Yves here. With Trump news consuming the air supply, it seemed useful to look at some of the wobbles among what passes for leadership across the pond. Pretty much no one expected Starmer to last very long. However, my impression from this remove is that Starmer has managed to underperform the weak expectations for him. This is not just his lame political conduct, like failing to address a growing hunger crisis in the UK and instead running to Ukraine to enter into a 100 year pact. The economy is going into stagflation as Starmer is in deer-in-the-headlights mode.
UK readers are encouraged to opine.
By Richard Murphy, part-time Professor of Accounting Practice at Sheffield University Management School, director of the Corporate Accountability Network, member of Finance for the Future LLP, and director of Tax Research LLP. Originally published at Fund the Future
Keir Starmer really does not understand what he is doing. It must be that statements issued by his own team informed these comments in the FT this morning concerning an extended Cabinet meeting held yesterday afternoon and evening:
Sir Keir Starmer has launched another attempt to reboot his ailing UK government at a six-hour cabinet meeting, held against a bleak economic backdrop and crumbling public support.
The prime minister admitted his administration had been too slow, too cautious and risked being left behind by world events, telling ministers at a special meeting on Friday in Lancaster House: “We can either be the disrupters or the disrupted.”
The FT added:
At the end of a week which saw the Bank of England halve its growth forecasts for 2025 and the populist Reform UK party overtake Labour in a YouGov poll, Starmer’s allies said he had made “a passionate call to increase the pace of change”.
There are four things he very obviously does not get.
The first is that however hard he calls for it, growth is not going to happen in a world as chaotic as that we are now living in. When every signal being sent out into the world from Trump says that chaos is imminent, the world is going to be in precautionary mode. People and companies are not going to spend. They are not going to invest. They are going to save. That is what always happens when people are afraid, and they are rightly afraid right now. Telling people to do otherwise is going to have no impact. They are not going to listen to him. His whole plan is utterly hopeless in a world where growth is not on the cards.
Secondly, it really is time he gave up on growth anyway, for two reasons. One is that most people know that the benefits of growth only go to the wealthy. They are not interested in any more of that happening. And, unless he says what he wants to grow and why, then they will be alienated because, by itself, the word has become meaningless. He could talk about growth in the one thing he can control, which is the state sector, and people might listen. But, since he will not talk about, or even countenance that, any discussion of growth is now a political turn-off.
Thirdly, it should have dawned on him by now that the word ‘change’ is also seen as meaningless unless explained. Unless the change from ‘something’ to something else’ is explained, with reasons for the change being given and potential benefits being laid out for all to appraise, then people are now as alienated by this word as they are by growth. People might be desperate for radical change in our political system so that it might function for them, but when Starmer has turned his back on everything from proportional representation onwards that might really deliver change, they do not trust him with the word.
And, fourthly, for a man who makes the average conveyancing lawyer in a small market town look exciting, the claim to be a disrupter is ludicrous. That is most especially so when nothing Labour is offering appears to change anything that really matters in any of the biggest areas of concern, from healthcare to education and onwards. In fact, all labour seems to be doing is maintaining the status quo.
Starmer can say these words. No one will, however, believe a word he says. Only actions matter now, and he does not believe in the state, reform of the state, or in what a state liberated by proper macroeconomic thinking can do. Unless he changes – and that seems unlikely – those at yesterday’s meeting must realise that they are doomed to failure. It’s just going to be torture whilst the path to Starmer’s painful demise is rolled out.
