Road To Nowhere
Labour’s Lack Of Political Sense Will Destroy This Government
Source: Integrity Institute
By Honest John
HOW HAS it come to this? The first Labour government in fourteen years elected with an astonishing majority just sixteen months ago is now seriously contemplating electoral defeat at a General Election still well over three years away, that would, if the opinion polls are correct, usher in the first far right government in Britain’s history. How can a government which had - and still has - untrammelled electoral power, have shed so much of its polling support (a staggering loss of 17% of the vote when compared to July 2024 according to Politico) and seen an extraordinary collapse of its vote at the Caerphilly Senned by election in a constituency the party has held since it was created (Labour secured a derisory 11%)? Of course much of this can be explained by an unrelentingly hostile media and online landscape from which it is assailed by both right and left, and a fickle and impatient electorate looking for instant gratification and retaining little political loyalty to the party it last voted for. However, this is the modern political world and does not alone explain the intense vulnerability of a government transformed from a determined agent of change 16 months ago into its current crouching shadow of its former self, lacking confidence, narrative, charisma, or it increasingly seems, any governing purpose whatsoever.
As is often the case when governments fail, the source of its woes are usually self-inflicted. The previous Tory regime wrecked itself on the folly of Brexit, the idiocy of Boris Johnson, the madness of Truss and the general haplessness of Rishi Sunak, but it took many years before its serial errors became utterly self-destructive. The Starmer’s regime’s level of political stupidity to get to this place in little over a year, is therefore truly impressive. It commenced on almost day one. Instead of recognising a public mood that had, perhaps for all time, reduced the strongest political party the UK has seen to a broken remnant no one even notices anymore, and which was now seeking the change and the hope Starmer had promised, were instead greeted by relentless messaging about a “£22bn black hole”, the “ironclad” nature of the government’s fiscal rules and the need for “unpopular decisions”, thus sucking out any optimism about a change of administration that a sceptical electorate may have had. A bemused public could be forgiven for thinking they had changed governments to see positive change, not to be told there was no money, that nothing could be done and that it was all the previous lot’s fault. This relentlessly negative messaging, full of references to “broken” public services and unsustainable debt, was then contradicted by the sheer hypocrisy of Starmer and fellow Ministers indulging in a seeming orgy of “freebies” donated by wealthy donors and corporate interests, ranging from concert tickets to spectacles. It was pointed out that the scale of this “scandal” was tiny when compared to the grotesque corruption of the Tory years, but nonetheless, the contrast of Ministers’ personal behaviour with Labour’s dystopian account of its inheritance was jarring and fuelled the already present sentiment that “they’re all the same.”
This was followed by perhaps Labour’s defining moment of shooting itself in the foot when, in the October 2024 budget, Rachel Reeves insisted on means testing the Winter Fuel Allowance in order to contribute £1.1bn of savings to the fiscal black hole, while at the same time raising £40bn in taxes. Even in fiscal terms, by definition, the assault on Winter Fuel was therefore not necessary, and yet the government allowed the narrative to be set that Labour hated pensioners and were presiding over continuity austerity. Labour succeeded in getting brickbats for both cutting spending and raising taxes, which is impressive enough, but the sense of absurdity was only heightened by the later decision to reverse the measure after enduring a winter of being continually criticised for “Winter Fuel” and the policy being cited by vox pop voters as the reason they "will never vote Labour again". It was too late: the damage was done and appears to be permanent.
Just a few months later, the sectarian government that Starmer leads then effectively launched an assault on its own voting coalition (which at 34% last July was not that big to begin with) through the catastrophic attempt to cut payments to disabled claimants under the guise of welfare “reform” when the motivation was clearly financial, leading even the PLP to revolt, forcing another policy withdrawal. Like Winter Fuel, it was too little too late, and disenchanted leftish voters began a slow drift to the Liberal Democrats and the Greens. This was compounded by extraordinary actions last summer by front bench politicians seemingly seeking to carry out the wishes of the Israeli state at all costs - whether this was criminalising agitprop protestors as terrorists; persecuting mouthy pop stars or defending Israeli football hooligans in the supposed interests of combating anti-semitism. Labour’s casual dismissal of a pro-Palestinian cause so important to so much of its base is, in terms of electoral survival, inexplicable. But with the arrival of charismatic Jewish and anti-Zionist leftist Zack Polanski to lead the Greens, the trickle of left wing and Muslim voters to Polanski’s party has become a flood. As a result Labour now polls at 18% - three points ahead of the Greens and eleven behind Reform.
This litany of self-inflicted woes is set to continue. Starmer’s reshuffle largely credited to (guess who?) Morgan McSweeney, has created a cabinet of drones. No alternative voices now exist to challenge the defunct neo-Blairism Starmer appears to favour; no passionate advocates of an activist state to lead economic growth are at the centre of government to challenge the Treasury orthodoxies that Reeves so blindly follows; no radical imaginative thinkers to promote the multiple ways in which the government can raise revenue to repair public services and drive down the level of debt without having to increase income tax are present in Starmer’s cabinet, and no articulate and community-engaged ministers are working with the beleaguered Prime Minister to wrest his scripts from the hands of the phenomenonally useless McSweeney to try to breathe life into a non-existent government project. Instead, a cabinet created by factionalism will continue on its doomed road to nowhere, bragging proudly of the “unpopular decisions” it will have to make, promoting the orthodoxies it will pretend are immutable and the “missions” that no one understands.
The errors of this latter day political version of the Titanic are set to continue: Reeves has confirmed her absurd fiscal rules; Shabana Mahmood intends to enter the same failed territory as the Tories and attempt to “deter” asylum seekers; Wes Streeting, despite being in receipt of £29bn of additional funding presides over a cost-cutting regime in the NHS as brutal as anything perpetrated under Sunak; Steve Reed has already reduced the relatively small affordable housing quotas in the government’s new homes programme to stimulate private sector involvement and Blairite Pat McFadden, apparently learning nothing, wants to have another go at cutting the welfare bill. It is genuinely difficult to work out for whom this government thinks it is working - Labour voters seem to trail far behind the bond markets, private business, Reform voters and the state of Israel in Ministers’ list of priorities.
It is often said, with so many years before the next general election there is plenty of time for Labour to turn things around. There is indeed, but it is too late for either Starmer or Reeves to do so: not only due to their own chronic unpopularity which is likely now to be fixed, but because neither have the depth, intellectual curiosity or basic political competence to be able to do so. The chances of a leadership challenge in the next couple of years are remote and so Starmer’s ship of fools will likely remain on course for its ultimate rendezvous with the waiting iceberg and Starmer’s enduring legacy will be to have been - despite claiming to be precisely the opposite - the man who wrecked the Labour Party.
6th November 2025