A BUDGET billed as an emergency measure that failed to please anyone, despite just about keeping the markets on side.
Cabinet ministers quitting over past misdemeanours, despite lofty promises of restoring integrity.
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Endless boats arriving each day, exposing the impotence of the British state, despite tough three-word slogans.
The NHS being shovelled more cash, with an IOU of reform wrapped around it in a bow.
And a Prime Minister, after a rocky start, realising the job he had lusted after is actually a little more difficult than it looked, after he spent the past couple of years scheming.
As Christmas approaches, they’ve summoned their top team in full “something-must-be-done mode”.
No, not struggling Sir Keir Starmer, but Rishi Sunak in late 2022 — frustrated at not getting enough credit from the public for what he was trying to do.
Doomed PR solution
Both are technocrats, both facing mounting questions about their political instincts and both reaching for the same slightly doomed PR solution.
The only thing to annoy both of them more would be calling this moment a reset.
Sunak chose his five pledges on prices, debt, growth, waiting lists and stopping every boat.
And he spent the rest of his short premiership bickering over whether he missed them completely, moved the goalposts to hit them or, in the case of halving inflation, would have hit it regardless of his policies.
And it appears Sir Keir could be about to walk into the same elephant trap.
He is going for something even woollier at a big speech on Thursday — setting targets for boosting growth, going green, cutting crime, reducing waiting lists and the woolliest of all, spreading opportunity.
While these “milestones” will be good sport for journalists and interviewers to beat Cabinet ministers around the head with, will anyone actually care what the graph says more than how they feel themselves?
Nothing annoys voters like politicians regurgitating stats at them showing that actually crime is going down when they see phones getting nicked and shops looted in broad daylight.
Or being told that actually our beloved NHS is on the mend when they can’t see a doctor or find they missed out on an appointment because they received the letter inviting them arrived three weeks after its date.
Inflation may be lower but prices are still a fifth higher than they were a few years ago.
“Don’t pee on my boots and tell me it’s raining”, as the Yanks say.
Million more immigrants
And what about the biggest problems of them all? Nearly a million more immigrants arrived than people departed in Britain in 2023, dropping to almost three–quarters of a million this year.
More than 20,000 boats have arrived since Starmer promised to smash the gangs and turn the tide.
And still yesterday the all-but-Deputy PM Pat McFadden insisted it was right not to put an acceptable number on legal migration as it “ebbs and flows”, depending on the needs of the jobs market.
That same jobs market currently has 11million out of work or on the sick, while ministers thought a £45million trial, which included having the Royal Shakespeare Company train a handful of young people, was a headline solution to the problem.
In ducking the immigration debate and kicking any meaningful attempt at reducing the number of people on benefits, No10 should not be surprised if Thursday’s speech ends up being written off as simple window dressing.
And it won’t even be Starmer’s most important speech this week, despite all the hype.
Migration woes
Tonight the PM faces the daunting task of trying to explain how he will surf the wave between the incoming Trump administration — and all the potential pain that could bring for a Labour PM — as well as his attempt to take the UK back even further into the orbit of Brussels.
The so-called reset with Europe looks unlikely to help his migration woes either, as visas for EU students to freely come and study here are firmly on the negotiating table.
Further alignment on farming and goods standards to soften trade checks puts the PM on a collision course with Trump, whose allies say this is the time the UK should be moving away from the bloc.
Those four big issues — migration, benefits, Trump and the EU — will be the true tests that Starmer’s next few years will really be judged on.
The PM may want to talk about his milestones, but each of those is a millstone around his neck that could yet sink him.
WITH convicted fraudster Louise Haigh falling on her sword, the Cabinet has lost its weakest link.
After her botched handling of train driver pay rises and nearly sinking the PM’s big investment summit in a row with P&O, colleagues said the flame-haired lefty was already a “walking reshuffle”.
So squeaky bum time now for other ministers who are being seen as poor performers.
There are murmurings about Liz Kendall at DWP not meeting expectations, and similar mutterings about Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds.
FEWER than 30 MPs would need to switch sides for the landmark bill to legalise assisted dying to fall.
And now the stark realities of law change will need to be chewed over – not least will this be a service on the taxpayer?
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Cabinet Office boss Pat McFadden told Times Radio yesterday: “People currently have to pay for this themselves if they go to Switzerland.
“So all those questions of costs, safeguards – all the issues that have been raised – have to be considered.”
As leading critic Danny Kruger MP told Never Mind The Ballots last week: “What would inevitably happen, as happens elsewhere, is a new sort of specialism would emerge of medical practitioners.
“I don’t want to be dramatic about it, but sort of death clinics would emerge – you know, places where you go to get this service.
“And I’m afraid it’s why the current safeguards are not good enough.”
There were emotional scenes as the bill passed its second reading on Friday, but things are likely to get much more heated as the devil of the details are discussed.
