“May you live in interesting times”
This infamous “Chinese curse” is a phrase that’s doubly apt because politically we most certainly do, and its origins are bogus.
There’s little evidence of it being a curse or Chinese, but more that it was promoted by British politicians in the late nineteenth, and early twentieth century. If there is any Chinese curse, it’s that Starmer’s personally longed for visit to Beijing was as underwhelming in its execution as it was costly in its purchase.
Apart from a visa deal bringing the UK in line with France and Germany with regards to China’s regime – that’s visa regime before you ask – the billions for the UK the Prime Minister is boasting about seem further off than his current political future will see out, and frankly if they don’t exceed the £35Billion his handing to Mauritius to give away our Chagos Islands then it seems small beer, or at least weak Mijiu.
One shadow cabinet member messaged last week:
“Are we sure when Starmer offered ‘Change’ he hadn’t just mis-read Chagos on the autocue?!”
Donald Trump also seems to have changed – his mind. Labour spinners couldn’t believe their luck eleven months ago when Starmer sat next to him in the Oval Office as the President opined “We’re going to have some discussions about that very soon, and I have a feeling it’s going to work out very well.”
If he meant at the time that he’d end up branding it an “act of great stupidity” almost a year later, he wasn’t letting on at the time. He too seems to have woken up to the problem of over-interested Chinese fishermen. Well it would have been rude since he held in his hand and invitation from the King, delivered by Prime Ministerial postman for a second state visit. If Kemi Badenoch is right when she repeats – and all the evidence is she is – when she repeats “when Starmer negotiates Britain loses”, she might add, Starmer tends to go abroad bearing gifts that don’t bear fruit.
His stop off in Japan to visit a leader facing a crucial election in a week was, for any Japanese that noticed, odd in a UK context. Here was our PM paying a supportive courtesy call on Sanae Takaichi a Japanese PM, whose economic plans are either akin to Liz Truss or Georgia Meloni, and the jury – indeed the Japanese electorate – are still out on that, and we know, oh how we know, our PM loves to talk about the mini-budget. Perhaps he advised her to invent a 22bn Yen black hole?
If we are living in ‘interesting times’ it’s because of the pace and nature of change we are witnessing. And ‘change’ is an ambiguous and capricious beast if you try to saddle and ride it, an almost invariably get thrown off by trying to define it.
As someone who has covered elections both here and abroad the number of times I’ve seen each described as a ‘change election’ is remarkable. The only one here that struck me as anything but was 2005, where apart from being given a bloody nose over the Iraq War it was obvious not a great deal was going to change. Tony Blair was going to survive and continue his changes – ones that twenty years later have confined successive governments into ever narrower space for manoeuvre and ossified the bureaucracy within which they are expected to govern. Confucious Cummings has spoken.
It always felt the hostage to fortune it has become that Starmer majored on ‘change’ throughout 2024. He meant, from the Conservatives. He meant a whole new approach to the ethos, management and morality of government. What he meant and what has happened are two very different things, highlighting the obvious flaw in any claim to be controlling and delivering ‘change’: that it works both ways. Change for the better or change for the worse. Anything in the middle is no change.
Eighteen months into this Labour Government I could fill the rest of this article with objective evidence that’s what has been delivered by them is change for the worse. If not then why would Starmer be returning to what will surely evolve, in time, to serious challenge to change his role – one even members of his Cabinet believe his unsuited to.
Of course the political addiction to the electoral potency of ‘change’ applies to the Conservatives, or Reform too.
Robert Jenrick’s defection declamation against his former party, and former leader, was that the Conservatives are ‘incapable of change’. It’s noticeable that the Reform or Reform-curious who’ve spent a year refusing to accept Badenoch has changed anything from the party of 2024, have now seen this ‘opinion’ morph into a considered attack line from Reform.
Her speech last week suggested there would be no change, from the change she’s making. The prospect of Prosper UK ‘dragging her left’ was countered, sensibly, quickly, but remains to be seen if convinces. Another senior Tory told me:
“This Prosper thing is singularly unhelpful since it amplifies division at a time the party has achieved relative unity. ‘One Nation – Two Tribes’ is part of what killed us before. And the ‘stupid’ thing is it’s still all about ‘the economy’ and both party and Prosper agree on that”
Tom Tugendhat’s recent intervention on the ECHR, would seem to argue that far from a cabal of ‘closet Lib Dems’ trying to stop Badenoch, there’s more agreement than disagreement. It’s odd for older observers to see a battle over Thatcherite approaches to the economy, as a return to better older ways of Conservatives doing things, when Thatcher herself was considered ‘not a proper Conservative’ when she first expounded her vision.
The people battling to offer a complete change, a ‘revolution’ – the strongest essence of change – are in an odd bind. Reform simultaneously trail a coat to those that consider Farage’s outfit ‘proper Conservatives’, they recruit people who’ve always thought of themselves as ‘proper Conservatives’ and yet both argue they are not Conservatives at all, and have hinted at policies that aren’t Conservative. And they want to destroy the Conservatives.
Reform are offering, and been very successful so far in offering, seismic change. They are, and here is the opportunity the Tories must still seize, offering very little substance on what exactly that change would be, or how they’d achieve of pay for it. They certainly don’t seem to have convinced that pint holding, blokey petrol-head turned farmer, Jeremy Clarkson. Similarly, If there are seven million voters in the centre that are there for the taking, and if the Tories don’t persuade them back the Lib Dems will, that seven million shown no sign of swimming to the wet-suited wet in charge of the golden parrot. No change there, yet.
So what change to offer, since ‘business as usual’ is off the menu, for the forceable future, for any party?
To bastardise the infamous opening to the film Trainspotting:
‘Choose to change the dysfunctional system. Choose radical change to the economic ecosystem to stop ‘growth’ being a yearning rather than a reality. Choose to change our habit of a stubborn reliance, and expectation, that the state must give us things, regardless of its ability to fund them. Choose to change the rhetoric from exclusively what you are against and how bad everything is, to what you can and will do, and how much better it can be as a result. Choose to change lives.’
Breaking the doom-loop of depressing political narrative – harnessed and driven by parties’ agendas – to look different, sound different and offer something new, would, in fact, be a welcome change.
I’d rather it was the hope that killed us, than ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous’ opponents.