5th July 2024 and Labour have won the biggest landslide majority in their history. The reasons given were, the Conservative vote had collapsed, the Liberal Democrats had risen from the grave dug for them by Nick Clegg, and Reform had stolen some of the Tory vote as the right wing of the party deserted a sinking ship.
Kier Starmer had stolen Downing Street because of Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak’s inability to get anything right, or right wing enough, and now the country had fallen to ‘the communists’. We were going to go woke and go broke in weeks! Jeremy Corbyn had retained Islington and Diane Abbot was organising a lesbian co-operative take-over of the UK education system.
I will ‘fess up straight away, I could not in a million years vote for Starmer and was not happy with the idea of turncoat Wes Streeting being health secretary. I had joined the Labour party BECAUSE Jeremy Corbyn had become leader, and I thought might just be able to undo the years of dereliction caused by the dreaded Margaret Thatcher. I left the Labour after they knifed Corbyn in 2019.
Am I happy with the current government? No! Do I like the current government? No! Would I take part in overthrowing the current government? No! I am happy to give Starmer and his frankly feckless frontbench a little longer to wake up and smell the brown stuff to check if it is coffee.
The main reason is everyone has calmed down somewhat from the frenzied headlines around Boris, then Truss, then everyone almost having a complete breakdown as Sunak failed, and failed, and failed again to reignite the economy. The second reason is I think Labour are doing rather well considering what they were left with, read on if you do not believe me.
Okay the Mail, the Sun and Telegraph still go off bang once a week over some completely misinterpreted comment by Angela Rayner or another of the empty gas cylinders that claim to be the skulls of certain frontbench spokespeople.
People forget, these newspapers have always had explosive editorials and front-page headlines. It is their nature, but they are back to once a week or so, rather than daily under Sunak. As for the empty gas cylinders, go have a look at any Thatcher cabinet, apart from Keith Joseph they were the worst bunch of yes people the world has ever seen.
As an LGBTQ+ person I am appalled at the lack of progress in terms of a ban on conversion therapy. I am apoplectic about turncoat Streeting swallowing the, at best ill-informed, Cass report and banning much needed medication for trans people.
The claim that they have ‘robbed’ pensioners by removing the winter fuel allowance is probably the worst piece of hyperbole to come out of this so far. Maintaining the triple-lock on pensions means that pensioners have benefitted by £689 this year in increases, slightly more than the £300 average. This at a time when wage rises still have not caught up with price increases, including the costs of getting to work in first place.
Labour have also tried to improve the take up of Pensioners Credit, leading to some of the poorest pensioners not benefiting by £300 a year, but by as much as £4,000 per year. It should be noted that those pensioners that receive Pension Credit will also still get their winter fuel allowance and a free TV licence.
Factor in that estimates put the number of millionaire pensions in London at one in four and around one in five nationally. These people are also all beneficiaries of council house sell offs, cheap or free travel schemes, free prescriptions and various other give aways.
Yes, there will be some that are in poverty for a variety of reasons, but they are not a large number and so far, not even one has been publicised as due to a lack of winter fuel allowance.
Direct intervention by properly funded local authorities and their social and care work teams will find those people, through increased investment by Labour. To find them a balance must be struck, and paying out an arbitrary £300 to every single pensioner regardless of need is not balance.
The policies that Starmer and his team seem to be following come across to me as slow and steady rather than forcing growth, and therefore, one hopes, avoiding boom and bust. This is a credible approach, especially when considering the world’s political and economic situation that seems to be getting more volatile.
The Labour party have had some successes. The Renters Rights bill will remove no fault evictions, letting tenants appeal above market rent increases and making landlords fix hazards quick, other measures in the bill will mean safer and more stable conditions for many in the rental sector. The Tory members of the Lords are trying to delay passage, despite some of these measures being previous Tory government policy.
On Housing Labour have provided extra money for affordable and social housing with more funding in the pipeline.
The Employment Rights bill, this will give workers more rights to negotiate pay and conditions. As for the NHS, two million extra appointments have already been delivered. Waiting lists for care, treatment and tests are all down, many to levels not seen since Covid.
Despite the negative publicity around tax, the Chancellor Rachel Reeves, has put money into recruiting extra tax inspectors to recover tax from rich people using avoidance loopholes to the extent that the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) have revised upwards the money they think the government will recover from rich tax dodgers. This shows efforts to crack down on dodgy tax schemes has worked better than OBR thought back in October.
This list is not exhaustive, more measures have been introduced, on water quality, increases to the minimum wage, more NHS dentistry appointments, efforts to bring more services under government control and real increases to our defence budget.
A few measures may not be initially popular, they may seem to be targeting the wrong people, but on balance it looks like the still less than one year old Labour government is heading in the right direction, all be it more slowly than we, and probably they, had hoped having to contend with the mess left by 14 years of Tory incompetence.
