Brit Card, Starmer’s Poll Tax
To be fair to the Poll Tax analogy as far as the Brit Card concept is not actually that fair to former Prime Minister Mrs Thatcher. Her error in terms of being blind to the views of the British people came after 11 years of being in government, and presumably the result of her being increasingly isolated from both her party and the voters.
In fact, it could have been an argued even at the that the idea was sound, but the manner of trying to execute and publicise it was somewhat wide of the mark. Indeed, apart from the divide over Europe, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back of her premiership.
Doubling Down
In the case of the latest controversy over the Brit Card, it would appear that Prime Minister Keir Starmer is very much doubling down on recent disasters. He does not seem to know that big government initiatives are exactly what the people do not want. This is something that at the time of the Runcorn by election defeat just four months ago, he promised would not happen.
At that time he said that he did “get it” in terms of the concerns of the electorate and what they wanted to see happen next after a rather painful first year in office. Since then we have had the farcical Online Safety Bill, which probably ensure that almost everyone apart from children are kept safe online.
This has been followed by the Brit Card with its tagline that it will prevent illegal immigration or at least people coming here to work illegally. One would imagine that the spin doctors that be, knowing that the initiative would be about as popular as the plague, or a pandemic lockdown, thought that conflating further government overreach with a popular concern, might pander to the anti-mass migration zeitgeist. However, no one cares about the black economy, and everyone cares about another layer of intrusion into their lives.
The Illegal Economy
Of course, this is not an issue or a problem that many people really need to care about. Given the way that the illegal economy only really hurt one small group, depriving HMRC of VAT and income tax/national insurance. Everyone else has to just keep working away proof of identity or otherwise.
But it would appear that in the wake of the Brit Card debacle, Keir Starmer has inadvertently united almost everyone against him, specifically everyone who will have to have a Britcard. This is including even fanatical Scots people who would not want to be associated with something which had the letters Brit added onto anything associated with them.
Labour Party Conference
Therefore, in terms of being a vote losing machine it would appear that the Prime Minister has stepped into overdrive. The petition against Brit Card has already reached 2.3m. He has also done it in Labour Party Conference week. This is something which means that while the idea was presumably designed to be a victory lap in, will turn into a shooting gallery. Everyone will be able to both see and enjoy the spectacle if so minded.
But getting back to the “getting it” issue, what we see with the Brit Card and other initiatives which are for the common good, but gravely misunderstood is the way that they all seem to rub people up the wrong way. They also seem to cross a line in terms of the British/or even Scottish psyche in the sense that most of us can understand or even accept Labour policies. If we are so minded we may even on some issues go for a socialist approach.
Policy Making
But the kind of Marxist/globalist policy making that this Labour government is serving up as an ideology seems far more powerful and indeed painful to the masses than anything that was suggested even at the height of trade union power in the 60s or 70s.
Perhaps this is not the worst aspect, the real disaster here is that after appearing to be or even posing as some kind of revival of New labour / Tony Blair, everything has gone back to old Labour and something that even those who favour the “up the workers” slogan find difficult to swallow.
Working People
Indeed, even though the government ministers across-the-board like to still refer to working people as a euphemism for the working class it is this very demographic however labelled which seems to be rushing to Reform in its droves. To its credit Reform appears to have successfully delivered a kind of pincer movement, both beating the Conservatives to the right in terms of immigration, and siding with the worries and fears of the working class/traditional Labour voters. Therefore, it is not surprising Reform are in the lead at the polls, and could stretch even higher, given they have actually managed to serve up a greatest hits of both the Conservative and Labour parties being strong on social welfare and justice, as well as promising to address fears over immigration, and preserving traditional British values. Perhaps it should have been called a British Values Guarantee Card?
