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Tories: Starmer’s ’emergency’ plan shows the Government is feeling ‘unstable’

By Emily Price
Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Image: Carl Court/PA Wire

Sir Keir Starmer’s “emergency list of priorities” is a sign that the Government is feeling “pretty unstable”, the Conservatives have claimed.

This comes as the Prime Minister set out a series of “milestones” he pledged to achieve over the course of this Parliament, including higher living standards, clean power by 20230, and cutting NHS waiting lists.

Building 1.5 million homes, putting “more police on the beat”, and giving every child the “best start in life”, were also listed as milestones by Sir Keir.

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'Rattled'

The Government’s plan was also presented to the Commons by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, with shadow Cabinet Office minister Alex Burghart accusing Pat McFadden of appearing “rattled”.

In his statement on Thursday, Mr McFadden said the previous government had “given up” on trying to deliver for people.

“Today, we turn the page on that record, we reject the hopelessness that it fostered, and we set out milestones for each of our missions and the foundations which underpin them,” he added.

Mr Burghart then said: “We will all on this side of the House want to congratulate the Government on its most recent reset, there are only a few more resets left before Christmas. The Labour Party may like to try turning it off and, well, maybe just leaving it off.

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Punchy

“But it’s good that they have taken the time to come up with an emergency list of priorities after only 14 years in opposition, five months in power, they finally decided some things they’re going to work towards.

“(Mr McFadden) in his statement was quite punchy about the past, actually unusually punchy for (Mr McFadden).

“One could say that if (Mr McFadden) is rattled, and he is not the rattling type, it is a sign that the Government itself must be feeling pretty unstable at the moment.”

He added: “The missions only mean anything if the Government is honest about what it is doing, about the milestones it is hitting or not hitting, and also why it has downgraded certain other priorities.

“Like, how has it chosen these six issues, over immigration, over GP surgeries, over A&E, over defence, over the £300 energy bill reduction target, over becoming the fastest growing economy in the G7. Why has the Government chosen the priorities it has? The House should be told.”

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Failure

Mr McFadden replied: “Let us contrast what we are announcing today with their milestones of failure.

“They had record high waiting lists, the worst Parliament for living standards on record, a surrender on house building, a failure on infrastructure, a £22 billion hole in the public finances.

“Those are the milestones of failure. Those are our choices today.”

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6 comments

Mab Meirion

What poor copy writers they are in No 10...

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Jeff

Interesting which reporters went for immigration questions, though no surprise.

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Adrian

It’s even less surprising which reporters didn’t bring it up. It’s a top-three issue for most voters and Starmer's unwillingness to address it is likely to scupper most of his latest wish list.

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Fi yn unig

The Tory government was unstable wasn’t it? Built on the sands of depraved nonsense and lies. Just a nudge from the electorate and it came crashing down. They never stop to think before piping up.

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Adrian

Just pull the string hanging from his back and you’ll get ‘smash the gangs’, ‘fixing the foundations’, or ‘my fadder was a toolmaker’ all in that adenoidal, Zippy-from-Rainbow monotone. Starmer has no idea what he’s doing and neither do any of the muppets he’s surrounded himself with. The Tories were bad, people said this lot would be worse, but I don’t think anyone anticipated just how disastrous it would get, or how quickly. It’s going to be a long five years.

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Zarah Daniel

We've got the same problems now that we always get when Labour get into power. 1. They've got SO MUCH to repair that the Tories have deliberately run into the ground. It nearly always costs a lot more money to repair something that's been left to rot than it would have to keep it running well in the first place! 2. Labour responds really BADLY to the media, which is nearly all owned by the right wing. Labour's never been good at presenting itself in the press, which makes it so easy to undermine any good they try to do. 3. The job of ANY government borders on insurmountable. Whatever you choose to make a priority means that something else is less of a priority. It doesn't mean that it's not being dealt with but something else will be a higher position on the list. All governments have this problem. The difference between Labour and the Tories in this respect is that when the Tories start cat-calling that Labour are NOT doing something the press makes a huge deal out of it and Labour listen. As we've seen for 14 weary years, the Tories are so arrogant that even when they were actually caught out committing crimes they didn't care less and carried on regardless!!! Perhaps, instead of trying to win the next election already, the Tories should be exploring some of the policies Labour are trying to implement and asking if, since they are for the benefit of the country, they should actually be supporting them. The ONLY reason people in this country worry about immigration is because newspapers tell them that they should. We have a significant shortage of working age people and a huge aging population. We need immigration according to every economist on both sides of the political spectrum. These same economists have shown that migrants bring the country a net benefit, not cost! All we actually need to do is employ more staff to process the immigration and asylum system so that people either get through, join the work-force and start paying taxes which benefit us all or are rejected.and repatriated to their own countries or.(If that is impossible for some reason), potentially to another safe country - a REAL safe country! Instead of giving money to the French for their pseudo-police who beat up and steal from migrants, why didn't the Tories ask the French if we could build a British migration processing centre in Calais?? If migrants were processed there and then either allowed to come here or not, there would be almost no boats. Those we chose to admit could be ferried across safely, openly buying their own ticket at a normal price (instead of giving their entire life savings for the chance to risk their life). Those we chose to reject would already be in the migration centre and so "in our custody", enabling us to organise their travel to whatever country we send them to without accidentally losing them back into the hands of the gangs. Instead, the Tories CUT the number of Border Force staff and the number of staff processing migration and asylum claims. At the same time, they started feeding into the rhetoric that migrants were all criminals and that they were the reason that wages were low - both proven time and again to be lies but very popular with Ukippers and Reformers who the Tories were losing voters to. Once again, their priority was winning elections and NOT doing what was best for the country.....but sure, mock Labour for actually trying to fix the mess you made.

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