Starmer has promised to "rethink" some of his anti-working class policies. But only since Nigel Farage, the billionaire, revamped his "worker" image and said he'd restore pensioners' winter fuel allowance and scrap the two-child benefit cap.
In fact Starmer's winter fuel allowance cut left 10.3m pensioners worse off - including 2.5m who were already under the "Minimum Standard of Living" and struggling to make ends meet. To have announced this as one of Labour's first austerity measures was always going to cause uproar - but Reeves and Starmer thought they could get away with it.
Badenoch not bad enough?
They didn't expect Farage to capitalise on their cuts, however! Now even Tory leader Kemi Badenoch says "her party" would never have touched the pensioner fuel allowance. However, unlike Nigel (since she also has to distance herself from him!) she is 100% against scrapping the two-child benefit cap. She says families shouldn't have children if they can't afford them. On the other hand, given Britain's falling birth rate, there are those who would argue that the state should pay them to have kids - and the more the merrier!
So far, Starmer hasn't given any details as to which pensioners might have their winter fuel allowance restored. And as for when this might happen, apparently it's only due to be announced in the October budget - too late for this winter!
As for the two-child benefit cap, one of Starmer's ministers told a news programme that "it is on the table". But which table that might be, nobody in Starmer's Cabinet seems to know!
And who needs a "Nigel"?
In the meantime, Nigel Farage is going all-out to try and steal Labour's thunder (if there is any working class thunder left in the Labour cupboard), while Starmer is doing an excellent impression of Enoch Powell.
He is announcing yet more measures against immigrants - which will prevent overseas workers from getting visas to work in social care, for instance, when there is no other way to cover these jobs! As for his and Yvette Cooper's campaign against asylum seekers, by not providing safe entry routes, which is the only way to "stop the boats", they continue to promote death by drowning.
Talking up war...
As if this were not bad enough, now Defence Secretary John Healey is talking up war. In the year of the 80th anniversary of nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he has announced a second nuclear "deterrent" for Britain. And he boasts about the government's "historic" commitment to increase its defence budget to 3% of GDP.
And why? Because he says that "Russia" poses a threat to Britain. He told the BBC that "Putin" attacks Britain on a daily basis, apparently referring to cyber warfare. Of course, an assertion which is hard to verify. He did not explain how a nuclear bomb - or a "British-made" Storm Shadow missile - might stop "weapons" in cyberspace, however.
...against the working class
In the meantime, the cost of living spirals upward while wages stagnate. At the time of writing, Birmingham refuse workers, who are fighting against a pay cut of up to £8,000 a year(!) imposed by the council, have been on strike for 12 weeks already, without a result. But what's just as significant is that no other section of the working class has joined forces with them...
So what about it? All workers - wherever we work - are being squeezed every which which way, today. There is shared a common interest in fighting the bosses and their war-mongering, anti-working class government. Across both public and private sectors, we would all do well to prepare for a "summer of discontent"!