Chris Chope’s advice to Keir Starmer
We are all paying heavily for the current political paralysis. In the light of the Government’s massive House of Commons majority, this crisis is unnecessary and unacceptable. Why is the Prime Minister surrendering his authority and allowing our country’s economy to drift perilously towards recession? What and should Keir Starmer do? My advice is that he takes a leaf out of Sir John Major’s leadership manual and resigns while simultaneously offering himself for immediate re-election by Labour MPs. Such decisive action would clear the air and restore governance to our country. The Prime Minister’s challengers in the Labour Party should not be allowed to hold the country to ransom while deciding among themselves whether, and if so when, to remove their Leader. If the Prime Minister really believed that the elected Mayor of Manchester was needed to strengthen his Government, he could have given him a peerage and a top ministerial post. Instead, by choosing Andy Burnham to be the Labour candidate in a by-election later in June, contrived by the Prime Minister’s enemies, the Prime Minister seems to be hoping that the electors of Makerfield will reject Burnham for his carpetbagging and Europhilia. If, as seems likely, Burnham’s defeat is the outcome, the Prime Minister will remain weakened by his own vacillation and ineptitude.
None of the Labour alternatives to Keir Starmer would be an improvement. Indeed, in my view, all would be even worse because of their commitment to higher borrowing and debt, more burdensome regulations and taxation and increased dependence on the European Union and its commitment to open borders.
Rising unemployment, particularly among those aged under 25, is a national scandal. One in every nine in that group is now on benefits. Things will only improve if the legislation which the Government recklessly enacted over the last two years is repealed. Increases in National Insurance, tax, minimum wages and so-called employment rights have tightened the labour market to the disadvantage of those without jobs. For all its platitudes about being interested in working people, Labour’s policies have incentivised those who are not working while penalising those who are.
A European re-set as desired by the Government can only be at the cost of even higher levels of illegal immigration and its adverse impact on public services and the rule of law. That more than 200,000 illegals have now crossed the Channel in small boats is a disaster and a reminder of the broken promises and misspent subsidies to the French. The tenth anniversary of the decisive referendum to leave the European Union beckons and the case has never been stronger for ending appeasement to the European human rights lobby and restoring control over our national borders.
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