In the wake of the local election results Andrew Marr has predicted Farage will become the next PM. About turn…
He said on LBC just now:
“As we sit here now, Nigel Farage is going to be the next Prime Minister. I think we are on course for a Reform victory at the next election. They might have Tories propping them up or not. But the way things are, very interesting listening to Farage just now… he kept talking about geography. And that is the crucial part of what’s happening today, which is that they are indeed becoming a national party.
They are winning all over the place. Now, the early wins have been in Labour’s traditional northern heartlands. And that’s part of, you know, the Brexit story, part of Boris Johnson’s levelling up.
It’s been going on for an awful long time but they’re winning there and they’re winning in the Tory heartlands across the southeast of England as well you put that together you’re asking him can he win an overall majority without London in effect and the answer is he probably can and the big questions for the other parties are do they maintain their position do they try to maintain their position as big national movements.”
This is the same Andrew Marr who said in July 2024:
“I think just having a stable government for five, maybe ten years, which has ordinary, down to earth, serious people, talking like the rest of us, in charge of the government, is going to mean a wall of money coming into this country from around the world. If you look at the chaos in France and Italy, and the chaos in the United States, for the first time in a long time Britain is like a little haven of peace and stability.”
Tempora mutantur…
Andrew Marr has conceded he might have over-egged the pudding when he claimed, just a day after last year’s election, that Labour’s victory would turn Britain into a “little haven of peace and stability“. Remember when a “wall of money” was supposed to pour into this country? Is this wall of money in the room with us now?
He writes in this week’s New Statesman:
“After Keir Starmer’s victory, I succumbed to that hard-to-forgive journalistic sin: the faint prickle of optimism. With a big majority, it seemed that, perhaps at last, the “grown-ups” were in charge… But shocks kept coming. Above all, the Labour establishment had underestimated the deeper difficulties of so much it was facing. The intractable problem of ballooning welfare spending and worklessness; the sheer incompetence of much of the state; the pressures on housing and public services caused by the post-Brexit immigration wave. It did not feel as if a new government meant a new start, not in daily life.”
Guido will at least give Marr credit for admitting he got it catastrophically wrong on The Quiet Era of politics. Remedial support is available for other recovering Starmtroopers. Take note Otto English, Anna Soubry, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Marina Purkiss, James O’Brien…
It has been a year since Keir Starmer summoned “the sunlight of hope” and declared an end to 14 years of misery.
Dewy-eyed hacks could barely contain themselves. Krishnan Guru-Murthy signalled the end of “personality-driven” politics, and claimed it would be so tranquil in Westminster that it would be a “challenge” for broadcasters to cope. Andrew Marr even insisted a “wall of money” would come pouring into the country, and we were all lucky enough to live in a “a little haven of peace and stability” now that serious people were back in charge. Obviously James O’Brien welcomed the return of the grown-ups.
It would take some time to adjust to ‘The Quiet’ era of politics. How’s that going?
Andrew Marr is in awe…
… the world of the Tony Blair Institute is to go back to a sunnier, lighter age; hyper-educated, beautiful young people with transatlantic accents play data ping-pong and talk admiringly of Kissinger on the balance of power. The raw desperation of life for ordinarily chaotic people trying to pay their bills in 2023 seems a long way away.
Paula Barker, Liverpool Wavertree MP backing Andy Burnham, told Times Radio there wouldn’t be trouble from the markets under Burnham:
“The markets will have to fall in line.”