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Prime Minister Starmer’s having to reprise Winston Churchill’s famous red tag with that three-word instruction on more fronts than he feared. Just a week into the job he’s getting the measure of quite how much needs fixing, and how soon. As our Political Correspondent Peter Spencer reports, it’s a race against time, and he knows it.
Tony Blair has often ruefully admitted that he wishes he’d done more at his moment of maximum potency, when he’d just got elected in a blaze of glory. And Sir Keir’s clearly taken the hint.
Our new PM has the advantage over Blair that, as a former Director of Public Prosecutions, he has actually run a department. Meaning he understands how government works.
His disadvantage, however, is that while our Tone inherited a nation in tolerably good shape, Starmer’s picked up a complete can of worms.
Now that he can finally take a detailed look not only at the public finances but also at problems/crises afflicting prisons, water, the NHS and welfare services, he can only recoil in horror.
Voters knew everything was a shambles, which is why they chucked the Tories out, but only now is the scale of their failure becoming clear.
As one top bod in Number Ten luridly put it, the job now is to: ‘Bring out your dead.’
In a nutshell, this same person added: ‘I knew the last government were a bunch of cowboys, unfit to run the country. But I didn’t realise quite how awful it all was.’
Little surprise then that Starmer was visibly hopping mad when he realised he had no choice but to let convicts out when they’d done well under half their time.
But with jails so full that there’s hardly anywhere to put people there are very real fears of civil disorder if things are left as they are.
Longer term, there’s root and branch reform in the pipeline. Starmer’s started as he means to go on by choosing James Timpson as his Prisons Minister.
This man’s given jobs to thousands of ex-cons in his key-cutting company. And he’ll be on a mission to persuade other bosses to follow his example.
In tandem with that he’ll try to boost learning and training for those who’re inside. The plan being to make it easier for them to get work, thus reducing the risk of re-offending.
But all this will take time. Same as the comprehensive review of how the health service works. And the long, hard look at Britain’s defence needs. And everything else that desperately needs sorting.
At this stage, blaming the last lot for the chaos and failings just about everywhere will resonate. But it won’t be long before it’ll be his side carrying the can.
At least he can crack on straight away with reforming the planning system, putting two fingers up to the Nimby tendency that scared the pants off Rishi Sunak.
But there too it’ll be a while before the revamped rules translate into homes, preferably plenty of affordable ones, actually getting built.
Action this day? He sure better get a wiggle on.
But it’s not like Starmer hasn’t hit the ground running. So fast that his feet have barely even touched it.
After whizzing round all four corners of the United Kingdom he jetted off to Washington where he played a highly visible role at the NATO summit.
In contrast to Joe Biden grappling with his advancing years and some European leaders struggling with political turmoil at home, he exuded calm and stability.
He also took with him several senior ministers who grabbed the chance for face time with their opposite numbers in the EU. Meetings that would otherwise have taken ages to organise.
All very handy for the major reset of relations with Europe that he has in mind. At very least ironing out creases in what almost everyone now agrees was a botched Brexit deal.
Given that Sir Keir’s ruled out rejoining the single market or customs union, he’s not planning on getting back into bed with the EU. But a good snog’s looking likely.
And he’ll be showing plenty of ankle, if nothing else, when he hosts a meeting of something called the European Political Community, at Blenheim Palace in a few days.
It was set up to bring civilised continental countries together in the wake of Putin’s savage invasion of Ukraine. And of course security will be high on the agenda.
But it’ll also be a chance for Starmer to further consolidate trade ties. And maybe entice big money from across the Channel. Get the inward investment on which he’s banking to restore our fortunes.
He’ll certainly get a fair wind from the US. Biden, who always thought Brexit was a daft idea, stresses that the so-called ‘special relationship’ hinges on the Brits giving him an in on Europe.
As to how far Starmer might be tempted to ease back into the EU’s arms, polling now shows a clear majority of Brits agree that flouncing off was a dumb thing to do. A space worth watching, then.
He certainly wouldn’t have anything to fear from the crumpled remains of the opposition, or from Reform leader now Clacton MP Nigel Farage, who spooked the Tories into holding the referendum.
His bleats, about how jolly unfair it is that his party’s four million votes only turned into a handful of MPs, are drowned out by the screeching and yelling by Conservative leadership hopefuls.
At the first meeting of the new shadow cabinet, likely frontrunner Kemi Badenoch accused her rival, Suella Braverman, of having a ‘very public’ nervous breakdown.
And she called out Sunak’s springing the election date on everyone as way beyond silly, bordering on ‘unconstitutional’.
The poor chap probably can’t wait to hand over the reins, though at this stage they can’t even quite make up their minds exactly how to replace him.
Little wonder Mark Littlewood, who heads one of the right-wing factions, reckons his side is: ‘Looking for a surgeon or a doctor or a necromancer to revive the dead corpse of the Conservative Party.’
Of course at some point the Tories will follow Fred Astaire’s cheery little ditty: ‘Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again.’ But, at this rate, god knows how long that’ll take.
In the meantime, possibly for the next decade or longer, we’re looking at a peculiarly misshapen house of commons, with two-thirds of all MPs crammed into the government’s half of the chamber.
But however much of squeeze it is on the Labour side, the new parliament is more race and gender diverse than it’s ever been.
Nor does it stop there. Sitting round the oddly coffin-shaped table in the cabinet room are the most women and predominantly state-educated folk in history.
Plus, one final thought.
When they get sworn in, MPs have a choice of using a religious oath or the secular equivalent. And this time round, way over a third of them went for the non-god option.
Maybe the Labour folk felt they didn’t need him any more. Or, could be, Tories who felt let down by the heavens reckoned Satan would be a better option.
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