LABOUR’S big reset put Sir Keir Starmer firmly back in his comfort zone – campaigning.
Campaigning is the only time Starmer reveals flashes of inspiration.
Campaigning is what he is good at. Campaigning is what he does best.
Actually running the country — not so much.
Labour’s landslide was built on two false assumptions.
One — that Labour couldn’t possibly be worse than the last lot.
And two — that Starmer’s Labour Government would be some kind of updated New Labour, an aspirational pro-business party with a social conscience.
How stark raving bonkers both of those expectations seem today.
What nobody saw coming was that it would all fall apart so quickly.
At a time when Labour — only in office for a shade over five months — should still be enjoying a honeymoon with the British public, it feels like we are already in the divorce courts.
Despair and discontent are everywhere.
Pensioners, farmers, big business, small business — all have been shafted by these old-school socialists who pretended to be something very different.
Only the public-sector unions, Labour’s paymasters, are happy after receiving inflation-busting pay rises.
There is disgust too, not least for the blatant lies told by Labour to not increase taxes on “working people” — as though anyone who runs a business or employs others is not a “working person”.
Growth? With their loathing of the private sector, Labour are already wrecking our economy.
Nobody in Starmer’s cabinet ever ran, let alone started, their own business.
The only growth you will see with this lot will be David Lammy’s waistline.
No wonder Starmer wants to start again!
Keir’s relaunch, reboot or reset was most significant for what it left out.
Among all of Thursday’s blah-blah-blah about new milestones and millstones, there was not a peep about controlling immigration, taming the benefits bill or staving off World War Three by increasing defence spending.
Credit where it could conceivably be due — if Labour build 1.5million homes and slash NHS waiting times, then they will deserve to have us weeping grateful tears.
But Keir’s comeback is like the usual “jam tomorrow” promises of the campaign trail.
On the same day that Starmer attempted to get his Government restarted by pulling out the plug and sticking it back in, I had a dinner with a man who runs a large company, and who has already started making redundancies as a direct result of Labour’s National Insurance hike on employers.
It is not just Starmer. All Labour’s senior figures look allergic to high office.
Did it really never occur to Chancellor Rachel Reeves — who claims to have “broken one of the last glass ceilings”, as though three female Tory Prime Ministers never existed — that her lies about never raising taxes on “working people” was as dodgy as her doctored CV?
Did it never occur to Foreign Secretary David Lammy, when he was calling Donald Trump names on Twitter, that he may one day have to deal with an American administration run by a President called Trump?
Did it really never occur to pink-haired Transport Secretary Louise Haigh that her fraud conviction would inevitably be revealed?
It is almost as if Labour are totally flabbergasted to find themselves actually in power.
And it is painfully obvious that being in Government does not suit them.
No wonder start-again Starmer looks wistful for the easy life of opposition.
But Keir’s not on the campaign trail now.
He’s on the road to nowhere.
TIM MONTGOMERIE has been one of the most thoughtful Conservative commentators for decades. And this week Tim defected to Reform UK.
And if the Tories are not shocked by a reasonable chap like Montgomerie jumping ship, they should be.
LAST Christmas may well be George Michael’s career-defining moment.
George wrote better songs – Careless Whisper, Everything She Wants – but nothing comes closer to the soul of the man than his Christmas classic, and the memorable video that came with it.
Last Christmas, written in the bedroom where he grew up, is peak George – romantic, yearning, steeped in nostalgia and lavishly aspirational.
How did all these young folk in their late teens and early twenties ever afford a ski holiday?
Conceived as a winter wonderland counterpoint to Wham!’s sun-dappled Club Tropicana, Last Christmas rather incredibly turned 40 this week.
And from the day it was released in December 1984, it seemed dusted in some kind of festive magic, full of love and wonder, that made it feel like a standard from the first time you heard it.
In any other year beside 1984, Last Christmas would have been No1.
But it spent five weeks in second spot, kept off the top by Do They Know It’s Christmas?.
Now Andrew Ridgeley has revealed the secret ingredient that made Last Christmas such an instant classic.
“Real wine,” confesses Andrew. “The production team, in their wisdom, had chosen to provide us with real wine, right to the brim.”
Every film, TV or video set in the world has some innocent drink passing for alcohol.
But on the set of the Last Christmas video, they had the real thing.
There is such an air of euphoric jollity in the video for Last Christmas because they were all half-cut.
“We were having great fun but there were casualties, of which I was one,” recalls Andrew.
“I’d laughed so much at the dinner table that my eyes had swollen up and I was unfilmable.”
Drinking far too much at this time of year?
Now that’s what I call the true spirit of Christmas.
SABRINA CARPENTER was music’s break-out star of 2024.
She opened for Taylor Swift on the Eras Tour, is nominated for Best New Artist at the Grammys and until recently had a celebrity romance with Saltburn’s Barry Keoghan.
Sabrina even has her own Christmas special on Netflix.
“I wouldn’t count on a silent night!” she titters, with an innuendo that Dick Emery would have admired.
In the Netflix trailer, Sabrina examines a present that has something, er, vibrating inside.
“Oooh, a massager,” she giggles.
Well, it’s probably not a pair of socks.
Morecambe and Wise Christmas specials were never like this.
AFTER all the controversy around that new Jaguar ad, the company finally unveiled its new car.
The Jaguar Type 00 (Zero Zero) is yours for £120,000, not including electricity.
Reviews by motoring correspondents have been wildly enthusiastic.
But you can’t help noticing the Jaguar Type 00 (Zero Zero) looks like a Batmobile made out of blancmange.
“COPY NOTHING”, advised that hotly debated Jaguar ad.
But the video shamelessly copied David Bowie’s 1980 Ashes To Ashes video.
And that Barbie-pink motor looks as though it may possibly have Ken locked in the boot.
SPORT can change minds. But meaningless virtue-signalling will always change nothing.
This week, football’s addiction to empty gestures hit the buffers.
Sam Morsy, Ipswich captain and a practising Muslim, refused to wear a rainbow armband to show the FA’s “support” for the LGBTQ community.
Marc Guehi, skipper at Crystal Palace and a committed Christian, wore the multi-coloured armband but wrote “I Love Jesus” on it.
I suggest that the religious beliefs of these players are just as valid as the FA’s supposed support for the gay community.
Football DOES sometimes stand up for gay rights.
Aaron Ramsdale, at Southampton and his previous club Arsenal, has talked movingly about his brother, Oliver, who is gay and has lived in an “open and authentic way” since school.
“I’m so proud to say he’s my brother,” Aaron has written. “I want this game I love to be a safe and welcoming place for everyone.
“I want my brother Ollie – or anyone of any sexuality, race or religion – to come to games without having to fear abuse.”
Unlike the compulsory wearing of rainbow laces, Aaron Ramsdale talking about his brother actually means something.
And it might actually change some hearts and minds.
BY pardoning his son Hunter of gun and tax convictions, President Biden ensures the Democrats can no longer get sniffy about the morals of Donald Trump’s Republicans.
How heartily Joe must despise the party that dumped him for Kamala Harris simply because he couldn’t remember what planet he was on.
