Nothing so became Keir Starmer’s premiership as his leaving of it. Farewell remarks outside Downing Street, unpunctuated by the odious Steve Bray; a brief goodbye in Buckingham Palace, before the King welcomed his fourth new prime minister in four years; then to the pub to drown his sorrows with Rachel Reeves, leaving Andy Burnham and John Healey to pick up the national tab.
There is an irony to Healey’s appointment as Chancellor. Burnham blames Margaret Thatcher for so many of the country’s ills but her time in office was devoted to clearing up the dreadful inheritance left by the last Healey at the Treasury: a top rate of income tax at 98 per cent, untamed inflation, union disarray, socialist sclerosis.
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Douglas Murray
The problem with the Widdecombe suspect’s ‘fair trial’
