PM's attack on aspiration is draining the life from Britain

There are, believe it or not, some parallels between the political careers of Sirs Keir Starmer and Tony Blair.

- CHRIS BLACKHURST

Starmer, like his mentor, presides over a thumping majority. In theory, Starmer can also, like Blair, do pretty much as he pleases policy-wise - he should not be in any danger of being driven out of office, he's sitting on enough support to carry him through and beyond the next general election. Except he can't. Unlike Blair, he finds himself hamstrung at every turn, with the result that instead of riding high, he is dragged ever downwards.

Starmer spends an inordinate amount of time telling business chiefs why they matter and how much he respects them and wants them, then introduces measures that display total disregard for them and their needs. Similarly, he insists to his backbenchers and activists that he is red to his core but also makes it plain he isn't happy with some of their wishes, that he also sides with the bosses.

The outcome is a premier who is damned if he does, damned if he doesn't, inert, stuck, blinking into the headlights. Rachel Reeves is said to be planning a "mansion tax" in her forthcoming Budget. Even Reeves's old boss at the Bank of England, the mild-mannered Lord Mervyn King, concluded that this strategy is not "coherent", adding that problems within the system cannot be solved by "just adding another wealth tax to it".

Doubtless, given what has also been mooted, there will be additional similar steps, designed to tax the better-off, to make them shoulder, as she has said, their fair share of the burden.