You can see why people don’t trust politicians. For two weeks running, our Prime Minister has stood at the dispatch box giving a wholehearted and enthusiastic endorsement for his colleagues caught in the spotlight. Yet withing 48 hours, he had dumped his deputy prime minister for alleged tax dodging, and with 24 hours had dumped his ambassador to the US because he was “best pals” with a convicted paedophile. You can’t make this stuff up.
Despite all the bleatings about being unaware of all the incriminating emails and documents, the reality was that appointing Peter Mandelson as the country’s number one diplomat was always a bonkers move. Mandelson has a track record of embarrassing failures, so it was always going to be risky.
To be fair, he is a talented individual. But he is not the only talented individual and others could have been appointed who were not known chums of paedophile Geoffrey Epstein.
What is ironic is that Starmer, Reeves and other Labour front benchers keep going on about the failures of the last government. It is not unreasonable. It is because of those failures that Labour got their huge majority, despite dropping their vote by more than 500,000 from their 2019 defeat.
But here’s the difference.
Whilst Reeves and Starmer go on about the failures of Liz Truss, the economy has gone down further as a result of measures brought in by Reeves. Job vacancies are down by 800,000 since the jobs tax was introduced. Economic growth has stalled. Government borrowing costs are at their highest in recent history, and certainly higher than after Truss’s budget. And whilst Reeves claims their actions have brought down interest rates five times, she fails to mention that the rate setting bank of England is independent and interest rate cuts have been brought in to try to stimulate growth, killed off by this government.
What Labour MPs are now confronting is the uncomfortable truth. When Conservatives had a useless leader, we got rid of her within days. We owned and dealt with the problem swiftly. Labour now has a far weaker leader, and a more incompetent chancellor. Yet they hold onto this situation.
Labour MPs look as glum as a anything I have seen in 15 years as Wyre Forest’s MP. Yet they have it in their power to act in the interests of our country and get rid of this useless leader. They should do it now.
