PROMISING voters “stability” has a way of coming back to bite you.
Remember David Cameron’s tweet in 2015? “Britain faces a simple and inescapable choice - stability and strong Government with me, or chaos with Ed Miliband.”
That didn’t end well for him. Now it’s coming back to haunt Labour with the resignation of Keir Starmer’s chief of staff Sue Gray.
She has been forced out after losing a war for supremacy with Starmer’s puppet master Morgan McSweeney.
To make the truth of this unmistakable, McSweeney has replaced Gray (below) in the top role in Downing Street, while she’s been put out to pasture as a new “envoy for the nations and regions”.
It’s far from the only crisis at the heart of government, with Labour’s popularity plummeting ahead of the 2026 Holyrood elections.
Scottish Labour have blamed the bad vibes on the decision to axe the universal Winter Fuel Payment and fear it could halt their ambitions for a return to power in Edinburgh after a series of by-election losses.
And there’s dodgy donors in the form of a £4 million bung from a tax haven-based hedge fund, while what should have been a triumphant party conference was overshadowed by questions over ministers living the high life on freebies.
All this and they’re not even 100 days in.
Stability it ain’t – so we’ve complied the highlights from before it all went south for Labour.
Andrew Marr says Britain will be a ‘haven’ under Starmer
Speaking on Question Time the day after the General Election, veteran broadcaster Andrew Marr said that Britain under a Labour Government would appear to the rest of the world as a “little haven of peace and stability”.
He said that the “down-to-earth, serious people” in a Starmer government combined with a dependable plan for investment would “mean a wall of money coming into this country from around the world”.
The Sun says it’s time for a new manager
Just two days before Britain went to the polls, The Sun cautiously threw its weight behind Labour, ever keen to back a winner.
The paper described the Tories as “exhausted” and said “sleaze scandals” had left the public scunnered with Rishi Sunak’s party.
In its endorsement, the paper made clear it was reluctant to back Starmer but presented the choice as inevitable when one compared Labour with the Tories’s record for “upheaval, backstabbing and mayhem”.
It added: “They need a period in opposition to unite around a common set of principles which can finally bring to an end all the years of internal warfare.”
The Guardian hails the return of the ‘grownups’
In a particularly salivating sketch, The Guardian covered the first Sunday broadcast round under Labour by declaring that the “grownups are back in Westminster”.
The paper announced: “The Tory psychodramas inside No 10 have been replaced by a serious Labour government focused on delivery. It’s going to take time for all of us to make the adjustment.”
Channel 4 predicts no crises ‘anytime soon’
In a tweet just days after the election, Channel 4’s lead presenter Krishnan Guru Murthy (below) pondered what a Labour government would mean for the media, who had just come off the back of covering 14 years of the most spectacular chaos in Westminster.
He wrote: “The challenge for political broadcasting is enormous, and rather satisfying to watch.
“After years of personality-driven and chaotic, shallow politics coverage across much of the media, which was largely about instability, gossip and leadership crises we now have a Government with massive majority, widespread internal agreement and no likelihood of massive instability anytime soon.”
James O’Brien says ‘it’s about optimism’
LBC host James O’Brien, who made a tidy career for himself out of the chaos of the last Government, opined a couple of days after the election that “it’s about optimism” under the new Labour administration.
He said there was a sense that “they know what they’re doing” and added: “I’m conscious that we’re going to have to change the way we do business slightly.
“I certainly hope that we’re not going to spend another five years daily pointing out the depravities, immoralities and egregious conduct of the most senior politicians in government.”
