DESPITE winning a landslide election last July, Sir Keir Starmer has failed the political challenges of 2024.
It is traditional to be positive at the beginning of the new year. In that spirit, I hope for the country's sake that Sir Keir navigates 2025 with more skill than he did last year. Growing the economy, reforming public services and the welfare system, tackling government waste and controlling migration will be some of the most important issues of this political year. Starmer needs to show he's able to rise to these challenges and showing he's on the side of the British people will be key tests for him this year.
But if he carries on putting the Labor Party before the country, millions of families across the country will pay the price.
Sir Keir has ended up in a mess of entirely his own making.
Unions were given billions in no-strings attached handouts while vulnerable pensioners have been left to choose between heating and eating. Starmer has raised taxes to a historic level, taxing jobs, investment and family farms. And he has rolled out the red carpet to migrants the world over, making Britain the soft touch of Europe. All of this while breaking countless pre-election promises.
Sir Keir went into the General Election preaching that he wanted to make the UK the fastest growing economy in the G7. How lucky he was, then – thanks to the hard work of the British people – to inherit the fastest growing economy in the G7. But in just six months he has undone that hard work by trash talking the UK, reducing confidence, whacking businesses with a jobs tax, and handing out billions of pounds of taxpayers' money to satisfy his union donors. And now the economy is flatlining.
Economic growth is the closest thing we have to a silver bullet. Growing the pie means better public services, more job opportunities, and greater investment. Sadly, everything Sir Keir Starmer has done since getting the keys to Number 10 is delivering the opposite.
Business confidence is the lowest it's been since the pandemic. By the government's own estimates, Labour's damaging changes will cost upwards of 50,000 jobs, with businesses and industry experts forecasting greater losses still. And we've had higher inflation, and a smaller economy, than when Labor took office.
Labor has always been the anti-business party, but they don't seem to understand that it is working people who pay the price for their economic incompetence.
If this litany of failures continues this year, it will mean he will have no choice but to demand even more tax rises. More of your money.
Even though he spent last year crushing the UK's spirits, he can still turn things around in 2025. But this will require difficult decisions on public spending that don't seem to be in the Prime Minister's arsenal.
Britain cannot afford another year of Sir Keir's empty slogans amid plummeting public sector productivity and a welfare budget spiraling out of control. We need action.
Similarly, 2025 will require deeds not words to bring migration under control. It is what the British people are crying out for. If left unchecked, it will continue to put a strain on public services, create pressure on school places and lock even more young people out of the housing market.
Judging by his actions so far, Starmer seems deaf to this growing issue. He has scrapped our measures to tackle illegal and legal migration. As a result, small boat crossings are 29 percent up compared to the same period last year and net migration is set to go up, not down.
The country needs someone who is able and willing to do the right thing on the economy, government waste and migration. If 2025 is going to be a good year for the country, Sir Keir needs to defy all expectations and deliver for the British people.
But it is clear that he has no idea about the issues facing Britain, nor a plan to solve them. My prediction for the year is that 2025 will be another year of the Prime Minister putting the party before the country – and we will all pay the price.