Poverty is a growth industry. Starmer has not seemed to grasp this nettle

One hundred and twelve years of governmental ignorance explain Starmer’s demise. Starting 112 years ago, the First World War began by sacrificing hundreds of thousands of men to a disastrous idea that Great Britain needed to stay in the game. And rule supreme. Pumped up by Victorian and Edwardian pomposity, GB was adamant it needed to rule the waves rather than accept the fact there were three other powers – Japan, Germany and the US – challenging a cardboard British Empire.

That dreadful and deadly war meant that over the course of the next 40 or so years, the UK lost two world wars, economically if not militarily, and an empire. It arrived in the 1960s with only The Beatles to defend it from the charge of being irrelevant and having no say in the world. In the ever expanding industry of youth culture, at least, the UK ruled the airwaves if not the sea waves, and was a mighty pop music world power.

Every government since the Second World War has pussyfooted around the social chaos thrown up by a defeated economy and a collapsed empire. Always trying to look strident and world class on the back of former military and economic wins, the UK started to lose its way. 

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Starmer, posturing on the word stage without a robust army, navy or airforce, and without a growing economy to back him up, made himself look inept. Facing Putin, Xi and Trump meant displaying impotence rather than virility. Especially when limping ships couldn’t protect the remnants of what was left of British overseas power.

So 112 years of history should teach us that former glories don’t pay the bills today. Starmer’s ineptness is greatly influenced by his involvement in world events, from which he emerges looking wet. Even his rush to not look too closely at Mandelson was due to him looking for an insider, however damaged, to face Trump in Washington. Rushing, not thinking through, exposed Starmer to charges of not being in control of his own governmental apparatus.

Read more:

• Keir Starmer might not have ‘rizz’ – but maybe we should give him a chance
• Keir Starmer: What Labour leader could learn from Neil Kinnock to capitalise on Boris Johnson’s woes
• Keir Starmer on being as ‘bold as Attlee’ and why there’ll be no return to austerity under his watch

We have to accept that government ineptness is not new. Cameron felt he had to leave office after losing the referendum. Johnson ground to a halt over garden drinking while people were banned from seeing their relatives who were dying of Covid. Truss imploded whilst imagining herself as Thatcher Mk II. Sunak’s moment of unfitness for office seemed personified in announcing a general election in the rain without an umbrella.

Seemingly ever U-turning, bullied by world leaders, a disastrous loss of confidence with business over such things as the rise in national insurance, coupled with workers’ rights putting employers off employing; add to this potholes and inflatables crossing the channel, and Starmer looks dead in the water. 

Bringing in 112 years is to underline that UK society could do with a reinvention, you might even call it a revolution. But not one full of the old-fashioned revolters of yesteryear. It means doing an audit of what works well in the economy, and the society that is buttressed by that economy. 

It means repairing the fabric destroyed by Thatcher’s government closing down of the old industrial UK and replacing it with benefits for many rather than employment.

It means challenging the disastrous practice of recruiting our leadership from Oxford graduates, including the much-maligned chancellor and her PM – and the civil service that backs them up. Eighteen of the last 29 PMs are coated with the Oxford brush (since Gladstone was elected in 1892).

It means accepting the appalling reality that since Thatcher we have been growing social security into an inefficient dumping ground for people, rather than giving them the chance of a secure future. Accepting the fact that crippling people who aspire to university with vast debts means social security will be loaded down with young people worn out by state-created worries.

Poverty is a growth industry and alas, Starmer has not seemed to grasp this nettle which cripples our schools, hospitals and justice system. Not once have they indicated that they have a plan to tackle the toxicity thrown up by the spread of poverty into new sections of the community.

Truthfulness is not put to use as a tool of government. Promises uttered before the reins of government are attained are parroted in government, steadfastly maintaining that all is well in the ship of state. But we know it’s not.

Government itself needs a vigorous reinvention. Parliament also. Why is it so obsessed with creating new laws when many existing laws are ignored or unenforceable? Filling government business with law-making rather than governing.

There’s a lot to achieve, but honesty and truthfulness would go a long way. And admitting that we’ve yet to get over the last 112 years or so might be a good beginning. Let’s be real about our history. We happen to live in one of the most creative and rich economies in the world. But it’s not looking like that.

John Bird is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Big Issue. Read more of his words from our archive.

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