FWIW I don’t find Sunak and Hunt to be any more competent than Starmer and Reeves. I’m not saying this as a fan of one party or the other necessarily. I think Sunak was a good and extremely smart man that was dealt a brick hand and played it extraordinarily badly. And I think Starmer is someone that consistently proves his doubters wrong, but has usually tended to start terribly in his political roles and learn quickly. I think he was also dealt a brick sandwich in taking over and on the real substance I’m not sure what else I would have wanted him to do. There were hard choices each way you turned.
I think where Starmer so far has been absolutely terrible is on the communication. I can’t work out why it’s been so bad, but taken individually they have a set of pretty popular policies that have not been tied together into a singular narrative that enough people can get behind. And by the same token attempts to trim around the edges (relatively speaking, given the amounts spent) on welfare for example, or some of the changes to farmers, dominate the narrative as some sort of proof that he’s a dud.
I don’t think he’s a dud, I think he’s been very canny especially on the international stage especially with Trump. And my belief is that he’s doing a lot of unpopular things in the first year in order to build momentum towards the next GE in the subsequent years to come.
Overall though I think Starmer and Reeves are just as competent as Sunak and Hunt. But Labour have to really deliver in the next 4 years. I’m not sure, given the rate at which politics moves, and how we’ve seen their first year go, whether they’ll do enough to satisfy the mood for change in the country. They would have to take some really big swings, and succeed with them. Otherwise I don’t see how stability and watering down your attempts at change because of back bench rebellions gets the job done. And I don’t say that because I have a view on the changes one way or the other, I just mean that you need to be seen to be doing something to drive change, you need to be seen to be capable of doing it. He can’t look impotent.
Completely disagree. Sunak is extremely competent where it matters: business and management of the economy. Before being in politics this is a guy that had billions of dollars under management globally for one of the world's largest investment banks.
He correctly predicted publically what would happen if Liz Truss got in and enacted her policies and he successfully stabilised the situation and he and hunt began to generate growth in the economy and a feeling of positivity in the economy and the UK in general.
He also correctly predicted what would happen if Labour got in and enacted their policies. Growth and confidence in the UK is flat-lining, confidence got shot by Starmer and Reeves doom and gloom and £22 billion black hole talk.
And unfortunately doing that talk and then: 1) whacking in an unaccounted for and not-in-manifesto NI rise
2) throwing around unfunded huge pay rises to public sector workers
3) rolling back benefit reform promises all of which led to....
a) eclipsing any "black hole" left by the last government and
b) led to some of the starkest analysis I've seen from the OBR and IFS on future state of public finances in a long long time.
If they dont arrest the current level of spending commitments or manage to boost growth considerably they're in an absolute bind:
But the markets have reacted to them already (at a slower pace than they did with Truss as the mask slipped at a slower pace as more and more bad decisions have been made) to the point where the "idiot premium" on UK bonds and stocks has pretty much gone back up to where they were post-Truss.
The other day you've had the boss of Lloyds basically stating that Reeves policies are "anti-growth" .......
A competent team doesnt lead to the chancellor crying on the front bench in front of the entire f*king world while the measly Starmer reads out the shredding of their flagship public finance reform policy in front of jubilant back bench rebels while also being unable to provide assurances as to the chancellors future under repeated questions from the opposition......it was a public and brutal humiliation for this country the likes of which I cant remember seeing in my lifetime...
