Starmer's Return

Good afternoon, colleagues.

Before I begin you should know that this meeting will remain completely secret. That means no off the record briefings of any kind and no private minuting or diarising. We shall need at least ten years before any of this comes out.

So far ninety-odd MPs have called for my resignation as Party leader and I have let them have it, for now. Let a hundred flowers bloom, as Mao said; unless they change their minds they may find they are cut flowers. Let September’s Conference crown Andy Queen of the May - he’s taking group selfies already - but I am still and intend to remain Prime Minister.

For why and how I now pass you over to our new Cabinet Secretary whom you all know. Everything he is about to say to you has my full backing.

Good afternoon.

We have a choice before us.

If Andy took over this would be the last Labour government for a generation, perhaps for ever. He may have made the trams run on time in Manchester but he’s aiming for Number Ten on the basis of no prior planning. The bond traders would skin him alive for his uncosted notions of seizing privatised enterprises, the markets and pension funds will tank and the country will fall into chaos.

He’s a nice guy. He likes to be liked. That is a fatal weakness. When the wolf is at the door love will fly out of the window.

You must all understand that this is a revolutionary government. We came to power in order to save the country and it’s going to happen, if we hang together.

We’ve spoken of change and fixing the foundations and most people think that means the economy. Not so. It’s about the Constitution. Everything flows from that and if we get it right the Tories are dead for good.

Look at what we have achieved already.

Take the House of Lords. In 1980 Tony Benn said create a thousand peers and abolish the House; twenty years later when Tony Blair came in he tinkered with the Lords but had no idea what to replace them with. What those two dreamed of we’ve done. The hereditaries have gone and we have a second chamber we can fill with our appointees.

Resistance has moved to the shires and we have an answer for that too. Local government reorganisation and the new unitary authorities will bury the far right under a pile of confused and apathetic voters. Rupert Lowe, to take one example, will find his base utterly diluted when East Norfolk Council comes into being. Regional politics will be about roads and bins.

And a good thing, too. Why were the people ever given the vote? In 1918 it was to prevent revolution by giving them forums to complain and squabble. We’re here to deliver that revolution and we don’t want to be bogged down with whingers and rabble rousers.

Speaking of which, the social media need to be curbed. Everybody gets to be identified and answerable and we have the tech means to put them all on their best behaviour, as Tony’s mate Larry Ellison says. As for TV and the Press, they’re pretty much on the leash already.

We’ll put a lid on the griping but we’ll also give them less to gripe about. And we’ll do it in a systematic way, not like Andy’s piecemeal populism.

Take energy. Ed is right, we are now approaching the limits to growth but Net Zero will bankrupt us even as China and India are on the rise. We have to get to sustainability by the right route so the lights don’t go out. Drilling, fracking, small nuclear reactors, anything necessary while we build the alternatives.

Ed, we’ll need your brains and diligence in a different area and sorry, you can’t refuse unless you want out altogether. If the international economy goes down and the world stops feeding and clothing us we’ve got seventy million potential victims on our hands. We have to reduce the population and your brief will be to manage net migration well into the negative. That should take the wind out of Lowe’s and Farage’s sails. Apart from anything else AI is going to destroy white collar jobs and the knock on effects of lost salaries will give us severe deflation and soaring structural unemployment. We have to find a way of keeping necessary talent and losing the useless eaters.

Now we come to the biggest resistance, the unelected money-shufflers. We have no intention of being Trussed-up by the bond traders. The reason why this gathering is later in the day is that there was a Privy Council meeting this morning as a result of which we’ve already told the City that if they fuck with us they will find out. We’ll honour any bonds already issued but we’re not going to be at the mercy of lenders and speculators. Anyone who tries it on will lose their licence to trade.

Debt growth is on track to kill us and so we’re going for Modern Monetary Theory. In future we will print our own currency, not borrow it. This will help counter the coming economic deflation.

Free trade just suits the free traders, at everyone else’s expense. Their time is over. We are adopting the approach of Alexander Hamilton’s American School: protective tariffs, infrastructure investment and a national bank that fosters productive enterprise instead of global financial crises.

One of this morning’s Orders in Council is a declaration of national emergency. A consequence is that until we are back on an even keel there will be no General Election. The public doesn’t need to know that yet and the MSM are instructed not to ask.

Social media, emails and phone communications are under intense computer-assisted surveillance and selective suppression. The intelligence services, police and armed forces are prepared to handle any attempt at fomenting discontent and sedition.

Colleagues, this our best and likely our only chance to complete the revolution. Either we will go down in history or we will go down altogether.

Individuals will shortly be called for discussions on appointments and tasking. I shall of course be assisting Sir Keir at such interviews but in any case my door is permanently open to any and all of you.

This meeting is ended. Please leave your folder on the table for collection and secure storage. Thank you.