SOME of you will already be getting bored of today’s column, and we’re only a few words in.
Attention spans just ain’t what they used to be.
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In the age of social media snippets and information overload, people are increasingly impatient. Mobile technology means there’s often no excuse to dwell. Whole TV series shows can be devoured in a night via streaming services.
This clamour for immediacy runs through everything we do, and is now the natural state of being, as unnatural as it may feel.
My 10-year-old daughter has been planning her 11th birthday party since before her 10th.
She’s always two steps ahead. It drives me mad, but we’re fighting the tide.
Back in the grown-up world, news is only news for a few hours — if that. Journalists need to find new lines, as we call them, on an hourly basis.
The days of the daily news cycle may not be dead — the release of information, the parliamentary diary, interviews.
They can all be choreographed, especially by governments, to chime with a 24-hour cycle, exploiting sweet spots such as front pages of daily newspapers and evening TV news.
But when it comes to a big, overarching story being played out, there is less control. And Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour seem to have forgotten this.
If it wasn’t obvious before the election, Labour’s strategy for the next five years is obvious now.
Blame, blame, blame the Tories, make the country take its medicine (unless you’re a public sector worker with an inflation-busting pay deal), get some totemic policies in the bag, blame the Tories some more, pray the UK returns to decent growth, then fight the 2029 election on having “delivered” despite the basket case they inherited.
And, they hope, they’ll be able to say it’s now time for the good times again.
In politics terms, Labour have a “five-year horizon”. But there are some big ol’ problems with this, all related to that point that people can barely wait five minutes to be sated, never mind five years.
If there’s one thing that voters will remember about this year’s General Election campaign, it will be Labour repeating the word “change” so often that many people’s eyeballs rolled into the back of their heads.
That and the twin clown carts of the Tories and SNP may have persuaded a great deal of people to put a cross next to a Labour candidate.
But the word played by Starmer and Co played to their advantage now becomes their greatest weakness.
People want that “change” now. They are already bored of the blame game.
They’re not buying the things-are-worse-than-we’d- ever-imagined stuff either.
Polls last week showing sliding Scottish Labour support already point to that. The economic inheritance is not Labour’s fault, of course.
But the unfortunate reality for them is that there are quite enough people out there amid a volatile electorate who may be willing to swipe away Labour and switch back to the Tories or SNP, regardless.
Labour have been looking at how the Tories came to power in 2010 following the banking crisis and imposed austerity.
There wasn’t much joy about and David Cameron went on to win a majority in 2015. Labour reckon they can repeat this.
But a decade on, these are very different times, not least because there has been very little joy since 2010.
Labour have now been in power for 10 weeks, but it feels like 10 months. Time, like much of life, seems to have sped up.
And it’s been 10 weeks, overwhelmingly, of moaning.
But they may have to rethink the five-year take-your- medicine strategy if they want a second term.
They could be approaching a Catch-22 bind. They have few means to improve things without tearing up their tax-and-spend rulebook.
Starmer says winter fuel cuts needed ‘to fix economy’ & blasts SNP’s handling of finances
By Conor Matchett
SIR Keir Starmer defended his decision to strip ten million pensioners of winter fuel payments, saying the savings would help “fix” the economy.
The Prime Minister insisted he was being “honest” about the tough choices facing the country, while accusing the SNP of “walking past” them.
Sir Keir is facing the biggest rebellion of his premiership as up to 50 rebels threaten not to vote with the government in a Commons showdown today.
But he and Chancellor Rachel Reeves have refused to water down their plan — as unions accuse them of “picking the pockets of pensioners”.
Sir Keir said: “We can’t secure and fix the economy if we can’t get our transport systems working, if we don’t have our health systems working.
“If you’re asking whether I recognise it’s a tough decision, I absolutely recognise the tough decision.
“If you’re asking me would I want to stand here as Prime Minister and make this decision the answer is no.”
The £1.5billion raid will see the £200-£300 benefit previously paid to all over-65s restricted to those on pension credit only.
The UK Labour leader also blasted the SNP’s handling of public finances and accused them of avoiding the difficult decisions he is taking.
He said: “We could pretend it didn’t exist. We could walk past it. We could put it into the long grass.
“All of that was done by the last government and is still being done in its equivalent form, by the SNP.
“Or we could be honest about it, say that requires us to make tough decisions.”
Or they can stick to the plan and be punished by an impatient public which is quite willing to treat every election as a “change” election.
For Scottish Labour, things are far more urgent. Their “horizon” is little more than 18 months away — the May 2026 Holyrood election.
If there are no big changes by then, which can be shown to be making a difference to Scots’ lives, then Anas Sarwar’s Scottish Labour may not be the shoo-in to be the largest party that some think.
They have on their side the SNP in disarray.
But imagine the Nats do get their house in order, such as by finding a way to get a new leader in place to give them a decent run-in to 2026?
And if the Scottish Tories under a new leader were to appeal more to the working class, then Scottish Labour could find their vote is eaten into at both ends.
Scots figures in the UK Government insist Starmer’s cabinet are aware of Sarwar’s need for quick wins.
They will need more than the HQ of GB Energy in Aberdeen, given this nebulous venture looks likely to be little more than an office full of clever people doling out grants and loans for windfarms.
So far, to far too many people, Starmer’s “change” has meant slashing Winter Fuel Payments. When he stands up on Tuesday for his Labour conference speech, he’d better have more than misery.
Read more on the Scottish Sun
He promised change to an impatient nation, so he shouldn’t be surprised that people want change.
Unfortunately for Labour, people want it yesterday.
