This article was originally posted 6/12/24 but was deleted, probably my mistake.
GOVERNMENTS are never officially “relaunched” because the term is a tacit admission that something has misfired or gone badly wrong.
Nevertheless, relaunches do happen. The last one in British politics was Rishi Sunak’s bizarre and fruitless attempt to present himself as a change agent, challenging the “30-year consensus” at the Tory Party conference in 2023.
But seldom, if ever, has a government had to relaunch itself just five months after its election. The speech by Keir Starmer in a tent in Buckinghamshire is, therefore, a measure of how far his administration has fallen and how fast.
Yet a host of evidence points to Labour’s failure. Starting from an anaemic election result of less than 34 per cent, it is now polling in the mid-twenties.
And the Prime Minister’s personal figures have slumped from a plus 20 positive rating to minus 30 or thereabouts.
It is a political fiasco for the ages and one that only the Tories and Reform UK, both under hard-right leadership, look set to benefit from.
Starmer’s response is encapsulated in the six milestones unveiled today.
These six milestones follow the five missions and the six commitments launched before the general election, which, of course, succeeded the 10 pledges in Starmer’s number-salad of forgettable, or reneged on, policy promises.
This is leadership in the style of a corporate management seminar as if announcing a plan were equivalent to achieving anything. And the increasing velocity with which each initiative follows its unfulfilled predecessor indicates that we are now at the point at which football fans would strike up the familiar chant of “you don’t know what you’re doing.”
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