He ain't going anywhere
Everyone chill, OK?
Dear lovely people,
37% of children are arriving at Primary School without basic skills. That might be an inability to listen / follow instructions, or finding talking or expressing need tricky to do. Some can’t use the loo independently.
This is a real issue, because of the way schools work. There are limited adults in the room. If children aren’t ready, running a working Reception class is really tricky.
This is an problem. Since the pandemic it has got worse because… well, everything has got worse since the pandemic.
Like with so much, it’s complicated. Fundamentally, we’re talking about parenting.
To what extent is parenting something in which the government should involve themselves?
This week children across Britain got primary school place offers. The government seized the moment and released some stuff to support parents. There is a ne bit of an existing website (check it out here, it’s quite small font and dry looking, even if there is some solid advice in there).
They have also released a song by MC Grammar. You can listen here. It’s an odd one - it’s messaging is too quick and too wide ranging for three and four year olds to find it instructional. It’s clearly not written for parents. For whom has this been done? Money and resources have been spent.
Directionless, prodding about with websites and influencers (Mr P is involved…). None of this will make a difference. Nobody is going to look at the website who needs to look at the website. Who thinks to turn to the government for this advice? The song? Even if it were useful, who is going to hear it?
What else is there. Gentle support for parents is mostly all the government can do - and they seemingly can’t do that very well.
I don’t know if there were ever days in which governments could shape culture and society. If there were, those days are done.
Politics is difficult, difficult, lemon difficult.
Peace and love,
Tatton x
ps - We’re absolutely not telling anyone about it yet. Launch date isn’t until 8th May. Diane gets cross when I sneak out a reference. And yet… I’m too excited…
We’re launching a brand new page. Simple Animals is going to be a place of joy and wonder, the perfect counterpoint to a difficult landscape in both politics and personal finance.
If you head here on Instagram or here on Facebook, you can get in ahead of the rush.
I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Where the city sleeps
And I’m the only one, and I walk alone,I walk alone, I walk alone
Green Day
Plenty of road to run
I am painfully aware of how easy it is to dislike Keir Starmer.
Let’s take this week’s PMQs. He opened with his newly invented mini statement slot. He love that slot. He gets to say whatever he wants and nobody has right of reply, unless they want to bin off their planned question. He’s created a little addition to further reduce scrutiny.
Anyway, in that slot he chose to remember the 97 who died at Hillsborough, on the 37th anniversary of the tragedy. He pledged to deliver the Hillsborough law.
Sure, PM. You’re going to deliver that are you? Not this Parliamentary session you’re not. After a difficult Committee Stage (they’re struggling to include the actions of the secret services in the duty of candour), no date for the Report Stage has been suggested. It is stuck, with no future in sight.
A vague promise about things that will happen in the future is no promise at all.
On PMQs went. Kemi Badenoch took to her feet to ask about the state of our Defence. There are some serious questions to answer here.
In their exchanges, Keir Starmer said about 420 words (I must admit I’ve used Chat GPT to help with this research). Roughly 110 words referred to him and his own actions. Roughy 310 were about the Conservative Party, Badenoch, Truss, 14 years etc etc etc.
He spent 75% of the time attacking other people. He’s two years into a government and he still has so little to say about his own actions.
There are many things that this government has done that are positive. School breakfast clubs, for example, genuinely help people. Hospital waiting times are down.
We wouldn’t know it. Our Prime MInister seems unable to tell his own story.
Which means that, when things grow a little tumultuous, he has few friends to rally round. Today, things are a little tumultuous.
It turns out that Peter Mandelson failed his security vetting for his appointment as our ambassador to the United States. I’m sure you’re as shocked as I am.
Sir Olly Robbins has left his job, the story we’re being told is that he saw that he had failed and changed the recommendation, without telling anyone at all. Not the Foreign Secretary (David Lammy, at the time), not the PM.
Does that sound right? A major decision, quietly and secretly changed by the senior civil servant in the Foreign Office without telling a single government minister. If it is true, surely he would only have done so with some serious pressure on his shoulders.
The PM has also regularly, frequently told MPs and the public that full he had passed the vetting. Did he speak to the Foreign Office about it?
There are many, many calls for Keir Starmer to resign.
To make matters worse, in three weeks time, Labour will almost certainly receive their worst ever elections results in Scotland and Wales. The local elections in England are going to give a brutal assessment of the country’s governing party.
Lovely reader, he is not going to resign. He is not going to be pushed out. The road of his Prime Ministerial reign has plenty of miles to run.
Why? First of all, he’s not very resign-y. It’s not his jam.
Second of all, if he doesn’t resign, the only people that can get rid of him are his own MPs.
Ms Badenoch can stamp her foot. Mr Davey can release press release after press release (they do an awful lot of those). The Green Party can post as much as they want on social media. None of it matters.
Here’s the thing. Despite all of this - all of this - we shouldn’t want him to go.
Starmer has always been at his best when on the world stage. He loves the world stage, not just because it gets him away from the House of Commons, but because he understands it. He can see what’s going on.
He’s a pragmatist who can talk trade around the world at the same time as building trade with the EU. He’s leading the Coalition of the Willing in support of Ukraine. His colleague Yvette Cooper has just announced more support for Sudan on the third anniversary of that terrible wat breaking out.
The world is in a state of massive uncertainty right now. The state of things in Iran, Lebanon, Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, etc etc etc is massively, massively destabilising for the world, as well as tragedies for the people involved. Donald Trump’s tenure at the White House destabilises the world.
Inflation is coming, growth sure ain’t. Does anyone really think we’d be better off if Darren Jones was in charge?
This is a world stage, and we need someone with experience and a track record of pragmatism. We’ve seen our man stand up to Trump in recent weeks. The King is still going. These are treacherous waters and he’s wading through them.
This is his moment to be strong and to lead, to really lead, the country and the world. In that, I think we should all support him. If we have hope as a country, in the short term at least, it can only lie with our current Prime Minister.
Anyway, again, only Labour MPs can change the PM right now. They won’t do it. If they did, there would be a battle between (presumably) Mahmood, Streeting, someone from the left, maybe Rayner (if she’s cleared by HMRC by then), who knows who else. Lammy? I’m speaking to the buses minister, Simon Lightwood, on Wednesday. Perhaps he’ll throw his hat into the ring.
The frogs are in a pot of warmish water, leaning out to turn up the temperature would be a churlish.
Here we go! Parliament is back! It’s going to be a banger of a week, right? Right? Oh…
Monday - The PM is going to make a statement on the latest Mandelson stuff. He didn’t do so on Wednesday when he first found out, but will do when other people have found out.
Main business today is tidying up the Police and Crime Bill. Looking at the state of it, there will be a few more trips back and forth between the Commons and the Lords.
Tuesday - The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill is doing it’s amendment thing.
Wednesday - PMQs. The abject horror.
We’ve then got Lords amendments on the Pension Schemes Bill, Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill and more Police and Crime Bill. Surely the Lords won’t make MPs vote against a ban on social media for under 16s again?
Thursday - Really very little.
We’re looking at re-launching our social media consultancy / training / bit of help thing. As you can tell, we’re not massively articulate about it, but… we do know our way around social media. If you’d like our help individually, for your charity, for your company, whatever, drop me a line.