive” actions (there’s no such thing as a “defensive” bomb). But he apparently hasn’t had time to bring in immediate, critical steps to stop bills going up as a direct consequence of this war. He apparently hasn’t had time to roll out a properly regulated and well-funded national home insulation scheme or scale up investment in renewable energy to offset spiralling oil costs. All of our energy bills are set to leap up on 1 July, and the government isn’t freezing them. We’d feel that within ten weeks, not the ten years Keir Starmer thinks he’ll cling on for.
The Representation of the People Bill which will be reintroduced to parliament this session refuses to meaningfully tackle the influence of dirty money in our politics. As a knee-jerk reaction to the influence of overseas millionaires, Labour are set to introduce some slightly more firm slap-on-the-wrists. But are they stopping the hundreds of corporate lobbyists undermining our democracy? Are they cracking down on MPs getting paid hundreds of thousands for speaking gigs, or consultancy? Of course they aren’t. And if we’re looking at electoral reform, there’s no single measure that would improve the calibre of our democracy more than proportional representation.
What this all boils down to is that Keir Starmer’s Labour say they want to change the country, but all they really want to do is be better managers of a failed and failing system. They can’t keep complaining of the broken system that is entirely within their power to fix.
At the heart of the Labour Party is a lack of willingness to take on the vested interests that prop up our unfair system. They’re not willing to tackle the fact we’re one of the most unequal countries in the world. We should be taxing the assets of the very wealthiest among us – it’s Green Party policy to tax 1 per cent of people’s assets when they’re worth over £10 million, and 2 per cent over a billion. These are levels of wealth so extravagant that a tax feels common sense. But it seems this Labour Party would much rather have the backing of wealth rather than redistribute it.
Without a desire for structural change, all they’re going to do is fiddle around the edges, maintaining the interests of the status quo. And if you’re a government that’s working in line with the interests of the status quo, if you’re afraid of taking on the establishment and refusing to take the political choices that would ease people’s struggles, then you’re a part of the problem. And Labour sold themselves as the solution.
Keir Starmer’s Labour have spent almost two years refusing to challenge rip-off Britain. It doesn’t matter how many cabinet reshuffles they do, how many ex-prime ministers they bring in to advise. It’s just the same stuff, churned out in a different (and still very unimaginative) way.
The government is in chaos. Scandals, defeats, resignations – it’s all kicking off for Starmer. He’s the most unpopular prime minister on record, and is clearly driving his party off the edge of a cliff. But it will take more than just swapping one Labour PM for another. The party needs an entire overhaul. And if they want to get back in touch with their roots, they actually need to start listening to people. And if they finally start to do that, there’s a lot of people in Gorton and Denton I could take them to meet.
[Further reading: How Labour can win again]
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