Since the 2016 Brexit referendum, the UK has been a case study in political instability. Six prime ministers in 10 years, on top of six foreign secretaries, five defence secretaries, six chancellors and five Cabinet secretaries. Toppling Sir Keir Starmer in the wake of Labour\u2019s shellacking in the local government elections would merely confirm that Britain has become an unserious country.<\/p>\n
I hold no brief for Starmer. From the day he entered office, nearly two years ago, he has frittered away capital, blaming others for his own mistakes on appointments, communication and policy choices. But there is no obvious candidate to replace him. Talk of an orderly transition – a plan reportedly floated by former Labour leader and net zero fanatic Ed Miliband – is political castration by any other name.<\/p>\n
So what should Starmer do? He is too weak to reshuffle his Cabinet; hence his awkward decision this weekend to invite two Labour grandees – Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman – to become special advisers on global finance and women and girls respectively. He could exit stage left, to his family\u2019s relief. But he\u2019s pledged to fight another day, starting tomorrow when he\u2019s scheduled a major speech to shore up support ahead of the King\u2019s Speech before Parliament where he will set out a legislative agenda for the next 10 years in office (Ed – surely some mistake).<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what I believe the sitting prime minister should say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since the 2016 Brexit referendum, the UK has been a case study in political instability. Six prime ministers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":954537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-954536","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116560995805513098","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/954536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=954536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/954536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/954537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=954536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=954536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=954536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}