let the nonsense commence

Let the nonsense commence: Pete North hits the ground running and looks like having a rich diet of hypocrisy, contradiction and idiocy upon which to feed.

Keir Starmer has called for a ceasefire in Gaza. He is already pandering to the Muslin vote, and our foreign policy is to be dictated by cousin-marrying third worlders living in Oldham. Meanwhile, Ed Miliband, in defiance of local democracy, is to remove the effective ban on onshore wind turbines in line with the party donor’s demands.

We also learn that Labour is considering plans to release offenders after they serve just 40% of their sentence in a bid to tackle prison overcrowding. We then learn today that Labour is to allow more than 100,000 migrants to apply for asylum after scrapping Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda scheme. This latest move amounts to a general amnesty for immigration cheats. It will be interesting to see where Mr Starmer plans to house them.

As an opening salvo, none of this bodes well for the country. It suggests Labour could be about as bad as we feared. Already though, Starmer is making enemies by appointing a women’s minister who said that there are many definitions of a woman. JK Rowling, Martina Navratilova and other feminist campaigners have condemned the move. One can‘t help feeling that Labour is setting itself up for a fall on several fronts.

Labour’s promise of 1.5m new homes, for instance, requires a 70 % increase UK house building capacity, which categorically isn’t not going to happen. Opposition to new onshore wind farms is likely to drive considerable rural opposition, while the approach to dinghy migrants will anger just about everyone apart from human rights lawyers.

We have yet to see Labour’s plans to open up new fronts in the culture war, but it’s not a good sign that Stephen Kinnock has been appointed Minister for Health and Social Care. Kinnock has surrendered his daughter to the gender butchers for breast amputation. During the election Starmer vowed to ban the teaching of gender ideology in schools, and won’t be keen to make a rod for his own back, but the new influx of backbenchers will have their own ideas o the matter.

The real worry, though, is how far Starmer will appease Islamists, recognising he needs to win back urban Muslim votes if he wants to secure a comfortable second term in office. If there are moves to enshrine the APPG definition of Islamophobia into law, we’ll know whose tune Starmer is dancing to.

Meanwhile, it seems we should keep a close eye on Starmer’s plans for “devolution”.

This, of course, is not real devolution, rather it it marks the regionalisation and quangofication of “local” government, controlled by Whitehall. Labour will put new powers in the hands of combined authorities but with statutory strings attached. We do not yet know if Starmer intends to press ahead with Gordon Brown’s constitutional revolution, but this smells like the groundwork.

On the Brexit front, both Starmer and Lammy have been keen to dampen any ideas about rejoining the single market, though David Lammy has made it a priority to repair relations with the bloc. Precisely what he can accomplish remains to be seen. Initial remarks suggest Lammy will limit himself to talks on climate, energy and security, but this is unlikely to produce anything tangible. EU diplomats have already poured cold water on anything more ambitious.

As to the economy, Rachel Reeves has signalled the nation’s finances are in worse shape than she previously understood, and is preparing the ground for a round of tax increases.

Over the coming days and week we’ll get more of a flavour of what we’re in for, but it will be rich pickings for a conservative opposition. That, though, is contingent on there being a conservative opposition and whether it can take time away from the ritual infighting. It looks like we’re in for another protracted leadership contest in which party will fail to resolve its internal philosophical differences.

On that score, I have no real preference. Suella Braverman has grown on me over the last year, as has Robert Jenrick, but the new front line of the Tory party does not look inspiring or encouraging. The party cannot go where it needs to go in order to win back Reform voters. Even if Labour is especially bad, the scale of Tory betrayal will be keenly remembered.

The good news is that there is no role in Starmer’s government for Emily Thornberry, and David Cameron has declared his intention to retire from frontline politics again. Since good news is in such short supply, I’ll take whatever cheer I can find.

In the round, we are in for a turbulent few years. Starmer’s majority may be a mile wide, but it’s only an inch deep. Several of his key policies fly in the face of majority opinion, and the rise of political Islam has not gone unnoticed. The entire political class is in a state of denial as to how fractured and dangerous politics is becoming, and is singularly incapable of debating the issues, let alone addressing them.

As such, politics out in the real world will continue to deteriorate while the world becomes a more threatening and unstable place. The fate that befell the zombie Tory party is just as likely to befall Starmer’s Labour. A clock is ticking, but the denizens of Westminster are deaf to it.