The Papua New Guinea Courier on Keir Starmer and the 'face that launched a thousand PIPs'

To Albion, where Labour is proposing to reduce waste by cutting benefits for people who can’t wash below theirs.

Labour has earned a vanishingly rare opportunity to implement any agenda it sees fit by virtue of it not being a party of tractor-wanking, horse-heating, ‘I’m trapped in a room with some bad people’ throbbers.

Accordingly, the party of Attlee and Bevan has opted for Griffin-infused Thatcherism, with benefits slashed, migrants besieged, quangos axed, and the ultra-wealthy (unlike most of the buildings here) comprehensively insulated. In Starmer’s defence, he inherited the political equivalent of an unattended death that even the hardiest team of cage van clearance cowboys would balk at.

Still. A ballooning benefits bill, broken economy, and crumbling public services were also what he campaigned to take charge of.

Hence, while he and Chancellor Reeves – the face that launched a thousand PIPs – Truss themselves with arbitrary red lines, in a country where the richest one per cent possess the wealth of the poorest seventy per cent, a progressive taxation system is one thing that is not on the table. Neither is rejoining a customs union with the UK’s biggest trading partner. The poor, however, are fair game.

Why? Streeting’s Law (the one that states that the most depressing answer is usually the correct one) says that it’s because extremely vulnerable people have no opportunity to complain, whereas the rich might stop donating to your party/write nasty headlines/bump into you in a TV studio.

This vapid policymaking is underscored with keen alienation of an already stratified base. In pursuit of the Mosely-vote, Starmer’s troops give increasingly frequent toots not only on the national dog whistle, but also on its DOGE whistle, ratifying Facebook-friendly fallacies about the dangerous influx of ‘men of fighting age’, and pointing to huge savings to be made by gutting specialist expertise from public bodies. All of which is music to the ears of Reform, because it affirms their bigotry and ignorance, and its constituency will never vote for zero- percent Keir. Why would they when they you can get properly pissed off Farage?

Politics is a shit business of endless compromise. Which is why it’s helpful to start with a vision. Or moral clarity. Even both. Ideals which might anchor you. Starmer appears to have neither, blowing wherever Ted Verity or Lee Anderson’s noxious gusts take him. But when the wind changes, his face will stay like that, grimacing at all the refugees he probably doesn’t mind.

By ridding itself of all residual progressive sentiment, Labour might reflect that it may also be removing its last chance of ever again holding the reins of power.

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