I don’t know where the Starmer family were going last Monday, when the rioters were so uncivilised as to delay their holiday. Possibly, it was somewhere in the European Union – to signal the ‘reset’ in relations that is apparently under way.
Perhaps there is a gite in the Dordogne still awaiting the Starmer arrival, the welcome bottle of rosé pathetically unopened in the fridge door; or there could be some golf balls in the Algarve, still hoping for the honour of being thwacked into the rough by the Starmer clubs.
Maybe there is a brace of empty sun-loungers on a Greek beach, still yearning for Sir Keir and his wife to sink them deeper into the sand as they lie back and toast each other with their pina coladas and ‘Keir’ royales.
Across the resorts of the world, the bartenders and hotel staff are all asking themselves – will it be us? Will we be the lucky ones? Will the human bollard come and park himself here?
Far-Right protesters hold a demo in Sunderland last weekend, monitored by riot police
I have, as I say, no idea which part of the world Sir Keir will favour with his custom. But I have strong views about when that holiday should take place – and the answer is now. This minute.
Come on, Starmer, man or mouse? Never mind the blasted ‘optics’ of the situation. Fight down this cowardly anxiety about your personal ratings, and whether the public will mark you down for going on holiday.
Think of your family! Stop worrying that Britain is supposed to be in a state of ‘tinderbox’ combustibility. It’s time to pack the Autan and the Factor 50 – and whoosh, cabin crew doors to manual, and check out of Britain.
Now is the moment to go on holiday, Prime Minister, because it has become ever clearer, over the past week, that your presence has made no difference whatever to the disturbances – or, if anything, made things marginally worse.
The police have got the thing under control, as they always do. The thugs and miscreants are now being processed through the courts with ruthless efficiency.
Rather than holding any more meetings and giving any more of your stunned-mullet press conferences, it is time for you to recharge the batteries. You need to scrunch the sand between your toes, squint at the sea and think.
You need to reflect on the events of the past month, and the whole strategy of the Labour Government, because it is starting to look like a frenzy of utter stupidity.
You might want to start with the bonkers plan to cancel the prison-building programme, and simultaneously release thousands of serious criminals before they have completed their sentences.
Where are you going to put all these rioters, once they have been convicted? Butlin’s?
And what happens when the thousands of prematurely liberated prisoners decide – as, sadly, so many of them do – to re-offend? Where do they go?
You are going to need more prison places, not fewer – or else people will start to conclude that your critics were right all along, and that the Government is now in the hands of Lefty human rights lawyers who are basically soft on crime.
And then you need some space to think about the meaning of these riots, and their causes.
You say it is all a form of ‘far-Right thuggery’, and I agree that anyone offering violence and intimidation needs to be banged up. The riots have been disgraceful. They are a criminal justice problem that demands a criminal justice solution, and they are getting one. But is that the whole story?
I saw an astonishing statistic that 34 per cent of the public actually support the protests – if not the violence associated with it.
Does that mean that more than a third of the UK population are ‘far-Right’ in their views?
I know that there are some people who claim it is ‘far-Right’ to believe in Brexit, or to support the existence of the state of Israel, or to share the views of J.K. Rowling about who exactly a woman is these days.
There may even be some Left-wingers who believe that 34 per cent of the population is ‘far-Right’ in that they actually hold racist or bigoted views.
I don’t believe that for a second. I believe that Britain is, on the whole, a remarkably loving, welcoming and generous society. So how the hell can a third of Britons apparently support these protests? What has gone wrong?
It is time to reflect, PM, as you sip your sundowner, on whether you struck exactly the right note on illegal immigration, and I mean illegal immigration, the kind that is resented especially by many who have brought their families here perfectly legally.
You kicked off your premiership by announcing with glee that you were cancelling the Rwanda plan – even though it is the only idea that has any chance of working, and stopping the cruel cross-Channel gangs, and which is now being imitated by plenty of other governments.
You announced that about 100,000 asylum seekers were going to be given an amnesty, instead of being deported.
You closed the Bibby Stockholm ship where some of the illegal arrivals were being held.
Whatever you may have intended by all this, you gave the clear impression of a man who has no plan to stop illegal immigration, because he simply doesn’t care.
Indeed, Yvette Cooper, the new Home Secretary, offered the extraordinary suggestion that we should stop talking about ‘illegal’ immigration, and only about ‘irregular’ immigration. That is an insult to those, as I say, who have come here legally.
Nothing excuses the behaviour of the rioters, and they deserve to be banged up. But nothing excuses a Government that seems deaf to public concerns, and that suggests, moreover, that they actively dislike all members of the public who share those concerns.
All this bears mulling over, Sir Keir; and while you are at it you might re-think your whole economic approach.
You have bunged a huge increase in public-sector pay, with no increase in productivity, as a sop to your union paymasters, while cancelling the previous Conservative plan: which was to begin to trim the vast expansion in the size of Whitehall bureaucracy by 66,000 jobs.
We all know that 80 per cent of public-sector spending is on the salaries of public-sector workers, and yet Labour, again, has no plan whatever for reform – but axes building new hospitals instead.
You are about to pay for all this pay inflation with blatantly unnecessary growth-choking taxes, on pensions and investments and much else. It is madness.
It is the last thing we need now, after all the misery and expense of Covid. In a pathetic attempt to justify your tax hikes, you have lied about the state of the economy – and been caught out.
You have already put back the cause of free speech at universities, by revoking the Act that had just been passed to protect it.
You have appointed cronies – people who have personally given money to you or to your Chancellor, Rachel Reeves – to government posts.
Stop all this nonsense, and go on holiday, Prime Minister. Stand not upon the order of your going, but go at once.
Have some guts, face down your critics, and acquire the perspective that comes with distance and a kilo of retsina.
Go now, and don’t come back till you have bucked up your ideas.
