Labour voters elected Keir Starmer at worst possible time - here's the proof

There is never a good time to elect a Labour government. There are only slightly less bad times. Like 1997 for example. We could just about afford Labour then, because the economy was absolutely booming. Not that it stopped Labour being kicked out of office in 2010 for its financial incompetence, with Treasury minister Liam Byrne sheepishly admitting "there's no money". Thanks, mate. But of all the horrendous times to elect Labour, July 2024 might well have been the very worst.

We still hadn't recovered from the deep recession of 2008-09. The pandemic had drained the country of cash, all splurged on paying people to stay at home. Putin's war had not only caused unthinkable human suffering but had driven the global economy off a cliff edge, forcing governments, including ours, to subsidise energy bills to the tune of billions.

Meanwhile, the Conservative administration had let people down. It abused our trust over lockdown rules and presided over a wave of immigration so extreme and absurd that at one point, in 2022, a phenomenal 1.26 million newcomers arrived in the UK. That's more than the population of Birmingham.

We were in a sorry state. Yet, ironically, what we needed in July 2024 was a classic small-state, centre-right government with the determination to take the tough but wholly necessary decisions: to slash government expenditure, to get people back to work and off state handouts, to minimise immigration, to cut taxes, to boost entrepreneurial endeavour, to foster growth and to get the country off its self-defeating addiction to rights rather than responsibilities.

But we couldn't. Because we already had a centre-right government, in name at least. So, what did we do? The very worst thing. We elected Labour. That's the Labour that actually believes in a bigger state, higher taxes, and more borrowing.

That's the Labour that always leaves the economy in a worse state than it found it. The Labour that had been kicked out in 2010 because there was literally "no money left".

So, just when Britain was so sickly and obese that only a stringent diet would do, we took ourselves off to McDonalds for a "Feed the Family" all-you-can-eat Labour special.

This evening, Rachel Reeves will deliver her Mansion House speech promising a bonfire of regulations, which she'll say are holding business back, and a new system to encourage start-ups. Bully for you, Chancellor.

Because all she's doing is shifting deck chairs on the Titanic. Thanks to her diabolical Big-Mac-and-Fries spending splurge and disgraceful tax raid last autumn, business confidence is plummeting, hiring is sharply down and the economy is actually contracting.

Nor can she rule out a further gigantic tax raid on business in her next budget in just a few months' time, not least because her own MPs rebel at the slightest hint of anything that might look like a cut in our ever-ballooning government expenditure.

Meanwhile, borrowing is almost literally out of control, with the government spending more each year on debt repayment than it does on education. We are heading for catastrophe.

I reckon Reeves is fully aware of how bad the situation is, hence the tears. I reckon she now realises that her budget last year has just made things even worse, and that "tax to grow" is an oxymoron. I believe she knows, deep down, that the only way out is the centre-right way: cut taxes, cut borrowing, cut spending.

But she also knows she's completely knotted and snookered by her own MPs and her own choices last year, so much so that she's now politically incapable of making the right decision. Her own side simply won't let her.

They've got her in their net. So, she tinkers around at the edges, delivering speeches and praying for a miracle. A miracle that will never happen.