The hottest ticket in town. No, not Taylor Swift at Wembley. Not Peter Kay at the O2 Apollo in Manchester. It was our expensively dressed Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, addressing an expectant nation from Pinewood Film Studios.
How appropriate Pinewood, given how wooden this performance was, still wearing the proceeds of a high end shopping spree with Lord Ali, a Besuited prime minister, compared himself to a film franchise which put Pinewood on the map James Bond.
Unfortunately, the only licence Starmer had was to bore us to tears with yet another flowery address, which was big on poetry and thin on policy.
This felt like an AI generated speech from Britain’s first AI generated Prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer being the human manifestation of ChatGPT software gone wrong.
Our laser printed premier crafted from the finest cardboard bamboozled his audience with platitudes and slogans.
Even the gags failed to land with his joke about 007 going down, as well as Gregg Wallace at a Women’s Institute Christmas lunch.
Mark Dolan shared his roundup of the events in politics this week
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Somebody could put together, quite frankly, a clip reel of Starmer’s attempts at humour over the years and play them back to Hamas operatives as a form of torture. The Gaza war would end in an instant.
The hostages returned by close of play. Free the sausages. Oh, folks, we have got four years of this, and our only hope is that the PM might deliver for the country by accident or something based on the idea that a broken clock is at least right twice a day.
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Certainly his keenness to ignore regulations and nimbyism to get Britain building again is a good place to start. Keir the builder, can he build it? I’ve seen his helmet.
Now, similarly, a goal to improve living standards so that we can enjoy maybe 0.1 per cent of the luxury lifestyle of his millionaire mate Lord Ali, is to be encouraged. And who doesn’t want equal opportunities for all?
Bring it on. But the problem is, not only was the speech uninspiring and characteristically vague, it was a missed political opportunity because Starmer could have used this moment to ditch his clearly failing policies and properly start again.
How ironic that the king of the U-turn in opposition now refuses to U-turn in power and, as a result, is driving the country into a very deep ditch.
Keir Starmer outlined his plans for change this week
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This was a speech by committee for a government by committee, promising not even the status quo, but further decline. This speech wasn’t changed.
It was more of the same, more taxing, more borrowing, more bloated failing public services, more living beyond our means and more clobbering wealth creators who pay for everything.
For example, a now furious Tom Kerridge, the TV chef who regrets co-signing a letter of 120 leading entrepreneurs endorsing Labour before the election in what looks like the ultimate example of turkeys voting for Christmas.
Kerridge and the other misguided business owners taken in by Starmer and Reeves charm offensive are well and truly stuffed.
Keir Starmer said “there is no way that Labour will win the next election”
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Gobble, gobble. So, on the strength of this speech and this non reboot, there is no way that Labour will win the next election.
But so far under Kemi Badenoch, there has been no compelling offer either from her and her party to a country which is desperate for radical change.
If she’s not willing to commit to a seismic, Trump style revolution in the UK. We know a man who is.