Seven PILLARS, six MILESTONES, five MISSIONS, three FOUNDATIONS – but not ONE firm target to cut migration. Our sketch writer QUENTIN LETTS endures Starmer’s bingo hall parade of buzzwords and political nerdspeak_Nhy
Pinewood film studios have, over the decades, seen their share of box-office flops and glass-jawed boobies who thought they were God’s gift.
Now Sir Keir Starmer, the George Lazenby of prime ministers, had chosen the place for his Government’s relaunch.
‘Reset’ was Downing Street’s preferred term, but in movies they say ‘take two’.
That’s after the first attempt was a disaster, with the main actor pulling the doorhandle off, fluffing his lines and stepping on his leading lady’s hem, ripping her dress and leaving her starkers.
‘Back to the top, please,’ says the director. ‘And Keir, darling, remember you’re supposed to be prime minister, not a bloke come to read the meter.’
Some 200 Labour MPs, business people and reporters assembled for the event. We reached the black-curtained, cavernous studio by walking down Goldfinger Avenue, named after the Bond films that were made here. Pinewood’s historic hits also included Great Expectations and Mission: Impossible. These were also the studios that made Fiddler On The Roof. Rachel Reeves?
A plodding gait presaged the charisma-vacuum of a dull man entering the room. It was our matinee idol himself.
‘Reset’ was Downing Street’s preferred term, but in movies they say ‘take two’, writes
That’s after the first attempt was a disaster, with the main actor pulling the doorhandle off, fluffing his lines and stepping on his leading lady’s hem, ripping her dress and leaving her starkers, Quentin Letts writes
A solitary aide started whooping and there was a dribble of applause from perhaps six fans. Opening speeches and videos by activists were downbeat: tales of woe about breast cancer, sexual assault, disadvantaged kindergarten children and a couple of drippy millennials whingeing about their lives.
This mood chimed with one of the stewards who showed us to our seats. He had a ring through his nostrils but he was also suffering from a runny cold which had made his poor nose red and sore. Blowing your hooter while wearing a dangly nose-rivet is not straightforward. Things get caught in it. The ring looked as if it might be turning to rust.
A low-energy speech from Angela Rayner – distinctly off her oats – did not lift the dank mood. Buckinghamshire may not be her sort of place. A glossy brochure told us about seven ‘pillars of the growth mission’, six ‘measurable milestones’ and the five new missions with which our sun-kissed kingdom was to be transformed. What with four banners on stage and three ‘foundations’ to accompany the ‘first steps’ that historians will recall from an earlier part of Sir Keir’s visionary era, the relaunch had a countdown.
The BBC’s Chris Mason, in front of me, trilled ‘and a partridge in a pear tree’.
The banners said PLAN FOR CHANGE. CHANGE OF PLAN might have been slightly more accurate, for immigration had dropped off – man overboard! – and the environmental promises had melted.
Sir Keir announced that ‘the milestones all ladder up’, an expression which led to a certain amount of blinking in the audience, Quentin Letts writes
Sir Keir announced that ‘the milestones all ladder up’, an expression which led to a certain amount of blinking in the audience. During questions, Gary Gibbon from Channel 4 let the side down badly by calling the milestones ‘pledges’. Gary was told he was guilty of ‘wrong thinking’.
Sir Keir, who seemed to be the only person to understand all this rubbish, took a swipe at Nimbys, telling them ‘you no longer hold the upper hand’. He also, quite out of character, attacked the £100 million ‘bat tunnel’ that the HS2 railway was obliged to build by the animal rights brigade. That was one of the few moments he became agitated but one dreads to think of the flap it will cause in the bat world.
For the rest of the time his speech was a bingo-hall parade of buzzwords and political-nerd phrases. ‘Stabilising the economy’, ‘fixing the foundations’, ‘clearing up the mess’, ‘taking the country forward with our missions’. He was going to ‘double-down on our missions – the stabilising certainty of the clear destination guiding us to a decade of national renewal’. Listening to this drivel was worse than wading through minestrone.
And having dragged us all the way to Pinewood, he denounced ‘Westminster stunts’. Corker!
If all the slogans were confusing, Sir Keir was not the man to make matters clearer. ‘Today we publish new milestones,’ he murmured to something less than rapture. ‘Make no mistake,’ he averred, ‘this plan will land in Whitehall with the heavy thud of
a gauntlet being thrown down. We must tear down the walls of Whitehall!’ As he described his missions or milestones or tools or foundations or whatever the blasted things were, one came to suspect that the only thudding would come as civil servants’ foreheads hit their desktops with tedium. Provided they are not working from home, as Mrs Rayner encourages them to do.
Sir Keir spoke with a weird lack of animation. He was almost whispery. Snooker commentators are fine citizens but you do not always want them to be models for political oratory.
Mark my words’, he droned, the hallmark of a bore. His eyes were two dull pebbles behind his spectacles. His hair stuck out at the sides. He deplored the ‘unrealistic bluster of Boris Johnson and the acceptance of decline of Rishi Sunak’ and pushed out his lips petulantly. Suddenly gripped by defiance, as if he could sense derision in his outwardly comatose audience – the room was by now rigid, paralysed by ennui – he snapped ‘change and reform are coming’. At which he glared at us like a startled lavatory brush.
I suppose I have heard worse speeches by a prime minister, speeches more constipated by cliche and meaningless slogan. But I cannot immediately think of one.
We may soon need another relaunch.
