Delivering Deliverance

​Is it too soon to make New Year predictions? The merest onset of Autumn has set me wondering about the promise of 2026. It is currently the received wisdom, despite the latest upsets, to write Starmer off. He is badly damaged but not yet holed below the waterline. There are still many in the PLP who are telling themselves that the ship will right itself and their careers will despite a bit of a swell proceed apace. Lessons will have been learnt which will lead to the next few years being ones of, as their leader has said, ’delivery, delivery, delivery, delivery delivery del . . .  [hang on, I think a bit of dust has gotten into the Cyborg’s chip]. Yes, there’s loads of time left to convince the voters that Labour collectively will answer their dreams. But I suspect Starmer will be ousted as part of this project after next year’s devolved assembly elections, and somebody like Steve Reed will be the frontrunner to replace him. I heard Reed on the radio tonight and there’s no doubt he’s driven, with a thoroughgoing belief in his own political skills. He takes credit for promoting the new Prince of Darkness, Morgan McSweeney to his elevated plinth. So, after all the toing and froings of 2025, Labour will next year contemplate its nadir but through this Nietzschean experience emerge stronger and more in tune with The People, newly willing to use its still overwhelming parliamentary majority to propel more radical solutions to address ailing Britain’s endemic decline (is that right? Can you have an endemic decline? Sounds about right though).
 
But as Harold Wilson once said, ‘a political equation is a long string of imponderables’ [I’m sick of hearing about a long week in politics, etc., etc.] The first imponderable will be the Budget on the 26th November. How the hell is Rachel Reeves going to lift the mood? Honestly I don’t envy her position. She may have wished she’d been shifted to DCMS in last week’s Cabinet reshuffle. At least she’d get invites to Covent Garden. In Budget terms she will have to lift a rabbit out of the hat at the end of her speech which otherwise will be full of misery albeit smothered in mumbo-jumbo about a reviving economy. There will have to be at least one thing for Labour backbenchers to cheer. Something eye-catching but cheap. Free St George’s flags for all primary schoolchildren for starters? Sorry, too facetious! What about a significant bounty for people joining the forces? That wouldn’t cost much but would tick a few Starmer boxes.
 
As I write I have one eye on the last night of the Proms. What flags are waved always tells a story. Right now ’Land of Hope and Glory’ is being accompanied by a sea of E.U. flags. Somebody’s organised a statement—I wonder if the Beeb will report it? Still less the Daily Mail? The land of hope and glory appears to be Europe. And that’s a nice way of saying F.U. Trump on the eve of Starmer’s cringing hosting of his state visit. (n.b. I didn’t spot a single U.S. flag on the eve of this auspicious occasion).