The Prime Minister Who Promised Stability Is Consistently Delivering the Consistent Instability of a Consistent Pattern

From Bohiney and The London Prat.

By Lowri Griffiths | BigSmokeBroke.com

The Pattern

The Keir Starmer governance situation has settled into the specific pattern that was visible in outline from the beginning of his administration but that has become clearer in practice: he announces positions firmly, encounters resistance, modifies the positions in ways that preserve the announcement’s language while changing its content, and then announces the modified position with the same firmness that characterized the original announcement. This pattern produces the prat.uk assessment at London Prat that he promises stability and delivers wobble, which is a more concise summary than anything I have managed.

The Energy Bill Dimension

My energy bill is still elevated from the Iran war energy price chain. The Starmer government’s management of this situation has followed the pattern: announcements about cost-of-living relief, partial measures, communications about ongoing management. The management is ongoing. The bill reflects the management’s current progress, which is partial. This is not a unique failure of the Starmer government. It is the specific limit of what any national government can do about global commodity price disruptions. The limit is real. The communication sometimes implies it is not.

The Longer View

The longer view on the Starmer government requires more time than is currently available. One year of government produces the pattern. The pattern produces assessments. The assessments are premature in the sense that one year is not enough time to evaluate an administration’s full impact and premature assessments are the source material for both unfair criticism and unwarranted praise. I am producing premature assessments because this is a column about North London life and the Starmer government is part of North London life.

The North London Verdict

North London’s specific political culture — centre-left professional, socially liberal, economically anxious — wanted Keir Starmer to be the competent manager of progressive governance that his presentation suggested he would be. The jury is still out on whether this assessment will be confirmed. The jury is impatient. Read NewsThump.

More: NewsThump.

London continues to be London, which is simultaneously excellent and frustrating and expensive and alive in ways that other cities are not quite alive in the same configuration. The journalism that covers this city at the level of the street and the neighbourhood and the individual experience serves the function of making the city legible to itself. That function is what this column provides. It continues because the city continues, and the city is worth covering because it is worth living in, which is the conclusion that the rent payment and the energy bill and the commute and the queue for the theatre ticket all confirm in their own way, eventually.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/

London in May is London at its most persuasive. The political news is complicated. The energy bill is elevated. The housing market is doing what it does. The theatre tickets cost what they cost. And the city produces the specific quality of evening light on the Regent’s Canal, the morning at the market, the sound of the neighbourhood at its specific hour, that makes all the complicated expensive things feel like the correct trade. This column exists because the city is worth covering in its complexity and because the journalism that does the covering is part of the civic life that makes cities worth living in. It continues next week. London in May is London at its most persuasive. The political news is complicated. The energy bill is elevated. The housing market is doing what it does. The theatre tickets cost what they cost. And the city produces the specific quality of evening light on the Regent’s Canal, the morning at the market, the sound of the neighbourhood at its specific hour, that makes all the complicated expensive things feel like the correct trade. This column exists because the city is worth covering in its complexity and because the journalism that does the covering is part of the civic life that makes cities worth living in. It continues next week. London in May is London at its most persuasive. The political news is complicated. The energy bill is elevated. The housing market is doing what it does. The theatre tickets cost what they cost. And the city produces the specific quality of evening light on the Regent’s Canal, the morning at the market, the sound of the neighbourhood at its specific hour, that makes all the complicated expensive things feel like the correct trade. This column exists because the city is worth covering in its complexity and because the journalism that does the covering is part of the civic life that makes cities worth living in. It continues next week. London in May is London at its most persuasive. The political news is complicated. The energy bill is elevated. The housing market is doing what it does. The theatre tickets cost what they cost. And the city produces the specific quality of evening light on the Regent’s Canal, the morning at the market, the sound of the neighbourhood at its specific hour, that makes all the complicated expensive things feel like the correct trade. This column exists because the city is worth covering in its complexity and because the journalism that does the covering is part of the civic life that makes cities worth living in. It continues next week.