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I have spent the past week marveling at the behavior of our commentating class. They seem to have whipped themselves back into that familiar frenzy which must lead, inexorably, to the Prime Minister stepping down. “He has to go”; “The most incompetent prime minister of my lifetime”; “Things can’t go on like this” – these were the general sentiments revolving around Keir Starmer even before his party’s thumping in the May 7 local elections.
The problem is that some of us have a longish memory. So when people say the Starmer government is uniquely incompetent or ineffectual, a tiny flare goes off in my mind. Have these people forgotten Theresa May? Do they not remember the snap election of 2017 which was meant to deliver a “strong and stable government,” but which resulted in this country almost suffering a parliamentary coup enabled by – of all people – John Bercow? Are the people who claim we have never been so badly governed lucky enough to have overlooked the years when Anna Soubry was forever on the airwaves?
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Spectator (paywall)
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Douglas Murray is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor of City Journal.