I wonder how many of your readers are getting as fed up as I am of the personal attacks made against our Prime Minister. I accept the press is responsible to holding our leaders to account, but I expect the media to take a fair and balanced view, however partisan their editorial policy may be.
We’ve all read a lot of nonsense about Keir Starmer, but the essence of the personal criticism against him is that he’s boring and has little or no charisma.
Well, if that’s all the media can criticise him for, he can’t be a bad man.
Besides, haven’t we had enough charismatic prime ministers – politicians who can inspire us with visions of paradise based on emotion rather than fact – who over promise, under deliver and what they do deliver is often change for the sake of change without worrying about the inevitable unintended consequences.
There was Margaret Thatcher who inspired us to fight and win the Falklands War whilst running down our armed services.
Her government was responsible for privatising the public utilities. We were promised we would become a nation of shareholders, and what have we now? Utilities owned by big business – including companies owned by foreign states – not all of them our friends, delivering inadequate services without accountability to the customers who pay not just for their services but also for shareholder dividends.
Then there was Tony Blair. He ran a slick public relations operation. He always kept one step ahead of the press, so that one new initiative followed another before the press could catch up with the failure of the earlier one.
He blindly followed the Americans into Iraq on evidence he should have known was flawed. Much of the chaos in the Middle East today is the result.
Not to mention Boris Johnson. Now he was charismatic. He led us out of the EU and gave us a hard Brexit which has done irreversible damage to our economy.
He clearly cared as little for the consequences as he did for obeying rules which he himself had imposed on the country to protect us all from covid. And who can forget the way he openly bullied and undermined Theresa May in the House of Commons?
Haven’t we had enough of charismatic leaders? What this country needs is someone who will manage the government in a cool and calm way.
If this is what Keir Starmer is doing, he should be given credit for it. His government has been in power for less than eighteen months.
They would say NHS waiting lists are down; the railways are being brought back into public ownership; employment law is being reformed; more money is being put into peoples’ pockets through the increase of the minimum wage; ambitious housing and clean energy targets have been set, and the economy has started to grow etc.
One can argue about whether or not the facts match the claims and whether or not these policies will make real improvements to people’s lives or help or harm businesses, but at least Starmer’s government is committed to getting things done rather than talking about them.
It doesn’t seem to matter what Starmer does – a reason can always be found to criticise him.
So, if he spends a lot of time abroad, he’s criticised for not being at home.
The fact that he has had to represent the country in a difficult and rapidly changing world and somehow keep in with President Trump is ignored by the media. What task could be more important for a prime minister than engaging in diplomacy with other heads of state to keep our country and economy safe?
Then there is the budget saga, For weeks we have been bombarded with speculation about how bad it was going to be.
It looked as though everybody was going to be taxed out of existence and Keir Starmer would take the blame and lose his job.
As it turned out, the budget did make some increases in taxation, but nothing spectacular and it went off like a damp squib.
The worst criticism that could be levelled against the chancellor was not that she had lied or covered up some looming financial crisis, but that she had failed to tell the press how much the economy had improved – making those feared spectacular tax increases unnecessary.
This country is lucky to have a free press, but freedom comes with responsibility. It is right to challenge policies and decisions, but wrong to launch into the kind of vitriolic and hysterical personal abuse which is seen in some newspapers.
This country needs the media to be fair and balanced.
You do not have to be charismatic to make a good leader.