A GRIM vision of the schools of the future: “Morrison, how many missions in a pledge?!”
The boy stammers and looks down.
“No looking at your notes. You’ve not been learning your Starmstimes tables have you, boy?”
“N-no sir…”
“Ok boys and girls, once again, repeat after me: seven pillars to a strategy, five missions to a pledge, six pledges to a milestone…”
Poor things. But this is – at least as I imagine it – what schools will be like in England after five years of Labour rule.
Like the children of the USSR forced to learn the difference between scientific and utopian socialism, English schoolchildren will soon be forced to tell their milestones from their pillars if they hope to keep up with the Byzantine structures of Starmerism.
Perhaps Thursday’s speech was an unexpected coup for the Prime Minister. Keir Starmer managed to so thoroughly bamboozle the country, we were largely distracted from this being his eightieth (fact check, ed.) reset since last Sunday.
I watched the full thing though spared myself the journey to Pinewood Studios (no, it wasn’t because I “was not invited”) and I still couldn’t tell you why No 10 thought it necessary.
Do the people around Starmer think he is a good public speaker? Does he enjoy doing it? Do they – this is the worst thought – think we enjoy it?
There must be some reason they force him out on a stage apparently every week. It’s a bit like a primary school child’s idea of being prime minister: Wednesday, turn the Christmas lights on; Thursday, big speech; Friday, lunch with John Swinney?
If you’re still struggling with the pillars and the milestones, a few enterprising hacks have turned their hands to the emerging science of Starmerology to help you muddle through.
A journalist prepared a flowchart which showed how priorities fed into foundations then into first steps into milestones, concluding with growth sectors.
Just don’t land in the “defence” growth sector or else you’ll get sent all the way back to the foundation of “national security”. It’s like a technocrat Wheel of Samsara. Ask the Lama Starmer what it all means and he simply smiles at you serenely, whispering: “Change.”
It’s easy to make fun of – and enjoyable, too – but this is serious stuff. This is the bulwark Labour are constructing against Reform. Against the Elon Musk/Trump-ification of UK politics.
They seem to forget that one of the chief attractions of Nigel Farage (above) and Donald Trump is their ability to hold a room, to speak to people on a level that resonates with them.
When Starmer was asked whether the public at home could be forgiven for finding the whole thing a bit confusing, he looked like that had genuinely not occurred to him.
For a worrying moment, it looked like he might reach for his own flowchart: “Well it’s quite simple, really…”
Labour’s answer to this is that this was a speech for Whitehall, to scare them into action. The Starmbots have reportedly run into trouble with the civil service, much to the glee of blob-hater Dominic Cummings (below).
We dug out the 1854 report on the civil service, which led to its reform into the institution (more or less) we know today. Its authors found it a corpulent and stultifying place, filled with “the unambitious, and the indolent or incapable”.
Starmer’s people seem to agree, and their anonymous briefings against civil servants saw them labelled “Trumpian” by the union.
War with the civil service, meaningless slogans and eccentric press conferences – it’s all feeling a bit late-era Tories, isn’t it?
Still, there’s always the ritual humiliation of Ed Miliband to look forward to. His mission was the only one that got watered down in the transmogrification into a milestone – full clean power in six years is now only 95% by 2030. Poor old Ed.
You can get the Worst of Westminster delivered straight to your email inbox every Friday at 6pm for FREE by clicking here.
