“CHANGE or die” was Keir Starmer’s message to the National Health Service.
But it could as well apply to his own government, which already appears locked in a downward spiral.
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Labour secured the election with the smallest share of the vote for a new government in history and on a low turnout to boot. Barely one eligible voter in five chose Labour on July 4.
Starmer himself, moreover, saw half of his 2019 vote — and that was not a good year for Labour — disappear in his north London constituency.
But the only conclusion he has apparently drawn is that more misery must be piled on the public.
First, he maintained the cruel two-child benefit cap, and suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party those MPs who had the temerity to vote to lift children out of poverty.
Then he appeared in the Downing Street garden to announce that things were only going to get worse for the foreseeable future, preparing the way for that new round of austerity he had pledged to avoid during the election campaign.
His pretence is that “tough choices” are needed because of an unexpected “black hole” left behind in the public finances by the Tories.
But the choices made by Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Starmer are always “tough” at the expense of the poorest.
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In 2017 Labour estimated that means-testing the winter fuel allowance would lead to nearly 4,000 extra fatalities. Today, following exactly that policy, the government conceals the possible consequences, having either not commissioned an assessment of the policy’s impact, or determined to hide it.
It is said that you only get one chance to make a first impression. The first impression of this government is now set in stone — it is of callous cost-consciousness compounded by concealment.
This is not “fixing the foundations” as Starmer claims. It is fracturing them, and many Labour MPs know it.
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