Lately return'd from his summer pursuits, our scribe reflects on the demise of Big Ange

When Swift was a small child, he was much taken with a novelty pop hit – ‘Three Wheels on My Wagon’ - which depicted the journey of a hapless American pioneer who pressed on over the prairies despite his waggon losing - one by one - all its wheels.

The song came to Swift’s mind when contemplating Keir Starmer’s famous (or fatuous) latest reset, which was immediately succeeded by the defenestration of Angela Rayner, and an unplanned cabinet reshuffle (itself much wider than was necessary, and thus offering us another recurrence of the disease of British governments: viz. moving people around to look like one is doing something, thus ensuring that no-one really knows what they are about and can be easily manipulated by their unctuous senior mandarins).

But oh, poor Sir Keir! Even in the reliably awful Guardian, there is a developing consensus among the ragbag of opinion writers (where do they get them?) that the issue might not be the waggon, but Keir the Rhinestone Cowboy himself, who seems to steer it reliably into every gulch and canyon on its route.

Labour has been an utter carnival of chaos since the very first day. Absolutely not a thing has gone right, and most of the mishaps have been self-inflicted. And Keir? He gurns and grins, he prates of delivery, he makes speeches, he goes on fancy trips, and yet nothing ever happens, leastways nothing good. To quote a political phrase of some resonance in this situation, he is in office but not in power.

Which brings Swift to the departure of Angela Rayner, who might be said to be in the reverse position. It is apparently obligatory now for reporters to claim that she is a sad loss, bringing much-needed colour to British politics, and of course - did anyone miss this? - she is that rare beast: a working class politician. Sense of humour, bags of conviction, gritty determination, blah blah blah.

Swift does not acknowledge the obligation to be kind. He doesn’t care what Rayner did when she was a teenager, or whether her fashion sense and dance moves will be no longer around to be patronised by middle-class Labour activists, who treated and patronised her as if she were a new and exotic attraction at London Zoo.

Nope. Faith rather than deeds might be preferable in the Good Book, but politics is all about deeds, and it is by those that Rayner should be judged. In particular the poisonous legacy of her - mercifully brief - time at the top, the Employment Bill; the worst job-killing act of a murderously anti-business regime.

Swift is of course aware of the invidious consequences of the hike in Employers’ National Insurance and the rise in the minimum wage. (The particular victims of these being young jobseekers, which is abominable).

But the Employment Bill is different class. Its wild and unjustified extension of workers’ rights will heap costs and headaches on employers, create yet more work for HR departments (the elephants’ graveyard of corporate careers) and restore to trade unions powers that they neither deserve nor can be trusted responsibly to use. Unfair dismissal claims can be made after a single day’s employment, more sick pay, flexible working on demand, easier strikes, more perks for trade union reps. Swift could go on; but that would be depressing. Ask ChatGPT.

Yet we should not be surprised by this litany of larceny. The whole history of the union movement (with which Labour remains intertwined and is paid by) revolves around a simple proposition: the rights of those who are employed (union members) must be entrenched, even if that is at the expense of those who aren’t in either category. So what if employers are dissuaded from hiring people. No skin off my nose, mate, because I'm part of the union. 

A landscape in which employment law and tribunals, and the unworldly soft-headed judges therein, looms ever larger is great for unions. Their interest in job creation, let alone economic growth, is precisely zero. Their party doesn't get it either. There’s barely a Labour MP now who has been employed in the private sector, and Swift cannot think of one who has actually run a business.

There was perhaps a brief moment of hope that the implementation of this monstrous machine of a Bill might have been impaired by the downfall of the Orange Witch of Hove. It has been striking - geddit - in the last few days how alarmed trade union leaders have been by her departure.

Brothers, relax. There is no way a government led by Sir Sad Sack himself will stand up to you. You will get what you want, and any productivity improvements can stay in the land of make-believe where you think they belong.

As the Bard observes, the evil that men do lives after them. So with Angela. It will, dear readers, be a stormy autumn and a hard winter.