A bizarre way to run a government

Prime Ministers usually praise most of the things going on in the country they govern. They make proposals for improvement. They tell us things will be better tomorrow as we follow their lead.

Not this one. He tells us everything about the country and the government is bad. The NHS is broken. There is a societal black hole, meaning the people misbehave. The Treasury does not have enough money. There were “right wing “ riots on the streets. He stresses it is all the fault of the last Conservative government.

It is true many former Conservative voters stayed at home or voted Reform because they were very critical of the last government. They did not go and vote Labour because they thought Labour would make things worse. They are angry about the way the Starmer government runs down the U.K. as well as about the last not very conservative  government. They are angry that his changes in his own words will make things worse. They are angry about fuel benefit  cuts, about bloated public sector pay awards for well paid train drivers, about more overseas aid, more so called green investment, the continuing failure to control migration , more poor performance of public services and nationalised industries.

The PM may find it is easy to drive down the low polls for his party and himself but more difficult to pull them up again when has punished us enough. Normal PM s do not behave like this as they realise the public doesn’t like gloom and does expect a government who identifies actual or made up holes to fill them in quickly. Labour won a record majority on a very low share of the vote. It was no endorsement of Labour but a scream of anger by Conservative voters that their party had let them down badly over stopping the boats, controlling migration, keeping tax down and avoiding inflation.

The latest polls show Labour down to 30%. They show Reform and the  Conservatives together well ahead,  but also the big split between the two would still leave both individually trailing Labour. Since the election both Opposition parties are up, Reform by the more. Conservatives still lead Reform.