Starmer out, Burnham in, and Britain crosses the threshold of doom

Starmer out, Burnham in, and Britain crosses the threshold of doom. By Tom Slater in spiked.

Andy Burnheam took over from Keir Starmer as UK PM yesterday.

Time was, PMs were ousted mid-term over crises, over defining political questions, over something of consequence. This time around we seem to have something more akin to a summer makeover – a Paul Smith glow-up of a Labour Party totally out of ideas. …

Where the old guy failed:

[Starmer was a] creature of the liberal-left, cosmopolitan, eco-obsessed state reigning over a people smarting from broken borders, sky-high energy bills and a not-so-sneaking suspicion that the elites regard them as scum. A nation looking for inspiration and leadership lumbered with a man who would struggle to gin up a biddable scout group.

It was never going to end well. Starmer proved himself psychologically incapable of doing what is necessary to set Britain on a more prosperous, self-confident path. For doing so would mean dispensing with Net Zero, mass immigration, international ‘human rights’ law — the panoply of failed orthodoxies from which our political classes continue to draw their phoney moral superiority. …

Who’s the new guy?

He is an unthinking adherent of the real ruling-class ideology of our time — the Third Way worship of technocracy over democracy, multiculturalism over nationhood, and environmental piety over economic growth.

The contradiction is glaring. Burnham is simultaneously posing as a steady pair of hands and a decisive break with how politics has been done since the 1980s. When he spoke outside No10, he had one eye on the markets, jittery at any perceived ‘lurch to the left’, and another on his backbench MPs, for whom virtue-signalling and infinity welfare is now the closest thing they have to an ideology.

Old boss, same as the new boss.

And now for the important news, broken (at least to us — have you heard this elsewhere?) by a pair of comedians (via Vigilant Fox):

Bill Maher tells British comedian Jack Whitehall that England now spends more on welfare than it collects in income tax.

£333,000,000,000 out. £331,000,000,000 in.

MAHER: “England just got way too woke on a bunch of crazy shit... They passed a milestone where the amount of money they’re giving out in welfare is, for the first time, more than what they take in in taxes.”

[Whitehall’s eyebrows shoot up]

MAHER: “Every third eligible-to-work man is not working. They’re ‘on disability.’ And some people really are… but NOT THAT MANY.”