He said Corbyn was his “friend” then expelled him from the party. He pledged to be "continuity Corbyn", then governed like Blair. He promised not to raise taxes on working people, then hiked national insurance by billions. He assured us council taxes and energy bills would go down, then shrugged as both shot up. He convinced the WASPI women he supported their cause then abandoned them once in power.
He persuaded farmers and pensioners they could trust him, then hiked tax on the former and grabbed the winter fuel allowance from the latter. He promised students he’d abolish tuition fees, then flip-flopped. He pledged a £25 billion Green Investment Fund, then dropped it. He said Britain would have the fastest growth in the G7, only to pursue policies that see us languishing at the bottom.
He said he’d govern for all, then took allowances away from disabled people. He advocated for a longer, harder lockdown, but secretly met his own voice coach in the midst of it and shared beer and curry with workers in Durham that looked like a lockdown-breaking party.
He promised to “smash the gangs” only to preside over even more small boat arrivals than came under either Johnson or Sunak.
I could go on. And all the while he claims to be a man of integrity.
Just how many more promises will Keir Starmer have to break before his reputation is finally and comprehensively demolished? Well, he’s on the way already.
And here’s the appalling truth: these broken promises were not the result, as Starmer and Rachel Reeves like to claim, of “changing global circumstances”.
They were carefully planned. Read Get In by Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund, the inside story of Labour under Starmer.
What this spells out in gobsmacking detail is that Starmer and his puppet master Morgan McSweeney always intended to fool far-left Corbynite Labour members into voting for him for the leadership.
They always planned to kid them that he would be “continuity Corbyn”, complete with nationalisation of utilities, huge taxes on the very wealthy and the abolition of tuition fees, only to abandon all those pledges as soon as the leadership was in the bag.
Likewise, they always intended to raise taxes by tens of billions under the pretence of a “black hole”, despite denying before the election that they’d do any such things. Sunak was right all along. The whole nation was hoodwinked
Can we say it like it is? That these were all barefaced lies? You be the judge.
So, it’s no mystery why Labour has gone from polling in the mid 40s a year ago to the low 20s now.
I genuinely feel for the millions who were conned, and who felt they could trust a man who, with his nasally voice, grey suits and lawyerly background looked just too boring to be untrustworthy.
How impressions can deceive. Well, the only saving grace is that those voters are unlikely to be fooled again.
I know what they’ll say. All politicians bend the truth, they’ll protest. Especially prime ministers, they’ll insist.
Look at Boris Johnson, they’ll say, who ate cake in Downing Street during Covid, for heaven’s sake. And what about Blair, who lied about his reasons for going to war. A war that led to a million deaths.
But never has a prime minister made such a platform out of his own “integrity” as Keir Starmer has. And never has a prime minister flip-flopped, deceived and obfuscated as often and as shamelessly and as Keir Starmer has.
If I were a Labour MP, and if I wanted to win the next election, I’d be plotting to rid the country of this appalling, deceitful leader as soon as possible. Perhaps they are. We can only hope.
