Starmer’s pledges are a placard of political platitudes – but here’s what he’ll really deliver...

There used to be an ex-serviceman called Stanley Green who wandered up and down London’s Oxford Street every day waving a placard proclaiming ‘Less Lust From Less Protein’ and so on. It was his simple manifesto for a healthier lifestyle.

Listening to Keir Starmer’s latest campaign launch in essex yesterday it struck me that the Labour leader and our would-be next Prime Minister had taken his cue from Stan the Protein Man’s songbook.

Starmer brandished a red card containing six meaningless slogans which he claimed would propel Britain to a brighter future under a Labour government.

The staccato Max headroom- style delivery was still there, even though the severe, stickyup, gelled hair-do has been softened somewhat.

(Speaking of hair-dos, the female members of the Shadow Cabinet all looked as if they’d been to their local Teasy-Weasy’s salon for a pre-match shampoo and blow dry. Most of them had scrubbed up pretty well.)

Starmer himself emerged to a video which showed him strutting his stuff in front of a Union Jack. (I wonder what Lady Nugee would have made of that. Bit racist for the Momentum crowd, methinks.)

he was obviously channelling the spirit of Cool Britannia, which Tony Blair milked successfully while winning a landslide victory in 1997, even though no one would ever confuse Starmer for the man even the Cameroons called ‘The Master’ when it came to the art of political deception. Or mistake Martha reeves and Anneliese Dodds for the Spice Girls — although, come to think of it, Pixie Balls-Cooper does have the air of Scary Spice about her.

Starmer had also revived Blair’s pledge card gimmick, a handful of key Labour promises spelled out on everything from billboards to coffee mugs. In ’97, Blair’s pledges were quite specific.

In 2024, the wannabe heir to Blair’s bullet points are, to be charitable, pretty vague. Pretty vacant, more like. Aspirations rather than firm commitments. Ambitions not targets. All Labour’s campaigns chief Pat McFadden would say during interviews yesterday was that the policies outlined by Starmer would be introduced ‘as soon as possible’ after the election.

SO, AS Loyd Grossman would have said on Through The Keyhole: Who lives in a house of Cards like this? Let’s look at the evidence . . .

Deliver economic stability.

Or as Starmer put it: Stability Is Change. Orwell would have been proud of that one, right up there with War Is Peace and Freedom Is Slavery. Actually, when it comes to Labour’s economic policy, another slogan from Orwell’s 1984 would be more appropriate. 2+2=5.

The plans don’t add up. Starmer says there will be higher economic growth under Labour, but Britain’s economy is already forecast to grow faster than France, Germany, Italy and Japan over the next six years. So what would his government do differently?

Shadow Chancellor reeves proposes to hand more powers to unelected quangos such as the Office for Budget responsibility and to the Bank of england, which has failed miserably to meet inflation targets. She also plans to set up another superfluous quango, the Office of Value for Money, to cut down on Whitehall hiring even more civil servants and claw back public spending through efficiency savings.

Good luck with that. The Civil Service continues to grow like Topsy and is a law unto itself, flagrantly refusing to take instructions from ministers or implement policies of which the unions and the bureaucracy disapprove. Can anyone seriously see Labour standing up to the unions or defying entrenched Treasury orthodoxy? Cut NHS waiting times. Starmer promises another 40,000 appointments a week, by making staff work weekends and evenings. As if the Tories haven’t been trying to do that for years, only to be frustrated by the intransigent, top-heavy NhS bureaucracy.

After all, it was under the last Labour government that doctors were given bumper new contracts which allowed GPs to abandon evening and weekend working. This exacerbated pressure on hospital A&e departments.

If you want to see what Labour actually would do to the NhS, just consider the basket case the party has made of the health service in Wales — which Starmer proclaims as a ‘ blueprint’ for a future UK-wide Labour government Secure borders.

Don’t make me laugh. It was Labour which ripped up our borders, encouraging the mass immigration which has put such crippling pressure on public services (see NhS above) and housing. remember Mandelson boasting Labour ‘sent out search parties for immigrants’ to rub the right’s nose in diversity, according to a senior party adviser.

Starmer, a yuman rites lawyer, has opposed every Tory effort to stop the boats and halt illegal immigration. he also wants an amnesty for those already here and is proposing a deal with the eU which will see the UK every year taking in at least 100,000 migrants, who would otherwise have arrived illegally.

he says he will establish a new Border Control Command and smash the smuggling gangs in concert with our european ‘partners’. What does he think the Conservatives have been trying to do? We’ve also bunged the French more than £500 million to stop the boats, to little or no effect.

Set up Great British Energy.

A nationalised, green power company, costing £8.3 billion a year, which he first proposed two years ago to guarantee energy security. If he wanted to do that he’d start fracking immediately and lift all restrictions on North Sea exploration. Yet he remains in thrall to Net Zero, and would bring forward plans to make the UK power-grid carbon-free by 2030, the same date as he proposes banning new petrol-driven cars — a mortal blow to the motor industry.

Boom, boom, out go the lights.

Safer streets. Crack down on anti-social behaviour.

What, like London’s Labour mayor Genghis Khan, who has presided over an explosion of knife crime and disorder? Not a day goes by without another serious stabbing incident. robberies from shops have reached epidemic proportions and are largely ignored by the police. Starmer says he’d bolster police numbers, but Labour remains implacably opposed to stop and search. Hire 6,500 more teachers. Sunak has been trying that, too, giving teachers a 6.5 per cent rise this year, but still they keep leaving in droves. The schools will continue to be run by militant unions, who consistently put their members before the best interests of pupils. Starmer promises ‘more opportunity for your children’, but what’s that supposed to mean? It’s all a bit Whitney houston. ‘I believe that children are our future . . .’

Yes, but then what? And more to the point: where’s the money coming from? Taxes are already at a 70-year high under the Conservatives.

LABOUr plans to slap VAT on private school fees. But that will only price parents out of private education and they’ll end up sending their kids to the local comprehensive, putting still more pressure on the state sector.

As for raising taxes on non- doms, Labour has already promised to spend that money ten times over. That’s always assuming that wealthy foreigners don’t move elsewhere.

Sorry, but Starmer’s pitch yesterday was wholly unconvincing, a catalogue of empty platitudes. The truth is Labour doesn’t have any more credible solutions than Sunak’s embattled Government.

he might just as well emulate Stanley Green and walk up and down wearing a sandwich board plastered with vacuous slogans. It’s probably too much to expect him to level with the British public. The truth is, the only guarantees under Labour would go something like this: Even higher taxes.

More power to the unions and unelected quangos.

More wokery — more rights for ‘ women with penises’, and a Scottish-style hate crime law.

Closer ties with the EU, throwing Brexit into reverse.

No end to mass migration and an amnesty for those here.

Higher gas and electricity bills and a full-blown energy crisis sooner rather than later.

Given that Starmer’s a vegetarian, he might as well throw in: ‘Less Lust From Less Protein’, and see how popular that proves.

Vote Labour!

McCourt, younger brother of Angela’s Ashes author Frank, who has died aged 92, was once asked by Prince Philip in Manhattan how he liked living in the US. ‘I love it here,’ he replied. ‘George was foolish to let it go.’ Philip replied: ‘We all make mistakes.’