I know it sounds incredible with such a massive majority and only five months into power but I am seriously wondering how long Starmer will remain as Prime Minister.
Take the latest blow to his authority which has just from one of his own side. The woman who fired the missile was Yvonne Gagen, Labour leader of West Lancashire Council, an area of 110,000 residents covering Fylde, Wigan, St Helen and Skelmersdale.
Speaking on BBC radio Four’s Today programme she single-handedly blew apart Labour’s main election promise to build 1.5million homes before the next election. She said they had been told they had to increase the number of homes to go up in their area from over 100 plus to over 600.
Cllr Gagen said that was impossible for one very good reason. Her area was 90% A1 farming land and that to build on it would endanger the nation’s food security. A very good point and one that I hadn’t heard made before.
Further, she said, the council would be on a collision course with the government if they pressed ahead with the demands. Other council politicians will be emboldened by Cllr. Gagen’s damaging interview.
Currently our farmers supply 60% of what we eat. We need to be told with Starmer’s plan to build on green belt how much would that number go down. A dangerous idea to reduce our home-grown food as we already know from energy supply the danger and cost of relying on our ‘’friends’’ across the sea to keep us warm.
Starmer will of course push back, but the reality is that he needs the councils (especially Labour councils) or nothing will be built. In the end he will have to accept that 1.5million homes is out of the question and he will be lucky to build a million.
The issue for Starmer is that this has failure written all over it and that he is the face of that failure. My bet as the building numbers collapse so will his authority and that challenges will emerge in his own ranks.
How long will Keir Starmer last, asks Kelvin MacKenzie
GB News
His other major problem came in a poll this week. True it was only one poll, but what a shocker it was for Starmer. It showed that Reform at 24% was ahead of Labour at 23% for the first time. The Tories were leading at 26%.
That is a truly astonishing number for Nigel Farage. Normally after a General Election a minority party would see a steep fall in its numbers. The reverse has happened for Reform. It has moved sharply up, instead of going sharply down.
If you took those results the following Cabinet ministers would go. Rayner, Cooper, Streeting, Phillipson and half the Labour MPs. And that’s after five months.
Imagine if you are a politician on that list you will want to see your leader become more popular or you will be out of a job. All that crap about ten years, he won’t be around ten minutes.
What is clear is that Farage is taking from Labour as well as the Conservatives. I have my doubts that Badenoch will be able to hold back the Farage tide. The reality is that he has the popular touch – something neither Starmer or Badenoch has- and fortunately for him he’s never been in government so he’s not tainted by failure.
There’s no doubt that the poll gave Farage an extra shot of adrenalin on BBC’s Question Time as he emerged the winer in debates with Alastair Campbell, a rather sad Tory politician and Labour’s Jacqui Smith who didn’t quite know what to say.
You would think from Farage’s performance that he was the Prime Minister. Confident, good one-liners and even the hand-picked Lefties in the audience felt they had to give him a round of applause.
Were I Labour’s Jacqui Smith I would be taking a message back to No.10 that the natives are restless and that unless he starts putting money in their pocket- rather than taking it out- he won’t last until the summer.
I keep saying it; Starmer’s a dud.