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| Sir Keir Starmer needs to be bold, and introduce a swift EU return (Image: Yorkshire Bylines) |
I don't know what has been more sobering - the latest UK election results or their subsequent commentaries. If we are to believe in any press speculation, Britain may be looking at welcoming its fourth Prime Minister this decade almost as soon as I press 'Publish' to this article. The frenzy and franticness of British politics have reached a new level, and the more I read into it, the more worried I am about the future.
To summarise these recent weeks, current Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer has been under severe pressure over his handling of the government's appointment of Peter Mandelson as Ambassador to the United States last year. We know why it happened - because, at the time, Starmer wanted anything to appease the American government led by the unpredictable Donald Trump who, back then, only started declaring economic wars against allies through crippling tariffs. If anyone could handle Trump, it'd be equally quirky and controversial, Mandelson, apparently. It backfired spectacularly, due to the discovery of Mandelson being featured on a number of occasions in the Epstein Files, a scandal that can be equated to Wikileaks and Watergate in its scale of impact.
Individual Americans have handled the release of the Files in different ways - for example, Bill Gates, Bill and Hillary Clinton have done tell-all accounts under oath and journalist microscopes, washing their hands of any responsibility with the horrors that are mentioned within countless pages of evidence against financier and convicted paedophile, Jeffrey Epstein. Trump, who is allegedly mentioned in the Files more than God is mentioned in the Bible, pretends as though it doesn't exist, and he has enough lawyers to steer him from further scrutiny, for now. In the UK, however, it has demoted a prince (I'm not delving into Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor today) and possibly a Prime Minister.
Don't get me wrong, appointing Mandelson in the first place was off. In fact, you can tell that Starmer is trying everything to relive the late 1990s by recently asking former Prime Minister Gordon Brown and former party Deputy Leader Harriet Harman around to Downing Street this weekend for some assistance to kickstart his premiership. But appointing Mandelson to an important role, in any other year or time, was barely seen a sackable offence. Starmer's predecessors have done much worse and kept their jobs. While he has not helped himself by confusing messaging on the situation which has led to opposing party leaders accusing him of misleading Parliament, he knows - and we all know, deep down - that there are more pressing issues the government needs to tackle than this.
Nevertheless, the Mandelson uproar, along with a number of arguably contentious policy announcements and u-turns has resulted in the Labour Party suffering big losses in the latest set of elections. It lost significant ground in dozens of English councils, lost power in Wales for the first time in over a century, and failed to produce any gains in Scotland, with the SNP coming well on top, despite its rollercoaster of a few years. This has stirred up the speculation around Starmer's future. Will there be an attempted coup from his fellow colleagues? Will it be one of Angela Rayner (former Deputy Prime Minister), Wes Streeting (present Health Secretary) or Andy Burnham (current Mayor of Manchester) ready to lodge a challenge? Or will Labour completely fall apart and eventually trigger a snap general election which could open the door to a Nigel Farage premiership with his Reform UK minions?
The more I look at these questions, the more petrified I am. There was a time when a Prime Minister can make a mistake or two, or announce an unpopular policy or two, and live to tell the tale. Starmer isn't close to perfect by any means - I didn't vote for Labour in 2024's general election, and I don't intend to, as it stands, come 2029 (I'll explain why later). However, as he has settled into his role as Prime Minister, I can see pockets of genuine progress. He is looking a lot more commanding on the international stage, finally standing up to Trump's bullying and global recklessness. The economy is improving, even if 'tentatively', though we're yet to feel the deeply fearful impact of the Iran war. The NHS is showing signs of improving, with fewer reports of it being 'on its knees,' despite the resident doctor strikes that had taken place earlier this spring. And he is hitting the appropriate notes when it comes to addressing local tensions, such as the rise in anti-Semitic attacks in north London and elsewhere. The more I see him, the more assured I am, which is annoying, because the moment I feel like this, others want him to go.
If Starmer felt he had no alternative but to vacate from 10 Downing Street in the immediate future, leading to potentially disruptive changes to other vital roles within the cabinet, including Chancellor, will we see genuine, speedy progress from his successor? While the 'public' 'expect' quick results, most of us know that we won't in today's climate, and we have to graft to build our own success in times of severe global and regional pressures. Most certainly, one of the key areas the current government has to improve on is tackling the cost of living crisis, which is persistent - it's still too expensive to heat our homes, to buy essential groceries, to fuel our cars (even before the war in Iran) and the inflation rate simply isn't shifting to our favour. In one way or another, millions of Britons are feeling the pinch, and little has been done to bring those vital costs down.
Sadly, the cost of living is a crisis, I fear, that no Prime Minister is able to help, with the system and climate we're at right now. Kemi Badenoch, current Conservative leader, can claim she can combat it, but she perhaps needs to be reminded which party led the government during times of austerity in 2011-15 and when the present challenges first surfaced in 2021. Nigel Farage and his Reform UK party will seriously make the situation worse - by pledging to close UK borders to new talent from abroad, and drowning the country's natural resources, just as the councils his party are leading are. I cannot state enough how much of a disaster he would be as Prime Minister. Zack Polanski and his Green Party, meanwhile, have a small party spirit to lead a Parliament of more than 600 if there were to be an election tomorrow. However, I do admire his ambition, and how he has gotten his party to be seen as more than just pro-environment, though I am deeply against his pro-legalisation of all drugs policy.
The leader who sort of 'gets it' is Sir Ed Davey of the Liberal Democrats. He and his party seems to be the only political figures who recognise that, since the UK left the European Union (EU), the general standard of living in the country has slipped. Boris Johnson's negotiated Brexit deal in 2019-20, which took the country out of the crucial Single Market and Customs Union, was a tragic and fatal error, drastically downgrading the country's economic prospects. The UK was only behind the United States, China, Japan and Germany as the biggest economy in the world, now India has caught up with Britain - and it'll only be a matter of time when France and Italy will catch up by the end of the decade. This matters, because our global reputation impacts you, me and everyone else.
To his credit, Starmer is looking at building closer ties to the EU. The return of the Erasmus scheme is a good start - we should encourage more British and European students to visit and study across the continent without the needless red tape. Starmer needs to go further and explore the idea of bringing back membership to the Single Market and Customs Union. In 2016, 52% of voting Brits voted for the cancellation of EU membership, and nothing more than that. Theresa May, when she was Prime Minister, tried to negotiate a 'softer' Brexit but it was rejected overwhelmingly by Parliament, more than once. I sense the vote will have been different in hindsight, if those MPs seen today's harsh realities.
It is of little coincidence that the general standard of living in the UK since 2016, and again in 2020, has been devalued. Even during the austerity years in 2011 things weren't this toxic. Brits relied so much on European funding, to aid the building of vital infrastructure, community projects, health research and shared security intelligence. There's only so much we can blame on the impact the Covid-19 pandemic had, when, in the wider scheme of things, it was a big, but temporary, bump along the way. That pandemic impacted other things more, such as a working-from-home culture and an increase in social anxiety, which I'm confident will reverse in time.
In the meantime, greater attempts are needed to unite with the EU in a significant way. Plaid Cymru, who will now lead the Welsh government, understand this. The SNP is desperate for it in Scotland, a country that did vote convincingly to 'Remain' in the 2016 Brexit referendum. Sinn Fein, who lead the Northern Irish government, is also pro-European. Starmer needs to wake up to this firm reality and be bold in this ambition. He may fear backlash in particularly the Eurosceptic parts of the country (namely the North East and West Midlands regions), but as leader, he needs to convince them that the EU membership was not the reason for their problems, but an austerity government that cut vital resources, as well as being vulnerable to an odious individual who spent at least 20 years of his political career slandering a membership that was doing genuine good - yes, I'm talking about Nigel Farage.
For a long while, I resisted the urge to write about Farage, because, whenever he threatens authority, he then gets bored and goes away until the next relaunch. However, of late, the prospect of a government led by him has felt all but inevitable, as all online and traditional media continue to push his dangerous narrative with such velocity. It is a dangerous narrative because major platforms are being given to someone who is a hypocrite, fuels racism and xenophobia, gets the big calls wrong, is economically corrupt, and 'exposes' the 'establishment' by being the biggest 'establishment' figure of them all.
The quicker people under his dark spell recognise that there is something seriously sinister behind the pub-friendly bravado, the quicker Britain can heal. You think Trump is bad in the United States, Farage will be worse for the UK. I dare imagine the consequences of him leading Britain when the economy and society is at its most vulnerable. Starmer and his Labour government need to build a positive case, and prove that good, quiet results can triumph over loud hatred and division, then, Britons can look forward to a positive end to a turbulent 2020s.
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