I don't have any New Year's Resolutions myself, but I have got some pointers for Sir Keir Starmer. Granted it can't have been easy becoming the Leader of Her Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition in April 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but his response to the virus has been strategically naive.
To my mind, the primary constitutional function of the Opposition is to expose the policies and actions of the Government to scrutiny. I would go further, it is NOT, except in the run up to an election. to propose detailed alternative policies.
Lack of appreciation of this has been Starmer's Achilles heel. He is forever painting himself into a corner, by adopting a rhetorical stance that commits him to saying that Labour would have cracked down harder and faster with regards to COVID always and everywhere. This is not exposing the policies and actions of the Government to scrutiny. This is, to all intents and purposes, giving Johnson and Co. a free hand to impose any gimcrack, back-of-the-envelope load of old cobblers they just dreamed up without any debate.
Concentrate, Keir my old son, on making these crash test dummies justify themselves to us, the public. When they claim to be "following the science," ask "what specific science?" You are dealing with people so monumentally deluded, stupid and incompetent that they think something as flippant as"'Captain Hindsight is rising rapidly up the ranks and has become General Indecision' is a legitimate response in the serious business of the House.
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