Why is Keir Starmer taking us for fools?

Following Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s speech in the Downing Street Rose Garden this week, you would be forgiven for thinking he has mistaken the role of PM for that of a primary school teacher, such is the flagrant disregard in which he appears to hold the opinions and the intelligence of the British public.

The PMs gloomy speech centred around a doubling down of some lines that have become well-trodden in recent weeks… that the economy is in tatters, that his government has inherited a £20 billion black hole in the public finances, and that the country is in the midst of a far-right uprising that must be crushed at all costs, even if that includes the freedom and liberties of everyday hard-working British people.

He even had the temerity to claim that the decisions made thus far in Government, including to rob pensioners of their Winter fuel allowance, and the inevitable tax rises that are to be announced in the October budget, have been forced upon them.

I don’t recall anyone forcing Starmer’s government to commit nearly £12billion in overseas climate aid, or £3 billion to fund the ongoing war in Ukraine. And I’m not sure anyone expected such a speedy capitulation to the unions demands that have led to significant and unaffordable pay rises for many public sector workers, including 22% for Junior Doctors and 15% for train drivers. These pay rises, by the way, contribute half of the £20 billion fiscal “black hole” that they keep referring to… this was not inherited from the Tories, it was entirely of their own making.

Yet we are seeing exactly the same approach to public speaking from Starmer and his team that we saw in the year before the General Election… say a lie enough times, and eventually people will believe it. The old “The Tories crashed the economy” line has been spouted off routinely by Starmers stooges since Liz Truss’ fated spell as PM, and it is only recently through reporting from the ONS that we have had confirmed what many of us knew all along… that this was utter nonsense.

Labour have become so used to lying with impunity, that they have convinced themselves that this will wash now they are in power. This reflects poorly on the media in this country, who allowed Labour’s lies to go unchallenged whilst they focussed their ire on the Tory Government they were so determined to overthrow. But Starmer is wrong if he believes that the public will blindly believe his lies any more.

He may take us for fools. He may believe that those of us who oppose rampant uncontrolled illegal immigration are nothing more than racist, far-right thugs. He may dismiss the concerns of entire communities about the hordes of undocumented men being dumped into their neighbourhoods, despite daily reports of stabbings and violent attacks. And he may believe that cronyism is only wrong when the Tories do it.

But the rest of us are not so easily convinced. And if he needs evidence of how the public view his disastrous first 6 weeks in charge, he need look no further than the latest opinion polls, which show his approval ratings slipping from +19 on 23rd July to -16 today (28th August). That is a fall from grace that eclipses even that of Liz Truss in the short time she was in power.

Starmer needs to learn that the public do not like being labelled as far-right thugs, they do not enjoy seeing their legitimate concerns being dismissed simply because the rhetoric does not suit Starmer’s agenda, they do not like being lied to, and they do not want to be taxed to high heaven.

Starmer’s Rose Garden speech was the epitome of doom and gloom. The public were told they were voting for change, but for most of those who voted for Labour, I don’t think what we have seen thus far from this government is the kind of change that they had in mind.