No, Keir Starmer: Brits don’t want ‘change’

Change. If one word can embody the political philosophy of Keir Starmer, it’s this one. The Prime Minister is ever so fond of it. Starmer deployed it copiously on his way to Number 10, and it’s been his repeated mantra ever since. No wonder that when the PM unveiled his big new idea this week, it was called The Plan For Change. He’s obsessed with the word and the concept. The problem is that much of the public aren’t so enamoured of change. Many people don’t like the way British society has changed. They would have preferred if things had remained as they were. Much of the public still want things to stay the same.

We aren’t just talking about the tangible change effected by the new Labour government since coming to power, most of which has been hugely unpopular: the hike in national insurance and implementation of wide-reaching and costly rights for workers, the cut to pensioners’ fuel allowance, new inheritance laws affecting farmers, the appeasement of the unions.