IN 1995 after a local election wipe-out, PM John Major muttered the immortal words: “When your back is against the wall, the only thing to do is turn around and fight.”
Major had won the 1992 General Election with a record pile of votes.
Clueless Keir Starmer has picked up a grenade, pulled out the pin . . . and dropped it on his foot[/caption]
Angie Rayner, aka the ‘Ginger Growler’[/caption]
In 1997, he was swept away by Tony Blair’s New Labour.
Now another political dud has come out fighting.
Surrounded on all sides, clueless Keir Starmer has picked up a grenade, pulled out the pin . . . and dropped it on his foot.
Apparently driven mad by Nigel Farage, he has declared war on his own party.
The PM has so far caved in at every sign of resistance from leftie zealots and trade union barons.
Now he has decided to take them on in a bid to save his own neck.
The stodgy socialist has signed up to Blue Labour, an updated version of Blairism peddled by the party’s only serious political thinker, Lord Glasman.
A mere mouthpiece
Yet the vast majority of Labour MPs are Red in tooth and claw — and they are spitting blood over Downing Street’s signals turning right.
It is ironic that, on his own track record, leftie Starmer himself might recently have been numbered among them.
Downing Street is pretending Friday’s forced reshuffle was an opportunity, not a crisis.
But Starmer was forced to sack two of his highest-ranking Cabinet ministers after just a year, neither of whom should have been given their job in the first place.
Wet lettuce Yvette Cooper was a waste of space long before she arrived at the Home Office to oversee a record surge in cross-Channel illegals.
As for David Lammy, nobody could take the Foreign Secretary seriously after his puerile insults about US President Donald Trump — the UK’s most powerful ally.
Both have been promoted to non-jobs.
Yvette is a mere mouthpiece at the Foreign Office and Lammy’s role as Deputy PM is just a title.
As for the four women sacked over various scandals, plus Number Ten supremo Sue Gray, they stand as evidence of Starmer’s hamfisted political judgment.
Various scandals
They were among his closest political pals — and picked for that reason.
Far from choosing the best people to serve the national interest, the toolmaker’s son was busy filling quotas and paying back political debts.
Furious voters have dumped Labour and flocked to anti-immigration campaigner Nigel Farage.
The risk of being slaughtered by a party that barely existed before the last election has focused minds in Downing Street.
The PM claims he is being ruthless. In fact he is just unscrupulous.
He is in the last chance saloon. He must ditch the madness of the past year to give Britain a chance.
Last chance saloon
Watch now as this avowed international socialist reverses his view that international law trumps the UK law of the land.
New Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is already threatening to axe visas for countries who refuse to take back expelled illegals.
Next watch Downing Street suspend or amend the European Convention on Human Rights to thwart people-traffickers. And it might work.
If Starmer puts up real barriers to this trade in human misery, he might even finally “smash the gangs”.
The PM deserves not a whiff of credit. He is being driven by blind panic. Like most Labour MPs, Starmer does not even believe in borders.
Starmer doesn’t believe in borders
Ministers can blame 14 years of Tory misrule, but the arrival of 50,000 mostly single young men has broken records on their watch.
Britain is a welfare El Dorado dishing out free phones, free health and dental care, £50 a week pocket money and a fancy hotel room.
When Chancellor Rachel Reeves tried to curb our absurdly generous welfare state — where nine million people of working age are not in jobs — Downing Street caved in as rebel MPs left her crying in the Commons.
Now, with UK plc going bust, Starmer is being forced to think again, but with someone else’s brains.
Puppet masters such as Morgan McSweeney — Downing Street’s Chief of Staff — and Cabinet enforcer Pat McFadden are pulling his strings. They are at least on his side.
No love lost
But Starmer’s enemies, the mafia bosses waiting to cut off his toes, are far more powerful.
These are Corbynite socialists, Ed Miliband’s green loonies, pro-Palestine troublemakers and public sector unions ready to fight any move to curb strikers.
So, after barely a year, we have a government in chaos and a PM held hostage to rebels of all flavours.
Since Friday they have a new leader in flame-haired Angie Rayner, aka the “Ginger Growler”.
There is no love lost between Starmer and his sacked deputy.
Time and money are running out. We are 13 weeks away from Rachel Reeves’ make-or-break Budget.
The Treasury is up to its neck in debt and must somehow persuade the markets to keep lending us billions.
This is a crisis not just for Labour but for the political and economic stability of the United Kingdom.
Starmer has just two options: crash through — or crash.
I’ll wager a fiver on a crash — making this PM the first election-winning leader ever to be dumped in Labour’s 125-year history.