STRONG AND STABLE GOVERNMENT : UK PM K Starmer has sought to reassure voters today, with many still “harbouring cooling hopes he may bring revolutionary change in our relationship with Europe”.
In particular he is thought to be targeting the substantial cohort of voters who ticked Labour at the last election, under the misguided belief that he wasn’t really a Brexiter. People can change and they sometimes do. Just not always in ways you expect.
“I’m not in office to sow confusion,” he told a gathering of mostly right wing, partisan journalists who would write up whatever they liked later because Leveson 2 is still in the bin. And importantly, there seems currently to be not the slightest inclination to remove Rupert Murdoch as the UK’s head of state, and spiritual father to much of the media he doesn’t own.
“I want to make this absolutely clear. Clarity is very important to government. You can be reassured what I am saying is what I am saying.”
Exactly what he was talking about wasn’t clear however, to anyone paying attention, as it seemed to be a stream of consciousness, comprised of platitudes, seized on by his comms team and interjected hypodermically into his cerebel cortex.
“You can be sure I have the country’s best interests at heart. The United Kingdom is the greatest country on earth. The appearance of being in a coma is just playing dead to fool our enemies.”
But once the oratorial flourish was finished, he did get down to business.
“Many are wondering what my government is for? Answers on a postcard please. In all seriousness. Just because we are still freezing pensioners, raising tuition fees to prop up a failed university funding model, not taking water back into public hands, increasing the cap on bus fares and fuel bills, and stating the same ridiculous Brexit mantras as the catalogue of catastrophic Tory governments that preceded us, doesn’t mean we are not different.”
A credible statement, given there has not yet been a serious attempt to loot the public purse.
But when pressed on Brexit specifically, and why he is keeping red lines that only allow the UK to sink deeper into the “tepid bath of managed decline”, Mr Starmer finally went off script and answered directly.
“I will ignore it. It will get bored and go away.” Before adding, “You are aware that the Sun will eventually supernova and swallow up the Earth and extinguish all life? Not even Brexit will survive that.”
Some say.