Labour Party's P&O row shows Keir Starmer could be set for early departure
My goodness me! Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! Just when you thought things couldn’t get much worse — wallop, Two-Tier cops another shiner on his boat.
This time the headache (coming thick and fast so they are) revolves around the attendance by DP World at the International Investment Summit UK kicking off in London today. These are the Abu Dhabi owners of that once famous brand of Britishness, P&O. Two-Tier is hosting a gathering of global movers and shakers, cap in hand, seeking lots of readies from them too.
He wants to entice their investments into the UK, which DP World were, then weren’t, now are once again due to make with an enticing one-billion-pound punt into a new Thames freeport.
One flagship of Labour Government policy is to promote this country as being open for business to stimulate economic growth. Apolitically speaking, that’s fair enough. But doing this whilst so publicly aligned with your union paymasters demonstrably capitulating to their grossly excessive wage demands does appear somewhat contradictory.
This is especially apparent when advancing the argument of bringing an immediate end to long running public transport disruption, for example, yet failing to achieve it because the unions still intend to maintain their stranglehold with strikes. No concessions in return for such a huge boost in public sector worker wages, and we the ordinary folk remain hostage to renewed union militancy.
Oh, I almost forgot. Our redoubtable Secretary of State for Transport, Louise Haigh was right in the middle of this one too in rewarding train drivers with their inflation busting pay rises!
The idea of attracting fixed investment to boost employment prospects for the wider jobs market is all well and good; indeed, it should be encouraged, but for reasons that make commercial sense. However, when potential investors see another flagship policy being unveiled almost simultaneously advocating primacy of unrealistic workers’ rights then it will be challenging for anyone to take you seriously as unequivocally business friendly.
This fiasco over DP World perfectly illustrates this dichotomy of promoting an investment friendly or beneficial environment for business on the one hand, whilst at the same time creating an over-regulated nightmare being anything but commercially beneficial.
Ms Haigh boldly told ITV News on Wednesday last week that the owner of P&O ferries was a “rogue operator”, exhorting British consumers to boycott them. She was, of course, referring to the company’s decision in 2022 to sack eight hundred staff, primarily in Dover, to be replaced by lower cost foreign contract workers.
Ms Haigh, having previously angered Downing Street by blindsiding them over the train drivers’ pay deal, once again got her boot stuck in her mouth. These events will inevitably raise doubts over her future, including suggestions the PM might hold a Cabinet reshuffle early next year. Her position for now though is not under threat, and she still nominally retains the full confidence of her boss.
Besides, replacing her could be politically unwise since she is one of the few true lefties at the Cabinet table right now. But here is where things get interesting, Possums. Ms Haigh’s description of P&O as a “rogue operator” exactly mirrored language that was used in a government press release put out earlier on the same day. The release was issued jointly with Angela Rayner and had been signed off by No 10 too, you see.
Well, we all thought the same, didn’t we? My, but the mind boggles. Now we know that the Ms’s Haigh and Rayner are both radical lefties.
The upshot of this brouhaha is that Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, chairman of DP World, is finally set to confirm their funding commitment at the summit. They announced this after the Prime Minister publicly disowned “those” comments about P&O made by Haigh and Rayner.
DP World, which is based in the United Arab Emirates, had threatened to pull out of the summit after being referred to as a “rogue operator”, which they didn’t like very much! Well, would you?
Only after the personal intervention of PM Two-Tier in publicly disowning Haigh and Rayner's remarks were DP World persuaded to return to the table. It seems that senior officials in Number 10 made early hours phone calls to the company in a diplomatic frenzy, distancing the PM from the aforementioned ladies’ remarks.
DP World then confirmed on Saturday night that the announcement of their investment in the new Thames freeport would now go ahead on Monday as planned. Rayner is incensed, apparently is Haigh too, at getting thrown under the bus and scapegoated for Two-Tier’s crass ineptitude. I am no leftie sympathiser, but I almost feel sorry for these two.
And how were DP World finally persuaded to attend the summit? This question is perfectly reasonable and should be answered. Some critics have also pointed out that Two-Tier, whence in opposition, had said the Tories “must sever ties with and boycott P&O until the sacked workers were reinstated”.
Doubts must therefore persist about how much of a grip Two-Tier effectively has on the reins of power, not least since the premature departure of Sue Gray over a week ago.
It’s all a bit too much watching this lot make such a monumental hash of trying to govern and we’ve got more than four years before we can do anything about it.
Two-Tier might well be destined for a premature and ignominious departure if he keeps up this nonsense. Frankly speaking though, the alternatives for his replacement are what ought to be sounding alarm bells.
