Keir Starmer is finished – who’s really running Labour is terrifying | Personal Finance | Finance
Keir Starmer has no opinion, no belief, no fight. It is a cipher, a void, a political black hole. Starmer became Labor leader as a blank canvas; The man to whom Labor Party members can project their hopes. He pulled the same trick on voters last year and won the election simply because he wasn’t a Conservative Party.
Now in Downing Street, that bulky shirt is being horribly exposed. Starmer has left a vacuum where leadership should be, and nature abhors a vacuum. Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham tried to plug it, but why replace one political vacuum with another? Now it’s Wes Streeting’s turn to challenge the Prime Minister, with Angela Rayner also making the rounds.
Starmer is still in office but real power has moved elsewhere and that is a disaster for Britain.
Because in the absence of real leadership, the last people we would want to lead the country are now in charge.
They are flexing their muscles for the next Budget. Chancellor Rachel Reeves was supposed to be in charge of this, but she lost control years ago.
Attempts last year to cut the country’s ballooning sickness benefits bill by just £5bn collapsed after a backbench rebellion forced Starmer into a humiliating U-turn.
That’s when we saw for the first time where the real power in Starmer’s Labor Party lay. And this is very scary.
Labor’s disgruntled backbenchers, radical activists and resurgent unions are now running things, and Starmer is too weak to stop them.
The same intrigue dictates this year’s budget. They don’t want to make difficult choices. They just want to crush taxpayers and waste their income over and over again.
Reeves has now been forced to scrap the two-child benefit cap at a cost of £3.5bn. This is despite Starmer promising to keep it just 15 months ago.
While working families struggle with whether they can afford another child, families receiving social assistance can have as many children as they want, financed by taxpayers.
The Treasury even abandoned plans to reduce benefits so that claimants would receive less pay the more children they have. The Labor left would not allow this.
Same story with sickness benefits. Under Labour, a staggering 1.3 million people were laid off as sick or long-term unemployed, bringing the total to four million. This is a national emergency but Starmer will not oppose it. From where? His own MPs do not allow him to do so.
Angela Rayner’s disastrous Employment Rights Bill will cost businesses up to £5bn and eliminate more jobs than the last Budget, but it still must be passed. Union bosses demand this.
Starmer failed to sack energy secretary Ed Miliband even as his reckless net zero campaign drove up energy costs and hit industry. Activists love him, so he stays.
The Prime Minister’s majority has become his curse. He was paralyzed while hundreds of Labor MPs put forward their cases.
We are now under mafia rule. The government is run by a motley coalition of union barons, angry Corbynians, climate campaigners and welfare campaigners.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer is in office, but Labor’s far left is now in power. And it’s getting stronger day by day.
