The wheels come off on 7 May. That\u2019s the date set for the local and devolved elections that will sweep Labour away. Sir Keir Starmer\u2019s party is projected to lose as many as 1,700 council seats. Labour faces annihilation in former strongholds across the North of England, London, Wales and Scotland. If Starmer were a man of honour, he\u2019d fall on his sword. Instead, he\u2019s come up with a plan.<\/p>\n
The country has already made up its mind about Sir Keir. Voters see him as dull, empty, passive, spineless and slippery. A man who will say anything to get his way, then say the opposite the next day, if that suits him better. He\u2019s told whoppers on everything<\/a> from Labour\u2019s tax and spend plans to the Chagos Islands, winter fuel payments, social care, farmers, Brexit<\/a>, grooming gangs, small boats, Waspi women, Peter Mandelson\u2026 the list is endless.<\/p>\n His own cabinet isn\u2019t impressed either. He dithers, avoids decisions and when embattled ministers need his backing, he drops them like a stone. Just ask home secretary Shabana Mahmood<\/a>, who deserves better.<\/p>\n Starmer has forced Rachel Reeves<\/a> into a string of humiliating U-turns<\/a>, on winter fuel, welfare cuts and last Budget\u2019s income tax hike, for starters. Each time, she\u2019s been left high and dry, eroding whatever’s left of her authority. When she broke down in tears beside him in the Commons, Starmer barely seemed to notice<\/a>. Let alone care. That\u2019s nothing compared to what he’s planning for her now.<\/p>\n What we do know is this. The PM will do whatever it takes to save his own skin. And that\u2019s terrible news for Reeves.<\/p>\n He\u2019s been using her as a human shield for months. Reeves is perfect for the role, given that she’s the only member of the cabinet who is even less popular with voters than he is. That\u2019s partly her fault for driving the economy to destruction with her incoherent tax-and-spend policies, but Starmer must share the blame.<\/p>\n The PM has just left her to it. He\u2019s given her no direction, allowed the mistakes to pile up, then hung her out to dry when the backlash came. Imagine working for a boss like that.<\/p>\n Relations between the two have reportedly collapsed. They can barely stand to be in the same room. And she knows what\u2019s coming. At the moment of maximum pressure, Starmer will throw Reeves under the bus. He’ll sacrifice her as part of his desperate last-ditch attempt to head off the Angela Rayner<\/a> bandwagon.<\/p>\n Reeves had better reach for her crash helmet. Though in truth, she probably already has. She knows how Starmer operates, having witnesseed this hollow man at first hand. Now all she can do is wait for the inevitable. It might even come as a relief.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The wheels come off on 7 May. That\u2019s the date set for the local and devolved elections that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":490964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,420,2053,50,173646,1445,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-490963","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-keir-starmer","12":"tag-labour-party","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-political-reshuffle","15":"tag-rachel-reeves","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}