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 understand that he is talking about his party. For all Labour’s talk of being different, for all the ways in which they talk about “difference”, they are not delivering it.
The people of the area I represent and the country are not interested in more empty promises and exhortations for patience, they just want action. Keir Starmer and his cabinet think they can fool us into believing they are doing a good job of showing how change takes time. It is true, of course, that the impact of good policy takes time to be felt. But they’ve had plenty of time to pass legislation — and they’ve passed some that are moving us in the right direction. It is what is missing 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 investing meaningfully in affordable housing? Millions of renters and small businesses are still spending billions upon billions on 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 flush with money when they has written to Steve Reed this week: “… the government is set to transfer £70bn to private landlords through housing support between 2024-28. That’s six times the amount of money spent on affordable homes over the past five years.”
The Prime Minister has had time to turn around dozens of Trump’s strikes on Iran – using British runways – as “defensive” actions (there is no such thing as a “defensive” bomb). But he apparently has not had time to take immediate, critical steps to stop rising bills as a direct result of this war. He apparently hasn’t had time to launch a regulated and well-funded national home insulation scheme or to increase investment in renewable energy to offset spiraling oil costs. All our energy bills are placed in dance until July 1 and the government is not freezing them. We’d think within ten weeks, not the ten years that Keir Starmer thinks he’ll be behind.
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The Representation of the People Bill, which will be re-introduced to parliament this session, refuses to meaningfully address the impact of dirty money on our politics. As a reaction of the knee to the impact of overseas millionairesLabor is set to introduce some slightly harder slaps on the wrists. But are they stopping it? HUNDREDS of corporate lobbyists undermining our democracy? Are paid MPs striking hundreds of thousands for speaking gigs, or consulting? Of course they are not. And if we look at electoral reform, there is no single measure that would improve the caliber of our democracy more than proportional representation.
What this all boils down to is that Keir Starmer’s Labor say they want to change the country, but all they really want to do is be better managers of a failing, failing system. They cannot continue to complain about a broken system that is completely within their power to fix.
At the heart of the Labor Party is an unwillingness to take on the vested interests that support our unjust system. They are not willing to deal with the fact that we are one of them more unequal countries in the world. We should tax the assets of the wealthiest among us – it is Green Party policy to tax 1 per cent of people’s assets when they are worth over £10 million and 2 per cent over a billion. These are levels of wealth so extravagant that a tax makes common sense. But it seems this Labor Party would rather have the support of wealth than redistribute it.
Without a desire for structural change, all they will do is run around the edges, maintaining the interests of the status quo. And if you are a government that works in accordance with the interests of the status quo, if you are afraid to take on the establishment and refuse to make political choices that would ease people’s struggles, then you are part of the problem. And Labor sold itself as the solution.
Keir Starmer’s Labor has spent almost two years refusing to challenge a broken Britain. It doesn’t matter how many cabinet reshuffles, how many former prime ministers they bring in to advise. It’s just the same thing, made in a different (and still very unimaginative) way.
The government is in chaos. Scandals, defeats, resignations – it’s all starting for Starmer. He is the most unpopular prime minister in history, and it is clear that he is driving his party off the edge of a cliff. But it will take more than just swapping one Labor prime minister for another. The party needs a complete renewal. And if they want to get back in touch with their roots, they should actually start listening to people. And if they finally start doing that, there are plenty of people in Gorton and Denton that I can take to meet them.
(Further reading: How Labor can win again)
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