Strength Abroad, Surrender at Home: How Labour Intends to Manage Decline in a Flak Jacket

With tensions escalating in the Middle East and the situation deteriorating by the day, it’s hard to believe that, less than a week ago, most of Britain’s political rune-readers were still poring over the entrails of Rachel Reeves’ Spending Review.

It did happen, I should say.

It’s just that, for most people, it’s unlikely to change their fortunes—or the country’s economic trajectory—and thus, it’s unlikely to shift politics in Labour’s favour either.

For all the talk of “renewal,” the hope was that it might serve as a reset for a government desperate to galvanise a public edging perilously close to losing the plot entirely. That is: a public so fed up with the current incarnation of this clueless psychodrama called “government” that it might just turn to a party—i.e. Reform—that can’t find savings across a parish council, let alone the Treasury.

This is always the risk with politics.

The ‘Comms Grid’—what the government would like to be talking about—can quickly become tomorrow’s chip paper.

That’s handy if you’re hoping to bury a scandal or two. Or, in the absence of scandal, to bury the fact that half your MPs are sharpening their knives over welfare reform, somewhere between the weather report and the threat of nuclear war.

Less handy if you’re trying to sell the public on “billions in investment”—which, even if real, will make bugger all difference to their lives. Especially once the looming threat of council tax hikes becomes the headline takeaway.

Incidentally—